NYC last week passed a modest Green New Deal. This initiative falls far, far short of where climate change policy needs to go, but is certainly an improvement on the fossil fuel-friendly agenda of the Trump administration (and its predecessors).
Read more...Author Samuel Stein talks about how capitalism shapes cities.
Read more...Does the testy abandonment of its New York City “HQ2” scheme mean we’ve hit Peak Amazon?
Read more...China gets a cold and California real estate gets pneumonia.
Read more...Kamala Harris’ supposed big accomplishment, of getting California a better deal in the 2012 mortgage settlement, isn’t anything to boast about.
Read more...Housing is going pear-shaped in California tech-land….and you can’t blame it on a tech bust.
Read more...Michael Hudson gives a wide-ranging interview, discussing the importance of euphemism in obscuring power relationships and exploitation.
Read more...Confirming Airbnb’s effects on rentals and home prices.
Read more...Australia looks to be on the verge of a nasty unwind of its housing bubble. A plunge would damage not only its banks but also retirement funds, since banks play an outsized role in the Australian stock market.
Read more...Blackstone is a major operator in the Spanish property market. This post discusses the Spanish government’s plans to enact modest protections for tenants by reforming rent laws. Will the government respond to tenant needs, or give way to the private equity firm’s implicit threat to reduce its Spanish property investments? Alas, it looks likely that the government will fail to deliver on its reform pledge.
Read more...Until 2008, rising home values gave the middle class a cushion amid growing income inequality. But following the financial crisis, that wealth has failed to return.
Read more...Rising rental costs put a spotlight on how it is even harder than ever for ordinary workers to get by.
Read more...Explaining a fundamental error in a widely-touted paper on HAMP modifications.
Read more...Some of the analytical sleights of hand used to promote the ideology of financializatation.
Read more...How a new paper on HAMP manages, by not understanding the program. to whitewash it as well as promote financialization.
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