The Costa Concordia was launched on September 2, 2005, with a mishap that back then didn’t mean anything: the champagne bottle thrown against its hull didn’t break. But on January 13, at 10 pm, the mega cruise ship hit a reef near the small island of Giglio, off the coast of the Tuscany. So far, 11 bodies have been found and 23 people are still missing.
Satellite image by Digital Globe
Supercar enthusiasts went into a tizzy when Honda announced that it would bring its Acura NSX back to life. Design and manufacturing would be shifted from Japan to Ohio. And much of the production would be exported. It won’t add much volume to Honda’s production, but it will be a technology showcase. And a precursor that the math of manufacturing in America is changing.
“The fact that we profit massively from the euro doesn’t mean we have to accept every political horse-trade to save the common currency,” said Anton Börner, president of Germany’s Association of Exporters—a swipe at the Italian prime minister who’d demanded that Germany dig deeper into its pockets to reduce the debt burden of other countries, such as, well, Italy. When the German industrial elite talks about exiting the Eurozone….
After they were downgraded in early August, US government bonds gained upward momentum and yields fell. Japan, which has danced the downgrade tango for years, is contemplating the next step, from AA- to A+, yet 10-year Japanese Government Bonds are yielding below 1%. Downgrades of sovereign bonds of developed countries make good headlines, but the impact on bond markets has been nil. With one exception: the Eurozone.
Tokyo, April 1996. Our fingers laced together, we mosey from the Imperial Palace through Hibiya Park to Ginza’s shopping avenues. She picks a café on the second floor, and we settle into Viennese-coffeehouse armchairs by a floor-to-ceiling window. I’m the only male in the place. On the menu, only the prices are legible.
On January 9, I posted “The Systemic Nature of Medicare Fraud” —“the kind of Medicare fraud that makes your skin crawl.” On January 10, I received an email from the Chief of Staff at Alvarado Hospital. He strongly objected to this sentence: “Its Alvarado Hospital Medical Center in San Diego already appears to be under investigation.” And it kicked off a learning process.
Consumer optimism has been rising from the morose multi-year low in August and has reached levels not seen since, well, May. It whipped hope into a froth. Rising confidence would pump up consumer spending, which would pump up everything else. But the inexplicable American consumer, the toughest creature out there that no one has been able to subdue yet, had other plans.
Austerity measures are taking their daily toll on Greece. Suicides and attempted suicides have jumped by 22.5%. Unemployment rose to 18.2%. Pharmacies are having difficulties obtaining medications. More cuts are coming. If there is no agreement with the bailout Troika, Greece will default in March. But now, even the Troika is in disarray.
150 factory workers in China threatened to jump off the roof of an iPhone factory unless they received a raise. Similar stories are accumulating. To make ends meet, desperate workers sometimes take drastic measures. These anecdotes underscore a major trend in China: skyrocketing cost of labor. But in the US, it’s the opposite—and now part of the official White House strategy.
Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF, told the South African Business Day that the Eurozone might avoid a recession in 2012, an inexplicable bout of optimism in light of some ugly trends. Germany, economic superstar with unemployment at a 20-year low and exports at an all-time high, produces 34% of the Eurozone’s GDP—and it has smacked into a wall.
