Streaming Accounts For Just 30% Of US TV Screen-Time
When Netflix reported its first-ever subscriber drop in its latest earnings report, the company went into some detail on how it sees its growth prospects in the longer term.
But, as Statista’s Feliz Richter points out, among other things, the company shared an interesting piece of information with respect to its position in the competitive landscape in the United States: Netflix’s share of total TV viewing in the U.S. has been “steady to up,” the company said quoting Nielsen data, despite the launch of several new streaming services.
Perhaps more importantly though, streaming as a whole is still at the beginning of the road, despite commanding a fair share of the conversation surrounding TV content, especially among younger audiences.
According to a monthly Nielsen report called “The Gauge”, streaming accounted for just 30 percent of total TV screen time in March 2022, with linear TV (i.e. cable and broadcast) still dominating video consumption on the big screen.
While cable is still far ahead of streaming at 37 percent of TV usage, broadcast has actually been overtaken, accounting for just 25 percent of TV consumption.
Breaking down the streaming total by individual service reveals how much room to grow there still is for Netflix, YouTube and the like.
At 7 percent of TV screen time, Netflix is the leader of the streaming pack, ahead of YouTube (6 percent) and Hulu (3 percent).
“Considering that we are less mature in other countries and that this excludes mobile screens (where we believe our share of engagement is even lower), we are confident that we have a long runway for growth,” Netflix wrote in a letter to shareholders last July.
Looking at the age gap in TV consumption, the future does indeed look bright for streaming services.
In 2005, there were still two European and one North American port in the ranking of the biggest shipping hubs in the world.
In 2021, only Rotterdam remained in the top 10 – in the bottom rank.
Asian ports have grown at a fast rate in recent years. In addition to several Chinese ports, Singapore and Busan in South Korea also make the top 10 ranking. In Malaysia, Taiwan and Thailand, completely new shipping hubs have emerged.
In contrast to the production of goods, the increases in port size in Asia are not an indication that the Asian port technology itself in more innovative, faster or more competitive. According to experts, the development of port infrastructure simply reflects the growth in trade flows.
Maritime shipping suffered setbacks in the coronavirus crisis as supply chains around the globe were disrupted.Shipping volumes initially declined as factories in Asian production hubs closed down, only to be overstretched as restocking needs in receiving countries caused a shipping boom later in the pandemic.
Nearly 400 employees at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) haven’t received a COVID-19 vaccine, according to data obtained exclusively by The Epoch Times.
A total of 382 workers at the CDC are unvaccinated, Roger Andoh, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) officer at the agency, told The Epoch Times.
Another nine employees have just had one dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, meaning they also don’t qualify as fully vaccinated per the CDC’s guidelines.
Collectively, the number is 3.2 percent of the CDC’s workforce.
“Please note that this is the most recent and most complete data available and some data elements that you requested are not available,” Andoh said initially.
When asked to clarify, another CDC officer repeated Andoh’s statement.
After The Epoch Times filed an appeal to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the CDC’s parent agency, the office changed its stance without explaining why.
“After an additional search, we are providing you with the following information,” Andoh said in the new response.
“The response I got to your appeal from CDC gave me the impression they didn’t mean to withhold any information in the first place,” Jonathan Nelson, a FOIA analyst with HHS, told The Epoch Times in an email. “Based on that, my (personal) belief is that this was just an accidental omission on their part.”
In addition to revealing that 391 employees weren’t fully vaccinated, the CDC said that 12,399 were fully vaccinated, meaning that they had received two doses of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines or the single-shot Johnson & Johnson jab.
Additionally, 5,810 employees shared that they had received a booster dose, although the agency stressed that employees don’t have to say whether they’ve had a booster.
The CDC also disclosed that the agency had granted zero requests for exemption to President Joe Biden’s federal worker vaccine mandate, which is poised to take effect on May 31 after a months-long suspension due to a court ruling.
