Month: May 2018

May 14, 2018

If you were only to read one thing…

FT – China buys up flying schools as pilot demand rises – Jamie Smyth and Ben Bland 5/10

  • “Chinese airlines are buying foreign flying schools and poaching pilots, amplifying a talent shortage that has affected airlines in other regions.”
  • “’The growth in Chinese aviation is unprecedented in our lifetimes and probably in history,’ said Paul Jebely, a Hong-Kong-based lawyer specializing in aviation. ‘There have been more aircraft ordered than there are pilots to fly them’.”
  • “The squeeze on flying talent has triggered flight cancellations, dented profits and threatened the industry’s ambitious growth targets around the world.”
  • “China is on course to overtake the US as the world’s largest air travel market by 2022, according to the International Air Transport Association.”
  • “US aircraft maker Boeing predicts China will need 110,000 new pilots in the years through to 2035, and its airlines are expected to purchase 7,000 commercial aircraft over the next two decades.”
  • “China’s aviation market grew by 13% last year, with 549m passengers taking to the skies, double the number who flew in 2010. Growth is being driven by the rising middle class, an expansion of routes by Chinese airlines and the easing of visa restrictions by foreign governments keen to attract Chinese tourists.”
  • “The number of pilots and co-pilots working in China almost doubled between 2011 and 2017. Over recent months China’s main airlines — China Eastern, Air China, China Southern and Hainan Airlines — have stepped up recruitment and are expanding their offshore training.”
  • “The starting salary offered to foreign pilots in China has jumped over the past 10 years from $10,000 per month to $26,000 per month, tax free, and was still rising, he said.”
  • “’Some Chinese airlines are offering tax-free salary packages, which can be up to twice what western airlines offer,’ said Murray Butt, president of the Australian and International Pilots Association.”
  • “India’s surging air travel — where passenger numbers have been growing by an average of about 16% a year since the beginning of the millennium — adds more pressure to the global pilot shortage.”
  • “Having seen rapid growth in passenger numbers over the past few years, Indian airlines have been recruiting from the military, from abroad and from their competitors by offering increasingly lucrative contracts. They have also made it more difficult for pilots to leave, forcing commanding officers to give a year’s notice if they wish to leave.”
  • “Chinese airlines pay the tuition of cadet pilots and are intensifying efforts to develop more local talent. But there are only 22 pilot schools in China and restrictions on the use of domestic airspace mean they are increasingly looking overseas to partner with foreign flights schools.”
  • “Almost half of China’s 5,053 trainee pilots last year were trained abroad, creating a flourishing business for flight schools and their owners in the US, Canada and Australia.”

Perspective

WP – For six decades, ‘the man with the golden arm’ donated blood – and saved 2.4 million babies – Amy Wang 5/12

  • A great example of human kindness/exceptionalism.

Visual Capitalist – The United States of Beer – Nick Routley 5/12

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

FT – Memo from Amazon: tell a good story – John Gapper 5/8

  • “Jeff Bezos and Winston Churchill both appreciated the value of skillful narrative.”

WSJ – Mercedes Wants to Borrow Money From You. Should You Bite? – Jason Zweig 5/11

Markets / Economy

WSJ – Record Buybacks Help Steady Wobbly Market – Ben Eisen and Akane Otani 5/10

Real Estate

CoStar – Already Down, Chinese Investment in U.S. Real Estate Evaporates in First Quarter – Mark Heschmeyer 5/10

WSJ – Daily Shot: PlanMaestro – Age of Housing Stock by US Zip Code 5/11

Entertainment

WSJ – Why Box Office Flops Really, Really Hurt – Justin Lahart 5/11

  • “It isn’t rare for a handful of big movies to do much better than anything else during the same year, but over the past few years the differences have become more acute. One way to see this is by applying a standard measure of inequality—the Gini coefficient—to the box office. A Gini of zero would mean all the movies did equally well and a Gini of one would mean one movie made all the money.”
  • “Based on the domestic receipts of the top 100 grossing movies, the box office Gini for last year’s releases was 0.49, versus 0.46 for 2016. Over the previous 10 years, the Gini averaged 0.4 so there has been a big change in an already skewed field. For comparison’s sake, the Gini coefficient for after-tax household income is 0.39 in the U.S. versus 0.46 in Mexico, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.”

