June 26, 2018

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

NYT – The Profound Social Cost of American Exceptionalism – Eduardo Porter 5/29

Markets / Economy

FT – Lumber producers profit from record prices – Ben Foldy 6/25

  • “What do forest fires, wood-eating beetles and US President Donald Trump have in common? They have all helped push the price of lumber to historic heights, leading to record share prices for lumber producers and higher prices for US homebuyers.”
  • “The price of lumber has increased 57% since the start of 2017, according to the Random Lengths framing lumber composite price index, going from $356 to $571 per thousand board feet.”
  • “Analysts attribute the price spike to steadily increasing demand and a coincidence of supply shocks in British Columbia, one of the world’s largest producers of softwood lumber.”
  • “’When you have a tight supply chain, as soon as one thing goes wrong, prices skyrocket,’ said Brendan Lowney, principal and macroeconomist at Forest Economic Advisors. ‘You almost have a vertical supply curve.’”
  • “But of the factors driving current prices, duties are only ‘number three on the list,’ said Mr Lowney. More important was a historic 2017 wildfire season that was so severe the Canadian government’s senior climatologist called it the ‘summer of fire’.”
  • “Between April and November, more than 1,300 fires consumed more than 1.2m hectares of British Columbia. The fires and dry conditions forced many sawmill owners to halt operations and restricted much of the province’s logging activity.”
  • “The slowdown came at a most inopportune time thanks to another, slower moving shock to the industry: throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, British Columbia’s forests saw the largest infestation of mountain pine beetles on record, and the consequences are being felt now.”
  • “It only takes a few hundred of the hard-shell black bugs, each roughly the size of a grain of rice, to overwhelm the defenses of a healthy, towering pine. As they burrow through the tree’s bark to lay their eggs, they also introduce a fungus that changes the color of its wood.”
  • “’The tree is as good as dead within 48 hours,’ said Katherine Bleiker, a bark beetle ecologist with Natural Resources Canada.”
  • “The epidemic hit hardest in the heart of British Columbia’s logging country, affecting more than 18m hectares and killing about 54% of the province’s merchantable pine.”
  • “But despite their changed color, standing trees killed by pine beetles can still be harvested for lumber. Many are usable for up to eight years, and some last up to 12.”
  • “By the last quarter of 2017, it had looked as if prices had settled around $435 per thousand board feet. But when a harsh winter slowed down Canadian rail traffic, other commodities were prioritized and lumber orders piled up at mills, giving a new leg-up to prices.”
  • “’What’s unprecedented about this run compared to other record runs is the length of it,’ said Shawn Church, who has covered the industry for 28 years at trade publication Random Lengths.”
  • “With the spring and summer building season now under way, prices are still climbing. The US residential sector is the country’s biggest lumber consumer, and new housing starts hit a post-2007 high in May.”
  • “High prices and high demand meant massive first-quarter profits for lumber companies. Share prices for the two largest Canadian lumber corporations, Canfor Corporation and West Fraser Timber Co Ltd, and Weyerhaeuser Co, the largest US producer, have all hit record highs this month.”
  • “As lumber companies rake in profits, the costs are shifted to builders and eventually on to homebuyers.”
  • “Analysts differ in their estimates, but the increase in lumber costs alone has probably added between $3,000 and $9,000 to the cost of the median new home.”

Cryptocurrency / ICOs

WSJ – Daily Shot: Bitcoin 6/22

WSJ – Daily Shot: DigiCor – Major Cryptocurrencies Market Performance 6/24

Tech

Bloomberg – Instagram Is Estimated to Be Worth More than $100 Billion – Emily McCormick 6/25

  • “Facebook Inc.’s Instagram is estimated to be worth more than $100 billion, if it were a stand-alone company, marking a 100-fold return for the app was purchased in 2012, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Intelligence.”
  • “The photo-sharing platform, which reached 1 billion monthly active users earlier this month, will likely help nudge Instagram revenue past $10 billion over the next 12 months, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Jitendra Waral wrote in a report Monday. Instagram is attracting new users faster than Facebook’s main site and is on track to exceed 2 billion users within the next five years, Waral said. While the social network already has surpassed that milestone, Instagram’s audience is younger than its parent, making it more attractive to advertisers. And unlike Facebook, Instagram is still growing in the U.S.”

China

WSJ – China Eases Credit Policy as U.S. Tariffs Near – Lingling Wei and Chao Deng 6/24

  • “China’s central bank is freeing up more than $100 billion for commercial banks to boost lending and restructure debt, as the Chinese leadership tries to shore up growth amid slowing momentum for economic expansion and an intensifying trade brawl with the U.S.”
  • “In a statement Sunday, the People’s Bank of China announced that it is reducing the amount of reserves banks are required to keep with the central bank by half a percentage point starting July 5. That is the day before a U.S. deadline to slap punitive tariffs on tens of billions of dollars in Chinese goods.”
  • “Under the reserve cut, some 500 billion yuan ($76.86 billion) will be released for 17 large banks, including the Big Five state-owned banks, the central bank said. It said the banks are to use the freed-up funds by converting bad loans into equity in companies that default on their debts.”
  • “Another 200 billion yuan is being unleashed for the country’s city-level commercial banks and other smaller lenders, and those funds are to be used to expand lending to small businesses, the central bank said in the statement.”
  • “Following the reduction in banks’ reserve-requirement ratio, analysts expect more loosening, including increasing lending quotas for banks, relaxing mortgage restrictions for home buyers in some cities and easing limits on local governments to borrow.”
  • “’China is on the way toward monetary easing,’ said Zhu Chaoping, a Shanghai-based global market strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management.”

June 25, 2018

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

WSJ – Anger Over Tourists Swarming Vacation Hot Spots Sparks Global Backlash – Rachel Pannett 5/22

  • “In Venice, Barcelona, Thailand and New Zealand, ‘overtouristing’ is straining local infrastructure and prompting restrictions; the ‘Lord of the Rings’ effect.”

Markets / Economy

NYT – Your Recycling Gets Recycled, Right? Maybe, or Maybe Not – Livia Albeck-Ripka 5/29

  • “Plastics and papers from dozens of American cities and towns are being dumped in landfills after China stopped recycling most ‘foreign garbage.'”

