North America

Amazon's willingness to sell almost any product imaginable at a loss, combined with a massive bubble in retail real estate square footage courtesy of decades of low interest rates seems to finally be catching up with the traditional bricks-and-mortar retailers of America. 

As evidence, Scott Krisiloff of Avondale Asset Management compiled the following sample of relatively downtrodden commentary from America's largest retail CEOs, all of who seem to be throwing in the towel on hopes of any near term upside for their industry:

While many have blamed today's spike in yields for the broader underperformance of the REIT sector, which sent the Bloomberg North American REIT index down 1.4%, its biggest one-day drop since December in a widespread selloff across all property sectors with 194 of the 214 stocks in the index lower today, it's more than just the jump in rates that is slamming the rate-sensitive sector.

Via Peter K of SovereignMan.com,

I’m visiting my brother in Indonesia right now.

Being a good host, he was fixing us vodka martinis, when he realized he ran out of olives.

Both of his drivers had finished for the day so I was expecting him to compromise on the olives.

No need.

He loaded up a mobile phone app and ordered a jar of olives.

This will be the biggest challenge for developed nations over the next hundred years: depopulation.

Expect strange things to happen in the western world and developed nations in Asia over the next fifty years --  marked by unusual foreign policy moves --  and a craven, almost desperate clamoring for middle eastern, south american and african migrants to replace their withering and decadent societies.

Why?

Credit expansion, or at a minimum, stasis.

Via Disobedient Media