Who in the Hell is Don Williams?
7-16-23
Opening Comments
My last note was about my Bahamas fishing excursion entitled, “There is Fishing, Catching and Crushing.” The most opened link was about a Harvard professor on aging and the 2nd most opened link was about growing wealth.
I have discussed the pent-up travel demand for a while. In 2020, hotels were empty, and I was paying $50/night with 10% occupancy at the Spring Hill Suites in Saucon Valley, PA. Last year it was in the $200 range. Check out the SAME HOTEL this week for a SPRING HILL SUITES including my discounts. On a related note, Delta posts record quarterly earnings, hikes full-year outlook on travel boom.
Today’s piece is about connecting with people. My travels and the newsletter have me meeting so many fascinating people. My readers clearly know virtually everything about me given I am an open book, but when I get to meet them in person, I become more aware of the lives of my readers. It is a lot of fun for me. Thank you.
Markets
Concerning Charts Showing Deficit Growth/Entitlements
Best and Worst Tax States for 2023
Farmers Insurance Pulls From FL
Hudson Yards Condo Building Not Selling
San Fran Retail Exodus
Boston Office Incentives-Enough to Move the Needle?
McKinsey-$800bn Office Value Destruction Globally by 2030
Rapper Rick Ross Buys on Star Island for $33mm
Video of the Day-Gray Whale Asking for Help
A remarkable video shows the moment a gray whale sought help from a whale-watching captain in Mexico to have parasites picked off its head. The footage, posted to Facebook in March, was taken by a passenger on a whale-watching boat operating in the Ojo de Liebre, a lagoon on the Pacific coast of Mexico's Baja Peninsula. In this video, the gray whale waits patiently while the fishing captain picks parasites off its back. Amazing.
Who in the Hell is Don Williams?
I took a ride from LaGuardia to Southampton on Saturday July, 8 and the driver was from Gambia. When I got in the white Toyota Camry, I was startled by the driver’s size despite the fact that he was sitting down. I said, “What are you, 6’7”?
He said, “No, I am 6’10.”
Ali was his name, and he is a soft-spoken giant of a man from the West African country of Gambia. He was a basketball player who travelled across Europe as a kid to play ball. After all, at 14 years of age, he was 6’5”.
He left Gambia and came to America to play basketball in high school on a scholarship. He then played ball at a small college in Florida. He injured his elbow which derailed his basketball career.
He moved to NYC in 2018 and is working hard to stay in the country and make a living. Given I can start a conversation with anyone about anything and have been known to make inanimate objects laugh, we began our 2+ hour conversation on the way to Southampton.
He currently lives in Harlem in a 2 bedroom/1 bathroom apartment with 3 roommates and is so happy to be in this country. Life expectancy in Gambia is 62-years-old compared with 77 in the US. Per capita income in Gambia is about 10% of the US.
He asked me why so many Americans commit suicide and are depressed. He talked about growing up and never heard of anyone in his country killing themselves. He said, “In America, you have everything. How can you be so unhappy? In my country, people have nothing, but are so happy.” He suggested that getting enough food to feed your family was the big driver for his parents each day. I thought his comments were quite interesting and sad.
I am a bit of an idiot savant on music, and he was listening to a great classic rock station and I was calling out the song and the musician while singing out of tune. He said, “In my country, we loved the GREAT American country singer, Don Williams.”
I said, “Do you mean Hank Williams Jr?”
“No, Don Williams, country singer. He is big like Elvis.”
I had never heard of this singer and looked up Don Williams, listened to his horrific music and lost it. He is the worst country singer I have ever heard. I never expected a 6’10” Gambian man to tell me he grew up listening to country music by Don Williams, who has a song list which in includes: “Lord, I hope this Day is Good, We Got Love and You’re My Best Friend.” To top it off, Ali thought Williams was a big deal in America.
