Weakonomi¢s » weaky

Weaky #24: Mini-Madoff to the Stars

The Weakonomist — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 15:01:29 +0000

Remember Kenneth Starr? No, not that Kenneth Starr. Before a few days ago I didn’t know there was another Kenneth Starr either. Apparently, this Kenneth Starr was a financial advisor to the stars and apparently, that’s such a thing. Some of the clients listed were Sylvester Stalone, Uma Thurman, Wesley Snipes, and Martin Scorcese. Kenneth Starr was arrested for what else but running a ponzi scheme.

Starr has already been dubbed “mini-madoff” not only because of his scheme but how he got clients, by rubbing shoulders with his potential new customers at events he knew he could find them. Like any other dirtbag, he used the money to finance an extravagant lifestyle, not much different than the type his clients enjoyed. But he also took it a step further. Somehow, he managed to convince some of these people to open accounts with his name on it. There are so many no-nos being crossed here that it’s too easy to talk about them.

I’m not at all surprised that celebrities and other people with more money than they know what to do with end up getting screwed by Madoff like people. They don’t understand the value of money and everywhere they go they’re overpaying for products and services. In other words, there’s no shortage of people ready and willing to take advantage of them. Mini-Madoff Ken Starr is on the extreme end, but he’s still just a dude that took advantage of rich people.

If you’ve got too much money to manage yourself and you’ve got not enough motivation to learn anything about money, you have a simple way out: go to the big companies to manage your money. Everyone from Wells Fargo to Goldman Sachs has specialized divisions that exist simply to serve clients with more money than brains. You’ll pay out the yin-yang in fees, but you’re already doing that at some boutique place that your co-star recommended in between lines of blow. The benefit of going to these big firms is you’ll be dealing with someone that probably couldn’t squander all your money even if they wanted to. And if they somehow managed to do it, you can at least sue the crap out of the firm to get your money back.

But just in case you want to learn something about money I’ve taken the liberty of giving you a list of desirable traits of your financial advisor to get you started:

Middle-upper middle class (but not loaded)
Have no legal claim to your money
Have a CFP
Should not be your friend

So that’s what your financial advisor should be, and that’s seriously sufficient. The Reformed Broker has a list of what your financial advisor should not be; the hilarious post gives special emphasis to stars and is such a must-read it was the whole inspiration for this post.

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Weaky 22: Rangel Me Up Some Controversy

The Weakonomist — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:39:04 +0000

Who is Charles Rangel? He’s just one of a series of controversial New-York politicians to make it into the media. Chuckie is being featured today for one reason only, to reinforce the notion that the career politician is an awful abomination that should be destroyed. Allow me to present you: Fat Bastard Congressman Charles Rangel of the 15th district of New-York, AKA Harlem.

Normally, I like to phrase my Weakies with a good backstory and build everything up, but Chuckie has been way too busy to do that. I will tell you he’s an NYU educated man, lawyer, and Korean War vet with a Purple Heart. He’s a hero, and he’s no moron. Which leads me to believe everything I list below was done deliberately.

He used Congressional letterhead to arrange meetings with potential donors to a center named after him at the City College of New-York. An ethics “no-no”.

Rangel rents 4 apartments in Harlem at below market rates. He paid $3894 per month for all 4 in 2007. The going rate was closer to $8125 per month. 3 are used for his “home” in Harlem while the 4th is used as a campaign office. City law requires that apartments of this type be used for living, not business. The building is owned by a company with one of the owners being a regular contributer to Rangel’s campaigns. The savings add up $50,000 a year, which far exceeds the $100 gift limit established by the House. Quid pro quo? Perhaps. Sketchy? You bet.

He owns some vacation property in the Dominican Republic which during the busy season rents for as much as $1100 per night. He bought the place in 1988 but mortgaged part of it. He was one of a few investors that had interest payments forgiven. In 2008, it was discovered that he had failed to report $75,000 worth of income on the property. Either our tax code is too complicated for a Congressman to figure out, or he was hiding it. Either is disgraceful considering he’s the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, the House comittee that DESIGNS THE TAX CODE. Only last week did he take a temporary leave of absence amid all the scandals.

In January of 2009, another Congressman introduced legislation for the “Rangel Rule” a joke of a bill designed to forgive taxpayers on interest and penalties for unpaid taxes.