The CDC’s media office didn’t reply when asked what would happen to unvaccinated workers who don’t have an exemption, and why no exemptions had been granted.
The data were current as of April 12.
Three other health agencies inside HHS that are deeply involved in promoting COVID-19 vaccination and refused to provide data beyond December 2021 still have not provided the figures requested. They are the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the National Institutes of Health.
Inspired By Tyler Durden, “Fight Club Thailand” Has No Rules
Most films made over the last two decades have been long forgotten except for the movie “Fight Club.” The constant theme of this movie is the globalist system has transformed men into cowards. Here’s Tyler Durden (one of the movie characters):
“We’re consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don’t concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.”
Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) is a fictional character imagined by a depressed white-collar man (Edward Norton) who has insomnia. Durden persuades the narrator (Norton) to punch him to be jolted into the present so he can feel a swell in his masculinity. And so they begin to beat each other, which is the origin of the fight club.
Soon after, Norton becomes confident and aggressive and doesn’t miss his possessions. Other men become attracted to Norton’s alpha perception and gather in secret locations to fight each other, seeking to tap their untapped masculine energy that has been depressed by modern society.
Two decades later, halfway around the world, young men seeking to reclaim their masculinity are fighting in an underground club in Bangkok, Thailand, according to AFP.
Inspired by the movie, “Fight Club Thailand” allows shirtless men to brawl against each other in one round increment lasting three minutes per round, where anything goes.
“Here, you don’t have to know how to fight. You just need to have heart and that’s it,” club co-founder Chana Worasart told AFP.
Worasart said he started the club in 2016, inspired mainly by Tyler Durden.
“I think the popularity is due to a variety of occupations and fighting styles that are different from the styles in the (professional) ring,” he said.
The fighters are everyday people from Bangkok and surrounding areas who want to unleash their inner masculinity in a fighting ring surrounded by old rusted shipping containers with a homemade backcloth banner on one that reads in bold white capitalized words: FightClub.
Our image of a hero has two aspects. The first consists of generic, stereotypical traits: bravery, determination in the face of adversity, achievement against heavy odds — the kind of person who saves the day.
The second aspect is more culturally specific, describing and contextualizing the circumstances of bravery and determination, and the nature of achievement in terms that are narrowly defined. In other words, cultural descriptions of bravery are most often expressed in terms compatible with the social and political conditions of the hero’s society.
Heroes are ubiquitous. For instance, there are American heroes, Russian heroes, Israeli heroes, Arab heroes, Ukrainian heroes, and so on. Where does good and bad come into it? Well, that too becomes a cultural judgment. Below are two examples of “heroes.” I will leave it to the reader to decide who is good and who is bad.
Albright —From Outside the Establishment
Madeleine Albright was the first woman to serve as American secretary of state (1997-2001). She served in this capacity under President Bill Clinton during his second term. As such, she must be seen as a loyal promoter of her president’s foreign policy — a policy she may have helped create — regardless of any moral or ethical considerations. In other words, she is a “company” point person.
Whether this requires bravery is questionable. As we will see, it will require a persistence toward a single end defined in societal or national terms. This does indicate determination and achievement in the face of an alleged foe.
When Madeleine Albright died in 2022, the following “achievements” were critically cited in the obituaries written by those outside the establishment and thus critical of Albright:
Russia was “her obsession” and this led to her being the U.S. government’s point person on the expansion of NATO eastward into what had been the Soviet sphere of influence. This was done in violation of guarantees given to Russia in 1989 that NATO would not go further than the border of the newly united Germany — an act that helped prepare the ground for the present war in Ukraine.
In 1997-1998, acting as secretary of state, she threatened Iraq with aerial bombardment if its government did not allow for weapons inspections at designated sites. The Iraqis eventually complied but got bombed anyway.
