EU helps protect weak firms from foreign takeovers

This article above is really mostly about China and other Asian attacker states...........

Sunday, March 22, 2020

WHAT IS THE WEST DOING AND WHAT IS CHINA DOING NOW?

I am just going to take a guess, based on the past.

I am just grabbing this shit out of my ass! (cf. Randy Fertel, improv)

Traditionally, with a recession, or a depression, the West , short term profit driven, radically disinvests, cuts to the bone, cannibalism really!

(In the third world, in a downturn, they sell themselves and their children into slavery!)

It sells off assets, lays off starving workers, goes out of business permanently, commits suicide en masse, things like that.

What, on the other hand, have attacker states like Japan and China done, under conditions of recession, especially recession, stagnation, and stagflation, in the West?

They put on capacity.

They buy raw materials in large longterm contracts at fire sale prices.

They buy civil and military plant and equipment when available for a song if possible.

They buy distressed Western companies and Western assets for a song, and try to get a controlling interest where possible.

This would be an opportunity, if nothing else, and all else being equal, for them to consolidate their dominance in many areas of global production and supply.

Sunday, September 1, 2019

PUTTING ON CAPACITY AGAINST RETARDS

Friday, August 16, 2019

KRUGMAN 101

Maybe this is just Part One, for his article for today......

He says, three rules, stock mkt not economy, X3.

Those are his guidelines for you. it's one rule.

Then, oh, shit, the bond market is the economy.

That is not one of his three rules, folks.

It is also not rule 4.

Maybe it is symmetrical: The economy is the bond market.

Very few Americans ever knew that, assuming that it is a fact, for a moment.

He doesn't say what it is, but it looks like a very very simple, Mickey Mouse, equation, only not in math, and maybe not even in grammar.

Let's suppose it is some kind of Wonkish Krugman Pretzel Logic.

I would like to say he is uttering what some logicians have called a tautology, but I am not sure even of that.

Then, he finally admits, realizing what I have told you from the first month of Trump's Presidency:

Trump, against all odds, it seems to me, is dead serious about protectionism and tariffs.

This is a breath of fresh air before the end, for me. Go out swinging.

Krugman is right about what timid short term profit driven American firms do, when tariffs hit foreign made inputs, most of what they now have to have from abroad to just even continue now as a going concern:

They disinvest further!

Krugman is right about that. Some things are true even if Krugman believes and says them; similarly for Trump, according to Thomas L Friedman, who is partly right , but whose reasoning conceals a fallacy or two or three.

What have attacker states done, when they see a whiff of American protectionism or tariff protection initiatives, or trade war saber rattling?

THEY FUCKING PUT ON MORE CHEAP CAPACITY!

Why? I will let you think about that.

Remember that Krugman talks about his tautology implicating a recession.

Six out of six sounds so much like an iron law of nature, of mathematics, and of logic, that it could substitute for a tautology, or a categorical imperative.

This post is dedicated to Gabor Steingart, The War For Wealth.