What We Read Today 07 May 2014

Econintersect: Every day our editors collect the most interesting things they find from around the internet and present a summary “reading list” which will include very brief summaries of why each item has gotten our attention. Suggestions from readers for “reading list” items are gratefully reviewed, although sometimes space limits the number included.

• The Commercial Office Market – An Illusion of Recovery (Keith Jurow, Advisor Perspectives) Keith Jurow contributes to GEI. Keith says that the commerical real estate “recovery” is as much of an illusion as the housing “recovery” which now appears to be unwinding much as Keith has predicted it would for several years. The parabolic spike of the 2007 bubble is well underway again in commercial real estate. See graph after the Read more >> jump.

• Germany’s Private Sector extends its Gains for the 12th Consecutive Month in April (Lindsey Taylor, FX Empire) Germany’s PMI (Purchasing Managers’ Index surged for the 12th straight month in April with a reading of 56.1, up from 54.3 in March. A sub-sector reading that tracks only the private sector was at 54.7 up from a five-month low in March (53.0). Employmnet numbers continued to grow, as did output. See GEI News for PMI review for entire Eurozone.

• Apple, Google, and the Hubris of Silicon Valley’s Hiring Conspiracy (Paul M. Barrett and Brad Stone, Bloomberg Businessweek) Hat tip to Marvin Clark. This is all about, crony capitalism, non-competittive and non-free markets, oligarchial sense of entitlement and the repression of labor. Anyone who doubts that unfettered capitalsim is preferable to control of the economy by unions needs to read this. Both are anti-free market.

• Ultralightweight and Flexible Silylated Nanocellulose Sponges for the Selective Removal of Oil from Water (Zheng Zhang, Gilles Sèbe, Daniel Rentsch, Tanja Zimmermann and Philippe Tingaut, Chemistry of Materials) Scientists in laboratories in France and Switzerland have developed nanocellulose sponges to combat oil pollution by selectively absorbing hydrocarbon fluids from water. The sponges are fabricated from renewable natural sources. Will the next Exxon Valdez or Deepwater Horizon catastrophe be contained with this technology? Only if stores of this material are built in advance. It is not clear if that will be done at this point in time.

• Just 7 percent of journalists are Republicans. That’s far fewer than even a decade ago. (Chris Cillizza, The Washington Post) Large changes have occurred in the political associations of journalists over the last ten years. After relative less movements in the numbers from 1971 to 2002, affiliations with the Democratic party have decline more than 1/3 of all reporters to just above 1/4. Republican ranks have been decimated with a drop from 18 % in 2002 to 7% in 2013. That means that after decades when less than half of all reporters were not associated with one party other the other, now nearly 2/3 are in that classification.

• Bernanke to Einhorn: You’re Wrong About QE (YouTube) Hedge fund manager David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital recently had dinner with former Fed chairman Ben Bernanke. Einhorn has been critical of the ultra-low interest rate policy of the Fed for several years and this dinner was the first opportunity he had to talk with Bernanke directly. Einhorn discussed the conversation on Bloomberg TVs “Market Makers” 06 May 2014. Watch the video and then ask the question: Who is actually wrong?

Today there are 16 articles discussed ‘behind the wall’.

First there are 4 articles about investing topics, followed by 2 on the Chinese real estate market situation and then 10 related to U.S. housing market news.

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