The Federal Reserve Bank was able to dodge inflation over the years by printing money and buying securities using front companies. This created a huge bubble in the stock market and also made a few insiders owners of most the publicly traded corporations.

Since the LDS church is a big investor thank’s to decades of cash tithing it became extremely wealthy in this securities bubble. Now the church knows they have to cash out before a crash. One way to cash out is to buy real estate. A good way to justify the purchase is temples.

Business wise the church is in the best situation it ever has been. Membership wise it’s stalled. There’s not enough members to justify all these temples. The church literally has more money than it knows what to do with. Russ has been good at spending it. Of course some of it will go to LDS connected contractors.

But we are seeing the big temple bubble financed by the big stock market bubble and a church awash in money but stumped at what to really do with it and confused what the church really is anymore. The membership numbers stay flat.

The church bought the Deseret Ranch in Florida in the 1950s. They had quite a few welfare farms in Utah before that. Deseret Ranch was 330,000 acres before they started selling off slices as housing developments in east Orlando.

Temple lots are between two and ten acres. Let’s say the average size is 6 acres. Three hundred temples at six acres is 1800 acres. Even at one million dollars an acre, that is only 1.8 billion dollars, less than two percent of what Ensigh Peak Advisors had several years ago.

And trust me, the temple lot in Bismarck, ND would not resell for a million dollars an acre.

On top of which, an asset that you can’t sell is not an investment. Name any temple lot they have ever sold at a profit. And how much was that profit after deducting the cost of tearing down the temple?

You of course can’t name one because they have never sold a temple. And I am sure they would be a lot more expensive to tear down than an abandoned Walmart store. You know why buildings often stand abandoned for years? Because nobody is willing to pay the cost of demolition.

This idea that the temple lots are a great real estate investment is a delusion.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/05/2022 06:19PM by Brother Of Jerry.

Depends on the location. The church could sell several temple lots for a tidy sum. The church sells residential lots around the temple lots in some areas or develops commercial real estate around the lots. The point I’m making is the church bebpnefitted big from the equities bubble pumped up by funny money. You preserve your gains by buying tangibles before the bubble deflates. Temples are just one thing you can buy. Are they a smart long term buy? I don’t think so but the church buys agricultural land and water rights as well. They just build temples like crazy because they can. It’s an ego thing.

so ~



who exactly is becoming extremely rich OPie ? ~




asking for a feind ~

The corporation.

...is that investing is gambling. You have no idea when you invest in something whether or not it is going to take off (and in truth, most investments don't because a majority of businesses fail, especially after 5 years if they manage to survive that long). So the LDS church has all of this cash from its members that it keeps investing, hoping that its gambling (investing) revenues will improve its financial status, especially since, as noted, its membership remains flat at best. At some point (and I don't know when it's going to happen), the church is either going to bet wrong or some of its long-term investments are going to take a beating. In either case, the LDS church could lose a little or a lot of money.

So, when someone says that the church has invested smartly, the answer to that is no; they have been just lucky with the investments they've made thus far. However, like anything else, that luck will someday run out.

Jesus doesn't give them stock picks in the Celestial Room?