Perspective

WSJ – Daily Shot: Business Insider – U.S. Pretax income growth by income category – 6/14

Economist – Around the world, beer consumption is falling – THE DATA TEAM 6/13

WSJ – Daily Shot: BMI Research – Projected Global Water Availability 6/14

Markets / Economy

Bloomberg – Wheat Soars as U.S. Spring Crop in Worst Shape in 29 Years – Megan Durisin 6/13

• “A prolonged dry spell has left the U.S. spring wheat crop in its worst shape in almost three decades, sending prices for the grain on a tear.”

WSJ – Daily Shot: Red Spring Wheat Futures – 6/13

• “According to the USDA, the US wheat crop is now in worse shape than at any time since 1998. Prices spike.”

Real Estate

Bloomberg  – These Cities Have Too Many Stores, and They’re Still Building – Patrick Clark and Dorothy Gambrell 6/12

China

FT – Shanghai loosens housing policy after rare protests – Yuan Yang, Xinning Liu, and Tom Hancock 6/13

• “The Shanghai city government has made a partial policy concession after a rare housing protest at the weekend, in an effort to placate middle-class anger at measures to pour cold water on a hot property market.”
• “Some 100 demonstrators gathered in the main shopping street of Nanjing Road on Saturday night — a sight rarely seen in China’s financial capital.”
• “The crowd said they had bought ‘dual-use’ homes built on land sold for commercial rather than residential development, and criticized the government’s recent decision to enforce an old rule that restricts such land to commercial use.”
• “’The government has realized its reliance on asset bubbles for growth is not sustainable,’ said Wang Xinling, lead analyst at China Policy, a Beijing think-tank.”
• “’So it wants to change direction, but the public perceives this as hurting their wealth while the property market stagnates,’ Ms. Wang added.”
• “Late on Monday the Shanghai government blamed property developers for ‘distorting the policy’ and ‘delaying reforms’, trying to paint the developers — rather than the government — as the target for public anger.”
• “However, it relented by allowing buyers of ‘dual-use’ homes to move in, although it did not loosen restrictions on selling the houses, which is a big contention for the homebuyers.”
• “China is worried about property bubbles developing after years of breakneck price rises, and has attempted to cool prices by limiting citizens’ ability to buy houses while simultaneously bringing the residential market under stricter oversight.”
• “The regulations affect 12m square meters of property, according to Zhang Hongwei, chief analyst of Tospur, a property consultancy.”
• “About 30 local governments across China have issued measures making it more difficult to buy houses since last autumn.”
• “As a result, Beijing house prices fell 4% in May, according to a study by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Prices in other big cities are falling or at a standstill and sales have collapsed this year.”
• “Aspiring homebuyers have been pushed into greyer areas of the market, such as buying dual-use commercial properties.”