From the Record:
‘The new normal’? In NJ, higher prices may be here to stay, say economists
With prices rising at their fastest in more than four decades, the question is on the mind of every driver, homeowner, shopper and saver in New Jersey: Where will it end?
In the Garden State, gas prices have spiked 44% in the past year. The cost of new car in the New York Metro Area jumped 16% in June from a year earlier, according to the U.S. Labor Department. Meat, chicken, fish and eggs climbed 10%. Housing costs were up 4%. Economists expect the pain to drag on at least through the end of the year. Volatile energy and food prices may come back down, but some of the eye-watering increases are likely here to stay.
Eventually, employers may be forced to hike wages, increasing individual purchasing power to take some of the edge off of inflation. But it’s looking more and more likely, economists told us, that any “relief” will be triggered by a recession that dries up demand and forces businesses to recalibrate.
“Unless the economy really goes in the tank, I don’t think businesses will be inclined to lower the prices,” said Robert Scott, an economist with Monmouth University. How did we get into this mess? How do we get out of it? Here’s what a sample of local and national economic experts told The USA Today Network in New Jersey:
First
On a more interesting note, was talking to my brother about music, and he was telling me about “Hitsville” in Passaic. I believe it was on the site of what was the Sevilla Restaurant more recently. This would have been a few blocks from the famed Capitol Theater – which would have had a similarly epic show list over the same time period.
1981-1983 at Hitsville might just be the most epic of venues for GenX and 80s music. How did I never hear of this?
Modern English
Cramps
Psychedelic Furs
Fixx
Bauhaus
Billy Idol
Stray Cats
Nina Hagen
Black Flag
REM (as relative unknowns, before their first studio album)
The Waitresses
Ramones
Misfits
U2 (as relative unknowns, second time in US – October tour)
Siouxie and the Banshees
Bow Wow Wow
Joe Jackson
Vapors
Joan Jett
The Go-Gos
John Cale (Velvet Underground)
And probably a ton more that are just lost to time.
Grim,
What about Waterloo Village? Plenty of popular bands played the field there.
Wasn’t that more recent though? I remember that being more of a 90s mega show venue. I vaguely recall seeing someone there, maybe Phish?
Scratch that, Blues Traveler – Horde festival – 95ish
https://www.u2songs.com/shows/1981_11_24_u2_hitsville_north_passaic_new_jersey
Coming off three successful nights in New York City, the band moves to New Jersey for two back to back shows. They play Hitsville North in Passaic on the first night, and then play Hitsville South in Asbury Park on the second night. Both shows start late at night and run well after midnight. Supporting U2 for both nights are The Nitecaps. Early advertisements had these two dates in the reverse order.
Little is known about this first show in Passaic. The band play the upstairs area of the club, and a DJ continues to spin records at the downstairs part of the club. The DJ couldn’t be heard well over U2’s sound system and is eventually shut down. The show was not sold out, and it’s also been suggested that the club asked the DJ to stop playing so more would go up to U2’s performance that evening.
Little is known about what U2 played that evening, although the band did return to the stage to play “I Will Follow” a second time after the first encore.
Bono was dressed in red plaid pants, and a red plaid scarf for much of the show. He started out wearing a heavy leather vest, but later stripped down to just a black T-Shirt.
From the second show notes – Asbury Park:
Bouncers at the club remember the entire band squeezing into a station wagon and leaving after the show with Bono in front and the other three in the back.
Waterloo Village, haven’t thought of that place in a long time. Backstage catering in a field. Fun times.
Economists increasingly expect the Federal Reserve, in its efforts to push down inflation, to raise rates enough to trigger a recession, with many worrying the central bank will go too far.
Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal now put the chance of a recession sometime in the next 12 months at 49% in July, on average, up from 44% a month ago and just 18% in January.
Some 46% of economists said they expect the Fed to raise interest rates excessively and cause unnecessary economic weakness. Slightly fewer, 42%, said they anticipated the Fed increasing rates about the right amount to balance inflation and growth. Around 12.3% thought it would raise rates too little.
