Tag: Debt

January 5, 2018

Happy New Year!

I hope that you had a safe and enjoyable transition and I wish you a prosperous 2018.

While I wasn’t planning a post today, I don’t want to deluge you with too much content first thing Monday, so here is a mid-day post.

Cheers,

Duff

Perspective

NYT – Rise of Bitcoin Competitor Ripple Creates Wealth to Rival Zuckerberg – Nathaniel Popper 1/4

  • “The virtual currency boom has gotten so heated that it is throwing the list of the world’s richest people into disarray.”
  • “Consider what has happened to the founders of an upstart virtual currency known as Ripple, which has seen its value skyrocket in recent weeks.”
  • “At one point on Thursday, Chris Larsen, a Ripple co-founder who is also the largest holder of Ripple tokens, was worth more than $59 billion, according to figures from Forbes. That would have briefly vaulted Mr. Larsen ahead of Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg into fifth place on the Forbes list of the world’s richest people.”
  • “Other top Ripple holders would have also zoomed up that list as the value of their tokens soared more than 100% during the last week — and more than 30,000% in the last year. The boom has turned Ripple into the second largest virtual currency, within striking distance of the original behemoth, Bitcoin.”
  • “While most of these currencies were worth nearly nothing a year ago, many are now responsible for creating billionaires — albeit with rapidly fluctuating fortunes. If this is a tulip fever, the fever has spread to chrysanthemums and poppies.”
  • “Ripple, whose tokens are known as XRP, is far from the only virtual currency being fueled by the hysteria. In 2017, there were 29 tokens — including Einsteinium and Byteball — that rose more than Bitcoin’s remarkable 1,600% jump, according to OnChainFx, a data provider.”
  • “Nearly 40 virtual currencies are worth more than $1 billion — when all the outstanding tokens are counted at their current value — despite many of them not having been used in any sort of transaction other than speculative trading.”
  • For perspective, “… all the outstanding Ripple tokens were worth $140 billion on Thursday, while all Bitcoin were worth $250 billion.”
  • “Mr. Larsen was Ripple’s chief executive from 2012 until he stepped down last year to become the company’s executive chairman. During his tenure, Ripple focused on helping banks use its software to shift money between different foreign currencies, something that most banks currently do through a cumbersome process involving separate accounts in every country where they operate.”
  • “Ripple has said it has signed up more than 100 banks to use the company’s technology, including American Express and Banco Santander.”
  • “But banks do not need to use Ripple tokens for Ripple’s software to transfer dollars, euros and yen. That point appears to be lost on many small time investors who are buying Ripple tokens.”
  • “Most of the buying and selling of Ripple tokens is happening in South Korea, according to data providers that track virtual currency exchanges, where ordinary investors have thrown money at a wide array of virtual currencies.”
  • “…Even virtual currency analysts who believe in Ripple’s software have said there is a big difference between Ripple the company being successful, and Ripple the token gaining enough traction to justify current prices.”
  • “’An impossibly long list of things already needs to go right for XRP to become a reserve currency for banks,’ Ryan Selkis, a virtual currency analyst, wrote in a post on Thursday.”
  • “But, Mr. Selkis added, that doesn’t mean Ripple’s price won’t keep ascending. Why? ‘Because this is crypto, and everyone in the industry is now slinging crack crypto cocaine to retail addicts,’ he wrote.”

WSJ – The Cashless Society Has Arrived – Only It’s in China – Alyssa Abkowitz 1/4

  • “Though the U.S. saw $112 billion of mobile payments in 2016, by a Forrester Research estimate, such payments in China totaled $9 trillion, according to iResearch Consulting Group, a Chinese firm.”
  • “For Alibaba and Tencent, the payoff isn’t just the transaction fees they make from merchants, typically 0.6%. It’s also the consumer data collected, which can transform their apps into marketing platforms for an expanding array of services, from bike sharing to travel.”
  • “Conditions in China made it ripe for this innovation. Credit cards never caught on in a big way. Discretionary spending wasn’t an option for most people until recent years, and there has long been a cultural aversion to debt in China. On top of that, the government made it tough for Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. to set up shop.”
  • “The rise of tech companies as financial powers has dealt a blow to traditional banks. China’s state-owned banks lost nearly $23 billion in fees in 2015 they might have collected from card fees, according to a November 2016 report from EY (formerly Ernst & Young) and Singapore’s DBS Bank. The report projected the annual fee loss could widen to $60 billion by 2020.”
  • “The larger problem for banks might be that Alibaba and Tencent often know more about their customers than they do. If a Beijing car dealer uses a bank debit card for a business trip to Shanghai, the bank knows what airline he or she flew, as well as the hotel and restaurants patronized. ‘But if the ‘customer interface’ is happening elsewhere, the bank has zero visibility over transactions,’ said James Lloyd, Asia-Pacific FinTech Leader at EY. ‘That’s not a good situation to find yourself in’.”
  • “Tencent and Alibaba say they have no plans to push their payment platforms to U.S. consumers. Many Americans don’t see the need for mobile payments, since their plastic cards and cash are welcomed and some merchants still accept checks.”
  • “’Any new way of paying has to prove itself to be incrementally better than any other options you have,’ said James Wester of research firm IDC Financial Insights. In the U.S., ‘plastic is convenient, widely accepted and understood by the customer’.”

Visual Capitalist – China’s Digital Wallets Offer a Glimpse at the Future of Payments – Nick Routley 12/30

NYT – Three Months After Maria, Roughly Half of Puerto Ricans Still Without Power – Frances Robles and Jess Bidgood 12/29

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

A Wealth of Common Sense – When Things Don’t Make Any Sense – Ben Carlson 1/4

  • Some perspective on the cryptocurrency boom.

FT – Fed risks massive hangover as it begins ‘great unwind’ – Michael Hassenstab (CIO – Templeton Global Macro) 12/27

  • “Only a strong economy can stop damage in Treasuries spreading to equities and credit.”

FT View – A healthy economy is a risk for stock markets 12/29

  • “If the big US tax cut that brought 2017 to a conclusion has its intended consequences, then capital expenditures will start to rise in the next year, as will wages. With consumer confidence high, that should lead to higher consumption. It would also lead to monetary policy at the tightest end of what currently seems probable. The European Central Bank and Bank of Japan would indeed desist from their asset purchases, the Federal Reserve would reduce its balance sheet, and liquidity would flow out of world markets. The Fed could be expected to raise rates four times.”
  • “This would be a consummation devoutly to be wished, vindicating both the belated fiscal stimulus that the US has just administered and the desperate muddle-through strategy that preceded it. But significantly higher rates and lower liquidity would be bad news for equity markets, which look historically expensive. High valuations can be justified while rates are historically low. Future earnings can be discounted at a low rate and the cash yields on stocks look attractive. But if all goes according to the US Republican party’s plan, interest rates will need to be significantly higher a year from now, and valuations will come under pressure.”
  • “The alternative scenario is that the tax cut achieves no meaningful stimulus, and is merely put towards higher corporate dividends and expensive mergers and acquisitions. The synchronized global economic recovery of the past year peters out, as other brief post-crisis recoveries have done. In this situation, the Fed tightens far less aggressively, other central banks blink and keep buying assets, and bond yields stay where they are, or even fall. On this gloomy prognosis, the legacy of the tax cut would be no more than greater inequality. But equity markets would enjoy much the same benign conditions they have had this year.”
  • “Amid Wall Street’s bullish prognoses for 2018, an inverse relationship is becoming clear. Those who are more optimistic for the economy tend to be more pessimistic about the prospects for risk assets. Some say they are so bullish they are bearish.”
  • “This is realistic. If monetary stimulus really does give way to a successful fiscal stimulus, investors should expect much higher volatility, and probably outright price falls, from equity markets.”

The Guardian – The sugar conspiracy – Ian Leslie 4/7/16

WSJ – China’s Bid to Dominate Oil Pricing Will Fail – Nathaniel Taplin 12/26

Markets / Economy

Bloomberg Quint – World’s Wealthiest Gain $1 Trillion in ’17 on Market Exuberance – Tom Metcalf and Jack Witzig 12/28

FT – Uber’s rise triggers financial crisis at taxi lenders – Alistair Gray 12/30

  • “Credit unions at risk of failure as loan losses mount.”

Real Estate

WSJ – Daily Shot: UBS Estimates – US Retail Store Closures 2017 – 1/5

FT – Brookfield moves into private rented sector for fresh profit – Aime Williams 12/29

  • “Fund manager to keep 1m sq ft space in Canary Wharf Group towers.”
  • “Brian Kingston, chief executive of Brookfield Property Partners, said property prices in London had ‘always been high’, but were now ‘very high’.”
  • “’You would always have people starting out renting, but they would graduate to owning,’ said Mr Kingston. ‘But in New York and London, you could be a fairly well-compensated individual and you could still not afford to buy’.”

