Wealth and power
Dear Mr. Blum,
Thank you so much for your candid letter [Letters, July 15] in defense of your investment portfolio. How awful of the proletariat classes to put into question the nature of your blind but well-intentioned investments and cast a shadow of a doubt on your good-natured profit motive.
“That said, the comments made about Colony American Homes and other investors in single family homes for rent are totally false and inflammatory. The investments are removing distressed inventory from the market, which has been depressing home prices. Many of these homes being purchased were foreclosed years ago, and had become a blight on neighborhoods.”
Forgive us Mr. Blum for daring to cast a pall over the good name of CAH and the fine work which your “passive” investing makes possible for humanity. Please forgive us for not being thankful enough for what you and your admirable fellow capitalists do to help remove the blight from our neighborhoods! Thank goodness these investments in Colony American Homes (and other schemes like it) focus on helping the hard-working families who would otherwise have to contend with a housing market in which prices are “depressed.” Instead we have the immense good fortune, thanks to you and your oligarch friends, of not being able to afford rents or take out mortgages on the artificially pumped-up prices of the speculative Bay Area real estate market!
“Instead, the investors rebuild communities and provide jobs. And they allow families who cannot buy or prefer not to, to stay in the communities they want. The average renter stays for five years.”
God bless the virtuous Captains of Enterprise and High Priests of Wall Street who, through their benevolence and care for the commoners, invest in good causes—like securities and derivatives and real estate—which profit not only the tycoons and multi-millionaires but the whole community as well (though obviously not in the same proportions; roughly 99 percent to 1 percent, shall we say?).
I truly appreciate the kindness and thoughtfulness of people like Mr. Blum, who show such empathy and deep understanding of ordinary individuals’ and families’ plights.
“Finally, the homes being purchased by CAH and other investors are typically all-cash investments so they are not crowding out other buyers; most homes purchased are not even on the open market.”
Finally, Mr. Blum’s statement à la Robert Durst, that investors put up “all-cash investments,” ergo “other buyers—presumably meaning those of us who have to qualify for a bank mortgage—are not crowded out, is splendidly impressive reasoning. Moreover, Mr. Blum informs us that most of the homes CAH, and other corporately owned real estate investment and management firms like Blackstone/Invitation Homes and Waypoint Homes acquire, never even make it to the “open market.” Is there some black market we don’t know about where this is happening? Oh, yes, that would be the Insider’s Trading Market conveniently located next to the NYSE there on Wall Street.
So thank you Mr. Blum for your outspoken and guileless explanation of the situation. And, quite frankly, thanks for giving us “non-investors” an insider’s glimpse of how the oligarch thinks. For it is said in the billionaire’s investment bible somewhere that “Might makes Right,” while Laws 1 and 4 in the Ten Commandments of Wealth Building respectively state: “Thou shalt put thyself before all others” and “Thou shalt not question.”
People, please remember to be respectful of your superiors’ wealth and power.
—Ivan Besack, San Rafael (read the full letter on pacificsun.com)
What an obnoxious, self-adoring response. Hatred of people with money is not, actually, a virtue. It’s one form of the blind bigotry that you presumably think you yourself are rallying against.
The understanding of the current market conditions and society by this Mr. Blum well deserves the irony of the writer, since his position is so self centered and selfish that he just does not grasp what is going in the market and the impact that his behavior causes to the rest of us.
@Samantha Smart
Since when have “people with money” (which you cite as a category or class) needed to be defended? It is not money itself, but the love of money, which is at the core of all this evil. Is it bigotry (blind or not) to speak Truth to Power? How much longer are we to tolerate these “people with money” who think only of themselves and how to screw an extra dime out of you and me? Down with the power-possessing class! Down with the rich!