Encouraging the creation of new housing is the way to go. One thought— what percentage of new home purchases are made by large investors and is it growing? This seems like the most important metric to look at rather than existing ownership.
This is a good point. The major issue I see is the BBC is funded by taxpayers through government-mandated contributions, whereas Fox News is a private company.
The last bullet is a good idea but wouldn’t work in practice. Otherwise a company could hire someone else’s H1B worker for $10k more per year and avoid the $100k fee.
Maybe a company that hires someone else's H1B worker for $10k more per year in the first year has to pay the $100k fee and the first company gets their fee back.
I agree with you, but one point I see everyone missing is the fact that this is a first-time installation of a new technology that hasn’t scaled. There needs to be a business plan of course. At the same time, no one would expect to see ROI figures for the first build of a concept car.
That's because concept cars aren't investments. This project is an investment. Investors invest in investments to get a return on their investment (ROI). Car buyers, other than car dealers and outfits like Budget Rent-A-Car, do not buy cars to get ROI. Advertising an investment without publishing any projected ROI figures (the business plan you mention) is like advertising a concept car without publishing any photos, video, or drawings.
I like to think I’m somewhat intelligent, but there’s something I don’t understand here. The article cites an example of pandemic bond holders receiving a return of 40% over 3 years and these bonds being a useful way for the issuer to secure needed funds in the event of a pandemic. Unless a pandemic happens every ~8 years, isn’t this a ridiculous and unsustainable risk premium to pay?
The class B bonds paid roughly 11% over LIBOR, so about 40% over three years, against the risk of a viral outbreak for five different families, defined as At least two countries experiencing at least 250 fatal cases increasing over twelve weeks, so the trigger did not have to be as globally-significant as COVID-19 turned out to be. That’s a pretty aggressive coupon, but the chance of a regional outbreak was also pretty high.
Based on that description it would have been triggered by COVID-19, swine flu in 2009, and I think just missed out (depending on the fine print) on SARS in 2002. That's two or three in 18 years, so losing your money once every eight years is not far off the recent performance of this kind of bond.
reply