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Demand for luxury properties in Aspen, Colorado, and Park City, Utah, is “through the roof,” explained Mauricio Umansky, CEO of real estate firm The Agency, who recently spoke with Fox Business. 

Umansky said the pandemic had accelerated the trend of wealthy vacationers staying year-round in rural, resort communities. 

“A lot of traveling to Europe this year is probably nonexistent … And so I think a lot of Americans are looking where to enjoy the summer,” he said.

As we’ve previously noted, “there’s a mad rush” of wealthy folks leaving big cities due to the virus pandemic, economic crash, and social unrest. It was noted by Sotheby’s relators that people in the San Francisco Bay Area are fleeing the city for rural communities, such as Marin County, Napa wine country, and south to Monterey’s Carmel Valley. 

Some rich people have also fled to their luxury doomsday bunkers — but it seems, for the mainstream household with a couple million dollars in the bank, they’re fleeing to rural communities, no matter if it’s the outskirts of the Bay area, or as we now find out now, Aspen and Park City. 

According to the Park City Board of Realtors, the market was hot during 1Q20 as it outpaced last year, despite a pandemic and economic crash. The number of homes sold rose by 11%, and the median sale price was up 5% YoY. The median sale price is about $2 million, which means the area is an exclusive retreat for the rich as they attempt to isolate themselves from the implosion of American cities. 

In Aspen, median sales prices increased 6.7% to $6.4 million for single-family homes compared to 2019, according to Aspen Board of Realtors. Supply was tight in the first half of 2020 as the number of days home set on the market was reduced by 30%. 

Umansky said people from New York City are fleeing to Aspen, while Park City is seeing folks from Los Angeles or San Francisco. All of these cities have witnessed strict lockdowns, high unemployment, crashed services economies, and now social unrest — that makes city life unbearable to raise a family. 

“People have realized that you can work from home,” he said. “And the big question has become: where do you want to sequester with your family if this ever happens again? And so I think people are looking for space and looking for areas where there’s a lot less density.”

The collapse of American cities is set to spark a massive revival of rural communities in the early 2020s. A combination of social unrest, economic crash, and virus pandemic could result in a plunge of real estate in major metros, with slow recovery time as the crisis as the socio-economic crisis worsens. 

The trend is your trend — smart money is dumping real estate in major cities — they’re getting the hell out of dodge as radical leftist attempt to defund or disband police departments across the country and turn metros into a world of chaos. 

After three months of slow but consistent improvement in restaurant dining data in the US and across the globe, in its latest update on “the state of the restaurant industry”, OpenTable today reported the biggest drop in seated restaurant diners (from online, phone and walk-in reservations) since the depth of the global shutdown in March.

As shown in the OpenTable graphic below, on Sunday, June 14, restaurant traffic suddenly tumbled, sliding from a -66.5% y/y decline as of June 13 to -78.8% globally.

This was mostly due to a sharp drop in US restaurant diners, which plunged by 13% – from -65% to -78% – the biggest one day drop since the start of the shutdown in the US, and the second biggest one day drop on record.

The drop was uniform across most US states, which saw a traffic dip between 10% and 25% overnight.

While the upward trend in dining was barely impacted by the roughly 3 weeks of protests across the US, the most likely catalyst was the widespread media coverage of spiking coronavirus cases across several states including California, Florida and Arizona. And while not necessarily surprising, the speed and severity of the decline demonstrates just how quickly any V-shaped recovery can collapse under its own weight if enough people become convinced that the pandemic is making a comeback.

Authored by Michael Krieger via LibertyBlitzkrieg.com,

The title of today’s post is not meant to be taken literally. I trust plenty of people. I trust friends who’ve demonstrated their trustworthiness over the years. I trust my family. Having people in my life I love and trust makes everything far more meaningful and pleasant. I hope people reading this likewise have a circle of trust they’ve built over the years.

On the other hand, you should never trust anyone or anything that hasn’t given you good reason to do so, and if someone or something gives you good reason not to trust them, you should never forget that. The more power a person or institution has in society, the less trustworthy they tend to be. I don’t say this because it’s fun to be cynical, I say this because my life experience has demonstrated its accuracy.

