Tag Archives: coronavirus

SALES OF $100 CHOCOLATE BARS ARE COLLAPSING.

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Due to the Covid epidemic, sales of very expensive chocolate bars have fallen off the cliff. Chocolate bars that sell for $100 or more are mostly sold in places that are now closed, places like luxury resorts, cruise ships, and duty-free shops. However, you can still buy most of these products online. Here’s where you can buy a To’ak Art Series chocolate bar. To’ak Chocolate. It’s $450. That seems like a lot of money (at least to me) for one chocolate bar, however, their packaging is much, much nicer than mine. Gift wrapping is extra. I don’t provide free gift wrapping, but if you are willing to pay me $450 for one of my chocolate bars, I will gift wrap it for free. To’ak Art Series Chocolate Bar.

SUR LA TABLE DECLARES BANKRUPTCY.
Sur La Table will be closing 50 of their 120 stores due to their recent bankruptcy filing. Like a lot of other chain stores that have recently declared bankruptcy, Sur La Table had a lot of junk debt. This is something that I predicted in my April newsletter. I expect that many more companies with heavy junk bond debt will be doing the same. I hope Sur La Table won’t close their Berkeley store. I like to browse around there, but I rarely buy anything there. They sell Fran’s sea salt chocolate covered caramels, an excellent product and Barack Obama’s favorite candy, but they cost $100 a pound. Sur La Table is the place to go in Berkeley if you want to buy a $500 kitchen knife or a $5,000 home coffee maker. Coffee Maker. I am not sure who buys this stuff. Although Berkeley is a college town, I don’t often see people of college age at Sur La Table, but then, how many college students buy $500 kitchen knives and $5,000 coffee makers?

WHAT WILL LIFE BE LIKE IN THE BAY AREA AFTER COVID19?

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We all know that the driving force in the economy of the San Francisco bay area is the high-tech industry. The COVID19 epidemic has made big changes in the way that people in the high-tech industry live and work, and some of those changes will be permanent. Most high-tech workers in this area are now working at home, and many of them will never return to working at an office. Some San Francisco tech giants, including Twitter and Square, have told most of their employees that they can now work from home permanently.

HOUSING. The fact that high-tech company employees are now working at home explains why rents in some bay area cities are falling but not others. The average rent for a 1-bedroom apartment in San Francisco has fallen 9% since May, 2019. In Mountain View, average rent fell 16% and in Cupertino 14%. However, in Oakland, rents rose 5%, and rents in Berkeley are holding up too. In other words, rent is falling in cities where big tech companies are headquartered. Now that high tech employees are working from home, and many permanently, they can move to nearby cities where the rent is cheaper. The average 1-bedroom apartment in San Francisco currently rents for $3,400 a month. See: Rent Jungle. However, the average 1-bedroom apartment in Oakland is $2,500 a month. A person working at the Salesforce Tower may have been willing to pay $4,000 a month for an apartment nearby for the convenience of being able to walk to work, but what about now? For a recent college graduate in a high tax bracket and with student loans to pay off, being able to save over $1,000 a month on rent by moving to the east bay is a no-brainer. No one knows when this epidemic will be over, and when it is over and tech companies have reopened their offices, how many people who are now working at home will go back to commuting to the office 5 days a week just like before? Some tech people working at home may feel that they can now move far away from the bay area to places where rent is really cheap, places like Lubbock, Texas; where you can rent a modern 1-bedroom apartment that’s walking distance from Texas Tech for $500 a month. Of course, a lot of high-tech people currently working at home will still need to live near Silicon Valley when this is over so that they can attend meetings and conferences. Plus, there are a lot of people who work at home 4 days a week but who have to go to the office 1 day a week. I know people like that. Besides, how many people would really want to move from Palo Alto to Lubbock?

OFFICE SPACE. If working from home becomes the new normal for the high-tech industry, what will happen to companies that rent office buildings in Silicon Valley and downtown San Francisco? What will happen to companies like We Work? And what will happen to the businesses near high-tech company headquarters that depend on income from the people who work there – or used to work there – places like spiffy bars and restaurants in San Francisco’s financial district?

