Like so many things these days, it’s much, much worse than anybody thought.
NEW YORK – A new report from the NYC Hospitality Alliance shows the extreme financial problems restaurants in New York City are facing, as 92% of the city’s restaurants could not afford to pay their rent in December.
92%?!? HO. LEE. KERRAP. Stick a fork in New York, New York, people, because it is DONE. Ain’t gonna be no reviving the City That Never Sleeps after this self-inflicted catastrophe; it ain’t just sleeping, it’s comatose.
The number has steadily worsened throughout the pandemic, from 80% of restaurants in June 2020 not being able to pay rent.
As every good NYC Leftard knows, the only way to recover from socialist tyranny is with more socialist tyranny. Yep, THAT ought to do it, you betcher. Then, when that fails—UNEXPECTEDLY!!™—you can flee the nest you fouled for greener, freer climes and immediately resume voting for the exact same stupid shit that doomed your previous home.
Idiots.
Cometh, the Mark-1 Mod-0 horsepuckey everybody seems to enjoy spewing nowadays:
“We’re nearly a year into the public health and economic crisis that has decimated New York City’s restaurants, bars, and nightlife venues,” said Andrew Rigie, executive director of the NYC Hospitality Alliance.
92% ain’t hardly “decimated,” bubba. The situation demands stronger words to describe it, something more along the lines of denuded, depopulated, or demolished. Less alliterative but more accurate, maybe—since this was done intentionally, as a ploy to ensure Trump got the bum’s rush—would be exterminated.
“While the reopening of highly regulated indoor dining is welcome news, we need to safely increase occupancy to 50% as soon as possible, and we urgently need robust and comprehensive financial relief from the federal government. We will continue to work with Senator and Majority Leader Schumer to ensure that the $25 billion restaurant industry recovery fund is passed as part of the Biden administration’s emergency relief plan, and advocate for the enactment of the RESTAURANTS Act to save as many local eating and drinking spots and jobs as possible.”
We don’t have a “health crisis,” and we never did. Your city’s economy was destroyed by two things: (1) the self-serving lies of power-hungry despots; and (2) your panicky willingness to not only put up with it, but cheer it on and beg for more; call it Sheepleism, to coin a new term. Mencken’s Prophecy is in full effect, and New Yorkers are getting exactly what they voted for—no more, no less.
Such a shame; NYC was unique and wonderful not all that long ago, and a hell of a lot of fun. Those days are over now, more’s the pity. Expect it to resemble a more dangerous and unpleasant version of Thunderdome before too very long, then collapse into a certain Kurt Russell classic after that.
(Via Bill)
Ah, New York city — always wanting to stick the rest of the country with the tab for their screw ups. New York city and state destroyed their own restaurant industry — let them pay to bail it out, if that is even still possible. As many (including me) warned when the lockdowns were imposed, you may be able to shut off the economy, but when you flip the switch back to the ‘on’ position it will not magically come back to life. Businesses are called ‘going concerns’ for a reason, and if the revenue stops flowing for very long they are dead. You might, maybe, be able to jolt them back to life with a large transfusion of cash but that is not guaranteed to work. And even if it does, you are really just starting a new operation in the same spot as the previous one. It is unlikely to be quite the same as it was before, since a lot of the people will have moved on to something else because they needed to earn a living. The experience and institutional knowledge is lost.
If the idiotic lockdowns had truly been “two weeks to flatten the curve” it would still have been difficult to restore everything to its previous status. At more than a year and still going, not a chance. It is going to be building anew atop the rubble of the past, not resuming after an interuption. I suspect it will take years for NYC’s much-boasted-about dining sector to recover. Same for Broadway, and concerts, and many other public gathering type venues.
On top of that, 92% of restaurants not paying rent now? And 80% not paying since June of last year? The landlords are TOAST. Which means all the people they owed money to have not been getting paid. Which means lots and lots of loans are going to default, if they have not already done so. Which means banks and pension funds and REITS and insurance companies are all taking it in the neck. Which means even MORE demands for bailouts from Uncle Sucker, because the big financials are “too big to fail” and own a lot of politicians. Stick another few trillion on the federal credit card! At this point, what does it matter? (As someone or other said….)
I used to read about the Great Depression and wonder how the leaders of that era could possibly have screwed up so badly. How could they not have realized that what they were doing was leading to disaster? I don’t wonder any more. Now I wonder how future generations will try to explain the mass insanity of COVID and this massive self-inflicted damage. If you think we have conspiracy theories today, I bet the attempts to explain it by people 100 years from now will make them look sensible and moderate.
I always understood the first “great depression” was a failure of leadership, and the coming one will be almost the same. The difference?
They did it on purpose. I hope they all starve to death.
Hoover and FDR and the Fed at the time did the exact opposite of what had always been done during Depression level credit crunches.
You let the bad businesses fail and lend to good ones but at high enough interest rates that you know those that make it truly were “viable”. You let prices and wages fall. You make sure you have hard money because bad money always chases out good money. For example, people hold on to gold and spend devalued currency.
But even these lessons are useless today. Never, ever in the history of the US did we force healthy businesses to shut down. This wasn’t a credit crunch. Interest rates were up but, at 2.5%, lower than most historical periods. For example the credit crunch of 1991 brought 3% Fed Funds and people gasped at how low that was. We were at 2.5% with a healthy economy.
Bottom line. There is no way to deal with this using conventional economics and finance knowledge because this has been self inflicted suicide that has no parallel in history to mine for nuggets of wisdom.
Gee, just like Fear-monger Fauci and our other so-called “experts” did the exact opposite of what had always been done for past epidemics?
Yeah, and it has worked about as well as the responses to the great depression did. Instead of quarantining the sick, protecting the vulnerable, and keeping the healthy working they quarantined the healthy, intentionally infected the vulnerable, put tens of millions out of work, and destroyed entire sectors of the economy. Genius!
As Barry said, they did it intentionally so they could grab power. The damage will be felt for decades, much like the great depression scarred an entire generation. And we are much, much weaker as a nation and a culture than late 1920s America was. I doubt we survive this intact. It is easy to argue that the death has already happened, even if the corpse is still twitching a bit.
Good point on the relationship with Fauci (spit).
Warming up any Haz?
We lost power last night after my last email reply to you, Barry. AFTER the storm was already long over. 🙂
OG&E finally got it back on about 2am. At which point, I said “fuck it” and went to bed.
Damn’ glad it went then, and not when it was -4 degrees a few days ago.
Ouch. You should never have mentioned a generator…
It has finally warmed up a bit, getting back to normal for this time of year. It is above freezing and forecast to stay that way for a week or so — VERY welcome news around here!
A lot of people are still having issues with power and water, but fewer. I think every plumber and electrician in the region has been working non-stop, and probably will be for some time yet. But things are improving.
Hope it continues to improve.
We’ve gone Through The Looking Glass, Darkly.
Oh, please. I’ve been to NYC. Those days were over decades ago.
Good riddance to it.
And now those filthy maggots are moving to Florida!!!
Shoot ’em at the border.
To misquote a Vox Dayism: “ALWAYS blow up the U-Hauls.” 🙂