Opening Comments
Pictures of the Week-Miami Tragedy
Pièce de Résistance at the Motel 6
Quick Bites
Markets, SFO Homeless Cost, Labor Shortage
Cancer Blood Test, Maher On Big Tech,
Woke Brandeis, Chauvin Sentence, Trump CFO
West Coast Heat/Drought, UFO Update
Virus/Vaccine
Data
Scott Gottleib-”Very Dense Outbreaks”
FDA Warning
Germany “On thin ice”
Breakthrough Cases
Real Estate
My Thoughts-One Example
Opening Comments
Jack and I had a great time Thursday and Friday at Kittansett with friends. Newcomb and Chili hosted us and we spent time with so many great people. Patrick and Dan took us out golfing separately. Kittansett is hard to explain. It will be 100 years old in 2022 and will host the US Senior Amateur next year. The place feels like you are going back in time. The views are breathtaking. The course looks straightforward and you think, this is going to be a breeze. Oh yeah, then the wind blows 20mph and all bets are off. Being over the greens makes a near impossible up and down and the place is beautiful. Jack prides himself on the short game and when he had poor approach shots, he paid the price. We teed off Thursday at 8am with sunny skies and zero wind and by 9:30am it was howling. Friday brought in fog with limited viability. I felt like I was in Scotland taking off my layers and adding them again.
My mistake was that I walked 36 holes on Thursday. I have not been playing much golf and 36 was brutal on my back and ankle. I just walked without playing the following morning and teed it up in the afternoon. Jack played 39 holes Thursday and 22 on Friday including hours of practice. Tons of fun. I have included pictures of the course. Hole #3 is arguably the best hole in MA. Amazing time. Thanks to all who organized. Jack and I can’t stop talking about it. Jack also hung out a bit with Newcomb and Chili’s son and made fast friends. I heard them talking some interesting business ideas.
We left Kittansett at 7am Saturday morning a bit golfed out. A reader who is senior at Travellers Insurance sent me a note that Jack and I could get VIP tickets to the golf tournament so we drove from Merion, MA to Hartford, CT to check it out. I have attended approximately 20 professional golf tournaments including 8 trips to the Masters. The frustration historically has been the crowds make it impossible to see anything unless you are Shaq on stilts. Given COVID-19 restrictions, the tournament this year was only 25% capacity. Couple that with tent access with food and drink and it was a home run. We had a blast. Alan, thank you for hosting us; the set up was amazing. The field was stacked and Jack got to follow a bunch of his favorite players. On a 225 yard par 3, we watched 5 groups and the worst shot was 30ft. Yeah, these guys are good. Jack wants a sponsor’s exemption! Players love the tournament and Travellers treats them and their families amazingly well.
Things are a bit shorter. When you read my theme section today, you will know why. Enjoy.
Pictures of the Week
I want to begin with my condolences for all the families impacted by this horrific tragedy in Champlain Tower South on Surfside Beach. I would guess this place is 40 minutes south of my house. I have been to this area hundreds of times, and it scares the hell out of me. My cousin from Montreal owns a vacation apartment in Champlain Towers North, about 400 feet north of this building. At the moment he has it rented out. The East building was constructed around the same time as the South building, and they appear identical when you drive by. There is talk about evacuating that building too, to have engineers check the structure. Someone in that sister building listed a condo for sale, the day after the tragedy, and that Realtor received a lot of hate mail. Read this article from the Miami Herald.
I have read a dozen reports as to the cause, but I have not seen anything confirmed. One suggested an inspector complained three years ago about the pool lining leaking. Another suggested a sink hole and another implied the roof work triggered it. Scientists have speculated on beach and sand erosion contributing to it. This NY Times article chronicles the recent discovery of structural damage issues.