Lots of great shows at Waterloo. FYI, John Popper played with Phish in Summer of 95 at Waterloo. Recall that was show with insane parking situation. I think you had to take a bus to venue. So overcrowded that people were grabbing onto back of bus. I believe a girl got run over..sad.
Maybe it was Phish, I recall it taking hours to get back and find our car.
One observation I want to mention, it’s something that was cemented over a few conversations I had over the past two or three weeks.
We’re in an interesting position with regards to corporate leadership right now. From my perspective, you have a large number of what appear to be very successful leaders over organizations that have effectively been running on autopilot over the last 5 or 6 years. Supply chain dislocation, price increases, delays, market volatility – is beginning to expose these leaders and companies for exactly what they are – leaderless organizations.
In my position, I talk to a lot of companies, and I’m privvy to conversations that take place at a very senior leadership perspective. When it comes to outsourcing and cost cutting, those cards are often played very close to the chest of senior leaders, typically long before the rest of the company, or even the public market, is aware of these things.
What we’re seeing with companies struggling to navigate the past two years, has a lot to do with the fact that these companies were all essentially running on autopilot. Leadership was largely irrelevant, the companies would have performed the same with or without them. They might be public figures, but they are essentially a passenger in an autonomous car, while taking credit for being the driver.
The more I look for this, the more I see it, and it’s all over the place. Shortsightedness, ability to make a decision in a timely manner, wildly overcorrecting and thrashing back and forth. The people running these companies today are not the people that had the foresight, mindset, and knowledge, to build these businesses. They have no ability to help the organization navigate these scenarios, hell, in many cases they have little to no idea about how their company actually operates.
We’re getting to see first hand how many “leaders” were swimming naked the last few years, and there are LOTS of them. I suspect we’re going to see more CEO and leadership changes in the next two years than ever before in history. Was talking to a colleague at another public US firm that was basically saying the same thing about his org. The revolving leadership door is all you need to know about what orgs are capable of running in an autonomous way. Reorg, reorg, reorg, but the reality is that nothing is changing, because everyone who actually DOES realizes how inept leadership is today.
So that – we’ve got a crisis of effective organizational leadership today, and we’re seeing that play out through the pandemic, through the supply chain crisis (it’s partially the cause of the supply chain crisis), and more.
Good luck to those CEOs, and god help the companies they are presiding over.
Outdoor events: I was up in New Hampshire this weekend, went to a race. It took 45 minutes to leave the venue grounds and another hour to travel 5 miles. The venue is in the middle of nowhere and there’s nothing but a single northbound and southbound road (route 106) to a major Interstate. If you go south or north, it’s seven miles to Interstate 93. They do open up the shoulders to make it two lanes in either direction but it doesn’t help that much. Pack a cooler, do some tailgating afterward, it’s really the only way.
NJ: most engineers per capita of any place its size in the world
Also NJ: floods all over from that rain yesterday. (NJ floods at the drop of a hat).
Still waiting for Murphy’s water management and anti-flooding policies and rhetoric but he’s focused on pushing his PAC which is pitching platitudes that he hopes will propel him to the Presidency.
Also NJ: floods all over from that rain yesterday. (NJ floods at the drop of a hat).
Every acre of land is being plowed and replaced with insane numbers of condos and townhouses. Standard thunderstorms have become epic events. When do we stop building?
Rainfall in inches:
7/19/2022 7:30 AM Tenafly 4.57
7/19/2022 6:20 AM Fair Lawn 4.25
7/19/2022 7:00 AM River Edge 4.24
Good post, grim.
Workers and leaders have gone to chit. Time for a big change. Out of darkness comes the light. Make america great again through hard work, sacrifice, and doing what you do to the best of your ability.
I was in Junior High at the time of Hitsville. I was mostly into metal at the time. Van Halen, Ozzy, Maiden, etc. Though I was really into U2 by the time the Unforgettable Fire tour went off where they were selling out Worcester sized arenas, where I first saw them live. That was 1984 or 1985. So Hitsville was just before me. I never heard of it either. Shame. The 80s were such a weird time musically. The advances in MIDI and the synthesizer created so many one-hit wonders that lots of truly talented bands didn’t really get the same due that they would have had they been around in the 60s or 70s. That list you shared Grim, reads like the playlist at WRSU or WPRB from 1983.
