The recent post by Randy Watters is very good regarding the Watchtower selling assets. Some posters suggested that maybe they were doing this because the clean-up of asbestos is too expensive, making a sale more rational.
IN the USA, any building containing asbestos insulation must be dealt with by the Seller of a property. When you sell any residential or commercial building, you must disclose any asbestos, lead-based paint, and other material defects, and then submit to a property inspection. In commercial real estate, the inspections are not your typical residential house inspector who can be complete a typical inspection in a 2 to 3 hour period. Instead, engineers and environmental experts take days at a significant cost. I doubt that the WTS would sell to hide asbestos or other such issues. They would more likely call upon JW engineers and other in-house experts to solve the problem.
Rather, I strongly believe that the Watchtower Society is selling its assets to make their USA holdings more liquid. They can then easily move money out of the country when plaintiffs in lawsuits prevail with judgments against the Watchtower. If the WTS sells its assets now, it will be harder for the courts to get their hands on the money. The only way to get at Watchtower liquid assets is for there to be a way to place them under the same rules affecting international terrorists ... rules that allow the government to seize assets in cooperation with other nations.
A possible way to pre-emptively stop the WTS: Another way is for USA attorneys now involved in lawsuits against the Society (e.g. the pedophile issue) to get the courts to cloud the title of all Watchtower properties in ALL 50 STATES, making any sales impossible, and in this way keep the Society chained down until the lawsuits are fully litigated and the plaintiffs prevail. - Jim W.