The Surfside town building official was on the roof of the beachfront condo 14 hours before half of the building collapsed. Jim McGuinness said during an emergency meeting that he was on the roof to inspect work of replacing roof anchors, used by window cleaners to attach their equipment, the Palm Beach Post reported. Hours after his inspection of the roof at Champlain Towers South, at around 1:30 a.m. Thursday, one leg of the L-shaped 12-story tower pancaked, killing at least five people and leaving at least 159 unaccounted for. Rescuers have had little luck combing through the pile for survivors, and no one has been found alive since Thursday morning. Today marks the fourth day of search efforts.
Zero for 67 and then One for 68
We left the Travellers golf tournament at 5:15pm on Saturday after a memorable couple days at Kittansett and the golf tournament. Now, unfortunately, the good mojo we had going came to a crashing halt. Some readers have made complimentary comments about me and my ability to track and juggle so many topics. I must be bright. Clearly, after hearing this story, you will realize I was either dropped on my head too many times as a child or just not that impressive.
Jack had a practice round scheduled in Hershey Park, PA for mid-day Sunday. The drive from Hartford to Hershey was 5.5 hours and I already drove 2.5 hours from MA to CT. I was not up for that much driving. I had a choice to make. Do I go an hour out of my way to sleep in NYC or just drive towards the ultimate goal of Hershey and stop along the way? In my infinite wisdom, I picked the latter. In hindsight, I was a brutally bad decision.
We went over the Tappanzee Bridge and were in NJ and started calling for hotels. We struck out left and right. No availability. Every hotel let us know that not only were they fully booked, they were not aware of any room in the vicinity. I kept heading west on I-78 and was using Hotels.com, Booking.com and anything else to find a room for the night. ZERO. It is now 930pm. I was tired and had driven for almost 7 hours on Saturday. I told Jack that he might experience his first night sleeping in a car. I have done this surfing as a kid with no money, but really did not want to do it with my bad back, especially given the car is jam packed full of crap. This is what it looked like the day after I cleaned out everything in the car. Of note, there is a black garbage bag in the pack. That is clean laundry. Our great friend, Chili, screamed at me insisting to do our laundry. Newcomb and Chili are awesome. Being on the road, laundry is the hardest thing to do. THANK YOU again.
I called my friend, Ryan, and my wife, Jill, to help me find a hotel. It is dark and I was exhausted. I did not want to search and drive. We were striking out left and right. Jill confirmed a good location and she booked something using a third party (Hotels or Booking.com). I was sent a confirmation and changed routes to head to the hotel. One was for a Comfort in for $365/night. If I stay at a Comfort Inn, it is generally about $100-130. This shows how insane the market is on weekends today. About 5 minutes later, I received this email.
I went back to I-78 west and continued towards Hershey, and in two more times the same thing happened again. Jill booked a room only to have an email come some minutes later that it was not confirmed. Jill’s sister, Robin was also trying her best to get us a room as well with no joy. We were now zero for 55. It was 10:30pm and I was ready to pull over into a truck stop and sleep. My contact lenses were sticking to my eyes. Jill booked yet another hotel on a third party site, and I headed toward the hotel. But it is quite out of the way. I ask her to confirm with the hotel directly, as for once, I did not get a disappointing email that there was an error. The receptionist told her, “We have zero rooms; I’m sorry, but it was an error.” I had no choice but to just randomly drive to hotels on the side of the highway, and everyone turned us down and let us know there were no rooms anywhere.
We were quite upset, but at this point, I was resigned to the hotel called the “Chevy Traverse.” My son, Jack, said, “I won’t give up in a golf tournament and I don’t want to sleep in a car. I am still calling.” We were about zero for 67 now.
I have spoken about the Roaring Twenties and the pent up demand from lockdowns. Well, no weddings last summer has resulted in every hotel booked for weddings this summer. Couple this with sporting events/tournaments and now a proximity to Hershey Park, and we were screwed. People want to consume their lives again. Last summer, when I traveled for Jack’s tournaments, I never made a reservation, and not once did I see more than 25% occupancy given the pandemic. Those days are gone and the “new normal” is quite different.
