Month: May 2014

Leaked Recording Reveals True State Of Chinese Housing Market

A leaked recording by the vice-chairman of Vanke Group (China’s biggest property developer), confirms, as The Telegraph’s Amrbose Evans-Pritchard reports, what the bears have been saying for months, ‘it is a dangerous bubble, and already deflating‘. Mao Daqing’s words, translated, are ominous: “In 1990, Tokyo’s total land value accounts for 63.3% of US GDP, while Hong Kong reached 66.3% in 1997. Now, the total land value in Beijing is 61.6% of US GDP, a dangerous level… China has reached its capacity limit for new construction of residential projects… and I don’t see any possibility for a rise in home prices.” The simple chart below highlights all one needs to know – inventory is exploding – and as Mao concludes: “housing production per 1000 people reached 35; even when the housing market is hot, no country has a figure of greater than 14 – this should cause alarm.”

Via The Telegraph’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard,

So now we know what China’s biggest property developer really thinks about the Chinese housing boom.

A leaked recording of dinner speech by Vanke Group’s vice-chairman Mao Daqing more or less confirms what the bears have been saying for months. It is a dangerous bubble, and already deflating.

 

Li Junheng from JL Warren Capital has translated his comments:

 

“In 1990, Tokyo’s total land value accounts for 63.3pc of US GDP, while Hong Kong reached 66.3pc in 1997. Now, the total land value in Beijing is 61.6pc of US GDP, a dangerous level,” said Mr Mao.

 

“Overall, I believe that China has reached its capacity limit for new construction of residential projects. Only those coastal Tier 3/Tier 4 cities have the potential for capacity expansion.”

 

“I don’t see any possibility for a rise in home prices, especially in cities with large housing inventory, unless the government pushes out another few trillion. Beijing and Shanghai have already been listed among the most expensive cities in the world in terms of the medium central city property prices.”

 

 

Mr Mao said China’s house production per 1,000 head of population reached 35 in 2011. The figure is below 12 in most developed economies “even when the housing market is hot; no country has a figure of greater than 14”.

 

“By 2011, housing production per 1000 people reached 30 in Tier 2 cities, excluding the construction of affordable houses. A persistently high figure such as this should cause alarm,” he said.

 

…

 

The numbers of flats and houses for sale has suddenly doubled. “Many owners are trying to get rid of high-priced houses as soon as possible, even at the cost of deep discounts. As a result, ordinary people who want to sell homes in the secondary market must face deep price cuts,” he said.

 

“In China’s 27 key cities, transaction volume dropped 13pc, 21pc, 30pc year-on-year in January, February, and March respectively. We expect the trend to continue in April. The drivers behind the fall in price are credit tightening from the banks.”

 

“Most cities have seen an increase in the ratio of inventory to sales. Among the 27 key cities we surveyed, more than 21 have inventory exceeding 12 months, among which are 9 greater than 24 months. The supply of residential buildings is rapidly increasing month-on-month.”

 

Mr Mao said 42 new projects for elite homes in Beijing will be finished in 2015, hitting the market with an extra 50,000 units that “can’t possibly be digested”.

So there we have it. Vanke Group say the comments do not reflect the view of the company or indeed Mr Mao – which is odd – but they do not dispute that the recording is authentic.

His words compliment recent warnings by Nomura’s Zhiwei Zhang that the problem is even worse in the smaller cities in the interior, as we reported last month:

 

“We believe that a sharp property market correction could lead to a systemic crisis in China, and is the biggest risk China faces in 2014. The risk is particularly high in third and fourth- tier cities, which accounted for 67pc of housing under construction in 2013,” he said

As AEP notes, it’s time to rip the band-aid off – but the rest of the world should be very nervous…

On balance it is better for China to get the trauma over and done with sooner rather than later. But the rest of the world should be under no illusions as to what it means.

 

This policy decision – should President Xi stay the course – is equivalent in global scale to the decision by Fed chief Benjamin Strong to pop the US speculative bubble in 1928, causing a commodity slump that was transmitted worldwide through the dollar based currency system (Inter-War Gold Standard) and which later snowballed into something far worse.

