Category: Business & Industry

Dissecting Corporatism

I got a kick out of this one:

http://blog.vdare.com/archives/2005/12/26/new-orleans-blacks-betrayed-by-their-leaders/

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An Anglospheric triumph

Countries rated as good places to do business are good generally:  “Doing Business in 2006 was published today (midnight GMT), tracking the state of red tape across the world… There are many wise things to be said about this data, and I’ll try to say them over the next few days. But since this is a blog let me go for the cheapest headline. The top ten business environments in the world, as measured by the ‘Ease of Doing Business index’:  1. New Zealand; 2. Singapore; 3. United States; 4. Canada; 5. Norway; 6. Australia; 7. Hong Kong; 8. Denmark; 9. United Kingdom; 10. Japan

[Note that fully half of them are English-speaking and two out of the three Asian ones have had strong English influence]

Booms and Busts and how to do well in real estate

I gather that the housing boom is still ongoing in the USA.  All such booms come to an end, of course.  Australia’s recent boom started earlier but has now well and truly finished.  I thought it might be easier to show how these things work by looking back on an earlier boom in Australia:

One thing that seems very hard for most people to assimilate is that the economy goes through cycles of booms and busts.  The reason why it is hard to assimilate is presumably that the booms and busts concerned can last quite a few years and their beginnings or endings can never really be predicted.  So in a boom, most business people act as if the boom will go on forever.  The price for so acting, however, is almost always eventual bankruptcy.  The mid to late 80s in Australia were a classic example of this.  Both Real-Estate and share values seemed to be constantly rising and fortunes seemed to be there ready for the making in return for only a little risk-taking.  So people bought all sorts of property with borrowed funds in the expectation of being able to resell the properties concerned at a very large profit after only a very short time.  And many people did just that.  They DID make large profits.  So then they went out and tried to repeat the trick, didn’t they?  Like the gambler who has a big win, they never knew when to quit.  And note that even the real smarties came unstuck at that game.  Almost ALL the high fliers of the ‘80s lost the lot.  Some even ended up in jail over their activities (e.g. George Herscu and Alan Bond).  And the not-so-smart went broke at a great rate too.  An amazing number of hitherto successful Australian businesses—household names even—went to the wall at the end of the 80s and into the 90s.

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The Bear’s Lair: Lashed by dragon tails

In ancient Chinese mythology, dragons live in the center of the earth, and when they awaken and shake their tails, earthquakes result.  The Chinese economic dragon has very clearly awakened; dealing with the lashings of its tail will be no mean feat. 

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What destroyed the US car industry?

For those with little interest in cars, this is the post to skip completely.

I have however been fascinated by cars since I was a child. Nothing, for me, could beat the thrill of driving an automobile for the first time in my life. This country has now declared war on the car owner with obnoxious taxes and all manner of hidden charges (and to top it all those skyrocketing oil prices) with the result that the Car seems to be headed for oblivion. 

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