As to Waterloo. I snuck into Lollapalooza 1 with a heck of a lot of others. The fence surrounding the field was only about 8 feet high. The problem was, to get to a section away from all of the security at the main entrances, you had to swim across a pretty strong moving river. Many a car key FOB was ruined that day. After the first few people jumped the fence, security caught on. The problem was, there were hundreds of us who still were trying to sneak in. It wasn’t the ticket price either which was a reasonable $35 or so. It was that they sold out almost instantly. Well, we all regrouped at the river bank and decided that the survival of the fittest was the best strategy. We would inundate the security (which was like one unarmed old man every 20 feet) by all going at the same time. We also decided that we would all just run directly into the mosh pit for cover. Now, the visual was pretty damn funny. Jane’s Addiction was playing, “Been Caught Stealin,” as the massive group of wet teenagers is inundating the security, actually knocking most of them down as they ran by and all of a sudden, the mosh pit triples in size. Too make things sillier, it was really dry that Summer and the pit was a giant dustbowl. So now, we were all turned into mud people as the dust hit our wet clothes. It was such a friggin’ mess. But definitely one of the highlight’s of my life. And the show that day was legendary. Especially, Ice Tea and NIN.
But but but we need affordable housing cries the liberals.
Fast Eddie says:
July 19, 2022 at 9:53 am
Also NJ: floods all over from that rain yesterday. (NJ floods at the drop of a hat).
Every acre of land is being plowed and replaced with insane numbers of condos and townhouses. Standard thunderstorms have become epic events. When do we stop building?
Impervious ground cover is a bigger deal than new developement.
How do we go backwards and start ripping up ground cover that we previously put in place.
We need to incent property owners to want to participate in this, meaning, ripping out driveways, ripping out patios. Replacing these things with more permeable ground coverings, or none at all.
Next step is going to be banning concrete and blacktop. More dirt, grass, and gravel parking lots. More gravel driveways.
We’re well past the point of stopping new development making any impact at all.
Not to continually call out Wayne, but look to the work being done to reclaim the riverfront, and turn it all back into wetlands. Buy out the houses, tear them all down, tear out the driveways, tear out the roads, tear it all back out. Let nature have it all back, knowing it’s going to flood, and most likely flood far more regularly than previously. This has been a TWO DECADE project at this point, to fix what’s a TINY slice of the problem in the broader scheme. Good luck with bigger projects in our lifetimes.
Providing property tax credits for reducing coverage % is going to be a far easier solution than huge public works projects. We know how to fix Passaic and Ramapo River flooding, it’s a 20 mile long, 40 foot diameter flood tunnel from up here all the way down to Newark Bay.
Good luck building that, just like I said above, we no longer have the leadership that has any understanding at all for how to get things done. It’s nothing more than politicians and ceos that want to preside over autonomous organizations, because they haven’t a clue how to actually run them.
I can’t even imagine what it would cost to build a 40 foot diameter, 20 mile long main tunnel, and a 20 foot diameter, 20 mile long spur tunnel cutting across the most populated part of New Jersey.
Would be well into the double digit billions of dollars, hell, it’s not crazy to think it could break the $100 billion dollar mark.
And that still only fixes one small part of NJ’s flooding problem.
Then you’ve got Paterson, which has a combined sewerage and storm sewer.
You essentially need to tear up the entirety of Newark, and build two completely new storm and sewerage systems under the city, and reconnect every building and storm drain that exists.
That’s a project that was estimated to cost a billion dollars – for ONE TOWN in NJ.
There aren’t enough dollars in NJ to pay for all of this anymore, you think Paterson alone can saddle a billion dollar infrastructure project? Debt service on the bonds alone would completely blow the town budget.
grim,
I’ve observed CEOs in companies for about 30 years, and probably more up close for the last 15. I think a large number of CEOs have always been figureheads, more or less. Not entirely, but in big organizations they don’t have much choice but to delegate. I think more or less they are setting out some priorities, and tasking their sub executives to deliver them, who in turn are tasking their upper level managers to deliver on those priorities. MBA school CEOs just aren’t founder CEOs. Like Musk who is half nuts, half brilliant, and will make bold executive decisions that break “the rules”.