Discrepancies were found in the listed value of a property he owns in Florida. Values vary from $50,000 to $500,000. Not sure what this means, but do YOU have this problem?

Chuckie also uses a parking garage just for Congressmen as personal storage for his old Mercedes Benz. House rules forbid the use for any period longer than 45 days. It’s been there so long the plates are gone, at least a few years. The spaces are valued at $290 a month and could be considered income that would need to be taxed. The doesn’t even have the necessary permits to be in the garage.

He’s taken a homestead tax break on his house in DC, despite maintaining a residence in New-York. Again, no expert but it’s said this potentially violates laws in both areas.

There is a tax loophole that has allowed a corporation to save tens of millions of dollars by operating “in Bermuda”. The corporation has donated $1 million to a City College of New-York center, named after Rangel. Rangel promised to oppose closing the loophole after a meeting with the company’s CEO. 5 days earlier the company donated an additional $100,000 to the City College of New-York. This company is one of only 4 that benefits from the tax break.

In 2008, Rangel paid $80k in campaign funds to a company to develop his a website. The company he paid is run by his son. Sites like this are regularly designed for about $100. A representative of the Campaign Legal Center, a non-profit watchdog said “this is probably legal but definitely wrong.”

Rangel again teetered on the edge of ethics by taking trips to the Caribbean funded by a non-profit in NY, funded by a number of large corporations with lots of lobbying interests.

In 2009, Rangel amended his 2007 financial disclosure form to double his reported net worth. This included properties in NJ (again with back taxes), investment, and checking accounts.

Also in 2009, Rangel opposed legislation that would have stopped $2.9 billion (yes billion) in tax money that would go to bailout a rum company in the US Virgin Islands. Naturally, he received campaign monies related to the deal.

And that’s just the stuff we know about. This man is the perfect example of everything that is wrong in Washington. He’s been in office since the 70s, it’s time for him to go.

Wikipedia has more about all his bad deeds.

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Weaky #20: Oniomaniac Embezzles 1/3 Of Company’s Value

The Weakonomist — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 15:48:54 +0000

You’ve probably never heard of Koss. They are an American company that makes headphones, usually of the low end variety. For the most part, they’re just a company trying to make their way in the American dream. They’ve have their successes and failures over the years, including a bankruptcy in the 1980s, but for the last few years they’ve managed to turn a tiny profit.

But sometimes cozy little American companies hire themselves an idiot. Case in point: Sujata Sachdeva. Ms. Sachdeva is the former VP of Finance at Koss. She started there many many years ago and worked her way up to the respectable position within the company. On Christmas Eve of 2009 she was fired because Koss had learned she was embezzling money.

I always find it sad when someone steals money from their employer. I’m under the belief that it should be near impossible to do if the company does proper auditing and cash-flow tracking. But it does happen.

What doesn’t happen, ever, is someone embezzling 1/3 of a company’s value. Koss has a market capitalization of $63 million (remember it’s a small company). Sachdeva has been accused of embezzling as much as $20 million from the company over 4 years. They are certain of a few million, the rest of which is still pending. That’s a third of the company’s value! I cannot stress this enough.

Normally I’d give a Weaky Award to someone for being dumb enough to steal from a company thinking they wouldn’t get caught. But not this time, no. This goes to Koss for not noticing. In order for someone to embezzle 1/3 of Google they’d have to take $57 billion (that’s BILLION). I think someone would notice that!

Another way to look at this is she is accused of embezzling more in 4 years than the company made in profits. How do they not notice this? Who is running the show at Koss?

Would you notice if over 4 years someone stole all your money? Probably. Koss is planning to restate their earnings for the last 4 years, an embarrassing thing for any firm to do. Honestly, I wish we had the legal system in place in this country to just shut down firms that are clearly incapable of running a business.

Ranting aside, Sachdeva admits to embezzlement claiming to be an oniomaniac (shopaholic for those of you that hadn’t looked up the work yet). It was later discovered that much of what she purchased was never used (clothes) which corroborates her story. Even someone at the legal edge of “crazy” wouldn’t buy $2 million worth of clothes.

Sachdeva clearly has a case to argue in court for being crazy. But honestly the shame goes down on the management of Koss for not noticing this sooner. The company has 73 full time employees and was incapable of noticing millions of dollars being embezzled. Seriously, anyone could have figured this out in an afternoon. Read more about Sachdeva and her antics here, here, and here.

