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Recovery of New York office space as vacancy drops to 15% in Manhattan office buildings from the 8% before the pandemic in 2019's final quarter. The Park Avenue $60 story tower that has head offices of Chase Bank is one of the recovery spots. The return ot office attendance is back up to levels before the pandemic in 2019, slightly higher by 1.3%. A younger workforce is attracted to work in Manhattan with short commutes from the suburbs around it.  The Park Avenue Corridor near the Grand Central Terminal Building is  another one of the areas with easy commute into New York City from suburbs.

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New York city officials are facing up to the reality that midtown Manhattan, a party of the city that is made up of office commuters, may never be the same. Offices in midtown are attracting about one third of their pre-pandemic workforces. Midtown is home to about 11% of all office inventory in the US, employing 1.6 million workers, a third of all New York city jobs and contributed two thirds of the city's gross product. Before the pandemic three years ago, an estimated 2.6 million worked in the borough of Manhattan, 70% of whom commuted from other parts of the city or suburbs.

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The Manhattan business district of New York City has office occupancy rate of only 50%, leaving half the office space unused and vacant. Only 9% of Manhattan office employees are in the office 5 days a week, 37% 3 days a week, says this report in WSJ. The business district is far from recovery. New York Mayor Eric Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul have convened a group of civic leaders to draft a158 page report called- New New York Panel. The New York Panel suggests turning some of the business space into parks and promenades for pedestrians to make the city attractive and the space livable with green areas. A new director of public realm would report to the mayor. New York City has suffered much from the pandemic. The old midtown and the old city is no longer the kind of attractive livable green space that people want to live in or get to.

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Office buildings are being turned into apartments in large American cities like this one at 55 Broad Street in New York City. Hybrid work has made the huge office space of daily commuters obsolete. Subways and transport is also used at a fraction of its capacity. The remote working trend is sending vacancies soaring in office markets in the US and in the big cities. Businesses using hybrid work are leasing less space and migrating to newer buildings with modern designs, good locations, outdoorsy feeling, and abundant amenities.

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At one time Spotify's headquarters in World Trade Center 4 took up 16 floors of space. Today Spotify employees can work from distant locations. Spotify told employees they can work remotely, even in another state. Company after company is vacating space or reducing the amount of space it uses in the high rise buildings in New York City. New York may never look the same. The sight of thousands of employees entering he high rise office buildings to go to work spaces may now be a thing of the past.

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A sign of how high rise office building prices fell in 2024 in big cities in the US is the price of 135 West 50th Street 23 floor office building in New York City that sold for $332 million in 2006 and now sells for $8.2 million in an unusual online auction.

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48 storey Rittenhouse and 47 storey Arthaus are new condo development high rises in downtown Philadelphia. Highs in storefront occupancy, hotel occupancy, return to work pushed by Comcast and other companies are giving a new resurgence to the city center in Philadelphia. It shows that the city centers that have locals living in the area are doing better than city centers dependent mostly on commuters for activity. One advantage of Center City, Philadelphia is that there are 70,000 residents compared to mostly commuters in midtown Manhattan, Boston Financial District, Chicago Loop downtown areas. This means that even with remote work people are up and about in the city. 7000 workers for Comcast in office towers in Center City are also encouraged to come to the office.

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Powell and Rashbaum's interview with New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. Kelly changed the idea that crime was an everpresent fact of urban life in the heart of America's cities. He also considered increasing the number of officers alone as a political number not related to improving safety. Crime reduces the quality of life in inner city neighborhoods and in downtown areas and a safe city benefits all communities. Could this have been done without "stop and frisk" or had things deteriorated to the point that such measures had to be resorted to is the controversy surrounding the tactics. This had less to do with the increasing inequality in the city that the new Mayor De Blasio cited in the election, which was aggravated by the 2008 financial crisis and cuts in state and federal funding, which affected minority communities disproportionately.

