Mid-Summer Night’s Linkfestival

Wow. Was that not a wild and wooly week?

There was something for everyone as markets absorbed tremendously conflicted information — on inflation, retail sales, earnings, and M&A activity.

Hotnot_20070713185903
After Tuesday’s 148 point Dow drop, the market more than made up for it. On Thursday, a near 300 point gainer was one of the fiercest one-day rallies we’ve seen in years. For the week, the big winners were emerging market stocks, up 3.6%. The Dow tacked on 2.2%, while the Nasdaq gained 1.5%, and the S&P500 added 1.4%. The Russell 2000 was a non-participant, up just 0.4%, underscoring the big cap nature of this rally. Gold added 2%, Oil was plus 1.5%. Corporate junk, the US Dollar, and REITs were all negative on the week. Treasuries and European stocks were all in the green, albeit  slightly.

The bottom line remains that regardless of the many concerns out
there — the weak dollar, a selloff in treasuries, a sub-prime
implosion, the ongoing housing weakness and new signs of a consumer
slowdown — strength abroad, relatively low corporate borrowing costs
and, above all, plenty of liquidity, trumps all else.

Barron’s Trader column observed that:

"Buying is, of course, just another word for spending, and lately it’s the sustainability of America’s debt-driven spending that has worried the market. Those concerns drove the Dow down nearly 150 points as recently as Tuesday, as companies like Home Depot (HD) and Sears (SHLD) blamed a still weakening housing market for their glum forecasts. But each passing day without a new catastrophe from the mortgage world encourages the restless bulls, as does the recent stabilization of the 10-year Treasury yield just above 5%."

Where to begin this week? The Dollar? Retail Sales? Yields?
Housing? The biggest Dow rally in 4 years? No matter — we got it all
covered. Get clickin’:

INVESTING & TRADING

Why the Skeptics May Be Wrong Last week nicely illustrated how welled-up anxiety often gives way to a quicksilver rally. The debt market was starting to attach strings to buyout financing, oil prices were levitating, bank stocks were ominously weak and the Standard & Poor’s conference call to discuss a mass downgrade of subprime securities literally exceeded the telecom host’s capacity to service all the interested listeners. (Barron’s)

•  Earnings Season to Test Market Rally: Most everyone on Wall Street expected profit growth to slow this year, but, at the same time, they quietly hoped that the slowdown wouldn’t veer into a contraction. With second-quarter-earnings season kicking off today, this hope is facing one of its biggest tests. (Wall Street Journal)

•  The 2007 Fortune Global 500, by revenue, profitability and losses.
The list is fascinating, with 6 of the top 10 firms being oil
companies, and GM barely edging Toyota (5 and 6). You can slice and
dice the data in all manners of ways: By Country (here’s Britain, Japan and Germany), by Industry group — even by City (in order: Tokyo Paris NY London have the most top 500 firms).  Here’s the list of firms rising fastest within the group’s ranking.   

• Sentiment discussion: The impressive Thursday rally broke a spread
triple top in the S&P500, leading to a surprisingly frank chat with a fund
manager who is fighting the tape. "This is a bull$%&* rally!"  You know when I’m the one making the bullish argument, you can be sure the other guy was caught leaning the wrong way.

Bear Market Tightens Grip on Treasuries:
The bear market in U.S. Treasuries is just getting started as investors
turn their attention to the strengthening labor market and faster
inflation instead of the decline in home prices. That’s the conclusion of economists at Lehman Brothers
Holdings Inc., Morgan Stanley and RBS Greenwich Capital. They
estimate 10-year government notes will return 1.28 percent this
year, not even enough to cover inflation. The performance would
be the worst since 1999, when they lost 8.25 percent, Merrill
Lynch & Co. index data show. (Bloomberg)

Top 10 Stocks With Big Insider Buying, Buybacks: The perfect setup, however, is when one of these company insiders or an entire board — in the case of a buyback — are making long bets on the stock along with savvy investors. (TheStreet.com)

•  In 1988, Forbes argued that the preferential tax treatment of LBOs by private equity led to a rash of ill considered takeovers: How The Government Subsidizes Leveraged TakeoversThe Taxation of Carried Interest.      This past week, the CBO essentially repeated the argument:

