Wholly New, Says King Cuomo, of the Opening of La Guardia Terminal

I just read this article where the following is stated:

With the opening of the 840,000-square-foot building, the overhaul of La Guardia will be more than halfway complete. At the east end of the airport, Delta Air Lines is building a replacement for another terminal that is scheduled to open by the end of next year.

When everything is finished, it will amount to the first wholly new big-city airport in the country. The last major airport to open was Denver International Airport 25 years ago, Mr. Cuomo said.

I remember landing in the Denver Airport just about 25 years ago, not long after it was completed.  It was really a nice terminal and everyone marveled at the brightness provided by the natural light, the very cool fabric, tent like, roof, the huge shopping area which made the place feel like an open, airy mall. (Of course the entire interior had to be renovated and rebuilt to support the farce of "enhanced airline security" introduced after 9-11, a project still on going today).  Twenty five years ago!  Can you imagine?  It has been 25 years since a major city has built a "wholly new" airport?  

I find this NYT statement hard to comprehend.  Actually, I think the language is the problem.  Language in the US has migrated to become something I call "the commercial truth", or language specifically stated to give the reader, listener, viewer a specific impression or idea that negates any and all of what any rational person would understand as "truth" and replaces "truth" with a narrowly defined, often totally unrepresentative perspective of such "truth". This has become the norm. I think people who live in "free open democracies / societies" would consider this complete bastardization of language as "propaganda" but here in America people are completely and utterly incapable of seeing or understanding this. We take for granted that if you see a shiny floor in a TV commercial with a bottle of X cleaner in the foreground, the implication is that floor cleaner cleaned the floor, even though that is never specifically stated and there is just as much a chance not only was the floor not cleaned with the implied product but the entire image has been enhanced to make it look cleaner then it really is, if the floor actually exist at all!.  The same can be said for this NYT article.  If you take what the article states at face value, you would think not an airport in the US has been substantially upgraded, renovated or had new terminals built in the last 25 years.  Having said that, unless you fly frequently and know where new terminals have been built or substantially renovated  it is not easy to find a concise list of airports in the US that have been substantially rebuilt or renovated or "wholly new" built in the last 25 years.  So who would question this ridiculous statement?

My "local" airport, Washington Regan National Airport, built a New Terminal which opened in 1997.  At that time the older terminal still existed and was in use.  It was a great chance to see what still existed at most American airports and what a new terminal could be!  I have been to a few other cities that have rebuilt, renovated or added brand new terminals their airports as well.  But overall many American airports are still not unlike the now "old" La Guardia, cramped, ugly, with miles of drywall and drop ceiling in drab environments. 

On a side note: I find one of the images featured in the Times article especially funny reading "Mosaics display iconic New York Scenes" and there is a colorful food cart mosaic in the image... Yea, the Giuliani inspired banning of food carts back in the late 20th Century ("because they are viewed as incompatible with their vision of luxury New York") is now "iconic art".  Anyone who has visited NYC over the last 30 years will definitely notice the difference in Manhattan.  Along with the banning of food carts, it also seems they banned blacks and other people of color cause you would think America was 95% white if that is where you spend your time.  So with the complete transformation of Manhattan as a playground for the global elites (not unlike other international cities over the last few decades), why did it take so long to upgrade one of it's main airports?  And why are so many others so much in need of transformation as well?  These are the billion dollar questions indeed.

So now we have a beautiful new terminal and no passengers.  "Iconic" art of street vendors?  I foresee in the very near future many more street vendors as the economic collapse brought on by the closing down of the global economy will force millions of Americans, especially our recent immigrants, to live just like their counterparts in the developing world, where the only place they can make enough money to exist day to day is on the street.  But hey, I love street food culture so maybe we will gain from this economic collapse after all.

As for the airports, I have an inkling feeling we may have to live with many of the old structures for a while.

Follow up to "Participants will Emerge" June 2019 Part 3

Here we go again. 

With a very questionable future for an economy that has just been "put on hold" for 3 months globally, mortgage interest rates are back to all time lows.  The Fed has ramped up, or lets say tripled down on its bailout of the "Financial" Industry.  Now we all know that in the midst of what was supposed to be the longest expansion in history accompanied with extraordinarily low unemployment (well officially) that the Fed was completely and utterly unable to "normalize" interest rates or it's balance sheet as witnessed in September of 2019.  The policies adopted at that time created the perfect climate for the stock market to rocket to record highs by early 2020. After the Fed decided to perpetuate the bubble in the Private Equity / Hedge Fund / Shadow Banking world that month after already admitting it could no longer raise interest rates months before we got Part 1 of a pro-cyclical bailout driven to prop up over levered speculators.  The COVID-19 shutdown BS perpetuated by the squeamish global elites and billionaires the world over created the perfect storm for Part 2 (or you could say Part X since this has been going on for over a decade now).

The current political leadership followed through with their promise to the corporate elites to dramatically reduce taxes (part of the reason the idiot was tolerated I am sure) during what was supposed to be a "Great Recovery" in the economy, including the lowest unemployment on record, a 10 year bull stock market, corporate profits that were setting records and buybacks that were setting records instead of using the economic growth cycle to re-balance the finances of the public coffers.  Instead the decision was made to follow through with political promises and dramatically increase the public debt during an economic growth period that brought "peacetime debt levels" close to those only comparable to war time numbers. To top it all off, massive stimulus was passed by congress and more was promised, infrastructure and the like.  Meanwhile the asset bubble created in the Financial Industry had become completely unsustainable. The search for "yield" to pad the pockets of all those folks who already control over 80% of the global "wealth" had resulted in leverage not seen since just before the crash of 2008-9. 

