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Next UK government will face biggest challenge since WW2, warns Ken ClarkeFormer Tory chancellor who handed over booming economy to Labour in 1997 tells FT ‘serious problems’ await next administrationLord Ken Clarke, former Conservative chancellor, has warned that an incoming Labour government would face the biggest set of problems of any new UK administration since the second world war.Clarke, who handed over a booming economy to Sir Tony Blair’s New Labour in 1997, said the circumstances today were completely different, given the sluggish domestic economy and multiple international crises.“This is the worst combination of problems at home and abroad that any government will have taken on since the second world war,” he told the Financial Times in an interview.“The comparison I always make is with 1979 when we took over an economy in a disastrous state after the ‘winter of discontent’,” he added, referring to the wave of strikes that overwhelmed James Callaghan’s dying Labour government.Clarke said that current Tory chancellor Jeremy Hunt was doing the right things but that a combination of “appalling” UK productivity growth, low business investment, strained public services and global instability were all serious problems.“I don’t think there will be an automatic bounceback — no,” he said. Clarke said that Britain, like other western economies, had borrowed and spent too much in recent years, leaving little room for fiscal manoeuvre.In 1997, Clarke handed over an economy growing at 4 per cent to his Labour successor, Gordon Brown. By contrast, Britain’s economy slipped into recession at the end of last year, although the latest official data released on Friday raised the prospect it would return to growth in the first quarter. The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts growth of 0.8 per cent this year and 1.9 per cent in 2025.Clarke said he was “surprised” at recent comments by Lord Nick Macpherson, former Treasury permanent secretary, that this year’s contest would be a “good election to win” and that economic gloom had been overdone.Labour officials privately admit that Hunt and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak have stabilised the economy over the past 18 months and gaps between the two parties over their economic approach have been closing.Rachel Reeves, shadow chancellor, has accepted almost all the measures in Hunt’s two recent fiscal statements — including a 4 percentage point cut in national insurance — while Hunt has copied Labour’s plans to crack down on tax breaks for “non-doms” and maintain a windfall levy on the oil and gas sector. Clarke says Reeves’ attempt to narrow differences with the Conservatives — closing down potential Tory attacks in the election campaign — echoed New Labour’s decision to copy his tight spending plans ahead of Blair’s landslide victory in 1997.“Rachel Reeves and Jeremy Hunt are in the same situation now as Gordon Brown and Ken Clarke in 1997,” he said, adding that in both cases, Labour wanted to build on foundations laid by Tory chancellors.Clarke said that the travails facing the British economy were not the fault of Hunt, who he said was delivering sensible reforms and was “fending off the madder demands of his colleagues” to introduce big income tax cuts.“Similarly Rachel does seem to be keeping the Labour party broadly under control,” he said, adding that she and Hunt seemed to agree on the need to boost investment and productivity, supporting new industries and increasing skills.Clarke, chancellor in Sir John Major’s government from 1993 to 1997, oversaw a return to strong growth and low inflation after the debacle of Black Wednesday, the 1992 sterling crisis when Britain was ejected from the European exchange rate mechanism.He said he concentrated on economic basics and did not hold a “pre-election Budget or any other rubbish like that”. Hunt is eyeing a possible tax-cutting Autumn Statement before the election with Labour leading the Tories by an average 20-points in the opinion polls.Asked whether he resented the fact he had left a strong economy to his political opponents in 1997, he said: “Not particularly. Blair and Brown were responsible men. By and large, the Blair government wasn’t too bad.”He said that in the run-up to the 1997 election, the Conservatives retained a lead over Labour on the economy, even if his party — riven by divisions over EU membership and hit by scandal — trailed on most other measures.“Tony Blair and Gordon Brown disarmed that by making a point of saying they were going to stick to my figures after the election,” he said. He said he was surprised that his Labour successor stuck to his spending plans for two years, even though Clarke said he intended to review them after 12 months. After that, Brown turned on the spending taps.The Clarke-Brown chancellorships, spanning almost 15 years, marked what Clarke calls “the great normality”, which came juddering to a halt “when everyone got reckless” and the financial crash hit in 2008.In contrast to the run-up to the 1997 election, the Conservatives trail Labour on economic competence in the opinion polls. But Reeves is determined to stress to voters that her party would deliver some continuity if it wins the election. “Stability is change,” said one Labour official.“Jeremy Hunt and Rachel Reeves are very similar,” Clarke said. “The big difference is that I handed over to Gordon the healthiest economy we had had since the war.”
