new survey by the Pew Research Center found that 15 percent of prominent accounts on those seven platforms had previously been banished from others like Twitter and Facebook.

F.B.I. raid on Mar-a-Lago thrust his latest pronouncements into the eye of the political storm once again.

study of Truth Social by Media Matters for America, a left-leaning media monitoring group, examined how the platform had become a home for some of the most fringe conspiracy theories. Mr. Trump, who began posting on the platform in April, has increasingly amplified content from QAnon, the online conspiracy theory.

He has shared posts from QAnon accounts more than 130 times. QAnon believers promote a vast and complex conspiracy that centers on Mr. Trump as a leader battling a cabal of Democratic Party pedophiles. Echoes of such views reverberated through Republican election campaigns across the country during this year’s primaries.

Ms. Jankowicz, the disinformation expert, said the nation’s social and political divisions had churned the waves of disinformation.

The controversies over how best to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic deepened distrust of government and medical experts, especially among conservatives. Mr. Trump’s refusal to accept the outcome of the 2020 election led to, but did not end with, the Capitol Hill violence.

“They should have brought us together,” Ms. Jankowicz said, referring to the pandemic and the riots. “I thought perhaps they could be kind of this convening power, but they were not.”

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How Credit Suisse Became a Meme Stock

“Credit Suisse is probably going bankrupt.”

It was Saturday, Oct. 1, and Jim Lewis, who frequently posts on Twitter under the moniker Wall Street Silver, made that assertion to his more than 300,000 followers. “Markets are saying it’s insolvent and probably bust. 2008 moment soon?”

Mr. Lewis was among hundreds of people — many of them amateur investors — who had been speculating about the fate of Credit Suisse, the Swiss bank. It was in the middle of a restructuring and had become an easy target after decades of scandals, failed attempts at reform and management upheavals.

There seemed to be no immediate provocation for Mr. Lewis’s weekend tweet other than a memo that Ulrich Körner, the chief executive of Credit Suisse, had sent employees the day before, reassuring them that the bank was in good financial health.

But the tweet, which has been liked more than 11,000 times and retweeted more than 3,000 times, was one of many that helped ignite a firestorm on social media forums like Twitter and Reddit. The rumor that Credit Suisse was in trouble ricocheted around the world, stumping bank executives and forcing them to call shareholders, trading partners and analysts to reassure them that everything was fine before markets reopened on Monday.

prop up the shares of GameStop, the video game retailer, determined to outsmart hedge funds that had bet the company’s shares would fall.

But what started as a spontaneous effort to take down Wall Street has since become an established presence in the market. Millions of amateur investors have embraced trading, including more sophisticated strategies such as shorting. As the Credit Suisse incident shows, their actions highlight a new source of peril for troubled companies.

Founded in Switzerland in 1856 to help finance the expansion of railroads in the tiny European nation, Credit Suisse has two main units — a private wealth management business and an investment bank. However, the bank has often struggled to maintain a pristine reputation.

It has been the repository of funds from businesspeople who are under sanctions, human rights abusers and intelligence officials. The U.S. government has fined it billions of dollars for its role in helping Americans file false tax returns, marketing mortgage-backed securities tied to the 2008 financial crisis and helping customers in Iran, Sudan and elsewhere breach U.S. sanctions.

In the United States, Credit Suisse built its investment banking business through acquisitions, starting with the 1990 purchase of First Boston. But without a core focus, the bank — whose top bosses sit in Switzerland — has often allowed mavericks to pursue new revenue streams and take outsize risks without adequate supervision.

collapsed. Credit Suisse was one of many Wall Street banks that traded with Archegos, the private investment firm of Bill Hwang, a former star money manager. Yet it lost $5.5 billion, far more than its rivals. The bank later admitted that a “fundamental failure of management and controls” had led to the debacle.

surveillance of Credit Suisse executives under his watch. He left the bank in a stable and profitable condition and invested appropriately across its various divisions, his spokesman, Andy Smith, said.

Credit Suisse replaced Mr. Thiam with Thomas Gottstein, a longtime bank executive. When Archegos collapsed, the bank kept Mr. Gottstein on the job, but he started working with a new chairman, António Horta-Osório, who had been appointed a few months earlier to restructure the bank.

resigned after an inquiry into whether he had broken quarantine rules during the pandemic. But he made swift changes in his short tenure. To reduce risk taking, Mr. Horta-Osório said, the bank would close most of its prime brokerage businesses, which involve lending to big trading firms like Archegos. Credit Suisse also lost a big source of revenue as the market for special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, cooled.

By July, Credit Suisse had announced its third consecutive quarterly loss. Mr. Gottstein was replaced by Mr. Körner, a veteran of the rival Swiss bank UBS.

Mr. Körner and the chairman, Axel Lehmann, who replaced Mr. Horta-Osório, are expected to unveil a new restructuring plan on Oct. 27 in an effort to convince investors of the bank’s long-term viability and profitability. The stock of Credit Suisse has dipped so much in the past year that its market value — which stood around $12 billion — is comparable to that of a regional U.S. bank, smaller than Fifth Third or Citizens Financial Group.

appeared on Reddit.

Mr. Macleod said he had decided that Credit Suisse was in bad shape after looking at what he deemed the best measure of a bank’s value — the price of its stock relative to its “book value,” or assets minus liabilities. Most Wall Street analysts factor in a broader set of measures.

But “bearing in mind that most followers on Twitter and Reddit are not financial professionals,” he said, “it would have been a wake-up call for them.”