She also made sure draconian sanctions were applied (including banning many medicines) to Iraq for an extended period of time. The result was the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians, including 500,000 Iraqi children. When asked by the journalist Lesley Stahl on the TV show 60 Minutes whether the draconian sanctions were worth the price of the deaths of approximately a half-million Iraqi children, she replied, “we think this was a very hard choice, but the price—we think the price is worth it.”
This led one critic of the U.S. government to judge Albright’s career as follows:
“It is the ultimate moral crime to target for misery, pain and death those least responsible for the offenses of their tyrannical rulers. Yet this is the very policy Madeleine Albright, made “Standard Operating Procedure for US diplomacy.”
Albright — From Inside the Establishment
From inside the establishment, that is, from inside the U.S. government and foreign policy establishment as well as an allied media, she was lauded as a dedicated, talented and energetic leader.
One member of the House of Representatives said upon her death,
“Our nation lost a hero today. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was the face of US foreign policy throughout some of the most difficult times for our nation and the world. … She brought nations together to expand NATO and defend the very pillars of democracy across the world. … She taught us that we can solve some of the world’s most difficult issues by bringing people together and having tough, uncomfortable conversations.”
“Her performance as secretary of state won high marks from career diplomats abroad and ordinary Americans at home. Admirers said she had a star quality, radiating practicality, versatility and a refreshingly cosmopolitan flair.”
What can we conclude from these contrasting views? We quickly come to realize that inside the establishment one rarely, if ever, hears any reference to such things as the human cost of a policy, the end of which is defined in terms of national interest. In the case of Madelene Albright, national interest trumped human interest. Still, she was held a hero nonetheless.
Assange & Manning
Julian Assange is an Australian computer specialist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. It is a website dedicated to providing “primary source materials” to journalists and the public alike.
WikiLeaks eventually released “thousands of internal or classified documents from an assortment of government and business entities.” The site raised immediate hostility from many governments and corporations, which decried the “lack of ethics” of Assange and his fellows — who were exposing the often unethical, and sometimes murderous, behavior of those now attacking the website.
Bradley (aka Chelsea) Manning was an Army intelligence specialist assigned to a base near Baghdad during the Iraq War. Manning was suffering from a gender identity crisis. He also had serious second thoughts about the Iraq War.
Eventually, his growing opposition to the war led him to secretly send Assange“750,000 classified, or unclassified but sensitive, military and diplomatic documents.” Manning was later exposed and arrested, court-martialed and eventually had his sentence commuted by President Barack Obama.
From Inside the Establishment
As the writer and therapist Steven Berglas observes,
The complaints were, if you will, weaponized in 2010 after WikiLeaks released “half a million documents” relating to U.S. actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, obtained from the then young, disillusioned Army intelligence analyst Manning. This was followed by another release of about a quarter-million U.S. diplomatic cables, many of which were classified.
Assange was now deemed “a terrorist” by the government terrorists he had exposed. Subsequently, these actions were deemed “a threat to U.S. national security” by the U.S. government. As a result, Manning was jailed and suffered court-martial while Assange, now living in England, has been fighting extradition to the U.S. for years.
From inside the establishment both Assange and Manning are criminals. Both exposed secrets of governments and it is an established principle that states cannot run without secrets. This is partially because all states sometimes act in criminal ways. To expose these episodes is deemed more criminal than criminal acts of the states. Why so? Because governments say so and design their laws accordingly.
This rather arbitrary position taken by governments has been sold to the citizenry as necessary for the security of their state, but as we see, the consequences of WikiLeaks’mass release of classified documents has not been shown to have endangered the nation in any obvious way. Nonetheless, Assange and Manning are deemed criminals for setting a precedent that threatens other potential criminals employed by state and business.
From Outside the Establishment
Outside the establishment the view is 180 degrees in the other direction. Again, to quote Steven Berglas
“whistleblowers are rare, courageous birds that should be considered national treasures not disgraces.… It is clear that most snitches have more integrity–-and are infinitely more altruistic-than their government or corporate counterparts.”
