What we’re reading (8/17)
“The Extreme Renters Who Own Nothing, Not Even Their Jeans” (Wall Street Journal). “Brittany Catucci rents everything she can. Like lots of 20-somethings, she doesn’t own the place where she lives, a three-story townhouse in Emeryville, Calif. But she and her boyfriend, Eric Markley, also rent their queen-size bed, Catucci’s work clothes and repair tools from Home Depot or AutoZone.”
“New Real Estate Rules Sow Confusion, At Least in Short Term” (New York Times). “The changes that went into effect this weekend decouple the two commissions: Sellers are no longer expected to pay buyers’ commissions, though they can still choose to do so, and the proposed commission split can no longer be advertised on the online database commonly used to sell homes, the M.L.S.”
“Inside The $93 Million Wall Street Heist That Stemmed From Russia” (CNBC). “The money Vladislav Klyushin made from stolen financial information literally piled up, filling a safe with stacks of hundred-dollar bills. At one point, he was hoarding over $3 million in illegal gains. In less than three years, Klyushin’s cybersecurity scam amassed more than $93 million. His company, M-13, acted as a front for Russian hackers to steal information under the guise of protecting it, getting their hands on American corporate earnings reports before the rest of the world could see them. Then, they traded based on that insight, buying and selling stock from well-known American companies like Skechers, Snapchat and Roku.”
“Alleged Ponzi Scheme Salesman Either A Bad Speller Or A Literate Masochist” (Dealbreaker). “There are some notable things about the nine-figure fraud allegedly perpetrated by St. Augustine’s Russell Todd Burkhalter. For one, his Drive Planning’s pitch deck noted that the “bridge loan opportunities” offered were backed by $113 million in cash and real estate—in other words, one-third of the money he raised, such that he could conceivably have actually backed those “opportunities” with that amount of collateral and still had nearly $200 million to spend on Ponzi payments and other things.”
“Democratic Favor Channel” (Dealbreaker). “A large body of literature in economics and political science examines the impact of democracy and political freedoms on various outcomes using cross-country comparisons. This paper explores the possibility that any positive impact of democracy observed in these studies might be attributed to powerful democratic nations, their allies, and international organizations treating democracies more favorably than nondemocracies, a concept I refer to as democratic favor channel. Firstly, after I control for being targeted by sanctions from G7 or the United Nations and having military confrontations and cooperation with the West, most of the positive effects of democracy on growth in cross-country panel regressions become insignificant or negatively significant.”
