Real estate

The economy is growing, the markets are up, stocks are flirting with record highs… The good times are back for investors, so it seems, but are they really?

No lesser establishment economist than Martin Feldstein - Professor of Economics at Harvard University and President Emeritus of the National Bureau of Economic Research - has some warning words of wisdom for The Fed today: "...the Fed’s unconventional monetary policies have also created dangerous risks to the financial sector and the economy as a whole." When even The Ivory Tower is losing faith, you know The Fed is in trouble...

The only remarkable macroeconomic news overnight was out of Japan where we got the Q1 GDP print of 2.4% coming in well above consensus of 1.6%, and higher than the 1.1% in Q4. Did it not snow in Japan this winter? Does Japan already used double, and maybe triple, "seasonally-adjusted" data? We don't know, but we do know that both Japan and Europe have grown far faster than the US in the first quarter.

Since its inception, California has always portrayed itself as the land of opportunity. Kind of like a dream within the American dream. Of course, if you ask anyone who actually lives here, they’ll tell you the truth. The only people getting rich from the dream are the ones who made it up. They prey on the gullible masses who think they can move here and become movies stars, and tech CEO’s. But more importantly, this dream is the lifeblood of our vampiric state, and always has been. Like the myths surrounding the Great Wall of China, our foundations are layered with those who fell while chasing the dream. We owe our very existence to this ever evolving scam.

Boom-and-Bust City at its glorious best.

London’s property market is still hell bent on going crazy as if it has overeaten and become over inflated yet again.

Less than a week ago, fresh from the aftermath of the recent dramatic six-sigma move in German Bunds, one of Europe's largest banks openly lamented that so far the ECB's QE had done absolutely nothing: "two months of QE for nothing." And lo and behold, as if on demand, overnight the ECB confirmed it had heard SocGen's lament when just before the European market open, ECB executive board member Benoit Coeure delivered a speech at the Brevan Howard Centre for Financial Analysis (appropriately named after a hedge fund) at Imperial College Business School (not to be confused with the July 26, 2012 Mario Draghi "whatever it takes" speech which also took place in London) in which he said that the ECB intends to "frontload" i.e., increase, its purchases of euro-area assets in May and June ahead of an expected low-liquidity period in the summer.

After months of speculation and confusion, on Friday we finally got if not direct, then certainly indirect, evidence from this month's TIC data that "Belgium" was merely a front for China.

Old age and treachery will always triumph over youth and skill. At least, that is the way it looks.

Many people seem to think that America has lost its sense of purpose. You don’t have to seek further than the USA’s sub-soviet-quality passenger railroad system, which produced the spectacular Philadelphia derailment last week that killed eight people and injured dozens more. Six days later, we’re still waiting for some explanation as to why the train was going 100 miles-per-hour on a historically dangerous curve within the city limits. The condition of our trains is symptomatic of the shape of the nation.

In a stunningly honest turn of events - though likely self-preserving - a number of senior financial services executives are reportedly urged authorities around the world to bolster their crisis-busting arsenals amid fears that ultra-low interest rates have increased the risks of financial instability. As The FT reports, the heads of companies including HSBC, UBS and BlackRock will on Monday release a joint statement demanding policy-makers "address emerging market inefficiencies in the financial system, such as over-exuberance within asset classes." Policy-makers must “lean against something that is making people feel good but is actually going to give them a hangover they will find difficult to cope with."

Not content with building single-family houses (and WinSun's own office), WinSun recently made history when it demonstrated the world's first entirely 3D-printed five-story apartment building and a 1,100 square metre (11,840 square foot) villa, complete with decorative elements inside and out.

"Loans take time to season and go bad, and Wall Street loves to package and pass along risk. The music will stop — it always does — and this will not end well.”

Since the beginning of 2014, the 225 companies that have gone public in China have returned an average of 418% on their way to an average P/E of nearly 100X while growing earnings by an average of just 4%. Most absurd of all, software IPOs have returned 1,124%, have an average P/E of 311X on earnings growth of -5%.

• The fake: Avon-Offer Hoax Shows It’s Easy to Put One Over on SEC’s Edgar (BBG)
• And the real: US buyout group TPG snaps up UK discounter Poundworld (FT)
• El Niño near-certain to last through summer: U.S. climate center (Reuters)
• Oil Sands Land Becomes Alberta’s Hot Real Estate as Oil Rebounds (BBG)
• SEC a stumbling block in banks' forex guilty pleas: sources (Reuters)
• Pimco’s Stocks Chief Maisonneuve to Leave as Funds Closed (BBG)
• Bank of America’s Woes Test ‘Fixer’ CEO (WSJ)
• Puerto Rico Governor, Lawmakers Agree on Revenue Proposal (BBG)