The timing puzzled the bank’s analysts, major investors and risk managers. Credit Suisse had longstanding problems, but no sudden crisis or looming bankruptcy.

Some investors said the Sept. 30 memo sent by Mr. Körner, the bank’s chief executive, reassuring staff that Credit Suisse stood on a “strong capital base and liquidity position” despite recent market gyrations had the opposite effect on stock watchers.

Credit Suisse took the matter seriously. Over the weekend of Oct. 1, bank executives called clients to reassure them that the bank had more than the amount of capital required by regulators. The bigger worry was that talk of a liquidity crisis would become a self-fulfilling prophecy, prompting lenders to pull credit lines and depositors to pull cash, which could drain money from the bank quickly — an extreme and even unlikely scenario given the bank’s strong financial position.

“Banks rely on sentiment,” Mr. Scholtz, the Morningstar analyst, said. “If all depositors want their money back tomorrow, the money isn’t there. It’s the reality of banking. These things can snowball.”

What had snowballed was the volume of trading in Credit Suisse’s stock by small investors, which had roughly doubled from Friday to Monday, according to a gauge of retail activity from Nasdaq Data Link.

Amateur traders who gather on social media can’t trade sophisticated products like credit-default swaps — products that protect against companies’ reneging on their debts. But their speculation drove the price of these swaps past levels reached during the 2008 financial crisis.

Some asset managers said they had discussed the fate of the bank at internal meetings after the meme stock mania that was unleashed in early October. While they saw no immediate risk to Credit Suisse’s solvency, some decided to cut trading with the bank anyway until risks subsided.

In another private message on Twitter, Mr. Lewis declined to speak further about why he had predicted that Credit Suisse would collapse.

“The math and evidence is fairly obvious at this point,” he wrote. “If you disagree, the burden is really on you to support that position.”

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An Uptick in Elder Poverty: A Blip, or a Sign of Things to Come?

“We’re getting more and more older people who lived through this experiment with do-it-yourself pensions, and they’re coming into this age group without the same kind of incomes that older people have,” said Teresa Ghilarducci, an economics professor at the New School who specializes in retirement policy. “I don’t think it’s a blip.”

Even though the share of elderly people officially below the poverty line is low by historical standards in the United States, it remains among the highest in the developed world, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The average poverty rate for older Americans also masks far higher shares among more vulnerable groups, with nearly one in five Black and Hispanic women 65 or older falling below the official poverty threshold in 2021. It’s higher for single people, too — a reality forced on hundreds of thousands of older Americans whose spouses died of Covid-19.

The poverty rate is also not a bright line when it comes to financial hardship. It doesn’t take into account debt, which more seniors have accumulated since the Great Recession. Moreover, nearly one in four people 65 or older make less than 150 percent of the federal poverty line, or $19,494 on average for those living alone. Another measure, developed by the Gerontology Institute at the University of Massachusetts Boston and called the Elder Index, finds that it takes $22,476 for a single older person in good health with no mortgage to cover basic needs, with the cost escalating for renters and those with health problems.

“To some extent we’re splitting hairs when we talk about people who fall just above and just below, because they’re all struggling,” said Jan Mutchler, a demographer at the University of Massachusetts at Boston who helped devise the Elder Index. “The assumptions that go into what we’re calling hardship are just flawed.”

That’s true for Juanita Brown, 77, who lives on her own in Galax, a small town in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. A farmer’s daughter, she worked as a nanny, and then a certified nursing assistant, and then a preschool teacher. Her husband worked in the local textile industry, and after raising two children, they had built a substantial nest egg.

But then Ms. Brown’s mother developed Alzheimer’s disease and couldn’t support herself. Ms. Brown stopped working to take care of her, which cost another $500 per month in expenses. Her husband got prostate cancer, which required extended trips to the hospital in Winston-Salem, N.C.

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Aimco Files Definitive Proxy Materials and Mails Letter to Stockholders

DENVER–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Apartment Investment and Management Company (NYSE: AIV) (“Aimco” or the “Company”), today announced that it has filed its definitive proxy materials with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) in connection with its 2022 Annual Meeting of Stockholders scheduled to be held on December 16, 2022. Stockholders of record as of October 26, 2022, will be entitled to vote at the meeting. Aimco’s Board of Directors (the “Board”) strongly recommends that stockholders vote on the WHITE proxy card “FOR ALL” three of Aimco’s qualified and experienced director nominees, Jay Paul Leupp, Michael A. Stein and R. Dary Stone.

In conjunction with the definitive proxy filing, Aimco has also mailed a letter to the Company’s stockholders. Highlights from the letter include:

Aimco’s definitive proxy materials and other materials regarding the Board’s recommendation for the 2022 Annual Meeting of Stockholders can be found at https://investors.aimco.com.

1 TSR calculation as of September 30, 2022

2 Includes AHH, CLPR, CSR, FOR, FPH, HHC, IRT, JBGS, JOE, STRS, TRC, VRE, and WRE (per AIV 2021 10-K) represents simple average

The full text of the letter being mailed to stockholders follows:

October 12, 2022

Dear Fellow Stockholders:

Your Board of Directors and management team are committed to enhancing the value of your investment in Aimco and have been unwavering in our commitment to acting in the best interests of our stockholders. We have implemented a clearly defined value creation strategy and a comprehensive transformation of Aimco’s legacy business under a recently reconstituted, majority-independent Board (the “New Aimco Board” or the “Board”) and all-new executive management team.

