“REITs were created in the US after President Eisenhower signed the Cigar Excise Tax Extension of 1960. The law was enacted to give all investors the opportunity to invest in large-scale, diversified portfolios of income-producing real estate in the same way they typically invest in other asset classes – through the purchase and sale of liquid securities. Since then, more than 30 countries around the world have established REIT regimes. A comprehensive index for the REIT and global listed property market is the FTSE EPRA/Nareit Global Real Estate Index Series. As of December 2017, the index included 477 stock exchange listed real estate companies from 35 countries representing an equity market capitalization of about $2 trillion (with approximately 78% of that total from REITs).” ~Wikipedia on “real estate investment trust”
By Catherine Austin Fitts
This week is the final segment of our 3rd Quarter 2018 Wrap Up. On Thursday, I will discuss our theme – “Megacities and the Growth of Global Real Estate Companies.”
The megacities trend has profound implications both for culture and for markets. This trend includes the flow of capital into real estate and the intersection of global equity markets with global real estate development, ownership and management.
Between 1800 and 2000, the global population percentage living in cities grew from 3 to 47. That percentage is likely to continue to rise for some time to come.
The increase in planetary urban density is tied to the growth of the Asian economies and the rise of the Asian middle class. Of 47 current megacities (with populations of 10 million people or more), 30 are in Asia, including 15 in China and six in India.
Our 3rd Quarter 2018 Wrap Up comes with a web presentation and transcripts. This includes our tables of megacities and global real estate companies for your review. Our goal is to ensure you understand the growth of megacities as an important primary trend — with consequences for culture, geopolitics and investment for decades to come.
In Let’s Go to the Movies! I will review one of the choices in our Megacities collection of Documentaries, Movies & TV Shows, Crazy Rich Asians. Set in New York City and Singapore, it tells the story of an immensely wealthy Chinese family who made their fortune in real estate. This movie was first reviewed in our Food for the Soul column.
E-mail or post your questions for Ask Catherine at the Money & Markets commentary here.
Talk to you Thursday!
Related Solari Reports
2016 Annual Wrap Up – The Global Harvest
2nd Quarter 2018 Wrap Up – the Rise of the Asian Consumer
Related Links
I really enjoyed your talk. Thank you!
You are most welcome!
Brief comments:
City living: Catherine and I come from being practically neighbors in my early days to going in much different paths to the same conclusion about cities: Nice places to visit, wouldn’t want to live there. For me, the suburban model has meant access to the city with a relative freedom from crime. On Maslow’s scale, it’s important. I should also note that my vantage point from my suburban bedroom window overlooked two Boeing plants, Baldwin Locomotive, Scott Paper, Westinghouse Airbrake, a huge power plant, oil refineries and countless allied and affiliated businesses. The war and Cold War efforts are more what drove the suburban sprawl than the so-called ‘white flight.’ In fact, ironically-named Sproul Road (after PA governor William Sproul) was the main artery of my youthful world. We went suburban in late 1959, with grandparents remaining in West Philadelphia into the late ‘60’s, which departure could properly be derided as flight. Humans and rats are social creatures, but crowding brings out bad behavior as the natural competition for scarce goods and resources overwhelms higher instincts. Local scarcity is simple to bring about in cities, even if the desired commodity is plentiful at a larger scale. Cities are not good places to live free and inspired lives. We’re back to Maslow.
Autonomous vehicles: I have written extensively on them, a subject of interest with my civil engineering background, and I agree that they are of Deep State importance as control items, not conveniences or environmental benefits. There are certainly aspects of those features in them, but they are the hooks; the addiction is what ensues. I should not be concerned about the amount of bandwidth the vehicles will use, although it will be great, one can think of the ultimate autonomous vehicle as a robot with a passenger compartment—it will make its own reduced instruction set decisions independently of the network, like living drivers, consulting it only when prompted or in need. But, we ultimately have the Terminator vs. I, Robot dilemma: are humans to be served or eliminated—or some combination of both? The subject crosses directly to transhumanism.
Real Estate: consistent with Catherine’s take, I had a recent conversation with my third adjuster as I try to get some reasonable insurance payouts for my Florence losses. He said, without prompting, “They don’t WANT you to live here!” It seems like everyone hankers to be on the coast and near the water, so it’s surprising to hear such a conclusion outside of our alternative interest community. I suppose consolidators in REITS will want the properties eventually, as the seaside will continue to attract vacationers, so perhaps the intent is to turn everything desirable into a time-share, a socialized form of real-estate ownership, and a notoriously bad retail investment.
Sofia Smallstorm has had some very interesting observations on coastal land. I am hoping to get her back on the Solari Report to talk about it.
The fires are a sad thing; as we all know in California that no “campfire” started the whole mess. It has traveled down the coast in a very particular pattern, and has managed to touch only what it wanted to burn down. It could be the drug cartels in retaliation for most of California growing and legalizing marijuana; as well as developers (organized crime or not), wanting to get their hands on prime land. Many Jewish friends think that it is a radical Muslim group, who hate Hollywood and all it represents!. I cannot disregard this; as many of the stars and celebrities lost their homes, and they are Jewish. Many of the directors and musicians live in Chatsworth, Calabasas, and the San Fernando Valley area where they have some of the largest Temples. Since no large bank (Wells, BofA) will lend on land that is tied up in litigation due to crime or fraud;I am wondering how these large developers can finance it to build quickly, unless it is foreign money. According to friends, it is very hard to get Saudi money right now, so it must be Asian.
