Postcards from the Bleeding Edge
Monday, November 10, 2008

  China makes a withdrawal

China is injecting 1/6th of it's total GDP into its own economy, some 600B dollars.

Update: Other sources indicated later that the amount was closer to 10% of annual GDP, over 2 years - or a 5% stimulus.

Where's that money going to come from? I doubt they will print it.... About 3 years ago, China held reserves in the US of some 800+ Billion dollars... and the Federal reserve said that that wasn't a problem... oh? Today, China's holdings have ballooned to 1.9 trillion dollars in US reserves... No, China doesn't need to print any money, just make a few very large withdrawals... It must be great to be a creditor nation!

Chart of U.S. Money Supply Growth

In other news, DHL is closing up shop in the US. As they are my sole source of packages where I live, I worry that I will soon be entirely disconnected from my mail... which is not entirely a bad thing. Might make it kind of hard to pay taxes.

Circuit City goes belly up - also a shame, as their merely horrible customer service was a step up from Walmart's abysmal. I sure wish more people would focus on quality rather than price... and Circuit City and Walmart actually sold more products that were made in the US...

On the plus side, I just got internet installed in 2 days, with a rock steady 1Mbit connection that can pull in Canadian hockey... not much of a plus, I'll admit. I did catch an Eagles game, last night, same method - they lost.

And Nicaragua is now ranked the second safest country in the Western Hemisphere, after Canada.

The size of the national bailouts, the nationalizations of the banks and insurance companies, the pending "investments" into the big car makers - all mask the biggest increases in government power in my lifetime. Corporate power will be in (relevant) decline - and the power of ordinary people... well, who knows what power they will hold in the future?

This slideshow pulls together Sequoia Capital's viewpoint on the near future. It isn't pretty.

I've never really had a word for what happens when the buttons and knobs behind Keynesian spending policies finally stop working, now I do: Debt overhang, a condition where adding new debt does nothing, or worse....



Shipping is at a standstill. At current rates, anybody (anyone?) out there with sufficient capital could make a killing sending ships full of stuff people need where they usually don't go...

The American National Debt has increased by 639 billion dollars in 42 days. It's now at:



Sure wish someone would get around to answering my top 10 questions.

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Comments:
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"anybody (anyone?) out there with sufficient capital could make a killing sending ships full of stuff people need where they usually don't go..."


Care to expand on that thought?

where 'they usually don't go' is to places where there is no killing to be made.

also, see if you can more clearly differentiate between 'stuff people need' and 'stuff people want'.

I'm interested.

Best idea I ever had, when I was young, back in the 70s, and saw what I could buy gulf shrimp for in Galveston Texas, and what shrimp sold for in Colorado, and how much Ryder wanted for a month to month lease on a 24' reefer bobtail.

It was a real market opportunity, and I didn't take advantage of it.

Google maps doesn't give driving directions to Managua. :)

I'm guessing it's a 5 day (hard) drive from San Antonio.
 
DHL is killing *only* its domestic-US service, that is from one US location to another US location. Apparently they were unsuccessful at displacing FedEx and UPS from that market [Doh!].
DHL will continue its international shipping business, and they do much better in that area than the competition because they understand the in's and out's of crossing the different borders much better -- your packages are much more likely to arrive on time with DHL.
Shipments between the US and Nicaragua should continue via DHL just fine. I'd ship you some sunshine from AZ but, from the looks of your recent posting, you are getting as much as we are, and we're definately *not* getting in the water these cooler days!
 
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