Jack called a Motel 6 and the receptionist, Emily, said, “I have one room left, but it is first come first served.” Jack begged for the room as we were 12 minutes out and she said, “I will hold it for you.”
I pulled up to the “stunning" motel and there were a dozen people smoking sticks outside in tank tops. Mind you, it was now midnight. I held my breath and walked into the lobby and there were 4 people in line. One couple was clearly a “lady of the evening” and her customer. I look at Emily and she said, “Are you Eric?” I smiled and said, “Yes.” These other people were trying to take my room, but she held it for us.
We check into the $106 room from hell and Jack asked, “Dad, is it safer to sleep on the top or under the covers?”
I said, “Dude, I think you are kind of at risk either way.” I slept on the top and Jack under the covers (see below). If one of us gets some strange disease, you will now know the answer to Jack’s question.
The pièce de résistance of the Motel 6 was the bathroom. In the middle of the night, I went to the bathroom and turned on what I thought was a light. It was a fan which sounds like a jet engine. It literally scared the $hit out of me. I recorded it this am. There are no enhancements to this sound. Oh yes, this was a ZERO star Motel 6. Don’t forget the herd of elephants who were tap dancing above us through the walls made of matzah.
For those doing last minute travel, learn from my mistake. Weekends are booked solid. Even weekdays are getting harder too. I am officially tapping out as of Thursday and heading to Boca. By then I will have spent 40 nights, most of which were at a crappy hotels. I will have driven almost 4,000 miles. It’s time for Jill to take over while I go sleep in my own bed in Florida, cook my own meals, drink good wine, work out, go fishing and pay bills. I could not imagine what would have happened had Jill been forced to stay at the Motel 6. It would have made for an excellent reality TV show. Jill, here is a key for you.
Quick Bites
U.S. stocks rose on Friday with the S&P 500 building on its rally to records, as investors bet that higher inflation will be temporary as the economy continues to recover from the pandemic. The broad equity benchmark climbed 0.3% to hit another closing record high of 4,280.70. Financials were the best-performing S&P 500 sector with a 1.3% gain. The Dow Jones rose 237 points, or 0.7%, to 34,433, sitting less than 2% from its record. The Nasdaq Composite erased earlier gains and closed 0.1% lower at 14,360 amid a rise in bond yields. The 10-year Treasury yield jumped 4 basis points to 1.52%. The S&P 500 rallied 2.7% for the week, notching its biggest weekly gain since early February. The Dow gained 3.4% this week for its best week since mid-March, while the Nasdaq advanced 2.4%. Friday’s rally came after a key inflation indicator that the Federal Reserve uses to set policy rose 3.4% in May, the fastest increase since the early 1990s, the Commerce Department reported Friday. The reading matched the expectation from economists polled by Dow Jones. The core index rose 0.5% for the month, which actually was below the 0.6% estimate.
A homeless encampment run by San Francisco costs the city $60,000 per year, per tent, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The city’s six “safe sleeping villages,” provide homeless people tents, three meals per day, security and washrooms. The city is looking to renew the program for a cost of about $57,000 per tent, of which there are about 260. The Chronicle noted that if the funding is approved, the city will be paying about twice the median cost of a one-bedroom apartment for each tent. This is where I lose it. I am often asked about my view on taxes. My answer is quite simple. If I had any confidence the idiot politicians would properly spend my money, I would be more supportive of higher taxes. This is just one of 10 million examples of the ridiculous waste created by governments. No, I am not supportive with more income tax, estate tax, real estate tax for you complete morons to carelessly waste my hard earned dollars. SFO is spending $156/night for a tent facility? I would bet my children could come up with a more efficient plan. This is unacceptable. This is a link to a story about the Justice Department spending $16 per muffin and $8 per cup of coffee for employees. Yes, it was 10 years ago, but it happens everyday. Hello, get your own house in order before you waste trillions of dollars.