I started yelling at my Gambian friend. “Are you kidding me right now? Of all the great musicians, you think Don Williams is the king? What the hell is wrong with you?” Ali started laughing so hard, I thought he was going to crash the car. He was crying. The big man has a deep laugh which was fun to hear. I tried to put it into perspective for him about how unpopular Don Williams is in America relative to real bands.
Below are the top 15 all time sales of albums, singles, lps, digital, streams…according to Chart Masters. Household names which I would have thought Ali would have been listening to as a child in Gambia (Beatles, Michael Jackson, Elvis, Queen, Madonna, Stones, Eminem…), NOT Don Williams. Just plain funny. I would have been happy to hear Ali say, “Old Blue Eyes,” Mr. Frank Sinatra, but no.
I asked, “How in the hell did Don Williams find his way to West Africa?”
Ali said, “I had a cassette tape of Williams from my cousin, and we listened to it until the tape broke.” His cousin told him Don Williams was a big deal in the United States and Ali had no way of disproving it from Gambia.
I continued to crush Ali for his love of Don Williams and instead introduced him to all the great singers out there across every genre from classic rock to hip hop to country. Ali said, “I can’t wait to tell my cousin we were wrong about Don Williams.”
I played Elton John, Billy Joel, the Stones, The Beatles, Queen, Zeppelin, U2, Coldplay and many more to show what real music sounds like. I even played my favorite Bob Seger song, “Night Moves.”
He introduced me to the most popular singer in in West Africa, Uoussou N’Dor (song here). Turns out Youssou was the former Minister of Tourism from Senegal. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine described him as, "perhaps the most famous singer alive, in Senegal and much of Africa.”
When we got to the house in Southampton, I invited him in for some food and had to play some basketball with him. 6’10” is no joke. Yes, he blocked my shot. No, I did not block his. He backed me down and overpowered me with ease. Yes, I was faster than him, but the over one foot height difference and 75 pounds of weight was too much for me to overcome. Let’s not forget the 25 year age gap! All that matters is I did not get hurt and did score some points. No, there is no video of him backing me down or blocking my shot. That is intentional as my reputation as an elite athlete would never recover.
I made a new friend and learned a few things about Gambian culture. The funniest takeaway was that he thought Don Williams was a major music star in the US. We make connections in the strangest places and the back of an car is one of them. His legs are so long that he can’t find pants, so he rolls up the cuff. I just don’t think I will ever have such a problem. I generally need my pants shortened. “The Gambian Giant and the short Jew,” sounds like a movie in the making like “Twins” with DeVito and Schwarzenegger. This is a movie which definitely needs a remake with Eric and Ali.
Quick Bites
Equities remain hot as inflation data came in lower than expected with both CPI and PPI coming in under expectations. On a weekly basis, the Dow notched its best performance since March, up 2.3%. The S&P 500 added 2.4%, and the Nasdaq gained 3.3%. Also of note, JPM (bond trading and rates) and Citi (wealth management) beat earnings. Oil rallied 5% this week on supply disruptions in Africa and a reduction in shipments from Russia. Oil is -3% on the year now after being down as much as 18% on the year in March. This WSJ article is entitled, “Markets Appear Convinced the Fed Can Pull Off a Soft Landing,” and the markets are behaving as though the Fed can thread the needle.
I have been consistent in my desire to see more fiscal responsibility from the US Government and to be clear this message is for BOTH parties. The growth of our debt levels and higher interest rates is unsustainable and entitlement spending and debt service is crowding out discretionary spending. The federal government's deficit nearly tripled in the first nine months of the fiscal year, a surge that's bound to raise concerns about the country's rising debt levels. The Treasury Department said Thursday that the budget gap from October through June was nearly $1.4 trillion — a 170% increase from the same period a year earlier. The federal government operates under a fiscal year that begins October 1. Check out these concerning charts. Right now, the only candidate running for President that I have heard discussing entitlement spending is Christie. We must get this under control. The last charts are from Mike Cembalest whom I emailed for help. Entitlement spending growth is out of control. We all like free money, but at some point someone has to pay for it!