For instance, according to journalist Glenn Greenwald, Manning is “a consummate hero, and deserves a medal and our collective gratitude, not decades in prison.” At court-martial, Manning stated that the leaked material to WikiLeaks was intended to…
“spark a domestic debate of the role of the military and foreign policy in general… and cause society to reevaluate the need and even desire to engage in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations that ignore their effect on people who live in that environment every day.”
A heroic act, but also perhaps a naive one.
The Issue of Ethics
Governmental leaders and their aides often reserve for themselves the right to do illegal things such as
using sanctions that undermine opposition governments while ignoring the negative consequences on the wellbeing of civilian populations;
aiding and abetting coups that overthrow democratic and undemocratic governments alike, depending on how, in each case, Washington sees their economic and military stance; and
carrying out of illegal actions such as assassination, torture, and illegal imprisonment. All of this is immoral and unethical while being deemed necessary within the context of national interest.
Nonetheless the common citizen, who lives within what we shall call a propaganda bubble spun by his/her own government and its cooperating mainstream media, has a hard time understanding events except in propaganda designed terms.
Madeleine Albright’s funeral buried her legacy of war-making and extraordinary deceit
Most will pay no attention at all to the fate of whistleblowers, who speak in opposition to the propaganda, because their actions do not touch their lives, which are locally focused. For the small number who find that there is something not quite right about negative media reports of whistleblower revelation, there is often a sense of helplessness and inertia that causes their momentary uneasiness to go nowhere.
The unfortunate truth is that this phenomenon of mass indifference to what the government does in the name of national interest and security, backed up by seemingly blind support of the media, has become one of the pillars of societal stability. That does not mean that challenges such as those launched by Assange and Manning are not worth the effort. They might lead to reforms (the Watergate scandal and its consequences comes to mind), but under ordinary circumstances the status quo will carry on.
So, who are the heroes? Is it those who promote state policies which, regardless of their immorality, allegedly sustain state prestige, security and stability? Or is it those who shine a momentary light into dark places and reveal the immorality of state behavior — often at the cost of the destruction of their careers and reputations? You choose.
71% Of Elementary School Math Textbooks In Florida Contained ‘Woke Indoctrination’
The Florida Department of Education (FDOE) rejected dozens of mathematics textbooks for its K-12 curriculum, citing references to Critical Race Theory (CRT) and problematic woke content.
FDOE said 41% of submitted textbooks by publishers were “impermissible with either Florida’s new standards or contained prohibited topics.” Some of those topics included controversial CRT, inclusions of Common Core, and Social-Emotional Learning.
A shocking 71% of the submitted textbooks contained prohibited topics or unsolicited strategies for grade levels K-5 that didn’t align with FDOE standards.
Here’s a breakdown of FDOE’s findings of the 54 of the 132 (41%) reject textbooks.
*78 of 132 total submitted textbooks are being included on the state’s adopted list.
*28 (21 percent) are not included on the adopted list because they incorporate prohibited topics or unsolicited strategies, including CRT.
*12 (9 percent) are not included on the adopted list because they do not properly align to B.E.S.T. Standards.
*14 (11 percent) are not included on the adopted list because they do not properly align to B.E.S.T. Standards and incorporate prohibited topics or unsolicited strategies, including CRT.
*Grades K-5: 71 percent of materials were rejected.
*Grades 6-8: 20 percent of materials were rejected.
*Grades 9-12: 35 percent of materials were rejected.
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said, “publishers attempted to slap a coat of paint on an old house built on the foundation of Common Core, and indoctrinating concepts like race essentialism, especially, bizarrely, for elementary school students.“
“I’m grateful that Commissioner Corcoran and his team at the Department have conducted such a thorough vetting of these textbooks to ensure they comply with the law,” DeSantis added.
Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran said, “Florida has become a national leader in education under the vision and leadership of Governor DeSantis. When it comes to education, other states continue to follow Florida’s lead as we continue to reinforce parents’ rights by focusing on providing their children with a world-class education without the fear of indoctrination or exposure to dangerous and divisive concepts in our classrooms.”
Here’s one example of a “woke” math problem in one of the textbooks.
The report should be an eye-opener to parents about the massive indoctrination of the most vulnerable: children. There are ways to avoid toxic CRT that some teachers are already warning it’s “absolutely everywhere.”
Through homeschooling, or if parents don’t have the means, at least be open to understanding what is being taught at school.
The larger question is, who are these publishers, and why are they trying to indoctrinate kids with radical Left thinking?
The way special counsel John Durham is treating people associated with the 2016 Clinton campaign while investigating them is far cry from how special counsel Robert Mueller treated people associated with the 2016 Trump campaign while investigating them.
After Durham last year indicted lawyer Michael Sussmann for lying to the FBI, court documents revealed that the special counsel had long been in communications with Clinton campaign lawyers, hearing them out on why certain subpoenaed documents were protected by attorney-client privilege and thus shouldn’t be turned over. Durham only recently asked the court to compel production of the documents or at least have the judge review a sample of them before making a final decision.
“We have tried for some time to understand better the theory of privilege that is being asserted over various documents, and, you know, we have had conversations and have been unable to get comfort as to the grounding and bases of various privilege theories that have been asserted here,” said Durham’s lead prosecutor, Andrew DeFilippis, during a March 31 hearing (pdf).
Sussmann allegedly lied in September 2016 to then-FBI General Counsel James Baker about his motivation to give him reports and data supposedly showing secret communications between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa Bank. The FBI determined no such channel existed.
Sussmann told Baker in an email that he was going to the meeting not representing any client. However, he billed the time to the presidential campaign of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The data and reports were provided to Sussmann by Rodney Joffe, who has run several tech companies. Sussmann, Joffe, and others were part of a “joint venture” to dig up dirt on Trump and help Clinton, Durham said, but stopped short of alleging the venture amounted to a criminal conspiracy.
Durham’s approach contrasts with the methods used by Mueller, who in 2017-2019 investigated supposed collusion between the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump and Russia to sway the election in his favor. No such collusion was found, though Mueller prosecuted or referred for prosecution multiple Trump associates for unrelated or process crimes.
In August 2017, a few months after taking over the FBI Russia probe, Mueller had FBI agents raid the home of Paul Manafort, a career political consultant who headed Trump’s campaign for several months before his prior foreign dealings were criticized by media.
Mueller busted through Manafort’s attorney-client privilege, asserting the crime-fraud exemption, which strips the privilege from communications that a judge agrees pertained to committing or planning a crime. Largely based on secret evidence, D.C. District Judge Beryl Howell agreed with Mueller that Manafort “downplayed” in his lobbying disclosures his company’s prior activities in the United States on behalf of a Ukrainian political party (pdf). The judge thus allowed Mueller to question to some degree Manafort’s previous lawyer.
In April 2019, on a referral from Mueller, New York prosecutors had the FBI raid the office of Michael Cohen, then-personal lawyer of President Trump. Cohen’s lawyer said at the time that during the raid agents seized privileged communications between Cohen and his clients. In such a case, the government sorts out what is and isn’t privileged on its own, usually assigning a team independent of the case investigators to do the sorting.
Lawyers for both Manafort and Cohen said the raids were unnecessary because their clients had voluntarily cooperated with law enforcement.
Trump pardoned Manafort, but not Cohen, who made substantial efforts trying to implicate his former boss in a crime. Cohen recently told The Daily Beast that unless Manhattan prosecutors bring charges against Trump by April 30, he will cease his cooperation.
US Hotel Room Rates Hit Record High Prices Despite Occupancy Remaining Below Pre-Pandemic Levels
That pesky “Putin-flation” sure is running rampant. It seems like scorching inflation is still unfolding in nearly every sector, including the price of hotel rooms, according to a new report.