Real Estate

FT – How WeWork’s revenue-sharing leases could affect property investors – Aime Williams 6/21

  • WeWork is starting to work percentage rent deals with some of its landlords/co-investors.

Tech

FT – Mary Meeker warns tech giants that growth will be harder to find – Tim Bradshaw 5/30

  • “Veteran Silicon Valley analyst sees competition intensifying now half the world is online.”

Health / Medicine

FT – Spread of western lifestyle hampers battle against cancer – Darren Dodd 5/31

  • “The good news is that about 40% of cancer cases are preventable and that smoking, the biggest single cause, is in decline across much of the world. The bad news is that overall rates are shooting up as more countries adopt western lifestyles.”
  • “By 2035, the number of new cases is set to rise by 58% to 24m, according to a report from the World Cancer Research Fund.”
  • “’Over the next 20 or 30 years, unless anything is done to stop it, [obesity or being overweight] is going to overtake smoking as the number one risk factor for cancer,’ says Dr Kate Allen, executive director of science and public affairs at the WCRF.”
  • “The report is a synthesis of a decade of research on cancer risks with a new set of recommendations (see graphic) to minimize a person’s chances of developing the disease. It says 12 cancers are now linked to being overweight or obese.”
  • “’It has taken 40 or 50 years to make a big dent in tobacco consumption,’ Dr Allen says. In dealing with the problems of obesity, ‘it’s going to take at least that to get some traction,’ she adds.”

Canada

NYT – In Vancouver, a Housing Frenzy That Even Owners Want to End – Conor Dougherty 6/2

  • “Vancouver is so expensive that politicians want to tax its real estate market into submission, and many homeowners — who will lose money if home prices fall — think it’s the best idea they’ve heard in years.”
  • “Like many cities around the world, Vancouver is grappling with punishing housing costs that have pushed out large swaths of residents — and are causing distress among young adults who can’t afford rent today and take it for granted that they will never own a home.”
  • “Vancouver, surrounded by snow-capped mountains and wide maritime views, has never been especially cheap. But home and condominium prices are up by close to 16% over the past year, and about 60% over the past three, according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver.”
  • “What makes these gains so remarkable is that unlike Silicon Valley, London or New York — where the presence of high-paying tech and finance jobs helps explain housing costs — Vancouver has relatively low salaries. As part of their bid for Amazon’s second headquarters, Vancouver officials boasted about having ‘the lowest wages of all North American tech hubs’.”

June 22, 2018

Perspective

WSJ – Growth in Retiring Baby Boomers Strains U.S. Entitlement Programs – Janet Adamy and Paul Overberg 6/21

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

FT – The world’s progress brings new challenges – Martin Wolf 5/29

  • “Preserving peaceful relations in an era of rapid shifts in relative power is tough.”

Project Syndicate – Are We in a Corporate Debt Bubble? – Susan Lund 6/19

WSJ – Japan’s Yen: A Currency for All Seasons? – Richard Barley 6/21

WSJ – Why Home Prices Have Nowhere to Go But Up – Justin Lahart 6/20

  • “Low supply is keeping sales down despite higher rates and builders are in no rush to boost production.”

Markets / Economy

WSJ – Behemoths Have Dominated the Market Before, but Tech Is Different – James Mackintosh 6/14

Real Estate

FT – Blackstone remains global king of property funds – Chris Flood 6/2

WSJ – Daily Shot: Black Knight – US Foreclosure Starts 6/21

Finance

FT – The mystery trader who roiled Wall Street – Miles Johnson and Robert Smith 6/3

  • “Former Blackstone executive used complex credit derivatives to become a feared hedge fund manager but left behind a trail of recriminations.”

Education

NYT – The Numbers That Explain Why Teachers Are in Revolt – Robert Gebeloff 6/4

NYT – Top Colleges Are Cheaper Than You Think (Unless You’re Rich) – David Leonhardt 6/5

India

FT – Payments crunch pushes Indian power producers to brink of default – Simon Mundy and Kiran Stacey 6/20

  • “Possibility of writedowns hangs over banks still struggling from bad-loan crisis.”

June 21, 2018

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

A Wealth of Common Sense – Too Big To Be Simple? – Ben Carlson 6/19

  • “…There is no such thing as too big to be simple.”
  • “Problems arise when ultra-wealthy people assume the normal rules don’t apply to them.”

A Wealth of Common Sense – Is The Handmaid’s Tale Fast Approaching – Ben Carlson 6/5

Economist – In praise of ranked-choice voting 6/14

  • “A simple reform might fix America’s dysfunctional politics.”

Economist – China has made progress in tackling financial risks – Leaders 6/16

FT – Beauty contest to host new Amazon base reveals ugly truths – Edward Luce 6/5

  • “Competition for ‘HQ2’ shows how hard it is to ensure city development benefits the poor.”

FT – How millennials became the world’s most powerful consumers – John Gapper 6/5

  • “They are the biggest global generation – and their choices are upending business from the US to China.”

Markets / Economy

WSJ – Food Companies Can’t Figure Out What Americans Want to Eat – Aaron Back 6/5

WSJ – The Other Yield Curve Investors Should Watch as Trouble Mounts – Richard Barley 6/19

Real Estate

Financial Advisor – Nuveen, Starwood, Griffin Follow Blackstone Into NAV REIT Market – Evan Simonoff 6/4

Energy

Economist – Global Coal Consumption 6/14

Health / Medicine

FT – Gaming disorder joins the WHO panoply of diseases – Anjana Ahuja 6/19

  • “Official recognition of social media addiction could well be next in line.”

Britain

FT – ‘Hellish’: UK motorists hit by biggest petrol price rise in 18 years – Camilla Hodgson 6/5

  • “Petrol prices jumped at the fastest pace in 18 years in May, with an average increase of 6p per liter from the previous month, according to roadside assistance and insurance company RAC.”
  • “Unleaded petrol rose from 123.43p to 129.41p ($6.46 per gallon) over the month, taking the cost of filling up a 55-litre (14.53 gallon) family car to £71.18 ($93.79), an increase of £3.29 in just one month, according to RAC Fuel Watch data.”
  • “Price rises were driven by a jump in oil prices combined with the weakening of the pound against the dollar, said RAC.”

