Gayest Foreclosure Ever

August 30th, 2010 by alyx · breaking news

Parliament House isn’t doing so super, but thanks for asking.

The article I’m linking to doesn’t tell much of the history, so let me fill you in as a local. Parliament House Resort, was originally built as a hotel in the 1960s, then was converted to something of a gay enclave in the 70s by a man named Bill Miller. Miller died in the early 90s and the property started going the direction of everything else on South Orange Blossom Trail in Orlando, and that direction was, not surprisingly, south. It was acquired by Donald Granastein and his wife, Susan Unger, in 1999; they then proceeded to do what everyone in Florida was doing in the early to mid 2000s, which was to take out a multimillion-dollar loan to build a bunch of condos, in this case timeshare condos. They bought a trailer park, kicked out the hookers and started building it up.

I’ll give them props for letting the place continue to fly its freak flag instead of aiming it at the Disney crowd, but unfortunately, as with a lot of real estate developments in Florida these days, the owners are getting their pink slip, no pun intended. Okay, pun intended:

Orlando’s oldest gay entertainment club, the Parliament House, faces foreclosure and is headed into receivership, according to court filings.

Houston-based Southwest Guaranty Ltd. and Compass Bank of Alabama initiated foreclosure actions against the property on North Orange Blossom Trail in July over a $7.5 million mortgage that matured at the end of 2009. Attorneys for the creditors said Monday they expect it will taken over this week by a court-appointed receiver, which would continue the club’s operations under court orders.

Lenders have taken the initial steps to foreclose on the property, which is owned and controlled by Grantastein, president of Parliament Partners Inc.; Gerald Cadesky; and the Gardens LLC.

Granastein claims the receivers are going to let Parliament House go on with shop as usual, but do you really think the boards of two banks based in Texas and Alabama aren’t going to have objections to a place that bills itself as “The Gayest Place On Earth” and has regular foam parties and events like “Bears’ Night Out?” I’m surprised they were open-minded enough to finance it in the first place.

This image of course popped into my mind when I read about the foreclosure, and I really think Barney Frank should come down here and do a P-House fundraiser, immediately:

More on this topic (What's this?) Read more on Foreclosure at Wikinvest

→ No Comments

You Can’t Stop Yen, You Can Only Hope To Contain Him

August 30th, 2010 by alyx · loller dollar, zirp

Folks, consumer electronics shopping is gonna get a lot more painful this holiday season. The yen is rallying, the Bank of Japan is easing and the markets are shrugging:

Japan’s government offered a modest stimulus package Monday and the central bank took steps aimed at curbing the rising yen, but a tepid reaction from markets leaves policy makers under pressure to do more.

The 920 billion yen ($10.78 billion) stimulus is part of a double-barreled attempt to prevent the surging yen from undermining Japan’s fragile, export-led recovery. At an emergency meeting Monday, the BOJ’s policy board voted 8-1 to offer domestic financial institutions 10 trillion yen of six-month loans, in addition to the 20 trillion yen in three-month loans it has been offering.

The chairman of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association expressed hope the BOJ move will help weaken the yen. A strong yen makes Japanese products less competitive abroad, hurting key export sectors.

The move is largely considered to be the equivalent of throwing a bone (er…. a wonton?) to the local manufacturing industry, unlikely to have any long-term effect on the yen’s rise. If the BOJ wanted to make a significant impact, they’d need to buy bonds or get their ZIRP on. And they’re resisting that:

But he seemed to rule out one common suggestion: greater “quantitative easing” through stepped-up BOJ purchases of Japanese government bonds. “The current pace of outright government bond purchasing is the most appropriate,” Mr. Shirakawa said.

He also has resisted cutting policy interest rates, which have been at 0.1% since December 2008, to zero, fearing this would interfere with money-market functioning.

(Reports that a major car manufacturer threatened to point a number of recalled vehicles with so-called “accelerator issues” in the direction of the BOJ building if they failed to act are unsubstantiated at this time.)

In sum, get those Blu-Ray players and Lexuses while you can still afford ‘em, folks — it’s unlikely we’ll see a strong loller dollar vs. the yen any time soon. Much like the top in the euro was marked by supermodels demanding their contracts be paid in that currency, we’ll probably be able to call the top in the yen by waiting for 50 Cent to change his Twitter name over to @50¥, so I’m just going to wait for that to manifest.

