The awesome, mind-blowing action of last week's solar and semiconductor conventions left me with little material for sarcasm. The only comic relief was some inebriated dude in an alien jump suit doing somersaults and almost smashing into a solar panel. This is why I need headline news to deliver sarcasm.
China's GDP growth is toast. Their falsified official statistics have caught up to them and their national leadership can no longer deny that they will have trouble reconciling the accounting for their internal debts. That crashing sound you hear is a giant panda bear tearing through the bamboo shoots that undergird all of the empty real estate built in China's ghost cities.
Global business confidence is down the tubes. Executives who pull the levers that make things are probably better judges of market reality than their lying sales reps or illiterate delivery drivers. The folks at the bottom of the corporate food chain will be the last to know. This is business as usual. Real cuts in advertising budgets and IT spending will confirm this sentiment, so I'll watch for those numbers to appear.
Egypt's oil-rich neighbors gave it an economic lifeline. The Sunni autocracies don't want the Muslim Brotherhood spreading its nonsense in their backyards. The aid is enough to reduce the prices of basic food staples. Exploding food prices caused the Arab Spring in the first place. The major oil producers had enough money to buy off their restive citizens or put them down with force. The minor oil producers - Syria and Egypt - have had more instability. Oil money made the difference for those regimes that survived.
I've got a business meeting down in San Jose tomorrow so I can't afford to overdo it on the sarcasm tonight.
China's GDP growth is toast. Their falsified official statistics have caught up to them and their national leadership can no longer deny that they will have trouble reconciling the accounting for their internal debts. That crashing sound you hear is a giant panda bear tearing through the bamboo shoots that undergird all of the empty real estate built in China's ghost cities.
Global business confidence is down the tubes. Executives who pull the levers that make things are probably better judges of market reality than their lying sales reps or illiterate delivery drivers. The folks at the bottom of the corporate food chain will be the last to know. This is business as usual. Real cuts in advertising budgets and IT spending will confirm this sentiment, so I'll watch for those numbers to appear.
Egypt's oil-rich neighbors gave it an economic lifeline. The Sunni autocracies don't want the Muslim Brotherhood spreading its nonsense in their backyards. The aid is enough to reduce the prices of basic food staples. Exploding food prices caused the Arab Spring in the first place. The major oil producers had enough money to buy off their restive citizens or put them down with force. The minor oil producers - Syria and Egypt - have had more instability. Oil money made the difference for those regimes that survived.
I've got a business meeting down in San Jose tomorrow so I can't afford to overdo it on the sarcasm tonight.
