Commercial Loans and Fun Blog

Joke Du Jour:

"A new study reveals that the average fast-food chicken nugget is almost 60 percent fat.  The study also says that the average fast-food customer is almost 60 percent chicken nuggets.” — Conan O'Brien

 

 

 

 

Commercial Loan Lesson:

Banks will often grant commercial lines-of-credit to profitable businesses.  Generally, a company will need to show a steady profit of 1.5 times the size of the requested line-of-credit.  For example, if you wanted a $150,000 line-of-credit, the company would have to consistently show a profit of at least $225,000.

But what if the company is a C-corp, as opposed to an LLC?  Amazon is a C-corp, and so is Wal-Mart, Tesla, IBM and the rest of the big boys.  C-corp's pay taxes on their profit, and then the owners pay again - double taxation - when they receive dividends.  

The way is get around this is for the owners of the corporation, if it is closely-held, to suck out all of the profits in the form of big salaries and bonuses.  When the company's profit has been drawn down to break-even, the C-corp has no income taxes to pay.  Voila!  Business 101.

 

 

 

 

I had a retarded banker tell me the other day that my borrower, the sole owner of a family corporation, had to show a $225,000 profit in his C-corp. in order to qualify for a $150,000 line of credit, despite pulling out a huge salary every year.  

That meant that he would have to pay $67,500 in unnecessary Federal income taxes (30%) plus another $18,000 in unnecessary State income taxes (8%).  The bank would also charge around $15,750 (7%) in interest for its line, so altogether our borrower would have been required to pay $101,250 every year, just to borrow $150,000.

The bank underwriter wouldn't budge.  I would never call some precious little girl, born with Down Syndrome, retarded.  But this banker?  He was clearly retarded.  Haha!

 

 

 

 

Scary New Facts About the War With China This April:

In 1987, the U.S. agreed to an Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia.  We couldn't legally build intermediate range missiles; but China, which was not a party to the treaty, built scores and scores of mobile (truck borne) intermediate range missiles capable of destroying our carriers.  In 2019, President Trump withdrew from the treaty; but it may have been too late.

Right now, China can hit us with their hypersonic missiles, but we can't reach their mobile missile launchers, if we could even find them.  Hence, all of my earlier blog articles about the French knights and the English longbow men at the Battles of Agincourt and Crecy.  A tiny number of Englishmen, with their longer-range weapons, absolutely destroyed huge French armies.

If China is going to invade Taiwan, it will almost certainly be this April, just seven months away.  This is the soonest when the ocean tides will be calm enough for the China's invasion craft.

 

 

 

 

Folks, I want to be wrong here.  I want you guys to laugh at me and call me retarded [chuckle] when April passes, and the invasion doesn't start.  "George is retarded, George is retarded!"  :-)

If we can just get past April, our new hypersonic missiles, currently being tested and hopefully soon to be mass-produced by Lockheed, can be delivered to the Army, Navy, the Air Force (air-launched), and the Marines (island-launched), followed by deliveries to Japan, Australia, and Taiwan.

 

 

 

 

 

But I Keep Hearing Scary Stuff:

1. Chinese officials and oligarchs are being ordered to immediately liquidate any overseas holdings (Treasuries, real estate, US stocks, US bonds, etc.) and return the money to China.
   
   
2. China is building coal-fired power plants like crazy to provide energy to the country, in the event that oil supplies are cut off during a war.  Apparently China has a lot of coal.
   
   
3. China is stockpiling food and fuel for the upcoming naval embargo.
   
   
4. The Chinese Navy and their Marines practice their invasion maneuvers, strikes, and landings almost daily.
   
   
5. President Xi is poised this month to essentially be appointed Dictator-For-Life.

 

 

 

 

if the Chinese are ever going to come, this attack is likely to happen this April, before Lockheed starts distributing our own hypersonic missiles.  From the Chinese point of view, time is not on their side.  Tick-tock.

If Donald Trump died and made me King, I would pull all of carriers back 2,500+ miles from the Chinese coast.  Our jets can't reach China's mobile missile launchers anyway, even if we could find them.  There is no point in having our precious young sailors aboard those carriers die for nothing.  

If our subs can sink enough of China's landing crafts and supply ships, and if Taiwan can hold on long enough for our own intermediate range hypersonic missiles to finally arrive, maybe we might have a fighting chance.  But if DraftKings was taking bets on the upcoming war, I sadly would have to place my bets on China.

 

 

 

 

Please, Mr. President, move our carriers out of range.  And don't wait until April!