Commentary: If we want affordable housing, we need rent controlOpinion by Michael Weinstein, Progressive Perspectives In 2024, rent control is gaining traction as one possible solution to a growing affordable housing crisis across the country.While a rent control bill in Washington state ultimately stalled, caps on rent increases, late charges and fees inched closer to passage than ever before. In Pennsylvania, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro has proposed $80 million to fund anti-homelessness initiatives and public legal defense against evictions. St. Paul, Minnesota, and Montgomery County in Maryland recently joined the list of 200 local governments that successfully regulate rents.In California, the Justice for Renters Act is on the ballot this November to remove the state’s rent control ban. The 2024 ballot initiative would give local communities the right to stabilize rents and make apartments more affordable for low-income renters.Nationally, more than 60% of Americans support rent control. In deep-red Florida, eight-in-10 voters agree that the state should limit rent increases. In deep-blue California, the Justice for Renters Act is attracting majority support.The consensus is this: The rent is too darn high, with half of all U.S. renters now paying more than 30% of their income on monthly rent. Housing demand is greater than supply, with one exception: There is a surplus of luxury housing. If a household can afford rent totaling $10,000 a month or more, there is no shortage of options.Building more housing would help lower costs, but not all housing is equal. There is very little housing being built for very low-income individuals and their families. More expensive apartments do not magically trickle down to the poorest among us. If they did, perhaps there wouldn’t be more and more people living on the streets in cities like Los Angeles.A Californian making a minimum wage of $15 an hour only can afford to spend $780 a month on rent without having to sacrifice basic necessities like food and health care. There are almost no apartments in major cities where the rent is that low unless the individual qualifies for a limited number of rent subsidy programs or is lucky enough to live in a rent-controlled building.In lieu of affordable housing construction, rent control becomes a necessity so low-income Americans can actually afford to stay in their homes. They can’t afford to wait for more affordable housing to be built (although that is important in the long run). Another part of the solution is to provide subsidies to tenants and landlords who commit to housing the most disadvantaged over time.Here’s another one: preventing current low-income housing from being converted into high-end condominiums or hotels. Charging a vacancy tax on high-end development, for instance, can discourage speculation that drives rents ever higher.If politicians are serious about solving the affordable housing problem, let’s dispense with ideology, figure out where we agree and accept the fact that housing is a human right.
India’s Housing Market Is Booming. What’s Driving the Big Gains.India is on a roll. Its economy is thriving, its population is growing, and real estate has become an obsession for an increasingly wealthy population looking for new homes in a very hot market.No place is hotter than Mumbai, India’s largest city. These days, it often feels like a construction zone, with a maze of dug-up roads every half-mile. Parks are hard to find, but many streets are filled with a line of buzzing restaurants, stationery shops, cafes, and sometimes an overwhelming line of fish sellers.The exception to the chaos is South Mumbai—known as the city’s SoHo. It’s home to old, iconic British-era bungalows alongside luxury stores and the boutique shops of Bollywood’s biggest designers. Rickshaws aren’t allowed, large towers rise to the sky, and there is even open space, something lacking in much of the rest of the city, where older buildings are squat and look rundown. But even that is changing, as newer ones push higher where big builders have consolidated properties and broken ground on modern apartment complexes.It’s there that Shivangi Chaturvedi, a 32-year-old video producer and crochet artist, lived in rented apartments with her family for over a decade. They wanted to own a top-floor unit, but the money just never added up. That changed in August, when a vacant property they owned in a far-off town sold for nearly $110,000, Chaturvedi got approved for a $100,000 loan by HDFC bank, and a 15th-floor apartment opened up in Mumbai’s solidly middle-class Kandivali neighborhood, home to many of their friends. By March, they had the keys to a new 2.5-bedroom unit.“We had just accepted the fact that we’re not going to be able to afford a house in this area,” said Chaturvedi, now a first-time co-owner. “But so many things worked out right.”Chaturvedi is just one of many middle-class Indians navigating an increasingly active real estate market, where financing, patience, and a little luck are needed to find a new home. It is emblematic of both India’s promise and its problems. The country is booming—its economy grew at an annualized rate of 8.4% in the final months of 2023—juiced by a strong technology sector that has boosted wages for the middle class and the affluent. India’s recent attraction as a manufacturing hub for companies looking to diversify out of China has also helped. The rapid increase in wealth has created an environment ripe for spending on anything marketed as luxury—but also one where less affluent citizens are being left behind. It has also boosted the stocks of builders and construction companies listed in India.In the past, the housing market was loaded with debt, and smaller developers would often divert money among projects—and then fail to deliver the promised apartments. The introduction of the Real Estate Regulation and Development Act, or RERA, in 2016 brought some structure to the chaos. A new tax mechanism and the limits placed on the circulation of paper currency also facilitated the move away from “black money” and standardized taxation across different states.