advisedwang

US Constitution Article III Section 2 Clause 2 which says the supreme court's appellate jurisdiction is subject to "Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make." So Congress could, for example, require the supreme court to hear every case appealed to them instead of letting the justices pick their cases. Or it could require judges to recuse themselves if there is a conflict of interest*. Or it could forbid the court hearing cases where an en banc appeals court was unanimous.

* which could have more teeth than the self-imposed ethics rules for conflict of interest that the court has now.

For the most part no. The Administrative Procedures Act outlines a fairly robust process for rulemaking (ie regulations must go through a notice period, must be justified etc) and adjudication (ie per-person decisions must have notice, ability to have counsel, be appealable etc).

However there's also lots of authority given to the president (and executive office of the president) to which the APA doesn't apply. This includes powers the constitution gives to the president directly and (mostly emergency) powers congress gives to the president. Sadly political processes and supreme court cases have hugely increases what can be done with this*.

Moreover, it's been a frequent pattern (over many decades, but especially under Trump) for the president to simply nakedly overstep their authority. Sometimes there's no push back (see: 9/11); sometimes the damage is done even if it's eventually overruled. Never is there any consequences though, so the pattern repeats.

* E.g. The president's control of the military is supposed to be checked by congress deciding when to declare war. However the war powers act has in practice played out to allow the president to unilaterally start wars, especially as the supreme court has stepped in to make the war powers act less effective.

   for each element:
     cut a spaghetti strand to the a the length of the elemnet
     add strand to bundle of spaghetti
   
   hold spaghetti bundle vertical

   lower spaghetti bundle to a flat surface.

   loosen grip so that each spaghetti strand comes to rest on flat surface

   while there is spaghetti in the bundle:
     lower a second flat surface above the bundle until it touches the topmost spaghetti piece
     remove the piece, and output it's length

The system described in the article is basically that the risk is not explicitly planned for, and just washes out that it is managed by a vacancy and building owners eating the cost of the vacancy.

Any solution needs to provide a new answer for how that risk is managed, preferably one that doesn't result in foreclosures. Some possibility:

* The bank takes on the risk, by loans having a provision for writing down value if rents have to drop. This is tricky, because if the operator decides when rents need to be revised down, they have no incentive to protect the bank's position. If the bank decides, then they have no incentive to ever accept a rent drop, they'd rather force the operator to eat the vacancy. You'd need some trigger like duration of vacancies.

* The operator takes on the risk but with a mechanism for lowering the rent. I can't really figure out a way this would work without requiring the operator to have capital on hand though.

* The risk is insured. If rents need to drop then insurance pays the write-down in property value. I'm not sure any insurance company would be able to take this business though, as it is highly correlated between customers. A downturn would just wipe-out the insurer.

* maybe if the operator goes bust, the rents on the building can be lowered with a new property value for future loans. Then perhaps it can be occupied. But that's very uncertain, especially if this happens to a whole city at once.

Who even is the fraudster? The operator of the building is losing money, so clearly they're not making a gain from anyone

1. You don't get to see signage that tells you what lane to be in

2. You are forced to take in irrelevant details.