Tech

FT – Travis Kalanick to sell part of his Uber stake for first time – Tim Bradshaw 1/4

  • “Deal will earn ousted chief over $1bn in sale to SoftBank as part of their tender offer.”

Entertainment

FT – China’s Hollywood romance turns sour – Matthew Garrahan and Charles Clover 12/26

China

NYT – China’s New Lenders Collect Invasive Data and Offer Billions. Beijing Is Worried. – Alexandra Stevenson and Cao Li 12/25

FT – China share pledges soar as founders seek new borrowing tools – Gabriel Wildau and Yizhen Jia 12/26

  • “Chinese stockholders are ramping up borrowing against shares, driving revenue for securities houses but creating risk of a chain reaction in the event of a sharp market downturn.”
  • “Shareholders in 317 Shanghai and Shenzhen-listed companies had pledged shares worth at least 40% of those companies by December 18, up from 224 companies on the same date a year earlier, according to Wind Info.”
  • “Share-pledging is especially common for small and mid-cap companies, where a single shareholder often owns a large stake. Controlling shareholders sometimes reinvest the proceeds into company projects or buy additional company shares on the secondary market to boost the share price.”
  • “In September China’s two main bourses published draft rules that would tighten regulation on share pledging. One provision caps the value of loans secured by shares at 60% of the market value of the pledged shares, ensuring a buffer that will protect the lender in case a share price falls.”
  • At least the mainland exchanges require that such pledges be disclosed, unlike the Hong Kong exchange, where other shareholders can be surprised.

Reuters – China’s lenders fret over debts lurking in shadow banking system – Engen Tham, Matthew Miller and David Lague 12/28

December 21, 2017

Perspective

Visual Capitalist – Sellbrite: Breaking Down How Amazon Makes Money – Jeff Desjardins 12/19

NYT – How the Winklevoss Twins Found Vindication in a Bitcoin Fortune – Nathaniel Popper 12/19

WSJ – Daily Shot: BMO & statista – US States with Highest rates of debt collection 12/19

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

FT – The long and short of H&M’s travails – Richard Milne 12/19

  • “Concerns rise that family-controlled Swedish retailer needs radical change.”

ZeroHedge – China Systemic Risk: Liquidity Problem Surfaces at HNA Group Less Than Two Weeks After Company’s Denial 12/18

Markets / Economy

Bloomberg Businessweek – Fees Rise for Underfunded Pensions – Katherine Chiglinsky and Brandon Kochkodin 12/14

  • “The largest pension plans held by S&P 500 companies face a $348 billion funding gap. As a result, they’re paying higher annual fees to the U.S. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., the government agency that backstops plans. ‘There’s increased awareness that an underfunded plan imposes risk on employees, it imposes risk on shareholders, and it’s getting more expensive,’ says Olivia Mitchell, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and executive director of the Pension Research Council.”
  • “Only about two dozen companies in the S&P 500 have overfunded pensions. Nine of them are banks.”
  • “Offloading risk isn’t on the table for every company. Insurers don’t take on obligations from underfunded plans…”

CNN Money – SEC suspends trading of red-hot bitcoin stock – Paul R. La Monica 12/19

WSJ – Cryptocurrency Exchange Collapses, Files for Bankruptcy After Second Hack – Eun-Young Jeong and Steven Russolillo 12/19

  • “Yaipan, which operates South Korea’s Youbit, said latest security breach caused it to lose 17% of its total assets.”

Bloomberg – South Korean Crypto Exchange Files for Bankruptcy After Hack – Todd White and Kyungjin Yoo 12/19

  • “Korea has emerged as a sort of ground zero for the global crypto-mania. So many Koreans have embraced bitcoin that the prime minister recently warned that cryptocurrencies might corrupt the nation’s youth. The craze has spread so far that, in Korea, bitcoin is trading at a premium over prevailing international rates.”

Real Estate

Yahoo Finance – The hottest housing market of 2017 – Amanda Fung 12/20

  • Spoiler alert: it’s Seattle.

Tech

ARS Technica – Currency-mining Android malware is so aggressive it can physically harm phones – Dan Goodin 12/19

Britain

FT – Help! My house has been hijacked – Lucy Warwick-Ching 12/19

  • “Fake tenants adopt a property owner’s identity and sell the property.”

Europe

WSJ – EU Triggers ‘Nuclear Option’ in Fight With Poland – Valentina Pop 12/20

Other Interesting Links

NYT – ‘Porch Pirates’ Steal Holiday Packages as They Pile Up at Homes – Nick Wingfield 12/19

December 13, 2017

Perspective

Bloomberg Businessweek – The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market – Olga Kharif 12/8

  • “Among the coins people invest in, bitcoin has the least concentrated ownership, says Spencer Bogart, managing director and head of research at Blockchain Capital. The top 100 bitcoin addresses control 17.3% of all the issued currency, according to Alex Sunnarborg, co-founder of crypto hedge fund Tetras Capital. With ether, a rival to bitcoin, the top 100 addresses control 40% of the supply, and with coins such as Gnosis, Qtum, and Storj, top holders control more than 90%. Many large owners are part of the teams running these projects.”

WEF – This is every US state’s biggest trading partner – Andy Kiersz 11/16

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

Bloomberg Businessweek – What Happens When the Government Uses Facebook as a Weapon? – Lauren Etter 12/7

  • “Internet.org was just one part of a decade-long campaign of global expansion for Facebook. In countries such as the Philippines, the efforts have been so successful that the company is able to tout to its advertisers that its network is, for many people, the only version of the internet they know. Repressive governments originally treated Facebook, and all social media, with suspicion—they saw how it could serve as a locus for dissidents, as it had in the Arab Spring in 2011. But authoritarian regimes are now embracing social media, shaping the platforms into a tool to wage war against a wide range of opponents—opposition parties, human-rights activists, minority populations, journalists.”
  • Maria Ressa, co-founder of the country’s leading online news site “recalled that she started as a journalist in the Philippines in 1986, the year of the People Power Revolution, an uprising that ultimately led to the departure of Ferdinand Marcos and the move from authoritarian rule to democracy. Now she’s worried that the pendulum is swinging back and that Facebook is hastening the trend. ‘They haven’t done anything to deal with the fundamental problem, which is they’re allowing lies to be treated the same way as truth and spreading it,’ she says. ‘Either they’re negligent or they’re complicit in state-sponsored hate’.”

Bloomberg Businessweek – Millions Are Hounded for Debt They Don’t Owe. One Victim Fought Back, With a Vengeance – Zeke Faux 12/6

  • “The concept is centuries old: Inmates of a New York debtors’ prison joked about it as early as 1800, in a newspaper they published called Forlorn Hope. But systematic schemes to collect on fake debts started only about five years ago. It begins when someone scoops up troves of personal information that are available cheaply online—old loan applications, long-expired obligations, data from hacked accounts—and reformats it to look like a list of debts. Then they make deals with unscrupulous collectors who will demand repayment of the fictitious bills. Their targets are often poor and likely to already be getting confusing calls about other loans. The harassment usually doesn’t work, but some marks are convinced that because the collectors know so much, the debt must be real.”
  • “Americans are currently late on more than $600 billion in bills, according to Federal Reserve research, and almost one person in 10 has a debt in collectors’ hands. The agencies recoup what they can and sell the rest down-market, so that iffier and iffier debt is bought by shadier and shadier individuals. Deception is common. Scammers often sell the same portfolios of debt, called ‘paper,’ to several collection agencies at once, so a legitimate IOU gains illegitimate clones. Some inflate balances, a practice known as ‘overbiffing.’ Others create ‘redo’ lists—people who’ve settled their debt, but will be harassed again anyway. These rosters are actually more valuable, because the targets have proved willing to part with money over the phone. And then there are those who invent debts out of whole cloth.”

The Guardian – Former Facebook executive: social media is ripping society apart – Julia Carrie Wong 12/11

Markets / Economy

WSJ – Daily Shot: Bloomberg – Prime-age male labor-force participation 12/11

Real Estate

FT – New Zealand looks to ban foreigners from buying houses – Jamie Smyth 12/9

FT – Unibail-Rodamco sees €100m annual synergies in $24.7bn Westfield takeover – Jamie Smyth 12/11

FT – Hong Kong investors go defensive in $3bn property auction – Henny Sender 12/11

Finance

WSJ – Daily Shot: Bitcoin 12/11

  • “Bitcoin’s volatility is on the rise as the cryptocurrency hit new highs.”

