The FDIC has seized Georgia’s Silverton Bank, Matt Andrejszak writes for Marketwatch, which is notable here because they’re the bank financing the Landmark Hotel. How will this effect the hotel? Well, it’s not like it could get any worse than remaining as-is. Thanks to Bob for the tip.
By the way, if you’re curious about how the FDIC actually seizes a bank, I highly recommend listening to the recent This American Life episode about this very topic. It’s actually pretty bad-ass. At 6:00 PM on a Friday, dozens of covert agents converge on the unsuspecting bank simultaneously, lock it down, and spend the weekend doing a full accounting of its assets, merging those assets with those of another bank in the area, and opening it again for business under its new name on Monday. They try to do that on a three-day weekend (this Monday, for instance, is a bank holiday), but it’s still a pretty amazing accomplishment.
I heard that episode of “This American Life.” It’s completely bad-ass… well, to the extent that accountants can be HARD CORE.
Oh, and damn this stupid hotel construction failure. I was counting on my roof-top bar, and the drinks that Mr. Minor promised to buy the skeptics like me.
Oh, the heavenly bliss of rooftop bars. Someday, someday. Sigh! I don’t miss big city life very much, but I do miss hanging out on rooftops of tall buildings. The Landmark Hotel was going to be as close as we could get to a tall building, and that rooftop bar was going to help satisfy that particular wistfulness for me. Damn.
Well, thank goodness the city had the common sense to have the developer put up a performance bond. The city would be really screwed had they not done so. Nothing worse than an abandoned large construction site in the middle of your crown-jewel Downtown Mall.
What does a “performance bond” do? Just curious.
Why is this Monday a bank holiday? What’s the occasion?
A performance bond is when you put up a bunch of money to back up a promise. For instance, my wife and I built a road on our land last year. The county has a series of environmental regulations, mostly related to erosion, to which we had to adhere. But the trouble for the county is that they’ve got a tough time making people do anything. We signed a piece of paper promising that we’d put up siltation barriers, but if we didn’t actually do it, they’d have to take us to court to make us. That could take months or years, in which time a lot of damage could be done. So, instead, they had us give them something like $10,000, which they held onto until we were done. If we hadn’t put up the barriers, they could have used some of that money to pay somebody to do it. Like most people, we didn’t actually have $10,000 lying around to pony up, so we went to a local insurance agency and paid them a couple of hundred bucks, and they put up the bond on our behalf. Kind of like paying a bail bondsman.
May Day. Which, yes, was yesterday, but don’t ask me why they observe it on Monday. :)
http://www.frbatlanta.org/invoke.cfm?objectid=A35367B1-1354-11D5-93310020352A7A95&method=display
May Day isn’t an official bank holiday that I can find…
Huh. I was just relying on Apple’s iCal, which has a built-in schedule of holidays. Monday is listed as “May Day Bank Holiday.” But googling around, I have to suspect that it might exist only in England. Which would do nothing to explain why it’s on my calendar. :)
According to JP Morgan, Monday, May 4, isn’t a bank holiday in the US. Where did it say said it was?
http://www.jpmorgan.com/tss/General/Bank_Holidays/1104848711495
I am very happy to hear about this “performance” bond for the Landmark Hotel wreck – how much was the bond for and what will the city use it for?
I think maybe Big Al was kidding about there being a performance bond in place re: this project? I think maybe his point is that we’re screwed?