•  Oh, no! Sears is still a retailer! Sears stockholders woke up and realized that instead of owning a hedge
fund, they own two huge, slipping retailers that happen to be run by a
financial genius without much stated interest or demonstrated
competency in middle-market retailing. (
Slate) See also The Top 100 Retailers

 •  Swarm Theory of Group Behavior: An important truth about collective intelligence: Crowds tend to be wise only if
individual members act responsibly and make their own decisions. A group won’t
be smart if its members imitate one another, slavishly follow fads, or wait for
someone to tell them what to do. When a group is being intelligent, whether it’s
made up of ants or attorneys, it relies on its members to do their own part. For
those of us who sometimes wonder if it’s really worth recycling that extra
bottle to lighten our impact on the planet, the bottom line is that our actions
matter, even if we don’t see how.
(National Geographic)


ECONOMY

The Wall of worry continues to build:

• We had numerous separate commentaries on Retail Sales this week; Here’s the full Retail Roundup.

Are Business Births All That Healthy? Each month, the BLS surveys 160,000 employers at 400,000 worksites to produce an estimate of non-farm employment. It supplements this sample survey with a model-based estimate of new business formation. The so-called net birth/death model generates an unadjusted monthly estimate, which is added to the unadjusted sample survey before the whole piece is adjusted for seasonal fluctuations.  (Bloomberg)   

Haves and Have-Nots of Globalization: The United Technologies story is part of a broad structural shift in
how and where many American companies are making their money. The trend
has been in the making for decades, and by now it clearly carries major
economic implications, as well as significant investment opportunities.
The trend accentuates the divide between workers who benefit from
globalization and those who don’t, sometimes within the same company.
Financial analysts at United Technologies in Hartford overseeing
Carrier’s sales in India and Pratt engineers designing jet engines in
Connecticut for export to Europe certainly benefit; but people who
worked in Syracuse in the company’s air-conditioning plant, now
defunct, do not. (New York Times)

•  Fed’s Focus on ‘Core’ Inflation Raises Concerns: As food and energy prices climb across the nation, the
Federal Reserve is facing growing criticism for focusing on "core"
inflation, which excludes both those items, as the basis for its
interest-rate decisions. Many consumers question whether Fed officials eat or
drive, and some economists worry that the Fed is underestimating
inflation risks. Even some Fed officials share these concerns. (Wall Street Journal)



HOUSING

Why Harlem is Hot Hot Hot 

No housing slump for super-rich: "Twenty million dollars is the new $10 [million]," says Cecelia Kennelly-Waeschle, a Beverly Hills sales agent who tallies "the list," the unofficial log of the Westside’s high-end sales. Real estate experts say sales are being fueled by several factors, including the growing ranks of the wealthy. The richest 5% of the nation’s population saw its average household wealth soar 40% (adjusted for inflation) from 1990 to 2005, according to census data. That contrasts with a 7.3% increase for middle-income families. (Los Angeles Times)

Borrowing & Spending: Forget MEW (thats so 2005). Its back to good old fashioned credit card debt for homeowners.

•  States Push Ahead With Subprime-Mortgage Laws as Congress Lags:
State lawmakers, faced with a record number of constituents who may
lose their homes, are pressing to pass their own laws to halt
mortgage-lending abuses, saying they can’t afford to rely on the U.S.
Congress to act. Legislators in some 30 states have introduced about 85
bills to protect mortgage borrowers from deceptive-lending practices,
foreclosure or fraud, according to a Bloomberg analysis of data from
the National Conference of State Legislatures. (Bloomberg) 


 

WAR/MEDIA/POLITICS/ENERGY

•   Cleantech green-lights largest solar farm ever: San Francisco company said Friday it plans to build the world’s largest, solar power "farm" near Fresno, California. (Reuters) See also: Today’s Entrepreneur: He brings windmills to backyards

•  World will face oil crunch in five years:  The world is facing an oil supply crunch within five years that will force up prices to record levels and increase the west’s dependence on oil cartel Opec, the industrialised countries energy watchdog has warned.(FT)

