Well, one extreme case suggests 90%! Reuters reported this week (HT to Almost Daily Grants) that Country Garden, the large Chinese property developer that defaulted on it’s external bondholders has offered up new debt instruments with extended payback, or cash with a 90% haircut! Maybe the property sector is worse than the other capital misallocation […]
Archives
-
How much capital has been squandered by ChiComs?
12 Jan 2025
-
Biden ignores his national security advisors’ advice to block Nippon Steel deal for national security!
04 Jan 2025
So reports the WSJ this morning. I’m reminded of the aftermath of the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle and the reporting that Mr. Biden ignoring military general’s advice and stubbornly followed his own poor political calculus that he had to have the U.S. out of Afghanistan by his own arbitrary timeline of 9/11/2021. At that time we […]
-
Why we don’t want to be like Europe
26 Dec 2024
A few posts back I critiqued Fox News Laura Ingraham’s comment that basically said (my paraphrase) “Europe pursues a Europe-first policy in managing their economy and so we should be be pursuing an America-First policy with our economy” (embracing Trump’s tariffs). My retort was do we really want to be like Europe, when for multiple […]
-
Yesterday Donald Trump and the CEO of the Japanese Softbank company announced a deal to invest $100B in the U.S. You can ignore the question of why investment by Japanese that Mr. Trump likes is good while Japanese investment in US Steel is bad, because a little cognitive dissonance is good for us all. The […]
-
I am Tariff Man, and I rule the world!
16 Dec 2024
So American CEOs can just pound sand! The WSJ reports yesterday that CEOs are quietly trying to get into the Trump transition team to try and influence the new administration to not start a trade war, which will harm their businesses and raise prices. But as the headline says, “He isn’t budging.” I’ll have more […]
-
Of course, he doesn’t see it that way, but that is the reality nonetheless. Mr. Trump once again came out yesterday against Nippon Steel’s purchase of U.S. Steel. We’ve discussed this a couple of times, here and here, so the basics of the deal haven’t changed–Nippon Steel will invest significant capital ($1.4B) into the new […]
-
Note to Tariff Man (and wannabe Tariff Woman!)
26 Jul 2024
Donald Trump proudly proclaims himself Tariff Man, and whether Ms. Harris calls herself Tariff Woman or not, the Harris/Biden Administration left most of Mr. Trump’s tariffs in place, so she is still a Tariff Woman. Writing in the WSJ, Michael Levy helpfully notes (HT Cafe Hayek): Tariffs are fees charged on goods imported by U.S. […]
-
Donald Trump proudly claimed that “I am a Tariff Man!”, falsely suggesting that imports impoverish us: Mr. Trump and Mr. Bernie Sanders are in unity: protecting industries from foreign competitors is the way to create a great economy (although even Mr. Sanders understood the folly of starting a trade war with Canada, strongly disagreeing with […]
-
In the case of the Hollywood writers’ strike, who has the moral high ground? Many have seen the consistent refrain that Hollywood executives are taking advantage of poor, overworked writers via streaming culture changes and AI’s rise.* Hollywood studio executives are trying to cut costs to preserve profits in a new and changing environment for […]
-
Chile’s New Direction
26 Dec 2021
This year, Gabriel Boric won the Chilean Presidency by riding a populist wave of anti-market sentiment. Populism is a political tool not tied to any particular ideology, and it can drive people to very dangerous conclusions. In this case, Boric convinced Chile that the rich elites maintained power in his nation at the expense of […]
Bert Wheeler
Jeff Haymond
Marc Clauson
Mark Caleb Smith
Tom Mach