Four Finance Stories

First....back in the summer of 2023....fresh out of the Covid-era....two high-class hotels in San Francisco....Parc 55 San Francisco (a Hilton property with 1,024 rooms) and the Hilton San Francisco Union Square (with 1,921 rooms), owned by Park Hotels & Resorts, defaulted on a $725 million non-recourse loan.

The holder basically handed the keys to the bank and said that reduced tourism and remote work trends killed off their business plan.

Earlier this month....the two hotels were sold at a steep discount. A partnership between Newbond Holdings and Conversant Capital acquired both properties for a combined $408 million.   If you were wondering....it's a bout  25-percent of the 2016 appraised value. 

General plan?  The owners say the two need renovation, and around $200-M will be poured in over the next year. They left open the reopening plan....I would  assume....spring 2027.

The game-plan dependent on tourism returning to SF?  Yeah....otherwise, this effort will collapse by the end of the first year of operation.

Second story....not front-page news.....vehicle repossessions (for 2025) are at the highest level since 2009.   

In case you were  wondering....since 1945....2009 is the 'record-year'....with 2.1 million cars taken in that year.  

Also, if you were wondering....lenders usually only recover about 30-percent of the loan value....after they pay the tow-guy, storage fees, and sell off the vehicle.  So....somewhere in the numbers game....lenders have to make up for losses.

Third story.....oddly....AI-related investment now accounts for half of GDP growth in the US. Some folks....talk of a speculative bubble and overvaluation. Payback/savings?  Well....you need to un-employ people (like the PhD crowd)....to get some real savings.

Reality?  If the AI-boom for 2025 investments had not occurred....we probably would be in a recession period right now.

Fourth story....in case you were wondering...since 1945, there have been 12 official recessions.  The last?  Spring 2020....primarily due to Covid.

Since finishing high school....I've been through six.

The longest since 1945?  Nov 1973 to Mar 1975 (over a year).  Most last 3 to 6 months.  

Also, in case you were wondering....the triggers usually lead back to the Fed tightening their money-policy, energy chaos/problems, heavy speculation on Wall Street, and bank failures (loaning out funds that end up in failed results). 

I'm of the mind that folks over age 60....have probably seen these come and go, and are LESS stressed-out than those in the 18-to-30 age group. But adding to reality....if  you asked a thousand college-kids (age21) to explain a recession....less than 1-percent could give a simple explanation.

Trump and the Aliens?

 There is a belief existing that President Trump will shortly announce that yes,  we hold 'some' UAP/UFOs, some alien bodies, and all of this stuff since 1947...is real.

So.....there are five questions I'll have.

1. Who is in charge?  

2. Are there tens of thousands of classified patients held by the companies doing backwards-engineering?

3. How much yearly is spent on the secret business?

4. Can the Democrats find a way to screw up this announcement?

5. Will we end up spending all of 2026 trying to grasp the entire story?

Unrealized Losses Story

 Various U.S. banks (Wells Fargo, BoA, Citibank, etc...the big boys)....are now sitting on $395,000,000,000 in unrealized losses as of Q2 2025.

At some point between now and end of 2025....I'll predict the 'boys' all declare losses, and a collapse of stock will occur.

Blame?  Lot of commercial property sitting there....lot of repossessions of cars....lot of new cars sitting on lots....lot of people NOT traveling on vacations. Way beyond the mess of 2008. 

If you had money in your IRA....might be time to move toward bonds or CDs. 

Voting By Phone?

 I watched a interview....new candidate for California Governor...Dem....making a loose comment....he wanted to have voting by phone possible.

I paused over this.

It's not that crazy.  One single phone....tied to a chip....with a number.  If you had a receiving system....that would only accept one single chip number, than zero-out the guy's further actions....it might work.

The problem is you have various non-Americans and kids under 18....with smart-phones, and the state governments are stupid enough to allow any chip-number to work.

Then you have the ten-million-odd folks who can't handle cellphones.....or they have lousy reception.

I Have This Theory

 There's a TV show in Germany called 'Werewolf'...on for two seasons now.  It's a game-show.

There are twenty players....who pretend to be villagers in a town where some are secretly werewolves (killers). 

The goal?  Around four are selected secretly....by a moderator....to be the werewolves. The game then plays out....with a dead figure, and remaining players (really 15  at this point)....figure out who's who by talking, lying, and voting who they believe is the werewolves.

They basically talk, and talk, and talk....with the werewolves nearly always convincing the players to select a non-werewolf to eliminate.   After eliminating the innocent party....the moderator then gives the bad news....there's still four  werewolves. 

Then the werewolves secretly meet, and select another 'victim'....where the chatter occur,  and in 99-percent  of situations....the overall crew again select the wrong person as the werewolf.

Once you get to two innocent folks....the game ends, with the werewolves winning.

So I have this theory.....that on a mass scale....we  are playing werewolf daily.

Examples? Post-9/11 fear campaigns and the Patriot Act.  COVID policy debates (lockdowns, mandates, lab-leak cover-up vs. conspiracy overreach).  Russiagate vs. Hunter Biden laptop suppression.  Trans chatter  in schools and sports (where one side sees coordinated grooming, the other sees coordinated transphobic panic).  Migration crises used to inflame both xenophobia and open-borders ideology simultaneously.

Who invented werewolf?   Well....this gets interesting.  Dimitry Davidoff...invented the core game in 1986, while he was a psychology student at Moscow State University in the Soviet Union (now Russia). 

Why?   He created it as a social experiment and teaching tool to demonstrate how an informed minority can manipulate an uninformed majority.

In my theory....some folks are convinced they are informed.....when the reality is....they are NOT informed.

The question is.....how do we know that two innocent folks  remain....with the final four werewolves?

Five Things About This Alien/UFO Chatter

 This week....this documentary (Age of Disclosure) came out, and pumped up the UFO/alien BS....another notch.  So five observations:

1. Pretty good odds that Trump by end of 2028....will disclose some 'wild' things....over aliens, hidden technology, and UFOs.

2.  Just my humble belief....one out of five people will NOT be able to handle this reality, and paranoid schizophrenic behavior-reaction will be an issue.

3. The worst part of this disclosure?  The control-idiots will admit they were using $1-trillon yearly to run their program.

4.  Somewhere in the middle of the mess....some idiot will admit that 1,660,000 alien-aliens (not Mexican-aliens) are living quietly in the US....given 'papers', social security numbers, and driver's licenses. Then the harsh reality......they are registered to vote....admitting they all voted for Trump.

5. Finally, the aliens will admit that they are greatly entertained by the woke-idiots,  the 'karins', and the 66-gender crowd....that they don't have this BS on their home-planet.

Would I.......

1.  Hook-up with a gal with a nose-ring?

No....it would be distracting each time she was giving me a 30-minute lecture on some BS...that I wouldn't be able to get the 'full-treatment'.

2. Spend $75k on a new car?

No....my reality-meter would max out at $35k....so it'd have to be a used-car.

3. Find a way to be anti-capitalist?

No....even with a half-a-bottle of gin....it just won't be possible.

4. Sit and listen to 10-minutes of struggles-chatter over someone's woes in life? 

When I was 30....I had such patience and at least pretend to 'care'.  Around age 50....my max patience was 3 minutes.  Today....you get about 10 seconds, then I'm leaving.  The struggles-people are like some tribal-unit....wandering in circles, and a brief snow-storm sets them off. 

5. Move to California?

I'd pause over the idea....the most scenic state in the US....then realize that it's basically 'Albania-on-steroids', packed up with 100,000 druggies wandering around on the streets, with some 12-year-old kid in a suit pretending to be governor.