“In the past six to seven years, we have seen a complete shake-up and cleanup of the Indian real estate market,” says Anuj Puri, chairman of property consultancy Anarock.Now, sales are booming, with some 86,345 units sold in eight major cities during the first quarter of 2024, nearly the most in six years, according to Knight Frank India data. That’s on pace to beat out 2023, when 330,000 units changed hands, the most in a decade. Prices have risen 26% since 2020, according to Anarock, creating an environment where DLF, a top builder, can say its unbuilt luxury high-rises sold out in 72 hours in January and nobody bats an eye.Mumbai is at the center of the action. In the latest quarter, 23,743 units were sold, up 17% from last year and the most of any city in India. Real estate in the country’s financial capital is driven by purchases of higher-priced apartments, which more than tripled in the city. That’s a far cry from New York City, where 7,904 homes sold in the first quarter, down 11% from a year ago, according to StreetEasy. In Mumbai, those sales have been accompanied by new transit systems, airports, and more sea bridges being built, despite some of the world’s worst air pollution.Mumbai “is in the middle of a massive infrastructure boom,” says Siddharth Jain, deputy portfolio manager at GQG Partners. “We think people are underappreciating what is happening.”Mumbai isn’t alone. In India’s quickly urbanizing cities, including Delhi and its districts, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad, sales of luxury property—defined as houses costing more than $480,000—rose an average of 75% in 2023 from a year ago. Luxury sales accounted for just 4% of overall sales last year but doubled from the prior year. Meanwhile, affordable housing, with costs under $54,000 a unit, is at its lowest level in 10 years at 19% of overall sales, according to real estate consultancy group CBRE India.Bengaluru, India’s Silicon Valley, is among the world’s fastest-urbanizing cities. Once dubbed the Garden City, it has seen a 1,055% surge in new roads and concrete structures over the past five decades, resulting in the loss of green cover and lakes, and a water shortage. North of Bengaluru is Hyderabad, where Micron Technology has set up design centers to develop hardware components—DRAM and SSDs—contributing to the artificial-intelligence boom. The city houses over 11 million people and hosts Google, Goldman Sachs, and Amazon.com’s largest-ever campus, offering stiff competition to Bengaluru.The growing luxury real estate market in the developed cities is also a stark reminder of deepening inequality in India. Indians earn about $2,100 a year on average, and the country is home to the world’s largest number of poor people. Even college graduates are having a tough time, with more than 40% under the age of 25 estimated to be unemployed. The upper strata, by contrast, has benefited, with the richest 1%—some 9.2 million people—now earning a record 22.6% of the nation’s income, among the highest ratios in the world. The entry of big global wealth managers and private-equity firms over time has produced more millionaires in Mumbai than there are in Rome, and builders say they are seeing demand from young buyers whose earnings capacity has increased.But it isn’t just tech and high finance that are helping to spur sales of new homes. The weaker Indian rupee has helped international buyers who are inclined to have stronger ties with their homeland. India, which is the world’s largest recipient of funds from migrants, received $125 billion last year, up about 12% from 2022. DLF says that Indians residing abroad now account for 20% of its net sales versus 5% two years ago. Among them was 29-year-old Tejal Kunhipurayil, who relocated to Hong Kong for a financial-technology role. One of her goals was to earn a higher salary so she could buy a house for her family, she says. She was successful. Earlier in April, her family officially moved out of their cramped one-bedroom home that often lacked running water for a newly renovated two-bedroom apartment in a gated community near a lake and temple.India’s real estate surge is also helping stocks of developers constructing them. The biggest names—DLF, Macrotech Developers, Godrej Properties, and Oberoi Realty—gained 84% in 2023 using a market-cap-weighted composite index, outpacing the Magnificent Seven’s 76%, while the S&P BSE Realty index, which tracks the performance of India’s publicly traded real estate companies, has risen 125% in the past 12 months.DLF, valued at $27 billion, has also gained 125% in the past year, spurred by high-ticket launches and its best quarter for advance sales. The stock can be found in the iShares MSCI India and Goldman Sachs ActiveBeta Emerging Markets Equity exchange-traded funds. The iShares fund also owns Macrotech, formerly known as Lodha. With $14.7 billion in market value, Macrotech dominates Mumbai, India’s most expensive real estate market. Its stock has gained 160% over the past year.India’s banks, including HDFC Bank and State Bank of India, might also benefit from the demand for real estate, especially as interest rates are expected to decline this year. But competition from the country’s many shadow banks could limit the upside in the stocks. Building material company UltraTech Cement, among the world’s top cement manufacturers, is another obvious beneficiary, though much of the sentiment on the stock is driven by broader government infrastructure spending, says Siddhartha Khemka from financial advisory firm Motilal Oswal Financial Services.Experts say India’s real estate market has legs at least for the next year or two. For U.S. investors, the simplest way to play the real estate boom would be through broader exposure to the market with the iShares MSCI India ETF or the WisdomTree India Earnings ETF, the biggest funds with expense ratios under 1%. (For more on investing in India, see this week’s Funds column.)It isn’t the most targeted approach, but it allows investors to benefit from India’s growth, of which real estate is only one part.