 

The US was then the world’s rising creditor power, with foreign reserves above 6pc of global GDP, almost exactly the same as China’s holdings today. When China sneezes … you will catch a cold, wherever you are.




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NYPD Cops Can’t Stop Drunkenly Shooting at People This Week

There’s a saying that if something happens once
it’s a fluke, twice it’s a coincidence, and three times it’s a
trend. It would seem, then, that the latest trendy thing for New
York City cops is to get drunk and shoot at people. Within a recent
span of seven days:

  • On Wednesday, April 23, NYPD Detective Jay Poggi got drunk and

    accidently shot his partner     in the wrist with a .38 revolver.
    Instead of calling an ambulance, Poggi decided to personally drive
    his wounded partner to the hospital—netting him a DWI after he blew
    a .113 on a blood alcohol test. Investigators
    believe the shooting occurred     when the on-duty
    officers, who had just consumed 11 beers apiece, were firing the
    gun in the air. 
  • On Tuesday, April 29, NYPD Officer Brendan Cronin got wasted,
    got behind the wheel of his car, and while stopping at a red light
    took the opportunity to
    fire 13 shots at a nearby car     for no apparent reason. The
    man driving the other car wound up taking six of these bullets,
    with one just missing his head. (He is now in stable condition.) A
    witness called 911 as Cronin fled the scene with his hazard lights
    blinking. When cops caught up with Cronin not long after, he was
    still driving with the hazards on and said he didn’t remember
    firing his gun.  
  • On Wednesday, April 30, off-duty NYPD Sgt. Wanda Anthony

    drunkenly shot at a woman’s car     outside of New Jersey strip
    club in what’s being labled a “domestic dispute.” 

The week before all these shootings,
another three off-duty NYPD officers were charged with driving
under the influence. In a press conference this week, NYPD
Commissioner William Bratton admitted
that perhaps the department had a “problem of inappropriate use of
alcohol by members of the department.” 

Also last week—right around the time Detective Poggi was tying
one on and firing his gun in the air like some sort of old-timey
prospector—the NYPD’s social media team asked
people to tweet photos of themselves with city cops, using the
hashtag #MyNYPD. They were surprised when the results weren’t
entirely positive.

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Tonight, on a Can’t Miss Episode of The Independents: Paul Wolfowitz, Tom Ridge, and John Bolton Get Interrogated on Foreign Policy

Friday’s theme episode of The
Independents (Fox Business Network, 9 p.m. ET, 6 p.m. PT)
is titled “Mad World,” and it’s about the mixed-up, shook-up planet
we live on, and what the United States government should (or
shouldn’t) do about it. Almost accidentally, the show has morphed
into a vigorous debate over George W. Bush-era foreign policy with
some of the principals involved.

He's at the American Enterprise Institute these days. |||Former Bush deputy secretary of
defense Paul
Wolfowitz defends the Iraq War, elevates his former boss over
his former boss’s father, and rejects the historical premises of
the co-hosts. Original Department of Homeland Security secretary
Tom Ridge
defends the DHS and the Transportation Security Administration, and
rejects the notion that threat alerts were ever politicized. And
former U.S.
ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton tussles with
the co-hosts (and former Reagan-administration deputy defense
secretary K.T.
McFarland) over drones, nukes, and red lines. These segments
are not what you would describe as typical exchanges on cable
television.

What about China?
Fox Business Network reporter Jo Ling Kent and author Gordon Chang
provide some welcome context and expertise. Three-war vet and radio
host Bryan
Suits talks about how military deployment creates libertarians,
and (of course!) there is a game in the middle of the show called
“Name That Dictator,” featuring contestants Tracy Byrnes and
Ellis Henican.

Follow The Independents on Facebook at http://ift.tt/QYHXdB;
follow on Twitter @ independentsFBN, and
click on this page
for more video of past segments. And yes, I’ll bump this post
later, you demanding so-and-sos.