Environment / Science

FT – Apple looks to ‘green’ metal for use in iPhone and MacBook – Neil Hume and Henry Sanderson 5/10

  • “Apple has joined forces with two of the world’s biggest aluminum producers to develop a ‘carbon-free’ metal it plans to use in its iPhone and laptop computers.”
  • “The consumer electronics group is backing a joint venture between Rio Tinto and Alcoa that is seeking to commercialize a new technology to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from aluminum smelting.”

Health / Medicine

Gallup – Uninsured Rate Rises in 17 States in 2017 – Dan Witters 5/9

  • “The uninsured rate rose by statistically significant margins in 17 states in 2017, the first time since the full implementation of the major mechanisms of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2014 that any state had a rate increase. Also, for the first time since 2013, no states had a lower uninsured rate than the previous year.”

South America

Reuters – Conoco authorized to seize $636 million in Venezuela PDVSA assets – Mike Willemse, Brian Ellsworth, Alexandra Ulmer, and Tom Brown 5/12

May 11, 2018

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

Bloomberg – Middle-Class Doldrums Don’t Add Up to a Crisis – Noah Smith 5/9

  • “The U.S. economy is back to normal again. Unemployment is low. Business investment is up. Wages are slowly rising. The traumatic memories of the Great Recession and the global financial crisis are finally beginning to fade.”
  • “The absence of pressing crises means that it’s a good time to step back and take stock of deeper issues in the U.S. economic system. For several years, there has been a rising outcry over inequality… Adjusted for inflation, wages for production and nonsupervisory workers fell from their peak until the early 1990s, and haven’t yet climbed back to their former heights:”
  • “But the story isn’t quite true. The average American has, in fact, seen modest gains since the early 1970s; the falling wages of production workers don’t tell the whole story.”
  • “What explains the difference between wages and income? Two things. First, wages aren’t the only way Americans make money in the market. Income from assets, like retirement accounts and pensions, is increasingly important, as are nonwage compensation like employer contributions to retirement accounts. Second, the income numbers include government transfers, which have shifted more and more income from rich Americans to those who earn less in the market. These factors are all bigger than in the 1970s:”
  • “Increased redistribution has been helping the poor as well as the middle class. Recent calculations by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities show that child poverty in the U.S. has fallen to record lows once government assistance is taken into account.”
  • “Meanwhile, gains in income haven’t come from increased toil. Despite women’s increased labor force participation, working-age Americans in 2014 tended to labor little more than their predecessors in the late 1970s:”
  • “In fact, the working hours data makes the 2000s and 2010s look less awful in comparison to the ’80s and ’90s. Gains in those earlier decades came partly from women entering the workforce en masse. But those gains were preserved in recent decades despite Americans working fewer hours on average.”
  • “It was during the early 1970s that total factor productivity growth began to slow down. It accelerated again in the 1990s and early 2000s, only to fall back to a crawl about the middle of that decade.”
  • “It’s therefore possible to interpret the slower growth of Americans’ incomes as the result of slowing productivity. Inequality has certainly contributed as well, but increasing government transfers have helped cancel out some of that. But with slowing productivity growth, there’s simply less to redistribute than if productivity had maintained the torrid pace of the early and mid-20th century.”
  • “Capitalism may not be in crisis, but it’s troubling that a few super-rich individuals have managed to amass vast fortunes even as productivity has stagnated. That is a phenomenon whose cause must be carefully investigated. For the typical American, gains in living standards have continued at a slow, steady pace. Increasing that pace should be a top priority.”

FT – Investors should be cautious of simplistic indices – Kate Allen 5/9

  • “Poland’s upgrade to developed status shines a light on [an] outdated approach to classification.”