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NYT looks at the corruption in city government in Los Angeles. During the turn of the century Tammany Hall was a term used for the organization down to city wards that controlled city government and under city bosses led to much corruption. Rapid real estate development in the city of Los Angeles with Chinese developers investing in building high rise office and other buildings in the city led to corruption. A large concentration of power, the lack of news coverage from local sources as one of the effects of the internet, surges in real estate growth, have led to reduced attention to the effects of corruption in the city of Los Angeles and in the state of California. Jose Huizar on the City council and Raymond Chang deputy mayor are shown here in this NYT report to be convicted of racketeering charges.  Over a decade 576 public officials in California have been convicted on federal corruption charges, according to Justice Department reports, says the NYT. This is more than the number of cases in states better known for public corruption, including New York, New Jersey and Illinois. ...

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Mr Wolfson and Ms. Gibbs are deputy mayors of New York City. Here they list all the efforts made by Mayor Bloomberg to fight poverty in New York City and help the homeless during his years in office. They cite a 28% reduction in street homelessness since 2005, a 22% drop in school suspensions, a drop in welfare rolls by 25% with 900,000 New Yorkers moved from welfare to work, and a poverty rate that is flat over the last 12 years while the poverty rate in the U.S. is up 28%. They point to the last Bloomberg budget allocation of $9.2 billion for services to the poor and homeless- 83% higher than Bloomberg's first year in office. Of this $981 million was for services to the homeless, double that in 2002. 175,000 units of affordable housing were built.

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A new terminal is taking shape at 41st st and 8th Ave. in New York City. This is the new $10 billion Port Authority Bus Terminal. NYT taks a look at the design of this new terminal that will replace one that had become old and haggard looking. Port Authority officials say the old building was a rundown 1950's era building that was a poster child for a failed infrastructure facility. The NYT says this brick building darkened two full blocks of midtown Manhattan. In its place will be a a brighter open looking space that is state of the art and has 2 office towers. Much of the US infrastructure was built in the period of the 1950's and 1960's. Much of it is crumbling and old, and the investment taking place step by step under the Biden plan for rebuilding infrastructure with trillions of dollars in investment is working. Construction will take 8 years by 2032 with coronavirus pandemic delay figured in. Step by step it will change the way cities, highways, airports, bridges will look in the US in the coming decade. ...

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Coronavirus pandemic is likely to have a permanent impact on the economy even after the pandemic has passed, says Justin Lahart in the WSJ. This is part of a 5 part series on the economic, social and cultural changes that are likely to be permanent even after the pandemic has passed. 

Working from home some of the time is likely to lead people to buy homes further into the suburbs and increase sales of country homes. People will now be able to stay longer distances from city offices and work remotely. This will change aspects of the real estate industry. Airlines are likely to see fewer passengers and some airlines may benefit at the expense of others. Even today Southwest Airlines is moving to expand, and other airlines such as Lufthansa are facing huge losses.

Tourism, travel, restaurants and some service industries are likely to be impacted more than other industries.  

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Women made large gains in the 2018 Mexico elections. WOmen won 49.2% of Mexico's 128 member Senate for a 50% increase. WOmen also won 47.8% of the lower house of Congress. In Mexico City, a city of 8.9 million people, the first female mayor was elected. In a country with macho politics this is a stunning change. A UN study shows only Belgium has a larger representation in the upper legislative chamber, and only Rwanda, Bolivia and Cuba have ahigher representation in the lower house of parliament. Not all the momentum for women comes from the election of Lopez Obrador. In 2014 the constitution of Mexico was changed requiring poltical parties to have male and female candidates in equal numbers at the federal, state and local levels. In fact of the more than 83,000 candidates seeking office nationwide, 50.4% were women. More than 89 million people registered to vote and female voters were 51.9% of the total. Mr. Lopez Obrador's encouragement added to the fervour for women to vote and women to fight for political office. It also helped Claudia Sheinbaum , a 56 year ol environmental engineer win the election for Mayor of Mexico City by a landslide. Sheinbaum was environmental chief under Mr. Obrador when he was Mayor 2000-2005. Her platform was to improve drinking water supplies and transportation services, expand free child care.  Some of Mr. Obrador's supporters say the agenda for reducing inequality by tackkling corruption, reducing government waste, increasing social spending on the poor helped rally women as candidates and voters. Obrador's conviction that women have a greater capacity for hard work also played a part. Sheinbaum was encouraged to run for office in 2015 and won as governor of Tlalpan, one of Mexico City's 16 boroughs. After the 2006 election loss of Obrador for the presidency she had returned to research work at the National Autonomous University. The entry of women is also seen as a way to bring new approaches to tackle the problems of inequality and corruption after the male dominated established parties from the Calderon-Pena era failed to address these problems. ...