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Less Than Half of the States Met their Obamacare Enrollment Targets

In the press release accompanying the administration’s Obamacare
enrollment report yesterday, Health and Human Services Secretary
Kathleen Sebelius declared that the 8 million people who had signed
up for private health plans in the law’s exchanges had “exceeded
expectations.” 

That depends on which expectations you’re referring to. Looked
at nationally, it’s true enough, at least if you count sign-ups
rather than paid enrollments. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO)
had initially expected 7 million people to gain private coverage
through the law in 2014, an estimate it revised down to 6 million
after the botched launch of the exchanges last of October. As of
April 19, slightly more than 8 million had signed up, according to
yesterday’s report. If you’re looking at actual enrollments, on the
other hand, and you assume a 15 to 20 percent attrition rate due to
non-payment of premiums, then the coverage total drops to somewhere
between 6 and 7 million, meaning it beat the CBO’s revised
expectations but not the initial projection.

But it’s also worth remembering that Obamacare enrollment varies
quite a bit by state. And some states beat their enrollment
projections handily, while others lagged far behind initial
estimates. An analysis
released today by the health consultancy Avalere Health compares
enrollment projections in each state with total reported sign-ups,
as well as with a lower figure that factors in a 15 point drop as a
result of non-payment of premiums. 

According to Avalere, 22 states met or exceeded enrollment
expectations, with the biggest overages appearing in Florida and
California, which even after attrition for non-payment hit 199 and
186 percent of their projected sign-ups, respectively. Another four
states came reasonably close to hitting their estimates, reaching
at least 90 percent of their projected total. Here it is in map
form: 

The rest of the states all came in lower, in some cases much
lower, than expected. Attrition-adjusted enrollment in the
Distriction of Columnia came in at 40 percent of expected
enrollment. Hawaii came in at 46 percent. Wisconsin came in at 57
percent. The figure that stands out the most is New York’s
attrition-adjusted enrollment, which is just 49 percent of the
expected total. That’s a bit unexpected considering that New York’s
existing mess of insurance regulations had
decimated the individual market, and that it was one of the few
states where Obamacare’s rules were almost certain to bring down
individual market premiums from their previous highs. (Granted, the
state still managed to sign up 370,500 people, more than all but
three other states.) 

The report is a reminder is that, especially at first, Obamacare
is going to look and feel very different depending on what state
you’re in. In some places, you’ll see robust sign-ups and insurers
responding accordingly. In other states, you’ll see tiny markets.
Health plan providers are just not going to care as much about
doing business in those areas. 

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The Odessa Images Spooking The Market Ahead Of The Weekend

Wondering why Treasury yields plumb new depths, gold’s having its best day in a month, and stocks can’t keep a bid no matter how many times JPY or VIX is slammed? The answer lies in these disturbing images from Odessa which show Pro-Russian forces under attack by Ukrainian forces, buildings burning, deaths, and of course – most critically – the kind of anti-Russian actions that Vladimir Putin said was the red-line for him taking action…

 




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Italy May Have Over 1,000 Tonnes Of Gold At The New York Fed

Submitted by Gold Core, Written by Ronan Manly

Italy May Have Over 1,000 Tonnes Of Gold At The New York Fed

Italy’s central bank, the Banca d’Italia, has recently published an important document detailing the storage locations and composition of the country’s gold reserves. The document confirms that Italy’s gold is held across four vault locations, three of which are outside Italy.

This is a significant announcement given that the Banca d’Italia is the world’s third largest official holder of gold after the U.S. and Germany. Italy officially holds 2,451.8 tonnes of gold, worth more than €72 billion (US$ 100 billion) at current market prices [1].

In the detailed three page report focusing exclusively on its gold reserves (and only published in Italian), the Banca d’Italia reveals that 1,199.4 tonnes, or nearly half the total, is held in the Bank’s own vaults under its Palazzo Koch headquarters on Via Nazionale in Rome, while most of the other half is stored in the Federal Reserve Bank gold vault in New York. The report also states that smaller amounts are stored at the Bank of England in London, and at the vaults of the Swiss National Bank in Bern, Switzerland.

