Blackstone Craters After Trump Teases Institutional Ban On Single-Family Homes
The housing affordability crisis is a direct symptom of the money printer. Banning certain types of owners from the asset class is a bandaid over a bullet hole. As someone who has seen firsthand how institutional capital allocators utilize attorneys to navigate virtually any law in their way, I don’t expect this to have much effect. Nevermind the fact that the executive branch is not able to write laws, and that even if this was a law it would be wildly unconstitutional. The administration would be well served to ask themselves the deeper question: “why are institutional investors buying single family homes in the first place?”
A mysterious online gambler made $400,000 betting on the removal of Maduro
Prediction markets are an interesting new phenomenon and certainly have strong free market aspects. One interesting thing to consider is that for an outcome like Maduro’s capture, a savvy security team could have seen the swing in the odds in the prediction markets shortly before the operation was executed, and anticipated some sort of attack was imminent. For planned outcomes like a kidnapping, the incentive for any one of the kidnapping team members to bet on the outcome they are about to make come true is high. With the odds books being public information, that bet in favor of the outcome is a tip of what might be about to happen. Additionally, if someone wants to create a public “bounty” for a certain outcome, they can simple bet against that outcome with a large amount, pushing the odds down (and payout up) of the outcome they actually want to occur. Then, anyone who has actual impact on the potential outcome can bet the low odds side, then make that outcome come true and collect their winnings. An example would be something like betting a large amount against Trump pardoning Samourai Wallet developers Bill and Keonne, driving the odds of that happening way down, and the payout of that outcome way up. Then, Trump or anyone close enough to him to convince him to pardon them could easily take the low odds side of the bet, then make the outcome come true by issuing the pardon, and collect their winnings. It is an interesting new dynamic that I think we will see play out over the coming years.
The Venezuelan Drone Crisis
Last week was one of those weeks in history where decades happen. This article was written before Maduro’s capture, which makes it even more impressive of an analysis on the situation. The “drugs and oil” narrative is likely not the real story. Long read, but worth it.