Juggling Dynamite

Climate deniers and fossil fuel advocates are working hard to ban words and education on the science of our planet warming, but rising waters are showing us all who is actually in charge here.  Only smarter technology, clean energy and dramatic changes in human consumption can help turn this tide or not.  The longer the status quo stalls our evolution, the higher the compound costs will be.  See:  Rising seas: “Florida is about to be wiped off the map”:

Sea levels are rising. For many cities on the the eastern shores of the United States, the problem is existential. We take a look at how Miami and Atlantic City are tackling climate change, and the challenges they face under a skeptical Trump administration that plans to cut funding for environmental programs.  Here is a direct video link.

Also see Baton Rouge emerges from devastating floods to lead the battle against rising water.  Here is a direct link to a video report.

Rising Risks: Baton Rouge emerges from devastating floods to lead the battle against rising water from CNBC.

Think tank to Chinese government: don’t just stand there, get a plan! Turns out that ‘add even more debt and stir’, has been the only plan everywhere for the last decade.

A leaked report from a Chinese government-backed think tank has warned of a potential “financial panic” in the world’s second-largest economy, a sign that some members of the nation’s policy elite are growing concerned as market turbulence and trade tensions increase.

Here is a direct video link.

Torrents of foreign capital seeking land banks in the west, misguided government policies that encourage real estate speculation, the lowest interest rates in centuries, excessive credit abuse enabled by central banks, debt securitization and yield-desperate, price indiscriminate funds buying everything in sight–all these factors served to temporarily hyper-inflate realty and security prices into 2017.  Now these same forces are moving in the other direction–all together, even while many realtors and builders are working to keep up bullish appearances.  See Recycled listings around Vancouver obscure a major market correction.

While it is a common fantasy that affluent people always buy and never need to sell their properties, history does not agree.  This is especially the case in today’s highly interconnected, debt-soaked economies and markets.

CNBC’s Robert Frank (who reports in the clip below) is the author of the must-read book The High-Beta Rich (2011) which brilliantly illuminates on the global interconnections at work here.

CNBC’s Robert Frank reports on how New York City real estate fared in the second quarter of 2018. Here is a direct video link.

Manhattan real estate continues to slide from CNBC.

Thanks to a reader who, this week, sent me the below snapshot of a December 1997, Vancouver Sun article, reminding of the forced selling wave that hit Vancouver realty during the Asian liquidity crunch of 1997-98.  This was the same butterfly flapping its wings in Asia, that brought down the ‘genius’ Long Term Capital Management funds and shook Wall Street in 1998.  A synchronous liquidity crunch across many highly levered economies and asset markets in the months ahead, is likely to hit harder and last longer than previous cycles in memory.  We’ve been amply warned about how these cycles go.