gradenko_2000 posted:

kazmeyer posted:

(Note that they simultaneously hold the belief that they will all become fantastically rich and capitalism will die at the same time, so I'm not sure how that works. This also of course requires that if a short squeeze does happen and the price spikes, everyone will hold their shares instead of selling them for insane profits. The theory of what the world is going to be like after the MOASS varies, but common beliefs include such things as being able to live off GME dividends or use your sudden quadrillion-dollar stock account to borrow against to buy yachts and poo poo, to weird fantasies of GME becoming the one surviving corporation in the world and running everything from their own bank to their own government to their own space program.)

I think it fascinates me the same way sovcit stuff does-- the idea that you can beat a system that's rigged against you if you invoke the right rules. The idea that they can earn a victory over the stock market with math and capitalism will just dash its hat to the ground and stamp on it before slinking away in defeat is a hell of a mental image.

Zodium posted:

i know a few people who fell down the gamestop hole after the initial funny week, and the unshakeable faith in the fundamental integrity of capitalism meeting the utterly contradictory belief that the system is completely rigged is the best part. well, insofar as there are good parts about people i know getting into a cult, anyway.

Willa Rogers posted:

https://twitter.com/mayavada/status/1649111795880325121

SKULL.GIF posted:

Don't some of these office towers have extremely expensive upkeep? Like I think back during covid I read that these towers are designed to have air conditioning running 24/7 or they become mold spires.

Willa Rogers posted:

https://twitter.com/mayavada/status/1649111795880325121

forkboy84 posted:

Truly the rationality of the free market wins again.

It's probably time for Georgism to come back in vogue. Sure, it's nowhere near radical enough but at this point at least it's a start

Bar Ran Dun posted:

so these social media companies implode when they go public because they have to clean up for the payment processors. this has happened a few times. it’s really predictable. why don’t they just make their own sex tolerant payment processor?

Harik posted:

because it's not possible? the 'payment processor' who's a prude is the one at the very top of the heap, so it doesn't matter if pornhub makes it's entire own merchant services because visa/mastercard will ice them out.

you're talking creating a new porncard network and getting people to buy into it.

Zodium posted:

i know a few people who fell down the gamestop hole after the initial funny week, and the unshakeable faith in the fundamental integrity of capitalism meeting the utterly contradictory belief that the system is completely rigged is the best part. well, insofar as there are good parts about people i know getting into a cult, anyway.

kazmeyer posted:

Yeah. If I wanted to touch the poop I'd be really tempted to go in there and ask how do they know Computershare is playing by the rules and what proof do they have that their "booked" shares are actually held in their name instead of on a ledger, but I know that would make a bunch of CS employees want to kill themselves from the resultant howler monkey influx on the phones and I can't be that much of an rear end in a top hat to them.

Harik posted:

fwiw don't we know that it's not and it's just held in a ledger because that's how brokerages work?

like if the little people are seen to have a snowballs chance in hell at reversing the natural flow of money (upward) the rug will be pulled faster than something named 'scamcoin'

shrike82 posted:

the WSB community doesn't strike me as an example of doublethink - I get the impression most people there are poor and treat the day trading stuff as a lottery ticket

Harik posted:

scamcoin

Animal-Mother posted:

should i invest in this? i've heard good things

Cpt_Obvious posted:

And they'll let people live there right?

....right?

Bar Ran Dun posted:

it’s be real loving handy if internet searches actually worked right now. cause trying to find that just goes to results of a bunch of commercial real estate lenders lol.

quote:

The lenders have not foreclosed on the two properties or exercised other remedies available to them, according to Brookfield’s filing. In January, Oaktree Capital Management wrested control of the building known for providing the exterior shots for the main office in the television series “L.A. Law” after the owner, Coretrust Capital Partners, went into default on a loan tied to the property.

quote:

Occupancy and interest rate hikes had hit Brookfield’s defaulted D.C. office portfolio hard—across the 12 properties, occupancy rates averaged 52%, down from 79% in 2018 when the debt was underwritten, Bloomberg reported.

On top of that, monthly mortgage payments jumped from $300,000 to $880,000 over the past 12 months due to interest rate hikes.

forkboy84 posted:

Truly the rationality of the free market wins again.

It's probably time for Georgism to come back in vogue. Sure, it's nowhere near radical enough but at this point at least it's a start

shrike82 posted:

https://twitter.com/WSJ/status/1649895929426726912?s=20

Harik posted:

you're talking creating a new porncard network and getting people to buy into it.

