xcer

Geithner: China's Not Manipulating Currency

You have to make something that that people wants to buy first

Easy for Top Banks to Make Money with Low CD Rates

Sorry to hear you own Citibank shares, that share probably going to hurt the XLF

E-Reader Wars Heating Up: Apple May Have Edge with Younger Generations

It is because young people don't read. Also with e-reader the older generations can read easier with out reading glasses. But more affordable models is needed for schools, especially for elementary students. Sometimes these children are carrying up to 30% of their weight with all these text books. Schools and publishers are against it because it will hurt their profits. Every year students must buy new books even though only a few words were changed so that they cannot buy used. If all the students in the world can use a e-reader then the cost of these devices will drop quickly and education will also be much cheaper.

What's Citigroup Really Worth?

The problem with Citibank is that not only is the number of shares outstanding is hard to figure out, I don't think the management even have any idea what the true figures of its liabilities or any other financial numbers. It is one mess up bank and has been for may years.

China's 'Problem': Too Much Money

I think what Jeff is trying to point out is that the "potential bubble" is built on hard cash not debt (it may be the bank's depositor's cash or the states, but with @70% deposit to loan ration). If you lose a 100% of your investment but not in debt is a big difference in a country's ability to come back.

The Mac vs. PC Debate Was Never Clearer

Simply put it PC people don't get it.

What China Can Buy for $2 Trillion

I think the barriers are both way. Every country in this world have barriers. The stuff they want to buy US will not let them buy. Maybe US should force open the Auto market like they did with Japan. That did a great favor for the European, now you can buy a BMW or Benz for less then a Japanese car, but still no one bought an American car. I guess US can always force China to buy its junk, just like the US treasury. One thing people have to realize is that most US manufacturing job was lost to the so call Asia four dragons, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, and Singapore plus Japan in the seventies. In the nineties and recently, China takes the manufacturing job of these countries not US.

How Long Will the Chinese Let the U.S. Bluff?

If a “super-sovereign reserve currency.” is created, can US continue to print money?

Obama Begins Jawboning Campaign with Chinese President Hu

So I guess it is alright for US protectionism for the Automobile industry by only bailing out the big three when other brand such as Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Benz, BMW and other which are also incorporated in the US and hires hundred of thousands of American Auto workers and gives business to hundreds of American Auto parts workers; for the Agricultural industry by subsidizing so much to a point that no other country can export to the US; for the Pharmaceutical industry by using the FAA to make it impossible for other country to penetrate the US market and yet sell their product at such a huge mark up that millions in the 3rd world countries are dying.

When will American auto industry will admit that no one in the world are interested in buying American cars that are design for the American market. When Japan finally lower tariffs for auto import to a point that foreign imports are cheaper than Japanese cars, the Japanese only import European cars. In UK Lamborghini out sells Cadillacs. Yet when the US car company design and manufacture for the local market they are successful, Ford in Europe, Buick in China, Ford in Australia, etc. The point is that if they are not design for the local market, most likely the car will not succeed. What is consider good in the US does not mean it is consider good in other countries. The foreign brands develop cars specifically for the US market.

When China is not importing items like aircraft from Boeing they are buying from Airbus, China only just test flighted their own first passenger plane which is still years from actual productions. All those mining equipments, high tech equipments and manufacturing tools are brought from Germany because they are consider better engineered. But they do buy a lot from Caterpillar. Another big problem is that US is not willing to sell a lot of things to China, yet these products seems to be sold to terrorist sponsoring countries and to dictators.

"United States, which advocates democracy and freedom", haha, our country talks about it but at the same time support all these dictators that steal from their own countries.

"Chinese currency manipulations that keep American products expensive and Chinese products inexpensive" The RMB will have to probably be traded more than USD1 to RMB1 to true, beside most of what China export did not cause US manufacturing jobs, most was lost to Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Philippines decades ago. China is really taking the manufacturing jobs from these countries. Also people must realize that while China has a huge surplus against the US, China runs a deficit with almost all its trading partners except for Western Europe and US and the actual total trade surplus globally in total is much lower. It is just that the finish goods are manufacture in China because of its vast infrastructure and assembly capability. China does not even come close to India in causing American job loss in the area of high-tech and call center business. Beside most of the imports to China are made by Taiwanese, Japanese, Korean and (yes) American factories in China. Chinese own companies is only just getting started.