In the 21st century alone, I’ve been given good reason to distrust all sorts of things around me, including the U.S. government (all governments really), intelligence agencies, politicians, mass media, Wall Street and Silicon Valley, to name a few. These power centers make up “society” as we know it in 2020, which is really just massive concentrations of lawless financial and political power obfuscating rampant criminality behind the cover various ostensibly venerable institutions. What’s most remarkable is how many people still maintain trust in so many of these provably untrustworthy organizations and industries, which speaks to the power of propaganda as well as the comfort of denial.

That said, the ground is clearly beginning to shift on this front. As more and more people recognize that the system’s designed to work against them, increased numbers will reject conventional wisdom and search for an alternative framework. Unfortunately, this next step can be equally treacherous and it’s important not to jump from the frying pan into the fire.

This is where social media comes into play. It offers an endless array of opinions and analysis that you don’t get from mass media, but it’s also filled with bad actors, professional propagandists and con artists. At this point, everyone knows that social media is the new information battleground, so every character or institution with malicious intent is aggressively playing in this arena and often with boatloads of money. The charlatans at MSNBC will have you believe it’s just the Russians or Chinese, but every government and every single special interest on the planet is now involved. They’re all on social media in one form or another, trying to push you in a specific direction that’s usually not in your best interests.

It took me a while, but I’ve finally recognized how unthoughtful and treacherous social media is whenever some big news event hits. Important arguments quickly lose all nuance and devolve into binary talking points and agendas. People split into teams in a way that feels very much akin to the traditional, and now largely discredited, red/blue political theater. For covid-19, it felt like half of Twitter thought it was an extinction-level event, while the other half was convinced the whole thing was a hoax. In the aftermath of George Floyd, you were either cheering on the civil unrest, or wanted to send in the military. Increasingly, if you aren’t in one of two manufactured camps on any issue you’ll be shouted down and ostracized.  That’s not the kind of discussion I’m here for.

As someone who’s found great value in Twitter over the years, I’ve become far more careful in how I use it and where to direct my attention and energy. It reminds me of Mos Eisley in Star Wars, a wretched hive of scum and villainy, but simultaneously a place you can connect with Han Solo and get a spaceship.

As we move forward, it’s going to feel like the world’s ending, and in some ways it will be. No the world isn’t literally ending, but a specific kind of world is ending, and it’ll be extremely difficult for many people to tell the difference as it’s happening. This will likely lead to many more episodes of mass insanity as professional manipulators take advantage of millions upon millions of disoriented people. Priority number one should be to stand guard at the gate of your mind during this time so as not to become a victim.

We live in an age of mass corruption, mass oligarch looting and mass institutional and structural breakdown.

We also live in an age of mass manipulation, mass hysteria and mass psychological warfare.

Navigating through these two realities will become increasingly difficult.

— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) June 12, 2020

The best thing you can do from here on out is use your time and energy as productively as possible. We’re going to need builders, creators and inventors more than ever before, because we’re past the point of putting this thing back together. We’ll need to recreate, reimagine and rebuild, and all of this must spring from a point of consciousness in order to bring forth something that is both better and sustainable. Become more beautiful and resilient as others become ugly and unhinged. Focus on what’s within your capacity to control and always remember to resist the crazy.

*  *  *

Liberty Blitzkrieg is an ad-free website. If you enjoyed this post and my work in general, visit the Support Page where you can donate and contribute to my efforts.

Talk about a bitter irony. During an ESPN program entitled “the Return of Sports”, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred announced on Monday evening that the league is on the verge of scrapping the 2020 MLB season, a 180-degree reversal from his promise made last Wednesday that a season would “100%” happen, even if players had to perform in empty stadiums to TV-only audiences.

WSJ explains that an increasingly fraught labor dispute between the league, the owners and the player’s union has jeopardized an abbreviated 50-game season that had been set to start as soon as July 4th Weekend, getting a jump on other American sports. That jump could have maybe helped baseball recapture the interest of fans who have started to abandon the sport. Instead, the problem of how owners can profitably run a business without a critical pillar of revenue – ie ticket sales and sales of food, beverages and merchandise from live game attendfance – has reared its ugly head.

“The owners are 100% committed to getting baseball back on the field,” Manfred said. “Unfortunately, I can’t tell you that I’m 100% certain that’s going to happen.”

Restaurant owners across the US are shutting their doors en masse as millions find that the “COVID-19-friendly” arrangement of dining rooms at 50% capacity simply isn’t workable for most restaurants, though some have made it work by expanding their dining rooms to the surrounding street and parking lots.