Health / Medicine

NYT – A Nasty, Nafta-Related Surprise: Mexico’s Soaring Obesity – Andrew Jacobs and Matt Richtel 12/11

  • “Mexico began lifting tariffs and allowing more foreign investment in the 1980s, a transition to free trade given an exclamation point in 1994, when Mexico, the United States and Canada enacted the North American Free Trade Agreement. Opponents in Mexico warned that the country would lose its cultural and economic independence.”
  • “But few critics predicted it would transform the Mexican diet and food ecosystem to increasingly mirror those of the United States. In 1980, 7% of Mexicans were obese, a figure that tripled to 20.3% by 2016, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. Diabetes is now Mexico’s top killer, claiming 80,000 lives a year, the World Health Organization has reported.”

China

WSJ – China’s Clean Energy Future Has a $1.2 Trillion Problem – Nathaniel Taplin 12/11

  • “China’s enormous coal-power debt overhang limits its ability to shift rapidly to cleaner fuels.”

Europe

WEF – Which countries feel they’ve benefitted from the EU? – Niall McCarthy 11/6

Other Interesting Links

Bloomberg Businessweek – This Crowdfunding Site Runs on Hate – Adam Popescu 12/4

December 11, 2017

If you were only to read one thing…

A Wealth of Common Sense: How Does Something Like Bitcoin Happen? – Ben Carlson 12/7

  • The best synopsis of the cryptocurrency I’ve read to date.
  • A taste: “Anyone who tells you they know where this thing is heading, how to value it, where it ends, etc. is nuts. No one has a clue. This is everything you’ve ever read about the markets all wrapped into one — FOMO, supply & demand, human nature, behavioral biases, volatility, booms, busts, uncertainty about the future, etc.”

Perspective

WEF – California is the world’s sixth largest economy. Now is the perfect time for it to step up – Rodrigo Tavares 12/7

WP – Americans are drowning in debt. Here’s where they have it the worst. – Christopher Ingraham 12/8

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

Be Inspired: The Power of Morning Routine – Jim Kwik 11/26 (YouTube Video)

Bloomberg – HNA Warning Signs Keep Sprouting Up Over Mounting Debt Costs – Judy Chen and Dong Lyu 12/6

Farnam Street – Maker vs. Manager: How Your Schedule Can Make or Break You – Shane Parrish 12/9

Fortune – Inside Elliott Management: How Paul Singer’s Hedge Fund Always Wins – Jen Wieczner 12/7

FT – Self-driving finance could turn into a runaway train – Gillian Tett 12/7

  • “…at a recent financial technology conference at Michigan Law School, regulators and academics estimated that computers are now generating around 50-70% of trading in equity markets, 60% of futures and more than 50% of treasuries. Increasingly, machine learning and artificial intelligence are being added to the mix, to analyze data, trade securities and offer investment advice.”
  • “What we are seeing, in other words, is the rise of self-driving investment vehicles, matching the auto world. But while the sight of driverless cars on the roads has sparked public debate and scrutiny, that has not occurred with self-driving finance.”

FT – $400m for a Leonardo da Vinci. Has the art world gone mad? – Jan Dalley 12/7

Investment News – Stripped of fat commissions, nontraded REIT sales tank – Bruce Kelly 12/7

  • “The Department of Labor’s fiduciary standard, and new securities industry account statement rules for greater clarity in the prices of products, have forced nontraded real estate investment trusts to slice their commissions. Since then, sales of the product have collapsed.”
  • “No fat commissions on REITs means poor sales by brokers.”
  • “REIT managers and broker-dealer executives are likely reluctant to make the connection, at least publicly. But there is no denying that brokers’ appetite for the product disappeared almost overnight once upfront commissions were cut from 7% on an A share to 3% for a T share.”
  • “When REIT sales were booming a few years ago, the product’s pitch was simple: real estate kicks off an income stream of 6% to 7% annually, real estate is an asset class that is not correlated to the stock market, and with interest rates at record lows, investors needed the yield.”
  • “Those conditions haven’t changed dramatically, but nontraded REIT sales have tanked regardless.”
  • “InvestmentNews​ reported last month that Robert A. Stanger & Co. expects nontraded REIT sales this year to reach just $4.4 billion, about $100 million less than last year and the lowest levels since 2002.”
  • “If the ‘income, diversify and interest rate’ pitch was accurate back in 2012 and 2013, when REIT sales were booming, why isn’t it working today? There is little change in the narrative.”
  • “Interest rates have risen only marginally, and with the stock market roaring, wouldn’t it make sense for a broker to peel off some clients’ gains and invest in commercial real estate, a hard asset not correlated to stocks?”
  • “With brokers no longer getting juicy commissions for REIT sales, they simply don’t appear interested in selling the product.”
  • “Most brokers who still sell nontraded REITs no longer earn the eye-popping 7% commission, the standard rate paid to brokers who sold the product back in 2013, when REIT sales hit their all-time high and brokers sold $19.6 billion of the product.”
  • “The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc. recently put into place a new rule, known as 15-02, that makes pricing of illiquid securities like nontraded REITs more transparent to investors. In the past, client account statements showed illiquid securities like REITs at the value they were bought by the client and did not subtract commissions, which were high.”
  • “‘Now that REITs are getting priced on statements, with Finra 15-02, advisers are having to consider these positions from a total return standpoint, not just income,’ Mr. Rooney said. ‘They are re-evaluating the client’s perception of the product.'”

Markets / Economy

WSJ – Daily Shot: FRED – US Treasury Securities Held by the Federal Reserve 12/8

  • “And so it begins… Quantitative tightening is finally here.”

Real Estate

Business Insider – Here’s where the future of retail is headed in 2018 – Stephanie Pandolph 12/5

  • Industry to top $5.5tn by 2020.

FT – Norway’s oil fund makes first Asian property investment – Richard Milne 12/7

  • “Sovereign wealth fun takes stake in 5 buildings in Tokyo and plans more deals.”

Finance

WSJ – Daily Shot: WP – Bitcoin Rising 12/7

  • “Bitcoin blasts past $15k, $16k, $17k in less than 24 hours.”

WSJ – Bitcoin’s Wildest Rise Yet: 40% in 40 Hours – Paul Vigna and Steven Russolillo 12/7

  • “Bitcoin mania reached new highs Thursday as the price of the digital currency jumped about 40% in 40 hours, smashing through five separate $1,000-barriers and surging past $16,000.”

NYT – Bitcoin’s Price Has Soared. What Comes Next? – Nathaniel Popper 12/8

China

WSJ – Jailed for a Text: China’s Censors Are Spying on Mobile Chat Groups – Eva Dou 12/8

  • If only George Orwell could see the tools at Big Brother’s disposal now.

FT – International investors chase the red dragon – Chris Flood 12/9

November 21, 2017

Perspective

WSJ – Daily Shot: Moody’s – Higher Ed & Not For Profit Debt Rating Changes 11/19

  • “College debt continues to get downgraded. Some suggest that this could become a severe problem if the economy slows (colleges are no longer able to raise tuition at the rate they used to). Will we see colleges consolidating or even going under?”

WSJ – Google Has Picked an Answer for You – Too Bad It’s Often Wrong – Jack Nicas 11/16

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

FT – Can journalists ever regain Americans’ trust? – Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson 11/16

  • “According to Gallup, Americans’ trust in mass media peaked at 72% in 1976, the year All The President’s Men hit cinemas. By last year, that figure had plunged to 32% — just 14% among Republicans.”
  • “America is not unique in this, but in few countries are views of journalists more defined by party allegiance and in no other has a president so weaponized that mistrust.”
  • “A Politico/Morning Consult poll in October found 46% of Americans believe news organizations fabricate Trump stories, and more than three quarters of Republicans think we are making it up. Far more Americans now define ‘fake news’ as sloppy or biased reporting than White House spin.” 
  • “Knowing the consequences my colleagues and I would face if we fabricated a story, I find such polls baffling and alarming. It is tempting to quibble with the methodology or even to despair of those who don’t understand how we work. But it feels more important to examine how we became so vulnerable to the ‘fake news’ charge.” 

FT – US trade problems begin at home not abroad – Rana Foroohar 11/19

FT – China’s growth miracle has run out of steam – Michael Pettis 11/19

  • “Beijing must reveal the true level of GDP and wasted investment.”

FT – Lex in depth: Hammond’s housebuilding budget fix will not repair market – Jonathan Eley 11/19

  • “What if a lack of homes is not the real problem.”

WSJ – How to Spot a Market Top – Ken Brown 11/19

  • “The issue isn’t whether the market will crash, it is how much money investors will make, or lose, in the coming years. With cash sloshing around the global financial system, prices can go higher, but investors who buy at those prices shouldn’t expect their returns to match those earned in the past few years.”

Finance

WSJ – Daily Shot: Bitcoin 11/19

Britain

FT – Left behind: can anyone save the towns the economy forgot? – Sarah O’Connor 11/15

  • “Soaring antidepressant usage, falling life expectancy: Blackpool embodies much of what is going wrong on the fringes of Britain.”