Markets / Economy

FT – Daimler leads new investors in SoftBank’s $100bn Vision Fund – Arash Massoudi, Leo Lewis, and Patrick McGee 5/10

  • “Germany’s Daimler and Japan’s three largest banks are set to become investors in SoftBank’s Vision Fund as the Masayoshi Son-led company looks to complete fundraising for its $100bn technology investment fund, according to people briefed on the matter.”
  • “The Mercedes-Benz maker along with MUFG, Mizuho and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp will be among the final investors in the fund, which is the largest ever created in private equity or venture capital, these people said.”
  • “They added that other new investors will include Larry Ellison, the billionaire US co-founder of software group Oracle who is investing personally, and the sovereign wealth fund of Bahrain.”
  • “Daimler and the Japanese banks are set to be among the smaller ones in the fund, alongside earlier participants such as Apple, Qualcomm, Foxconn and Sharp. About $88bn of the fund comes from SoftBank, Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi.”
  • “Individuals close to the three Japanese banks said their decision to invest had a twin motivation: the quest for returns in Japan’s ultra low-interest environment and the desire to further strengthen their relationships with what is by far Japan’s most active corporate name.”
  • “All the new investors will be participating under the terms of the fund’s unusual structure, which sees them receive 62% in preferred units paying out an annual coupon of 7% over the fund’s 12-year life cycle, and the rest with equity.”
  • “SoftBank itself is the only investor that has full equity exposure, giving it the most upside to the fund’s investments in addition to the management and performance fees.”
  • “SoftBank outlined on Wednesday in a presentation that it had spent $29.7bn of the Vision Fund since inception. It has placed bets on more than 30 companies including ride-hailing group Uber, shared-office provider WeWork and chipmaker Nvidia.”

Real Estate

Bisnow – California Super-Commuters Are Transforming Sleepy Suburbs Into Busy Metros – Julie Littman and Joseph Pimentel 5/9

WSJ – California Takes Big Step to Require Solar on New Homes – Erin Ailworth 5/9

Energy

FT – US oil producers battle to meet Iran shortfall – Ed Crooks 5/9

  • “Pipeline constraints mean shale cannot come to rescue as sanctions push up prices.”
  • “Inadequate transport capacity in the region is reflected in the soaring discount for oil in Midland, west Texas, compared with US benchmark crude. That discount hit $13 a barrel this week, meaning that while the easier-to-trade West Texas Intermediate was selling for about $70 a barrel, oil in Midland was just $57 a barrel.”

WSJ – Venezuela’s Brewing Oil Shock May Be Bigger Than Iran’s – Spencer Jakab 5/10

  • “The oil headlines this week have all been about Iran, but the slowly unfolding disaster in Venezuela may be even more significant.”
  • “Venezuela faces two risks that, if both come to pass, could cut its oil output by more than the biggest estimates of what could happen to Iran if sanctions were reimposed. The risks stem from Venezuela’s dependence on importing lighter varieties of crude to mix with the heavy oil it produces, and its need for products imported from the U.S. to enable its thick oil to be transported.”
  • “The first situation is playing out in the Dutch-administered islands of Curaçao and Bonaire, where Venezuela’s state oil company owns refining and storage facilities. U.S. producer ConocoPhillips is attempting to take physical control of those facilities after winning an arbitration award against Venezuela for seizing its assets in 2007. Venezuela appears to be telling its suppliers not to ship oil to these facilities for fear ConocoPhillips will seize that too, potentially shutting down refining.”
  • “The second situation would play out if the U.S. halts exports to Venezuela of a product called diluent, which allows the thick oil to be transported. Such a move would imperil half or more of the country’s remaining production. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence has already called the presidential election a sham.”

Finance

WSJ – Daily Shot: DISH Network Bond Price 5/19

Environment / Science

Economist – Climate change will affect developing countries more than rich ones – The Data Team 5/9

