This number is the only official account of the WeChat public account "Shi Kelang", the author of this article: Uncle S.
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During this time, many friends asked a lot of questions in the background, including the collapse of Republic First Bank, commercial real estate in the United States, and more about the future of the world economy.
What is the feeling?
It's just that everyone is quite confused.,Today, on May Day.,I'll write a longer article.,To take care of the things in between.,To sort it out a little.,This not only requires strong thinking ability.,It may also burn the brain a little CPU.。
Let's start with three things.
The first thing happened on April 27, local time in the United States, let's count it as April 28, the Bank of America exploded again, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation took over Republic First Bank.
Here's a quick introduction to this company: it is headquartered in Philadelphia, with total assets of $6 billion and total deposits of $4 billion.
Here's a reminder: The First Republic Bank here is not the First Republic Bank, the two names are quite similar, but they are not the same bank, the latter one, which collapsed in March last year, is much larger than the First Republic Bank that collapsed this time.
The second thing was a little earlier, and it was in the news in March 2024, when the New York Community Bank also had problems, but they received a $1 billion injection.
It's been several months, and it's been a critical illness, but I haven't swallowed that breath.
It's still standing upright, holding on.
The third news came out in November 2023, when Son's WeWork, a subsidiary of SoftBank, became known as the world's first co-working company, but it went out of business.
In hindsight, Son lost almost $12 to $3 billion.
In addition to this incident, Son's reputation suffered a lot.
Because he invested in Ali before and made a lot of money!
Everyone thinks he's a man of God!
It's a bit like stock trading, every time there is a big bull market, there will always be a few stock gods, and then as the bull market collapses, the stock gods are also extinguished.
These three things seem to have nothing to do with each other, but if we look carefully and dig into them, we will find that behind them, there is actually something in common.
Starting with First Republic, it was actually a small regional bank with only 32 branches, and after being taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, it was entrusted to another bank, called Fulton Bank, and then reopened, in the middle of which the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation lost $667 million.
But the question arises: why did such a small bank fail?
The reason is that the commercial real estate in the United States is sluggish, and it has taken out too many loans before, and as a result, it is difficult to collect the loans, and there are many bad debts.
Looking at the New York Community Bank, why has there been news that it is going to collapse recently?
It was actually dragged down by Signature Bank, which took over when it collapsed in March last year. Now many of our financial bloggers are still saying on the Internet that Signature Bank is engaged in cryptocurrency, and it is too fierce to make trouble, but in fact, this is wrong, it is also engaged in commercial real estate, so it caused trouble.
As a result, after the New York Community Bank took over it, it did not solve the problem properly and was dragged into the water again.
Finally, Masayoshi Son's WeWork, which is simply a commercial real estate company, to put it nicely, is to rent offices around the world, and then sublease them to small start-ups, to put it mildly, it is to do the work of a second landlord.
Speaking of which, we can peel off the second layer of onion: because many financial bloggers have talked about the collapse of American banks and the collapse of American companies since March last year, usually with a sentence that the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates, and then a sentence is so gently and cleverly covered.
But why are these institutions actually bankrupt because of commercial real estate?
If you look at the direct cause, it is in the past 10 years, because of low interest rates, too much water release, coupled with the leverage effect, the United States and many investors from all over the world, have poured into office buildings and other commercial buildings, from Los Angeles to New York, as long as there is no decent city in the United States, not a single one, not like this.
As a result, in 2020, catching up with the epidemic, because of working from home, there is no longer such an office building, and the office building is the largest in commercial real estate, so there has been a big decline.
By the end of 2023, the situation is already very serious, one-fifth of the office buildings in the United States have been vacant, and even cities like Los Angeles and Houston, which are also claimed to be emerging cities in the United States in recent years, have a vacancy rate of more than 20%.
Then, this is the Federal Reserve began to raise interest rates, and this rate hike led to a collapse in US commercial real estate. Morgan Stanley has such a statistic: since the Federal Reserve raised interest rates in March 2022, U.S. commercial real estate has fallen by at least 11%, the worst plunge in half a century, and if you count the previous ones, prices have fallen even more sharply, more than 20%.
Of course, this is only the average, and there is a place where the price has fallen sharply, and there are not many halves.
Then on November 6, 2023 local time in the United States, the thing that made Son's face swollen to death came: Wework ran and filed for bankruptcy in federal court in New Jersey, and the numbers that came out made everyone startled!
This company, with a total debt of $18.65 billion!
Total assets of $15.06 billion!
$3.6 billion insolvent!
Not counting the more than $10 billion that Son invested before!
At this point, Son Masayoshi invested in Alibaba before, and the aura of the god of the investment world, as well as his reputation, collapsed in an instant.
There are also a bunch of people, especially the old employees before SoftBank, who jumped out and frantically slapped Masayoshi Son in the face!
They said: Masayoshi Son has always been based on a principle in doing things, instead of making all kinds of complex assessments, it is better to rely on intuition, look for potential companies, and then invest with your eyes closed!
What does that mean?
That is to say, this guy actually has no ability, but he is lucky!
Blind hits the fat that has been super big!
This mouse is Alibaba!