China

FT – China’s debt collectors focus in on $200bn P2P debt pile – Don Weinland 6/4

  • “Debt collectors in China are harnessing new technologies such as artificial intelligence in a bid to collect on an estimated Rmb1.3tn ($200bn) debt bubble that has formed in the country’s peer-to-peer lending industry.”
  • “An estimated Rmb1.3tn in outstanding P2P debt as of May, according to online lending intelligence firm Wdzj.com, and a rising number of defaults have opened the door to a wave of start-ups using new technologies to try to recover tardy loans.”
  • “’People’s usage of P2P debt is very high but the government only monitors the banking system closely,’ said Cherry Sheng, chief executive of Shanghai-based debt collection group Ziyitong and a former manager at Citigroup and ANZ Bank. ‘This has become an opportunity for start-ups with advanced technology to move into this market.’”
  • “Ziyitong, which has sought to recover Rmb150bn since it was set up in 2016, recently launched an AI platform to help recover delinquent loans for some 600 debt collection agencies, and more than 200 lenders including Alibaba Group and Postal Savings Bank of China, Ms. Sheng said.”
  • “The system scrapes the internet for information on borrowers and their friends, then contacts the borrower via phone using a dialogue robot. The conversations are recorded and analyzed by an algorithm that then determines the phrasing with the highest likelihood of pressuring the person to pay back the loan. The system also calls friends of the borrower and asks them to relay the urgency of making payments.”
  • “In May the AI system had a recovery rate of 41% for large clients on loans delinquent for up to one week, according to Ms. Sheng, compared with a rate of as low as 20% via traditional debt collection methods for similar loans. Ziyitong plans to expand the system to loans that have been unpaid for longer periods of time.”
  • “Yigou, another debt collection start-up, has launched a mobile phone application that allows collection agents to search thousands of individual debt records and choose cases, streamlining connections between lenders and collectors. The company can also provide geo-locational data on some borrowers to help the agents track them down.”

WSJ – China Tech Giants’ Costly Wars to Go Cashless – Stella Yifan Xie 6/14

Europe

WSJ – The Force Behind Europe’s Populist Tide: Frustrated Young Adults – Eric Sylvers 6/17

 

June 20, 2018

Perspective

OECD – A Broken Social Elevator? How to Promote Social Mobility 6/15

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

Foreign Affairs – Beijing’s Building Boom: How the West Surrendered Global Infrastructure Development to China – Bushra Bataineh, Michael Bennon, and Francis Fukuyama 5/21

FT – Facebook’s data sharing shows it is not a US champion – Rana Foroohar 6/6

  • “The social network gave China’s Huawei access to user information despite concerns.”

Pragmatic Capitalism – The Vollgeld Proposal is Bad. Very Bad. – Cullen Roche 6/6

  • A thoughtful point on the benefits of private banks vs. a nationalized banking system.

Wolf Street – Next Mortgage Default Tsunami Isn’t Going to Drown Big Banks but “Shadow Banks” – Wolf Richter 6/17

  • “This is the trend: Banks are pulling back from mortgage lending in a big way, likely cherry-picking their customers to curtail the risks amid inflated prices and irrational exuberance in an environment of rising mortgage rates; and non-bank lenders aggressively chase everyone else. And since these ‘shadow banks’ not regulated by bank regulators, they’re free to do as they please.”
  • “ATTOM obtained this data from publicly recorded mortgages and deeds of trust in more than 1,700 counties accounting for more than 87% of the US population.”
  • “It also pointed at the curious dynamics of co-buyers – defined as multiple, non-married buyers listed on the sales deed – in the most expensive markets. Nationwide in Q1, 17.4% of all single family homes were purchased by co-buyers, up from 16.3% a year ago, and up from 14.9% two years ago. But the national averages paper over the vast differences in individual markets.”

Markets / Economy

FT – How millennials’ taste for ‘authenticity’ is disrupting powerful food brands – Scheherazade Daneshkhu 6/18

  • “Business struggles to respond to young consumer demand for more natural products.”

FT – The millennial moment – in charts – Cale Tilford 6/5

WSJ – Daily Shot: BofAML – Updated Asset Price Bubble Chart 6/19

Real Estate

WSJ – Daily Shot: Black Knight – Tappable Equity of US Mortgage Holders 6/19

Bloomberg Businessweek – Brexit Pain Hits London Housing – Jill Ward 6/18

Energy

FT – Oil producers face their ‘life or death’ question – David Sheppard and Anjli Raval 6/18

  • “Fear of an imminent peak in demand means companies are less likely to invest. So does that make shortages and a price rise inevitable?”
  • “In the second half of this decade total capital expenditure by the large oil and gas groups is projected to fall by almost 50% to $443.5bn from $875.1bn between 2010-15, according to Norwegian consultancy Rystad Energy. Although partly offset by a fall in oilfield development costs, the drop also coincides with the big groups ploughing more capital into shorter-term projects, which pay off quickly, as well as renewable energy. The moves come amid fears that electric vehicles pose a huge threat to oil’s dominance.”
  • “’It’s not wise to be cavalier about a lack of investment,’ says Stewart Glickman, an energy equity analyst at CFRA. ‘The drop over the past four years eventually will have an impact on crude prices.’”
  • “He adds that while investment in US shale has grown as companies look to short-cycle projects, bottlenecks and the declining quality of reserves mean it alone might not be able to fill the gap. ‘To blithely assume that because [the US shale industry] has been able to generate enough production so far that we’ll be able to continue doing so is a risky expectation,’ he says.”
  • “Estimates for when oil demand will peak vary wildly. Some experts say it could happen as soon as 2023, others put it off to 2070. That lack of consensus presents a danger, critics say, that the oil groups are being pushed — against their instincts — into shelving complex long-term investments just as demand for oil nears 100m barrels a day for the first time as emerging economies in Asia and Africa expand.”
  • “’There is so much uncertainty,’ says Andrew Gould, former chairman and chief executive of oilfield services company Schlumberger. ‘It’s increasingly difficult now to get boards to sign off on projects that have a 20-25 year life.’”

Shipping

WSJ – Business Is Booming at the Panama Canal – Costas Paris 6/17

  • “Widened waterway opened canal to bigger ships moving U.S. natural gas and petroleum, sending toll revenue soaring.”