Photo: Pal Berge

PS: Some of you may have noticed I published Weaky 21 before 20, it’s because I wrote this a while ago and for some reason forgot about it.

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Weaky #21: The Mortgage Bankers Association’s Underwater Mortgage

The Weakonomist — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:21:40 +0000

Back in 2007, we all thought there might be a real estate bubble about to pop. But most of America was still stupid and buying up real estate thinking prices would go up forever. Home ownership was the American dream, and we all wanted to own our own home. Even I was looking at properties (casually) and checking out interest rates in my area.

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), which is the trade group for scuba divers mortgage bankers, would have been perhaps the most optimistic about the future of real estate. They very much had a vested interest in you buying a home with a loan, and having you pay your bills on time. John Courson is the CEO of the MBA. The WSJ highlights the MBA’s stance on paying your mortgage:

(Courson) said he believed mortgage borrowers should keep paying their loans even if that no longer seemed to be in their economic interest. He said paying off a mortgage isn’t only a matter of personal interest. Defaults hurt neighborhoods by lowering property values, Mr. Courson said. “What about the message they will send to their family and their kids and their friends?” he asked.

Ouch. No questioning how he feels. But that’s how he feels about you, not how he feels about the MBA. See, in 2007, the MBA got into real estate themselves. They bought a $79 million building in Washington DC. They put just $4 million down, or 5% of the value, and financed the rest using a 30 year variable rate.

They planned to occupy 40% of the space and lease out the rest to businesses. Turns out real estate isn’t as easy as HGTV made it out to be. They only ever got to 50% capacity, including their office space. That just doesn’t pay the bills. So even though Courson told YOU to pay your mortgage even if it doesn’t make sense so as to keep property values up, the MBA will not be doing that.

They are hardcore underwater on this property. It’s so bad they had to sell for just over half the price they payed, $41.3 million. So much for keeping property values up right Courson?

A commercial real estate data house has purchased the building from the MBA. The MBA meanwhile has decided their interests would be best served by leasing. That’s right, the Mortgage Bankers Association can’t afford, and plans to avoid, getting a mortgage.

I really wish this development received more attention than it has. It’s perhaps the ultimate irony of the recession. Please pass this along, share it with loved ones. It’s a civic duty.

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Weaky #19: What You Lose In Vegas, Stays In Vegas

The Weakonomist — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:30:01 +0000

Go to Vegas and drop some money. As soon as you’re losing money the casino will start treating you like a valued customer. This is because, by losing money on gambling, you’re basically paying the casino to entertain you. As a thank-you for your business you may be offered “comps,” which are complimentary items as a thank-you for you business. Depending on how much money you burn, the comps could be anything from a free drink to a night in one of their hotel rooms.

It’s great getting treated link royalty. Though I cannot speak from experience, Vegas hotels have the customer service thing figured out. But as a smart customer, you should always keep in mind in the back of your head exactly why the casino is being so nice to you. Is it because they really want to be your friend? Is it because they live and die to please customers? Or is it because you’re blowing through money faster than MC Hammer?

Always keep in mind that the free stuff you’re getting isn’t really free. MBAs with spreadsheets calculate how much you need to lose to qualify for this stuff, and the house always wins. Apparently, Terrance Watanabe does not understand how Vegas works. Mr. Watanabe may have the biggest gambling problem on the planet. In 2007, he burned through $127 million at two casinos. Watanabe is known as a whale in the casino business. They are high rollers lured into luxury and extravagance; the goal is to bring them in, treat them like royalty, and milk them like crazy. Both casinos are owned by the same company, Harrah’s, and they derived 5.6% of their revenue in 2007 from him alone. Ahab got his Moby Dick.

But this whale is fighting back. He’s suing Harrahs’ claiming some of his losses were promised to be returned to him. He was also promised a stipend for airfare to Vegas, Rolling Stones tickets, and other odds and ends. It would seem Harrah’s backed out of these promises.

Watanabe is in some trouble with the law as well. The casino loaned him almost $15 million to gamble with (fairly standard practice if you’re rich and your assets aren’t immediately liquid). Watanabe hasn’t paid them back and faces prison time if convicted.

The Wall Street Journal has a good article about the guy, which includes how he became so wealthy (you’d never guess). He’s awarded the 19th Weaky Award for being so stupid as to think the casinos were being his friend, so stupid as to burn through money because he was bored, and really friggin stupid for handing out stacks of $100 pretending to be some high roller who really deserves such treatment. Regardless of how the criminal and civil suits turn out, I hope he loses and is thrown in prison for being such a moron with money.