•  Financial Times, CNBC May Share Resources — This makes sense if and when WSJ ends up migrating to Fox. (free Wall Street Journal)

Banks’ anti-money laundering costs jump – study: Spending by banks to combat money laundering has
jumped almost 60 percent in the last three years and tackling crime is
taking up an increasing amount of senior executives’ time, according to
a global survey. Anti-money laundering costs have risen more than banks
had predicted as they face greater involvement in emerging markets and
greater complexity of financial markets, the survey by KPMG showed. (Reuters)
   
 


TECHNOLOGY & SCIENCE

What is CNBC.com Thinking? They want how much to access their videos online?!?

•  An iPod Has Global Value. Ask the (Many) Countries That Make It: Who makes the Apple iPod? Here’s a hint: It is not Apple. The company outsources the entire manufacture of the device to a number of Asian enterprises, among them Asustek, Inventec Appliances and Foxconn.  But this list of companies isn’t a satisfactory answer either: They only do final assembly. What about the 451 parts that go into the iPod? Where are they made and by whom?  (New York Times)

• TED The Web’s secret stories (Video)

Alternative Energy Hurt By a Windmill Shortage:
The race to build new sources of alternative energy from the wind is
running into a formidable obstacle: not enough windmills. In recent
years, improved technology has made it
possible to build bigger, more efficient windmills. That, combined with
surging political support for renewable energy, has driven up demand.
Now, makers can’t keep up — mostly because they can’t get the parts
they need fast enough. (Wall Street Journal)

 



MUSIC BOOKS MOVIES TV FUN!

• Friday Night Rock: The Magic Numbers:
I learned an astonishing fact from the WSJ’s Weekend Adviser: the first
CD from The Magic Numbers sold a mere 44,000 copies in the US. That’s
astonishing to me, considering what a great CD it is. Long time readers
may remember a mention of this from our Best of 2006 music list.

Why YouTube is killing HipHop (Save your email, I know you don’t care)

•  Going Private released in December 1982 gives pointers on structuring transactions to take publicly traded companies private. This book analyzes the
fairness rule and burden shifting, state antitakeover legislation.  The more things change, the more they stay the same . . .

•  For economic wonks, an Efficient Market/Random Walk Joke   

 