Other observations about CEOs and the environment.
Trump’s tariff surprises was one of the first big surprises for supply chains that CEOs have had to deal with in a long time. Economically it creates friction, but it was an early wake up call to the fact that China is an unreliable long term partner in trade. Companies tried to deal with this a little, maybe create some minor back up plans in Vietnam, maybe led them to hold back going “all in” on China.
Other than that, CEOs thought for a while their top goals was to deal with the cultural revolutions of DIE and ESG. I personally am disgusted by this trend, but it’s a “luxury belief” system without which you don’t get invited to party at Davos or the Bloomberg retreats. So CEOs were hiring a bunch of diversity and ESG directors and letting them start doing all sorts of distracting stuff that creates negative value for the firm other than to boost the status of the company and management with people who care about that stuff. It doesn’t help companies meet financial goals though. I think the cult of stock-buybacks was also an unfortunate influence on a lot of large profitable companies. But that’s partly due to tax code distortions penalizing dividends vs buybacks.
Then Covid hit and it’s been one emergency after another since then. (The economy was already about to turn down just before Covid, but that’s forgotten now). As I set out above, very few CEOs or businesses look great during emergencies. Most high level CEOs like to fancy themselves super-long term planners, but most assume “normal” conditions not a series of surprises. And a CEO is never going to look much better than the underlying business model of their companies. Nobody, not CEOs, not economists, ever looks good after major economic surprises and turning points. They always miss them and most look dumb in hindsight. I’ve been seeing this around the world for decades. CEOs and CFOs don’t have as much foresight as people assume, despite them trying to look like they do. And sometimes they don’t even know what’s really going on during the heat of battle. Are CEOs today as dumb as the CEOs of Lucent or AT&T were 25 years ago? Some are. Are bitcrap and other various tech startup founders as dumb and opportunistic as the dotcom founders of 25 years ago? Probably. Getting money for free from people to try something leads people to behave that way. A few of these things even work out to become something good, but the majority in hindsight are just dumb.
Reminds me of
Here we stand
Like an Adam and an Eve
Waterfalls
The Garden of Eden
Two fools in love
So beautiful and strong
The birds in the trees
Are smiling upon them
From the age of the dinosaurs
Cars have run on gasoline
Where, where have they gone?
Now, it’s nothing but flowers
There was a factory
Now there are mountains and rivers
You got it, you got it
We caught a rattlesnake
Now we got something for dinner
We got it, we got it
There was a shopping mall
Now it’s all covered with flowers
You’ve got it, you’ve got it
If this is paradise
I wish I had a lawnmower
You’ve got it, you’ve got it
Years ago
I was an angry young man
And I’d pretend
That I was a billboard
Standing tall
By the side of the road
I fell in love
With a beautiful highway
This used to be real estate
Now it’s only fields and trees
Where, where is the town
Now, it’s nothing but flowers
The highways and cars
Were sacrificed for agriculture
I thought that we’d start over
But I guess I was wrong
Once there were parking lots
Now it’s a peaceful oasis
You’ve got it, you’ve got it
This was a Pizza Hut
Now it’s all covered with daisies
You got it, you got it
I miss the honky tonks,
Dairy Queens, and 7-Elevens
You got it, you got it
And as things fell apart
Nobody paid much attention
You got it, you got it
I dream of cherry pies,
Candy bars, and chocolate chip cookies
You got it, you got it
We used to microwave
Now we just eat nuts and berries
You got it, you got it
This was a discount store,
Now it’s turned into a cornfield
You’ve got it, you’ve got it
Don’t leave me stranded here
I can’t get used to this lifestyle
One of my favorite songs…
And as things fell apart
Nobody paid much attention
Sickening. Not paying rent and want to be bought out to leave. People are so entitled and f’ed up. Yea, landlords are the problem.