The problem with the MLB is that owners have been demanding more wage concessions from players. The players union has insisted that players won’t accept pay reductions that amount to more than 100% of the per-game pro-rated figure (ie a share of their salary that directly corresponds to the number of games played in 2020 vs. a normal season).

But owners insist that they can’t profitably run the business and meet player’s salary demands, which the owners have characterized as unreasonable. In recent days, the player’s union has asked to see proof that the owners truly are facing economic hardship. Before asking for further pay reductions from the players, owners had settled on the 50-game figure, the shortest of several proposed scenarios, to try and maximize the more lucrative post-season and minimize losses from what will likely be a loss-leader of a regular season. The player’s union cut off talks after rejecting the league’s third payroll reduction offer. Now, Manfred is accusing the players of negotiating in bad faith.

Then the players union accused the league of negotiating in bad faith “since the beginning”. The resulting acrimonious stalemate is threatening to cause ructions that could resonate beyond the 2020 season. The WSJ says both sides are now gearing up for a “prolonged labor battle” that could take years to resolve.

And the two sides haven’t even started serious talks in safety protocols.

As protests against police brutality continue to rage across major US cities, cops across the country have reached their breaking point.

On Monday, the Atlanta Police Foundation some 19 Atlanta police officers have resigned amid the growing civil unrest. And according to Foundation CEO Dave Wilkinson, “Morale is at an all-time low.“

“We are now going into the third consecutive week of unabated protests in which officers have worked 12-hour shifts seven days per week. As you can imagine, their stress levels are exacerbated by physical and emotional exhaustion,” Wilkinson told CBS46.

The resignations come after an officer involved in the shooting death of 27-year-old Rayshard Brooks was fired, another was placed on administrative leave, and Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields announced that she would be stepping down following the incident.

“The morale is bad right now. A lot of anger and frustration directed at our police officers,” said Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms.

As we noted over the weekend, Tulsa, Oklahoma police major Travis Yates told “Tucker Carlson Tonight” that police morale is at an all-time low, and that “Every department, every officer you talk to is looking to leave.” Yates published a column last Friday on the website LawOfficer.com titled “America, We Are Leaving,” in which he says “I wouldn’t wish this job on my worst enemy,” adding “I would never send anyone I cared about into the hell that this profession has become … I used to talk cops out of leaving the job. Now I’m encouraging them. It’s over, America. You finally did it You aren’t going to have to abolish the police, we won’t be around for it.”

Making matters worse, Los Angeles Police Department officers have racked up to $40 million in overtime during the recent protests, according to FoxLA‘s Bill Melugin, whose sources tell him morale is at “rock bottom.”

The officers will instead be given comp time.

According to multiple LAPD sources, LAPD Transit Division/MTA services, which is paid via OT, had 43 officers cancel their shifts today, and they are now averaging 12-18 cancellations per shift. I’ll be live at 6 on @FOXLA

— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) June 16, 2020

Via IssuesInsights.com,

In the wake of George Floyd’s death and the subsequent protests/riots calling for “defunding the police,” Democrats have started targeting police unions, saying they are obstacles to accountability and reform. Do they realize that the same can be said of teachers’ unions?

In a recent interview about reforming the police in his city, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said that:

“The elephant in the room with regard to police reform is the police union… We do not have the ability to get rid of many of these officers that we know have done wrong in the past due to issues with both the contract and the arbitration associated with the union.”

He said that it “sets up a system where we have difficulty both disciplining and terminating officers who have done wrong.”

Minneapolis City Councilman Steve Fletcher said the police union “operates a little bit like a protection racket.”

Frey and Fletcher won’t get an argument from us. Like other public-sector unions, police unions serve mainly to fatten salaries and benefits at taxpayer expense, make it harder to fire bad employees, and then dump campaign cash on the same people they are “negotiating” with.

It was Franklin Roosevelt, of all people, who understood the inherent problem this arrangement poses, warning back in 1937 that “All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.”

A Duke Law Journal study looked at 178 police union contracts and found that “a substantial number … unreasonably interfere with or otherwise limit the effectiveness of mechanisms designed to hold police officers accountable for their actions.”