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Uber and Lyft, ride-hailing apps are adding to the traffic in downtown areas of major cities in the U.S. It is getting worse to the point where cities are looking for ways to ease the congestion in downtown areas of Chicago, San Francisco, New York, New fees are being enacted in these cities on Uber and Lyft, and regulators are also considering fees. The problem is that ride sharing apps customers prefer not to pool or share rides as the ride sharing apps said they would to prevent congestion. Another problem is that Uber and Lyft are actually pulling people away from buses, subways and walking creating new waves of congestion and poor utilization of public transportation designed to ease travel for most of the post war period. Worse they are not supporting healthy living because it is harder to walk on traffic congested streets and some people become lazy and just grab a ride rather than walk a short distance or walk to public transportation. Another issue is that an estimated 40% of the time the Uber and Lyft drivers in major cities cruise around for fares without passengers. San Francisco county officials have found in a study that over 60% of the slowdown of traffic speeds in San Francisco between 2010 and 2016 was due to the introduction of ride hailing apps. In Chicago, the policy director in the mayor's office says there is exponential growth in traffic congestion from these ride hailing apps.  A December report by the California Air Resources Board found that ride- hailing cars are driving with no passengers 39% of the time, and New York city estimates cruising at 41%. Mr. Schaller, a New York City official who has studied this issue says surveys in many cities show about 60% of riders in Uber and Lyft would have walked, biked or taken public transit or stayed home if a ride hail car was'nt available. More and more so called disruption by Silicon Valley in the interest of rapid and chaotic growth is looking like a bad thing, says this report in the WSJ, creating a whole new set of problems. What is not even understood here is the vast misallocation of resources, the billions of dollars that could have improved public transportation, bike paths and other means of getting around, improvements in cities downtowns to make them friendlier and with new park spaces with those dollars invested there instead of in ride hailing apps.   ...

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Visiting the new presidential libraries is an excellent way to understand the history of America, American democracy at work, to grasp civic responsibilities, and to have a day's outing overlooking amazing landscapes. This NYT report shows the new JFK Library overlooking Boston harbor. The first Library and Museum of Franklin Roosevelt in Hyde Park opened in 1951 and shows that period of the Depression and the recovery under FDR, the Second World War. A visit to the JFK Library is an opportunity to see a temporary War exhibit with JFK's own experience in the war in the Navy. A Boston Harbor walk is also part of the experience on a 43 mile greenway on city's waterfront. Eisenhower's in Abilene Kansas and the Reagan Library are also shown in this report. New Exhibit at Eisenhower's library and museum shows connections between the suffragette movement of the 1950's and Ike's election in 1952. It also shows an exhibit on the Cold War. These issues are relevant today as is the exhibit in the FDR Museum on the New Deal- on Freedom from Want, Freedom from Fear. Libraries and museums of 13 presidents are open today. Under the Presidential Libraries Act of 1955 these libraries are privately built and federally managed, run by the Presidential Office of Libraries which falls under the National Archives. ...