China

FT – China eyes role as world’s power supplier – James Kynge and Lucy Hornby 6/6

  • “In Laos, in Brazil, in central Africa and most of all in China itself, ultra high-voltage (UHV) cable technology that allows power to be commercially transported over vast distances with lower costs and increased load is justifying the construction of massive power projects. It is dubbed the ‘intercontinental ballistic missile’ of the power industry by Liu Zhenya, its biggest backer and for a decade the president of State Grid, China’s powerful transmission utility.”
  • “UHV allowed China to binge on dam building in its mountainous hinterland, then transport the power thousands of kilometers to its wealthy, industrial east coast. But by enabling this, and other projects, UHV has left western China with such a glut of power that Mr Liu in 2016 proposed using the technology to export power as far away as Germany.”
  • “Now Mr Liu is promoting UHV internationally through his Global Energy Interconnection (GEI) initiative. Designated a ‘national strategy’ and championed by Xi Jinping, China’s president, the initiative feeds into one of China’s most ambitious international plans — to create the world’s first global electricity grid.”
  • “Advocates stress that this does not mean China would control the resulting grid but networks would be linked to allow better cross-regional allocation of power surpluses. It is no coincidence that this would resolve the problem of ‘trapped’ power resulting from some of China’s mega construction projects in countries like Laos that lack a big enough domestic market.”
  • “Chinese companies have announced investments of $102bn in building or acquiring power transmission infrastructure across 83 projects in Latin America, Africa, Europe and beyond over the past five years, according to RWR. Adding in loans from Chinese institutions for overseas power grid investments brings the total to $123bn.”
  • “Throw in all power-related Chinese deals overseas, including investments and loans to power plants as well as grids, and the number almost quadruples. Between 2013 and the end of February 2018, total overseas power transactions announced reached $452bn, up 92% from 2013 levels, according to RWR, which strips out of its calculations deals that are announced only to be subsequently cancelled.”
  • “Officials and power industry analysts in China insist that it would be too simple to assume that such investments are all slated to be rolled up into a single international grid to achieve the GEI goal, which Mr Liu recently described as similar to the internet: global but not controlled by a single country.”
  • “Although Chinese companies would not necessarily own or control the regional grids, their influence, via the assets they do control, would ultimately lead to regional interconnection.”
  • “The biggest boon for China’s global grid ambitions is UHV cable technology. While other companies such as Germany’s Siemens and the Swedish-Swiss conglomerate ABB also have the technology, Chinese companies have been the first to deploy it on a grand scale, developing global industry standards.”
  • “China has already demonstrated the technology’s performance at home. The 37,000km of UHV cable that is laid or under construction in China can carry a load of 150GW, equivalent to 2.5 times the maximum electricity load in the UK. And despite some pushback from the country’s entrenched power generators, Mr Liu claims that the cables are particularly applicable to renewable energy.”
  • “Steven Chu, a former US secretary of energy, has called China’s strides in UHV technology a ‘Sputnik moment’ for the US, alluding to the Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of the first earth-orbiting space satellite, which marked a technological leap ahead of the US.”
  • “’China has the best transmission lines in terms of the highest voltage and lowest loss,’ Mr Chu has said. ‘They can transmit electricity over 2,000km and lose only 7% of the energy. If we [the US] transmitted over 200km we would lose more than that.’”
  • “The technology promises to reshape the way in which the world consumes power, Mr Liu told his London audience. He used the hypothetical scenario of hydropower generated in the Democratic Republic of Congo for $0.03 per kWh being transmitted to Europe through Chinese UHV cables at a cost on delivery of just $0.07-0.08 per kWh. This compares with an average cost of €0.20 ($0.23) per kWh to households in the EU, according to Eurostat, the data agency.”

 

June 19, 2018

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

FT – Watch the Fed’s balance sheet, not interest rates – Gillian Tett 6/7

  • “The US central bank’s unwinding has contributed to turmoil in emerging markets.”

FT – China is winning the global tech race – Michael Moritz 6/17

FT – Donald Trump’s trade tirade shows his mastery of the message – Rana Foroohar 6/17

Polygon – What if Star Wars never happened? – Kevin Lincoln 6/7

  • “Imagining a world where George Lucas’ space fantasy didn’t revolutionize Hollywood.”

Markets / Economy

WSJ – Daily Shot: indeed – Older workers are the gig economy 6/18

Energy

FT Energy Source: BP – World Fuel Sources by proportionate share – Ed Crooks 6/17

LA Times – Shale country is out of workers. That means $140,000 for a truck driver and 100% pay hikes – David Wethe 6/8

Finance

WSJ – The Finance Industry’s Incredible Ability to Keep the Money Rolling In – Paul J. Davies 6/15

  • “Banks, brokers and money managers have kept their revenue steady for 130 years.”