That’s all from a lovely summer weekend in NY, where I think I may need to get me a hammock!

~~~

Got a comment, suggestion, link idea? Or do you just have
something on your mind?
The linkfest loves to get email!  If you’ve got something to say, then by all means please do.

 

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What's been said:

Discussions found on the web:
  1. Winston Munn commented on Jul 14

    I might add a modifier to your phrase: sustained liquidity trumps all.

    The great traders of history from Livermore to O’Neil echo the same sentiment: the bottom line is earnings. Unless liquidity is sustainable and can translate into higher earnings the price rises in the market are simply speculation, causing a bubble. Bubbles do not last.

  2. TexasHippie commented on Jul 14

    Winston – the latest shadow government statistics data shows at least a temporary slowdown in monetary expansion.

    http://www.shadowstats.com/cgi-bin/sgs/data

    Do you feel that liquidity will be reigned in any time soon, or at least slow down its rate of expansion?

  3. esb commented on Jul 14

    We all should have expected the currency/commodities/equities outcome we are now witnessing when we learned that GWB demanded a meeting with AG PRIOR to the former’s inauguration.

    The message from the former to the latter was, of course, inflate or get the hell out.

    The inflation to be managed by simply not reporting it.

    Being in the last half of the last quarter of my life and having been a currency trader (both professional [tier 1 firm] and private) since 1972, I am extraordinarily curious regarding how this experiment will all play out.

    What is becomming increasingly obvious to any careful observer is that we are witnessing a level of corruption unseen in the US since WWII. When the level of political manipulation over at BLS (and Treasury in general) is disclosed it will be found to dwarf that being reported involving Justice and the SG.

    BR… if you happen to read this I would be interested in knowing what YOUR contacts over at the ‘tier 1s’ have to say now regarding the reliability of the BLS (and other federal) data series. What I hear is that parallel proprietary data series are being (and have been) developed, and that the ones that have been developed (particularly with respect to the inflation series) have now diverged dramatically. Sorry to be a little vague but I am sure that you understand why.

    Best regards.

    ~~~
    BR: John Williams over at Shadow Fed has been doing the parallel data for years.

    He finds just what you would imagine — higher inflation and unemployment than reported.

    Check out John Williams’, Shadow Government Statistics
    http://www.shadowstats.com/cgi-bin/sgs?

  4. The Financial Philosopher commented on Jul 14

    I am impressed that you would include a link to the National Geographic story of the “Swarm Theory of Group Behavior” that essentially says that the group, as a whole, is acting intelligently resulting from the collective small acts of individuals. Should we conclude that “group think” can somehow be “smarter” than what the individual can potentially be?

    Overall, I am thankful for your post because, in my view, it illustrates the impact of group behavior and the fact that it is greater than the sum of its individual “parts.”

    I have learned (at TBP and other places) that “the crowd” is right most of the time but not all of the time…

    In a financial market context, an individual can gain an advantage over the group but only when the individual can somehow find him or her self “one step ahead” of the group momentum but never completely against it…. But who has the ability or foresight to achieve that on a consistent basis?
    ~~~

    BR: One fascinating apsect of the article are the conditions necessary for the group to outperform the individual: Only if individual members act responsibly, if their is diversity of opinion, if members independently make their own decisions. pply this to the market and you can see how tops form as members imitate one another, follow fads, or wait for someone to tell them what to do…

  5. Winston Munn commented on Jul 15

    TexasHippie:

    The question you ask is at the heart of the market and extremely complex to try to determine.

    Shortterm, the answer is probably yes, at least a little. This is due mainly to the resurrection of risk awareness and tightening mortgage lending standards. It is the demand for debt(i.e., money creation) that causes the expansion and contraction. There has been a mild drop in that demand caused by the above two occurences. I think this fear will be shortlived and be overwhelmed by greed.

    In the longer term, I am afraid we are too deeply involved in this Ponzi game to allow a graceful unwind, so I see it continuing to spiral out of control until it collapses.

  6. Philippe commented on Jul 15

    On liquidity if M3 is a benchmark they are still flowing beyond inflation safety zones (but not to worry inflation statistics are still subdued in Europe 2. PCT official)
    M3
    ECB + 10..7 Pct
    USA + 13 Pct
    Russia (official figures) + 36 Pct (inflation around 8 Pct official)

    Assets and risks are very slowly being repriced

    Bloomberg July 13TH
    http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601084&sid=agDQwe.HGEpc&refer=stocks

    « Debt Risk