Construction

WSJ – Daily Shot: FRED – PPI Concrete Products 5/10

Asia – excluding China and Japan

Economist – Malaysia’s chance to clean up – Leaders 5/10

  • “Elections in Malaysia are normally predictable. In fact, the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) and various allies had won all of them since 1955, until this week. Over the years UMNO has resorted to every conceivable trick to remain in power: stirring communal tensions among Malaysia’s ethnic groups, locking up critics, rigging the electoral system in its favor, bribing voters with populist handouts and threatening chaos if it lost. In the run-up to the election on May 9th it did all of that. It was testimony to the awfulness of the government of Najib Razak that the opposition was even in contention. And it is testimony to the good sense of Malaysian voters that the opposition won, convincingly, paving the way for Malaysia’s first ever change of government.”
  • “For a country where politics has always been run along communal lines, the shocking upset holds out the prospect of a more meritocratic form of government. For the region, where rulers with authoritarian instincts have been steadily curbing political freedoms, it is a heartening victory for democracy. And for Mr Najib, who was accused by America’s Department of Justice of personally pocketing $681m looted from a Malaysian government agency, it is a welcome comeuppance.”
  • “Sceptics note that it is led by Mahathir Mohamad, a former five-term UMNO prime minister who pioneered many of the underhand tactics to which Mr Najib resorted in his failed bid to remain in power. Dr Mahathir was also a champion of Malaysia’s odious system of racial preferences, which he expanded to keep Malay voters loyal to UMNO.”
  • “Perhaps the new government will succumb to infighting and fail to get much done. But its very existence is a potent reminder to Malaysians and their neighbors that governments can and should, from time to time, change peacefully. With luck, Cambodians, Singaporeans, Thais and Vietnamese, among others, will begin to wonder if something similar might one day happen to them.”

China

FT – China credit spreads near 2-year highs on default worries – Gabriel Wildau 5/9

“China credit spreads hit their widest level in nearly two years this week following new regulations that undermined long-held assumptions about implicit guarantees on debt linked to local governments.”

FT – Hong Kong’s tycoons: handing over power in troubled times – Ben Bland 5/9

May 10, 2018

Perspective

WSJ – Daily Shot: Charlie Bilello – Global Population Growth and Growth Rate Projections 5/9

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

FT – Donald Trump declares trade war on China – Martin Wolf 5/8

  • “No sovereign power could accept the humiliating demands being made by the US.”

FT – How the Beijing elite sees the world – Martin Wolf 5/1

FT – Argentines shocked by IMF loan request – Benedict Mander and John Paul Rathbone 5/8

WSJ – Will Argentina’s Nightmare Spread? – Nathaniel Taplin 5/9

  • Strong dollar, surging oil prices, and US growth picking up steam – all bad for investors searching for yield in emerging markets.

Real Estate

Bloomberg Businessweek – Surprise, You Live in a Giant Airbnb – Olivia Zaleski 4/30

  • “Airbnb’s branded buildings promise management companies 5% to 15% of the profit hosts generate. At Domain, residents who rent through Airbnb would pay Niido 25% of their home-sharing income. In exchange, Diffenderfer says, residents will have access to the same hotel-style amenities visitors will receive.”

NYT – Developers Add a Missing Piece to Their Projects: Hotels – Joe Gose 5/8

WSJ – California Set to Require Solar on New Homes – Erin Ailworth 5/9

  • “California is poised to become the first U.S. state to require solar panels on nearly all new homes.”
  • “The California Energy Commission on Wednesday is expected to approve a requirement that residential buildings up to three stories high, including single-family homes and condos, be built with solar installations starting in 2020.”
  • “California is pursuing aggressive policies to reduce air pollution and combat climate change—including a mandate to slash greenhouse gas emissions 40% below 1990 levels by 2030—that are helping drive renewable energy in the state.”
  • “Solar accounted for nearly 10% of California’s electricity generation in 2016, Energy Commission data shows.”
  • “Currently, about 20% of new single-family homes in the state are built with solar, said Bob Raymer, senior engineer with the California Building Industry Association, which represents thousands of home builders, contractors, architects and others. Making solar mandatory on homes is expected to add $8,000 to $10,000 to construction costs, he said.”
  • “While the building-industry organization would have preferred the Energy Commission hold off a few more years on mandating that homes be fitted with solar, it helped shape the rule to reduce compliance costs and increase flexibility, Mr. Raymer said. Builders would have the option to install solar in a communal area if it doesn’t make sense on individual rooftops. By installing batteries that help homeowners save energy for later use, builders can also gain some flexibility in meeting efficiency standards.” 
  • “California has more solar power installed than any other state, with roughly 21 gigawatts of generation capacity, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. That is far more than the second -largest solar-producing state, North Carolina, which has 4.3 gigawatts.”
  • “The commission expects the cost of adding solar, when combined with other revised efficiency standards, to add about $40 to an average monthly payment on a 30-year mortgage. However it estimates the investment would more than pay for itself, with consumers on average saving $80 a month on heating, cooling and lighting bills.”

