Weekend Reading 7-8 October 2017

Global Macro / Markets / Investing:

• Is This The Biggest Housing Bubble Ever? – Zero Hedge
• The Active Vs. Passive Conflict: Why All Dips Are Bought – Real Investment Advice
• Gold-Coin Sales Drop to Decade Low as Retail Buyers Flee: Chart – Bloomberg
• OPEC Pushes Russia to Continue Helping on Oil Prices – WSJ
• U.S. Shale Juggernaut Shows Signs of Fatigue – WSJ
• Bitcoin’s Rise Happened in Shadows of Finance. Now Banks Want In – Bloomberg

Americas:

• American public pensions suffer from a gaping hole – The Economist
• “I Realized I Was Probably Going to Die There”: Surviving the Las Vegas Shooting – New Yorker
• The GOP’s tax reform push is already a huge mess – VOX
• Trump alludes to “calm before the storm” in confusing comments – CBS News
• U.S. Halt in Visa Services Leaves Cuban Families in Limbo – NY Times
• How to Reduce Mass Shooting Deaths? Experts Say These Gun Laws Could Help – NY Times
• Payday Lending Faces Tough New Restrictions by Consumer Agency – NY Times
• Nothing Divides Voters Like Owning a Gun – NY Times
• Is America Facing Another Sputnik Moment? – New Yorker
• Puerto Rico Bonds and Cream Coins – Bloomberg
• Struggling to breathe: The consequences of life without power in Puerto Rico – Washington Post

Europe:

• Russia reportedly stole NSA secrets with help of Kaspersky—what we know now – Ars Technica
• Russian propaganda may have been shared hundreds of millions of times, new research says – Washington Post
• Dutch Regulator Warns Banks and Insurers to Factor in Climate Change – Bloomberg
• Theresa May’s horrible, no good, very bad day explains why democracy is better than technocracy – Washington Post
• German business warned to expect ‘very hard Brexit’ – FT
• The Bank of England says we need a Brexit deal by Christmas – The Independent
• Top Banker Says Hungary May Adopt the Euro Sooner Than Expected – Bloomberg
• Catalonia vs. Spain: Here’s what could happen next – CNN Money
• US rounds on Britain over food quotas as post-Brexit trade woes deepen – Politico

Asia:

• Meet the invisible hand behind Hong Kong’s rise – The Economist
• Japanese Vending Machines at Night Juxtaposed with a Wintry Hokkaido Landscape – Spoon Tamago
• The Nobel committee should go ahead and infuriate China – Washington Post
• Japanese woman ’dies from overwork’ after logging 159 hours of overtime in a month – The Guardian
• Soaring rates of ’shadow banking’ add to fears of Chinese debt, warns World Bank – The Telegraph
• South Korea Joins Cryptocurrency Crackdown – WSJ

Trans-Tasman:

• How Pension Funds Are Nickel and Diming Australia – Bloomberg
• For the love of Queensland, this land clearing has got to stop – The Guardian
• Coalition resists calls to ban importation of flammable cladding – The Guardian
• Australia’s energy trainwreck: How we ended up with the world’s highest power bills – The SMH
• “Australia admits more migrants than any other big Western country” – The Economist
• Malcom Turnbull defends NBN Rollout – The SMH
• ‘We’ve Got This in Hand’: Malcolm Turnbull Slammed For Brushing Aside NBN Concerns – Gizmodo
• Thailand tops the list of deadly destinations for Australian travellers – ABC
• The $8b exodus: Sydney home owners are selling up and Queensland is the big winner – The SMH
• Pharmacy guild undermining TGA over codeine (AMA) – AMA
• Lay off the zingers, Peter Dutton, and take your job a bit more seriously – The SMH
• Politicians’ spending under the spotlight as first independent report is released – The SMH
• Brandis named ‘villain of the year’ for encryption crackdown – Computer World
• Turnbull denies new facial recognition measures amount to ‘mass surveillance’ – The Guardian
• States reject demands by Malcolm Turnbull for coal seam gas green light – WA Today
• Nick Xenophon to return to state politics – ABC
• The real chink in our armour – The SMH
• Tony Alexander suggests real estate agents look for jobs as builders or teachers as property boom ends – Interest.co.nz
• The dangers of averaging – Interest.co.nz

Other:

• Netflix ups U.S. fees for first time since 2015 – Reuters