Cryptocurrency / ICOs

FT – Who really owns bitcoin now? – Hannah Murphy 6/7

  • “Initially in the crypto space, you had people who really understood the technology. Then there was a typical bandwagon investor situation and you know how it ends — and it did.” – Campbell Harvey, finance professor at Duke University and an investment strategy adviser for Man Group.
  • “But how many have gained — and lost — from the bitcoin bubble? Exclusive data from blockchain research company Chainalysis seen by the FT provides some tantalizing answers.”
  • “The Chainalysis data quantifies this distinct shift in the make-up of bitcoin owners from longer-term investors — those who held the asset for more than a year — to short-term investors who have traded more recently, by analyzing how regularly coins have changed hands.”
  • “Last November — before December’s pricing peak — the amount of bitcoin held for investment was roughly three times that held by traders.”
  • “However, by April 2018, the data show the amount held by investors — about 6m bitcoin — was much closer to the amount held by short-term speculators, with 5.1m bitcoin.”
  • “Indeed, Chainalysis estimates that longer-term holders sold at least $30bn worth of bitcoin to new speculators over the December to April period, with half of this movement taking place in December alone.“
  • “’This was an exceptional transfer of wealth,’ says Philip Gradwell, Chainalysis’ chief economist, who dubs the past six months as bitcoin’s ‘liquidity event’.”
  • “Mr Gradwell argues that this sudden injection of liquidity — the amount of bitcoin available for trading rose by close to 60% over that period — has been a ‘fundamental driver’ behind the recent price decline. At the same time, bitcoin trading volumes have now fallen in tandem with the prices, from close to $4bn daily in December to $1bn today.”
  • “So will the price of bitcoin ever surpass December’s peak? Part of the answer lies in who holds bitcoin now that the hype has died down.”
  • “Born in 2009 in the wake of the financial crisis, bitcoin is rooted in a libertarian quest for a means of exchange that is unshackled from the central banking system. Proponents — among them, computer experts and political activists — heralded the arrival of an alternative monetary system that could replace fiat currency.”
  • “But despite the recent crypto boom, there are few signs that this is happening. According to research published this month by Morgan Stanley, only four of the top 500 US e-commerce merchants accepted cryptocurrencies in the first quarter of 2018, compared with three at the beginning of 2017.”
  • “Chainalysis notes that the ‘vast majority’ of transactions it analyzed showed bitcoin being received from exchanges and rarely sent to merchant services to pay for goods or services.”
  • “Only a finite number of coin — 21m — can be created. Of this, about 4m are yet to be mined. Just as physical coins can be lost down the back of a sofa, so can bitcoins if users lose or forget the passwords needed to access their online wallets. The Chainalysis data separates out coins it deems to be lost or unused for years — which total 3.7m bitcoin, worth about $28bn.”
  • “’Speculation remains the primary use case for these digital assets; merchant or institutional adoption does not appear to be a primary driver of price,’ says Preston Byrne, an English structured finance lawyer and cryptocurrency observer.”
  • “Given this breakdown in bitcoin owners, most market watchers do not rule out another rapid price run-up. However, they say this would likely be the random movement of pure speculation or market manipulation rather than anything else.”
  • “’It’s very important to stress, this is not in any sense a rational market,’ says David Gerard, the author of Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain.”
  • “’It’s very thinly traded, very badly structured . . . and it’s stupendously manipulated,’ he adds. ‘Anyone who goes in not realizing just how manipulated the crypto markets are will get skinned.’”
  • “The Chainalysis data also show that the bitcoin marketplace is skewed in terms of wealth distribution. A small cluster of investors — known colloquially as ‘whales’ — capture a hefty proportion of the market, which stands at odds with bitcoin’s mission to democratize finance. This brings its own risks.”
  • “Overall, some 1,600 bitcoin wallets — managed by both speculators and investors — contained at least 1,000 bitcoin each in April, according to Chainalysis, collectively holding nearly 5m bitcoin, or close to a third of the available total.”
  • “Of those, just under 100 wallets owned by longer-term investors contained between 10,000 and 100,000 bitcoin — so between $75m and $750m at today’s prices.”
  • “Nevertheless, some point out that the excitement and influx of fresh funds into the market has allowed its infrastructure to mature — albeit gradually — which could be a boon for those looking to trade bitcoin more safely in future.”
  • “Much of the future of bitcoin trading will depend on the approach that regulators take, experts say. There are stirrings across the world, though to date, little coherence. Asian financial centers such as Tokyo are now regulating crypto exchanges, while China has banned them outright. Meanwhile, the US Securities and Exchange Commission last month announced a criminal probe into potential bitcoin price manipulation.”
  • “Banks in particular have been reticent to engage with cryptocurrencies and the companies that handle them, partly due to the difficulty of conducting anti-money laundering checks on transactions.”
  • “’Bank compliance officers really, really hate cryptos . . . be prepared to demonstrate the provenance of every penny from every crypto,’ says Mr Gerard.”
  • “Any more widespread adoption of bitcoin would need regulators, central banks and tax regulators to allow the transfer of wealth movement from the current financial system into the new one, says Gavin Brown, senior lecturer in financial economics at Manchester Metropolitan University and director of cryptocurrency hedge fund Blockchain Capital.”

Environment / Science

Quartz – To hit climate goals, Bill Gates and his billionaire friends are betting on energy storage – Akshat Rathi 6/12

China

FT – Beijing leans on lenders to back debt-hit HNA’s bond sale – Lucy Hornby and Sherry Fei Ju 6/15

  • “Chinese banks have been urged by government officials to ‘support’ bonds issued by HNA as the troubled finance-to-aviation conglomerate tries to extricate itself from a massive debt burden racked up during an acquisition binge.”
  • “HNA plans to issue Rmb4bn ($620m) in domestic bonds, paying interest of 6.5-7.5%.”

Other Interesting Links

Bloomberg – It’s Billionaires at the Gate as Ultra-Rich Muscle In on Private Equity – Simone Foxman and Sonali Basak 6/11

WSJ – Daily Shot: Plastic Surgery Portal – Most Searched Plastic Surgery Procedures by State 6/18

June 18, 2018

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

Bloomberg Businessweek – Could Ocean’s 8 Actually Work? – James Tarmy 6/5

  • “Why stealing giant diamonds is a terrible, no good, very bad idea.”

Bloomberg Businessweek – Tears ‘R’ Us: The World’s Biggest Toy Store Didn’t Have to Die – Susan Berfield, Eliza Ronalds-Hannon, Matthew Townsend, and Lauren Coleman-Lochner 6/6

FT – Trump is trading on the protectionist mood – Rana Foroohar 6/10

  • “When even centrists are circling the wagons, we know we have entered a different world.”

FT – Forecasters have an awful record in predicting energy markets – Nick Butler 6/14

  • “Wider uncertainty increases appeal of large, low-cost power projects.”

WSJ – The Stock-Market Price Can Be Wrong. Very Wrong. – Jason Zweig 6/15

  • “Researchers have caught investors in the act of wildly – and unnecessarily – overpaying for a stock.”

WSJ – Venezuela’s Long Road to Ruin – Mary Anastasia O’Grady 6/10

  • “Few countries have provided such a perfect example of socialist policies in practice.”

Markets / Economy

NYT – Power Companies’ Mistakes Can Cost Billions. Who Should Pay? – Ivan Penn 6/14

  • “Utilities say they must be shielded from liability or the electric grid will suffer. Critics say that puts the burden on ratepayers, not investors.”