The national average daily rate for a room in March rose to $146.61, marking its highest level for any month on record, according to a new writeup by BisNow.
STR, who provides premium data benchmarking, analytics and marketplace insights for the global hospitality industry, reported this week that the average daily rate (ADR) rose 10.9% from pre-pandemic figures (March 2022 vs. March 2019).
Occupancy, however, slid -6.2% to 64%, the release notes, while revenue per available room (RevPAR) was up 4% to $93.82.
Of all major U.S. cities, Tampa experienced the highest occupancy level (84.7%) even though it was still down 3.6% from 2019. None of the top 25 markets saw an increase in occupancy over 2019, the firm reported.
And of course, the steepest decline in occupancy came from none other than San Francisco, which saw a stunning -23.4% dropoff in occupancy from March 2019.
In total, U.S. hotels sold 6.6 million in group room nights versus 7.8 million in 2019. Despite the decline in occupancy, “urban hotels increased their average daily room rates 56% month-over-month, while airport locations were up 42%,” the report says.
CoStar National Director of Hospitality Jan Freitag commented to BisNow: “Easter and spring break are just the two obvious indicators of continued pricing power for the U.S. hotel industry driven by, as we had said repeatedly before, very healthy leisure demand.”
“I’m very, very interested in seeing what the summer holds with regards to pricing power,” Freitag concluded.
As mentioned previously, stepping away from managing money has allowed me more time with other parts of my life. But these different areas have also opened my mind to various other ideas, so I would like to share some details. One area that takes up an awful lot of my time is my son’s karting career (Instagram : jarrettclark55 – please follow. It brings him untold joy to have more followers!). There are many, many stories that I could tell you about karting, but I am just going to focus just on the economics, as I think it illustrates many of the potential flaws with many “quality” stocks.
Jarrett is competing in the British Championships Honda Cadet Class this year. Many of the current Formula 1 drivers have competed in British Karting Championships. It is highly competitive, with races held all over the UK. You can see below, the chassis, tyres and engine are all specified.
To try and make karting fair, all of the equipment is regulated. Race tyres have to bought from the organiser on the day and a set costs £150 or so, and chassis can be bought from a number of different providers with a new one costing around £2,500. Engines however are far more variable. If, like me, you knew nothing about karting before starting, you might have googled 160cc 4-stroke engine to get an idea of how much that costs, and then estimated the cost of an engine at around £250 to £400.
However, the reality is that there is a lot of variation in the power of the Honda engines when the leave the factory, some have good “bottom” (i.e. good acceleration) while some have good “top” (i.e. a very fast top speed). What in practice happens, is that engines with a proven history of winning trade a large multiple of their ex-factory price. Think of a number and triple it, and you will be closer. You also need three to four engines – one wet engine, one dry engine, and one practice engine. You may ask if people will really pay that much money for an engine? The way I explain it to people, is imagine the most insane football mum or dad you have ever seen, the one who is shouting non-stop at the ref, and their own kids and is totally emotionally committed to their child making it in football. Now imagine if you came up to them and said, “Hey I have magic football boots which means your child will be competitive with the best kids in the country. Would you like them?”. If you can imagine that conversation, then you can understand why competitive karting engines are so expensive. Almost all karting parents are totally emotionally committed to their child making it, so demand is very strong.
However, the value of the engines are subject to changes in regulations. A few years ago the British Karting Championship was run under a pooled engine system, which meant every driver had to rent an engine at random on the day of the event. The pooled engines were all adjusted to be roughly the same level, but there will still be some variation. And there is a alternative karting championship which is run under those rules, but the British Karting Championship is the official competition and has the largest participation and gets the best racers. In some European countries in some racing classes, karting regulations are such that the winner of a kart race must sell their engine to anyone that wants it at fixed price. This acts to keep a ceiling on engine prices.