If I was the war planner for China, I would launch our carrier-killer missiles right now. If the missiles missed or failed to do much damage, I would simply not launch the invasion of Taiwan.  If, on the other hand, Chinese hypersonic missiles sunk one or two American carriers (they are very accurate), no additional American carriers would dare approach Taiwan.

Mr. President, please move our carriers now.

 

 

 

 

Joke Du Jour

When your girlfriend comes home in a white suit, covered in bee stings, and smelling like honey... you know she's a keeper.

Lines of Credit on Commercial Properties Revisited:

Last week I stated that regulators won't allow banks to make the equivalent of HELOC's on apartment buildings and office buildings.  I got some interesting feedback.

 

 

 

One banker wrote, "We will consider them."

A commercial mortgage banker wrote me, "You have been in the lending game a lot longer than me, so I don't want to embarrass myself by saying, 'George, of course some banks and CU's will do commercial LOC's!'  While it's not a preferred product of banks and CU's, there are definitely lenders in the PA / NJ area that will do them.  The terms certainly aren't as attractive as a HELOC, and it costs as much to put one of these in place as it does a commercial mortgage."

A bank loan officer in California wrote me, "In a recent post, you mentioned commercial equity lines of credit, which our bank does indeed offer.  I have funded several in the greater SF Bay Area.  Prime-based pricing, 65% LTV, first or second Deed of Trust."

So apparently, folks, I am full of baloney.  Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.  I am the Great and Powerful Oz!  Haha.

 

 

 

 

America Needs People, Part II:

“If the alarming collapse in birth rate continues, civilization will indeed die
with a whimper in adult diapers.”  -- Elon Musk, August 31, 2022

Adult diapers?  Hahahaha!

The Huns were not Mongolian, but they were a steppe people.  The steppe is that seemingly endless sea of grass that begins in Eastern Europe and reaches to the Mongolian plateaus.  Steppe people spent most of their lives on horseback, herding their vast flocks of sheep and horses from one grazing area to the next, in enormous annual migrations.

Steppe people were also fierce warriors, firing composite bows with incredible accuracy during that brief moment in every stride when a horse is airborne.  Composite bows are made with different layers of bone and wood, and they took a year to cure before they could be used.  They were also recursive (the ends pointed funny), so it took a man of Herculean strength to pull the bow.  The arrows flew so powerfully that they would plow right through wooden shields and ancient armor.

 

 

 

 

Okay, so the Huns migrated into Eastern Europe around 400 A.D. and started kicking the poop out of the Visigoths - the folks then living in Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary.  No matter how bravely the Visigoths fought, they were no match against the armor-piercing arrows of the Huns.  Desperate, the Visigoths gathered up their remaining warriors, their women, their children, and their old people, and they fled across the Danube River into Roman territory.

The local Roman commanders were outnumbered two hundred to one, and the Visigoths were not offering violence.  They simply begged for sanctuary.  What could the local Roman commander do?  He couldn’t force them to leave.  He therefore gave the Visigoths a little used swathe of Roman land in which to huddle… and therein inadvertently spelled the doom of the Roman Empire.  Yikes.

Thirty or so years later, the Visigoths got tired of guarding the Danube River and the Roman border from the Huns without sufficient pay.  Angry and unappreciated, they successfully marched on Rome.  They sacked the city, killing many Roman scientists, engineers, and teachers; but interestingly, they did not burn Rome.  A second sack sixty years later finally burned the city.

 

 

 

 

Why do I bore you with this story?  America desperately needs Latin workers and Latin children to repopulate our country.  Yeah, yeah, they are not of European stock, but the population of Europe is falling so fast that the EU could hardly crew a rowboat. “Excuse me, but are you using those two million Ukrainian refugees?  We would be happy to take them off your hands.”  We need people!

If Caesar had died and made me Caesar, in 400 A.D. I would have cheerfully welcomed those Visigoth refugees.  The Roman Empire had suffered through two horrible plagues - the Antonine Plague in 165 - 180 AD and the Plague of Cyprian in 249 to 265 AD.  Each of these two horrible plagues had reduced the Roman population by 40%.  The Roman Empire desperately needed people too.

But with the benefit of history, I would have dispersed those Visigoths to cities across the Roman Empire, rather than allowing them to settle and increase in power and strength in a single location.  If the Visigoths had been spread out, they would have been Romanized in a generation or two.  They would have become great Roman citizens.

 

 

 

 

If only Caesar had died and made me Caesar.  :-)