Real Estate

WSJ – Daily Shot: Bianco Research – Value of US Real Estate relative to GDP 6/15

WSJ – Daily Shot: John Burns RE Consulting – Burns Home Value Index 6/15

WSJ – Daily Shot: John Burns RE Consulting – Burns Intrinsic Home Value Index 6/15

Energy

WSJ – Global Investment in Wind and Solar Energy Is Outshining Fossil Fuels – Russell Gold 6/11

Finance

WSJ – Daily Shot: MagnifyMoney – Auto Loan Rates vs. Fed Funds Rate 6/15

WSJ – Daily Shot: MagnifyMoney – Student Loan Rates vs. Fed Funds Rate 6/15

Fishing

NYT – In the Philippines, Dynamite Fishing Decimates Entire Ocean Food Chains – Aurora Almendral 6/15

Construction

NYT – Piece by Piece, a Factory-Made Answer for a Housing Squeeze – Conor Dougherty 6/7

  • “The global construction industry is a $10 trillion behemoth whose structures determine where people live, how they get to work and what cities look like. It is also one of the world’s least efficient businesses. The construction productivity rate — how much building workers do for each hour of labor they put in — has been flat since 1945, according to the McKinsey Global Institute. Over that period, sectors like agriculture, manufacturing and retail saw their productivity rates surge by as much as 1,500%. In other words, while the rest of the economy has been supercharged by machines, computers and robots, construction companies are about as efficient as they were in World War II.”

WSJ – Historic Rise in Lumber Costs Ripples Through Economy – Ryan Dezember 6/5

Education

WSJ – Judges Wouldn’t Consider Forgiving Crippling Student Loans – Until Now – Katy Stech Ferek 6/14

  • “For decades, college debt was immune from the bankruptcy process. Judges are actively seeking ways to help debtors.”

Africa

NYT – Corruption Gutted South Africa’s Tax Agency. Now the Nation Is Paying the Price. – Selam Gebrekidan and Norimitsu Onishi 6/10

Britain

FT – Average-sized English homes too pricey for average earners – Judith Evans 6/15

China

FT – Tycoon abducted by China works with authorities to sell assets – Don Weinland and Lucy Hornby 6/10

  • “Xiao Jianhua (Tomorrow Group company) said to be detained in Shanghai a year after being seized in Hong Kong.”

Nikkei Asian Review – How Beijing is winning control of the South China Sea – Simon Roughneen 6/13

  • “Erratic US policy and fraying alliances give China a free hand.”
  • “What China is winning is de facto control of nearly the entire South China Sea, including all activities and resources in it, despite the other surrounding Southeast Asian states’ respective legal rights and entitlements under international law.” – Jay Batongbacal, director of the University of the Philippines Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea
  • “At stake is the huge commercial and military leverage that comes with controlling one of the world’s most important shipping lanes, through which up to $5 trillion worth of trade passes each year.”

Europe

Bloomberg Businessweek – Italy’s Young Populists Are Coddling the Old – and Holding the Country Back – Peter Coy 6/6

  • “The country’s economic output is smaller now than it was in 2004, and employment policies are skewed to protecting jobs, not creating them. The number of Italians registered as living abroad rose 60% from 2006 to 2017, to almost 5 million. Among those who stay, it’s common for unemployed young people to live with their parents instead of starting their own families, which is one reason the country has one of the world’s lowest birthrates.”

South America

NYT – Workers Flee and Thieves Loot Venezuela’s Reeling Oil Giant – William Neuman and Clifford Krauss 6/14

Other Interesting Links

Tax Foundation – How High Are Beer Taxes in Your State? – Katherine Loughead 5/24

June 15, 2018

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

Economist – In investing, as in poker, following rules works best – Buttonwood 5/31

Markets / Economy

Economist – Central banks holdings of domestic government debt 5/31

WSJ – ECB to End Bond-Buying Program in December as Crisis-Era Policies Wind Down – Tom Fairless and Brian Blackstone 6/14

  • “The European Central Bank is closing a chapter on one controversial policy, government bond purchases, while extending the life of another: negative interest rates.”
  • “The central bank Thursday laid out plans to wind down its giant bond-buying program by the end of this year, but said it likely would wait ‘at least through the summer of 2019’ before raising its deposit rate, now at minus 0.4%.”

WSJ – Daily Shot: Deutsche Bank – US Budget Deficit Funding and % Holdings 6/14

Real Estate

WSJ – Daily Shot: Bloomberg – World’s Most Expensive Housing Markets Relative to Salary 6/12

WSJ – Daily Shot: Mary Meeker Internet Trends 2018 – Airbnb vs Hotel ADR 5/31

Wolf Street – Toronoto’s House Price Bubble Not Fun Anymore – Wolf Richter 6/4

Energy

WSJ – Daily Shot: US Total Crude Oil Production 6/14

Finance

FT – US fundraising for ‘blank cheque’ buyout vehicles hits record – Nicole Bullock 6/13

  • “Funds have been raised at a record rate in the US this year for shell companies that offer a ‘blank cheque’ to sponsors to pursue takeovers, providing further evidence of the rehabilitation of a controversial tool that waned in the wake of the financial crisis.”
  • “The so-called special purpose acquisition companies, or spacs, have raised $4.5bn so far in 2018 — the largest amount for this type of fundraising in the period, according to Dealogic, which began recording the deals in 1995. That followed a brisk 2017, the second strongest year on record with nearly $10bn sold.”
  • “The funds are placed in an interest-bearing account until a target is identified — and spac investors can get their money back if they do not approve of the acquisition. They are basically a bet that the sponsors can find a good company at a reasonable price.”
  • “Spacs offer investors, often hedge funds, a cash proxy with the option of the acquisition. Sponsors get a 20% stake in the acquired company, if investors approve it, for a nominal amount of money.”

WSJ – Daily Shot: BlackRock – Four big trends to drive ETF growth 5/31

Cryptocurrency / ICOs

WSJ – Daily Shot: Bianco Research – Cryptocurrency Market Caps as of June 11, 2018 6/14

Environment / Science

FT – Nikkei Asian Review: Thailand falls behind in global battle with plastic waste – George Styllis 6/13

  • “’Beating plastic pollution’ was the theme of World Environment Day on June 5, but Thailand is falling behind Asian and European countries in the fight against plastic waste.”
  • “The issue has been brought into focus after a dead whale was found last month to have swallowed 80 plastic bags.”
  • “The whale, found in Songkhla province, served as a reminder of Thailand’s problem with plastic, and the abject failures of the government and retail industry to bring the nation’s environmental consciousness in line with the rest of the world’s.”
  • “Thailand is the world’s sixth biggest contributor to ocean waste, while China is the largest. Thailand generates 1.03m tons of plastic waste per year, with over 3% of that finding its way into the ocean, Tara Buakamsri, Thailand country director for Greenpeace, told the Nikkei Asian Review.”
  • “Of the country’s total waste, plastic accounts for 12% — higher than China’s at 11%. A survey by the government in 2017 found that, on average, Thais each use eight plastic bags per day, which equates to about 198bn per year.”

