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“Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books…”
“Love grows from stable relationships, shared experience, loyalty, devotion, trust.”
– Richard Wright
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Pop Goes The Housing Market: Is owning a home always the best investment? Robert Shiller is a Nobel Prize-winning behavioral economist at Yale whose work may not be that familiar to people outside financial and real estate circles. He is probably best known for today’s S&P/Case-Shiller Index, which he initially created with his colleague Karl Case in the 1980s as a way to assess how home price changes over time. Case and Shiller developed a method for comparing repeat sales of the same homes using data from sales in Boston, which was going through a housing boom in the early ’80s. In 1991 the men formed a company with computer whiz Alan Weiss, who developed indexing techniques for national home sales that eventually led to tradable indices on the stock market.
In 2000 Shiller published his blockbuster book, Irrational Exuberance, in which he analyzed the history of home prices going back to 1890. Shiller had learned from his analysis that there has been no continuous uptrend in US home prices, something completely contrary to popular opinion. The data showed that between 1890 and 2019, national housing prices grew by less than 0.6 percent per year (after accounting for inflation). Shiller concluded that the sentiment and paradigm that home prices are continuously increasing may actually be fueling bubbles in real estate markets.
Inasmuch as Shiller correctly warned the world about the two big bubbles that devastated our economy over the last 20 years — the dotcom crash in the late 1990s and housing crisis from 2007 to 2009 — his opinion is taken seriously. A few months ago, he warned again about a potential housing bubble. The third biggest housing boom in modern US history has been ongoing since 2012. He says it could take awhile, but booms like this come to an end. One caveat — the Case-Shiller index does not track rents, and other economists say when you incorporate the value of rent, homes have a return similar to stocks, with less volatility. Additional movie trailer: The Big Short.
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Everyone Needs A Little Help: In the 20th century most doctors, mental health professionals and cultural theorists believed depression was a uniquely western phenomenon, something that only existed in rich nations. In 1953 a psychiatrist and consultant to the World Health Organization published an influential paper on the “African mind” that argued the continent’s inhabitants lacked the psychological development and sense of personal responsibility necessary to experience depression. That view began to change in the early 1990s with a landmark project on global health by the World Bank. Researchers examining the global causes of illness and disability found that the single largest cause of disability worldwide was mental disorders. In 2007 several experts published a series of articles on global mental health that warned mental health disorders are neglected and stigmatized, and pointed to the critical shortage in mental health care. They found that in America, less than half the people who needed treatment weren’t getting it, but in poor countries, virtually no one was getting the care they needed. (Guardian)
WHO Will Save Us From Ourselves (And Measles): In 2000 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared measles “eliminated” from the US. That same year the World Health Organization began a campaign to bring down the estimated global number of a million measles cases a year with the ambitious target of getting 90 percent of children vaccinated before their first birthday. By 2016 there were just over 100,000 reported cases. Since then the number has increased dramatically in America, with the CDC recording, as of this week, 704 measles cases in 22 states. The reemergence of measles is linked not only to parents who have chosen not to vaccinate their children, but also by the sheer surge of the disease in countries that don’t have the health care infrastructure to consistently carry out immunization campaigns, or are experiencing war or social collapse. (NPR)
The Future of Commerce and Social Selling: In China, the millions of Generation Z shoppers, born after 1996, are offering a glimpse into the likely future of retail around the world. These young people were raised on mobile devices and aren’t impressed by glitzy brands and traditional advertising campaigns. They spend their time on social media; they’re also buying goods suggested by social media influencers known as wanghong. And they’re using messaging, short videos, livestreaming, and social media apps as gateways to making those purchases. By 2022, according to researchers, more than $413 billion of goods will be sold through social e-commerce in China. (Bloomberg)
8chan, Where The Far Right Feel Right At Home: The latest website to come under scrutiny in the debate over the Internet’s role in radicalizing extremists is 8chan. Before going on a shooting spree at the Chabad of Poway synagogue in Southern California Saturday, the alleged perpetrator posted a letter on 8chan echoing last month’s shootings in New Zealand. Journalist Robert Evans, who writes for the online investigative platform Bellingcat, describes some corners of 8chan as “a neo-Nazi gathering place on the Internet where young men try to convince each other to commit acts of terrorism.” According to Evans, this is an extreme right-wing, racist community. Members offer tips on weapons, discussions about the best translated version of Mein Kampf and pictures of mass shooters portrayed as saints. (NBC, NPR) Additional read: A Holocaust Story for the Social Media Generation (NYT, $)
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Whitehouse Full Of White Lies: Attorney General William Barr appeared before a Senate committee Wednesday and defended his handling of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report, denying Democrats’ accusations that he dissembled and misled the public about the report’s findings. Much of the hearing centered on revelations that Mueller had complained more than a month ago about Barr’s initial public depiction of the investigation’s findings. The attorney general parried many of the Democrats’ toughest accusations and questions with avuncular answers about legal definitions and Justice Department policy, exasperating lawmakers like Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who accused Barr of “masterful hairsplitting.” The AG made several inaccurate or misleading statements during the hearing, and his overt defense of one individual, the president, clearly contravened the oath he took to be the top law enforcement official for America and to uphold the rule of law. After the hearing ended Justice Department officials notified the House Judiciary Committee that Barr would not appear at a planned hearing Thursday to discuss the Trump investigation. (WaPo, NYT)
13 Million Children Walk The Unfortunately Thick Poverty Line: The Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) said in a new report that about 13 million American children are living in homes with incomes below the poverty line, depriving many of a decent education and proper nutrition, and putting them at risk of homelessness and violence. Two-thirds of those living in poverty are children of color. The group outlines solutions — a federal minimum wage of $15 an hour, increased tax credits and widening childcare subsidies — which would cut child poverty by more than half. And increasing access to housing subsidies to low-income families on less than 150 percent of the poverty level of $25,100 a year for a family of four, would alone lift 2 million children out of poverty. The report estimates the cost of the measures at $52bn, just 1.4 percent of federal spending. The group says urgent action is needed to end the “moral travesty” of millions of children living in poverty while the wealthiest Americans get tax cuts. (Guardian)
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We Were Going To Give This A Title, But…Why Bother: The Dutch have a word for doing nothing—niksen. Why is that good to know? Because psychologists tell us running from place to place and laboring over long to-do lists have increasingly become ways to communicate one’s status, as in ‘I’m so busy because I’m so important.’ Generally speaking our culture doesn’t promote sitting still; rather, the messaging is that we always have to be doing something productive. Otherwise, we’re at risk of being called unproductive, or wasteful, or just plain lazy. The idea of niksen is to take conscious, considered time and energy to do activities like gazing out a window, or sitting motionless, or just hanging out. Multiple studies show that not taking breaks during the workday can lead to drowsiness and mental depletion, which reduces performance and productivity. And according to one expert, daydreaming — an inevitable effect of idleness — “literally makes us more creative, better at problem-solving, better at coming up with creative ideas.” (NYT) And then there are those who boast to do everything: People Who Claim to Work 75-Hour Weeks Usually Only Work About 50 Hours (NY Mag)
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