China

Bloomberg Businessweek – Patient Deaths Show Darker Side of Modern Chinese Medicine – Hui Li 11/2

November 13, 2017

Perspective

FT – How Germany got its gold back – Claire Jones 11/10

  • “It was kept abroad to escape the Soviet Union. But then Germany decided to bring it home.”

NYT – After Weinstein: A List of Men Accused of Sexual Misconduct and the Fallout for Each – Sarah Almukhtar, Larry Buchanan, and Michael Gold 11/12

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

FT – Little room for error as investors chase leveraged loan boom – Ben McLannahan 11/9

  • “Riskier ‘covenant-lite’ loans now account for about 70% of new leveraged loans, up from 30% before the Lehman Brothers crisis. Protections that were standard back then have now vanished altogether.”
  • “’As long as investors keep buying these loans, there’s nothing really to put the brakes on,’ says Derek Gluckman, a vice-president at Moody’s. ‘Things just keep getting worse.’”
  • “’Loan terms never got this bad in ‘07,’ says Mr. Cohen (founder and CEO of Covenant Review). ‘The contracts … are the worst they’ve ever been. Period, full stop.’”

Markets / Economy

WSJ – A Starbucks Coffee Costs What? – Chelsey Dulaney and Ira Iosebashvili 11/9

  • You’ve heard of the Big Mac Index, this is the Starbucks proxy.

WSJ – Daily Shot: FRED – Financial Stress Index 11/10

FT – Catastrophes wipe $35bn from insurers’ profits – Oliver Ralph and Alistair Gray 11/12

  • “A string of natural disasters from Hurricane Harvey in the US to earthquakes in Mexico have left the insurance industry facing one of its most expensive years on record.”
  • “The catastrophes have wiped more than $35bn from insurers’ profits, according to a Financial Times analysis of third-quarter results that have laid bare the scale of the damage. Berkshire Hathaway, run by billionaire Warren Buffett, and AIG were among the hardest hit in the US, while in Europe Swiss Re and Munich Re face large claims. Lloyd’s, the London-based insurance market, expects to pay out a total of $4.5bn.” 
  • “Insurers say the final cost is likely to be larger and push up premiums. Commercial insurance and reinsurance have suffered from years of falling rates, as excess capacity and a lack of big claims combined to drive prices down.”
  • “’The losses have been extensive across reinsurance, commercial insurance and personal lines,’ said Kurt Karl, chief economist at Swiss Re. ‘There were $20bn of natural catastrophe losses across the industry in the first half. Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, combined with the earthquakes in Mexico, will create about $95bn of insured losses.’”
  • “Added together, the industry is facing more than $110bn of insured losses from natural catastrophes. Only 2005 — when Hurricane Katrina hit the US — and 2011 — when there were earthquakes in Japan and New Zealand — were more costly.”
  • “The $35bn figure, taken from company reports, does not include losses from unlisted companies, or from insurance-linked securities in which investors’ capital is used to directly back insurance risk.” 

Tech

Statista – Attack of the Clones – Felix Richter 11/9

Environment / Science

WP – The Earth’s ozone hole is shrinking and is the smallest it has been since 1988 – Marwa Eltagouri 11/3

  • “This year, the ozone hole is the smallest it has been since 1985. NASA and NOAA scientists have been studying the ozone layer and monitoring its hole over Antarctica for years. This year, the ozone hole is the smallest it has been since 1985.”
  • “Here’s a rare piece of good news about the environment: The giant hole in the Earth’s protective ozone layer is shrinking and has shriveled to its smallest peak since 1988, NASA scientists said.”
  • “The largest the hole became this year was about 7.6 million square miles wide, about two and a half times the size of the United States, in September. But it was still 1.3 million square miles smaller than last year, scientists said, and has shrunk more since September.”
  • “Warmer-than-usual weather conditions in the stratosphere are to thank for the shrinkage since 2016, as the warmer air helped fend off chemicals like chlorine and bromine that eat away at the ozone layer, scientists said. But the hole’s overall reduction can be traced to global efforts since the mid-1980s to ban the emission of ozone-depleting chemicals.”
  • “The ozone hole was largest in 2000, when it was 11.5 million square miles wide, according to NASA.”

Health / Medicine

WP – Aaron Hernandez suffered from most severe CTE ever found in a person his age – Adam Kilgore 11/9

India

FT – Smog-cloaked Delhi looks with envy at Beijing’s cleaner air – Kiran Stacey, Emily Feng, and Archie Zhang 11/10

  • “As Indian politicians squabble over who is to blame for the thick smog that has descended over the north of the country this week, citizens have been looking enviously over the border at China, where particulate levels have been falling for years.”
  • “Many in India believe Beijing has been better able to combat its air pollution problem because it does not get bogged down in political infighting. They blame India’s problems on the country’s raucous but inefficient democracy.”
  • “This week, pollution in Delhi literally went off the charts, hitting the top reading of 999 on the US embassy’s air quality index. Anything over a reading of 100 is considered unhealthy.” 
  • “By Wednesday afternoon, Delhi saw airborne levels of tiny damaging particles known as PM2.5 hit 833 parts per million, while in Beijing the level was 76. Anything over 50 is considered unhealthy, and anything over 300 hazardous.“
  • “The difference between the two cities reflects a broader divergence over recent years, during which Delhi has taken over from Beijing as the world’s most polluted megacity.” 
  • “’Indian politicians have this very weird idea that we will do something about pollution when we are developed, but we won’t develop unless they invest in public health,’ says TK Joshi, director of the Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health in Delhi.”
  • “He adds: ‘Beijing has tackled this problem much better, but then it is much easier to control things in an authoritarian regime than in a democracy, especially one like India, where 50% of the people are so badly educated about the problem.’”

Middle East

WSJ – Saudi Crackdown Targets Up to $800 Billion in Assets – Margherita Stancati and Summer Said 11/7

  • “The Saudi government is aiming to confiscate cash and other assets worth as much as $800 billion in its broadening crackdown on alleged corruption among the kingdom’s elite, according to people familiar with the matter.”
  • “The country’s central bank, the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority, said late Tuesday that it has frozen the bank accounts of ‘persons of interest’ and said the move is ‘in response to the Attorney General’s request pending the legal cases against them.’”
  • “Much of that money is abroad, which will complicate efforts to reclaim it, people familiar with the matter said. But even a portion of that amount could help Saudi Arabia’s finances. A prolonged period of low oil prices forced the government to borrow money on the international bond market and to draw extensively from the country’s foreign reserves, which dropped from $730 billion at their peak in 2014 to $487.6 billion in August, the latest available government data.”

FT – Greed and intrigue grip Saudi Arabia – Simeon Kerr 11/10

November 10, 2017

Perspective

Pew – How U.S. refugee resettlement in each state has shifted since 2002 – Jynnah Radford 11/2

  • Animation

WSJ – Daily Shot: Convoy Investments – Rise and Fall of Some Famous Asset Bubbles 11/9

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

NYT – How to Reduce Shootings – Nicholas Kristof and Bill Marsh 11/6

NYT – Want Kids, a Degree or a Home? The Tax Bill Would Cost You – The Editorial Board

  • “An immense tax giveaway to the rich will hurt everyone else. Here’s how.”

Markets / Economy

WSJ – Daily Shot: Yardeni Research – Investor Bulls vs Bears 11/7

Real Estate

Business Insider – Zillow: America’s red-hot housing market is a bit of a problem – Akin Oyedele 11/8

  • “The recovery in US house prices since the recession has created a so-called seller’s market.” 
  • “In this part of the cycle, housing inventory is tight, especially in big cities where there’s plenty of demand. But buyers in these markets are getting stretched as prices climb above their prerecession highs and choices remain limited.”  

Energy

WSJ – Daily Shot: OPEC – Growth in energy demand by fuel type and region 11/9

WSJ – Daily Shot: OPEC – Energy demand next five years 11/9

Finance

WSJ – Daily Shot: LCD – Cov-Lite European Leveraged Loans 11/9

China

WSJ – Daily Shot: BMI Research – China Wealth Management Products 11/9

  • “Beijing’s deleveraging drive is having an impact on wealth management products (WMPs).”

Europe

FT – Germany creates third gender in ruling hailed as ‘revolution’ – Tobias Buck 11/8

  • “Germans will in future be able to register officially as neither male or female, after the country’s constitutional court issued a ruling establishing a third gender option that was hailed by intersex campaigners as a ‘revolution’.”

South America

FT – Venezuela inches closer to a formal default – Robin Wigglesworth 11/9

  • “Venezuela is closer to a formal default on its debts, with a global derivatives body set to rule on whether credit insurance should be paid out after a crucial payment deadline missed by state-backed oil company PDVSA.”
  • “Venezuela and PDVSA are legally separate entities, so PDVSA’s default would not trigger Venezuelan CDS or a Venezuelan sovereign default. But there are myriad other overdue interest payments by both borrowers, and unless the money appears soon then Venezuela will be in formal default on all its international bonds.”
  • “Venezuela has summoned bondholders for negotiations in Caracas on November 13, but the talks are expected to yield little. Indeed, US investors will be wary of even attending, given that the person leading the Venezuelan side of the talks, vice-president Tareck El Aissami, has been sanctioned by the US Treasury as an alleged drug smuggler.”
  • “None of the big rating agencies have formally declared a default yet, but S&P Global Ratings on Monday lowered the country’s rating to CC, the second-lowest rung possible, and said there was a 50% chance of a default within three months.”