Since the New Aimco Board and management team assumed their current roles following the Apartment Income REIT Corp. (“AIR”) spin-off in December 2020, Aimco has delivered total stockholder returns of 45%3, significantly outperforming its identified developer peer group4, the FTSE NAREIT Equity Apartments Index, the MSCI US REIT Index, the S&P 500 and the Russell 2000.

Aimco expects to continue to drive growth and outsized returns by:

The New Aimco Board and new management team executing this plan were put in place in connection with the 2020 spin-off of AIR, with the Company:

Despite Aimco’s clear momentum and the recent reconstitution of the Aimco Board, Land & Buildings Investment Management LLC (“Land & Buildings”) has initiated a proxy contest and is seeking to remove and replace two of your highly qualified directors. We have engaged with Land & Buildings to better understand its perspectives and have reviewed the qualifications of the candidates it has put forth. It is clear from our interactions to date, however, that Land & Buildings is primarily focused on historical issues and decisions made prior to the reconstitution of the Aimco Board and the replacement of the Aimco management team. While the New Aimco Board and management are open to continued dialogue with Land & Buildings, we believe that additional director turnover at this time is unwarranted. We also believe that the candidates proposed by Land & Buildings would not bring any relevant expertise that is not already well represented on the Aimco Board, and that election of Land & Buildings’ candidates would remove expertise from the New Aimco Board that is critical to our success.

Against this backdrop, you now face an important decision regarding the future of your investment and go-forward Board of Directors. Your Board has three directors up for re-election who have highly relevant skills and expertise and are important contributors to Aimco’s ongoing success. To protect your investment, we strongly recommend that you vote the enclosed universal WHITE proxy card today “FOR” all three of Aimco’s qualified and experienced director nominees: Jay Paul Leupp, Michael A. Stein and R. Dary Stone. Please vote today to ensure your voice is heard at the Company’s Annual Meeting of Stockholders (“Annual Meeting”) on December 16, 2022.

PROTECT THE VALUE OF YOUR INVESTMENT.

USE THE UNIVERSAL WHITE PROXY CARD TODAY TO VOTE FOR ALL THREE

OF AIMCO’S QUALIFIED AND EXPERIENCED DIRECTORS

AIMCO IS SUCCESSFULLY EXECUTING ITS VALUE ADD STRATEGY

For the past 21 months, Aimco has been successfully executing a growth strategy focused on value add, opportunistic, and alternative investments, targeting the U.S. multifamily sector.

As part of this strategy, we’ve taken decisive actions to drive stockholder value, by:

AIMCO HAS DELIVERED SIGNIFICANT VALUE FOR STOCKHOLDERS

Since the December 2020 spin-off, Aimco has significantly outperformed its identified developer peer group, real estate market indices, and broader market indices, as evidenced in the following chart.

From an operating perspective, we have generated significant value across our stabilized portfolio and our development pipeline. For example, during the first half of 2022, we increased net operating income by 14.9%, and since the start of 2021, we have nearly tripled the Company’s future development pipeline.

Importantly, we have a clear plan to build on this progress and drive continued growth. We will remain primarily focused on multifamily housing with an increased allocation to value add and opportunistic investments. We will also continue to leverage the Company’s best-in-class platform, existing portfolio of value add and stable core properties, and an investment pipeline that leads to superior risk-adjusted returns.

Despite these strong results and clear and actionable strategy, the New Aimco Board is not standing still. We routinely consider all viable options to enhance and unlock stockholder value and remain committed to doing so going forward.

NEW AIMCO BOARD AND MANAGEMENT TEAM HAVE ENGAGED CONSTRUCTIVELY

WITH STOCKHOLDERS, INCLUDING LAND & BUILDINGS

Aimco is committed to open and constructive engagement with all stockholders, including Land & Buildings. Aimco has held more than 80 individual meetings with more than 35 current and prospective stockholders in the past 13 months, including stockholders that own in the aggregate more than 80% of Aimco’s outstanding shares of common stock, as well as multiple meetings with Land & Buildings, as described in the Company’s proxy statement. The New Aimco Board has demonstrated that we value and act on the feedback we receive.

The New Aimco Board and management team are focused on the future, executing a clear and effective strategy to enhance the value of your investment, while Land & Buildings’ complaints primarily relate to decisions made almost two years ago by the pre-spin Board of Directors and management team.

THE DIRECTORS ON AIMCO’S MAJORITY-INDEPENDENT, RECONSTITUTED BOARD

BRING HIGHLY RELEVANT SKILLS AND FRESH PERSPECTIVES

Aimco is seeking your support to vote FOR ALL of its three highly qualified, experienced directors at this year’s Annual Meeting: Jay Paul Leupp, Michael A. Stein and R. Dary Stone.

The New Aimco Board is purpose-built, and its composition reflects our commitment to closely aligning the skill sets and experience of the Company’s directors with the needs of the Company and its stockholders. Importantly, the Board works closely with management and has been—and will continue to be—a significant agent of change overseeing the continued improvement of Aimco’s performance and valuation.

We are confident that our three highly-qualified nominees seeking re-election are the better choice to build on the success that Aimco has delivered. Aimco’s three director nominees bring highly relevant expertise and complementary skillsets, and our Board is unanimous in recommending that stockholders vote for our three nominees.

Mr. Leupp, an independent director and the Chairman of Aimco’s Audit Committee, has been an integral part of our Board since his appointment in December 2020 and brings capital markets, investment and finance, real estate, and development experience gained through his over 28 years as a Portfolio Manager and Managing Director focused on investments in publicly traded real estate securities and publicly traded REIT board service. Mr. Leupp is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA).