    Corporate-bond risk has soared this week after Standard & Poor’s said it’s preparing to downgrade $7.35 billion of mortgage bonds and Moody’s Investors Service cut ratings on $5.2 billion of sub prime-related debt, as delinquencies by homeowners with poor or meager credit jumped to the highest in a decade.
    Europe’s iTraxx Crossover Index, which is based on credit- default swaps of 50 companies, jumped the most in at least three years on July 11, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.
    A U.S. benchmark index for credit-default swaps, or instruments investors use to speculate on the ability of companies to repay debts, soared that day to the highest in almost two years. An increase may signal higher borrowing costs. »

    But strangely simple arithmetic may reveal that risk repricing is subdued and even deriding the reality as perceived by the rating agencies.
    From 3.3 USD TRILLION loans in real estates SP and Moody’s find 7.35 billion USD and 5.2 Billions to deserve a cautious outlook If one apply a genuine 20/80 Pareto’s distribution one may come close to 66 Billion USD of very unsecured loans and related mortgage bonds which figure could be confirmed by the 120 PCT financing against collateral banks tolerance.
    Should one be interested to look at SP and Moody’s findings against HSBC (only) 11 Billion USD write off of sub primes loans or recent figures of GE suprime lending business, one may find MOODY‘s and SP late findings a little short of reality.

    In Europe « everything is for the best in the best of the possible world « no European lenders is caught in direct lending or in the sub primes bonds no Insurance companies manage supbrime bonds or LBO’s bonds in their proprietary portfolios though one may have seen a sample of them in a public sample as direct lenders to New Century or Bear and Stern hedge funds.

    The future stories will be read in the LBO’s debts repayments which will, with no doubt bring litigious understanding of assets inflated prices and inflated stocks markets as real life by products. Equities markets are happy to be confirmed through M&A poison pills and the self sufficient tautology « if they buy we are right » what if they all were wrong? The interest debt servicing payment will suffice to prove it.

  7. stormrunner commented on Jul 15

    As stated previously on this blog I’m such an amateur it’s not funny example — got my stocks sold out from under me when Blum took Buy.com back private in the .com bust. My opinion at the time was that the volume of business would support the #2 retailer and after the weaker hands were shaken out margins could be increased. Now I don’t know if it’s reasonable to think of what happened as corruption, but this guy bought back shares of a company still in business from share holders for pennies on the dollar. Lesson learned even if you’re right you’re wrong. I think the same logic can be applied to the economic study and fraud exposure by participants of this blog. I get it, that we have to play the system as constructed, however after viewing content like Fiat Empire, Money Masters, Debt as Money, and daily following for 2 years of The Big Picture, Bill Cara, Kirk Report, Puplava, Financial Sense, John Mauldin, Roubini, ITulip, ImplodeOMeter, ShawdowStats, Mish, HousingBubbleBust, I don’t get why your collectively not screaming for reform even if you have managed to make profits. Now I know no one here wants to be associated with the “tin foil hat crowd” but a little constructive criticism seems to be in order. I’d really like to hear the opinions here of the life-time players regarding monetary reform as opposed to merely patching a broken system and speculation regarding its effects on traders. Considering the lack of pension availability in the private sector, everyone will need market exposure at least everyone wanting to retire.
    Hypothetically speaking Debt Money vs Government issued currency spent into the public domain for the common good, infrastructure for instance vs precious metal backing. I’m personally very hot for reform based on the above titled references, the authors of the first group appear to have a more than reasonable explanation for the complaints registered in the second group. Your thoughts on the allegations of the first group conspiracy aside just the systemic repair aspect —- any comment?

  8. Philippe commented on Jul 15

    Stormrunner

    YOU ARE RIGHT but the cover up which are “raisons d’état” are the best excuses for watching and trying to understand how and why appointed bodies from elected bodies could arrange truth and their representations, markets (interest rates, equities) to be manipulated by a set of agreed actors at the expenses and sometimes ruin of others.
    The representation of social justice, repartition of wealth, efficient economic value through those concerted actions need to be assessed and conclusions to be brought to the public. The problem is by whom, an academic PhD thesis posted in the journal of economics?

  9. stormrunner commented on Jul 15

    We all know there is a problem, anybody could be right about that. The million dollar question, multiple choice

    Quasi Private-Gov Debt Based unbacked (current system)

    Government Issue Debt Free

    Precious metal based (Ron Paul)

    Philippe’
    The problem is by whom, an academic PhD thesis posted in the journal of economics?

    Its looking like it might be handled in the courts as well as the political arena.

    Comment from Shedlocks site:

    Jury said NOT GUILTY!!!