The New York Times reports how police union membership has been climbing even as private-sector union membership has plunged, and that this gives unions “resources they can spend on campaigns and litigation to block reform. A single New York City police union has spent more than $1 million on state and local races since 2014.”

“The greater the political pressure for reform, the more defiant the unions often are in resisting it — with few city officials, including liberal leaders, able to overcome their opposition,” the Times reports.

No kidding.

All this applies equally, if not more so, to teachers’ unions. Through the collective bargaining process, they’ve made it nearly impossible to fire a teacher, unless the school wants to spend roughly two years and $200,000 doing it, according to Stanford Professor Terry Moe.

Teachers themselves admit that this is a problem. A survey by NPR and Ipsos looked at the views of K-12 teachers across America, with roughly half members of teachers’ unions and half non-unionized. Among the findings: 62% of organized teachers and 64% of non-unionized teachers agreed that the unions make it harder to fire bad teachers.

A study by the Fordham Institute looking at what it takes to fire bad teachers found that “For the most part, state and local policies create a tortuous maze of paperwork, regulations, and directives. Teachers who receive years’ worth of ineffective ratings are given multiple chances for improvement and reevaluation, and a single procedural violation by the administration starts the process over again.”

Teachers’ unions are the biggest and most relentless obstacle to education reforms such as charter schools and education savings accounts that would put more control in the hands of parents and break the union stranglehold over public education.

But don’t expect Democrats to ever extend their reasons for hating police unions over to teachers, for the simple reason that teachers’ unions dump far more money on Democrats than police unions.

While police unions give heavily to Democrats, they also support Republican candidates.

As one House Democratic leadership aide told Axios,

“Police unions are very different. They’re very conservative, a lot of them are even Republican. They don’t have the same progressive beliefs.”

But teachers’ unions? In the past 28 years, they gave 96% of their campaign contributions to Democratic candidates. And they are huge contributors. In 2016, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association gave $64 million in political donations.

The result: student test scores have stagnated while per-pupil costs continue to climb. Millions of children remain stuck in failing schools. But hey, it’s mainly a real problem only for those in poor, minority neighborhoods. Why would Democrats care about that?

Now that the public is opening its eyes to the harm done by one public-sector union, perhaps it will start to realize that being anti-teachers’ unions isn’t the same as being anti-education.

“We have a researcher who was removed by the RCMP from the highest security laboratory that Canada has for reasons that government is unwilling to disclose. The intelligence remains secret. But what we know is that before she was removed, she sent one of the deadliest viruses on Earth, and multiple varieties of it to maximize the genetic diversity and maximize what experimenters in China could do with it, to a laboratory in China that does dangerous gain of function experiments. And that has links to the Chinese military.” -Amir Attaran

A Chinese scientist who was escorted out of Canada’s only level-4 biolab over a possible “policy breach” shipped dealdy Ebola and Henipah viruses to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, according to the CBC, citing newly-released documents. The shipment is not related to COVID-19 or the pandemic.

Dr. Xiangguo Qiu, her husband Keding Cheng and her Chinese students were removed from the Canadian lab after the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) asked the RCMP to investigate several months earlier. According to PHAC, Qiu’s eviction from the lab is not connected to the shipment.

“The administrative investigation is not related to the shipment of virus samples to China, said PHAC chief of media relations, Eric Morrissette.”

“In response to a request from the Wuhan Institute of Virology for viral samples of Ebola and Henipah viruses, the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) sent samples for the purpose of scientific research in 2019.”

To recap, a Chinese scientist, her husband and her Chinese students were escorted out of Canada’s only Level-4 lab for reasons unknown, and which are not related to her shipment of deadly viruses to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

“It is suspicious. It is alarming. It is potentially life-threatening,” said University of Ottawa law professor and epidemiologist, Amir Attaran.

While Canada doesn’t do ‘gain-of-function’ experiments – which are where natural pathogens are mutated in a lab and assessed to see if it has become more deadly or infectious, “The Wuhan lab does them and we have now supplied them with Ebola and Nipah viruses. It does not take a genius to understand that this is an unwise decision,” said Attaran.

“I am extremely unhappy to see that the Canadian government shared that genetic material.“

Attaran pointed to an Ebola study first published in December 2018, three months after Qiu began the process of exporting the viruses to China. The study involved researchers from the NML and University of Manitoba.

 

The lead author, Hualei Wang, is involved with the Academy of Military Medical Sciences, a Chinese military medical research institute in Beijing. 

