March 2, 2016

It Gets Ugly in the Startup Bust

It Gets Ugly in the Startup Bust
by Wolf Richter • March 1, 2016


[font color="blue"]Debris from the collapse hits investors left and right.[/font]

Some startups succeed beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. This is the lure used to get investors from around the world to pour money into VC funds and mutual funds that invest in these miracles at ever higher “valuations” before they become miracles, before they have profits, or even revenues. The idea is to get in on the ground floor of a miracle. No price is too high. But now the miracles are deflating, reality is resurfacing, and a brutal drawn-out process has set in.

Yahoo investors are now coming to grips with this, because it’s their money that went down the drain when it bought Tumblr for $1.1 billion in 2013. At the time it recognized $750 million of that investment as “goodwill,” an intangible asset on which Yahoo blew tangible money. In January, it disclosed that it wrote down that investment by $230 million. And on Monday, it disclosed in its annual 10-K filing that it might write off “some portion or all” of the remaining goodwill.

But Tumblr is still out there, people are still using it, and revenues are creeping up. It’s just that after all these boom years when everything soared, the rout back to reality has set in, and its valuation is now being viewed with a more realistic eye, even at Yahoo.

Numerous startups have recently raised desperately needed new money at much lower valuations, including fitness-tracker maker Jawbone, whose valuation plunged 55% in that “down round,” and Foursquare, whose valuation was cut by 62%. ...........(more)

http://wolfstreet.com/2016/03/01/gets-ugly-startup-bust-investors-hit-mutual-fund-write-downs/

March 1, 2016

Marjorie Cohn: Occupy Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street Speeches

Occupy Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street Speeches

Posted on Feb 29, 2016
By Marjorie Cohn


Hillary Clinton refuses to make public the transcripts of her speeches to big banks, three of which were worth a total of $675,000 to Goldman Sachs. She says she would release the transcripts “if everybody does it, and that includes Republicans.” After all, she complained, “Why is there one standard for me, and not for everybody else?”

As the New York Times editorial board pointed out, “The only different standard here is the one Mrs. Clinton set for herself, by personally earning $11 million in 2014 and the first quarter of 2015 for 51 speeches to banks and other groups and industries.”

Hillary is not running in the primaries against Republicans, who, the Times noted, “make no bones about their commitment to Wall Street deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.”

She is running against Bernie Sanders, “a decades-long critic of Wall Street excess who is hardly a hot ticket on the industry speaking circuit,” according to the Times.

Why do voters need to know what Hillary told the banks? Because it was Wall Street that was responsible for the 2008 recession, making life worse for most Americans. We need to know what, if anything, she promised these behemoths. .............(more)

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/occupy_hillary_clintons_wall_street_speeches_20160229

March 1, 2016

DC Streetcar begins operations, no Sunday service

http://www.masstransitmag.com/press_release/12175627/dc-streetcar-began-passenger-service-on-saturday-february-27


After more than a decade of planning, construction and testing, Mayor Muriel Bowser and District Department of Transportation (DDOT) Director Leif A. Dormsjo announced that the DC Streetcar will open for full passenger service on Saturday, Feb. 27 at 10 am, following a brief ceremony.

“I’m proud to announce that Streetcar is ready for passenger service,” said Mayor Muriel Bowser. “I want to thank the residents of the H Street and Benning Road communities for their patience during the construction and testing of the system. As a way of saying ‘thank you,’ fares will be free on the system for an initial period of time.”

The opening ceremony took place at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, February 27 on 13th Street, NE between H Street, NE and Wylie Street, NE (intersection of 13th/H). Members of the public were invited to attend the ceremony.

The DC Streetcar standard hours of operation will be:

Monday-Thursday: 6 am – 12 am
Friday: 6 am – 2 am
Saturday: 8 am – 2 am
Holidays: 8 am – 10 pm

March 1, 2016

Miami’s Epic Condo Boom Turns into Glut

Miami’s Epic Condo Boom Turns into Glut
by Wolf Richter • February 29, 2016


[font color="blue"]Real estate agents see “looming” condo price correction.[/font]

Home prices overall are still rising in Miami and surrounding cities. The median price jumped 11.6% in January from a year ago, to $240,000. But according to real estate broker Redfin: unit sales plunged 11.9% from a year ago. The fourth month in a row of declines.

It wasn’t because the market was low on inventory: after an enormous and ongoing construction boom, 6,000 new listings hit the market in January, based on data on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). This pushed inventory up to the highest level recorded in “at least” two years.

This already high number of “new listings” may be under-reporting the true number with a sleight of hand: the number of new condos, according to Redfin, “is difficult to measure and may be much higher than what is recorded in industry data, because developers tend to list only a sample of available units on the MLS.”

And most of these units “come in the form of high-end beachfront condos.”

Given the decline in sales and the rise in inventory (however under-reported), the supply of all homes in the Miami metro area has jumped to 6.9 months, and “the balance of power has shifted into buyers’ favor.” ...........(more)

http://wolfstreet.com/2016/02/29/miamis-condo-construction-boom-turns-into-a-glut/

March 1, 2016

Democracy and Decentralization: UK Labour Leaders Reframe Socialism for the 21st Century

Democracy and Decentralization: UK Labour Leaders Reframe Socialism for the 21st Century

Thursday, 25 February 2016 00:00
By Gar Alperovitz and Joe Guinan, Truthout | Op-Ed


Bernie Sanders has made an unprecedented and extraordinary contribution to the US political landscape this election cycle. Whatever the outcome of the primaries, a whole generation has learned that talking about socialism, explicitly and proudly, is no longer as politically radioactive as once supposed. But can we not expect more from our economic populism than just knitting back together a frayed social safety net, kick-starting the engines of Keynesian demand with ecologically appropriate infrastructure and imposing some long overdue reforms on our largest financial institutions? Might the United States not be ready for a socialism that actually takes the question of "who owns the economy" seriously?

Though perhaps tactically understandable, given his own previous efforts, it's a little surprising that Sanders has not made ownership (and new forms of ownership) more of a theme in his campaign. "I don't believe the government should own the means of production," he emphasized in his major speech on democratic socialism in November 2015, even though elsewhere he has given vociferous support for expanding the scope of the US Postal Service into retail banking. Community development advocates are scratching their heads, wondering why Sanders' longtime support at the municipal and state level for transformative ownership strategies - employee ownership, community land trusts, cooperative low-income housing - haven't shown up on the stump. Hillary Clinton's tepid profit-sharing plan, where businesses could claim a tax credit for 15 percent of the amount of profit they share with their workers, and which grows out of Larry Summers' "inclusive capitalism" framework, at least opens the door to a (very) weak form of ownership.

A look at what's brewing on the other side of the Atlantic gives us some reason to dream a little bigger about what might be possible and also politically viable here, especially given the new direction socialist thought is taking all around the world.

Jeremy Corbyn's insurgent, grassroots-powered win that took the British Labour Party back from neoliberal centrists shares a lot with Sanders' presidential primary campaign. However, Corbyn has tackled the ownership question head-on, coming out strong for a modern approach to public ownership as a basic principle to defend and fight for: "After a generation of forced privatisation and outsourcing of public services, the evidence has built up that handing services over to private companies routinely delivers poorer quality, higher cost, worse terms and conditions for the workforce, less transparency and less say for the public." ..........(more)

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/34977-democracy-and-decentralization-uk-labour-leaders-reframe-socialism-for-the-21st-century