A serious labor shortage of professional drivers is adversely affecting Americans who need to move across country. My niece, who will start a job in a week as an Assistant Professor at The University of Rochester, and her fiance, a software engineer, just moved from Los Alamos, NM to Rochester, NY. They drove their cars across the country to their new home, and were expecting the moving company (one of the nation’s largest) to arrive 3 days later with all their possessions. When my niece called the moving company to ask when to expect her furniture, she was told that due to the labor shortage, their possessions remain on the truck in New Mexico, with no delivery date in sight. Mind you, they have no furniture or kitchen equipment and only a few items of clothing. They had to buy a bed and a desk, so the fiance could start working and are now in the process of buying enough cookware and dishes to get by. In addition to all that, the appliances they ordered months ago in anticipation of moving are much further delayed for delivery due to a serious shortage. They’ve got to use a laundromat for who knows how long. I have been driving all over the northeast and I see help wanted signs in big towns and small. Offers of significant upfront bonuses. Recall a few weeks ago I sent around the picture from the deli offering $500 sign on bonus and $18-24/hr to make sandwiches. Paying people to stay home is creating all kinds of issues. Trucking shortages are massive and it is impacting logistics issues and costs.
The number of unemployment-benefit recipients is falling at a faster rate in Missouri and 21 other states canceling enhanced and extended payments this month, suggesting that ending the aid could push more people to take jobs. Wait, you mean you stop paying people to sit at home and play video games and they go back to work?
A simple blood test that can detect more than 50 types of cancer before any clinical signs or symptoms of the disease is accurate enough to be rolled out as a multi-cancer screening test, according to scientists. The test, which is also being piloted by NHS England, is aimed at people at higher risk of the disease, including patients aged 50 years or older. It is able to identify many types of cancer that are difficult to diagnose early, such as head and neck, ovarian, pancreatic, oesophageal and some blood cancers. Scientists said their findings, published in the journal Annals of Oncology, shows the test accurately detects cancer, often before any signs or symptoms, while having a very low false positive rate. Scientists investigated the performance of the test in 3,537 people – 2,823 people with cancer and 1,254 people without. It correctly identified when cancer was present in 51.5% of cases, across all stages of the disease, and wrongly detected cancer in only 0.5% of cases.
"Real Time" host Bill Maher blasted Big Tech companies for their "outrageous" efforts to suppress the Wuhan coronavirus lab-leak theory, which in recent months has been taken more seriously amid major developments. "Facebook banned any post for four months about COVID coming from a lab. Of course now, even the Biden administration is looking into this," Maher said during a panel discussion. "Google -- a Wall Street Journal reporter asked the head of Google's health division -- noticed that they don't do auto-fill searches for ‘coronavirus lab leak’ the way they do for any other question and the guy said, ‘Well, we want to make sure that the search isn’t leading people down pathways that we would find not authoritative information.' "Well, you were wrong, Google and Facebook!" Maher continued. "We don't know! The reason why we want you is because we're checking on this s---!" "The WHO has been very corrupt about a lot of s--- and the CDC has been wrong about a lot of s---. This is outrageous that I can't look this information up!" I want to applaud Maher, the uber liberal comedian and show host for standing up against big tech, the CDC and the WHO. I have written about the media bias extensively as well as the CDC and WHO. I have begged for my readers to watch the movie, “The Social Network.” Google maintains 92% of the global search business. They control what you see, influence your views and have far too much power. We live in the USA and I can tell you that I believe Big Tech is VERY dangerous. When the truth comes out about the pandemic, cover ups, lies…I hope people will take thing a bit more seriously. I believe it is time for Fauci to go, something I outlined in a recent piece entitled, “Fauci Ouchie.”