Photo: lisa brewster

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Weaky #18 Saudi Reparations

The Weakonomist — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:58:06 +0000

I hate to cite Apple for examples, but they do a pretty good job of running a business and so here we go. Imagine you’re Apple, you’re making boatloads of money on iPods. Your cash situation is great. As a company you sit on so much cash you can buy whatever you want. Smartly, you decide to hold some of that cash for emergencies and use the rest to reinvest in the company. The iPhone is born, and you get even more cash.

Now imagine you’re Saudi Arabia. Your cash cow is not iPods, but oil. You love for Americans and Chinese to drive gas guzzlers. Over the years you’ve milked that teat for almost all its worth. You have lots of cash, are you going to use it to reinvest in the country so that you may thrive further down into the future? Nope. You’re going to subsidize oil for your people, build castles made of gold, and form cartels to protect your dying industry.

Which brings me to today. Oil consumption is down due to a global recession and increasing awareness of greenhouse emissions and fuel efficiency. Saudi Arabia knows that oil is their cash cow, and every barrel we don’t buy is lost revenue for them.

Enter what can only be called “stragegery”. The Saudis are trying to bring oil producers together (presumably OPEC) to confront wealthy nations regarding their reduction in oil consumption. Here’s how it works, if the United States reduces their oil consumption by one barrel, we must compensate the oil producers for that one barrel. It’s like going to the grocery store, and buying a half-gallon of milk instead of your full gallon. If you don’t buy the full gallon, you should still compensate the store for reduced purchase. This is their actual suggestion!

Stupid doesn’t begin to describe this idea, but I can’t help but congratulate them for having the cojones to propose such a radical idea. Even better, this isn’t the first time they’ve done it. No, going all the way back to the early 90s with the first green movements the Saudis quickly recognized what it meant and made these proposals then.

Thankfully, as dumb as the United States and other wealthy countries sometimes are, they aren’t dumb enough to fall for this. From an economics perspective it doesn’t even make sense. If we don’t buy the oil, someone else will. So hell no you fools.

I don’t give a Weaky to Saudi Arabia for their proposals to protect their cash cow. Everyone company, government, and individual will always do similar things to protect their primary revenue stream. Saudi Arabia gets a Weaky for not thinking ahead and developing industry that doesn’t rely on oil. In 50 years, they’ll be a nothing state with a bunch of holes in the ground.

Photo: photocapy

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Weaky #17: Subprime Double-Infidelity With A Side of Insider Trading

The Weakonomist — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:10:00 +0000

Have you heard of Ashley Madison? Sounds like a nice girl right? Well, whoever she is, she’s got an interesting website. If you’re the type of person that is looking for an extramarital affair, then Ashley Madison is to you what eHarmony is to that weird guy at the office. Statically speaking, some of you will click the link not because you’re curious, but because you’re interested.

Anyway. This New-York lawyer/investment banker type guy, James Gansman, was so over that whole monogamy thing and find himself a piece of tail down in Philly, Donna Murdoch. Affairs make for boring material these days, but as the headline suggests, this gets better. See, James was a big-wig over at Ernst & Young, a company that, among other things, helps other companies go through mergers. James is the type of person that would know whether a deal fell through long before Wall Street did, making him an insider. Acting on information before it’s public is against the law (that’s insider trading).

But this isn’t some simple case of James cashing in on some information to run away with his lover, Donna, oh no sir! The relationship was as typical as affairs can be at first. James would talk about his work only after it hit the newspapers. But then they started playing games in their respective offices, basically a “guess what I’m working on” type thing. What James didn’t know is that Donna was placing some bets on these games and other leaked info. She ended up on some SEC watchlists for insider trading.

But why did Donna make these bets? Well, Donna and her husband owed $1.45 million on a subprime mortgage! But Donna wasn’t done, not yet. She needed money to make these insider trades so she stabbed her lover (and her husband?) in the back and went and found ANOTHER man on Ashley Madison’s service. This guy, Richard Hansen fronted the money for trades and eventually got her a job at his brokerage firm. The relationships were all secret from eachother, I can’t imagine how hard it was to keep up with all those men.