The Gold in Rome

Of the 1,199.4 tonnes held in Rome, 1,195.3 tonnes are in the form of gold bars, with 4.1 tonnes held as gold coins (871,713 coins). There are 95,493 bars in the Rome vault, most of which are the standard trapezoidal shaped bars, however the holdings also include brick shaped U.S. Assay Office bars produced by the U.S. Assay Office, and another bar type which the Bank d’Italia refers to as ‘panetto’ (or loaf) shaped ‘English’ bars.
 
Like other major European central banks, the Banca d’Italia’s gold reserves were mainly accumulated during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Although Italy was already an important official gold holder during the first half of the 20th century, it still only held 402 tonnes of gold as of 1957. However, from 1958 until the late 1960s, the country’s gold reserves increased nearly 600% to exceed 2,560 tonnes by 1970[2].
 
Since 1970, Italy’s gold holdings have remained fairly constant, although at times some of the gold has been used in various financial transactions such as gold collateral against a German loan during the 1970s, and as contributions to the European Monetary Cooperation Fund (EMCF) and more recently to the European Central Bank (ECB).
 
The RAI Broadcast, the BIS and Bern

While the report from the Banca d’Italia appears to be the first official written confirmation that documents the exact storage sites of its gold reserves, the four storage locations were previously confirmed to Italian TV station RAI in 2010 when an RAI presenter and crew were allowed to film a report from inside the Bank’s gold vaults in Rome.
 
In the RAI broadcast for an episode of ‘Passaggio a Nord Ovest’, the presenter Alberto Angela states that in addition to Rome, the Italian gold is stored at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, the Bank of England in London, and at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Switzerland. The reporter uses the exact words “Banca dei Regolamenti Internazionali”.
 
The BIS connection was also confirmed in August 2009, when Italian newspaper “La Repubblica” published an article about Italy’s gold, stating that it was held in Rome, at the Federal Reserve in New York, in the vaults of the the Bank of England, and in the ‘vaults’ of the BIS in Basel.
 
This apparent contradiction between, on the one hand, the RAI and La Repubblica, who both state that some of the Italian gold is stored with the BIS in Switzerland, and on the other hand, the Banca d’Italia’s own document which states that its gold in Switzerland is stored at the Swiss National Bank (SNB) in Bern, is not really a contradiction since the BIS does not have its own gold storage facilities in Switzerland. The BIS simply uses the SNB’s gold vaults in Bern.
 
The BIS confirms this fact on its web site, under foreign exchange and gold services, where it states that it offers its clients “safekeeping and settlements facilities available loco London, Bern or New York”.[3] The term loco refers to settlement location for precious metals transactions.
 
By confirming that it stores gold at the Swiss National Bank in Bern, the Banca d’Italia has also inadvertently confirmed that the Swiss National Bank’s gold vaults are located in Bern. While this was generally known, the SNB currently will not confirm this fact publically and does not go beyond saying that it stores its own gold “domestically and internationally” in “decentralised” locations.[4]
 
However, Bern based Swiss newspaper “Der Bund” published an article in 2008 stating that the SNB’s gold vaults are in Bern, specifically underneath the Bundesplatz square which is adjacent to the SNB’s headquarters at No. 1 Bundsplatz. The SNB has two headquarters, one in Bern, the other in Zurich.
 
So it appears that the Italian gold in Switzerland is on deposit with the BIS (either earmarked or as a sight deposit) and is, at the same time, stored in Bern at the SNB vaults. Therefore the RAI and La Repubblica reports and the Banca d’Italia report are most likely both all in agreement, since they are merely saying the same thing, just in different ways. Another possibility is that the BIS sight deposit was converted back to earmarked gold in the SNB vault sometime since the 2010 RAI broadcast.
 
The reason for the confusion is because the Banca d’Italia will not confirm any of these details about how their gold in Bern is held, and they stated last week that they cannot comment beyond what is published in their April document.
 