“Check out my squatters who haven’t paid in 3 months and still want a lump some to leave…they kick a ball around in my front yard and step in my gardening areas….what would you do…trying to hold it together till I get a court date…how long did it take you to get a court date? I live on long island NY”
Russia Seen Restarting Gas Exports From Nord Stream 1 On Schedule – RTRS
I disagree that NJ’s building new developments or its impervious ground cover is the problem. The best example is Manhattan. It’s got much more impervious surfaces than NJ – but, it has better drainage engineering so it can accommodate rainfall without absurd flooding all over.
Next, I think it would make a lot of political sense to require any new build (including maybe even projects as small a single family substantial renovations to put in seriously over-sized seepage pits (able to capture the water from the whole lot that fell during Ida if Ida happened three days in a row) either underground under the project or in the backyard, If it has one.
Finally, let’s even imagine that it would cost $1T to fix all of NJ’s flooding problems. That should be identified and then the first $1B can go to the highest priority projects. However, neither our politicians or the local media that covers them has this out there as a big issue. I’m surprised that the voters aren’t more upset – it’s a disgrace to drive on Route 17 near the Garden State Plaza and have the highway flooded. I don’t know how the political big shots get away with not only doing nothing but not even talking as if they might do something.
O well, I guess the market will take care of it the other way – there will continue to be untouchable property in certain parts of the state where people who don’t know better buy a home and then suffer flooding, fixing, and then flooding again. We’ll continue to have flood-ruined cars showing up in shady used car lots.
Crushed,
Agree to disagree. Manhattan has serious flooding issues. You see the subways yesterday? Grim is correct. Do you understand what a flood zone is and what happens when you build on it? Do you understand rt 17 is basically the meadowlands paved over? We don’t even know the longterm repercussions for all this black top in this world. How does that affect future drinking water that never makes it through the ground..
Manhattan has been developed for 100+ years. Same for many urban areas in NJ.
People don’t realize how much of our infrastructure is designed based on climate.
Storm water drainage, water supplies, electrical distribution networks… even the asphalt mixes we use for our roads, were all designed to handle the climate we had 50-100 years ago, not the new climate that global warming is bringing us.
Fast Eddie says:
July 19, 2022 at 9:58 am
“Rainfall in inches: 7/19/2022 7:30 AM Tenafly 4.57”
zero point zero zero in Bridgewater; dead lawns, dry streams; terrible July so far in central NJ
Shore is dry as well. Storms keep petering out before they get to us. Watering my garden just to keep it going. Water company is asking to water on opposite days based upon address.
No One says:
July 19, 2022 at 10:35 am
“CEOs thought for a while their top goals was to deal with the cultural revolutions of DIE and ESG. I personally am disgusted by this trend…”
Still among top goals in many corps. And another example of our institutions losing their way as they focus on woke nonsense. Really no different than Powell turning the Fed’s time and attention to climate change last year, when it should’ve been focused on inflation. But perhaps the best current example (or worst if you’re a long term shareholder like me) is Disney’s new CEO destroying the company’s priceless brands in the name of diversity and inclusion. How long before Mickey gets a boyfriend? Literally organizational/institutional/societal suicide.
https://www.businessinsider.com/jerome-powell-climate-change-retirement-risk-federal-reserve-biden-renomination-2021-11
Next, I think it would make a lot of political sense to require any new build (including maybe even projects as small a single family substantial renovations to put in seriously over-sized seepage pits (able to capture the water from the whole lot that fell during Ida if Ida happened three days in a row) either underground under the project or in the backyard, If it has one.
Sure, but there are plenty of places in NJ where this model simply doesn’t work, because the ground won’t perc. The clay across a lot of NJ is simply brutal.
That said, for residential, we’re talking largely about roof drains.
Very, very few people are attempting to collect runoff from impervious cover and route that to drywells, other than in very rare scenarios (downward sloping driveways, etc).
Depending on their size, most new developments in NJ are required to have storm water retention basins.
Depending on their size, most new developments in NJ are required to have storm water retention basins.
Can anyone point to a link with this info?
Developments, yes, but far less so one off residential projects. And, for the most part, what’s proposed for a development is to manage the runoff generated by that specific development. That’s not addressing the current problem at all. Even if you drop on hugely restrictive requirements on a single new development, that’s still only dealing with that one development.