China

WSJ – Daily Shot: PIMCO – China’s Contribution to Global Credit Creation 6/12

WSJ – Daily Shot: Trading Economics – Hong Kong Home Ownership Rate 6/12

June 14, 2018

I’m back. Sorry for the leave of absence.

Perspective

Visual Capitalist: Mary Meeker 2018 Internet Trends Report – How American Household Finances are Changing – Jeff Desjardins 6/1

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

Axios – Millennials are moving to the exurbs in droves – Steve LeVine 6/10

FT – China’s Achilles heel lies with property companies – Henny Sender 6/12

  • “Heavy issuance of dollar debt could be exposed if currency rises further.”

NYT – A Rescue Plan for a Jobs Crisis in the Heartland – Edward L. Glaeser, Lawrence H. Summers, and Ben Austin 5/24

WSJ – Daily Shot: John Burns RE – US Economic Recovery Projection 6/13

Real Estate

WSJ – Blackstone Triples REIT’s Fundraising Goal – Peter Grant 6/12

Energy

WSJ – The New Tech That Terrifies OPEC – Spencer Jakab 6/1

  • “U.S. shale oil drillers are boosting efficiency with giant pads and walking rigs, lowering prices to a point that could hurt exporters like Saudi Arabia.”

Cryptocurrency / ICOs

WSJ – Daily Shot: Bianco Research – Bitcoin Trading Activity by Currency 6/13

Tech

Bloomberg – Native Programmable Microcomputer Shipments – Barry Ritholtz 5/11

Entertainment

WSJ – Why Empty Seats at Taylor Swift’s Concerts Are Good for Business – Anne Steele 5/15

Environment / Science

how much.net – The Most Expensive Weather and Climate Disasters in the US – Raul 5/29

Automotive

WSJ – A Worrying Turn Ahead for Auto Loans – Aaron Back 5/29

  • “Auto loan delinquencies are too high considering the strong economy.”

May 29, 2018

If you were only to read one thing…

WSJ – The Tragedy of Venezuela – Anatoly Kurmanaev 5/24

  • “Last weekend, Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro dragged his Socialist government into a third decade in power by winning elections that were boycotted by the opposition, ignored by most of his countrymen and rejected by the international community. As sluggish voting drew to a close, a smiling and confident Mr. Maduro posted a video of himself waving not to throngs of adoring supporters but to a largely empty public square.”
  • “By the end of 2018, it will have shrunk by an estimated 35% since 2013, the steepest contraction in the country’s 200-year history and the deepest recession anywhere in the world in decades. From 2014 to 2017, the poverty rate rose from 48% to 87%, according to a survey by the country’s top universities. Some nine out of 10 Venezuelans don’t earn enough to meet basic needs. Children die from malnutrition and medicine shortages. An estimated three million Venezuelans, 10% of the population, have left the country in the two decades of Socialist rule, almost half of them in the past two years, according to Tomás Páez, a researcher at the Central University of Venezuela.”
  • “If Mr. Maduro didn’t know when to stop the music, the idea for the endless party came from his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, who died just a month before I arrived in 2013. The strongman charmed his countrymen with a silver tongue, his love of dancing and singing and his disdain for the hated austerity packages imposed by previous Venezuelan presidents. As oil prices shot up in his last decade, Mr. Chavez not only failed to save any of the windfall but buried the country in debt.”
  • “Along the way, he imposed capital controls to try to stop money from fleeing the country. The arbitrary exchange rate system suffocated private enterprise and investment, but the poor got subsidized food and free housing. The middle class got up to $8,000 of almost-free credit card allowances a year for travel and shopping. And the rich and politically connected siphoned off up to $30 billion a year of heavily subsidized dollars through shell companies, according to the planning minister at the time.”
  • “The currency and price controls implemented by Mr. Chávez broke the basic link between supply and demand, creating surreal economic distortions. A business-class Air France return ticket from Caracas to my hometown in Siberia would cost me $400, yet a 15-year-old Suzuki jalopy with no air conditioning and 150,000 miles set me back $4,600.”
  • “Caracas in 2013 reminded me of a tropical version of the Soviet periphery. Basic goods like flour and aspirin had fixed prices and were so cheap that companies had no incentive to make them. When you did find them, it made sense to grab as much as you could carry. Who knew when you would find them again? Like Russia in the 1980s, people dealt with shortages by resorting to the black market, hoarding goods and trading perks of their jobs, like bureaucratic stamps of approval or access to car batteries, for other favors or products.”
  • “But Venezuela’s collapse has been far worse than the chaos that I experienced in the post-Soviet meltdown. As a young person, I was still able to get a good education in a public school with subsidized meals and decent free hospital treatment. By contrast, as the recession took hold in Venezuela, the so-called Socialist government made no attempt to shield health care and education, the two supposed pillars of its program. This wasn’t Socialism. It was kleptocracy—the rule of thieves.”
  • “In Venezuela, I saw children abandon schools that had stopped serving meals and teachers trade their lesson books for pickaxes to work in dangerous mines. I saw pictures of horse carcasses on the grounds of the top university’s veterinary school—killed and eaten because of the lack of food.”
  • “Hyperinflation, set to reach 14,000% this year, has transformed the most basic transactions into Kafkaesque trials. Cash is extremely scarce, card payment networks are overloaded, cell phone coverage is worse than in Syria, and online banking systems constantly crash because of underinvestment. Paying for a cup of coffee can take an hour.”
  • “The crisis has even made it harder for the ruling elite to enjoy its privileged status. Despite access to official dollars and the protection of security details, top apparatchiks now avoid the best restaurants, the plushest resorts and business-class lounges, where they fear encountering the hatred of their compatriots. Sanctions and fears of corruption probes have barred many of them from trips to the U.S. and much of Europe.”
  • “After 2016, I no longer had to travel to report on the toll of the economic crisis. It was visible all around me: in the sagging skin of neighbors, the dimming eyes of janitors and security guards, the children’s scuffles for mangos from a nearby tree. It is profoundly depressing to watch people you know grow thinner and more dejected day by day, year after year. When I look back at my five years in Venezuela, it’s not the time I spent covering riots, violent street protests or armed gangs that stirs the most feeling. It’s the slow decay of the people I encountered every day.”
  • “For most ordinary Venezuelans I know, Mr. Maduro’s foreordained victory last weekend snuffed out the last glimmer of hope that their lives can improve through democratic and peaceful means. What’s left is exile or further misery.”