Mr. Stein, an independent director and Chairman of Aimco’s Investment Committee, is a seasoned executive who brings real estate investment and finance, financial reporting, accounting and auditing, capital markets, and business operations experience, gained through his experience as a director of five publicly traded companies and Chief Financial Officer of three publicly traded companies. Further, having served on Aimco’s Board since October 2004, Mr. Stein has significant institutional knowledge of Aimco.

Mr. Stone, an independent director and Chairman of Aimco’s Nominating, Environmental, Social, and Governance Committee, is an experienced leader and has served on Aimco’s Board since December 2020 and brings investment and finance, real estate, development, property / asset management and operations, and capital markets experience gained through his over 30-year career investing and developing a variety of projects and joint ventures, including the management of one of the country’s largest master planned developments. He also brings publicly traded REIT board service.

PROTECT THE VALUE OF YOUR INVESTMENT AND AIMCO’S FUTURE GROWTH PROSPECTS.

USE THE UNIVERSAL WHITE PROXY CARD TODAY TO VOTE FOR ALL THREE

OF AIMCO’S QUALIFIED AND EXPERIENCED DIRECTORS

The New Aimco Board is active, engaged and focused on continuing to grow Aimco and providing enhanced value for all our stockholders. We strongly recommend that stockholders vote FOR the Company’s three director nominees on the universal WHITE proxy card: Jay Paul Leupp, Michael A. Stein and R. Dary Stone.

Your vote “FOR” our director nominees will help ensure that you, as an Aimco stockholder, have a Board acting in your best interest at all times.

On behalf of the New Aimco Board, we appreciate your investment and support.

Sincerely,

The Aimco Board of Directors

3 TSR calculation as of September 30, 2022

4 Includes AHH, CLPR, CSR, FOR, FPH, HHC, IRT, JBGS, JOE, STRS, TRC, VRE, and WRE (per AIV 2021 10-K) represents simple average

If you have questions or require any assistance with voting your shares, please contact the Company’s proxy solicitor listed below:

MacKenzie Partners, Inc.

1407 Broadway, 27th Floor

New York, New York 10018

Call Collect: (212) 929-5500

or

Toll-Free (800) 322-2885

Email: proxy@mackenziepartners.com

Forward Looking Statements

This document contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Forward-looking statements include all statements that are not historical statements of fact and those regarding our intent, belief, or expectations, including, but not limited to, the statements in this document regarding future financing plans, including the Company’s expected leverage and capital structure; business strategies, prospects, and projected operating and financial results (including earnings), including facts related thereto, such as expected costs; future share repurchases; expected investment opportunities; and our 2022 pipeline investments and projects. We caution investors not to place undue reliance on any such forward-looking statements.

Words such as “anticipate(s),” “expect(s),” “intend(s),” “plan(s),” “believe(s),” “plan(s),” “may,” “will,” “would,” “could,” “should,” “seek(s),” “forecast(s),” and similar expressions, or the negative of these terms, are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, condition or results, and involve a number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other important factors, among others, that may affect actual results or outcomes include, but are not limited to: (i) the risk that the 2022 preliminary plans and goals may not be completed in a timely manner or at all, (ii) the inability to recognize the anticipated benefits of the pipeline investments and projects, and (iii) changes in general economic conditions, including as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although we believe that the assumptions underlying the forward-looking statements, which are based on management’s expectations and estimates, are reasonable, we can give no assurance that our expectations will be attained.

Risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations include, but are not limited to: the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the Company’s business and on the global and U.S. economies generally; real estate and operating risks, including fluctuations in real estate values and the general economic climate in the markets in which we operate and competition for residents in such markets; national and local economic conditions, including the pace of job growth and the level of unemployment; the amount, location and quality of competitive new housing supply; the timing and effects of acquisitions, dispositions, redevelopments and developments; changes in operating costs, including energy costs; negative economic conditions in our geographies of operation; loss of key personnel; the Company’s ability to maintain current or meet projected occupancy, rental rate and property operating results; the Company’s ability to meet budgeted costs and timelines, and, if applicable, achieve budgeted rental rates related to redevelopment and development investments; expectations regarding sales of apartment communities and the use of proceeds thereof; the ability to successfully operate as two separate companies each with more narrowed focus; insurance risks, including the cost of insurance, and natural disasters and severe weather such as hurricanes; financing risks, including the availability and cost of financing; the risk that cash flows from operations may be insufficient to meet required payments of principal and interest; the risk that earnings may not be sufficient to maintain compliance with debt covenants, including financial coverage ratios; legal and regulatory risks, including costs associated with prosecuting or defending claims and any adverse outcomes; the terms of laws and governmental regulations that affect us and interpretations of those laws and regulations; possible environmental liabilities, including costs, fines or penalties that may be incurred due to necessary remediation of contamination of apartment communities presently or previously owned by the Company; activities by stockholder activists, including a proxy contest; the Company’s relationship with each other after the consummation of the business separation; the ability and willingness of the Company and their subsidiaries to meet and/or perform their obligations under any contractual arrangements that are entered into among the parties in connection with the business separation and any of their obligations to indemnify, defend and hold the other party harmless from and against various claims, litigation and liabilities; and the ability to achieve some or all the benefits that we expect to achieve from the business separation.

