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Wednesday, April 16, 2014

It's The Law

The law is the law, and you won't believe how many celebs have broken it.

Bill Gates was arrested for driving without a license? You won't believe all the celebs who have committed crimes.

With the second weekend of Coachella 2014 coming, it's time to look back at Vanessa Hudgens' love affair with the festival.

Beyoncé may be all the rage today, but let's not forget that Janet Jackson was the original pop diva.

IN OTHER NEWS...

Taylor Swift surprised a fan at her bridal shower, and kept an adorable video diary to document it. 

Remember Lady Gaga's campaign for Versace from last year? The unretouched photos just leaked online.

Leonardo DiCaprio was at Coachella this past weekend and got into a really strange wrestling match.

Whoa, Paul Rudd. What an incredible beach body you have.

IN CASE YOU'D FORGOTTEN...

The ladies of "Buffy."

The ladies of Buffy took part in this super adorable photo shoot together back in the 90s for InStyle magazine.

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The housing density is too damn low

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Your rent really is too damn high.

Kim-Mai Cutler has a long, detailed explainer on San Francisco's real estate crisis in TechCrunch. To begin with, she says, there's just not enough supply: "San Francisco has a roughly 35% homeownership rate. Then 172,000 units of the city's 376,940 housing units are under rent control", a number equal to a remarkable 75% of the city's rental units. That doesn't leave much for the rental market. As a result, any rents which can rise, will rise. (Marc Andreessen notes that tech has been driving up prices in the area for at least 30 years, and population boom cycles have been part of the city's history since the Gold Rush.)

Tech companies keep creating jobs in San Francisco and Silicon Valley without building more housing to accommodate the extra workers. As computer programmers flood in to the existing housing stock, the working class is pushed out completely. A big part of this problem, says Ryan Avent, is San Francisco's restrictive zoning requirements. The city's longtime residents are very good at keeping new construction out of their backyard. "However altruistic they perceive their mission to be, the result is similar to what you'd get if fat cat industrialists lobbied the government to drive their competition out of business", he writes.

While the tech industry (and San Francisco's zoning laws) exacerbate the situation in California, it's really part of a greater trend in urban housing affordability. Urban populations around the country, Cutler points out, have been rising since the 80's. A report from the real estate website Zillow found that "nationally, renters are spending more of their income on rent than they have at any point in the past 30 years", especially in urban centers. In quite a few cities, the average person has shot past the generally accepted 30% of income on rent guideline, and is now paying nearly 40% of what they make on housing.

Sheila Dewan at the NYT thinks that, even with new construction, things are unlikely to get better for the middle class. The rental market has bifurcated into affordable and luxury markets:

As long as there are plenty of upper-income renters looking for apartments, there is little incentive to build anything other than expensive units. As a result, there are in effect two separate rental markets that are so far apart in price that they have little impact on each other.

Matt Yglesias (who wrote the book on high rents) finds this argument lacking. "When you increase the number of units — even if the new units are very expensive — you're making some kind of progress", he says. Instead, the simple problem is construction of new units since the mid-aughts real estate boom hasn't kept pace with population growth.

Bill McBride has the numbers. He finds that there should be an increase in multi-family (apartment) building completions in 2014, but the number is still below the number of buildings completed every year in the decade before the crisis. – Shane Ferro 

On to today's links:

Primary Sources
Janet Yellen's speech: there's more slack in the labor market than the unemployment rate suggests - the Fed
Paul Krugman's CUNY offer letter - Gawker

Ugh
The US tax code fails the childless poor - The New Republic
A billion people could be pushed below the poverty line because of slowing global growth - FT 

New Normal
Loads of student debt plus stagnant wages is a pretty good way to stall household formation - The New Republic 

Housing
The remarkable productivity stagnation of the US construction sector - Cardiff Garcia

Wonks
The dark side of UK wage growth: mass employment might be here to stay - Chris Dillow

Breaking
Cutting unemployment benefits doesn't help the people find jobs - Ben Casselman

Headline of the Day
"Goldman Sachs CEO Retains Sense of Childlike Wonder" - Jessica Pressler

Wonderful Screeds
"'Whatever happened to good?' asks the white man with graying hair, dad khakis and an alarmingly large face" - Matt Buchanan

Health Care
Health care providers are kind of considering a little bit of price transparency - Wonkblog

Just an FYI
Google reads all of your email - Ars Technica

Billionaire Whimsy
Mike Bloomberg: "I have earned my place in heaven. It's not even close" - NYT

Remuneration
Coke is pushing the bad idea of stock-option pay to the extreme - Edward Hadas

 

 

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Business Today: Wall Steert gains on Yellen comments and Yahoo; BofA falls

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04/16/2014
Reuters Election 2012 Daily round-up of the day's top news from the campaign trail, the White House and all the politics in between
Wall Steert gains on Yellen comments and Yahoo; BofA falls
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks rose 1 percent on Wednesday, advancing for a third straight session as Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen reaffirmed the central bank's commitment to keeping interest rates low and Yahoo rallied.
Google first-quarter revenue misses Wall Street targets
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc's first-quarter revenue fell short of Wall Street targets and margins narrowed as the price of its ads continued to decline, pushing its shares sharply lower.
IBM revenue misses estimates as hardware sales fall
(Reuters) - International Business Machines Corp reported lower-than-expected quarterly revenue as the company struggles with falling demand for its storage and server products.
American Express profit rises 12 percent
(Reuters) - American Express Co reported a 12 percent rise in quarterly profit as its credit-card customers spent more in a recovering U.S. economy.
U.S. industry shows some vigor, but housing soft
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. industrial production rose at a faster-than-expected clip in March, the latest sign the economy was gaining momentum.
Yellen says full U.S. employment coming into view, slowly
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said on Wednesday the U.S. economy appeared to be slowly moving toward full employment, but that it would need help from the central bank for some time to come.
BlackBerry's meltdown sparks start-up boom in Canada's Silicon Valley
(Reuters) - The troubles at BlackBerry Ltd, which fired more than half its staff and lost more than 90 percent of its market value as consumers shunned its smart phones, might have spelled disaster for the company's hometown of Waterloo, Ontario. Instead, there are hot sports cars in the streets and new companies filling the refurbished office buildings.
Bank of America's mortgage crisis costs become a recurring problem
(Reuters) - Bank of America Corp's mortgage pain is lasting longer than expected, leading some investors to wonder if the massive expenses being incurred have become a recurring cost of doing business instead of being dismissed as one-time items.
Lululemon's status as yogawear's top dog at risk
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Still hurting from last year's see-through yoga pants debacle, Lululemon Athletica Inc is about to face a new headache: stepped up competition from rival yoga retailers, department stores and hot new brands.
AT&T threatens to sit out U.S. spectrum auction over rules
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - AT&T Inc has threatened to sit out a major U.S. auction of airwaves if regulators reserve some of the spectrum for smaller rivals, the No. 2 wireless company said in a filing released on Wednesday.
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BlackBerry: the crash that launched 1,000 startups
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Economic News
Yellen says full U.S. employment coming into view, slowly
U.S. industry shows some vigor, but housing soft
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