Problem is that the US military controls US air space and has near perfect intelligence on what is going on there. That means there are three possibilities:
1. The defense contractors or mercenaries are doing this on US direction
2. The US military is standing down
3 The US military is powerless to stop it – either they are outpowered with weaponry or technology of their bankers the NY Fed will shut of their money if they do not
That means this is not a radical Muslim group or crazy developers. IMO this has approval at the highest level of the Silicon valley investment leadership and the Bohemian Grove.
When you print money, you have the time to be patient – given the funds likely coming through the federal budget this is likely a richly for profit effort – same as 911.
Don’t fall into the latest version of the trap of believing that black teenagers control a $100 billion + a year narcotics trade while US military, intelligence and enforcement are helpless to stop them.
Entirely possible, Catherine…you make a solid point.. drug cartels out here are all Hispanic. We are only 2 hours away from the Mexican border. The government simply will not close our borders, crime is rampant, and the liberal venue will not change. Our elections were a mess, and probably fraudulent. I guess our government has found another way to ruin California!….on that note….. Happy Thanksgiving!.. I am grateful for people like you!
You have a marvelous Thanksgiving!
Awesome report, Catherine! What a comprehensive and rich picture.
I’d like to recommend to anyone interested to read Global Outlaws: Crime, Money, and Power in the Contemporary World by Carolyn Nordstrom ISBN: 9780520250963 (https://www.worldcat.org/title/global-outlaws-crime-money-and-power-in-the-contemporary-world/oclc/69792080). What I found is that it traces criminal activity all the way from the very personal level all the way up to the largest corporations. It draws out the dependence of the global model on crime, the way that globalization took mafias to the transnational level, and gives a sense of the magnitude of trafficking that goes through borders and ports every day. The author also throws an ethical wrench into the mix by adding the dimension of the hardened brutal criminal vs the people who simply feel the burning drive for development and so operate in an extralegal framework because they live in a place where the system does not allow development (i.e., Angola).
James:
So glad you liked it. I ordered Global Outlaws. I have also ordered Michael Woodwiwiss’s new book on organized crime. So it looks like I am in for my organized crime update.
Thanks for the recommendation.
Catherine
Thank you for the in depth discussion of the California fires, in the Nov. 15th Money & Markets!
As a follow-up on the discussion of the flammable nature of aluminum nano particles, we looked up Mark McCandlish’s 2014 testimony in Mt. Shasta. As a reference, below is the youtube link, with Mark’s testimony between minutes 45:37 – 49:32:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IR4jawnS8Ss
Thank you again!
Hello,
On the subject of the Nor Cal fires, this may be an additional motive to add.
I found some interesting videos about a movement that I didn’t know existed, “New California”. It appears to be a call for the 51st state. Paul Preston writes in his video that many of the leadership team for “New California” are among the missing due to the “Camp Fire”.
From their website:
The Need for New California
The U.S. Declaration of Independence of 1776, the Alta California Declaration of Independence of 1836 and the Sonoma Proclamation of 1846 declared the Right of the People in the states of Alta California and California respectively to throw off the bonds of tyranny.
Uploaded to YouTube 11/17:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgqf2KYZ6Po
Uploaded to YouTube 10/30:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdOLZdyu9hk
Catherine, thank you for your work. Your insightful analysis is greatly appreciated!
If we could get a database of all the homes and people burned out, my guess is that we could see multiple political patterns. Typical stacking functions.
The fires. There will be tens of thousands of insurance claims and associated litigation. They say you can’t fool all the people all the time. In a situation of such extraordinary loss of life and property, would “they” be able to control all the claimants and litigants, all the insurers and all the courts and other related parties?
In theory yes. It will be a big job and expensive. However, much cheaper and faster than clearing the land by market and eminent domain. My guess is that if they pull a lot out of the federal mortgage funds and disaster recovery funds, tremendous money could flow into the fed and banks – so this could be unbelievably profitable. It is more diminishment of the resources that stand behond the other obligations of the US. More cut and run.
The financial fraud has been managing this type of mess and litigation for decades. It rolled out of and was financed by both the fraud and narcotics trafficking managed through the intelligence agencies and the secret societies. The War on Drugs and War on Terror legal structures helped. And of course time. You need to control these networks to steal the $21 trillion and engineer the housing bubble leading to the bailouts. This is why controlling 3100 counties 1 county at a time is essential to real control. The great tragedy is that we have allowed the take over of each one of our counties, while we were busy obsessed with the Presidential Elections. The guys who control the 3100 counties control the federal credit.
Book that will help you understand this is Michael Woodiwiss’ Organized Crime and American Power: A History 1st Edition. 2001 I see he has a new book and I just ordered it. Would be great to get him on the Solari Report. Watch the documentary Hot Coffee – you will see what has been happening to the courts.