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Michael Corkery catches up with the indefatigable Paul Volcker at the office he shares with Richard Ravitch on the fourth floor of Rockefeller Center. Ravitch reminisces about events in 1975 when he tried to get a loan for New York City from the head of the New York Federal Reserve, who at the time was Paul Volcker. Today both men are working on another municipal crisis- the financial crisis facing U.S. states. They have raised $2 million from foundations and other sources, and hired a staff. They plan to publish a report on the crisis in 2012. The idea is to throw light on the issues so that the public can understand this better. Volcker says work is more relaxing than fishing, even though both men have spent much time fishing. The conversation drifts to the Occupy Wall Street protests and Ravitch says people forget what Teddy Roosevelt said about the malefactors of great wealth. Volcker insists it was Franklin Rosevelt, Ravitch says its Teddy.

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Activity in downtown San Francisco remains at about a third of prepandemic levels, with remote work having caught on for tech companies during the pandemic employees are there for only half of the week. Office vacancy rates are 28% for downtown. In a strange twist Silicon Valley that led the shift of manufacturing to China and ignored that this led to loss of tax revenues for the towns across America, and decline of these towns that lost factories, is now facing the same situation in its own backyard. Office based industry provides three quarters of San Francisco tax revenue, and faces a $780 million deficit for the next 2 years. Mentally ill on streets near a Whole Foods, and dealers in Fentanyl, homelessness, lead to closing of a Whole Foods store in downtown San Francisco. Thomas Fuller and Sharon LaFraniere provide this report in WSJ of the situation in downtown San Francisco in 2023. Reports from California show the failure to build enough housing during the tech boom for the average American, and apartments for homeless costing hundreds of thousands of dollars and years behind schedule. The mayor is looking for tougher laws to put mentally ill off the streets. There is no consensus on action. Tech investors people hope for another Tech boom to tackle the situation, yet tech companies are retrenching and face government scrutiny even breakup. Even a speeded up effort to add 20% of the housing stock of the city of San Francisco by adding 83,000 apartments from Mayor Ms. Breed would take 8 years.  ...

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The WSJ provides a fact check of Trump statements on crime, debt, and taxes. Trump says he is looking at a new plan for taxes not the $10 trillion in tax cuts over 10 years reducing tax collection by 22%, but something about a third of the size. No details are available on the plan. WSJ disputes Trump's statement that the U.S. is "one of the highest taxed nations in the world." WSJ points out that the U.S. in 2014 for federal, state and local government taxes collected 26% of gross domestic product in taxes, compared to average of 34% for about 30 countries, according to OECD. Debt to GDP ratio is about 75% that is high, but because of low interest rates the budget deficit is less than 3% of GDP, which is close to the long run average. For this reason economists say the government should invest in infrastructure and R&D that supports long run economic growth. On crime the record is mixed with increase in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City, but decreases in Washington D.C. and Baltimore. Police shootings were 67 in 2016 compared to 62 in July 2015, and the high being 280 officers in 1974 when Nixon was President. Crime was an issue in the 1968 Republican National Convention during the Vietnam era protests, police shootings and terror incidents attracted attention in July 2016, yet the situation today is very different from the war protests of the Vietnam era. On terrorism fact checks by the NYT and in Lyrarc shows Clinton at State Department and Panetta at Defense Department taking hawkish stands only to hit a barrier from President Obama for taking action needed in Syria, Iraq and Libya. Panetta's new book calls for robust action where needed. A Clinton administration would take action with allies in the Middle East. Even Hollande and Obama who pulled the U.S. and France out of following up in the French-British Sarkozy-Cameron led intervention in Libya, have changed policy, with Obama calling it his biggest mistake. France under Hollande with the U.S. is now actively engaged in the Middle East, having changed policy. It is highly unlikely that a Trump led policy which alienates most allies in the Middle East- Iran, Iraq and Saudis- is likely to work better than a determined Clinton-Panetta led effort which has support of the local countries on the ground actually currently on both sides because of complexities of Middle Eastern politics.  On trade a new administration will still have to work with China, India, the European Union, and other countries, as global trade supply chains are not likely to evolve overnight. Lessons will have been learned by Clinton about the need to bring back jobs and ensure the strength of U.S. manufacturing. Economic and jobs growth will require prudence in strengthening U.S. manufacturing coupled with global cooperation, which a Trump administration that alienates trading partners without the possibility of making any serious immediate gains in jobs, is highly unlikely to do better.      ...