Energy

WSJ – As Putin Starts Fourth Term, Higher Oil Prices Give Him a New Edge – Thomas Grove 5/7

May 9, 2018

Perspective

WSJ – Daily Shot: OECD – Levels of Working Poor by Country 5/8

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

A Wealth of Common Sense – Bad Advice Can Be Expensive – Ben Carlson 5/6

Bloomberg Businessweek – The Future of News – John Micklethwait 5/3

  • “…is journalism really in such a parlous state? Look closer. News is an industry in transition, not in decline. It is reemerging as something more digital, more personalized, more automated, more paid for—and (eventually) less fake. In many ways history is repeating itself, with the main surprise being the survival of so many established names. And good journalism still does have the power to change lives.”
  • “In a world where the facts are known, commentary will become ever more important…”
  • “That points to the final series of changes: the multiplicity of formats. The standard print news story is being broken up, split among explainers, videographics, podcasts, and so on. Editorship is increasingly a matter of choosing the best way to deliver information to a time-starved consumer. News is likely to get shorter, quicker, and more graphical. But if you need to understand Syria or cryptocurrencies, you may save time reading one long story in Businessweek or the New Yorker rather than endless small ones.”
  • “The newspaper has not so much died as transmuted. News is in a state of transition—and what’s emerging is molded by both new technology and old verities. As journalists, we have to work harder to keep our audiences. But I’m still optimistic—not least about fake news. It won’t go away; it never has. But it will play a smaller role. And the big winner will be you, the consumer. Even if you have to pay a little more for it.”

Economist – So long, farewell – Buttonwood 5/8

The Registry – Does WeWork at All? – John McNellis 5/8

Visual Capitalist – Interactive: Comparing Asian Powers to the U.S. (Lowy Institute) – Jeff Desjardins 5/8

Markets / Economy

FT – Walmart takes on Amazon in India with Flipkart deal – Simon Mundy and Arash Massoudi 5/8

  • “US retailer to pay $15bn for 75% stake in India’s largest ecommerce group.”

FT – Retail: Is the beauty industry ‘Amazon-proof’? – Anna Nicolaou and Aimee Keane 5/6

WSJ – Daily Shot: LPL Research – Length of Economic Expansions 5/8

Real Estate

WSJ – Daily Shot: Green Street Advisors – US Commercial Property Price Index 5/8

Energy

WSJ – Oil Costs How Much? How the Oil Rally Took Forecasters by Surprise – Alison Sider and Georgi Kantchev 5/6

Finance

WSJ – Daily Shot: Bianco Research – State Muni Yields vs. S&P Muni Index 5/8

WSJ – Pension Funds Still Making Promises They Probably Can’t Keep – Heather Gillers 5/8

  • “Retirement plans across the country still project their investments will grow at a median rate of 7.25%, according to Wilshire Consulting, an adviser to pension funds. Yearly returns on public pension plans have returned a median 6.79% over the past decade and 6.49% over the past 20 years, according to Wilshire Trust Universe Comparison Service, a database.”
  • “Unlike corporations, public pensions have wide latitude in projecting investment returns.”
  • “Public retirement systems had an average 72% of assets they need to pay for retirement promises in 2016, according to the latest data available in the Public Plans Database, which tracks about 170 pension funds. The figure a decade earlier was 85%.”
  • “Companies don’t have the same flexibility to set return expectations on their pension plans. Pension plans sponsored by S&P 1500 companies have an average 87% of assets needed to cover their pensions promises, according to Mercer, a consultancy.”

