For some reason, I woke up extra early this morning, well before my alarm. As soon as I came to and noticed the time, I immediately reached for my phone to pull up Twitter and see what happened with the UK referendum. And frankly, I was shocked to see that they had voted to leave the EU. 

Once I saw what had happened, I then went to my computer and started looking for maps of the voting results. 

Here’s one from the Guardian:

They also found that the best predictor of how people voted (with Scotland being a bit of an exception) was whether or not they had a degree. Residents with higher education were more likely to vote “remain.”

Here’s another vote map from the Telegraph, broken down by 12 regions:

According to these regions, only Northern Ireland, Scotland, and London voted to remain. If we get a bit more granular though, the map turns into this:

Not surprisingly, it is London and other big cities (remain) vs. the rest of England (leave). Here’s another case of urban divide.

I’m listening to The Foreign Desk this morning while I have my coffee. Steve Bloomfield is interviewing two different politicians: one who believes Britain should remain in the EU and one who believes Britain should leave the EU. 

(Each interview is about 15 minutes short.)

The back and forth is largely centered around two things: the economy and immigration. Will the British economy be better off in or out of the EU? And on the immigration front, will “in” translate into millions of Turks flooding into Britain should Turkey join the EU?

For those of you who haven’t been following, Britain will be holding a referendum on June 23rd (2016) to decide whether they stay or go.

My general view is that a strong economy should trump concerns over foreigners. But I don’t feel as if I know enough about this precise topic to take a firm position.

Regardless, I very much enjoyed The Foreign Desk episode this morning and I would be open to discussing this issue in the comments below if any of you are also interested.

A reader recently sent me a New York Times article talking about Chinese buyers flooding into the US residential real estate market. This is something that I’ve written about before, but I liked the “graphic” section called The Roots of China’s Real Estate Rush.

Here are two of the graphs:

The second chart shows you just how much more significant Chinese buyers are compared to the next biggest foreign customer of American homes: Canadians. And with the Canadian dollar where it is, it is no surprise that we are trending downwards. That doesn’t seem to be the case with the Chinese.