When a Billionaire Has Fallen and Can’t Get Up

I hate to point out a silver lining in the housing collapse that’s fucked over so many millions of Americans. But Goddamn it, this just Feeels Sooo Fuckin’ Gooood.

The biggest real estate deal in American history has collapsed. Now I don’t care if a few filthy rich people find a way to make even more money and get even richer. But this particular scam — even though it was perfectly legal — would have made billions of dollars at the expense of thousands of renters who had been playing by the rules, doing everything right, and almost had the rug pulled out from under them.

Sometimes lightning strikes the right person.

In 2006, an investment group led by New York City real estate firm Tishman Speyer Properties and BlackRock Realty Advisors purchased two huge Manhattan apartment complexes — Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village. And of course the $5.4 billion price included the lives of the 25,000 people in those two apartment complexes.

$5.4 billion for 25,000 people. Well, at least that’s more valuable than the “ten dollars a life!” from the “In Cold Blood” murders — mostly because of inflation, not because of any sort of ethics or morals on the part of these wannabe robber barons.

The Crooks Who Would Be King are almost certain to default on their $3 billion mortgage and the $1.4 billion secondary loan they bought the property with.

Their plans for converting thousands of apartments into luxury condos — to be sold at market value — are up in smoke. Awww.

A few would-be oligarchs have fallen and they can’t get up. And twenty-five thousand middle class renters can keep their lives. Works for me.

In other news: this headline is asking Are Humans Still Evolving?

Are?

You?

Fuckin’

Kidding???