Commercial Real Estate Blog

A conspiracy is nothing but a secret agreement of a number of men for the pursuance of policies which they dare not admit in public.” - Mark Twain

Normally I don’t get to engrossed in conspiracy theories and the such, but what is happening with oil and the financials and the dollar is becoming so gross that it is difficult to ignore. We talk about here the impact, whether directly or indirectly, all these forces have on the commercial real estate market and the general situation we find ourselves in today, but I felt compelled to write a post about what I believe is happening with the economy, financials, and the bailout underway at the hands of the populace.

First, a graph showing the Dow Jones Financial Services Index vs an ETF tracking the price of crude oil since the credit freeze began in earnest last summer (click for full-size).

I am of the camp that is fascinated by Wall Street. The ability with which Wall Street has managed to screw up, only to find a creative solution to the problem has been one which amazes me. They’ve managed to do this time and time again. This time, it goes without saying, they’ve managed to dig a giant hole. One where losses are into the hundreds of billions, with some estimates pegging total losses to be at over a TRILLION dollars when this is all said and done. That’s a lot of cheddar.

It seems Wall Street has again found a cure. Over the past few years, we’ve started to hear the term Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWF). These are funds which are state-owned investing in assets, projects, and securities worldwide. Over the past year, since the credit meltdown hit Wall Street, SWF have been running around Wall Street investing in everything from Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, and real estate as well to the tune of billions and billions of dollars.

The SWF of Kuwait, UAE, and Saudi Arabia seem to me to be working in concert with the investment banks to bail them out. The same investment banks who are blaimed for “speculating” the oil price to where it is right now are benefitting from huge cash infusions from the very same SWF benefitting from high oil prices.

Thus it is easy to see that Wall Street has once again managed to find a cure by getting the public to bail them out at the gas pump. The investment banks drive the price of crude up (and thus gas prices). The money flows into the oil producing countries and their sovereign wealth funds, which in turn reinvest the premium the investment banks created for them back into our financial institutions, with all of this financed by the public without having to mess with a tax increase or a congressional bailout replete with lobbying, hearings, public scrutiny or outcry. Absolutely Genius.

Kuwait’s Al Hamra Tower is the world’s first (and tallest) “Sculputred” Skyscraper. It will soar about 412M (1350 Feet) up to make it Kuwait’s tallest tower. The project was designed by Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, and is being constructed by Turner Construction. The building encompasses 77 stories at a cost of roughly $400M to build and is estimated to be delivered Q1 of 2010.

Most skyscrapers are built symmetrically, that is everything is equidistant off the core, but the Al Hamra project, as can be seen from the picture actually has two walls which vary in distance off the core .