Some of the details in the Bank’s gold reserve document were also confirmed a week prior to its publication when three Italian senators from Beppe Grillo’s political party Movimento 5 Stelle (Five Star Movement), namely, the party treasurer Giuseppe Vacciano, Andrea Cioffi and Francesco Molinari, visited the Rome vault on 31st March 2014.
 
The senators’ report states that as well as the 1,199.4 tonnes of gold held in Rome, “the remainder is mostly deposited at the Federal Reserve”, but also at the Bank of England and at “la Banca Centrale Svizzera” (which is the Swiss National Bank). The senators also reported that “For confidentiality reasons we were not notified of the exact extent of the deposits in different countries”.
 
Italian Gold in New York

As per the senators’ experience, the Banca d’Italia document does not specify how much of the Italian gold is held in New York, London and Bern, beyond stating that most of the gold that is not stored in Rome is stored in New York. However, the document does state that “the bulk” of foreign stored gold is in New York with “contingents of smaller size” located in London and Bern, so essentially it implies that the London and Bern holdings are not very large.
 
Of the 1,252.4 tonnes not in Rome, technically, a majority of this figure is anything greater than 626.2 tonnes. So with a simple calculation, there is at least 626.2 tonnes of Italian gold in New York.  But given that the “bulk” of 1,252.4 tonnes is in New York as the Bank’s document implies, and that “most of the remainder” not in Rome is in New York as the senator’s comments imply, then there could be anywhere up to between 1,000 tonnes and 1,200 tonnes of Italian gold in the FRB in New York.
 
In fact, 522 tonnes of this Italian gold that was earmarked at the Federal Reserve in New York in September 1974 was used as gold collateral for the Bundesbank loan to Italy during the first gold loan to Italy between 1974 and 1976. This collateral rose to 543 tonnes between 1976 and 1978.
 
London – The Bank of England

It is possible using historical data and records of Italian gold movements to estimate how much, or how little, Italian gold may be in London.  
 
It would appear that the Banca d’Italia does not hold very large amounts of gold in London. During the late 1960s, mainly between 1966 and 1968, the Banca d’Italia moved most of their gold that was stored at the Bank of England back to Italy. Regular shipments were exported and delivered to the Bank’s vaults in both Rome and Milan. By the end of 1969, the Banca d’Italia held less than 1,000 gold bars in London, or just under 400,000 ounces (approx. 12 tons).
 
Therefore, since Italian gold reserves have not in total changed very much since 1969, it would be realistic to assume that the Banca d’Italia’s London gold holdings have not changed very much since 1969, unless gold was moved back to London (or swapped back to London) after 1969. This would only make sense if it had been moved back to London for a specific reason such as to allow Italian gold lending through the London market. Gold lending only really began in London in the mid-1980s, and there is no public record that the Italians have engaged in gold lending through London.

Bern, Switzerland

Historical records from the BIS show that there wasn’t any Italian gold left in Bern after WWII, so whatever Italian balance is in Bern has been built up since 1946. It’s interesting to note that Sweden and Finland both recently published the international locations of their gold reserves, and revealed that only very small percentages of their gold is kept in the SNB vaults in Switzerland. Of Sweden’s 125.7 tonnes of gold reserves, only 2.8 tonnes or 2.2% is stored with the SNB vaults[5]. For Finland, only 7%, or 3.4 tonnes of its 49 tonnes of gold reserves are stored with the SNB in Switzerland[6].
 
If this Swedish-Finnish 2-7% range of allocations at the SNB was applied to the Italian gold that is reported to be outside Italy, it would work out at between 25 tonnes and 87.6 tonnes of Italian gold held at the SNB vaults in Bern. Assuming that there is very little Italian gold in London (400,000ozs or about 12 tonnes), and only a small allocation in Bern, then there could be nearly 1,200 tonnes of Italian gold at the Federal Reserve in New York.
 
Gold Audits and Repatriation

The Banca d’Italia state in their gold document that external auditors verify the gold held in Rome each year in conjunction with the Bank’s own internal auditors. The external auditors also verify the gold held abroad using annual certificates issued by the central banks that act as the depositories i.e.

