A common zoning distinction is that a bed & breakfast is a private home where the host lives in the home. If the host does not live there, many cities/towns would then consider it a hotel and subject it to different rules.
I think a lot of the arm waving about airbnb is because of the latter situation. I don't think many people seem to have issues with renting out a spare room.
We don't have zoning in my country. I've had two companies, their address was always my apartment. I was also manager for a company - it was located in an apartment, then a house, then finally a commercial place (when we got to over 25 people).
AirBnb is also collecting occupancy tax in many cities [0]. I don't have a view on whether this tax is well justified, but it does seem like if hotels are required to charge it, then full time airbnb hosts should be required to charge it as well.
I understand that AirBnB is now collecting an Transient Occupancy Tax on a county by county or city by city basis. I'm not arguing that whether AirBnB should be required to charge it. But when you stay in a hotel you as a guest get hit with both an occupancy tax and a sales tax.
The PDF here is a few years old but its a good overview of the tax regimes:
Prominently displayed in large font on page 1 of the Goldman research report on Tesla:
"Goldman Sachs does and seeks to do business with companies covered in its research reports. As a result, investors should be aware that the firm may have a conflict of interest that could affect the objectivity of this report. Investors should consider this report as only a single factor in making their investment decision."
(I put this in the reply to a child, but I felt it was relevant enough to reply directly to the parent.)
If you want to evaluate the quality of Goldman's research analysis on its own merits, this blog post picks out the core of the valuation argument (from mere hours before the IPO announcement)... http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-18/goldman-compares-te...
The only way they get from a $125 base case to the final $250 valuation is by assigning a disjoint probability to the idea that even if Musk doesn't build Steve Jobs-level hype, he would build Maytag Repairman-level hype around electric vehicles; therefore, they can double the probability that there is an above-fundamentals scenario. Whether or not a wall was broken, this is kind of ridiculous.
That's par for the finance world. They will sell you shit with a smile as long as it pays commission even though they would never touch it (or are even short it).
For anyone whose knowledge of this starts and ends with The Big Short, CDOs are not inherently bad. They're just a structure for divvying up assets based on risk. The problem up to 2008 was that the risks were downplayed/hidden by the banks and the credit rating agencies.
We do the equivalent of CDO to our networks at Google. (Ie tcp can't deal with packet loss, so needs the best tranche; especially if user facing. Some long running copy operations with fountain codes only care about total throughput, not lost packages, so get the `equity' tranches.)
No - when they sell you a security, the assumption is they were long until then (holding it) and then either disposed of their entire long position or disposed part of it (in which case they continue holding it long.)
Seems to me that depends on the actual quality of the report. If the report is substantively useful, and not hopelessly biased, then I don't see anything too sketchy about this.
You are conflating the investment banker and the equity research analyst, which have legally mandated information sharing firewalls. Also this potential conflict is clearly and openly disclosed, e.g. "This company publishes research and also seeks to do investment banking business with Tesla".
Further, Goldman conducted a secondary share offering for Tesla as recently as summer 2015, so it was exceedingly obvious to anyone who makes investment decisions based on the research that this conflict exists.
I have worked at several wall street firms and also worked for firms in silicon valley, and I frankly noticed more numerous and blatant conflict of interest situations in silicon valley.
EDIT/UPDATE: Prominently displayed in large font on page 1 of the Goldman research report on Tesla:
"Goldman Sachs does and seeks to do business with companies covered in its research reports. As a result, investors should be aware that the firm may have a conflict of interest that could affect the objectivity of this report. Investors should consider this report as only a single factor in making their investment decision."
No contest to the claim that there are conflicts of interests in silicon valley, but the firewall / chinese wall between research and banking groups is pretty spotty, despite all the formal processes to try to maintain it.
Personally saw tons of sketchy things going on with MDs on IB side influencing research analysts ratings.
It is much harder for investors to do their homework on private companies, because (as described in TFA) many private companies selectively disclose metrics that paint them in a positive light. And there are no requirements or standardized metrics of disclosure.
I think this is why regulators are concerned about the steep drop in "startups" going public. You have these huge companies with enormous valuations, and they arent subject to the disclosure and reporting requirements that regulators have designed for public companies...
The most ridiculous recent example was Morgan Stanley marketing Uber to high net worth individuals. [0] Potential investors were not even allowed to see the financials! You just had to take Morgan Stanley's word for it that the valuation was "reasonable".
Well I think that makes a good place to put a hard rule if you're considering investing in a startup: don't hand over a single penny unless you can see their actual financials. Of course very few people are going to do this instead of just hopping on the startup bandwagon, but it's easy to not play the game.
A different rational response could be to raise parking ticket prices.
I live in NYC. Parking here is so expensive that paying for a parking ticket (if you happen to get caught parking illegally) is cheaper than paying for the parking garage!
A monthly parking garage in my neighborhood (west village, manhattan) can cost $700-800. Parking on the street is not a perfect substitute, but I can get 10-12 parking tickets a month before the cost of parking illegally exceeds the cost of paying for garage space!
Haha, we do this in Miami Beach too. Some streets will tow you, but the others, just a chance of a $17 ticket if you pay within 30 days.
Parking is so expensive and hard to find (like half of the area is parking for "resident sticker only") that most people I know simply park in the residential areas and see what happens.
Levered people, whether rich or poor, are the ones who are forced to sell. There are always some over levered folks from both ends of the economic spectrum.
As long as you can make your monthly payments, you'll never be forced to sell.
Broadly speaking, investment banks perform two roles:
1) Act as advisors in financial transactions. You expect them to have your best interest in mind here. That's the core reason you are paying them -- to give you good advice and look out for you.
2) Act as brokers when you want to buy or sell something. Sometimes it's hard to find buyers or sellers for your particular transaction. Imagine trying to sell a hotel... or a 10% stake in Tesla... or a few million barrels of oil. You might not know anyone who has interest in that, but you still want to buy or sell. An investment bank can help broker a transaction. In this case, you're (implicitly or expicitly) paying for liquidity, i.e. access to their relationships with buyers and sellers around the world. The service being provided is arranging a buyer(seller) for your transaction. (The service is not about providing advice in your best interest).
There are certainly examples of shady dealings in role #1 above.
But in role #2, a customer of an investment bank generally understands that the service is matching buyers/sellers, and you don't rely on the investment bank to do your diligence. You're not paying for advice in this case.
It's like if your real estate agent was representing both the buyer and the seller, and you know they get compensated only if a transaction occurs. of course you expect that they are doing everything in their power to get everyone to transact.
I think a lot of the arm waving about airbnb is because of the latter situation. I don't think many people seem to have issues with renting out a spare room.