This article outlines the best and worst states from a tax perspective. The absence of a major tax is a common factor among many of the top 10 states. Property taxes and unemployment insurance taxes are levied in every state, but there are several states that do without one or more of the major taxes: the corporate income tax, the individual income tax, or the sales tax. Nevada, South Dakota, and Wyoming have no corporate or individual income tax (though Nevada imposes gross receipts taxes); Alaska has no individual income or state-level sales tax; Florida has no individual income tax; and New Hampshire and Montana have no sales tax. The states in the bottom 10 tend to have a number of afflictions in common: complex, nonneutral taxes with comparatively high rates. New Jersey, for example, is hampered by some of the highest property tax burdens in the country, has the highest-rate corporate income taxes in the county, and has one of the highest-rate individual income taxes. Additionally, the state has a particularly aggressive treatment of international income, levies an inheritance tax, and maintains some of the nation’s worst-structured individual income taxes. The last chart shows the population change in 2022 by the US Census Bureau. Clearly, there is some overlap on best and worst tax states, but crime, quality of life, pandemic mandates and work from home all play a part in the migration as well. Note, I moved from the 49th state to the 4th state from a tax perspective and quite frankly, taxes were not the biggest motivator for the move. Quality of life, cost of living, crime, weather and taxes all played a role.
I have written extensively about homeowners insurance issues in Florida. SO many insurance companies are pulling out of the state or sharply increasing premiums. This could end up being a big issue. Thus far, I am not convinced it has impacted housing prices, but at this rate, it will soon. Farmers Insurance will stop offering its policies in Florida, including home, auto and umbrella policies, in a change that will force thousands of people to change their insurance provider. The company said in a statement that its decision to get out of Florida was a business decision necessary to manage its risk exposure in the hurricane-prone state. Farmers serves 100,000 customers in Florida but said there will be no impact to customers who use Farmers’ owned subsidiaries like Foremost Signature and Bristol West. “Over the past 18 months in Florida, 15 home insurers have placed moratoriums on writing new business, four carriers have announced plans to voluntarily withdraw from the market and seven companies have been declared insolvent,” Mark Friedlander, a spokesperson for Insurance Information Institute, told CNN. This NYTimes article suggests the insurance industry has lost money for years with the most recent profitable year in Florida being 2016. I believe the lack of available school slots plays a far bigger role than insurance, but at some point, that can change as premiums sky rocket and coverage is increasingly hard to find.
Other Headlines
In recent months I have put at least 20 charts in my pieces showing my concerns around the consumer and the fact that savings are crashing while debt levels are ballooning at higher rates. Maybe Jamie is checking out the Rosen Report. The Conagra CEO says, Americans are now cutting back on food purchases. “Over the past year, many US consumers responded to surging inflation by trading down to cheaper options. But now they’re just going without.” This is a new chart showing card delinquency rates at small banks (all-time high). Auto delinquency rates are increasing too as seen in the 2nd chart.
Elon Musk launches his new company, xAI
I believe Musk is among the most important people in the world. Not for his net worth, but for his engineering skills and vision. He is now busy with TSLA, SpaceX, Neuralink, Boring, TWTR and now xAI? How in the hell is this possible? Spreading himself way too thin. Now Threads is kicking his ass on TWTR.
Former Celsius CEO arrested, company agrees to pay $4.7 billion settlement
For months I have written about my consumer concerns. Finally, others are talking about it now. YOLO-You Only Live Once. Seems they are running out of money as I have suggested, but now Siegel and Dimon are talking about it.
Unsold electric cars are piling up on dealer lots
EV sales, which account for about 6.5% of the U.S. auto market so far this year, are expected to surpass 1 million units for the first time in 2023, Cox forecasts. The nationwide supply of EVs in stock has swelled nearly 350% this year, to more than 92,000 units.