In a related note, a new poll shows many Americans believe Big Tech has too much power. Most American voters believe that five tech giants, including Facebook and Google, have too much power — but even more think the federal government has a surplus of sway, according to a new poll. A survey of 1,001 registered voters found that 63 percent believe Facebook has too much power. By comparison, 68 percent of respondents said they believe the federal government has too much power and 65 percent said they think the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has too much power.
I have written fairly extensively about the overly woke academic circles. Here we go again. Yet another school I cannot send my children to for college. The rule of thumb at this ultra-woke college is, don’t say “rule of thumb.” Students and faculty at Brandeis University are being urged to stop using words and phrases like “picnic,” “trigger warning” and even “rule of thumb,” because of what a campus counseling service calls their links to violence and power to “reinforce systems of oppression.” A compendium of “potentially oppressive language” posted on the school’s website by its Prevention, Advocacy and Resource Center also lists loads of examples of “gender exclusive,” “ableist,” and “culturally appropriative” terminology that “can get in the way of meaningful dialogue.” Brandeis has had about a half a dozen big woke incidents already.
Derek Chauvin, the former police officer who killed George Floyd on a Minneapolis street last year, was sentenced Friday to 22 and half years in prison. Chauvin, in a light gray suit and tie and white shirt, spoke briefly before the sentence was imposed, offering his "condolences to the Floyd family."Under Minnesota law, Chauvin will have to serve two-thirds of his sentence, or 15 years -- and he will be eligible for supervised release for the remaining seven and a half years. The sentence exceeds the Minnesota sentencing guideline range of 10 years and eight months to 15 years for the crime. Floyd's death sparked massive protests across the nation over police brutality.
Lawyers for former President Donald Trump were warned this week by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office that prosecutors soon may criminally charge the Trump Organization and its CFO, Allen Weisselberg. Trump’s lawyers were told that DA Cyrus Vance Jr. is considering charging his company and Weisselberg in connection with fringe benefits Weisselberg received from Trump’s company. People with knowledge of the matter told The New York Times that Vance could announce criminal charges as early as next week if he decides to seek an indictment.
To say it's hot in the Northwest is an understatement. Temperatures have already soared to levels never been experienced in recorded history in this part of the United States -- and AccuWeather meteorologists say the summer sizzle hasn't even reached its peak. AccuWeather's team of expert forecasters were describing the then upcoming heat wave as "unprecedented", "life-threatening" and "historic" as early as the middle of last week, and these descriptions have been accurate in the early stages of the Northwest scorcher. Saturday was just the beginning of the extended stretch of extreme temperatures. Portland, Oregon, recorded its hottest day ever, climbing to a sizzling 108 degrees Fahrenheit. The previous all-time record high was 107 set once in July of 1965 and twice in August of 1981.
In a related story, the drought is getting worse. Unstoppable drought is rolling over California and the Western U.S. once again, as it has with little interruption since the new century began. Nearly 98% of land across 11 Western states is abnormally dry, and more than 90% is covered by some category of drought—the worst levels in the U.S. Drought Monitor’s 21-year history. Reservoirs have drained to their bottoms, leaving bath-tub rings on their shorelines.
A new intelligence report sent to Congress on Friday concludes that virtually all of the 144 sightings of unidentified flying objects documented by the military since 2004 are of unknown origin, in an extremely rare public accounting of the U.S. government’s data on UFOs that is likely to fuel further speculation about phenomena the intelligence community has long struggled to understand. The report — the government’s first unclassified assessment in half a century — does not offer any definitive answers on who or what may be operating a variety of aircraft that, in some cases, appear to defy known characteristics of aerodynamics, and that officials believe pose a threat to national security and flight safety.
This is an excerpt from an interesting article entitled, “How Many Planets in the Universe.” But as of today, NASA’s Kepler Mission has found over 11,000 stars with at least one planetary candidate, and over 18,000 potential planets around those stars, with periods ranging from 12 hours up to 525 days. What we’ve learned from this is that there are:
a huge variety of planetary systems out there, most of which are very different from our own,
orbiting a wide variety of stars, including binary and trinary systems,
and we are only seeing the ones that are large enough, orbiting their stars close enough, that also have unlikely, fortuitous alignments with respect to our line-of-sight.
