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--></style><title>Forests came down, houses went up, and then we get
a situa</title></head><body>
<div><font face="Geneva"><i>The Economist</i> Aug 20th
2016</font></div>
<div><font face="Arial"><b>Housing in America</b></font></div>
<div><font face="Georgia" size="+1">Nightmare on Main
Street</font><font face="Georgia" size="+2"><br>
</font><font face="Arial" size="-1"><b>America's housing system was
at the centre of the last crisis. It has still not been properly
reformed</b></font></div>
<div><font face="Arial"
size="-1"><b
>http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21705317-americas-housing-syst<span
></span>em-was-centre-last-crisis-it-has-still-not-been-properly</b></font
></div>
<div><br></div>
<div><b>1st two paragraphs:</b></div>
<div><b><br></b></div>
<div><b>"</b><font face="Arial">WHAT are the most dysfunctional
parts of the global financial system? China's banking industry, you
might say, with its great wall of bad debts and state-sponsored
cronyism. Or the euro zone's taped-together single currency, which
stretches across 19 different countries, each with its own debts and
frail financial firms. Both are worrying. But if sheer size is your
yardstick, nothing beats America's housing market.</font></div>
<div><font face="Arial"><br></font></div>
<div><font face="Arial">"It is the world's largest asset class,
worth $26 trillion, more than America's stockmarket. The slab of
mortgage debt lurking beneath it is the planet's biggest
concentration of financial risk. When house prices started tumbling in
the summer of 2006, a chain reaction led to a global crisis in
2008-09. A decade on, the presumption is that the mortgage-debt
monster has been tamed. In fact, vast, nationalised, unprofitable and
undercapitalised, it remains a menace to the world's biggest
economy.</font></div>
<div><font face="Arial"><b><br></b></font></div>
<div><font face="Arial"><b>Other excerpts:</b></font></div>
<div><br></div>
<div><font face="Arial"><b>"</b>Taxpayers, they say, are
safe.</font></div>
<div><font face="Arial"><br></font></div>
<div><font face="Arial">"Only in their dreams."</font></div>
<div><font face="Arial"><br></font></div>
<div><font face="Arial">"Rather than allow the cycle of remorse
and repetition to repeat, better to complete the job of reform and
make sure that the mortgage system cannot be used as a political tool
to stimulate the economy."</font></div>
<div><font face="Arial"><br></font></div>
<div><font face="Arial"><b>See it all here:</b></font></div>
<div><font face="Arial"
size="-1"><b
>http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21705317-americas-housing-syst<span
></span>em-was-centre-last-crisis-it-has-still-not-been-properly</b></font
></div>
<div><font face="Arial"><br>
</font><br>
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<div><font face="Bookman Old Style" size="-1"
color="#000000"> </font><font face="Verdana" size="-1"
color="#1A1A1A">3 from Nature's Special Issue on coasts.<br>
<br>
</font><font face="Times" size="-1" color="#1A1A1A">Public Release:
4-Dec-2013<br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size="-1" color="#1A1A1A"> Nature<br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size="-2" color="#1A1A1A"><b>Humans
threaten wetlands' ability to keep pace with sea-level rise<br>
</b></font><font face="Verdana" size="-1" color="#1A1A1A">Left to
themselves, coastal wetlands can withstand rapid levels of sea-level
rise. But humans could be sabotaging some of their best defenses,
according to a Nature review paper published Thursday from from the
Virginia Institute of Marine Science and the Smithsonian Environmental
Research Center.<br>
<br>
</font><font face="Times" size="-1" color="#1A1A1A">Public Release:
4-Dec-2013<br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size="-1" color="#1A1A1A"> Nature<br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size="-2" color="#1A1A1A"><b>Sea level
rise and shoreline changes are lead influences on floods from tropical
cyclones<br>
</b></font><font face="Verdana" size="-1" color="#1A1A1A">Writing in
the current special issue of Nature dedicated to coastal regions,
UMass Amherst geoscientist Woodruff, with co-authors Jennifer Irish of
Virginia Tech University and Suzana Camargo of Columbia University,
say, "Society must learn to live with a rapidly evolving
shoreline that is increasingly prone to flooding from tropical
cyclones."<br>
<br>
</font><font face="Times" size="-1" color="#1A1A1A">Public Release:
4-Dec-2013<br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size="-1" color="#1A1A1A">Nature<br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size="-2" color="#1A1A1A"><b>Sea-level
rise to drive coastal flooding, regardless of changes in hurricane
activity<br>
</b></font><font face="Verdana" size="-1" color="#1A1A1A">Clamor about
whether climate change will cause increasingly destructive tropical
storms may be overshadowing a more unrelenting threat to coastal
property -- sea-level rise -- according to a team of researchers
writing in the journal Nature this week.</font><br>
<font face="Verdana" size="-1" color="#1A1A1A"></font></div>
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