This sound very similar to the way the German gold reserves stored abroad was audited. i.e. the gold stored abroad is not physically audited at all (although the Bundesbank did describe recently in quite a vague way that their gold in New York was recently audited by some of their own appointed representatives).

Given the widespread recent media coverage of the German Bundesbank’s plans to repatriate 300 tonnes of its gold reserves from the Federal Reserve in New York to the Bundesbank’s headquarters in Frankfurt, it will be interesting to see whether, in time, a critical mass is reached in Italian public opinion or even in Italian political opinion that would lead to the Banca d’Italia raising a similar request to the Federal Reserve.

The fact that the initial gold repatriated from New York by the Bundesbank needed to be melted down and recast (suggesting that it was low grade coin bars), does not inspire confidence that the Banca d’Italia might not face a similar problem if it attempts any gold repatriation from New York.

Source Links (all in Italian): 
Banca d’Italia gold document, April 2014
http://ift.tt/1rLYVH2
 
RAI gold vault video http://ift.tt/1rLYVH4
La Repubblica gold article: http://ift.tt/1rLYVH6
Movimento 5 Stelle article: http://ift.tt/1rLYVH9
Movimento 5 Stelle video of visit to Bank: http://ift.tt/1rLYVHa


[1] Excluding the IMF, Italy is the world’s third largest official gold holder; including the IMF, Italy is the world’s fourth largest gold holder.
[2] Central Bank Gold Reserves, An Historical perspective since 1845, Timothy Green, Research Study No. 23, November 1999, WGC
[3] http://ift.tt/1rLYYmq
[4] http://ift.tt/1jnR69U
[5] http://ift.tt/1rLYYCF
[6] http://ift.tt/1rLYVXx




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Comedian Rob Schneider – “America is Sliding Very Fast Towards Fascism”

The writing on the wall is there for anyone willing to take a look and be honest with themselves. I always try to highlight when public figures have the courage to state what is really happening in this country (such as rapper Lupe Fiasco), rather than cower in a corner from fear of repercussions. Most celebrities are the biggest cowards on earth. They prance around criticizing other nations, never daring to look inward. It is disgraceful.

Rob Schneider had a lot to say in his recent interview with Chris Stigall. Here are a few of his most incisive lines:

There’s a polarization that’s happening…I do think you look can look at government and go, ‘Wow, it is out of control now,’ and if you do criticize or tend to be not directly along a liberal stand, you can get murdered. 

We don’t really have freedom of the press. It’s owned by about eight different companies, and it doesn’t really express or help the average American.

There’s also the money shot of him discussing America’s decline into fascism, which you can hear in the clip below.

In Liberty,
Michael Krieger

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Comedian Rob Schneider – “America is Sliding Very Fast Towards Fascism” originally appeared on A Lightning War for Liberty on May 2, 2014.

continue reading

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Battlefield Ukraine: Separatists With Missiles Shoot Down Helicopters

Eastern regions of Ukraine are battlegrounds
today. The government in Kiev has launched a full-fledged offensive
against pro-Russian militants, and there are reports of heavy
casualties. President Barack Obama is meeting today with German
Chancellor Angela Merkel to discuss the situation. The Putin
administration has condemned the operation, saying Ukraine just
extinguished any chance of a peaceful resolution to the crisis. The
United Nations held an emergency
meeting that included U.S. Ambassador Samantha Powers.

There is no official tally of casualties from the fighting in
Donetsk and Sloviansk, but Ukraine’s interim president, Oleksandr
Turchynov, says the
operation left “many insurgents dead, wounded and arrested” and
accuses them of using human shields. He also
claims that “armed saboteurs” from the Russian government were
fended off at the border in the night.

Separatists,
reportedly armed with surface-to-air missiles, shot down two
military helicopters, killing two soldiers and injuring others.

In Odessa, there are ongoing clashes between pro-Russian and
pro-Ukrainian protesters. Agence France-Presse reports
three deaths from these skirmishes, and the Kyiv Post
reports 20 injured. Moscow Times reporter Howard Amos is
tweeting live updates and
photos (images above and below) of additional injuries and
deaths.

