My mid-week morning train reads:
• 26 Empire State Buildings Could Fit Into New York’s Empty Office Space. That’s a Sign. Unlike earlier eras of urban success, this time New York did not produce enough housing to keep up with demand. The cost of living skyrocketed. Compare New York with Houston, which remained affordable for ordinary Americans because it built aggressively. Manhattan became dependent on its elite earners — a large share of the tax base came from a tiny proportion of the population — who were also the only group who could afford to live in its increasingly expensive neighborhoods. (New York Times)
• The Home Buyer’s Quandary: Nobody’s Selling: Many are ready to move but don’t want to lose the low-rate mortgages they locked in a few years ago, crimping the supply of homes and keeping prices high. (Wall Street Journal)
• Warehouses Outperform in Cloudy Commercial Real Estate Environment: Warehouses have been red-hot for a long time but show no signs of meaningfully slowing down. (Chief Investment Officer)
• Housing-Strapped States Reach for a Fraught Fix: the ‘Builder’s Remedy’ State laws that allow developers to sidestep local zoning rules have been implemented in California and Massachusetts — but affluent suburbs often resist. (CityLab)
• Disney v DeSantis: what’s at stake for Florida as legal tug-of-war ramps up? Eventual outcome will have profound implications for Sunshine state overall and the regional economy in particular. (The Guardian)
• In Norway, the Electric Vehicle Future Has Already Arrived: About 80 percent of new cars sold in Norway are battery-powered. As a result, the air is cleaner, the streets are quieter and the grid hasn’t collapsed. But problems with unreliable chargers persist. (New York Times)
• How Saudi money returned to Silicon Valley: All the ways Saudi Arabia’s cash powers tech startups and venture capital. (Vox)
• How Elon Musk Broke the Ratio: Public shaming isn’t the same on a platform where right-wingers now pay for prominence. (Slate)
• The Company Behind Ben Shapiro Is Trying to Build a Right-Wing Magic Kingdom: The Daily Wire has ridden culture war outrage and transphobia into a breakout media business. Now it has its sights set on entertainment—and an entire alternative economy. (Businessweek).
• In the End, Rocket Raccoon Is the Star of ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ James Gunn has called Rocket Raccoon the “secret protagonist” of the ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ trilogy. In ‘Vol. 3,’ the secret is out. https://www.theringer.com/marvel-cinematic-universe/2023/5/8/23715659/guardians-of-the-galaxy-vol-3-rocket-raccoon-marvel-cinematic-universe
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Julian Salisbury, Chief Investment Officer of Goldman Sachs Asset & Wealth Management, with $737 billion in assets under management. He is a member of the Management Committee and Co-Chair of the Asset Management Investment Committees, (private equity, infrastructure, growth equity, credit, and real estate).
Rates pauses are bullish: The S&P 500 has rallied in the months after the pause
Source: Bloomberg
Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.