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This article in the New York Times makes an extraordinary report about Rod Rosenstein, U.S. Deputy Attorney General and his views on president Trump following Trump's firing of FBI Director Comey. New York Times says it has based its report on meetings in which Rosenstein participated with Justice Department and FBI officials. Mr. Rosenstein and Mr. Sessions, the Attorney General, attended a meeting at the White House last year with Mr. Trump in which he agreed to write the memo cited by Mr. Trump for firing Mr. Comey. Rod Rosenstein had no idea at the time that Mr. Trump would cite his memo, and felt afterwards that he had been used by Mr. Trump, according to this report in the NYT. Leading Democrats were very critical of Mr. Rosenstein for providing the memo that served as the basis for firing Mr. Comey. Mr. McCabe who succeeded Mr. Comey and others also left the Justice Department and the FBI, and the events of that time has created dissension in the FBI and the Justice Department, leading to the release of this information to the New York Times.  Mr. Rosenstein according to this report based on internal meetings with Justice Department officials, was concerned about the chaotic situation in the White House following the firing of Mr. Comey of the FBI. During this time it is reported here Mr. Rosenstein suggested recording of the president and invoking of the 25th Amendment. The 25th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution provides for removal of the President by the Vice President and cabinet officials on certain grounds such as when the president "is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office." Mr. Andrew McCabe, who was head of FBI following Mr. Comey's firing was also fired, and he has memorialized his interactions with Mr. Rosenstein in memos that are now with the Mueller investigation.  Not everyone thinks this is a constructive step as a letter in the New York Times questions the wisdom of such a report leading to the departure of Mr. Rosenstein. Mr. Rosenstein is seen by some as defending the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election. But even this may be overstated or in doubt as the criticism of Democrats leading to the the release of the report by the NYT on Rosenstein shows. Mr. Rosenstein says in response to the NYT report that he sees no need for invoking the 25th Amendment. ...

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A former mayor of Mexico City wins the election for president in 2018 with 53% of the vote. Obrador's margin was over 30% over Ricardo Analya of PAN party who had 22.5%, and ruling PRI's Antionio Meade with 16%, with 72% of votes counted according to Mexico's election agency. Issues in this election were corruption, with many corruption scandals for ruling PRI under president Nieto, and failure to maintain rule of law. The last time that a president won this size margin of victory was in 1982. Morena as Obrador's party is called, won 306 of 500 seats in the lower house of parliament and 70 of 128 seats in the Senate, winning majorities in both houses of parliament. It also won 4 of 8 state governor races and the Mayor's office in Mexico City. FOr the first time since 1997 one party will control both houses and Mexico City. Obrador formed his own party after leaving the PRD party, calling it The Movement for National Regeneration. Most Mexicans were highly disturbed by the violence and corruption that prevailed in local administration under president Nieto's PRI government. The PRI's dominance in Mexican politics is now broken. Obrador says he will work to put more emphasis on helping the poor in Mexico in framing his policies, distancing himself from the politics of the PRI which had distanced itself more and more from grassroots and ordinary workers in Mexico. This means adapting the free market economic model to suit Mexico's own conditions, the differences between northern and southern Mexico, and pushing for more worker friendly policies. It also creates more room for agreement with the U.S. as both Mr. Trump and Mr. Obrador agree on raising labor standards and wages for factory workers in Mexico ...