There are some advantages to not regulating engines. The Honda Cadet is an entry level for karting, so many novice karters begin racing at this level, and by making fast engines expensive allows the older more experienced karters to battle it out far away from the novices. It also acts as a barrier to entry, to reduce competition. Hence like most regulation, it benefits insiders at the detriment to outsiders.
UK Motorsport are contemplating changes to karting for next year, which has caused us to be underwater on our own engines on a mark to market basis. We may end up being forced sellers at a loss, but having talked to some more experienced people than myself, there is a chance that no changes will occur and the engines will bounce back in value, as this is exactly what happened a few years ago. I was told off one specific engine fell to 80% in value, before fully recovering.
There are other expenses and considerations, and if there is demand for a post purely on the costs of being a karting parent, I will try and oblige. But the point of this story is to show how regulatory schemes create “undeserved” value. Does this happen in markets? Of course it does. The best possible example of this, are the rating agencies, specifically Moody’s and S&P. I will go into detail of how bad these companies are at their core business, but first of all you should be aware that from a financial perspective, both business are high “quality” and have been 10 baggers since 2010.
However, the reality of their key service, providing ratings for fixed income securities is that they largely produce a pointless and typically bad product. The rating agencies were the root cause of the global financial crisis, by giving investment grade ratings to CDO and other structured finance products, when in fact they were worthless. However, in the move away from investment banks to clearinghouses, the rating of a bond by the rating agencies became even more important to markets, not less important.
If the subprime was a one off, perhaps this would be excusable, but rating agencies typically downgrade bonds at the worst time, and upgrade too late. A classic example of this was the Eurocrisis. In 2010, the first arrow indicated when Irish bonds were downgraded to junk. The second arrow indicates when the rating agencies upgraded Ireland to investment grade. That the rating agencies follow market action, rather than have any predictive power is well known by market participants. Or to put it another way, the market does a far better job than the rating agencies – but regulators requires bond issuers to have a rating from a rating agency, despite the market doing a far better job of pricing risk.
The rating agencies have a dream business. Government regulations create forced buyers of a substandard product. I would argue that clearinghouses are in very similar position, doing a substandard job, but with regulations creating forced buyers of their substandard services.
I have used the karting analogy for two reasons.
Firstly, I want to make the point that politics, as expressed through regulation is a very powerful force in market. The ability to influence regulation is a very powerful value creator for many businesses, particularly in America. Healthcare, aerospace, utilities, finance and recently semiconductors are all deeply influenced by regulation and politics, and area that I have previously ignored.
The second reason is that future posts are going to refer to some investment ideas that I have gleaned from travelling around the country as I help my son with his karting career. I thought if I suddenly start talking about market observation I picked up at a Premier Inn in Sunderland, the most immediate question would be why was there, rather than the merit of an investment idea.
And my next post will indeed be about an investing observation I made while on a karting trip to Sunderland.
India is urging Tesla to manufacture its vehicles locally.
The country said this week that the electric vehicle manufacturer is “welcome in India” and is encouraged to produce vehicles in the country, according to comments made by Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari.
India has conveyed to Tesla that “manufacture in China and sell in India is not a good proposition,” according to a Bloomberg wrap up of the story this week.
Gadkari reportedly made the comments at the Raisina Dialogue, “a geopolitical conference organized by the Observer Research Foundation”. He went as far as to say that Elon Musk “will have to manufacture his Tesla cars in India, and not China, if he wants to come and sell the vehicles in the country,” according to The Economic Times.
He said that Musk would “not get any special treatment when it comes to customs duties”, referring to importing vehicles from China.
Gadkari also defended several recent incidents of EVs catching fire in India, stating that the high temperature in battery cells was to blame. Gadkari said that India needs a system for testing battery cells to help avoid such incidents in the future.
Meanwhile, Tesla finally got its factory in Berlin open earlier this month after years of delays and red tape.
