Yes It's Time To Build (YITTB)

MON, APR 20, 2020

YOUR AFTERNOON NEWS UPDATE AND MARKET ACTION FROM CNBC

AS OF MON, APR 20, 2020 • 12:01 ET

DJIA		24062.88
		-0.74%	-179.61

S&P 500		2865.20
		-0.33%	-9.36

NASDAQ		8677.70
		+0.32%	+27.56

EDITOR'S NOTE

You guys may remember how effusive my praise was for my buddy Conor Dougherty's book, "Golden Gates." I wrote about it here, and here ("YIMBY is my new favorite macro story").

I just hadn't realized, before reading his book, to what degree younger people had started to flip to a pro-development mindset. I get it; I often feel like I'm the only one in my town who's glad to see big apartment complexes going up downtown. The book chronicles the frustration of San Franciscans (especially younger ones) at not being able to afford decent housing, and that frustration is widely felt nationwide.

Fast forward to the piece Marc Andreesen published on Saturday--a cri de coeur that takes the frustration with housing, healthcare, schooling, manufacturing, and so many more of our industries and synthesizes it into a single, simple, all-caps plea: "IT'S TIME TO BUILD."

The whole piece is worth a quick read, since it's the kind of original thinking that's not easily summarizable. He laments our lack of basic medical supplies, quicker vaccine development, better cities ("We should have gleaming skyscrapers and spectacular living environments in all our best cities at levels way beyond what we have now; where are they?"), smarter education (using tutors), "alien dreadnought" factory complexes, hyperloop transportation systems, and so forth.

The problem, he says--and many others would agree--isn't capital, which we've been awash in for the past couple decades, to the extent that Ben Bernanke has explained this era of ultra-low global interest rates as the byproduct of a "global savings glut."

The problem, says Andreesen, is inertia. ("Even private universities like Harvard are lavished with public funding; why can't 100,000 or 1 million students a year attend Harvard? Why shouldn't regulators and taxpayers demand that Harvard build?") Bottom line, he says: "Every step of the way, to everyone around us, we should be asking the question, what are you building?"

This is next-level stuff. This is exactly what we're all feeling stymied by at the moment. For every "why"--why can't we have a better way of getting groceries to people?--there is a challenge: then build it. (I'm hoping creating content like this can count as "building," too; maybe by inspiring someone.)

"YIMBY" already seems so 2019. The coronavirus crisis--and the trillions in capital about to be flowing from government spigots--seems to demand so much more. YITTB! Yes, It's Time To Build.

See you at 1 p.m!

Kelly

P.S. The Exchange is now a podcast! Click to subscribe.

P.P.S. One of my other favorite lines from Marc's piece, to those who say capitalism is the problem: "I'm with Nicholas Stern when he says that capitalism is how we take care of people we don't know." More on Lord Stern here, assuming that's who he means.

Kelly Evans
Twitter: @KellyCNBC

Instagram: @realkellyevans

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