I’m talking about looking backwards, and incentivizing change across the vast majority of existing properties, with a big focus on residential, that represents the biggest footprints from an overall area perspective.
When we’re talking about ground permeability – we’re talking about needing to address huge expanses of property. However, small changes replicated across these huge expanses can make a positive impact to the groundwater situation. What can the individual property owner in NJ do, that will have a small positive impact, one that can be amplified by repeating it.
At this point, we’re not going to stop the rain, what was a 100 year event, two or three decades ago, is an annual event now. Accommodating that means going backwards. Undoing whatever parts of the development that we can, where we can, in a way that’s fair and in a way that we can ensure adoption.
I live near the Peckman River. I was on the Passaic Valley Regional Flood Board (until Little Falls politics forced me off). I had no expectation that this would actually happen, however:
https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/passaic/woodland-park/2022/01/20/peckman-river-nj-flood-tunnel-levees-funding-cory-booker/6584968001/
“Can anyone point to a link with this info?”
https://gitoolkit.njfuture.org/nj-stormwater-rules/#rule-overview
or google “NJ storm water regs”
Example, as long as I don’t exceed the impervious surface coverage % in Wayne zoning code, I can pour a concrete patio with no consideration at all for stormwater runoff.
60, 70, 80, 90% coverages.
These don’t work anymore.
Will Willowbrook mall tear up half it’s parking lot?
No, probably not.
So what can we do to improve the existing, the current coverage %, on a township basis more broadly?
This is where we need to focus.
Always photos of cars stuck in the water under the railroad overpass on Rt 46 near Piaget in Clifton. There were a ton of great photos yesterday.
Besides the obvious answer – regrade the highway so that it doesn’t dip under groundwater levels to accommodate the overpass, what else?
I’m going to tell you that a huge number of residential properties off to the east side of that flood area have nearly completely paved over their properties. You have neighborhoods consisting of high density 40ft wide lots, two family houses with large footprints, all with paved driveways extending front to back, and in many cases residents have opted to cover the rear of their properties, and in some cases nearly 100% coverage. Some of these properties have postage stamp lawns that are entirely laughable.
Now add the industrial properties, the commercial properties, the parking lots, the sidewalks and roads to the mix, and why are we wondering at all why we are seeing huge flooding in those areas? The ground coverage in the immediate surrounding area of the flooding is probably greater than 75% just looking at the sat maps.
Replacing the asphalt in parking lots with permeable concrete pavers would be nice…
SmallGov,
I’m also in Bridgewater during the summer, was braced for rain all yesterday afternoon and evening, ended up getting none.
The town is also full of dead elm trees just waiting to fall and knock down power lines.
Grim, during the planning of our small addition the architect said if we hit the 20% range we would have to put something in. Thankfully we are not even close.
Invent a permeable parking lot paving system that can be poured and laid as inexpensively as concrete, than lobby the hell out of local governments to retroactively enforce new lot coverage requirements.
This is the American Way.
Lots of town engineers require on site drainage for new construction on spot lots and rebuilds on existing foundation in Bergen County.
Invent? It already exists and has for a decade.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I16WGau3jxE&t=368s
Its not perfect, but we are talking about improvements, not novel inventions.
I missed a few seconds…
https://youtu.be/I16WGau3jxE?t=325
Didn’t take 5 comments before someone bitched about car fluids draining into the groundwater if there was an accident.
Nearly everything reporting tonight or BMO tomorrow is up better than the market…went long NFLX at a slight credit (brokerage paid me) with 20% room for downside error before I come close to seeing a loss and full upside leverage a few bucks higher than here…mentioned a week or so ago how I’ve been whoring myself out for gains…totally inappropriate on so many levels but since there are so many 80s flashbacks in this thread (nice share on Waterloo lib, lol) I may as well go there…I feel some some imported south of the border or SE Asia chick ensconced on a dirty mattress in one of those tenements across from the PTA taking all comers…pays the rent I guess.
