Perspective

Visual Capitalist – Interactive: tableau – Visualizing Median Income For All 3,000+ U.S. Counties – Jeff Desjardins 8/22

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

Bloomberg View – The Energy Revolution Will Be Optimized – Liam Denning 8/16

• “The primary job of the 20th-century oil major or utility was to raise the capital required to build enormous energy production and distribution networks to feed industrialization. The onus was on providing ever more supply, since growth in demand was a given.”
• “The latter no longer holds true. Energy efficiency matters more now, especially as concerns about pollution, including carbon emissions, have intensified. The job of the 21st-century energy provider, therefore, will be less and less about sheer quantity and more about both quality and smart consumption. Think software-as-a-service rather than just getting Windows 95 installed on as many desktops as possible.”

Markets / Economy

WSJ – How Retiring Baby Boomers Hinder U.S. Wage Growth – Eric Morath 8/21

• “Departing older employees are being replaced by younger and cheaper workers, San Francisco Fed study finds.”

Real Estate

WSJ – The Price Isn’t Right for Home Builders – Justin Lahart 8/22

• “Shares of home builders look pricey and vulnerable to a correction as costs rise and affordability is strained.”

Finance

FT – Here is the big reason banks are safer than a decade ago – Alan Smit and Martin Arnold 8/21

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• “The build-up to the financial crisis was marked by a rapid growth in wholesale funding, where banks borrow from one another and other financial institutions, rather than raising money through deposits from retail banking customers.”
• “When the subprime mortgage meltdown began, banks lost faith in each other and those wholesale funding markets seized up.”
• While western banks have backed off of it, “wholesale funding now accounts for more than a third of many Chinese banks’ total liabilities — three times as much as five years ago. Some analysts fear Chinese banks may yet generate another ‘Lehman moment’.”

China

FT – Dalian Wanda drops £470m London property purchase – Don Weinland and Judith Evans 8/22

• “Chinese property developer Dalian Wanda has walked away from a plan to buy London’s Nine Elms Square amid mounting pressure from Beijing to curtail high-profile overseas acquisitions.”
• “The 10-acre plot is part of London’s largest residential development site, where a number of real estate companies are building 20,000 mainly luxury homes south of the river Thames.”
• “However, the land will still be acquired by Chinese buyers after a last-minute adjustment to the deal.”
• “Hong Kong-listed Guangzhou R&F Properties stepped in to make its second hastily arranged deal involving Wanda in a matter of weeks. In July, R&F, which is based in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, agreed to purchase 77 Wanda hotels on the Chinese mainland.”
• “R&F told reporters in Hong Kong that it bought the site jointly with CC Land, another Chinese property developer that this year acquired London’s ‘Cheesegrater’ skyscraper. R&F also owns the nearby Vauxhall Square site.”
• “Wanda still owns the One Nine Elms site in the same area, which is slated for a 200-metre-high development that includes 437 homes and 3,584 sq ft of retail space, as well as one of the first Wanda Vista hotels to be built outside of China.”

Japan

FT – Japan looks to staunch regional student exodus – Leo Lewis 8/21

• “Japan is planning an enrolment cap for Tokyo’s private universities to reverse a tide of ambitious 18-year olds eager to abandon the provinces and study in the capital.”
• “The plan to clip Tokyo’s academic wings is part of a broader drive to protect regional economies from implosion — a fate some consider inevitable as the country’s population ages and shrinks.”
• “Particularly acute, say government officials, is the ‘drastic decline in the population of 18-year olds’ — a group whose ranks not only want to study in Tokyo, but are increasingly keen to remain in the capital after graduating, to work.”
• “To reduce Tokyo’s magnetism in an uneven economy, proposed regulation will place an indefinite ban on any private university within Tokyo’s 23 wards from applying for an increase to its annual intake of new students.”
• “The plan’s success, say officials, hinges upon regional universities — and the job markets nearby — raising their game. ‘Universities have a major role in realizing regional revitalization but not many of them are that successful in driving structural changes in regional industry,’ said a report justifying the Tokyo quota cap.”
• “The report, which recommended the cap come into force within the current fiscal year, which ends in March 2018, warned that unless Tokyo’s dominance was offset, regional university finances would deteriorate.”
• “Regional revitalization policies have included encouraging bank mergers and legalizing casino gambling. But despite these policies, the annual number of 20-24 year old Japanese moving into Tokyo has risen 35% since Mr Abe became prime minister.”