CIM Group and Water - Still Thinking of You

I was worried that I had not written about the CIM Group in awhile and didn't want them to think that I had forgotten them, I haven't. In fact, I have been thinking and reading about them a lot lately. I will promise to write a lengthy post about them in the future and their link to Ares Management, Apollo Global, Elliot Broidy, Alfred J.R. Villalobos (recently deceased via suicide) and Federico Buenrostro Jr. Really, I haven't forgotten about you all. In the meantime I will just make this little post.

Back in 2009 a man named J. Ari Swiller (a friend and advisor to then Mayor Villaraigosa) and CIM Group partnered up and bought some land that the City's Department of Water and Power wanted to buy. The land was in Kern county and was supposedly wanted by DWP to build a solar plant. Anyways, it came out in the news and CIM sold the property to another city that paid about the same price as CIM paid. CIM kept the water rights though. It is assumed that the water writes are worth even more than the land rights were so they have already doubled their money on the deal.

In the scheme of things that deal was highly suspicious and as CIM is funded by public pensions, I question the conflict of interests; but, it is only one piece in a large tapestry so I rarely think of it, until I read an couple of things this week.

Alliance Resource Consulting - Job Announcement - General Manager, Antelope Valley Water Storage.

Sorry, I got distracted. I will return to the water thing. You know, how do two friends from Israel get Visas and permanent status in the United States at the same time. I mean Walter O'Brien (the guy the show Scorpion is based on with a purported IQ of 197) had to get a an E11 visa. An E11 is for people with unusual skills of value to this country. How did Mr. Kuba and Mr. Shemesh get into this country in the first place? What are the rules for being given billions of dollars in public pension funds to companies owned by foreigners? Never mind, they must be citizens by now and that means that they had to apply for their visas and citizenship under a determined criteria. I bet that is public record. Do you have to report if you were in a foreign nations military to be allowed in this country or become a citizen?

That is right, we were talking about water. CIM bought land in the Antelope Valley and apparently the write to provide water storage for the area to the tune of 500,000 acres of underground water storage. The job description makes it clear that they will charge everytime an organization stores water with them, they overlook the water and another fee for when you ask for your water back. This is what happened after energy deregulation, it is how Enron made it's money, by controlling the supply chain. A market is being made for water that closely resembles other recent innovations in market creation. There is a name for that; but, I will remember and write about it later. Peace.