It will be the first actors strike against the film and television industry since 1980 and the first time that actors and writers have been on strike at the same time since 1960, when Ronald Reagan was president of the Screen Actors Guild. Picketing is set to begin Friday morning.
Brzezinski blasts Biden's STAFF for making him look old
He is 80 years old and demented. Can’t hide it any longer.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon isn't a fan of 'Bidenomics'
“I’d be careful about that,” said Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, in reference to president Joe Biden’s economic theory that rejects “trickle-down” policies in favor of focusing on the middle class.
Secret Service concludes cocaine investigation, no suspect identified
Cameras are all over the White House and you need to give ID to get inside. How the hell are there no suspects? The most common assumption is it was Hunter, but to me, it would be even worse if it was someone else. The White House should be the most fortified building in the world. Now reports are suggesting other drugs have been found there previously as well. What is going on here? I believe this is a cover up and they know who did it. Some media outlets are suggesting they have found fingerprints on the bag. This would not surprise me. As bad as it sounds, it is better if it is Hunter rather than a random person.
Rupert Murdoch Bails On Ron DeSantis, Reportedly Has New Name To Fight Trump
DeSantis had potential and was his own worst enemy on abortion and the way he handled Disney. Sounds like Rupert wants to see Virginia Governor, Glen Younkin in the mix. Also, Ken Griffin is re-evaluating his support of DeSantis. It is official. DeSantis is toast.
Biden and DNC bring in $72M in second quarter
In a true clown show, we are likely looking at Trump/Biden again. The average Biden donation was $39 and 97% were less than $200. Looks like one of these elderly morons will be President again much to the dismay of the author of the Rosen Report. If this is the best the US has to offer, we are truly screwed. Trump took in $35mm during the period boosted by his indictment which brought in money from his hardcore followers. Pence raised less than $1.2mm.
Biden administration forgives $39 billion in student debt for 804,000 borrowers
PPP fraud is 'worst in history': $200B stolen, splurged on Lamborghinis and bling
I commend the government on quick action. However, the waste and carelessness of carrying out the plan was awful. The lockdowns, covid related mandates were the largest over reach in the history of the US government. The waste due to bad execution was legendary and helped to contribute to inflation.
New York Is Ordered by Appeals Court to Redraw House Map
Sounds like a win for the Democrats.
NYCHA woes grow as repair bill soars to a whopping $78 billion, new audit finds
The New York City Housing Authority’s repair bill has exploded to more than $78 billion — nearly double the $45 billion projected in 2017 — mostly due to surging construction costs and required upgrades.
Soft-on-crime Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg admits he’s fearful of crime on NYC subways
Here is a thought. Put the bad people in jail and let those attacked and defending themselves out.
70% in NYC don’t feel safe, Eric Adams, so stop the ‘media’ spin
New Yorkers reveal their fears over being city's next random crime victim
Seattle residents fuming about pool erected at homeless encampment
Crazy pictures.
Scary picture in the link.
'Fast & Furious'-style terror hits Bay Area: 'Sideshow' drivers block roads, pull guns, do donuts
Detroit police commissioner caught in car with prostitute, asks deputies to ‘help him out’
Italians grope themselves in protest of judge ruling that its not assault if less than 10 seconds
Perrigo Wins US Approval for Over-the-Counter Birth Control Pill
10 U.S. cities where job listings have the highest average annual salary—New York isn’t on the list
Too many kids are chronically absent. How can schools bring them back?
Ocean temperatures off Florida coast hit 'hot tub-like' NINETY-SEVEN degrees
Bad for hurricane season as storms strengthen in warmer water.
Cruises see surge of Norovirus, highest in decade: CDC
Nearly 1,700 passengers reported being sick with Norovirus during their voyages. Why do people go on cruises. I have never gone and have no plans to do so.