November 9, 2017

If you were only to read one thing…

Bloomberg – America’s ‘Retail Apocalypse’ Is Really Just Beginning – Matt Townsend, Jenny Surane, Emma Orr, and Christopher Cannon 11/8

  • “The so-called retail apocalypse has become so ingrained in the U.S. that it now has the distinction of its own Wikipedia entry.”
  • “The industry’s response to that kind of doomsday description has included blaming the media for hyping the troubles of a few well-known chains as proof of a systemic meltdown. There is some truth to that. In the U.S., retailers announced more than 3,000 store openings in the first three quarters of this year.”
  • “But chains also said 6,800 would close. And this comes when there’s sky-high consumer confidence, unemployment is historically low and the U.S. economy keeps growing. Those are normally all ingredients for a retail boom, yet more chains are filing for bankruptcy and rated distressed than during the financial crisis. That’s caused an increase in the number of delinquent loan payments by malls and shopping centers.”
  • “The reason isn’t as simple as Amazon.com Inc. taking market share or twenty-somethings spending more on experiences than things. The root cause is that many of these long-standing chains are overloaded with debt—often from leveraged buyouts led by private equity firms. There are billions in borrowings on the balance sheets of troubled retailers, and sustaining that load is only going to become harder—even for healthy chains.”
  • “The debt coming due, along with America’s over-stored suburbs and the continued gains of online shopping, has all the makings of a disaster. The spillover will likely flow far and wide across the U.S. economy. There will be displaced low-income workers, shrinking local tax bases and investor losses on stocks, bonds and real estate. If today is considered a retail apocalypse, then what’s coming next could truly be scary.”
  • “Until this year, struggling retailers have largely been able to avoid bankruptcy by refinancing to buy more time. But the market has shifted, with the negative view on retail pushing investors to reconsider lending to them. Toys “R” Us Inc. served as an early sign of what might lie ahead. It surprised investors in September by filing for bankruptcy—the third-largest retail bankruptcy in U.S. history—after struggling to refinance just $400 million of its $5 billion in debt. And its results were mostly stable, with profitability increasing amid a small drop in sales.”
  • “Making matters more difficult is the explosive amount of risky debt owed by retail coming due over the next five years.”
  • “Just $100 million of high-yield retail borrowings were set to mature this year, but that will increase to $1.9 billion in 2018, according to Fitch Ratings Inc. And from 2019 to 2025, it will balloon to an annual average of almost $5 billion. The amount of retail debt considered risky is also rising. Over the past year, high-yield bonds outstanding gained 20%, to $35 billion, and the industry’s leveraged loans are up 15%, to $152 billion, according to Bloomberg data.”
  • “Even worse, this will hit as a record $1 trillion in high-yield debt for all industries comes due over the next five years, according to Moody’s. The surge in demand for refinancing is also likely to come just as credit markets tighten and become much less accommodating to distressed borrowers.”
  • “Retailers have pushed off a reckoning because interest rates have been historically low from all the money the Federal Reserve has pumped into the economy since the financial crisis. That’s made investing in riskier debt—and the higher return it brings—more attractive. But with the Fed now raising rates, that demand will soften. That may leave many chains struggling to refinance, especially with the bearishness on retail only increasing.”
  • “One testament to that negativity on retail came earlier this year, when Nordstrom Inc.’s founding family tried to take the department-store chain private. They eventually gave up because lenders were asking for 13% interest, about twice the typical rate for retailers.”
  • “Store credit cards pose additional worries. Synchrony Financial, the largest private-label card issuer, has already had to increase reserves to help cover loan losses this year. And Citigroup Inc., the world’s largest card issuer, said collection rates on its retail portfolio are declining. One reason that’s been cited is that shoppers are more willing to stop paying back a card from a chain if the store they went to has closed.”
  • “The ripple effect could also be a direct hit to the industry that is the largest employer of Americans at the low end of the income scale. The most recent government statistics show that salespeople and cashiers in the industry total 8 million.”
  • “During the height of the financial crisis, store workers felt the brunt of the pain when 1.2 million jobs disappeared, or one in seven of all the positions lost from 2008 to 2009, according to the Department of Labor. Since the crisis, employment has been increasing, including in the retail industry, but that correlation ended as jobs at stores sank by 101,000 this year.”
  • “The drop coincides with a rapid acceleration in store closings as bankruptcies surge and many of the nation’s largest retailers, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Target Corp., have decided that they have too much space. Even before the e-commerce boom, the U.S. was considered over-stored—the result of investors pouring money into commercial real estate decades earlier as the suburbs boomed. All those buildings needed to be filled with stores, and that demand got the attention of venture capital. The result was the birth of the big-box era of massive stores in nearly every category—from office suppliers like Staples Inc. to pet retailers such as PetSmart Inc. and Petco Animal Supplies, Inc.”
  • “Now that boom is finally going bust. Through the third quarter of this year, 6,752 locations were scheduled to shutter in the U.S., excluding grocery stores and restaurants, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers. That’s more than double the 2016 total and is close to surpassing the all-time high of 6,900 in 2008, during the depths of the financial crisis. Apparel chains have by far taken the biggest hit, with 2,500 locations closing. Department stores were hammered, too, with Macy’s Inc., Sears Holdings Corp. and J.C. Penney Co. downsizing. In all, about 550 department stores closed, equating to 43 million square feet, or about half the total.”
  • “One response to the loss of store-based retail jobs is to note that the industry is adding positions at distribution centers to bolster its online operations. While that is true, many displaced retail workers don’t live near a shipping facility. The hiring also skews more toward men, as they make up two-thirds of the workforce, and retail store employees are 60% women.”
  • “The coming wave of risky retail debt maturities doesn’t take into account that companies currently considered stable by ratings agencies also have loads of borrowings. Just among the eight publicly-traded department stores, there is about $24 billion in debt, and only two of those—Sears Holdings Corp. and Bon-Ton Stores Inc.—are rated distressed by Moody’s.”
  • “’A pall has been cast on retail,’ said Charlie O’Shea, a retail analyst for Moody’s. ‘A day of reckoning is coming.’”

Perspective

FT – Forbes says Wilbur Ross lied about being a billionaire – Lindsay Fortado and Shawn Donnan 11/7

  • “Forbes business magazine has booted US secretary of commerce Wilbur Ross off its list of the richest people in America for the first time in 13 years, alleging he lied to them about his net worth by more than $2bn.”

FT – Electric cars’ green image blackens beneath the bonnet – Patrick McGee 11/7

  • “Nico Meilhan, a Paris-based car analyst and energy expert at Frost & Sullivan, says regulators should not encourage this race to sell electric vehicles with bigger batteries. ‘It’s a race, but it’s a very stupid race. It’s not towards a good solution,’ he says. ‘If you switch from oil to cobalt and lithium, you have not addressed any problem, you have just switched your problem.’”
  • “Instead, he says regulators should take weight into account by taxing heavier vehicles and creating incentives for smaller models in both electric and traditional vehicles.”
  • “Mr. Meilhan points out that petrol-engine cars weighing just 500kg — such as the French Ligier microcar or some popular ‘kei cars’ in Japan — emit less lifecycle emissions than a mid-sized electric vehicle even when driven in France, where carbon-free nuclear power generates three-quarters of electricity.”
  • “’If we really cared about CO2,’ he adds, ‘we’d reduce car size and weight.’”

WSJ – Jet-Set Debt Collectors Join a Lucrative Game: Hunting the Superrich – Margot Patrick 11/7

  • “Private investigators spend millions, scour globe, chasing an estimated $2 trillion in pending claims.”

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

Economist – Asian households binge on debt 11/2

  • “What should be good news for the global economy has its downsides.”

FT – The House of Trump and the House of Saud – Edward Luce 11/8

  • “The blossoming relationship with Riyadh symbolizes the decay of the US-led order.”

Markets / Economy

Business Insider – Someone deleted some code in a popular cryptocurrency wallet – and as much as $280 million in ether is locked up – Becky Peterson 11/7

  • “An estimated $280 million worth of the cryptocurrency ether is locked up because of one person’s mistake.”
  • “An unidentified user accidentally deleted the code library required to use recently created digital wallets within Parity, a popular digital-wallet provider, according to a security alert posted on the company’s blog on Tuesday.”
  • “The freeze affects all multi-signature wallets created on Parity after July 20.”
  • “Multi-sig wallets are especially popular among cryptocurrency startups and other groups because they require more than one person to agree before any currency gets moved around. It’s a safeguard against rogue employees who might want to run off with the money.”