Of course the SEC investigation eventually caught up to Donna and James. Poor James never made any money in all of this but he was the one leaking the information. Read the Wall Street Journal report to find out what happened in court.

The Weaky does not go to Donna for this. She was a mastermind who just eventually got caught up in her own web of infidelity and poor financial choices. No it goes to James for being dumb enough to give away company secrets, to someone he met online! Come on guys, don’t go messing around with married women, you know they’ve got some baggage, people like Donna just have a lot. Oh, and don’t cheat on your spouse, the SEC will know.

Photo: aleera*

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Weaky #16: $23,148,855,308,184,500 For Cigs & Supper

The Weakonomist — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 14:00:22 +0000

This was some fun news from last week. Imagine going to the store for some cigarettes (bad you but I respect your rights) and swiping the trusty Visa and heading back home. As you leave the store credit/debit card magic is happening (how credit cards make money). Little did you know that something has gone terribly wrong with the magic. Some time later you check your statement online and find a slight discrepancy. Instead of a few bucks it’s a few quadrillion bucks. Specifically, $23,148,855,308,184,500.

The human mind is weak and therefore it’s difficult to really comprehend how much money that is. The Office of Management and Budget (lead by super-nerd Peter Orszag) projects the 2010 budget for the United States to be just about $3.5 trillion (page 114). Let’s line these numbers up together along with a the cost of a typical pack of cigarettes.

$4
$3,500,000,000,000
$23,148,855,308,184,500

So yeah, that’s big. For reference $3.5 trillion divides into that number 6,614 times. That’s 6,614 federal budgets or government expenditures from now until the year 8623.

Useless number games aside, it goes without saying that this was obviously a mistake. This $23 quadrillion bill for cigarettes was charged to a man in New Hampshire, Josh Muszynski. And since he didn’t have that much money in his account at the time his was slapped with a $15 overdraft fee from Bank of America. He should keep more money in reserve to avoid those fees. Thankfully Bank of America in conjunction with Visa figured out the problem.

The great thing is that it didn’t happen just once. Nope. A dude in North Texas got slapped with the exact same $23 quadrillion for buying dinner at a Wolfgang Puck restaurant. Though that’s probably close to the cost of a meal by the most famous chef to never be employed by the Food Network, this was in fact an error as well. This time the debit card holder, Jon Seale, was dinged with an overdraft charge of $20 from Wachovia (what’s left of it).

Both banked waived these fees and said that a glitch in the Visa debit card processing system created the massive bill. Since it happened to two people within a short period of time to people at different banks, the evidence points to Visa for being responsible. In a classic move of stupid PR, they owned up to the mistake with Wachovia but told reporters in the New Hampshire case to direct questions to Bank of America (who in turn told them to direct questions to Visa).

The Weaky goes to Visa for allowing such an error to get through their system. Any company as large as this should catch mistakes like this.

If you’re the geeky type you can learn more about what may have caused the $23 quadrillion whoopsie. The short version is that it was simple a coding error that didn’t get caught. The geeky version includes references to hex code so if you don’t even know what hex is short for don’t bother reading.

So this was a huge Visa fail but thankfully everything was fixed and no long-term harm was done. Now all that’s left is for someone to try and break the record for the biggest single screw up in monetary coding since Michael Bolton’s misplaced decimal.

Photo: eklektikos

Poker Face: The Card Game Visa Is Playing With Your Money

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Weaky #15: $60,000 Gluttony

The Weakonomist — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:09:51 +0000

This might be one of those posts that pisses off some people. I’m going to attack a woman, use her as an example, and then draw a conclusion about fat people from it.

MSNBC met up Mary Uhazi, who over course of a few decades of credit based spending has run up over $60,000 in credit card debt. No there’s no Berkley degree backing that, it’s all based on good ole fashioned American consumption. You know, the kind that gets Keynes’s loins burning. You can read the article to learn how she did it, but that isn’t what I’m interested in.

What I’m interested in is how pathetic and short-sighted people like Mary are. Mary tells the reporter that she never really gave her spending much thought. It always seemed like she could afford to make the minimum payments but one day a recession sent her on furlough

My good friend J. Money from Budgets Are Sexy linked to this story on Twitter last week. My web browser at work blocks out most images so I had no idea what this person might look like. After reading the article I thought to myself, I’ll be she’s fat. Sure enough, she’s a chunker.