You may have read, relatively recently, that there are at least 100-to-200 billion planets in our Milky Way, and that’s true. But that’s not an estimate; that’s a lower limit. If you instead were to make an estimate, you’d get a number that’s at least one (and more like two, if you’re willing to make inferences about outer planets) orders of magnitude higher: closer to ten trillion planets in our galaxy, alone! I have mentioned this in previous reports. There are potentially 10 trillion planets in our galaxy. How can you assume we are alone?
Virus/Vaccine
The US data continues improving. Cases continue to hoover around 11k/day. Hospitalizations are 17k compared with peak of 132k. Deaths are approximately 300/day relative to peak of 3.4k/day. It should be noted that the lower vaccinated areas are seeing more cases than the areas of high vaccination rates.
More than 2.92 billion doses have been administered across 180 countries, according to data collected by Bloomberg. The latest rate was roughly 44.2 million doses a day. In the US, 323 million doses have been given so far. In the last week, an average of 804,634 doses per day were administered. The US was well over 3mm/day and now under 1mm. This is partially explained by the fact 152mm people are fully vaccinated accounting for 47% of the population.
As the U.S. continues to navigate its way through the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said areas of the country could experience "very dense outbreaks" with the concerning Delta variant continuing to circulate. "It's going to be hyper-regionalized, where there are certain pockets of the country [where] we can have very dense outbreaks," Gottlieb said Sunday on "Face the Nation." The most vulnerable areas continue to be those with low vaccination rates and low rates of immunity from prior infections. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, many southern states have vaccination rates that lag behind the national average.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday added a warning to patient and provider fact sheets for the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines to indicate a rare risk of heart inflammation. For each vaccine, the fact sheets were revised to include a warning about myocarditis and pericarditis after the second dose and with the onset of symptoms within a few days after receiving the shot. Myocarditis is the inflammation of the heart muscle and pericarditis is the inflammation of the tissue surrounding the heart. Health officials said the benefits of receiving the vaccine still outweigh any risk. “The risk of myocarditis and pericarditis appears to be very low given the number of vaccine doses that have been administered,” Janet Woodcock, acting FDA commissioner, said in a statement.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that Europe remains “on thin ice” in its fight against the coronavirus, as experts predicted that the more infectious delta variant, which was first detected in India, would become the dominant variant across much of the continent by summer’s end. “We need to remain vigilant,” Merkel, who is set to leave office this year, said Thursday. “The newly arising variants, especially now the delta variant, are a warning for us to continue to be careful.”
4,115 people have been hospitalized or died with Covid-19 despite being fully vaccinated. The total number of individuals who died after contracting Covid-19 despite vaccination is 750. 76% of hospitalizations and deaths from breakthrough cases occurred in people over the age of 65. The CDC received 3,907 reports of people who have been hospitalized with breakthrough Covid infections, despite being fully vaccinated. Of those, more than 1,000 of those patients were asymptomatic or their hospitalizations weren’t related to Covid-19, the CDC said.
Real Estate
I have been so busy, I have not been having a ton of R/E conversations with people. Florida in the summer tends to be slower too. I had mentioned one house in my community which was listed for $26mm. I thought it was crazy. I thought the house was worth $18mm. It is under contract for $24.5mm with multiple offers over $20mm. House is nice. Hate all you want, the big money is coming to Florida and establishing residency from high tax states. I will work on my data in coming weeks. Schools are getting increasingly difficult. I have heard from over a dozen readers relocating that they are having a challenging time getting kids into school. I have many people wanting to move down who cannot find a place. I feel there is a limit on prices now. Things have become so out of control expensive that it is less appealing from a cost perspective. I don’t see a crash, I just see a slow down.