    Louisiana Federal Jury found Attorney Tom Cryer NOT GUILTY of 2 counts of willful failure to file an income tax return.

    Tom had not filed a 1040 because he understood and believed that the law does not require Tom to pay income taxes on his labor. Tom Cryer ’s victory over the IRS is a serious blow to the IRS’ façade of invincibility and exposes the Wizard of Oz nature of the IRS.

    Tom’s web site is http://www.liefreezone.com.

    On this web site, Tommy exposes many lies of the IRS and the Federal Income Tax.

    http://www.livefreenow.org/streaming/player.cfm?media_id=8&type=Audio&xmlPath=/streaming/20070712_Radio_Programs.xml

    You’d think this would be big news haven’t researched the credibility seems worth looking into. If factual seems precedent setting.

    Don’t wish to be labled as a troll if this line of reasoning is not relevent to this forum please eloborate. The readership here are amoung the most likely to have the valid opinions.

  10. Winston Munn commented on Jul 15

    There seems to be a psychological cycle at work over the long haul. After the collapse of 1929, a few generations were influenced by the delayed gratification concept and saving for a rainy day.

    This has now morphed into an instant gratification mentality and borrow and spend lifestyle.

    It looks as though we have gone the full circle.

  11. Philippe commented on Jul 15

    In my first comment please read 660 Billion USD instead of 66 billion USD

  12. Eclectic commented on Jul 15

    Okay.

    I’ve got something on my mind, Barringo, so before you manage to hold the bold, I’ll slip this in. Maybe it’s on the subject or maybe it’s off, but this is the linkfest, right?… So, don’t touch… Don’t you touch!…Ya hear!
    ——-
    “Sino Apologia, the Chinese 512 and Mr. Zheng Xiaoyu”

    Let’s examine the difference between two very divergent reactions that the Communist Chinese give to circumstances related to commerce between our two countries. But better still… I’m going to illustrate the reasons for the very different reactions. Just pay attention. I’ll tie it all together… promise.

    The first one is related to what I’ll call the Chinese 512, or, that is, the Chinese version of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s special provision – you know, the one that digital carriers lovingly refer to as “Mother’s Milk” or possibly variously as “Manna From Heaven,” “The Gift that Keeps on Giving” or some other expression evocative of the enchanted land of “Shangri-La.” Whoops!… maybe I ought to not use a reference to S-La… Shhhh!…that won’t make it behind the Iron Firewall.

    For even though the U.S. version of 512 does indeed help provide a stolen but “curiously strange and offbeat potpourri of [digital] music, wit and convivial companionship,”(*note – bracketed addition mine) the Communist Chinese version is even more convivial… convivial to a fault I’d say, because their citizens flood the world with pirated intellectual products, both inside China and outside. Their own version of DMCA likely only provides at best a 512 wink and probably is less effectively employed than our version of the wink… if that’s possible.

    “But what difference does it make anyway?” they must calculate, since the U.S. has disguised the legislation as being something possibly profoundly protective of intellectual property rights, when in reality it’s mostly a license to steal. “Yep, those Americans,” they might say, “they’re big on pomposity and small on substance, so — they steal – we steal – we all steal together.”

    *I’ve always wanted to use that phrase in some written or spoken word that might convey the ironic humor often displayed by Mr. Conrad in his show: “Robert Conrad’s Weekend Radio” (thanks Mr. Conrad for all the years of entertainment) linked here:

    http://www.pba.org/programming/categories/arts_performance/all/

    So the Communist Chinese just ignore intellectual property rights altogether, and, as Lincoln more-or-less said in his time about another totalitarianism, “When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty — to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy [sic].”

    As I’ve said before, stealing a man’s intellectual property rights is just a step closer to stealing his human rights as well. It’s another type of slavery and Lincoln was speaking to that subject. I think Lincoln would’ve found hypocrisy in asking China for intellectual property rights protections after absurdly constructing and writing 512 into the DMCA.

    I tell you, that Lincoln could turn a phrase. You think?… and if he wasn’t the greatest of speilers, he was in a class that it didn’t take long to call the roll:

    http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/speed.htm

    Consequently Communist China doesn’t have the slightest worry about enforcing intellectual property rights of U.S. interests, because they know the U.S. is both too afraid to do anything about it and toothless to do anything even if it wanted to, except for a little ratchet jawing about intellectual property rights in between begging visits from Paulson and others regarding floating the yuan… floating it in a sea of Sea-Dee-Ohs, that is, or possibly Sea-Em-Ohs, according to Mr. Mauldin’s latest “Thoughts From The Frontline” writ and his quoting therein of a Bloomberg piece:

    http://www.investorsinsight.com/thoughts.aspx