“I disagree that NJ’s building new developments or its impervious ground cover is the problem. The best example is Manhattan. It’s got much more impervious surfaces than NJ…”
ehhh…manhattan is a few dozen feet above sea level but surrounded by water, ie. the sea at zero elevation. The water all just drains from Manhattan to the rivers as you so readily know from the detritus on your beaches…
NJ meanwhile is a fucking swamp…literally. Major portions are the low point that all the water from the inland hills drains INTO.
Big difference. Don’t live in and and develop a swamp.
Hoover dam turbine house fire. It’s been out out.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11029187/Massive-explosion-rocks-Hoover-Dam-black-smoke-fire-seen-inside-turbine-house.html
So….grim, thanks so much for that share. Seriously. I appreciate your unique insights and they are valuable to me, in a very real dollar and cents perspective. I should give you a 2 and 20 sometime…
In addition to thank you, I want to say I also agree with you…so take the below commentary with those two statements in mind….thank you and I agree with you.
“We’re in an interesting position with regards to corporate leadership right now. From my perspective, you have a large number of what appear to be very successful leaders over organizations that have effectively been running on autopilot over the last 5 or 6 years.”
Correction…last 50 or 60 years. Little has changed, you are seeing them with new eyes…
“What we’re seeing with companies struggling to navigate the past two years, has a lot to do with the fact that these companies were all essentially running on autopilot. Leadership was largely irrelevant, the companies would have performed the same with or without them.”
Agree. The follow-on thought may be why do you think these ‘leaders’ all coalesce around the ‘moderates’ and the ‘middle’ politically? Because they believe? Or because so long as the deviation from the fattest part of the bell curve economically and politically remains as narrow as possible their autopilot hits no turbulence, providing them the double payoff of their actual outsized compensation for little marginal value added and eliminating the need to actually step up to the plate and demonstrate their (mostly lacking) leadership attributes?
“The more I look for this, the more I see it, and it’s all over the place. Shortsightedness, ability to make a decision in a timely manner, wildly overcorrecting and thrashing back and forth.”
Again, at the risk of sounding condescending which is entirely what I do not intend…virgin eyes.
“We’re getting to see first hand how many “leaders” were swimming naked the last few years, and there are LOTS of them. I suspect we’re going to see more CEO and leadership changes in the next two years than ever before in history.”
LOL. Riiiightt. Exogenous factors. Unforeseen events. Contract renewed and, oh btw, option strike prices reset lower….Forget the CEO performance in these discussions, look at the Boards to see what [won’t] happen regarding executive suite accountability….
“So that – we’ve got a crisis of effective organizational leadership today…”
So, I asked you the other day…appreciate your evolving politics, when are you actually going to do something about it? When an IT professional is working his ass off at 1990s wages for a firm that should have been taken out back and shot as it has destroyed massive wealth whose CEO is rewarded with eight figures annual compensation annually, when a health care professional who has more direct marginal societal impact than most of these CEOs is fed on leftover pizza during a pandemic after a double shift.
What…The…Fuck…Are…You…Going…To…Do…About…It?
Are you going to be offended by the crude ramblings of an unpolished outsider who is able to squeak through? Not be offended when twice – not once, but twice – his equivalent on the left side of the spectrum is summarily dismissed for the ‘moderate’?
Do you ever ask yourself why both Sanders and DJT were attacked so vociferously and on such a base level? Was it really because DJT is a crude idiot and Sanders a ‘communist’?
How about this…Did you support an overprivileged drunk whose father was literally among the handful of the most powerful military figures in the world because the drunken son was ‘reasonable’? Do you support the billionaire son of a Governor and corporate CEO (and himself a corpoarate CEO and former Governor) because he’s a ‘moderate’ and we need ‘come together’? [The always unanswered but implied question is of course ‘come together’ for whom, certainly not the IT guy or HC professional…]
I don’t know about you but my father was none of the Commander of the Pacific Fleet during a war, nor was he Governor of a State, nor is he CEO of a major listed manufacturing company [but he was a hourly line machinist for one].
These people do not represent me. Or my values. Do they represent you?
Sorry for the screed. But it matters. Unless one wants to remain a Pavlovian lever pulling blind monkey every two years….
“Depending on their size, most new developments in NJ are required to have storm water retention basins. Can anyone point to a link with this info?”