Agriculture

WSJ – Scientist in China Race to Edit Crop Genes, Sowing Unease in U.S. – Jacob Bunge and Lucy Craymer 5/6

Construction

WSJ – Daily Shot: CME Lumber (Jul) 5/7

Education

Axios – The disappearing Chinese student visa – Stef W. Kight 5/6

China

Bloomberg Businessweek – The $94 Billion Mystery: What Will Be Left of HNA’s Empire? – Matthew Campbell and Prudence Ho 5/3

  • “An annual report released in late April revealed that HNA spent more on interest than any nonfinancial company in Asia last year, a $5 billion bill that represented a more than 50% increase from the year before.”
  • “Overall debt rose 21% in 2017, according to the report, with short-term borrowing climbing by 25%, to about $30.3 billion. Total debt amounted to about 20 times HNA’s earnings before interest and taxes…”
  • “Nonetheless, HNA, which Chen co-founded in the 1990s, counting George Soros among its early investors, isn’t at risk of immediate catastrophe. At the start of 2018, according to people familiar with the matter, it told creditors it would sell about $16 billion in assets in the first half to lighten its balance sheet. Happily for the banks that financed its rise, HNA is already nearing that goal, thanks largely to the Hilton sale ($8.5bn).”

FT – Chinese group with $7bn in debt seeks Beijing bailout – Gabriel Wildau 5/7

  • “In a test of Chinese authorities’ commitment to reducing financial risk, a large Chinese manufacturing group has begged for a government bailout to avoid default on up to $7bn in debt after a regional lender withdrew loans.”
  • “Over the past year, China has tightened credit in a bid to tackle an explosion of corporate debt that the International Monetary Fund has called ‘dangerous’. But the plea highlights how painful Beijing’s deleveraging campaign has been for some indebted groups.” 
  • “According to Caixin, a respected Chinese financial news website, the crisis involving DunAn began when Zheshang Bank, a regional lender in Zhejiang, demanded early repayment of loans, causing other banks to restrict lending to the group.” 
  • “DunAn employs 29,000 workers and manufactures a range of equipment including air-conditioning parts, civil explosives and wind power equipment. It has also expanded into asset management and real estate.” 
  • “Government bailouts are most common for state-owned companies, but officials have also rescued private groups when their potential collapse raised the prospect of contagion.” 
  • “The Shanghai government shielded investors from losses on bonds from privately owned Chaori Solar, whose 2014 default was the first in China’s domestic bond market.” 

 

May 8, 2018

If you were only to read one thing…

HuffPost – America’s Housing Crisis Is Spreading To Smaller Cities – Michael Hobbes 5/5

  • “It’s tempting to look at the housing crisis in Boise as just a miniature version of what’s already happened in the Bay Area and the Pacific Northwest and the Northeastern corridor. But in the last 10 years, the American economy has transformed in ways that are going to make it even harder for smaller cities to respond to growth.”
  • “In 2007, the city of Boise was issuing more than twice as many building permits as it is now. Despite having 125,000 more residents, Boise’s metro area built fewer homes in 2016 than it did in 2004.”
  • “The reason, says Gary Hanes, a retired HUD administrator based in Boise, is that the recession wiped out the city’s construction sector. Between 2008 and 2012, Boise home prices fell by 40%. With homebuilding stalled, thousands of construction workers took other jobs or left for North Dakota or Alaska. By 2012, once all the low-cost and foreclosed homes had been scooped up and the city needed new housing again, there was no one left to build it.”
  • “This isn’t just a Boise problem. Construction workers, even in high-paid jobs and booming cities, are in short supply. Plus, thanks to increasing international demand, prices for timber, steel and concrete are going up nationwide.”
  • “The higher costs of materials, financing and labor, combined with the years-long lag in homebuilding, have made construction unbearably expensive. Fred Cornforth, the CEO of the CDI/Idaho Development and Housing Organization, builds affordable housing in 17 states. He tells me that his last project in Boise cost around $155,000 per apartment ― cheaper than Seattle, where he also develops properties, but not by as much as you’d think.”
  • “This, Cornforth says, is the fundamental challenge of the housing crisis in Boise and everywhere else: The only way make prices fall is to overbuild. You need vacancy rates of 8% or more before rents start to come down. But the backlog is so great, and the costs of building are so high, that it’s impossible even to meet the current demand. Every year, he says, as the backlog grows, the costs go up and the challenge of meeting the need gets worse.”
  • “Ultimately, the housing crisis is not about housing. It is about the inability of American cities to grow.”
  • “’It’s hard to acknowledge change,’ says Mike Kazmierski, the president of the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada. He’s been watching Reno, another medium-size boomtown, play out the same debates as Boise for over six years now. ‘If you say your city is going to grow, that means you need another fire station, more schools, more staff. Cities don’t have the budgets for that, and asking for it means raising taxes. The pushback is, ‘We don’t want to pay for that growth. Let them pay for it when they get here.’”
  • “This is where Boise starts to look depressingly familiar. In the last few years, as the city’s growth has become more visible, NIMBY groups have taken over the political conversation. Of the 21 speakers at a town hall meeting last month, only two said they welcomed more growth. Signs reading ‘OVERCROWDING IS NOT SUSTAINABLE’ are showing up in front yards. Some local residents, taking a page from the San Francisco playbook, are trying to get their neighborhood classified as a ‘conservation district‘ to block new buildings from going in.”
  • “Some of the complaints have merit ― it’s hard not to be sympathetic to residents asking for sidewalks on their streets or more frequent bus service ― but many are simply pleas for the growth itself to stop. A comment on the Facebook page for Vanishing Boise, one of the local anti-development groups, is emblematic of the argument: ‘Why are they coming in the first place?????’”
  • “As in other cities, this dynamic reveals a fundamental weakness in the American political system: Opposition to growth comes from homeowners and voters, entrenched interests who already have the ear of local politicians. Supporters of growth, the beneficiaries of all the new development, haven’t even moved here yet.”
  • “…most local advocacy groups are making the same argument San Francisco homeowners have made for decades: If we don’t build it, they won’t come.”