Perspective

WSJ – Daily Shot: CNN – Global School Shootings Since 2009 5/25

Slate – Eighties Babies Are Officially the Brokest Generation, Federal Reserve Study Concludes – Jordan Weissmann 5/23

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

A Teachable Moment – When Fees Go Up in Seconds, It’s Time to Go – Dina Isola 5/25

FT – New York property jitters herald declines elsewhere – Gillian Tett 5/24

  • “Clouds are hovering over New York’s housing market. A couple of years ago, property prices were spiraling ever higher — much like the new luxury skyscrapers now springing up in midtown Manhattan.”
  • “But estate agents say that sales volumes in the first quarter of 2018 were at their lowest level for six years. Meanwhile the median price per square foot was 18% lower than a year earlier, according to some reports.”
  • For those of you not living in Manhattan and that don’t own property there, you think, so what? The thing is … “last month the IMF published its first comprehensive analysis of global property and this suggests that real estate is becoming prone to synchronization too. Two decades ago, only 10% of property price movements could be blamed on global — not local — factors. Now it is 30%.”
  • “…What is striking is that this real estate synchronization is affecting urban centers in both emerging and advanced economies. Or as the report notes: ‘House prices in major cities outside the United States — Beijing, Dublin, Hong Kong SAR, London, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Tokyo, Toronto and Vancouver — are positively associated with US house price dispersions’.”
  • “This might seem unsurprising. After all, the global elite hop across borders at dizzying speed. So does financial capital, and sentiment-shaping news. Meanwhile, the market capitalization of the real estate investment trust sector has tripled in the past 15 years, and large asset managers allocate on average of 11% of their portfolios to property.”
  • “This has made the housing market more ‘financialized’, since some investors are treating housing more like a tradeable asset, chasing yields around the world. No wonder that a decade of ultra-loose monetary policy in the west has lifted so many geographically dispersed real estate boats.”
  • “…the key point is this: if (or when) global financial conditions eventually become less benign, there will probably be downward movement in housing markets too, with some unexpected spillover effects.”
  • “Indeed, the most intriguing point in the IMF report is that ‘heightened synchronicity of house prices can signal a downside tail risk to real economic activity, especially when taking place in a buoyant credit environment’.”
  • “In plain English, this means that a correlated boom in global real estate markets can signal trouble ahead. We should keep a close eye on those estate agents’ reports in New York — as well as London or Hong Kong. The Big Apple’s jitters might yet be a canary in the coal-mine.”

FT View – A wise autocrat knows what he does not control 5/23

  • “Turkey’s president risks losing his fight with the financial markets.”

The Irrelevant Investor – Never Begin With the End in Mind – Michael Batnick 5/25

NYT – Elon Musk, the Donald of Silicon Valley – Bret Stephens 5/25

WSJ – Banks Won Big in Washington. What It Means for Investors – Jason Zweig 5/25

Real Estate

WSJ – Daily Shot: US Existing Homes Sales 5/24

WSJ – Daily Shot: NAR US Existing Homes Months Supply 5/25

WSJ – Daily Shot: Change in US Single-Family Homes Sales 5/25

WSJ – Daily Shot: Bloomberg – Zillow – Rise in Home Sales – Select markets 5/25

Energy

WSJ – Daily Shot: eia – US Average regular gasoline price 5/25

Shipping

FT – Maersk raises shipping rates as oil price spike bites – Joe Leahy and Richard Milne 5/24

  • “The world’s biggest container shipping group Maersk Line told customers it is raising prices in response to increased marine fuel costs, showing how the surge in oil prices to their highest levels in four years is rippling through the global supply chain.” 
  • “Bunker prices, as marine fuel is known, have risen more than 20% since the start of the year, and in Europe have hit $440 per metric ton, the highest since 2014. That has forced Maersk to introduce an ’emergency bunker surcharge’, the company told customers in a note.” 

Education

WSJ – Mike Meru Has $1 Million in Student Loans. How Did That Happen? – Josh Mitchell 5/25

  • “Due to escalating tuition and easy credit, the U.S. has 101 people who owe at least $1 million in federal student loans, according to the Education Department. Five years ago, 14 people owed that much.”
  • “More could join that group. While the typical student borrower owes $17,000, the number of those who owe at least $100,000 has risen to around 2.5 million, nearly 6% of the borrowing pool, Education Department data show.”
  • “For graduate-school students especially, there is little incentive for universities to help put the brakes on big borrowing. The government essentially allows grad students to borrow any amount to cover tuition and living costs, with few guardrails on how the final sum will be repaid.”
  • “More than a third of borrowers from one of the government’s main graduate school lending programs have enrolled in some form of federal loan-forgiveness plan.”
  • “Dental school is the costliest higher-education program in the U.S. Private nonprofit schools during the 2015-2016 school year charged an average of $71,820 a year, the Urban Institute found. The USC program now costs $91,000 a year, and $137,000 when living expenses are included.”
  • “Mr. Meru’s financial records—provided to The Wall Street Journal—show he borrowed $601,506 to attend USC—a debt swelled to more than $1 million by fees and interest.”

Asia – excluding China and Japan

FT – Malaysia police seized $28.6m cash in 1MDB probe raid – Ben Bland 5/25

  • “The cash confiscated last week from a luxury Kuala Lumpur apartment linked to the 1Malaysia Development Berhad investigation was worth RM114m ($28.6m), Malaysian police said on Friday.”
  • “The hoard, composed of Malaysian ringgit, US dollars and 24 other currencies, was seized alongside 284 luxury handbags and 37 other bags full of jewelry and watches from an empty apartment at the Pavilion Residences condominiums.”
  • We’re talking liquid-hard currency…
  • “Amar Singh, the head of the commercial crime unit, said it took police and 21 officers from Malaysia’s central bank three days to count the stash, which is now being held in the bank’s vaults.”

Japan

WSJ – In Booming Japan, the Phillips Curve Is Dead – Greg Ip 5/23