 

All of this has led to conspiracy theories linking the novel coronavirus responsible for COVID-19, Canada’s microbiology lab, and the lab in Wuhan. –CBC

According to the report, the RCMP and PHAC have repeatedly denied any connections between the virus shipments and COVID-19.

According to the newly-released documents, the following virus strains were shipped to the WIV (approximately 15 ml):

• Ebola Makona (three different varieties)
• Mayinga.
• Kikwit.
• Ivory Coast.
• Bundibugyo.
• Sudan Boniface.
• Sudan Gulu.
• MA-Ebov.
• GP-Ebov.
• GP-Sudan.
• Hendra.
• Nipah Malaysia.
• Nipah Bangladesh.

The documents also shed light on communications from the months leading up to the shipment – including confusion on how to package the viruses, along with a lack of decontamination of the package prior to its shipment, as well as concerns expressed by NML Director-General Matthew Gilmour to his superiors in Ottawa – particularly over where the package was going, what was in it, and whether its paperwork was in order. 

In one email, Gilmour said Material Transfer Agreements would be required, “not generic ‘guarantees’ on the storage and usage.”

He also asked David Safronetz, chief of special pathogens: “Good to know that you trust this group. How did we get connected with them?”

Safronetz replied: “They are requesting material from us due to collaboration with Dr. Qiu.” –CBC

According to the report, the shipper of the viruses had originally planned to use inappropriate packaging, and only corrected the mistake when the WIV flagged the issue.

“The only reason the correct packaging was used is because the Chinese wrote to them and said, ‘Aren’t you making a mistake here?’ If that had not happened, the scientists would have placed on an Air Canada flight, several of them actually, a deadly virus incorrectly packaged. That nearly happened,” said Attaran.

Read the rest of the report here.

Just imagine for a second that you’re the treasurer or CFO of a mid-sized corporation, and your looking for somewhere to park money where you can earn a decent return without taking too much risk. One of the Credit Suisse corporate bankers comes to you one day with an idea. They call it “supply-chain financing”.

The new strategy is essentially just another tool to help companies more “flexibility” in managing their short-term financing needs. It’s a fool-proof idea, the banker explains, because even if the companies default, there are all kinds of insurance policies and other safeguards in place to help make the lenders whole. You’re a

So you invest. A few years later, your banker calls with some bad news. Four of the 10 companies to which the fund was most heavily exposed imploded, and are likely headed for liquidation. It could be years before the lenders are made whole – if ever – and you and your fellow unlucky investors are simply along for the ride, but you can probably kiss that money goodbye.

Several months later, you open the FT, only to discover that many of the other investors in the fund, as well as the advisor managing the fund, were all financially linked to the companies in which the fund was investing. The circular flow of money from the funds to the companies’ suppliers means that, for these other investors, any losses stemming from loan defaults have already been offset, since they’re basically paying themselves…with your money.

Well, that appears to be what happened to some investors who weren’t too happy when they found out that several Credit Suisse ‘supply chain finance’ funds were essentially part of an elaborate shell game orchestrated by SoftBank to help inflate the value of Vision Fund portfolio companies by making them look more financially healthy than they actually were.

Here’s more from the FT:

SoftBank has quietly poured more than $500m into Credit Suisse investment funds that in turn made big bets on the debt of struggling start-ups backed by the Japanese technology conglomerate’s Vision Fund. SoftBank made the investment into the Swiss bank’s $7.5bn range of supply-chain finance funds, said three people familiar with the matter. Credit Suisse touts these funds to professional investors, such as corporate treasurers, as a safe place to park their cash in the short-term debts of seemingly diversified companies. Marketing documents sent to investors show that these funds have ramped up their exposure to several start-ups in the Japanese group’s $100bn Vision Fund over the past year. This has coincided with a disastrous stretch in which $18bn was wiped off the equity value of these technology bets. At the centre of the circular flow of funding is Greensill Capital, a Vision Fund-backed company that says it is “making finance fairer”. The London-based firm, which employs former British prime minister David Cameron as an adviser, selects all of the assets that go into the Credit Suisse funds under an agreement dating back to 2017.