No link but call your local engineer…last SFH build I did – 5/6 years ago – required an entirely separate runoff study and everything had to be routed into a basin. Ground was so nice it literally took them several tries to even get a perc, the ground just sucked up everything that was thrown in there. Regardless, 100 year storm, yada yada, had to drop not one but two concrete cans in the yard. 1/2 acre, 4BR/BA….
Got rid of my last property earlier this year…that jurisdiction for a SFH is requiring an above the ground type detention basin like seen in condo developments….5 acres, Highlands….
That last one cost me about 100k off sale price…
We fought our way out of having to put in a drywell 10 years ago when we did our renos.
I would have gladly done it, we had excavators on site, we dug out the whole foundation, what’s another big hole at that point?
But, given the massive muck pit of clay, it didn’t stand a chance at being able to perc. What’s the sense of going through the motions to install a drywell, only to have it continually overflow into the storm sewer anyway?
Again, if it had any chance of working, I’d have no problems doing it.
NFLX after hours…..boo fucking yah…..OUT.
They owe 100% of that to the Master of Puppets guitar solo in Stranger Things, which was absolutely god damned epic. Anyone who has ever rolled a d20 is a subscriber for life now.
But, but Hunter’s laptop..China connections..bad Brandon stuff..
Two New York state residents have been charged with illegally using funds from Chinese and Singaporean investors to donate $US600,000 to then-president Donald Trump’s re-election campaign in 2017, US prosecutors say.
The scheme was part of an effort by Sherry Li and Lianbo Wang to showcase political connections as they sought funds to build a China-themed park in upstate New York, prosecutors said, adding that they raised $US27 million ($39.56 million) in investment, but never completed the project.
Epic season!!
grim says:
July 19, 2022 at 5:18 pm
They owe 100% of that to the Master of Puppets guitar solo in Stranger Things, which was absolutely god damned epic. Anyone who has ever rolled a d20 is a subscriber for life now.
I was actually playing D&D from middle school through high school in the 80s. I had all the various dice, from d4 through d20. I think I even had a huge d100 for fun.
Gave me some insight into probabilities and randomness, and some practice in quasi-public speaking.
Foreign Buyers Return to US Housing Market After Three-Year Drought
After three straight years of declining sales, buyers from other countries purchased $59 billion worth of US homes
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-18/foreign-buyers-return-to-us-housing-market-after-three-years
10:04 yes, metal was mine and my friends preferred jam during 1979-84.
When you hit SoCal bring a swimsuit. Leo Carrillo & Zuma Beach is right down the road from Neptunes Nest …. It’s a world class sandbox!
Imagine if these guys were in the market…that’s how much demand is out there.
“In hindsight, it was a good thing that international buyers were absent in the past two years when the housing market boomed,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist. “The extra competition would have led to even greater difficulty in buying for prospective US homebuyers.”
And they are coming in and paying cash for half the purchases taking advantage of the Fed induced drop.
“Among foreign buyers, 44% paid cash, compared to 24% among all purchases.”
“The last time unemployment was this low was immediately before the pandemic.
Before that?
The dawn of the last inflation shock, that saw three recessions and lots of economic volatility over the ensuing decade (including inflation “peaking” 3 times)”
Again, at the risk of sounding condescending which is entirely what I do not intend…virgin eyes.
Disagree, my point is that this is now endemic. In my 25 years or so in outsourcing, I had the opportunity to work with some really talented client side leadership. Maybe I’ve fully converted to cynicism now, but damn if I’d like up behind any of the current crop of “leaders”. Or maybe I’m just so good now, that they should all be learning from me?
Fully agree though, clearly figureheads, clearly chosen to deliver on agendas far outside the missions of the company. Maybe that’s all on purpose? Give them something to do so they aren’t poking their noses in work they don’t understand.
Left: Booya
Funny story about clay soil. When my pipe burst in my front yard, we didn’t realize for months. It was separated 4 inches below because a slowly sinking 50 lb rock dislodged it. But the water tunneled through the clay and kept a path for the water. We never lost water pressure despite the pipe being fully disconnected.