Car dump

Today I was much pleased to receive the visit of this friend of mine from Los Angeles, and it's always a pleasure for me to discuss all things American with somebody who happens to have a strong critical mind and a humorous take on everything.

In particular, we discussed this whole business of cutting edge car design-my friend happens to be an industrial designer-and technology. Needless to say, the two of us are following with much interest both the coming up of Tesla Motors and the going down of General Motors.

To my personal view that the U.S. government ought to pull the plug on what is now Government Motors and Chrysler, my friend opposed his own argument that the U.S. government could not afford to not at least try to keep it going, if anything as a form of welfare toward GM employees who would otherwise be laid off.

After thinking it over, here again is my take on what is going to happen to both Chrysler and GM in the next few months: both are going under, both are going to be broken down and the pieces sold off to the highest bidder.

Welfare toward GM employees notwithstanding, keeping GM and Chrysler going at the expense of wads of taxpayer dollars is simply impossible for the following obvious reason, as I have already argued before: at the current rate, GM and Chrysler together are burning through almost as much cash as the U.S. military operation in Iraq, and such level of expense is completely unsustainable at a time when the U.S. federal debt is hovering above $10 trillion.

At this point, it just seems completely impossible to me that either GM or Chrysler could keep on driving after they've both totalled themselves into a ditch.

UPDATE: following the bankruptcy of Chrysler, I now invite the reader to read this excellent commentary in The Economist online, which echoes many of my own doubts regarding the future of the U.S. auto sector.

The rise of the laser pixels

This article posted on physorg.com describes the work of Cambridge physicists who are developing a new class of microscopic lasing devices using chiral nematic liquid crystals as the lasing medium. The most interesting aspect of this new laser technology is that the frequency of the light emitted can be tuned dynamically by altering the periodicity of the molecular orientation of the liquid crystal medium, for example with a local electric field, as in current liquid crystal displays.

Murphy's law-or shit happens

Last fall I wrote this post in which I decried the U.S. government bailouts of banks and generally the whole idea of an expensive stimulus package financed by deficit spending, as I argued there might be an unexpected catastrophe to deal with in the coming year. This is called Murphy's law-disasters tend to happen in series. In particular, I mentioned the possibility of a flu pandemic.

Well, here it is. It is not yet entirely clear if the current outbreak of swine flu in Mexico will indeed turn out to be the next flu pandemic, similar to the "Hong Kong" flu of 1968 that killed roughly a million people. But at the very least, this is a good reminder that, in the words of Forrest Gump, "shit happens," and precisely, the government's main job it is to take care of this. Any expenditures other than public health, education, transport, law enforcement and public safety should be avoided at all cost.

If the swine flu does indeed turn into a pandemic, this could cost the U.S. government far more than either the economic stimulus package or the bank bailouts and ultimately sink the U.S. economy even further. The problem is, the U.S. government is now completely broke and may simply no longer have the resources to deal with a massive outbreak of flu with hundreds of thousands of potential casualties...

Swedish socialism: it's about blondes

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
The Stockholm Syndrome Pt. 2
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

In which Daily Show correspondent Wyatt Cenac asks a Swedish member of parliament how many blondes their socialist state would tax from him. It turns out-the answer's two!

Wrecks everywhere

Just as one should have expected violence is exploding once again in Iraq as soon as the first U.S. troops are stepping out of the country, which is why I'm rather skeptical of Barack Obama's promise to get the USA out of there quickly... in any case another hilarious cartoon by The Guardian's Steve Bell!

Sun deal goes awry

Today negotiations for a reported buyout of Sun Microsystems by IBM was finally declared all but dead. This isn't entirely surprising as such a deal probably would never have passed through the net of antitrust regulators, either in the U.S. or the E.U. Even from a business perspective it did not make complete sense for IBM to pay so much money for a competitor that's dying out anyways and does not offer much in terms of I.P. that IBM does not already have in some form or other.

I have been reading all over the business and IT press today how Sun might still be acquired by Cisco or even HP, who have already rejected such a deal. I am more than a bit skeptical in both cases.

However, nowhere yet have I seen mention of a potential deal with Apple. This is quite strange, actually, as both companies are Silicon-valley based and they are both technology-driven. Moreover, Apple with its $24bn in cash could easily afford to buy Sun, and could make very good use of Sun's high-end Sparc chips in its Mac Pro line of workstations... not to mention a great way to further penetrate the enterprise server market... Steve, wake up, man!

Backseat wrecking

Of course I rather like Barack Obama, particularly the fact he's not systematically dismissive of old Europe, but still, I'm willing to bet very good money placed on a shorting position on the dollar for 2010 that Mr Obama's strategy of restarting the U.S. economy by doling out lots of free money will most certainly falter and lead America into a second recession next year... and no, balancing the budget needs not be a Republican thing-Bill Clinton did it.

Furthermore, this whole idea that the Chinese will keep on buying U.S. Treasury notes because they have no other options is nothing but a load of horses**t... when you have a strongly positive trade balance and absolute political control, you can just as easily use the entire Chinese economy as a piggy-bank. In other words, I'm also willing to bet good money that the Chinese government this year will start spending their cash at home to jump-start their own domestic market as opposed to dumping their reserves on America...