At this point, we can peel off the third layer of onions: is Son really like his old employees say, just a super blind cat, after hitting a big piece of fat, he triumphantly shows off everywhere?
In fact, this statement may be a bit biased.
Let's start with the company Wowork, which has a huge network all over the world. It has more than 850 stores in more than 150 cities around the world, and has more than 1 million office spaces rented, which means that it can accommodate millions of people!
But startups are always in and out!
So 2 million to 3 million people!
What was Son like when he invested in WeWork?
At that time, the world had low interest rates, and we once targeted Europe, and there was a kind of RMB treasury bond with only negative interest rates, which was actually snapped up at that time!
To put it simply, the whole world at that time was like the Pearl River Delta that had a rainstorm some time ago!
There is water everywhere on the ground!
Who will cherish water at this time?
Therefore, venture capital is everywhere, looking for investment targets everywhere, and the standards are loose.
At that time, we were also here, I have a friend, some time ago I watched the number "Uncle S said", and said very regretfully: You are too late, I sold an account in 2017, and the average reading volume was only more than 30,000, and the price offered at that time was 13 million, and now you can only be used as a dedication to love.
At that time, the United States was like this!
Why did he say that?
Let's look at the U.S. figures, and it will be clear: the total amount of venture capital raised in the United States in 2023 will be $57 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 67%! The year before, that is, in 2022, the United States was still in the midst of the epidemic!
There is an even scarier number, the amount of funding for global startups in 2023, compared to 2022, will drop by 58%, and the total will only be $1.7 billion!
With such a little money, the United States is still the global champion, a drop of 68%!
How so?
We used to say that the United States is a country, at least people are good at innovation, and there is always an endless stream of scientific and technological innovation, but judging from this number, I am afraid that this is not the case, and the United States has become a country that is not good at innovation in the world!
What about the old tech companies that existed before?
There are also constant layoffs.
Forbes had a statistic last year that said that Silicon Valley in the United States laid off 300,000 employees!
As a result, the financial resources of American technology companies in 2023 have not ended, and layoffs will begin again in 2024: like some time ago, Tesla announced a global layoff of 10%, and many college students have signed contracts and will be laid off before they are hired.
But it is said that Musk is not satisfied and is ready to lay off 20% of his workforce.
Other companies that are rumored to be laying off employees are also a bunch of them:
Apple;
UPS；
Microsoft;
And financial institutions, like Citibank.
There are no start-ups, old companies are still laying off employees, and Son's WeWork is not bankrupt, which is strange, in the same way, the First Republic Bank does not explode, and the New York Community Bank has a sound of going bankrupt from time to time, so it is strange!
So why is that?
At this point, we have to peel off the fourth layer of onions, starting with an incident raised by someone in 1990.
This year, Robin Hansen, an assistant professor at George Mason University in the United States, put forward a theory called "Big Filter Theory", which roughly means that in the development process of intelligent civilization, there will be some development links, which may be seriously underestimated, and many civilizations may be stuck in a certain link, and stand still for a long time or even forever.
In recent years, if you think about it, you will find a lot of strange things: 55 years have passed since 1969, but if we look at all the dazzling concepts, we will find that we are still stuck in the same position as 1969.
During this time, the Americans, especially their NASA administrator Nelson, were noisily shouting, and the United States was arguing and shouting in the 1960s, in fact, there was no difference, the meaning is: in terms of the moon landing, if we don't work hard, we will be surpassed by China!
Even Nelson said something like this: the victory in the race to the moon will once again verify the strength of the United States!
Many people around the world even wondered whether the Americans had ever landed on the moon back then!
Fortunately, we have a large belly, and we have proved many times that the Americans did indeed successfully land on the moon that year!
In addition, the new scientific and technological revolution is basically led by energy, like the first industrial revolution, which is to replace human and animal power with steam power; The second industrial revolution was the internal combustion engine; The third industrial revolution is nuclear power.
But now that we are talking about the fourth industrial revolution every day, where is the energy breakthrough?
Mankind is still only 50 years away from controlled nuclear fusion.
The weapons of war in the world have long been stopped, and all that remains is to beautify and decorate on the original basis, or tinker, like the recent Russian-Ukrainian war, the weapons used by everyone are still from the Cold War.
Originally, it was a weapon that was prepared to fight the Cold War, but decades later, they still faced the original opponent and fought "ping pong", and in the end, they did not waste anything at all, and strangely completed their historical mission.
The reason why we generally lack this feeling is because we have been making up lessons for more than 70 years, starting from the first industrial revolution and making up for it until now, condensing the nearly 300-year-old industrial revolution into the city to more than 70 years, of course, we will feel that the changes in this world are too big, and the world is moving forward rapidly.
But what about other countries, especially those in Europe and the United States?
The feeling is that the world has long since come to a standstill!
Finally, let me say a word about my feelings: now we are actually standing at the crossroads of human development again, the future is a blur, we don't know how the future will develop, we don't know how long this stagnation will be, and we don't know what we will usher in with this stagnation.
For so many years, human beings have never felt so lost and helpless as they do now, and of course the most hopeful thing is: suddenly one day, the train whistle will sound again, and we will be on a fast journey again.
But who can guarantee that?