In addition, the Company’s current and continuing qualification as a real estate investment trust involves the application of highly technical and complex provisions of the Internal Revenue Code and depends on the Company’s ability to meet the various requirements imposed by the Internal Revenue Code, through actual operating results, distribution levels and diversity of stock ownership.

Readers should carefully review the Company’s financial statements and the notes thereto, as well as the section entitled “Risk Factors” in Item 1A of the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2021 and in Item 1A of the Company’s Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q for the quarterly periods ended March 31, 2022 and June 30, 2022, and the other documents the Company files from time to time with the SEC. These filings identify and address important risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events and results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements.

These forward-looking statements reflect management’s judgment as of this date, and the Company assumes no (and disclaims any) obligation to revise or update them to reflect future events or circumstances.

We make no representations or warranties as to the accuracy of any projections, estimates, targets, statements or information contained in this document. It is understood and agreed that any such projections, estimates, targets, statements and information are not to be viewed as facts and are subject to significant business, financial, economic, operating, competitive and other risks, uncertainties and contingencies many of which are beyond our control, that no assurance can be given that any particular financial projections or targets will be realized, that actual results may differ from projected results and that such differences may be material. While all financial projections, estimates and targets are necessarily speculative, we believe that the preparation of prospective financial information involves increasingly higher levels of uncertainty the further out the projection, estimate or target extends from the date of preparation. The assumptions and estimates underlying the projected, expected or target results are inherently uncertain and are subject to a wide variety of significant business, economic and competitive risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the financial projections, estimates and targets. The inclusion of financial projections, estimates and targets in this presentation should not be regarded as an indication that we or our representatives, considered or consider the financial projections, estimates and targets to be a reliable prediction of future events.

Glossary and Reconciliations of Non-GAAP Financial and Operating Measures

This document includes certain financial and operating measures used by Aimco management that are not calculated in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States, or GAAP. Aimco’s definitions and calculations of these Non-GAAP financial and operating measures and other terms may differ from the definitions and methodologies used by other REITs and, accordingly, may not be comparable. These Non-GAAP financial and operating measures should not be considered an alternative to GAAP net income or any other GAAP measurement of performance and should not be considered an alternative measure of liquidity.

NET OPERATING INCOME (NOI) MARGIN: Represents an apartment community’s net operating income as a percentage of the apartment community’s rental and other property revenues.

PROPERTY NET OPERATING INCOME (NOI): NOI is defined by Aimco as total property rental and other property revenues less direct property operating expenses, including real estate taxes. NOI does not include: property management revenues, primarily from affiliates; casualties; property management expenses; depreciation; or interest expense. NOI is helpful because it helps both investors and management to understand the operating performance of real estate excluding costs associated with decisions about acquisition pricing, overhead allocations, and financing arrangements. NOI is also considered by many in the real estate industry to be a useful measure for determining the value of real estate. Reconciliations of NOI as presented in this document to Aimco’s consolidated GAAP amounts are provided below. Due to the diversity of its economic ownership interests in its apartment communities in the periods presented, Aimco evaluates the performance of the apartment communities in its segments using Property NOI, which represents the NOI for the apartment communities that Aimco consolidates and excludes apartment communities that it does not consolidate. Property NOI is defined as rental and other property revenue less property operating expenses. In its evaluation of community results, Aimco excludes utility cost reimbursement from rental and other property revenues and reflects such amount as a reduction of the related utility expense within property operating expenses. The following table presents the reconciliation of GAAP rental and other property revenue to the revenues before utility reimbursements and GAAP property operating expenses to expenses, net of utility reimbursements.

Segment NOI Reconciliation

Twelve Months Ended (in thousands)

December 31, 2021

December 31, 2020

Total Real Estate Operations

Revenues,

Before Utility

Reimbursements
[1]

Expenses,

Net of Utility

Reimbursements

Revenues,

Before Utility

Reimbursements
[1]

Expenses,

Net of Utility

Reimbursements

 
 

Total (per consolidated statements of operations)

$

169,836

 

$

67,613

 

$

151,451

 

$

61,514

 

 

Adjustment: Utilities reimbursement

 

(3,022

)

$

(3,022

)

 

(2,163

)

 

(2,163

)

 

Adjustment: Non-stabilized and other amounts not allocated [2]

 

(30,629

)

 

(21,158

)

 

(18,528

)

 

(17,676

)

 

Total Stabilized Operating (per Schedule 6)

$

136,185

 

$

43,433

 

$

130,760

 

$

41,675

 

 
 
 

Segment NOI Reconciliation

Three Months Ended (in thousands)

June 30, 2022

June 30, 2021

Total Real Estate Operations

Revenues,

Before Utility

Reimbursements
[1]

Expenses,

Net of Utility

Reimbursements

Revenues,

Before Utility

Reimbursements
[1]

Expenses,

Net of Utility

Reimbursements

 
 

Total (per consolidated statements of operations)

$

50,697

 

$

19,708

 

$

40,418

 

$

16,403

 

 

Adjustment: Utilities reimbursement

 

(1,347

)

 

(1,347

)

 

(1,128

)

 

(1,128

)

 

Adjustment: Assets Held for Sale

 

(1,823

)

$

568

 

 

(1,798

)

 

634

 

 

Adjustment: Other Real Estate

 

(4,383

)

$

1,317

 

 

(3,138

)

 

1,090

 

 

Adjustment: Non-stabilized and other amounts not allocated [2]

 

(10,040

)

 

(9,825

)

 

(4,589

)

 

(7,056

)

 

Total Stabilized Operating (per Schedule 6)