Us companies also has to realize that they can not be selling products in China at the same retail prices in China because majority of its people can not afford it. Only less than one percent of Chinese people can really afford foreign goods.

China has its problems but so does the United States. US has to realize that the two economy are very much tied together and are inter-dependent on each other. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses. They have to work together to maintain a stable world economy. US can not just keep blaming their problems on other countries and not recognize their own problems. Starting a trade war would be the worst thing for both countries but probably will affect US more as the rest of the world will take the opportunity to take US market shares away. US has to treat China as an equal partner because both economic and military threats against China is useless. US also has to forget about the "Communist government" label, communism is dead. While China is getting more and more capitalistic, US is becoming more and more socialist.

The Long Case for Chunghwa Telecom

The problem is that Chunghwa is still basically control by the government even though their shareholding dropped to 35.41%. I remember one time when the company announced the change in tarfffs it was announced by the Premier of Taiwan not the company. The Taiwan government tends to use their influence in companies like Chunghwa to win support from the people. As far as I know Chunghwa haven't adjusted their tariff for fix line upward in 30 years to be in line with inflation so there is no money for infrastructure investment. Taiwan has one of the worst telecomunication in the developed world. There is still alot of places in Taipei that doesn't have fiber optic network. Chunghwa has used it position as the dominate provider to access to the outside world during last year earthquake which cut the undersea cable to shut out the Tier 2 Telecom companies which uses their line to provide IDD and direct all the traffic to themselves. There was nothing these Tier 2 company can do. One of the major revenue for Chunghwa is mobile phone where the tariffs are high especially calls between mobile and fix line. Since the fix line is control by Chunghwa they get a piece of the renenue from all Mobile survice providers. There is alot of demand for them to cut the tariff and with two major election coming up there is a chance that this source revenue will be cut.

Apple's iPhone: Is 10 Million Units In 2008 Realistic?

Why does all these people still don't understand that the US market will be the smaller part of the whole iphone market. Look at the Razor, what % is sold in the US compare to the world, look at those expensive smartphone and what is the US market compare to the world? Also the iPhone is not expensive compares to other high end phone. The so call Verizon iphone killer which is the LG Prada phone retails for USD900. The reason why US consumer think all these phones are expensive is because they don"t realize that their carrier makes all the money back through their schemes and contract locks and phone locks. It only seem cheap in the US but everyone pays, always. That is also why dont gets the latest phones.

Apple's iPhone and the Future of AT&T

"Wow! I was thinking that Apple would go for market share"

Apple is going for marketshare, what do you think billions of mobile user in the world use as a standard. "GSM"

iPhone: Apple Making All the Wrong Moves

I think the key whether Apple will succeed or not in the long term as a phone maker is dependant on Apple's ability to bring the ease of use user interface from their other products to the mobile platform and to create seamless conectivity and synergy with computers, OSX or Windows. All the mobile devices that are available today has lousy user interface and doesn't work well with computers. This is on the top of the list of Apple as I think one of the first statement Steve Job made when introducing the iphone is about how bad the user interfaces are in todays mobile devices. If this is achieve then Apple's future as a mobile device maker will be bright. At lease even if this doesn't happen, the mobile devices makers has already made a big effort in bring a competitive product out the next six months which has greatly accelerated the development and advancement of mobile devices. The user will be the greatest winner. As they say a little competition doesn't hurt.

iPhone: Apple Making All the Wrong Moves

So is Motorola, but its top phones has been launched oversea up to a year being available in the US. In the overall scheme of things, the US mobile phone market is not a leader.

iPhone: Apple Making All the Wrong Moves

Typical Typical American centric arrogance that if it doesn't work in US it doesn't work anywhere else. If you consider that most phone companies launches and sell most of their high end phone in other parts of the world and then launching the phone in US a year or two later, it is more amazing that iPhone is launch in the US first. Maybe because it will take time to build up the supply to satisfy the world market or waiting for the 3.5G version to be ready. Another reason is probably Apple can generate a lot more free media promotion then launching the iPhone overseas.