→ 2 Comments

Sunday Night Links

August 29th, 2010 by alyx · links

- Real estate wheeling and dealing, now with 100% more pushing, shoving and headlocks

- OMG WTF, we’re on our way to a TLT BBQ

- If $HP wants to pay two bil for storage, the rafters of my garage are available.

- Chart porn of the day: A colorful breakdown of the Fed’s balance sheet courtesy of the Atlanta Fed.

Finally, a video from The Onion for those who have become bored with the MSM dumbing it down infographic-style:


TIME Announces New Version Of Magazine Aimed At Adults

→ No Comments

Tire Fires Burn Faster Than This

August 26th, 2010 by Jason · fail

Blockbuster is finally filing for bankruptcy, sometime next month. Friggin’ finally. Their failboat has been trying to dock for well over a year now.

We’ve posted about this stupid company’s looming bk so many times now that if we had a nickel for each one, we could have bailed them out by now. C’mon, Blockbuster. Fail already or get off the pink sheets.

→ 1 Comment

Does Anyone Like Dick?

August 26th, 2010 by Jason · lehman brothers

Fortune Magazine, having run out of actual things to report on, decided that it needed to check in on Dick Fuld. This was somehow not complicated by neither Fuld nor his lawyers wishing to comment on the article.

So what has he been up to? Turns out, not a lot, at least not by his standards. A little consulting here, a little getting his pilot’s license there, basically the kind of thing that he would have called “a light weekend” in his old life. Wait, pilot’s license?

He has also been spotted traveling to and from his usual haunts in Sun Valley and Jupiter Island, Fla., on commercial flights for the first time in years. (Curiously, he shows up on the FAA website as having gotten his student pilot’s certificate in November 2008, so he might be working on a strategy to avoid commercial air travel.)

Ha ha, he doesn’t want to risk brushing elbows with mere millionaires. Either that, or he’s planning to fake his own death a la Krusty the Clown, which, maybe not a bad idea.

As for his consulting gig, he’s said to be spending upwards of 60 hours a week (once known as “a working vacation”) at the office of his latest venture, Matrix Advisors, which is more executive advisory than dodging bullets. It’s a four-person office, and no one really knows exactly what he’s actually doing there all day. We’d like to think he leaves his house at 6 in the morning, commutes roughly an hour to the office, where he shuts the door and just cries for twelve hours before going home to outdrink Don Draper. Yes, this would please us.

“Now wait,” you may be saying, “this guy was known as ‘The Gorilla’ as much for his sloping brow line as for his rough temperament and the beautiful silver hair that covers every square inch of his back. He cannot have a human emotion, let alone functioning tear ducts.” Normally, I would be inclined to agree with you, but then this came to light:

Fuld then told White he was leaving Lehman. White asked whether he would be joining Barclays. “F— that,” Fuld said. “I’m not going to Barclays. F— that.” White said he wouldn’t be going to Barclays either, and told Fuld about Spring Hill. Fuld offered to help White any way he could. Then it was time for White to leave. Fuld stood up and came around to the other side of his desk to shake White’s hand. He put his hand out, then pulled it back. “Nah, f— that,” he said. “Give me a hug. I need a hug.” Before White knew it, Fuld, the man whose gruff, brutish manner had given him the nickname “the Gorilla,” was embracing him. Then, White said, Fuld started crying. “Kevin, you’re the first person to say thank-you to me.”

Was a hug all he ever really needed? Could so much of this had been avoided had someone walked into Fuld’s office with a banana as a peace offering, embraced him, and told him they loved him? Probably not, but those questions are a lot more pleasant to ponder than the ensuing love scene that played out in my head after I read that passage. Suffice to say, there’s more than one reason he was called The Gorilla.

But that’s what’s been keeping him out of trouble lately. Well, that and what is sure to be a neverending string of congressional hearings and lawsuits and possibly criminal charges that will consume his life until literally his dying day. Maybe he needs to get with the Krusty Solution sooner rather than later.

→ 1 Comment