AI doomsday scenarios are gaining traction in Silicon Valley
Real Estate
WSJ article entitled, '“The Luxury Tower Built for New York’s Elite Still Sits Half Empty-Related Companies has struggled to unload its most expensive units at 35 Hudson Yards. Now the developer is offering deep discounts.” To be clear, I could not imagine living in Hudson Yards and never would consider that location. My kids went to school a few blocks away and it is not for me. However, the units and amenities look amazing. Roughly a decade after Related broke ground on Hudson Yards, it has struggled to make that vision a reality. At the luxury glass-and-limestone tower 35 Hudson Yards, approximately 50% of the units were still unsold as of the last week of June, more than four years after sales launched, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal based on sales recorded with the city’s Department of Finance. Related is slashing prices and offering incentives at the condominium, such as covering buyers’ taxes and closing costs, local agents said. Recorded sales at 35 Hudson as of late June had closed for an average of 30% less than the original prices filed with the New York state Attorney General’s office, and active listings were discounted by up to 50%, the analysis shows. A four-bedroom apartment recently traded for $8.5 million, about 46% less than its projected asking price of $15.725 million, records show.
The slew of closures of retail stores in San Francisco in recent months doubles as a roundup of well-known shopping brands: Whole Foods, Old Navy and Nordstrom, among others. Nearly half of the stores in the city's downtown shopping district have closed since 2019, the San Francisco Standard found in May. In June, the 70-store downtown Westfield Mall said it would stop making payments on a $558 million loan, relinquishing ownership of the shopping center and leaving the fate of the complex uncertain. Dubbed a "retail exodus," the trend has spurred criticism focused on crime and homelessness but a more complicated set of forces is driving companies away from the city, experts and a former downtown store owner told ABC News. A diminished sense of safety among some shoppers has deterred foot traffic downtown, they said. Additionally, they pointed to sluggish sales at some stores due in part to a longstanding shift away from brick-and-mortar retail that went into overdrive during the pandemic. Crime is one factor, but homeless, covid mandates, work from home, high taxes, high cost of living and others are driving away wealth and business.
Interesting incentives in Boston to convert offices to housing. On Monday, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu announced a residential conversion program for downtown offices, to “meet City goals of creating housing units Downtown and having more consistent foot traffic throughout the week to support Downtown businesses,” the release said. The pilot program intends to offer the owners of “underutilized” downtown commercial office buildings a property tax break of up to 75% of the standard residential tax rate for up to 29 years in return for “immediately” converting their properties to residential homes. In allowing those buildings to qualify for the residential tax versus the commercial tax, there’s an added discount, as the commercial property tax rate is $24.68 per $1,000 of value, and the residential property tax rate is $10.74 per $1,000 of value. I am curious to see what uptake there is post the new incentives. Many buildings don’t have the proper floorplans and windows for residential. It will be interesting to see if the regulations are changed to accommodate the conversions. From speaking with insiders in Boston commercial R/E, there is little hope that this new policy makes a meaningful dent in the supply.
Behavioral changes sparked and accelerated by the pandemic, especially when it comes to where and how people work, threaten to have a “severe and lasting impact” around the globe that is estimated to wipe out some $800 billion in office value in nine cities by 2030. The total value of office space in New York, San Francisco, Houston, London, Paris, Munich, Tokyo, Beijing and Shanghai is expected to decline 26%, translating to that $800 billion estimate when adjusted for inflation, from 2019 to 2030 in a so-called moderate scenario, according to an estimate by McKinsey Global Institute, a research arm of the consultancy McKinsey & Company.
Article that Rick Ross (rapper/record executive) bought a place at 37 Star Island which was asking $37mm. I am told he paid $33mm for it. House looks awful. Article suggests he will be doing a lot of work. Demand for high-end Miami and Palm Beach remains high. Here is the listing.
Wow. Nice. Don't read my stuff if you don't like it. Do you think I care?
I want in on Twins remake. Thanks!!!