$

33,104

 

$

10,420

 

$

29,765

 

$

9,943

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

Segment NOI Reconciliation

Six Months Ended (in thousands)

June 30, 2022

June 30, 2021

Total Real Estate Operations

Revenues,

Before Utility

Reimbursements
[1]

Expenses,

Net of Utility

Reimbursements

Revenues,

Before Utility

Reimbursements
[1]

Expenses,

Net of Utility

Reimbursements

 
 

Total (per consolidated statements of operations)

$

100,691

 

$

38,929

 

$

80,222

 

$

33,345

 

 

Adjustment: Utilities reimbursement

 

(2,903

)

 

(2,903

)

 

(2,473

)

 

(2,473

)

 

Adjustment: Assets Held for Sale

 

(3,628

)

 

1,159

 

 

(3,503

)

 

1,265

 

 

Adjustment: Other Real Estate

 

(9,378

)

 

(2,822

)

 

(6,324

)

 

(2,127

)

 

Adjustment: Non-stabilized and other amounts not allocated [2]

 

(19,455

)

 

(13,696

)

 

(8,903

)

 

(9,871

)

 

Total Stabilized Operating (per Schedule 6)

$

65,327

 

$

20,667

 

$

59,018

 

$

20,139

 

[1] Approximately two-thirds of Aimco’s utility costs are reimbursed by residents. These reimbursements are included in rental and other property revenues on Aimco’s consolidated statements of operations prepared in accordance with GAAP. This adjustment represents the reclassification of utility reimbursements from revenues to property operating expenses for the purpose of evaluating segment results and as presented on Supplemental Schedule 6. Aimco also excludes the reimbursement amounts from the calculation of Average Revenue per Apartment Home throughout this Earnings Release and Supplemental Schedules.

[2] Properties not included in the Stabilized Operating Portfolio and other amounts not allocated includes operating results of properties not presented in the Stabilized Operation Portfolio as presented on Supplemental Schedule 6 during the periods shown, as well as property management and casualty expense, which are not included in property operating expenses, net of utility reimbursements in the Supplemental Schedule 6 presentation.

About Aimco

Aimco is a diversified real estate company primarily focused on value add, opportunistic, and alternative investments, targeting the U.S. multifamily sector. Aimco’s mission is to make real estate investments where outcomes are enhanced through its human capital so that substantial value is created for investors, teammates, and the communities in which we operate. Aimco is traded on the New York Stock Exchange as AIV. For more information about Aimco, please visit its website www.aimco.com.

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Amazon Labor Union, With Renewed Momentum, Faces Next Test

The Amazon Labor Union has built momentum leading up to an election this week at an 800-person warehouse near Albany, N.Y.

A federal labor official recently endorsed the union’s election victory at a Staten Island warehouse in April, which Amazon has challenged, while workers’ frustrations over pay and safety have created an opportunity to add supporters and pressure the company to bargain.

But the union faces questions about whether it can translate such opportunities into lasting gains. For months after its victory at the 8,000-person warehouse on Staten Island, the union appeared to be out of its depths. It nearly buckled under a crush of international media attention and lost a vote at a second Staten Island warehouse in May.

At times, it has neglected organizing inside the original warehouse, known as JFK8, where high turnover means the union must do constant outreach just to maintain support — to say nothing of expanding. Christian Smalls, the union’s president and a former JFK8 employee, seemed distracted as he traveled widely. There was burnout and infighting in the group, and several core members left or were pushed out.

attempt to overturn its victory, which consumed time and resources, as supporters and leaders testified in hearings that dragged across 24 business days beginning in mid-June. The union delayed plans to train more workers as organizers. A national organizing call was put on hold.

a party in Hollywood and decided that the Amazon Labor Union “understood where we were coming from,” she recalled in an interview.

could spend years appealing the election result on Staten Island, and the company still has enormous power over JFK8 workers. After workers protested Amazon’s response to a fire at the site last week, the company suspended more than 60 of them with pay while, it said, it investigated what had occurred. The union filed unfair-labor-practice charges over the suspensions; Amazon said most of the workers had returned to work.

unusually high injury rates, among other safety issues. The facility was evacuated after a cardboard compactor caught fire last week, two days after the JFK8 fire, which was similar.

“The timeline to fix things is before something tragic happens,” Ms. Goodall said.

She accused Amazon of running an aggressive anti-union campaign, including regular meetings with employees in which it questions the union’s credibility and suggests that workers could end up worse off if they unionize.

Mr. Flaningan, the company spokesman, said that while injuries increased as Amazon trained hundreds of thousands of new workers in 2021, the company believed that its safety record surpassed that of other retailers over a broader period.

“Like many other companies, we hold these meetings because it’s important that everyone understands the facts about joining a union and the election process itself,” he said, adding that the decision to unionize is up to employees.

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A Strong Dollar Is Wreaking Havoc on Emerging Markets. A Debt Crisis Could Be Next.

The average household in Ghana is paying two-thirds more than it did last year for diesel, flour and other necessities. In Egypt, wheat is so expensive that the government has fallen half a billion dollars short of its budget for a bread subsidy it provides to its citizens. And Sri Lanka, already struggling to control a political crisis, is running out of fuel, food and medical supplies.

A strong dollar is making the problems worse.

Compared with other currencies, the U.S. dollar is the strongest it has been in two decades. It is rising because the Federal Reserve has increased interest rates sharply to combat inflation and because America’s economic health is better than most. Together, these factors have attracted investors from all over the world. Sometimes they simply buy dollars, but even if investors buy other assets, like government bonds, they need dollars to do so — in each case pushing up the currency’s value.