    Whether you agree with part one or not, let’s talk about the second item of my discussion, the very different reaction the Communist Chinese have had to another sort of irregularity that people in the U.S. might get offended by… like when you kill their dogs and cats with pet food poisoning, or were you to really screw up and kill one or more humans with their food as well. That would be a big no-no. Why? Well, copyright infringement violations are no big deal for the Americans… because, heck… after all… you’re just helping them steal from each other, right?…But if you start killing them you’re likely to finally get their attention, and then get what you deserve, and that would be sudden and very serious trade restrictions.

    I must contribute that there’s at least one offender of this unwritten rule (Communist China is I think a country of mostly unwritten rules) that has now paid the price for risking the Super Big Box business that’s still going to the Norte Americanos:

    http://tinyurl.com/3dv7me

    Boy!… A little case of bribery and they put a bullet in your medulla oblongata. That’s hard! Whew!… as you can see from the guy’s expression, it positively flummoxed the accused. Man-O-Man I hope he was truly guilty!

    I wonder. Do you suppose that if they’d taken the head of Mr. Zheng Xiaoyu and put in on a stake it might help alleviate the fears of some Big Box shoppers in the U.S.? Hey, they could put pictures of the staked-out head in the pet food section… giant glossy reproductions. That ought to give them a real sense of security about Rover’s chow.

    See, the point I’m trying to make in all of this is to illustrate that the Communist Chinese will do whatever it takes to continue their export business relationship with the U.S., and with the other countries of the industrialized West… and in doing it they’ll also ignore anything of a violating nature that we ourselves allow them to ignore.

    You want to ignore intellectual property rights?… they’ll be all too glad to assist you, but don’t think it’ll stop with a few Barringo-criticized type CD label pricing issues, or some knock-off fashions or software applications that they know the American bass boat-buyin’ crowd will simply ignore for their own benefit. As soon as they get enough momentum, it’ll be the same with the big, big stuff, like with big, big planes, trains, electric dynamos, biomedicals… and everything else they can get their piratizing hands on that, at present at least, do still produce the odd higher paying skilled American jobs. Those jobs will get sliced and diced as well, as soon as Communist China can influence the employers of those jobs to absorb the capital costs of re-lo-cation. And that may not take too long, witness the intellectual brain drain to China and India already well under way and the recent apparent lacking of U.S. domestic cap-ex.

    You want to ignore their gross pollution of the environment?… their censorship?… their violations of human rights?… their ignoring of commercial investment reciprocity and stockholding rights?… Yes, they’ll help you along with these too, and remind us that we polluted for decades, and remind us that the agents of their U.S. importers are merely the co-agents with them of their pollution and other violations just as well, so “don’t you really mean ‘we’ Kemasaba?” they would say. And it’s true… if I want to reduce the costs of goods exported to the U.S., and if I can dump pollution into the air and water to do it, it’s the same as dumping them in Peoria. Anybody that can’t understand that is just nuts.

    You want to ignore killing a few pets and the occasional poor human sucker with a liver and kidney a bit too intolerant of ethylene glycol (antifreeze)?…. they’ll be all too helpful for that too, but they’ll be even more violently reactive to any further U.S. food poisoning issues that threaten to kill consumerism than even U.S. authorities will be. Actually, Communist China probably understands the U.S. consumer better than we in the U.S. understand him. I think they’d be quicker to kill to preserve U.S. consumerism than to kill to preserve or promote their domestic protections of human rights… witness the former Mr. Zheng Xiaoyu. He was D.O.A. as soon as the pet food manufacturing he oversaw started restricting pet food sales, even temporarily, in the U.S. I have no basis for doubting his guilt, but somebody had to be guilty for sure… some head had to roll, and his was at the top of the hill.

    In fact, Communist China has made a business and a culture out of ignoring most all types of rights… About the only interests in the U.S. they don’t ignore are the Big Boxers and their agents who provide them with ample Sino Apologia and ample opportunity to misrepresent the production costs of their export goods.

    Abandon your totalitarian state, China!… You worry about jobs for your people and you at least academically understand the poor status of your own consumer demand. That’s the world’s real problem with you, China… contrary to what our half-breed agent apologists of your conduct say. Take off the handcuffs from your people, and learn from our own admitted prior mistakes regarding pollution and other matters. You’ll soon have consumer demand and job creation climbing trees. But if you don’t un-handcuff them, sooner or later they’ll be climbing your walls when things don’t go as well as they do now.

  13. Eclectic commented on Jul 15

    Thanks Winston,

    I had to watch it about 8 times before I could remember the pattern.

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