Twitter
LinkedIn

Archive for March, 2008

Newer Entries »

Time For Chinese Money to Buy Silicon Valley Startups?

By on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 | 8 Comments

The very dramatic unwinding of Bear Stearns and the purchase of its shares at a fire sale price by JP Morgan Chase has raised some very interesting questions. Put simply, American assets are going to have to go at fire sale prices. We’re not talking about the Japanese buying Rockefeller Center, I mean real valuable [...]

Read More...

Another Reason Globalization Won’t Work

By on Monday, March 17th, 2008 | 1 Comment

Globalization is based on something which doesn’t exist anymore: cheap oil to fuel the global transportation and logistics system. Guess what? Cheap oil has gone away for good. Yet another reason to avoid going on an oil-based economy in the waning days of big oil.

Read More...

Unwinding Globalization

By on Monday, March 17th, 2008 | 1 Comment

JP Morgan Chase has just purchased Bear Stearns at $2 a share, an investment bank which was valued at $150 a year last year. Equity and capital markets are poised for a volatile week. The US Fed is set to make another rate cut, a desperation move, on Tuesday. This is likely to push the [...]

Read More...

Not Changing Fast Enough (Part II)

By on Sunday, March 16th, 2008 | Comments Off

If there has been a major problem with the Chinese leadership, it has been its slowness to recognize that the old way of industrialization simply does not work with a population as vast as China’s. Western Europe, then later America and Japan were able to get away with industrialization because they had smaller populations and [...]

Read More...

Not Changing Fast Enough (Part I)

By on Saturday, March 15th, 2008 | 1 Comment

This week’s Economist has a lead article and section on “The New Colonialists” which covers China’s expansion and search for natural resources on a global scale. For many Chinese, being equated with colonialism is a bad thing, because Chinese have historically seen themselves as victims of colonialism, having had Hong Kong taken away by the [...]

Read More...

The Shrinking US Economy:How Much Will It Shrink?

By on Sunday, March 9th, 2008 | 10 Comments

The past week has shown that the subprime credit mortgage crisis in the US has metastasized into something bigger, and is spreading into other parts of the economy, and is now beginning to affect bond markets in the US. This is a worst-case scenario gradually unfolding before our eyes, and the Fed under Bernanke and [...]

Read More...

Apple’s iPhone Computer SDK Just Changed the World Today

By on Friday, March 7th, 2008 | 10 Comments

In Sept. 2007 I wrote an article about how Apple’s global marketing for the iPhone was attracting and creating a new user base in China. Now, we know that there are more than 400,000 unlocked iPhones in regular use in China. Since Apple gets recurring revenue for the iPhone through its contracts with the operators, [...]

Read More...

Personal Lending + Web 2.0 + China = ?

By on Sunday, March 2nd, 2008 | 8 Comments

Two new startups in China have now entered the field of Internet-based personal lending and finance in China, and according to this article in China Web 2.0 Review, one of them, PPDai has already received first-round funding for an undisclosed amount from Essentia Equity. The concept of personal lending is an outgrowth of microfinancing, which [...]

Read More...
Newer Entries »