A FEW GOOD PROJECTS.

If you are looking for things to do because you are spending more time at home now because of the virus, here are some good projects.

1. Emergency water. During the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, all the water mains in the city burst. Some people in San Francisco didn’t have potable water for months. What would you do if that happened today? Everyone who lives in earthquake country should have an emergency supply of water. Gallon jugs of water are very cheap. You can also just clean out empty plastic milk and juice jugs and fill them with water. Store water jugs in a basement or bike shed or garage just in case they leak.

2. Dump expired food & meds. What’s in the back of your refrigerator? When was the last time you went through your refrigerator and kitchen cabinets and dumped expired food or food that has gone bad? There are a lot of foods that people never check the expiration dates on because they think they are edible forever, products like ketchup, mustard, hot sauce, etc., but that isn’t true. All food goes bad with time. You should also go through your medicine cabinet and replace expired meds.

3. Clean out your closets. When was the last time you went through your closets and got rid of the stuff that you have no possible use for? I am constantly amazed at the stuff that people store in their closets. I once had a tenant who called me over because the light bulb in his living room closet wasn’t working. I couldn’t get to the light fixture because the closet was full of used paper shopping bags. I told the tenant that I would return to fix the light after he removed the bags from the closet. When I returned, there were piles of shopping bags all over the living room. It turned out that the problem was just a burned-out light bulb. I know several other people like this, people who never throw out shopping bags, no matter how many they already have. Some people will not throw out empty boxes either. I know someone with a basement filled to the ceiling with empty boxes.

4. Start a Goodwill box. Start putting things that you have no use for in a giveaway box so that everything is in one place. Ask yourself if the things in this box are actually salable or just junk. People leave junk at thrift stores at night that should go in their garbage can instead. Thrift stores have no use for cracked dishes, broken appliances, or old mattresses. It is illegal in California for stores to sell used mattresses. On the other hand, thrift stores may actually want your old shopping bags.

WHY YOUR GRASS IS NOT GETTING MOWED.

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I know that your grass needs mowing, but I have told my gardener not to come here. I want you to know that I am not doing this from neglect. Because of the COVID-19 epidemic, it is now illegal in Alameda County (and most of the rest of California) to hire somebody to mow your grass or do gardening work unless it is to “prevent a dangerous condition such as fire prevention or tree trimming and not for cosmetic or other purposes, such as upkeep.” (Alameda County Health Officer Order, Section 13. Definitions, ‘f’ Essential Businesses, ‘xiii’ Arborists, landscapers, gardeners.) I don’t understand why the health department isn’t allowing gardeners to mow people’s grass. ​​If a gardener is working alone and no one else is in the yard, where is the risk? ​Besides, the​ grass at Berkeley city parks and school playgrounds is getting mowed. ​I don’t see the logic of this, but nevertheless, it​ is​ the law.

CORONAVIRUS.

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MY CHOCOLATE ROOM.

The bad news is that my free chocolate room is closed due to coronavirus. The good news is that you can still get anything you want from my chocolate room! Here is the new rule. Go to: Chocolate List. There you will find a complete list of everything I have in stock. Send me an email with your shopping list. I will put what you want in a bag and leave it on my porch with your name on it where you can pick it up. (I am sorry if this sounds overly dramatic on part, but it the safest way to do this.)


HOW SIMILAR IS CORONAVIRUS TO THE SPANISH FLU?

You see comparisons everywhere between Covid-19 and the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918, but how similar were they? In 1918, people did many of the same things they are doing now: wearing face masks, stockpiling food, and avoiding crowded places. While the fear between the 2 epidemics is similar, the diseases are very different. The Spanish Flu was the deadliest epidemic in human history. It killed over 50 million people worldwide, far more than were killed in World War 1, which ended that same year. 500,000 people died in the United States alone. The most obvious difference between the Spanish Flu and Covid-19 was who was at risk. Most of the people who died of the Spanish Flu were in their teens, 20s, and 30s. Very few people over the age of 60 got the Spanish Flu, and people over 70 were at the lowest risk of getting or dying of it. That is just the opposite of Covid-19. No one knows why so few old people got the Spanish Flu. Below is a photo of soldiers at Fort Riley, Kansas stricken with the Spanish Flu. World War 1 soldiers had a very high death rate, and most of them were under the age of 25.

