Home » Open thread 10/23/21

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Open thread 10/23/21 — 24 Comments

  1. jon, I just saw that myself about Putin. When the thug dictator of Russia makes more sense than our current administration and the entire Democrat party, you know the country is in deep do-do.

  2. This is the first Ozzy that I have watched. It’s fair f*ckin’ dinkum.
    Gators are dangerous to pets and potentially small children but I’d much prefer dealing with a gator than a croc.

  3. For a society destroying force “true” communism, “It’s never been tried!”, is no match for woke.

  4. Saw this at another site.

    This is from a “conspiracy theory” speech not an official announcement. Plausible?
    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/10/23/watch-moranos-full-25-min-speech-on-climate-lockdowns-at-heartland-skeptic-conference-in-las-vegas/
    Morano pulled headlines and quotes from mainstream media outlets that advocate for climate lockdowns that mimic covid lockdowns in the name of “saving the planet.” Under a climate lockdown, Morano explained, there would be little to no air travel, no new clothing, no private property, no meat eating, and of course, no use of traditional, reliable fossil fuel energy.

  5. geoffb,
    That was interesting. The S. California ports are backed up more than 100 ships deep, but I saw that Savannah Georgia was backed up about 20 ships deep a few days ago.

    In the case of Savannah, they said that all the warehouse space (where?) available to store containers was filled.

    It’s still not clear what the root cause of all this is, as Kamala would say. It does not seem logical to me that it is purely an empty container storage problem. Perhaps the full containers are not being moved out promptly leaving no room for the empties?

    I wonder if unpredictable labor problems are at the heart of it. Companies think they can get back to normal production with new hires and they order the goods. The goods show up at the docks and then they realize they don’t have the workers they need to use it. Just a guess.

  6. TommyJay,

    “Perhaps the full containers are not being moved out promptly leaving no room for the empties?”

    From that thread it seems like a Catch 22 situation. The full containers can’t be unloaded because the port storage is full, the port’s containers can’t be moved out because the truck beds to move them are full of empty containers. the empty containers can’t be taken off the truck beds because there is nowhere else to store them, legally, and the port won’t take them because it is full of full and empty containers.

    Get somewhere else to legally store empty containers and somewhere else to have trucks pick up full ones and the blockage unblocks.

  7. TommyJay, geoffb,

    My guess is it’s the result of private companies adopting financial strategies to minimize costs while maximizing profits. In other words, what all successful businesses attempt to do.

    In the ’70s there was a point where labor rates, capabilities and shipping costs made it less expensive to manufacture products U.S. consumers wanted in Asia. Union wages in the U.S., incredibly low wage rates in many Asian countries… Increased industrial manufacturing in Asia; Japan, South Korea, China (in that order) led to more, better trained folks in those countries and the ability to produce even more goods. In 1970 most Americans were comfortable buying a portable radio from Japan, but not a car. In 2021 most Americans are comfortable buying a television from China but not a car, but Japan and South Korea make some excellent automobiles.

    While all this was happening bright, industrial engineers were continually working on reducing carrying costs. The less inventory you have on shelves, the less shelf and warehouse space you pay for; fewer taxes and carrying costs. JIT, Just in Time, became a huge, industrial fad, followed by six sigma in quality and expanding elsewhere. Technology, real time data on raw materials and manufactured parts, finished goods, inventory customer trends, purchases… made it possible for companies to get extremely lean. When people talk about Wal-Mart pushing out small town mom and pops they rarely discuss Wal-Mart’s early adoption of high-end technology. Their data center in Bentonville, AR was second to none in the world regarding brilliant staff and cutting edge, in-house written code. With their software and knowledge of inventory on shelves they can predict demand BEFORE it develops.

    You may or may not think this is all great*, but there is no debating that it resulted in much lower prices on goods. And, even if a particular company didn’t want to do it, the competition was, so it was either adopt these strategies or go out of business. Today, we have decent quality goods produced at costs that were unimaginable just a few decades ago, however our supply chain is all completely interwoven and very fragile. Just in time means there is no surplus. Stores don’t carry excess nor do the companies that provide the goods. One disruption in the link and the whole, freakin’ thing grinds to a halt.

    Another factor is “solid state” manufacturing. Up until the ’80s, or so, many different things had interchangeable parts. Heck, if a quarter panel on your car got dented you could pull the dent, now you have to order an entire, new quarter panel. The exact quarter panel you need. Things were made to be repaired. Every neighborhood had a TV/Radio repairman and many of the tubes were interchangeable (or, you could just use a pair of pliers when the channel changing knob fell off the radio or TV 🙂 ).

    It is analogous to a monkey wrench thrown in a gear. The more complex and interlinked a mechanism the more susceptible it is to one point of failure.

    *Many small towns have been devastated by these changes. U.S. manufacturing is a fraction of what it was. We are much more dependent on foreign nations for essential goods.

  8. PA+Cat,

    Ozzie Man does reference that event between 1:36 and 1:39 in the video. He superimposes Floridaman with trash bin onto the video.

  9. Art Deco: “Neo has never written a post slicing up Connie Chung.”

    Did I miss a reference … or is this simply a non seq?
    Or should I not ask ….?

  10. @physicsguy:

    Except he’s not that much of a thug. He only kills people when it’s politically necessary to do so. Moths who cannot help but come to the flame. Everyone gets plenty of fair warning.

    Compare and contrast.

  11. Is Connie Chung’s mummy still on display at the Met? She was looking a bit rough around the edges 30 years ago.

  12. ^^^ Now THAT is when it’s excusable to let one’s atavistic impulses take over.

    Amygdala FTW!

  13. Now I wouldn’t necessarily believe everything ‘The Institute’ wants us to believe via Dan it’s most Excellent Mouthpiece (While I’ve greatest respect for his journalistic work ethic, if you think he does 100% of his own research into finer points of these shenanigans, there’s this Bridge in Brooklyn…) established to chill some of us ravening right wing beasts and to fire up the faithful…. When it comes to Biden Reputational Blackening, sign me up!

    http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2021/10/hunter-biden-and-muslim-brotherhood.html

  14. @ Rufus – great history lesson. Lots of ponderables in there.

    @ geoffb – much too sensible to be implemented.

  15. @Zaphod:

    I was curious about your take on this article:
    ___________________________________

    For years, there was the assumption among foreign investors when they bought dollar junk-bonds that the [Chinese] government would bail them out when the big S hits the fan. That had been figured into the risk calculus and price.

    But that assumption is now out the window, and prices plunged and yields spiked to adjust to the new perception that there might not be a government bailout of the dollar-bonds.

    And 26% of that $5.2 trillion that property developers owe, or about $1.4 trillion, are owed to apartment buyers that have bought unfinished apartments in presales. This $1.4 trillion are essentially interest-free loans by tens of millions of households to developers. If the developer collapses, those households end up with a fragment of a construction site, and their investment may be gone.

    In addition, developers have borrowed from suppliers and contractors by extending the time they take to pay them.

    Then there is the undisclosed off-balance sheet debt. Goldman Sachs estimated that Evergrande alone had about $156 billion in off-balance-sheet debt and contingent liabilities, such as mortgage guarantees to help people buy its apartments.

    –“How China’s Model of Dictated Economic Growth Blew Up”
    https://wolfstreet.com/2021/10/22/chinas-model-of-dictated-economic-growth-blew-up/

    ___________________________________

    I don’t intend this as a gotcha. I find it difficult to assess material about China. You are closer and have thought more about it.

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