WSJ – Clamor for Tech IPOs Reaches Fever Pitch in Asia – Saumya Vaishampayan and Steven Russolillo 11/8

  • “Nearly three quarters of the 66 tech floats in the first nine months of 2017 have been in Asia, and the companies have raised about 40% of the total $16.8 billion from the sector, according to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers.”
  • “Shares of newly public companies in Asia, on average, have risen by 141% from their IPO prices this year through the end of October, according to Dealogic. That compares with an average 25% gain for U.S. IPOs and a 13% increase for new issues in Europe.”

WSJ – Daily Shot: FRED – US Student Loan Balance 11/8

Real Estate

WSJ – Republican Tax Plan Would Slam California Housing Market – Laura Kusisto 11/8

  • “Limits on mortgage-interest deduction would affect many buyers in coastal regions around the U.S.”

WSJ – Co-Working Trend Eats Into Office Demand – Peter Grant 11/7

  • “The co-working trend, popularized by startup businesses like WeWork Cos., has been attractive to entrepreneurs and small companies looking for communal office space and short-term commitments.”
  • “But it could turn out badly for landlords, according to a new report from Green Street Advisors. The report predicts co-working will detract from cumulative office demand through 2030 by about 2% to 3% as the shared working space approach spreads from small businesses to large ones.”
  • “The report estimates there will be about 14,000 co-working locations world-wide by the end of this year, compared with 600 in 2010. WeWork alone has more than 20 locations in London and is now among New York’s largest office tenants, it says.”
  • “’The most ominous prospect for landlords is that [corporate] users could ‘outsource’ big chunks of their headquarters and regional offices to co-working operators,’ the report warns.”
  • “Consider the new business that WeWork launched earlier this year that creates tailored WeWork centers for big companies that employ hundreds or even thousands of workers. Named Onsite Solutions, it is marketing itself to employers that have flexible office space requirements or who want to circulate employees through hipper environments than their traditional workplaces.”
  • “Mr. Reagan (Jed Reagan, Green Street analyst) said such initiatives have the potential to hurt office landlords because co-working facilities typically require less space: about 75 square feet per worker compared with 175 square feet in traditional offices. Also, co-working leases for big tenants tend to be six months to five years, much shorter than the common lease term of five to 15 years, he said.”
  • “’That could undermine the stability and security of cash flow for landlords and could create more churn among tenants,’ Mr. Reagan said.”

India

FT – One year on, jury is still out on India’s ‘black money’ ban – Amy Kazmin 11/7

  • “Economy has slowed and cash in circulation is 90% of previous level, data show.”

South America

FT – Venezuela’s debt struggle poses more questions for investors – Robin Wigglesworth 11/7

  • “Analysts and investors say there are more questions than answers surrounding Venezuela’s plans to ‘refinance and restructure’ its financial liabilities.”
  • “Venezuela has about $63bn of foreign bonds outstanding, according to Torino Capital, while the central bank estimates the country’s overall foreign debts at about $90bn. The real number say most analysts is much higher.” 
  • “PDVSA, the state oil company, has sold $28.6bn of bonds and owes billions of dollars more in ‘promissory notes’. Venezuela owes another $4bn or so to creditors that have taken it to the World Bank’s ICSID court. Stuart Culverhouse, chief economist at Exotix, thinks total public sector external debts range between $100bn and $150bn.”
  • “Even this is uncertain. Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro has mentioned ‘refinancing’ and ‘restructuring’ the country’s external liabilities. But a refinancing usually implies something voluntary while a restructuring means forcibly ‘haircutting’ creditors. Crucially, US sanctions imposed this summer in practice means both options are off the table.” 
  • “That Mr. Maduro named vice-president Tareck El Aissami as the lead negotiator with bondholders complicates matters further. Mr. Aissami has himself been sanctioned by the US as an alleged narcotics trafficker, which means US investment groups — the biggest holders of Venezuelan debt — cannot enter talks with him.” 
  • “’The logistics seem almost impossible,’ notes Siobhan Morden, head of Latin American fixed income strategy at Nomura. ‘The cynical interpretation is that the impossible deadline for negotiations conveniently shifts the blame of default to bondholders for their unwillingness (inability) to negotiate.’”
  • “With a competent government and more orthodox economic policies, Venezuela could probably handle its debt burden. Although oil exports are declining, it still boasts the world’s largest proven reserves and prices are at their highest level for more than two years.”
  • “But chronic mismanagement by governments under Hugo Chávez and now Mr. Maduro and the oil slump has taken its toll. According to the IMF, the economy has shrunk by a third over the past five years.”
  • “The country’s options appear limited. Venezuela is overdue on the interest payments on bonds that mature in 2019, 2024, 2025 and 2026, demonstrating the ‘significant fiscal strain’ the country is facing, S&P notes. Foreign currency reserves are below $10bn — and much of this is in gold that will be hard to liquidate. China is wary of deepening its financial exposure to Venezuela while the country has already restructured some of its bilateral loans from Russia.”
  • “The price of Venezuela’s bond maturing in August next year has tumbled from 72 cents on the dollar to about 34 cents this week, as investors panicked after the restructuring announcement and bank traders pulled out of the market, causing prices to ‘gap’ lower.” 
  • “Russia could provide a loan secured by Venezuelan oil assets that the government could either use to pay creditors, or to buy back some of its bonds at their current big price discount.” 
  • “Venezuela could also seek to improve its fiscal space by separating PDVSA from the state, defaulting on the latter debts while staying current on the oil company’s bonds. That could in theory prevent creditors from interrupting PDVSA’s oil sales, while letting Venezuela’s sovereign creditors stew. Suing countries is much harder than companies with assets that can be seized.”
  • “Moreover, ringfencing PDVSA from the government will be tricky. Crystallex, a Canadian miner, is already suing Venezuela and arguing that PSDVA is the ‘alter ego’ of the state. If Crystallex wins, it opens the door for all creditors to try to seize Venezuelan and PDVSA assets interchangeably.” 
  • “The most likely outcome, investors and analysts say, is a protracted period of financial limbo, with a restructuring precluded by US sanctions and Venezuela facing a barrage of lawsuits that will tie it up for years to come.”

October 31, 2017

Happy Halloween!

If you were only to read one thing…

FT – Billionaire boom is a sign that rates need to rise – Merryn Somerset Webb 10/27

  • “It has been a good week for billionaires. The UBS/PwC Billionaires Report 2017 claimed the combined wealth of the world’s 1,542 billionaires rose by almost a fifth last year to $6tn: more than double the UK’s gross domestic product.”
  • “It has not been a particularly good week for governments. They have to deal with the fallout from rising wealth inequality, and that fallout is getting increasingly nasty. This kind of report does not do much for central bankers, either: the rise of the billionaires is as much about financial globalization as it is easy money, but every time a report lands on their desks, central bankers must stop to think about the economic, social and political havoc their policies have caused over the past 10 years.”
  • “The desperate attempt to avoid deflation via quantitative easing and record-low interest rates has had horrible side effects, and this observation is hardly controversial. The rich have become much richer; corporate wealth has become more concentrated; soaring house prices have created intergenerational strife; low yields have made all but the super-rich paranoid that they will be entirely unable to finance their futures. Most markets have ended up overvalued (this will really matter one day), while pension fund deficits and a constant sense of crisis have discouraged capital investment — and have possibly held down wages in the UK.”
  • “Set a target, get a distortion. This is standard stuff. But the fact that extreme monetary policy has been going on for so long means that central bankers do not just have macro problems to feel bad about. They are also effectively responsible for the increasingly dodgy micro policies governments have felt forced to put in place in an attempt to alleviate the nasty side effects of very low interest rates, over which they have no control.”
  • “A bit of good news is that this monetary experimentation has been about inflation targeting (everyone, for no obvious reason, is after 2%). And if you set a target and pursue it at the cost of everything else you usually get to it. So inflation is back. In the US, where expectations of inflation are low, September numbers showed average hourly earnings jumping 2.9%, the biggest rise in a decade.”
  • “The Monetary Policy Committee could dig out a list of excuses not to raise rates despite the last GDP growth numbers being rather better than expected. Raising rates will do harm at some point (asset prices will fall and the indebted will suffer). But not reversing is beginning to look like it could do more harm. Unless, of course, you are a billionaire.”

Perspective

Axios – ‘Degree inflation’ may be pushing workers out of the middle class – Christopher Matthews 10/25

  • “A growing number of U.S. employers are requiring bachelor’s degrees for jobs that have long been performed by workers without them, contributing to a rise in income inequality, according to a report published today.”
  • “Why it matters: The report, by Harvard Business School, Accenture, and Grads of Life estimates that 6 million American jobs are at risk of ‘degree inflation,’ a result of employers increasingly using a bachelor’s degree ‘as a proxy for a candidate’s range and depth of skills.'”

