tyu100

I don't think you have a clear idea of what you are talking about in terms of regulation.

As mentioned earlier, Sarbanes-Oxley regulations on public company reporting (which is what is being discussed here) precedes the 2008 financial crisis. There are different regulations that came into place on banks after the 2008 crisis like the Basel III capital requirements that attempt to solve a different problem.

This point is really important. The biggest private equity players are invariably pension plans. Canada has been particularly good at letting quality managers run their public pensions and they have outsize importance now.

Tone down the moral panic. The 'Style', 'Food' and 'Travel' sections in newspapers have been bought forever and this is more of the same in a different era.

I've always been most interested in why European goods are seen as luxurious in North America despite usually objectively being nothing special (wines that aren't any better in blind taste tests, cars of average reliability, bogus health claims of olive oil). You can usually trace this back to some mid-20th century group of journalists or experts getting a fully paid trip to Italy or France by some interested industry group.

Sea Buckthorns are considered a much better desert fighter in China than poplars or pines:

https://books.google.ca/books?id=6XfgBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA293&lpg=P...

I have one in my front yard, it's a neat but very aggressive and very thorny shrub.

Rare metal shortages are self-solving. There's already dozens of mining juniors prospecting in western countries and China has near-limitless resources. Additionally, graphite, lithium and cobalt are substitutable to some degree.

Anecdotally, the resource exploration stock message board forum I follow has almost given up on oil and gas companies and has moved to cleantech (or marijuania). Sign of the fast-arriving future.

Yes, 'Fast Casual' in the Chipotle and Panera style has seen a huge growth boom as well as experiential retail like the Apple Store, Sephora Makeup, Alamo Drafthouse and etc..

Personally I try to buy everything online that I can't walk to and I bought a lot at Best Buy this year. They gave me free wall mount installation from their local location on my television that I bought from their web site and it's nice to have a physical location nearby for bigger purchases in case you need to return something.

In addition, the Walmarts and Targets see an obvious future where you buy things from their web stores online but just have it shipped to their physical locations where you can pick it up during your weekly grocery run. This is already a reality.

There are clear secular trends towards online shopping and against malls but a lot of the shakeout has taken place already and a lot of the weak hands have already left the game. Those that remain along with new entrants are adapting quickly which is why I think the 'retail apocalypse' has already hit the peak of the hype cycle.

Content-free catastrophe clickbait like this is likely a good indicator that the mall-closing phenomenon in the states has peaked.

Lots of the retail stores in trouble were victims of high debt loads from private equity buyouts rather than major competition from online shopping.

Almost all of the major retail chains are now very competitive in online and mixed online/in-person shopping models and mall operators are re-tooling malls with a mix of retail and experiential stores and even governmental and professional services.

Even Sears looks like it might survive in some form and smart observers like Scott Galloway think its more likely than not that Amazon will buy a major department store soon to keep up with the Walmarts and Best Buy's that have effective physical footprints.

Spent a month last year in Spain and didn't see anything special about their construction. I'll resist making ludicrous generalizations though.

Yemen has been in a civil war for years which prompted Saudi intervention. Al Qaeda offshoots, Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, massive drought and etc..

Not on Facebook personally but the NY Times jihad against them (and the 'Fearsome Four' (yuck)) is getting a little bit tiresome, especially when a large part of the root of the Times' disdain is that they are direct competitors for ad dollars.

Their moral high ground on Soviet and Russian influence on the news isn't that impressive either given that they still haven't renounced the Pulitzer given to Walter Duranty for his explicit lying about the Holodomor so as to not impede the Communist movement.

Give me a break, every country is hugely protectionist, Canada as much or more than most. I'm a Canadian consumer who is tired of paying inflated costs on dairy and other Quebec and Ontario products just because of tariffs imposed to buy votes in federal elections.

Despite NAFTA, we also pay huge duties on products shipped from the States; we have a $80 limit on imports while Americans can ship ten times that amount from Canada duty free; once again to protect mediocre Eastern retailers from real competition.

Feel free to fly over Richmond B.C., an entire massive city built on sandy soil that will sink in the next big earthquake before you get too high on that horse.