Perspective

FactsMaps – US States by Population Growth Rate 1950-2016

WSJ – Daily Shot: OECD – Levels of Income Inequality 5/7

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

FT – Access to energy is an essential step in African development – Nick Butler 5/6

  • “Investment in infrastructure can unlock the continent’s potential but is far too low.”

FT – Fight the Faangs, not China – Rana Foroohar 5/6

  • “The Trump administration must break the power of big tech.”

NYT – Save Barnes & Noble! – David Leonhardt 5/6

WSJ – Xiaomi’s Valuation Isn’t Anywhere Near $100 Billion – Jacky Wong 5/3

WSJ – Tesla’s Numbers Are Even More Dramatic Than Its CEO – Charley Grant 5/5

WSJ – Why It’s Not Crazy to Buy a Mall Giant in the Age of Amazon – Stephen Wilmot 5/6

Real Estate

MarketWatch – With no letup in home prices, the California exodus surges – Andrea Riquier 5/7

  • “Over a million more people moved out of California from 2006 to 2016 than moved in, according to a new report, due mainly to the high cost of housing that hits lower-income people the hardest.”
  • “There are many reasons for the housing crunch, but the lack of new construction may be the most significant. According to the report, from 2008 to 2017, an average of 24.7 new housing permits were filed for every 100 new residents in California. That’s well below the national average of 43.1 permits per 100 people.”
  • “If this trend persists, the researchers argued, analysts forecast the state will be about 3 million homes short by 2025.”
  • “California homeowners spend an average of 21.9% of their income on housing costs, the 49th worst in the nation, while renters spend 32.8%, the 48th worst. The median rent statewide in 2016 was $1,375, which is 40.2% higher than the national average. And the median home price was — wait for it — more than double that of the national average.”
  • “One coping strategy: California residents are more likely to double up. Nearly 14% of renter households had more than one person per bedroom, the highest reading for this category in the nation.”
  • “Coping can also mean leaving.”
  • “The Next 10 and Beacon Economics researchers used Census data to track migration patterns by demographic characteristics. More than 20% of the 1.1 million people who moved in the decade they tracked did so in 2006, at the height of the housing bubble, when prices were, as they write, ‘sky-high’.”
  • “As the housing market imploded and prices came back to earth, migration out of the state slowed. But as prices recovered, ‘out-migration’ has not only picked up steam, it’s accelerated.”
  • “Those migration patterns are shaped by socioeconomics. Most people leaving the state earn less than $30,000 per year, even as those who can afford higher housing costs are still arriving. As the report noted, California was also a net importer of highly skilled professionals from the information, professional and technical services, and arts and entertainment industries. On the other hand, California saw the largest exodus of workers in accommodation, construction, manufacturing and retail trade industries.”