SoftBank effectively used these Credit Suisse funds – which were administered by Greensill Capital, an investment firm that, bizarrely, received a $1.5 billion slug of cash from VF. Aside from being run by an Aussie “paper billionaire” and advised by former Tory PM David Cameron, it’s not clear exactly what Greensill is supposed to be doing with all that money. But the company has managed to find itself enmeshed in all sorts of skullduggery uncovered by the intrepid reporters at the FT.

Fun story last night with @ArashMassoudi: SoftBank has quietly put than $500m into Credit Suisse funds that heavily finance struggling Vision Fund start-ups.

Starring Greensill Capital, a Vision Fund-backed company advised by David Cameronhttps://t.co/pUWd046Kmz

— Robert Smith (@BondHack) June 15, 2020

The whole scheme hinges on supply-chain finance, an esoteric financing technique at the centre of the collapses of NMC Health and Carillion.

If you’re new to this, I explained how it works on today’s FT News Briefing podcast.https://t.co/sjf3hhiobo

— Robert Smith (@BondHack) June 15, 2020

The most prominent proponent of the financing technique is Lex Greensill’s eponymous firm Greensill Capital, backed by the SoftBank Vision Fund

Greensill selects all of the assets that go into the Credit Suisse funds, which we delved into last month https://t.co/aHhgyKIxDZ

— Robert Smith (@BondHack) June 15, 2020

If the circular financing flow sounds familiar, that’s because Greensill has been in the middle of a similar arrangement involving Vodafone and another Swiss fund manager (GAM)

Story on that from @TBeardsworth: https://t.co/HqzzZH47jB

And column from me: https://t.co/g8HiUQyjB5 pic.twitter.com/6dInC8q8c8

— Robert Smith (@BondHack) June 15, 2020

Greensill Capital is absolutely central to the complicated financing techniques underpinning the industrial and commodity trading empire of Sanjeev Gupta. Deep dive on all that from @Michael_Pooler and me:https://t.co/RaDrcnASWa

— Robert Smith (@BondHack) June 15, 2020

The guys over at @trashfuturepod (@raaleh @milo_edwards, @hkesvani, @inthesedeserts, @aliceavizandum) did a whole episode on Greensill Capital on their Patreon recently, explaining it in a much more hilarious way than I’m capable ofhttps://t.co/QdMTbQmL4w

— Robert Smith (@BondHack) June 15, 2020

Four of the CS’s supply chain finance funds’ top investments were tied to Vision Fund portfolio companies.

Marketing documents for Credit Suisse’s main supply-chain finance fund show that, at the end of March, four of its top 10 largest exposures were to Vision Fund companies, accounting for 15 per cent of its $5.2bn assets. This included companies hit hard in the coronavirus crisis, such as Indian hotel business Oyo and struggling car subscription start-up Fair. A separate document shows that Santa Monica-based Fair was also the second-largest exposure in Credit Suisse’s “high income” supply-chain finance fund at the end of last year.  In October, the car subscription company’s founder and chief executive resigned shortly after announcing plans to cut 40 per cent of its workforce. Audited accounts for both funds show they had no exposure to Fair at the end of that month, suggesting that they only began financing the company after its difficulties came to the fore.

As the FT explains, investors (well, the investors who aren’t SoftBank) have pulled $1.5 billion from the Greensill-managed Credit Suisse funds as several of Greensill’s investments went sideways. Another interesting thing about Greensill: former British PM David Cameron is a paid advisor.

But now, the firm has hit upon a new strategy that just might revive the sagging fortunes of the SoftBank-backed lender.

Clients have withdrawn more than $1.5bn from these supply-chain finance funds this year, after a string of Greensill Capital’s clients defaulted on their debts in high-profile corporate collapses and accounting scandals, such as former FTSE 100 company NMC Health. Credit Suisse has told investors that a group of insurers and Greensill itself are covering losses in the funds. Australian financier Lex Greensill founded the company in 2011 and cemented his status as a paper billionaire last year when SoftBank’s Vision Fund invested $1.5bn into his eponymous firm. Greensill Capital specialises in supply-chain finance, where businesses borrow money to pay their suppliers. This week the British Business Bank approved Greensill to provide so-called “invoice finance” through the UK’s Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan scheme. “Making sure capital reaches the real economy, where it is needed most, is integral to Britain’s broader economic recovery,” Mr Greensill said of the decision.

There’s nothing like extracting rents from government capital intended for the “real economy” to help keep a small, politically connected lender afloat.