So the follow up on the "Participants will Emerge" theme was reawakened when I decided, in this stupid interest rate environment, to look into refinancing a mortgage with 75% equity simply to lock in a rate for 15 years to make sure when the fiat system implodes I'll have a fixed rate on my then worthless mortgage.  NO PARTICIPANTS EMERGED.  That's right.  An online search through one of the largest aggregators of mortgage companies with those who desire a mortgage only resulted in one bank willing to do a refinance.  When I finally was matched by some call center person to a "mortgage lender representative", who incidentally acted like this was her first ever deal, we did not get past some stupid questions about terms and whether I knew what my "credit score" was, which I could give a rats ass about.  When I told her "I pay my bills so I am sure it's fine lets just move forward," she hung up!  The second search for a VA option resulted in one lender as well who when I spoke to her on the phone, as soon as I said it was a refinance, she said, "We are not doing refinances right now".  I was like, "OK why?"  Well I don't have to tell you why, you likely already know.  The banks are up to their eyeballs dealing with people who DON'T WANT TO PAY THEIR MORTGAGE RIGHT NOW (which she would not say) but she did say "due to the drop in interest rates..."  Well I know what that means.

Nobody in their right mind will refinance a house at 3% for 15 years when the economy was just sent off a cliff and nobody knows if it will recover, when, how strongly and BTW we have millions of calls from people who DON'T WANT TO PAY THEIR MORTGAGE RIGHT NOW. 

OK so there you have it.  No Participants have yet emerged after 12 years Mr Federal Reserve Chairman and Treasury Secretary.  No Participants willing to buy mortgages at your artificially low rates outside of YOU and the federally sanctioned, technically insolvent, Fannie and Freddy.

At what point do you think "Participants Will Emerge" now?

Capatilism is Alive and Well: Riots Be Damned

Maybe it is not politically correct to make this observation but when I see video of protest turning to looting, my faith in capitalism is higher then ever.  I mean, who really has any conviction about some big drunk black man trying to pass a fake $20 bill for some cigarettes getting suffocated to death by an abusive white cop when there is nothing but a piece of glass between you and the Swarovski jewelry or Nike shoes, or just about everything you can get your hands on in that Target?

I have been telling everyone I can get some attention from since like March that this COVID-19 BS is nothing but the liberal elite and billionaires squeamish fear of an untimely death from what was nothing more then a nasty virus.  However Gates et al promoted the virus as "the pandemic virus" they should fear enough to shut down the global economy less their cushy privileged lives (or in the case of the billionaires their exuberant lives) be lost.  I saw this for what it was, weak pathetically uninformed politicians caving to this fear mongering by the global elites and I knew, just like the global PR machine that led to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, there was nothing I or any other person of reasonable mindset could do about it.

So now, after sending a shock-wave through the global economy for some 10-14 weeks the real ramifications are starting to play out.  The global reset is beginning.  The stock market is soaring, the rich have just received the largest direct transfer of wealth ever experienced in the history of humanity and central control over the creation of "currency" and it is high time "I" get some to.

I mean really, what's $600 / month in extra "unemployment" benefits unless you actually have access to unemployment benefits?  What's $1200 of helicopter money if you don't file taxes in the first place.  And even if you are getting both, all you have to do is turn on your TV to know that the 1% are making so much damn money in this totally flawed and corrupt financialized BS "capitalist" system we are living under, when the chance arises, you are gonna take what you can!

If I owned a Target store in that kind of environment, why not just open the doors, put a sign "free" out and provide shopping carts to make the process less destructive.  What are you loosing?  90% of what you sell is produced and purchased for pennies on the dollar in sweatshops in parts of the world most people (and I mean most people) could not even point out on a map.  And that goes for just about everything sold by the our oligopoly economy where some 80% of just about every category of goods is provided by 5 companies or less (those same companies that made out like champs in the Pandemic BTW).

All the posturing and posing and acting out anger at "police brutality" is getting old.  The US is such a drug infested, gun infested, delinquent infested, unhealthy nation consisting of all three tiers of development / life, no level of "police training" in the end will alleviate the reality that every so often someone is going to film excessive force and the loss of life.  To run around with some banner of righteousness in this country is as hypercritical as saying on one hand Americans care about the environment while on the other hand knowing 70% of the personal use vehicles sold in America are trucks (or whatever marketing name you put on it)... The ills of this nations history towards the black man run deep.  The ills of our failed capitalistic system is running deeper by the day.

However, the sales pitch of blatant materialism that props up our highly leveraged (well almost entirely leveraged) failed capitalist system is alive and strong as ever.  Just listen to the celebration of materialism / capitalism in the popular music of the same people who would go about looting.  God Bless Them!  They get it!  They are those who are the capitalist best friends!  They are the ones who have bought hook line and sinker just about every capitalist message that has been sold directly to them for decades!  They are the hope that the system can continue to perpetuate until every last resource of the planet has been consumed and returned to the earth as toxic waste.

Let them loot! Open the doors!  For every item they walk off with, it's cost is only a tiny fraction of what the oligarchy was going to sell it for anyway.  Just let the Fed print the money to refill the inventory just like they print the money to replenish Wall Street (banks, private equity, hedge funds, shadow banks etc.).  It will cost a fraction as much as handing out real money and result in way less damage, fires, violence, police expenses including all that anti crowd ammo, fuel and burning police cars, and to top it off, there will be less anger and animosity growing at authority and police because of it.  Just make it "Christmas" say thank you for supporting our capitalist system and call it a day.  That's all they want anyway...