Juggling Dynamite

On Thursday, January 13, vegan doctor, Michelle McMacken, was officially announced as the new Executive Director of Nutrition and Lifestyle Medicine for NYC Health + Hospitals.

To help even more people experience the benefits of plant-based whole foods, she created the Bellevue Plant-Based Lifestyle Medicine Program in 2019. The program helps people with certain health issues “upgrade” their lifestyle and increase overall wellbeing by focusing on diet, sleep, stress, exercise, social connection, and substance use. The program was supported by NYC’s new plant-based Mayor, Eric Adams, who was the Brooklyn Borough President at the time, and has helped hundreds of New Yorkers. Now, Dr. McMacken has the opportunity to build on this work and help even more individuals overcome chronic diseases by adopting healthier lifestyles.  See Plant-based doctor.

Dr. McMacken explained her food enlightenment evolution here in August:  a direct video link.

Amid slowing demand, the fewest births since 1950, a shrinking workforce, slumping home prices, and defaulting property developers, the Chinese central bank cut its policy rate overnight for the first time since April 2020.  See China’s GDP growth slows as COVID restrictions and property woes hit demand.

The rate cut follows a series of easing efforts in recent months that have included the issuance of bonds used by local governments to fund infrastructure, as well as telling banks to accelerate lending to property companies to reduce the risk of a hard landing for the housing market.

The intensifying home market downturn poses a challenge for policymakers, given that the sector accounts for about a quarter of gross domestic product.  It poses a challenge for global growth given that China has accounted for the largest share of global commodity demand over the past 20 years as well as a price-indiscriminate pool of buyers in many global housing markets. On the upside, excess output along with lower commodity and property prices should resume disinflationary forces globally.

Worries about contagion from China’s property crisis reached all the way to the nation’s biggest developer. Long seen as one of the most financially viable property firms, Country Garden Holdings Co. is now caught up in the industry’s liquidity crunch.  Here is a direct video link.

Public company CEOs are economic and financial market cheerleaders. Of course, they are; just ask them. They have taken an oath that their primary duty is “rewarding shareholders,” i.e., getting share prices higher. Equity-linked incentives also make up the bulk of their compensation. The same is true of central bankers and so-called ‘investment experts’ because their primary role is to help boost confidence, borrowing, spending and security buying at every price.  In this way, most financial experts are quite literally paid ‘not to see’ loss prospects. And yet, after confidence and prices have been boosted to the top end of historic norms, reality always intervenes with a gut punch that the masses never see coming.

This is why it’s imperative that individuals and bona fide risk managers are skeptics that do not blindly follow talking heads but rather do their own due diligence and assessments.

David Rosenberg, Rosenberg Research, joins ‘Closing Bell’ to warn that today’s retail sales data could be a warning sign for stocks.  Here is a direct video link.