I emailed myself the link and used the trusty iPhone to get the pictures to come up. Why does it matter if she’s fat? Well it confirmed my new stereotype and gave me enough reassurance that economists nutritionists need to team up for a study.

My theory is that there is a measurable correlation between someone’s obesity and their credit card debt. Why? Because I think the behaviors of our nation’s biggest people are very similar to the behaviors of our nation’s biggest spenders. In fact, many of them probably run up debt buying too much food.

Both the fat and the indebted fall victim to instant gratification and a failure to consider the future consequences of their actions today. The obese gorge themselves until they die of heart disease, and the credit card crowd spends until they can no longer afford the minimum payments. It’s basically a death of its own.
This is why I want to see if there is a measurable correlation between the two people. This would be an interesting anecdote and probably give psychologists enough fodder to see if there is a psychological deficiency or if it’s genetic.

So I want to give Mary a round of applause for representing everything that is wrong with America. She’s not the only one by any stretch, but she is the archetype and dumb enough to put herself in the news. Weaky for you.

If you’re thinking I’m a jerk it’s probably appropriate. However I want you to know I am someone who has struggled with obesity and won the fight. It was sheer determination and discipline that did it for me. I’m not skinny, but I did lose 75 lbs and can run a 10k without difficulty. If you don’t know what a 10k is then you probably haven’t weighed yourself recently either. Also, I know there are skinny people with tons of debt and fat people with none, what interests me is if there is a correlation at all.

Photo: menetekel

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When A $300,000 Parking Space Is Worth It

The Weakonomist — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 13:36:59 +0000

If you follow me on Twitter you may have seen this story last week. The short version is that someone purchased a parking space for $300,000. If you live in an area where you park for free or super cheap every day, you might see this as ridiculous.

The $300k parking space immediately became a prime candidate for my coveted Weaky Awards. As if it weren’t bad enough that even the choices for a $300,000 car are very limited, the situation that led to the current price was a classic example of an emotional purchase. Parking spaces in this area of Boston regularly go for less than half of the $300,000 this guy paid. A bidding war between residents led to the highly prized parking space. Even if you have money to burn it’s conceivable that this person grossly overpaid for the spot. Were you to treat this as an investment, it would be a long time before they make their money back if other spaces sell for half the cost. Bad move. If you wanted a spot to park your Ferrari because your wife’s Mercedes takes up the spot that came with your home, I hope you don’t mind it getting wet. This is an outdoor and uncovered parking spot.

However $300k for a parking spot seems less outrageous when you put it into context. For one thing we’re talking downtown Boston. There is a district called “Back Bay” where the wealthy live and play. The couple that sold their space are also selling their home, which is listed at $2.5 million. I looked up the address and found a few listings between $2 million and $3.5 million, but not one specifically for $2.5 million. But to give you an idea of what kind of area we’re talking about, here’s a listing in the same building for $2.7 million.

In order to understand $300k parking spots you have to think like someone that can afford a home costing more than 10x the national average. This person obviously lives in Boston, their multi-million dollar home in Back Bay is probably their primary home too, though possibly not their only home. They probably work very hard, and time is their most precious resource. Though he can afford an Aston Martin, he probably drives something more comfortable, and less expensive. This is because you don’t need 400 horsepower to navigate city streets, you need a soft suspension and something easy to park. Assuming he’s married, his wife gets the garage spot that came with the home because, well, she’s the wife. If this guy drives home from work every day in another part of Boston he might spend 30 minutes or longer finding a parking spot in this cramped neighborhood. But when a fellow resident is selling a spot right near the front door to his own building he sees an opportunity. He’d save himself valuable time and effort. In this scenario $300k for a parking space starts to sound slightly more reasonable. It’s not out of the question for me to say given that situation, I’d consider that too. I hate the act of “finding parking.”

There are other possibilities too. Maybe this guy is a lawyer and he operates out of his home. He’s got a good spot below the building, but his clients had nowhere to park. Leasing high quality office space in Boston is no matter of “bargain hunting”. $300k might pay for itself in a few years compared to what other lawyers are paying for office space and parking for their clients. An he doesn’t even need to be a lawyer, it could be anything.

Of course it always could have been a big purchasing mistake fueled by a bidding war between two angry neighbors with more money than common sense, but I just didn’t have it in me to award this guy a Weaky.

Story: Boston Globe via Autoblog

Photo: zkorb

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