dlj_canada

China: Claims It Is Overheating Grossly Exaggerated

Agreed on banks.

Anybody got any suggestions on what "agricultural stocks" might mean?

I'm particularly interested in Hong Kong H shares that meet the good professor's liking.

Big Three: What Would a Successful Negotiation With the UAW Look Like?

I'm a former member of Local 222 (Oshawa North Truck) and 379 (Shaw Street Massey Ferguson) of the, then, UAW (now CAW), and if I have an overwhelming feeling about these companies, it is of the incompetence of their management. Management as I saw it among the shop=floor supervisors, and management as I saw itself instantiated in the systems in the plants I worked in.

Later, in 1974, I visited the Toyoda City plants of Toyota Motor, courtesy of the State Department and the Japanese Minister of Technology. A vignette: since I and my friend Kent Smith, one of the main creators of the modern slim Canadian Tire, have always been inventory mavens, I asked my guide how much inventory they had on the floor in front of my eyes. He said "About four hours." The he slapped himself across the face and said "No, that's a lie. It's usually about six, and sometimes it's eight."

At Massey Ferguson they had only three levels of inventory: a stack of bins to the ceiling, two stacks of bins to the ceiling, and none at all so lets all run around in circles and whine.

Sadly, knowing the incompetence of the management of the North American majors a generation ago does not add up to a solution to today's problems. (After my visit to Toyota I wrote it all up for a friend at the National Academy of Engineering, and he circulated it widely. This means that I am possibly one of the hundred or so people responsible for America's faddish -- and somewhat useful -- attempt to bring in JIT, just-in-time, inventory control in the Eighties.)

Must auto-workers give some of it up? Well, yeah, probably. At least as long as there aren't hat many AMerican cars in the top half of the J.D. Powers reviews, and, importantly, as long as there are more American work-days in aq car than there are in the equally excellent Japanese or Korean products.

What everybody realy wants to see, though, at least in my humble opinion, is some real give back: Smith, the guy who f*ked up GM's $55 billion reconstruction probably still has his spare cottage, yacht, and Bohemian Club membership.

Seems to me that UAW give-backs should be predicated on a few of the guys **really** responsible for the disaster giving up their pensions, their perks, their ripped-off pelf.

Retired auto workers should live in little cottages on $25,000 a year when retired GM executives live in back alley garages in Sterling Heights, and save up for big dates with their wives at the Dairy Queen, on $25,000 a year.


Meself, I drive Hondas.

Pressuring China On Exchange Rate Policy: Even When You Win, You Lose

It's always interesting -- and annoying -- to see people using the term "comparative advantage," when what they mean is "advantage."

It's a sure sign that the guy is on autopilot.