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It is shocking that San Francisco spends $700 million on homelessness with a lot of the money not getting people off the streets. There are large issues of how American society in 2024 had neglected the needs of large sections of the population, and not made investments in the right places, lost jobs from deindustrialization. San Francisco's new Mayor is Daniel Lurie of the Haas Levi Strauss jeans business family. His mother Miriam Haas is the billionaire widow of Peter Haas, descendent of Levi Strauss, who was president of the company. Daniel Lurie is taking a $1 salary, and his motivation for this job is to get San Francisco hit by high homelessness and crime, drug use, and office vacancy, back on its feet again. Levis Strauss was founded like Bank of America in this city on the west coast. Lurie found it hard to explain to his two children the homelessness and the dismal condition of parts of the city. He is helping hotel workers get a decent wage in a society that has created a huge gulf between the low paid with less and less access to things essential for a healthy life and people in Tech work who have vast surplus income for such access. It also means getting the police force down to 600 back up to 2000 and with good morale and public support to clean up the city. ...

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Pfanner and Chen of the NYT talk to Samsung executives in Digital City, Suwon, head offices near Seoul. After capturing about 40% of the smartphone market Samsung still remains for the most part a hardware based company with strengths in production, cost and efficiency. Samsung still remains dependent on the Google Android software. Competitors in China are making smartphones that compete with Samsung products and cost much less. There is also the awareness of the problems faced by Motorola, Nokia, Blackberry, HTC, having only a temporary advantage in the fast paced software driven industry. Samsung's software efforts include merging its research effort in mobile operating systems with an industry effort that includes Intel Corp called Tizen operating system. In 2011 Samsung hired David Eun, who worked for AOL and Google, as one of the executives leading its software effort. The Boxee startup for television software was acquired and a partnership setup with the Flipboard news reading app company. In Feb. 2013 the Open Innovation Center was opened in S. Korea, New York and Mountain View, California, The same year the Samsung Accelerator program was setup in Palo Alto and Chelsea for tech startups to make products exclusively for Samsung. ...

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With $3.5 trillion dollars of commercial real estate debt outstanding, amid collapsing real estate prices, there is concern that this will hamper economic recovery. About $700 billion of commercial real estate mortgaes were packaged into securities and sold to pension funds, college endowments, foundations and other investors. This means the pain will be felt across the country, even in this small Ozark town of Springfield, Missouri, where the police and firefighters union has invested its entire 11% real estate allocation of $12 million in PRISA, a real estate fund of Prudential Insurance. Prudential in the boom years like 2005, was making as much as 25% return and large fees, and it marketed these products across the country. Even in a loss year of 2008 this generated $89 million in fees for PRISA. It decided to build 11 Times Square with a developer, 1.1 million square foot skyscraper in New York city, and the piece of that in the form of a security was marketed in this small Ozark town at a meeting between a Prudential representative and the towns pension fund board members, 1 policeman, 3 firemen and 2 city officials. The pension fund valued before the financial crisis at $131 million is now valued at $91 million, with 10% tied up in PRISA. A request for redemption of $5 million was rejected. The irony is that the pension fund was trying to boost returns to 7.5% from 5% on the advice of actuaries, to better fund the retiree obligations. The developer of the skyscraper Pozycki only comitted $15 million, or 4% of the equity, in exchange for developer's fees, having been burnt by earlier deals in the 1990's. As the building is nearing completion in 2009, not a single tenant has signed up. A loss of 50% is expected by 2009, because of so much vacant office space in New York city. Prudential will continue to collect its fees. And in Springfield the the losses will lead to budget cuts, reducing how often park lawns are mowed, and roads maintained, eliminating the summer concert series, multi-family housing inspections, and aservice to trap skunks and feral cats....

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Unemployment has fallen more heavily on blacks in New York City, with 80,000 more unemployed blacks than whites, even though there are about 1.5 million more whites than blacks in New York City. This is from areport by the City Comptroller's office, and is as of the end of March. THe gap between black and white unemployment has widened substantially in the past few months and this may be because of the large numbers of black people in retailing and other hard hit service industries.