NOW that its wallet is fat with billions in taxpayer money, General Motors is reconsidering moving its New York offices out of the ultra-expensive building that bears its name.
In other words, “Thanks suckas.”
An anonymous source in the real-estate business last week tipped me to the fact that GM is negotiating a deal to keep at least some of the 100,000 square feet of office space it now leases at 767 5th Ave., better known as the GM Building.
The automaker emerged from a quickie bankruptcy court proceeding just last week.
GM is now owned by me, you, and the rest of this country’s taxpayers — as well as the United Auto Workers union.
GM confirmed to me that it is now considering “a number of options, one of which is staying in the existing space.” It wouldn’t elaborate. “We are not going to disclose any more details.”
OK, have it your way.
Here’s what the source leaked to me: The company is currently paying $90 a square foot on a long-term lease that expires next spring even though space in the GM building could top $150/sq. foot.
Owner Boston Properties, run by Daily News Publisher Mort Zuckerman, is said to be offering GM six months free rent if it’ll stay put, as well as some other incentives.
Wouldn’t you like to be one of the other tenants in the building who could now go to Boston Properties, plead poverty and get a rent reduction?
Last year, when GM was playing on public sympathy, it announced with much to-do that it could no longer afford the GM building and would have to slum it a few blocks away at the Citigroup Center.
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It’s swell, don’t you think, that the federal government is finally going to crack down on speculators in the oil market.
Heck, it has only taken four years, during which time motoring Americans have been fleeced of billions.
And now Washington is getting around to dealing with the cowboys of Wall Street — but only with kid gloves.
Readers know where I stand on this issue since I’ve been boring you with tirades against these heartless speculators for years, including a column just last month.
The regulatory clampdown that the Obama administration seems to be proposing is nice — but, as usual, not enough.
Let me suggest this: Washington should go back a year or two and see if anyone actually tried to manipulate oil for their own profits.
Maybe, they bought oil futures contracts right before publicizing predictions that energy prices were going higher.
You know who I’m talking about!
If the case can be made for manipulation, then these speculators (even if they are big, bad brokerage firms) should be prosecuted and fined heavily.
The idea is to not only stop speculators but also take away their ill-gotten profits.
After all, speculators had no mercy when they were driving up the cost of gasoline for people who might not have even been able to put food on the table — or even keep a house in which that table could be kept.
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Will the consumer price index scare the financial markets this week?
The CPI for June is going to be released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics tomorrow and the experts think consumer prices jumped a pretty hefty 0.6 percent between May and June.
That would be a substan tial increase from the 0.1 percent gain from April to May.
Remember what I told you in a recent column.
A source at Labor, which handles the CPI, said it’s clear that inflation has been understated because seasonal adjustments have gone haywire.
And by their very definition, seasonal adjustments that understate inflation during certain months have to be offset by overstatements in other months — UNLESS the price of gasoline suddenly drops.
But this is key: The seasonal adjustments shouldn’t shift unfavorably until the July inflation number is released in August.
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Forget the green shoots, Tim Geithner; sees the silver lining.
The Treasury Secretary pointed the other day to the huge rise in Americans’ savings rate as one of the good things coming out of this crappy economy.
Sorry, Tim.
If you bothered to even check with the folks who compile the savings rate at the Commerce Department you wouldn’t believe Americans are putting away 6.9 percent of their pay. It’s a statistical anomaly.
But keep trying and you’ll come up with something that will cheer yourself up.
How about the increase in productivity?
That was Alan Greenspan‘s favorite silver lining — except all that it really meant was that so many people are being laid off that the still-employed were working harder.
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Last Thursday I mentioned that the New York Stock Exchange Euronext had eliminated a program whereby Wall Street firms have to report big stock transaction known as program trades.
The NYSE says it did, indeed, eliminate one of the requirements.
But it says firms will still have to adhere to a backup reporting system.