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Troubles of Brookfield DTLA show how some office-sector bets are starting to unravel ... A major Los Angeles office owner operated by Brookfield Asset Management is struggling to make mortgage payments as vacancies and rising interest rates disrupt the city’s commercial real-estate market. The company, known as Brookfield DTLA Fund Office Trust Investor Inc., owns six Los Angeles office buildings and a retail center. Five of the office buildings face the risk of foreclosure, according to its public filings, and at least two of its mortgages are in default. The company on April 21 filed to delist from the New...

US metro office vacancies hit an all-time high in Q4 2022 and office properties values began to decline as The Fed retreats as it fights inflation. So much money printing. Its The Fed’s claim to fame.

Krystal Guerra’s Miami apartment has a tiny kitchen, cracked tiles, warped cabinets, no dishwasher and hardly any storage space. But Guerra was fine with the apartment’s shortcomings. It was all part of being a 32-year-old graduate student in South Florida, she reasoned, and she was happy to live there for a few more years as she finished her marketing degree. That was until a new owner bought the property and told her he was raising the rent from $1,550 to $1,950, a 26% increase that Guerra said meant her rent would account for the majority of her take-home pay from...

Aided by fellow Republicans in the Senate, President Donald Trump is rapidly filling vacancies on U.S. appeals courts, moving some that had liberal majorities closer to conservative control in an ideological shift that could benefit his administration. These 13 courts wield considerable power, usually providing the last word on rulings appealed from lower courts on disputes involving federal law. Their rulings can be challenged before the U.S. Supreme Court, but most such appeals are turned away because the top court typically hears fewer than 100 cases annually. Eleven of the courts handle cases from specific multi-state regions, one handles cases...

47 women have been elected or appointed to fill congressional vacancies created by the deaths of their husbands, 8 to the U.S. Senate and 39 to the U. S. House of Representatives.

The most liberal appeals court in America could soon be getting a Republican makeover if President Trump and Senate GOP leaders are able to fill seven open seats with conservative picks. Standing in their way is a wall of Democrats hellbent on protecting the long-standing leftward lean of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The stakes are sky high because of the size, caseload and clout of the court. If Trump is successful in getting young, ideologically conservative nominees through the confirmation process, he could significantly alter the court’s DNA for decades to come. “Adding seven conservatives to the court...

Donald Trump is set to inherit an uncommon number of vacancies in the federal courts in addition to the open Supreme Court seat, giving the president-elect a monumental opportunity to reshape the judiciary after taking office. The estimated 103 judicial vacancies that President Obama is expected to hand over to Trump in the Jan. 20 transition of power is nearly double the 54 openings Obama found eight years ago following George W. Bush’s presidency. Confirmation of Obama’s judicial nominees slowed to a crawl after Republicans took control of the Senate in 2015. Obama White House officials blame Senate Republicans for...

Reflections on Presidential Appointments, in the wake of losing Justice Scalia... Article II of the Constitution begins, “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” It then goes on to stipulate how the president shall be chosen, what his powers are, and how he may be removed, when necessary to protect the nation. Subsequent amendments have clarified the matters of election and removals, and we have had all manners of presidents in these 227 years – old and young, firm and meek, principled and “open-minded”... But regardless of how they came to their...

Online retail sales keep climbing, big box retailers keep wondering what to do with all their space, and small stores struggle to survive at all. As a result of that nasty brew, Malls Face Surge in Vacancies. Mall vacancies hit their highest level in at least 11 years in the first quarter, new figures from real-estate research company Reis Inc. showed. In the top 80 U.S. markets, the average vacancy rate was 9.1%, up from 8.7%. The outlook is especially bad for strip malls and other neighborhood shopping centers. Their vacancy rate is expected to top 11.1% later this year,...

DALLAS (Reuters) - For every open construction job in America, there are more than 20 people lining up to apply. Few statistics illustrate the gravity of the U.S. recession as clearly as the yawning gap between job seekers and vacancies, highlighting the struggle President Barack Obama has had to contain job losses since he took over in January. Research by Andrew Sum, a labor economist at Boston's Northeastern University, shows that the ratio of unemployed persons to job openings has widened in America to 5.7 to 1 in August of this year from 1.2 to 1 in December of 2000....

The next U.S. president could reshape the Supreme Court, where the two oldest members are liberals and volatile decisions like abortion now hinge on a single swing vote. The possible sea change has already surfaced 18 months before the November 2008 election and could develop into a major campaign issue for Democrats who want to move the court to the left and Republicans who hope to plant it firmly in the conservative camp. The U.S. high court is now evenly split between conservative and liberal justices, who have been divided by 5-4 votes on abortion rights, the death penalty and...

Current Status of the U.S. Court of AppealsAppellate Courts: 13Judgeships: 179Active Judges: 164Vacancies: 15Pending Nominees: 9Future Vacancies Scheduled for 2006: 3 History Link: The U.S. Court of Appeals and the Federal Judiciary Note: The 13 appellate courts today have a total of 179 judgeships. Note: There are currently 164 active judges on the 13 appellate courts. Note: There are currently 15 open seats on the 13 appellate courts. Note: 2 of the 15 vacancies were created when previous Bush appointments were appointed to other positions: 1) Judge Michael Chertoff - 3rd Circuit - Now DHS Secretary2) Judge John Glover...

The Supreme Court ends its work tomorrow with the highest of drama: an anticipated retirement, a ruling on the constitutionality of government Ten Commandments displays and decisions in other major cases. Traditionally, there is an air of suspense as the justices meet for the final time before breaking for three months. Justices usually wait until then to resolve blockbuster cases. Added to that is the expectation that Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist is presiding over the court for the last time. Chief Justice Rehnquist has thyroid cancer and many court experts believe his retirement is imminent. Long lines have formed...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

<p>Gov. Gray Davis is known for dragging his feet on executive appointments, but in the weeks since a recall election became reality he has moved quickly to fill more than 200 vacancies in state agencies, boards, commissions and judgeships.</p> <p>With Senate confirmation needed before today's scheduled adjournment of the Legislature, the governor on Thursday pushed through two nominations to the sought-after University of California Board of Regents -- one for a major donor, the other for an icon in the farm worker movement, who helped deliver the Democratic Latino vote in last November's election.</p>