MarketWatch – Americans haven’t been this optimistic about house prices since just before the crash – Quentin Fottrell 5/7

  • “House prices are soaring and, despite warnings from some analysts, most Americans believe they will continue to soar.”
  • “A majority of U.S. adults (64%) continue to believe home prices in their local area will increase over the next year, a survey released Monday by polling firm Gallup concluded. That’s up nine percentage points over the past two years and is the highest percentage since before the housing market crash and Great Recession in the mid-2000s.”

Environment / Science

WP – Hawaii’s silent danger: Volcanic smog, otherwise known as ‘vog’ – Allyson Chiu 5/7

South America

WSJ – Daily Shot: Argentina Central Bank 7-Day Repo Rate 5/4

May 7, 2018

Perspective

Economist – Remittances 4/26

Visual Capitalist – A World of Languages – Iman Ghosh 5/5

WP – America is more diverse than ever – but still segregated – Aaron Williams and Armand Emamdjomeh 5/2

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

A  Wealth of Common Sense – Schrodinger’s Portfolio – Ben Carlson 4/29

Bloomberg – The Return of the Brick-and-Mortar Store – Conor Sen 5/1

Economist – In China’s cities, young people with rural ties are angry 5/3

Economist – Behind the teacher strikes that have roiled five states 5/3

Economist – Where will the next crisis occur? – Buttonwood 5/3

Mauldin Economics – Us vs. Them – Ian Bremmer 4/25

Pragmatic Capitalism – Three Things I Think I Think – China, Tesla And Weird Stuff – Cullen Roche 5/4

Markets / Economy

FT – Argentina stuns markets as it pushes interest rates to 40% – Cat Rutter Pooley, Adam Samson, and Roger Blitz 5/4

NYT – A Fast-Food Problem: Where Have All the Teenagers Gone? – Rachel Abrams and Robert Gebeloff 5/3

WSJ – Apple Allays iPhone Worries, Adds $100 Billion to Buyback Plans – Tripp Mickle 5/1

  • I count $300 billion in total dividends since 2013…geez.

  • If that wasn’t enough…

Real Estate

BI – Uber and Lyft are changing where rich people buy homes – Sarah Jacobs 5/3

  • “A report released this week from MetLife Inc.’s asset-management business confirmed that the premium cost of apartments near public transit has begun to decline due to services such as Uber and Lyft.”

FT – Priced out of the American dream – Sam Fleming 5/2

Health / Medicine

Bloomberg Businessweek – Silicon Valley Wants to Cash In on Fasting – Tom Giles and Selina Wang 4/24

Automotive

FT – UK to ban most hybrid cars, including Prius, from 2040 – Peter Campbell and Jim Pickard 5/4

  • Nothing formalized at this moment, just be aware of the direction of this effort.
  • “Hybrid cars that rely on traditional engines, such as the Toyota Prius, would be banned by 2040 under clean-air plans being drawn up by the UK government that would outlaw up to 98% of the vehicles currently on the road.”
  • “Three people involved in the decision-making process said the proposed rules would limit new car sales to those that can travel at least 50 miles using only electric power.”
  • “The change would outlaw more than 98% of the vehicles currently sold in Britain and require manufacturers to switch to vehicles predominantly driven by batteries — though they might be able to have petrol engines for back-up or support.”

South America

FT – Venezuela’s oil decline reaches new depths – John Paul Rathbone 4/30

  • “In addition to hyperinflation and a $70bn bond default that has cut off the country from fresh finance, the drop in oil production to 30-year lows has slashed government revenues, making it ever harder for Mr Maduro’s regime to import basic necessities and deploy the patronage he needs to maintain military and political support.”
  • “Caracas has also alienated key allies such as Beijing. Chinese state banks, which extended over $60bn in oil-backed loans between 2007 and 2016, last year made no fresh loans. A two-year grace period on a remaining $19bn debt to China expired last week, Reuters reported, meaning that Venezuelan export revenues will fall further.”