Orvin posted:

It took a couple minutes of looking, but I was able to find some articles from two months ago. It was Brookfield Asset Management that went into default on two buildings in LA.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-14/brookfield-defaults-on-two-los-angeles-office-towers?leadSource=uverify%20wall

Seems like since then things have gotten worse for Brookfield. Just last week this was reported that another group of buildings went into default. Much smaller than than the LA buildings at around $180Mil

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kather...it-matters/amp/

Zokari posted:

i wish people would stop saying computer toucher

shrike82 posted:

https://twitter.com/WSJ/status/1649895929426726912?s=20

DancingShade posted:

Computer molestor it is then.

DancingShade posted:

Computer molestor it is then.

DancingShade posted:

Computer molestor it is then.

quote:

Research finds hospitals' cash prices for uninsured often lower than insurer-negotiated prices

Two new studies led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health shed light on current U.S. hospital practices.

In one, the researchers found that the prices hospitals negotiate with commercial health insurance companies that get passed along to insured patients frequently exceed the cash prices hospitals unilaterally set for uninsured patients. In the other study, the researchers found an association between greater payment of trustees at U.S. non-profit hospitals and less provision of charitable care.

Both studies were published online April 3 in Health Affairs.

In the hospital pricing study, the researchers analyzed prices for 70 common "shoppable" services disclosed by 2,379 U.S. hospitals as of September 2022 under the new Hospital Price Transparency Rule that went into effect in 2021. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services defines routine services for which patients can compare prices in advance as "shoppable." The rule, intended to encourage lower prices through competition, requires all U.S. hospitals to post publicly their cash prices—the prices paid by uninsured patients—as well as prices hospitals have negotiated with commercial insurers for covered services.

For their analysis, the researchers used data from Turquoise Health, a data service company that collects hospital pricing information. On average across the 70 services, for nearly half of these services—47%—the cash prices were lower than or the same as the median insurance-paid prices for the same procedure in the same hospital and service setting. "Evaluation and management services" and "medicine and surgery" were the service categories that were most likely to have lower cash prices. The analysis also showed that nonprofit and government hospitals—which tend to serve a greater proportion of uninsured patients—were more likely to offer lower cash prices than insurer prices.

The findings suggest that in settings where market forces are more prevalent—in hospitals with more uninsured patients paying cash prices, for example—competition may be driving cash prices lower.

"Some insurance companies, by not negotiating lower prices with hospitals, ultimately shift costs to patients and employers through higher premiums and higher out-of-pocket payments," says study senior author Ge Bai, Ph.D., a professor in the Bloomberg School's Department of Health Policy and Management, and a professor of accounting at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School.

Bai suggests that self-insured employers should consider using hospitals' cash prices as references in price negotiations—or even contracting directly with low cash-price providers.

She notes, however, that at the time of the study, nearly half of the general acute care hospitals required to implement the Hospital Price Transparency Rule still had not posted most of their prices for mandated shoppable procedures. So, future data might yield different results.

"Tighter enforcement may be needed to realize this Rule's potential to lower prices," she says.

In a second hospital-related study, thought to be the first of its kind, Bai and colleagues examined compensation for the trustees who oversee nonprofit hospitals. These hospitals enjoy major tax benefits in exchange for delivering charitable care to low-income uninsured and underinsured patients and providing other community benefits. The trustees of these institutions—often wealthy philanthropists—traditionally have been expected to serve without compensation, in keeping with these hospitals' charitable missions.

The researchers, using Internal Revenue Service data for 2019, found that 37.3% of the 2,058 nonprofit hospitals in the U.S. compensated their trustees. These trustee-compensating hospitals, compared to other nonprofit hospitals that did not compensate their trustees, delivered less charitable care as a proportion of their overall expenses: a 1.6% charity-care-to-expense ratio compared to 2.2% for nonprofits with uncompensated trustees. The researchers calculated that a $10,000 increase in average annual trustee compensation was associated with between $66,000 and $77,000 less charity care annually.

"These findings suggest that some nonprofit hospital boards are more mission-driven than money-driven, and that difference is reflected in their provision of charity care," Bai says.

anime was right posted:

i went to a dollar store for the first time in like 10 years and there was one person work there and 20 people shopping

SKULL.GIF posted:

I notice that there's way less old geezers working there, staffing seems to be mostly older teenagers and 20somethings now.

Xaris posted:

that's about right for cvs/walgreens/dollar store/general dollar/whatever.

DancingShade posted:

Computer molestor it is then.

Xaris posted:

i'm guessing that's because they retired and that's because working retail, especially grocery store, is hell. unless it's a night-shift doing stocking only, that's pretty chill (if those positions even still exist)

anime was right posted:

i went to a dollar store for the first time in like 10 years and there was one person work there and 20 people shopping