That strength has become much of the world’s weakness. The dollar is the de facto currency for global trade, and its steep rise is squeezing dozens of lower-income nations, chiefly those that rely heavily on imports of food and oil and borrow in dollars to fund them.

But much of the damage is already behind us.

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  • “We are in a fragile situation,” Mr. El-Erian said. “Country after country is flashing amber, and some are already flashing red.”

    Many lower-income countries were already struggling during the pandemic.

    Roughly 22 million people in Ghana, or a third of its population, reported a decline in their income between April 2020 and May 2021, according to a survey from the World Bank and Unicef. Adults in almost half of the households with children surveyed said they were skipping a meal because they didn’t have enough money. Almost three-quarters said the prices of major food items had increased.

    Then came Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The war between two of the world’s largest exporters of food and energy led to a big surge in prices, especially for importers like Ghana. Consumer prices have gone up 30 percent for the year through June, according to data from the research firm Moody’s Analytics. For household essentials, annual inflation has reached 60 percent or more this year, the S&P data shows.

    To illustrate this, consider the price of a barrel of oil in dollars versus the Ghanaian cedi. At the beginning of October last year, the price of oil stood at $78.52 per barrel, rising to nearly $130 per barrel in March before falling back to $87.96 at the beginning of this month, a one-year increase of 12 percent in dollar terms. Over the same period, the Ghanaian cedi has weakened over 40 percent against the dollar, meaning that the same barrel of oil that cost roughly 475 cedi a year ago now costs over 900 cedi, almost twice as much.

    Adding to the problem are large state-funded subsidies, some taken on or increased through the pandemic, that are now weighing on government finances.

    Ghana’s president cut fuel taxes in November 2021, losing roughly $22 million in projected revenue for the government — the latest available numbers.

    In Egypt, spending on what the government refers to as “supply commodities,” almost all of which is wheat for its long-running bread subsidy, is expected to come in at around 7 percent of all government spending this year, 12 percent higher — or more than half a billion dollars — than the government budgeted.

    As costs ballooned throughout the pandemic, governments took on more debt. Ghana’s public debt grew to nearly $60 billion from roughly $40 billion at the end of 2019, or to nearly 80 percent of its gross domestic product from around 63 percent, according to Moody’s.

    It’s one of four countries listed by S&P, alongside Pakistan, Nigeria and Sri Lanka, where interest payments alone account for more than half of the government’s revenues.

    “We can’t forget that this is happening on the back end of a once-in-a-century pandemic in which governments, to try and support families as best they could, did borrow more,” said Frank Gill, an analyst at S&P. “This is a shock following up on another shock.”

    In May, Sri Lanka defaulted on its government debt for the first time in its history. Over the past month, the governments of Egypt, Pakistan and Ghana have all reached out to the International Monetary Fund for a bailout as they struggle to meet their debt financing needs, no longer able to turn to international investors for more money.

    “I don’t think there is a lot of appetite to lend money to some of these countries,” said Brian Weinstein, co-head of credit trading at Bank of America. “They are incredibly vulnerable at the moment.”

    That vulnerability is already reflected in the bond market.

    In 2016, Ghana borrowed $1 billion for 10 years, paying an interest rate of just over 8 percent. As the country’s financial position has worsened and investors have backed away, the yield — indicative of what it would now cost Ghana to borrow money until 2026 — has risen to above 35 percent.

    It’s an untenable cost of debt for a country in Ghana’s situation. And Ghana is not alone. For bonds that also mature in 2026, yields for Pakistan have reached almost 40 percent.

    “We have concerns where any country has yields that calls into question their ability to refinance in public markets,” said Charles Cohen, deputy division chief of monetary and capital market departments at IMF.

    The risk of a sovereign debt crisis in some emerging markets is “very, very high,” said Jesse Rogers, an economist at Moody’s Analytics. Mr. Rogers likened the current situation to the debt crises that crushed Latin America in the 1980s — the last time the Fed sought to quell soaring inflation.

    Already this year, more than $80 billion has been withdrawn from mutual funds and exchange-traded funds — two popular types of investment products — that buy emerging market bonds, according to EPFR Global, a data provider. As investors sell, the United States is often the beneficiary, further strengthening the dollar.

    “It’s by far the worst year for outflows the market has ever seen,” said Pramol Dhawan, head of emerging markets at Pimco.

    Even citizens in some of these countries are trying to exchange their money for dollars, fearful of what’s to come and of further currency depreciation — yet inadvertently also contributing to it.

    “For pockets of emerging markets, this is a really challenging backdrop and one of the most challenging backdrops we have faced for many years,” Mr. Dhawan said.

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    British Ruling Pins Blame on Social Media for Teenager’s Suicide

    In January 2019, Mr. Russell went public with Molly’s story. Outraged that his young daughter could view such bleak content so easily and convinced that it had played a role in her death, he sat for a TV interview with the BBC that resulted in front-page stories across British newsstands.

    Mr. Russell, a television director, urged the coroner reviewing Molly’s case to go beyond what is often a formulaic process, and to explore the role of social media. Mr. Walker agreed after seeing a sample of Molly’s social media history.

    That resulted in a yearslong effort to get access to Molly’s social media data. The family did not know her iPhone passcode, but the London police were able to bypass it to extract 30,000 pages of material. After a lengthy battle, Meta agreed to provide more than 16,000 pages from her Instagram, such a volume that it delayed the start of the inquest. Merry Varney, a lawyer with the Leigh Day law firm who worked on the case through a legal aid program, said it had taken more than 1,000 hours to review the content.