GOOD NEWS!

The good news is that medical science is in a much better position to control an epidemic today than it was in 1918. In 1918, doctors knew that viruses existed, but no one had ever seen one. Viruses are very small, and they could not be seen with the microscopes available in those days. Today, viruses can be seen with electron microscopes. Scientists in 1918 could not identify the genetic materials that a virus is made from. Now they can. And perhaps most importantly, they had no way to test people in 1918 to see if they were infected, so they could not quarantine people who were infected with the Spanish Flu but didn’t yet show symptoms of the disease. Now, doctors can do these things and a lot more. Because there was so little that doctors could do about the Spanish Flu, people resorted to folk remedies. People ate huge quantities of garlic and onions in the belief that it would ward off the disease. Grocery stores ran out of garlic and onions. Hundreds of worthless cures were sold, including arsenic tablets and beaver oil. They were all useless, and many were toxic.

Junk Bond Debt, The Coronavirus Threat That Nobody Is Talking About.

In 2008, the stock market crashed, and major banks were on the verge of collapse. In order to save the nation’s financial system, the Federal Reserve reduced the interest rate that banks and big corporations pay to zero. Ever since then, interest rates have remained very, very low by historic standards. Because the Fed was lending money at almost zero percent interest, a lot of big companies piled on debt, and much of it is junk bond debt. (These bonds are called ‘junk bonds’ for a reason.) American companies now have a whopping $10 trillion of debt, and half of it is junk bond debt. Some of the companies that have the most junk bond debt as a percent of their total capitalization are in businesses that are among the most adversely affected by Covid-19; airlines, cruise ships, oil companies, hotels, and entertainment companies. How will these companies pay their junk bond debt? Their income has fallen off the cliff. I seem to be the only person who is talking about this. Very little is being said in the news about the junk bond problem.

THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR TOILET PAPER.

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Paper towels, Kleenex, and flushable wipes are not substitutes for toilet paper. Toilet paper is designed to dissolve in water. Paper towels, Kleenex, and wipes hold together when they get wet. If you flush these products, in little time, you could find it impossible to flush your toilet. Getting a plumber to fix that could become difficult – and expensive. Despite their name, ‘flushable wipes’ are not flushable. I have written about this subject periodically in my tenant newsletter over the years. Flushable wipes cause an enormous amount of damage every year to people’s plumbing and to city sewage treatment plants. Flushable wipes and paper towels combine with kitchen grease (something else you shouldn’t flush) in sewer pipes to create ‘fatbergs.’ Some fatbergs weigh tons and can only be removed by tearing up a street. One especially large fatberg in a sewer line in London was bigger than a city double-decker bus. There’s a picture below of a fatberg that weighed over a ton. As you probably know, some people are buying huge quantities of toilet paper right now, but toilet paper is not sold out everywhere, and the price of it is not going up. I saw people at Costco with huge quantities of toilet paper in their carts – and nothing else. If these people were afraid that necessities were going to become unavailable, and they were thinking rationally, they would have bought food too, not just toilet paper. However, that’s the nature of panic buying. It’s never rational.


WHY ARE PEOPLE HOARDING TOILET PAPER?

As soon as this epidemic began, stories began circulating on social media web sites claiming that most of the toilet paper used in the U.S. is imported from China and that because China shut down its factories, the U.S. would soon be running out of toilet paper. Through Facebook and Twitter, these stories were repeated countless times. This led to the panic buying of toilet paper that we see today. However, the United States does not import toilet paper from China. Over 90% of the toilet paper sold in the United States is made in the United States. The rest comes from Canada and Mexico. The United States is net exporter of toilet paper, and we export a lot of it. The United States is the 3rd largest exporter of toilet paper in the world. This panic buying of toilet paper is not China’s fault. Take a look at the toilet paper in your home. You will probably never see a package of toilet paper in your life that says: “Made in China” on it.