A Kremlin spokesman has
stated, “While Russia is making efforts to de-escalate and
settle the conflict, the Kiev regime has turned to firing on
civilian towns with military aircraft and has begun a punitive
operation, effectively destroying the last hope of survival for the
Geneva accord.” Yesterday Russia demanded that Ukraine remove any
military presence from its own eastern territories or else face
“catastrophic
consequences.” 

Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry
counters that “despite calls of the international community,
the Russian Federation has taken no steps to de-escalate the
situation and fulfill the Geneva agreements. Russia strongly
supports the terrorist groups that operate in the eastern regions
of Ukraine, endangering civilians, seizing hostages and building
the atmosphere of terror and violence.”

Obama and Merkel both are threatening new sanctions against
Russia,
according to The Guardian.

Here’s a video of the action in Odessa: 

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Washington’s Marijuana Regulators Pick Retail License Finalists

Today the Washington State Liquor Control
Board (LCB), which has received more than 2,100 applications for
the 334 marijuana retailer licenses it plans to award, posted
the results of the lotteries it conducted to winnow down the list
for each locality. The applicants with the lowest lottery numbers
will be first in line for licenses, assuming they pass muster with
the state. In Seattle, for instance, the LCB ranked 58 applicants
(out of more than 400) by lottery. Since it plans to license 21
stores in Seattle, the 21 applicants with the lowest numbers will
receive licenses if they meet the state’s requirements. If any of
them don’t, applicants further down the list
will have a chance.

Licensees will also need local approval before they can open
stores. Nearly 100 cities and counties have imposed
temporary or permanent bans on marijuana businesses. Washington
Attorney General Bob Ferguson
says those bans are permitted by I-502, the state’s
legalization measure. The jurisdictions with bans include Yakima,
where the LCB nevertheless picked seven finalists for five
licenses, and Walla Walla, where three finalists are vying for two
licenses that won’t be worth much. Fifty or so local governments,
including Seattle, Spokane, and Tacoma, have approved
interim or permanent zoning rules for cannabusinesses.

One of the retail license finalists is Scott O’Neill, manager of
Pacific Northwest Medical, a dispensary in Spokane owned by Sean
Green, who
received Washington’s first marijuana cultivation license in
March. O’Neill ranks eighth on the lottery list for Spokane, which
had been allotted eight cannabis outlets. He hopes to open a store
at at 1919 East Francis Avenue, which is also the home of
Green’s Kouchlock Productions. The Spokane Spokesman
Review reports
that O’Neil “hopes to open the store by July if he can secure
marijuana from growers who are slowly being licensed.” So far the
LCB, which received more than 2,800 applications for cultivation
licenses, has awarded 25. The LCB
plans to “begin issuing retail licenses no later than the first
week of July.” As O’Neill tells The Spokesman Review, “The
big question in the beginning is going to be getting product on the
shelves.”

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“Eastern European” Buyer Scoops Up World’s First Quarter-Billion-Dollar Apartment

The world's most expensive apartment sale has been 'consumated'… in London (of course). As The Evening Standard reports, an Eastern European buyer (has anyone seen Yanukoych recently?) is believed to have paid £140 million (~$235 million) for the 16,000  square feet apartment — more than 10 times the size of a typical London three-bedroom home — at the One Hyde Park scheme near Harrods. This values the apartment at a 'mind-blowingly-desperate-to-launder-my-money-and-get-my-assets-away-from-potential-bank-freezes' $17,000 per square foot.

 

Ironically the price is a deal against the $295 million valuation that had been place on the apartment by appraisers.

Quiet City living…

 

Candelabra looks like Superman's home (hhmm, perhaps)

 

Kitchen looks a little narrow to us… (and no Sodastream)

 

Relax…

 

No beanbags?

 

Well, yeah that's great but $200million?!

 

Well – we guess it's worth it if you like that kind of thing – at least it is a "hard asset."




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