  • “‘This phenomenon is a major driver of income inequality,’ Joe Fuller of Harvard Business School tells Axios. ‘We’re hollowing out middle-class jobs and driving everyone to the extremes of the income spectrum.'”
  • “The number of U.S. job openings has reached an all-time high, but more than 13 million Americans — the vast majority with less than a four-year college degree — are unemployed or working part-time when they want full-time positions.”
  • “The costs of the shift are ‘profound’ for the two-thirds of American adults who lack a college degree, Fuller says.”
    • “90% of companies use screening software to weed out applicants lacking the education requirement. That means, even with the right experience, an applicant won’t even be considered by a human.”
    • “‘This puts significant pressure for people with certain aspirations to get a degree even when it’s not directly relevant to their career.'”
    • “When the 6-year graduation rate for 4-year schools in America is just 59%, that means Americans lacking the aptitude to excel in college take on debt for degrees they’ll never receive.”
    • “Hispanics and African Americans are disproportionately hurt by the phenomenon, because they have lower college graduation rates than the population at large.”

Visual Capitalist – Commuters and Computers: Mapping U.S. Megaregions – Nick Routley 10/28

  • “We tend to think of cities as individual economic units, but as they expand outward and bleed together, defining them simply by official jurisdictions and borders becomes difficult. After all, many of the imaginary lines divvying up the country are remnants of decisions from centuries ago – and other county and state lines exist for more counterintuitive reasons such as gerrymandering.”
  • “By ignoring borders and looking purely at commuter data, geographer Garrett Nelson and urban analyst Alasdair Rae looked to map the relationship between population centers in their paper, An Economic Geography of the United States: From Commutes to Mega-regions.”

  • “The study used network partitioning software to link together 4 million commutes between census tracts. This gives us a very granular look at the ‘gravitational pull’ of America’s population centers, and helps us better understand the economic links that bind a region together.”
  • “By combining visual and mathematical approaches, and some creative place-naming, the researchers created a map that they hope reflects America’s true economic geography.”

WSJ – Daily Shot: State College Graduation Rates – Highest & Lowest 10/29

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

The Atlantic – Harvey Weinstein and the Economics of Consent – Brit Marling 10/23

  • “The blunt power of the gatekeeper is the ability to enforce not just artistic, but also financial, exile.”

Bloomberg View – When Wall Street Looks Pricey, the Rest of the U.S. Thrives – Conor Sen

  • “When stocks are expensive, those with capital are more inclined to expand a business or start a new one.”
  • We’ll see…

Bloomberg View – Faster Growth Begins With a Land Tax in U.S. Cities – Noah Smith 10/24

  • This would cause a major political fight. The odds are that a land value tax would initially be passed onto tenants, until of course there is enough push back.
  • Granted, this goes against the goal of having property in core markets with the ability to benefit from economic rents…

Business Insider – Jeff Flake isn’t brave, he’s helpless – and he doesn’t understand why – Josh Barro 10/24

FT – Investors pass the buck on governance – Rana Foroohar 10/29

  • “Proxy advisers incentivize the wrong company behavior by creating rigid checklists.”

NYT – A Long-Delayed Reckoning of the Cost of Silence on Abuse – Jim Rutenberg 10/22

NYT – Forget Washington. Facebook’s Problems Abroad Are Far More Disturbing. – Kevin Roose 10/29

Real Estate

WSJ – Daily Shot: Moody’s – US Single Family Home Sales 10/29

  • “Moody’s is projecting that many more homes will be sold next year as homeowners finally make their move.”

Others are not as optimistic.

WSJ – Daily Shot: John Burns RE Consulting – US Existing Single Family Home Sales 10/29

FT  – Sand castles on Jersey Shore: property boom defies US flood risk – Gregory Meyer 10/29

  • “Sandy exposed the perils of shoreline living, as the climate warms and sea levels creep higher. In the US alone it left 162 dead, laid waste to 650,000 homes and cost $65bn — the second most expensive weather disaster in history.”
  • “On New Jersey’s fragile barrier islands, the response to Sandy has not been to withdraw inland but rather to build bigger. ‘They did not rebuild bungalows. They knocked those down and built McMansions,’ says Walter LaCicero, Lavallette’s mayor.”
  • That’s one way to do eminent domain.
  • “Improbably, the disaster created a once-in-a-lifetime buying opportunity. Older families unable to pay for repairs sold properties.”
  • “House prices in the worst-hit communities cratered after Sandy. In Lavallette, the median sale price of $532,500 in October 2012 had more than halved to $225,000 by February 2013, according to New Jersey Realtors. This past summer, median prices reached $660,000 and were higher by the beach.”
  • “The Federal Emergency Management Agency has paid out more than $25bn in New Jersey and New York alone, reimbursing towns for the cost of removing debris, repairing roads and bridges, and renting emergency equipment. Gaps in local tax revenue lost when assessed property values collapsed were filled with federal money. The agency granted $1.4bn to 179,000 people and households in the region to cover their costs of shelter and rebuilding.”
  • “Critics say federal policy rewards local officials for hazardous coastal development. ‘If someone told you you’re going to get a new beach every time the oceans washed yours away, you’re probably going to feel more secure allowing high-priced homes to be built there,’ says Rob Moore, senior policy analyst at the NRDC (National Resources Defense Council).”
  • “The aid has strings attached: all new and rebuilt houses must now rest on stilts at least one foot above the estimated crest of a once-in-a-100-year flood.”
  • “Relatively cheap schemes such as hazard zoning and land purchases have typically received about 5% of disaster relief funds, according to a report by the National Research Council, an expert body. Washington is also picking up a bigger tab from coastal disasters, covering 75% of the damages from Sandy compared with 6% for Hurricane Diane in 1955.”
  • “‘Developers, builders and state and local governments reap the rewards of coastal development but do not bear equivalent risk, because the federal government has borne an increasing share of the costs of coastal disasters,’ the council’s study said.”
  • “The prospect of higher and more frequent floods driven by climate change comes as the Trump administration unravels US commitments to rein in carbon emissions, including pulling out of the Paris agreement and abandoning an initiative to factor climate risks into infrastructure spending. As Irma bore down on Florida last month Scott Pruitt, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said the time to discuss the causes and effects of the storm was ‘not now’.”

WSJ – Stuck in Place, U.S. Homeowners Hunker Down as Housing Supply Stays Tight – Laura Kusisto and Christina Rexrode 10/29

FT – Boston prices its graduates out of starter homes – Hugo Cox 10/24

Energy

WSJ – Your Next Home Could Run on Batteries – Christopher Mims 10/15

  • “The rise of these home batteries isn’t just a product of our collective obsession with new tech. Their adoption is being driven by a powerful need, says Ravi Manghani, of GTM Research: renewable energy.”

  • “Without batteries and other means of energy storage, the ability of utility companies to deliver power could eventually be threatened.”
  • “Solar power, especially, tends to generate electricity only at certain times—and it’s rarely in sync with a home’s needs. In some states, such as California and Arizona, there’s an overabundance of solar power in the middle of the day during cool times of the year, then a sudden crash in the evenings, when people get home and energy use spikes.”
  • “For utilities, it’s a headache. The price of electricity on interstate markets can go negative at certain times, forcing them to dump excess electricity or pay others to take it.”
  • “’This is not a long-term theoretical issue that might happen—this is now,’ says Marc Romito, director of customer technology at Arizona Public Service, the state’s largest electric utility.”

Finance

FT – Wall St banks ride boom in leveraged loans as volumes soar – Joe Rennison and Eric Platt 10/29

  • “Wall Street banks are having a strong year underwriting and selling riskier loans, with the volume so far this year already surpassing the whole of 2016.”
  • “The overall industry has underwritten leveraged loans worth $1.251tn, and earlier this month eclipsed its previous full-year record set in 2013, according to Dealogic. Volumes are up 38% from a year earlier and more than 60% of the deals have been companies refinancing existing loans.”
  • “The relative dearth of new loans, as opposed to refinancings, has also given borrowers the upper hand. As well as lower rates, borrowers are also able to cut the number of investor protections, called covenants, written into the loans.”
  • “’Net new supply is relatively low so demand is exceeding supply,’ said Christina Padgett, an analyst at Moody’s. ‘Investors are going to get squeezed on price and the issuers are going to take advantage so they have really flexible credit agreements.’”