    What they found was that Molly had lived something of a double life. While she was a regular teenager to family, friends and teachers, her existence online was much bleaker.

    In the six months before Molly died, she shared, liked or saved 16,300 pieces of content on Instagram. About 2,100 of those posts, or about 12 per day, were related to suicide, self-harm and depression, according to data that Meta disclosed to her family. Many accounts she interacted with were dedicated to sharing only depressive and suicidal material, often using hashtags that linked to other explicit content.

    Many posts glorified inner struggle, hiding emotional duress and telling others “I’m fine.” Molly went on binges of liking and saving graphic depictions of suicide and self-harm, once after 3 a.m., according to a timeline of her Instagram usage.

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    China’s ‘Absurd’ Covid Propaganda Stirs Rebellion

    “We have won the great battle against Covid!”

    “History will remember those who contributed!”

    “Extinguish every outbreak!”

    These are among the many battle-style slogans that Beijing has unleashed to rally support around its top-down, zero-tolerance coronavirus policies.

    China is now one of the last places on earth trying to eliminate Covid-19, and the Communist Party has relied heavily on propaganda to justify increasingly long lockdowns and burdensome testing requirements that can sometimes lead to three tests a week.

    The barrage of messages — online and on television, loudspeakers and social platforms — has become so overbearing that some citizens say it has drowned out their frustrations, downplayed the reality of the country’s tough coronavirus rules and, occasionally, bordered on the absurd.

    citywide lockdown in Shanghai this spring, Jason Xue had no more food left in his fridge. Yet when he clicked on the government’s social media account, he noticed that a top city official had vowed to “make every possible endeavor” to address food shortages.

    Government assistance didn’t show up until four weeks later, Mr. Xue said.

    “I was extremely angry, panicked and despairing,” said Mr. Xue, who works for a financial communications firm. He eventually turned to neighbors for help. “The propaganda was resolute and decisive, but it was different from the reality that we didn’t even know whether we could have the next meal.”

    Xi Jinping, China’s leader, has made controlling the virus a “top political priority.” Thousands of state media outlets and social media accounts have echoed Beijing’s “zero Covid” policy and praised the sacrifice of workers trying to control Covid-19.

    at least 120 Covid-related propaganda phrases have been created since the beginning of the pandemic.

    blocking them from seeking safety.

    Videos of the episode were posted online and quickly deleted by censors, who said people should “at least bring masks before escaping from buildings,” even when an earthquake is “highly destructive.”

    For some, the video was a reminder of how the government had used the pandemic to tighten its grip on their private lives, telling them when they can leave their apartments, what kind of food they can buy and what hospitals they can enter.

    Kong Lingwanyu, a 22-year-old marketing intern in Shanghai, was upset that officials used the phrase “unless necessary” when describing restrictions around things like leaving the home, dining out or gathering with others.

    Ms. Kong said a local official responsible for carrying out coronavirus policies had told her that she should not “buy unnecessary food.” She said she asked the official what standards the government used to determine what kind of food was necessary.

    “Who are you to decide the ‘necessity’ for others?” she said. “It’s totally absurd and nonsense.”

    On state television, Beijing’s “nine storm fortification actions” around the pandemic are frequently repeated to keep people in line with Covid policies. The nine actions are: neighborhood lockdowns, mass testing, contact tracing, disinfection, quarantine centers, increased health care capacity, traditional Chinese medicine, screening of neighborhoods and prevention of local transmission.

    Yang Xiao, a 33-year-old cinematographer in Shanghai who was confined to his apartment for two months during a lockdown this year, had grown tired of them all.

    “With the Covid control, propaganda and state power expanded and occupied all aspects of our life,” he said in a phone interview. Day after day, Mr. Yang heard loudspeakers in his neighborhood repeatedly broadcasting a notice for P.C.R. testing. He said the announcements had disturbed his sleep at night and woke him up at dawn.

    “Our life was dictated and disciplined by propaganda and state power,” he said.

    To communicate his frustrations, Mr. Yang selected 600 common Chinese propaganda phrases, such as “core awareness,” “obey the overall situation” and “the supremacy of nationhood.” He gave each phrase a number and then put the numbers into Google’s Random Generator, a program that scrambles data.

    He ended up with senseless phrases such as “detect citizens’ life and death line,” “strictly implement functions” and “specialize overall plans without slack.” Then he used a voice program to read the phrases aloud and played the audio on a loudspeaker in his neighborhood.

    No one seemed to notice the five minutes of computer-generated nonsense.

    When Mr. Yang uploaded a video of the scene online, however, more than 1.3 million people viewed it. Many praised the way he used government language as satire. Chinese propaganda was “too absurd to be criticized using logic,” Mr. Yang said. “I simulated the discourse like a mirror, reflecting its own absurdity.”

    His video was taken down by censors.

    Mr. Yang added that he hoped to inspire others to speak out against China’s Covid policies and its use of propaganda in the pandemic. He wasn’t the only Shanghai resident to rebel when the city was locked down.

    In June, dozens of residents protested against the police and Covid control workers who installed chain-link fences around neighborhood apartments. When a protester was shoved into a police car and taken away, one man shouted: “Freedom! Equality! Justice! Rule of law!” Those words would be familiar to most Chinese citizens: They are commonly cited by state media as core socialist values under Mr. Xi.

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