Juggling Dynamite

One of the biggest problems we must remedy today is that governments are subsidizing highly health-destructive energy, food and drug use through our increasingly stressed tax system.  In this interview, Dr. Greger explains why helping to make fresh produce affordable and widely available to the masses, is the single smartest health policy we can support. Rare, valuable insight.

Dr. Greger is a physician, New York Times bestselling author, and internationally recognized speaker on nutrition, food safety, and public health issues. A founding member and Fellow of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, Dr. Greger is licensed as a general practitioner specializing in clinical nutrition. He is a graduate of the Cornell University School of Agriculture and Tufts University School of Medicine. In 2017, Dr. Greger was honored with the ACLM Lifestyle Medicine Trailblazer Award and became a diplomat of the American Board of Lifestyle Medicine. Both his latest books, How Not to Die and the How Not to Die Cookbook, became instant New York Times Best Sellers.

In this conversation, Dr. Greger talks about:

• The simple rules he has developed to help people eat as healthy as possible.
• Processed foods and plant-based meats, and whether or not they are beneficial to individual health.
• What makes certain foods “better” than others and what consumers really need to look out for on ingredient labels.
• Additionally, Dr. Greger provides some critical advice for food producers and provides tips on how plant-based products can be improved to optimize their health benefits.

Here is a direct audio link.

We cannot sustain debt and asset bubbles and make the intergenerational books balance. It’s that simple, the center cannot hold.  The evidence is everywhere.  See:  Millennial housing crisis engulfs Britain:

Analysis conducted as part of a two-year investigation into intergenerational fairness in Britain, chaired by a former Tory minister, found that millennials are being forced into increasingly cramped and expensive rented properties that leave them with a longer commute and little chance of saving for a home. It also finds an increasing proportion of the young living in overcrowded housing….

Millennials, classed as those born between 1981 and 2000, are half as likely to own a home at the age of 30 as baby boomers because of higher prices, low earnings growth and tighter credit rules. In the 1980s it would have taken a typical household in their late 20s around three years to save for an average-sized deposit. It would now take 19 years, the analysis shows.

Almost two-fifths of millennials rent privately at 30, double the rate for Generation X, born between 1966 and 1980, and four times the rate for baby boomers – born after the war until 1965 – at the same age.

Millennials are now spending an average of nearly a quarter of their net income on housing, three times more than the pre-war generation, now aged 70 and over.

Interest and tax rates fell from 1980 to 2016 and levered asset prices went along for the ride in a series of boom/bust cycles as the boomers aged and debt levels skyrocketed worldwide.  That magic is now over and the secular payback period is arriving in the form of deflating asset prices, higher savings rates, less consumption, weaker economic growth and higher property and consumption taxes.  We cannot have cake and eat it too, never could.

 The commission…is expected to conclude that new taxes on property wealth may be the only way to restore fairness and prepare the country to pay the care and support costs of an ageing population.

It is typical that late in every financial cycle, central banks are raising rates as demand and global growth are falling until finally central bankers blink and move to cutting rates once more.  Different this time:  globalization is in a secular retreat while global debt is at record highs and policy rates are less than 2% in North America, Europe, the UK and Japan.  All of these factors make it likely that the next recession will be deeper and longer than the last two, despite monetary efforts to intervene.

Ecri co-founder and COO Lakshman Achuthan discusses Fed policy, Treasuries and globalization.  Here is a direct video link.

Building on our earlier slowdown call, the incoming data has made the market begin to acknowledge that the economy is not as strong as expected – that’s the critical backdrop for the market jitters. See:  Deglobalization and the Fed.