FT – Why credit is the Hotel California of markets – Michael Mackenzie 10/24

  • “The endless debate over valuation metrics that have accompanied the storming bull run in stocks misses a much bigger point about investing in 2017. Thanks to the outsized role of central banks, it is the credit markets that run the show. If you want clues on when the bull run in equities is entering the red zone, keep your eyes on the corporate debt market.”
  • “Before central banks’ quantitative easing policies engineered the current cycle of financial suppression, credit markets had already established their bona fides as an early warning system for investors. When equities peaked in October 2007, the credit market had already begun turning lower.”
  • “A decade on, the risk premium, or additional yield, offered by corporate bonds over that of a US government bond is at its narrowest since 2007. That provides very little protection for buyers, with even a modest drop in bond prices erasing the meagre fixed income being paid by borrowers.”
  • “The big lesson digested by investors since the financial crisis is that you need to own yield, and the money gushing into bond funds remains immense. About $241bn flowed into US high grade bond funds and exchange traded funds in the first nine months of the year, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch estimates. That’s a whopping 34% higher than 2012’s full-year record of $180bn, the bank says.”
  • “This high tide of money means companies can keep selling debt — running at a record $1.4tn pace this year in the US — at very low interest rates. The resulting higher leverage in the system helps explain why the equity market keeps updating the record books with alacrity.”
  • “’As long as people are tripping over themselves to buy bonds, it remains a very favorable environment for risk taking,’ says Jack Ablin, chief investor officer at BMO Wealth Management.”
  • “True, a number of strategists concede the current credit cycle is looking a little long in the tooth, but they also think the water can remain warm and soapy for a while yet.”
  • “The Federal Reserve may have begun trimming its balance sheet, but other central banks are still buying and the scale of their largesse keeps US credit spreads tight as international money hunts yield. Not until next March will collective bond buying from the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and the Bank of England peak at around $15.3tn, according to BofA.”
  • “But kick the tires of the credit machine a little harder and there are nascent signs of trouble.”
  • “The quality of covenants — designed to protect bondholders from a borrower defaulting — loiters in the gutter, reflecting a market awash with far too much money.”
  • “In another troubling sign, companies have raised just $215bn from the US high yield market in 2017, the second-slowest figure since 2011, as flows of money into the sector have been choppy this year. While this suggests that some money managers are doing their credit homework, the recent bankruptcy filing of Toys R Us sends a grim tiding about market complacency.”
  • “Bonds in the highly indebted retailer were trading near par and then plunged below 30 cents on the dollar.”
  • “So where does this leave investors? Sure the music is still playing and will probably do so for some time yet. But watch the yield curve. The Fed’s autopilot sequence of rate increases has sharply narrowed the difference between yields on short and long dated Treasuries. This reflects expectations that inflation will stay low — bad for debtors — as well as concern that the economy’s growth prospects are limited.”
  • “If there’s further curve flattening after a tax reform deal, that will send a gloomy signal about the economy, finally push credit spreads wider and should worry the most ardent of equity bulls.”
  • “As we know from 2008, there is no exit once the credit market turns. Credit is the Hotel California of markets — and equity investors usually discover they are trapped in the basement.”

China

FT – Inside China’s secret ‘magic weapon’ for worldwide influence – James Kynge, Lucy Hornby, and Jamil Anderlini 10/25

  • “Xi is quietly ramping up a Communist party department to expand Beijing’s soft power.”

India

FT – India agrees $32bn plan to recapitalize state banks – Simon Mundy 10/24

  • “India’s government has announced a $32bn recapitalization plan for the country’s ailing state-controlled banks in a bid to tackle a festering economic problem.”
  • “The finance ministry promised on Tuesday to take a ‘massive step . . . to support credit growth and job creation’ by shoring up bank balance sheets strained by soaring corporate defaults over the past three years.”
  • “The state banks have been faced with weak credit demand this year and have lost market share to private sector rivals.”
  • “Concerns about the condition of the state-owned banks, which account for more than two-thirds of sector assets, have been mounting along with estimates of their bad loans.”
  • “This is because of a spurt in loans to companies in sectors such as steel and infrastructure over much of the past decade, many of which subsequently turned sour. Gross non-performing loans at the state-controlled banks rose to 13.7% of their assets at the end of June, up from 5.4% in March 2015.”
  • “Beyond the recapitalization, the government promised to push the banks to step up their lending to small and medium-sized enterprises, including by partnering with financial technology companies.”
  • “This sector was badly hit by India’s demonetization last year, which triggered a shortage of bank notes that rocked companies long used to dealing entirely in cash.”

Japan

WSJ – Japan to Young Investors: Loosen Up – Suryatapa Bhattacharya 10/29

Puerto Rico

Rhodium Group – America’s Biggest Blackout – Trevor Houser and Peter Marsters 10/26

Russia

NYT – In Russia, a Bribery Case Lifts the Veil on Kremlin Intrigue – Andrew Kramer 10/21

South America

WSJ – Daily Shot: Latinobarometro – Does Your Government Favor the Elite 10/29

  • It would be hard to argue it doesn’t.

October 20 – October 26, 2017

Polluted waterways in India…

It’s a light posting – I’ve been out of pocket for the last several days. Regardless, I will catch up with the content from those days and mix it in with new content.

However, since I’ve had some mixed feed back, I would like to open it up in a poll. Do you prefer daily or weekly posts?

Headlines

FT – Pollution-related deaths exceed 9m per year 10/19. “…Equivalent to one in six of all deaths across the world.” Of which, 6.5m are from air pollution, 1.8m from water pollution, and 0.8m from pollution in the workplace.

FT – China lifts ban on Anbang sales of high-yield investment products 10/21. After being banned from selling new products in May, the insurance group (known for its purchase of the Waldorf Astoria in New York and a $6.5bn hotel portfolio from the Blackstone Group), has been enabled to get back to it.

NYT – Puerto Ricans Ask: When Will the Lights Come Back On? 10/19. “…80% of Puerto Rico still does not have electricity. Some residents have not had power for 45 days…”

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

Politico – The Boomtown (Cape Coral, FL) That Shouldn’t Exist – Michael Grunwald 10/20

Perspective

National Geographic – These Are the World’s Happiest Places – Dan Buettner 10/18

NYT – A Boom in Credit Cards: Great News for Banks, Less So Consumers 10/19

National Geographic – Where to Find The Good Life – Manuel Canales & Kennedy Elliott 10/18

Real Estate

13D Research – The destabilizing truth of the retail apocalypse: it’s more about inequality than e-commerce – 10/5

Asia – excluding China and Japan

NYT – Myanmar, Once a Hope for Democracy, Is Now a Study in How It Fails 10/19

Europe

FT – EU opens investigation into Chinese e-bike dumping – Michael Pooler 10/20

Featured

WSJ – The World’s Next Environmental Disaster – Krishna Pokharel and Preetika Rana 10/20

  • “The Yamuna River that flows through this ancient city has helped sustain some of India’s greatest empires. Hindu poets celebrated its life-giving properties. The Mughal dynasty built the Taj Mahal and other monuments along its banks.”
  • “Today, the Yamuna is a foul sludge for much of its 855-mile run. In Delhi, it is black and nearly motionless, covered in many areas with a foam of industrial chemicals, floating plastic and human waste.”
  • “Every 100 milliliters of the Yamuna in Delhi contains 22 million fecal coliform bacteria, up from 12,250 in 1988, scientists say. Anything over 500 is unsafe for bathing, India’s government says. The comparable standard in Vermont is 235.”
  • “Illnesses ranging from diarrhea to brain worms are reported along the river’s edges. By the time the Yamuna exits Delhi, it is so defiled that scientists have declared the next 300 miles ‘eutrophic,’ or incapable of sustaining animal life.”
  • “For years, global environmentalists have focused on China, whose rapid industrialization made it one of the world’s most polluted major nations. Now it’s India’s turn.”
  • “Unlike China, which has become wealthier and is starting to clean up, India is in the early stages of industrial growth. It is following the same road China took to get richer, meaning more factories and cars. Yet, it already has some of the world’s worst environmental problems.”
  • “A government report in 2015 found that 275 of 445 rivers in India are severely polluted, including the Ganges. An international nonprofit, WaterAid, says 70% of India’s surface water is contaminated. Diarrhea, often caused by drinking bad water, is the fourth-leading cause of death in India, ahead of any cancer, and kills far more people than in China, which has a larger population.”
  • “Greenpeace says that in 2015, the average Indian was subjected to more air pollution than the average Chinese for the first time, as China’s ‘systematic efforts’ to improve air have started working. A 2016 WHO report found that 10 out of the world’s 20 most polluted cities were in India, based on residents’ exposure to deadly small particulate matter.”
  • “One reason India is an environmental mess at such an early stage of its development is that it has failed to master the basic services of sewage and water treatment which some other developing nations addressed when incomes rose.”
  • “Of the over 16 billion gallons of sewage that India produces every day, 62% ends up on nearby water bodies untreated, according to the Central Pollution Control Board, a federal pollution monitor.”
  • “Many Indian cities that built wastewater treatment systems don’t fully use them because of electricity shortages or other problems. Several others haven’t built them at all.”