Personal Dork Assistant

Apocalypse Later

A fascinating view into the cogs of global trade from the eastside point of view, care of the New York Times. Kinda cool how they design the container ships to exactly fit through the Panama Canal's locks with not even a meter to spare. Still faster to drop things off in LA and ship to New York by rail, but only by a couple of days, and ships can carry a whole lot more bulk. Although on the return trip to China most of what they'll be shipping is empty air.

And so far, the mounting Asian trade has been largely a one-way affair. After unloading 1,120 containers from the Glory, the longshoremen reloaded the ship for the return trip. Of 667 containers to be sent back, 419 were empty, being returned to Asia to carry more goods back to the United States. Of the rest, most were stuffed with two of New York's biggest exports: wastepaper and scrap metal.

Most people seem to have forgotten, or never knew, that trade and other assorted deficits are bad in the long term. Economists haven't, though, such as Steven Roach, who's apparently predicting the Doomsday Scenario for his top clients. Considering that the man's the head economist at Morgan Stanley, some big money may well be ready to bolt for the exits very soon. Of course, in his publicly-accessible comments he backpedals furiously away from the cliff, but even then the best he can spin it is a slow but continuous decline in the dollar and/or rise in interest rates. We really ought to get dad to dump that bond fund.

Life of a Salesman

Tagged along with our sales guy to downtown Shenzhen for a Supplier Business Review with a big American CPU/motherboard company. Chien was there, too, but we were more there as warm bodies than anything else, in order to show proper respect for the Big American Corp. Got there an hour early in case of traffic jams, so we had some time to wander around the upscale mall at the base of the gleaming office tower. On a weekday afternoon the people there were either suited business folks or 太太s with money to spend. In that steel-and-concrete bubble, the place didn't seem all that different from any other Asian metro. There were Boss and Escada boutiques, an Asus notebook display in the courtyard, food court upstairs, and a restaurant complete with big fish tanks out front (couple of tiger sharks swimming). Saw a Häagen Dazs shop and had to stop by for a couple scoops. It's been ages since I've had decent ice cream and it hit the spot, even if it was 45RMB for two small scoops. Spent the rest of the time before the meeting at an Illy coffee shop upstairs, with another 25RMB for a cup of cap.

FYI: $1 = 8.2765RMB, as of today, and every day.

I guess if you're used to California costs of living, $5.50 for ice cream at an upscale hotspot and three bucks for a cup of coffee isn't all that. But it does highlight the economic dichotomies when one can easily spend an average person's monthly salary for an afternoon snack. Well, I wasn't spending money on anything else. It was either ice cream or cheap whores and ice cream tastes better. Headed up to the 55th floor and met their reps in the conference room (great view of Shenzhen) for a mutually beneficial exchange of PowerPoint presentations. They wanted us to cost-down by 5% a quarter, and Stanley had to come up with a nice way to say "Screw You." At least they were nice about it, unlike the brutal item-by-item grind at the Foxconn Quarterly Price Review meeting. Other than that it was pretty much an empty-suit meeting, but it had to be done and it's nice to get away from the factory once in a while.

What If They Held A Sale...

...and nobody came? That was the nightmare scenario faced by Treasury officials recently. Billions and billions (™ Carl Sagan) of dollars of US Treasury debt, and nobody showed up for the auction. Specifically, the nobodies running the Asian national banks, who have been buying dollar-denominated debt like mad for years to keep their own currencies from rising vs. the dollar by making up for the ever-growing US-Asian trade deficit. Not to mention the US government's own proclivities for deficit spending.

"Sometime soon, the falling dollar is going to show up in rising inflation, rising interest rates and a falling standard of living," said Harry Chernoff, an economist with Pathfinder Capital Advisors. "The housing and mortgage markets, which benefited the most from declining interest rates over the past few years, are likely to feel the most pain."

Let's see:

• Rising Inflation
• Rising Interest Rates
• Falling Standard of Living

Check, check, and check. Not to mention the crashing dollar against the Euro is making that European vacation a pain in the wallet.

Thankfully, the MIA Asian bankers was only a one-time glitch rather than a real exodus. If everyone really started running for the exits by dumping their Treasuries, god knows what calamities might ensue. At least The Administration is calm. Boy, that sure makes me feel better.

Indeed, if a weak currency was the prescription for long-run economic health, countries like Argentina and Mexico — which have suffered massive currency devaluations in the last decade — would be financial titans.

Italian Master

And I thought I was a bigshot for plunking down a hundred bucks for some RAM and a USB flash drive the other day. The New York Metropolitan Museum just made their most expensive purchase ever, at least $45 million for a Madonna painting by Duccio di Buoninsegna from the early 14th century.

"The first slide in an art history 101 course is a Duccio," Mr. de Montebello said.

"He was one of the founders of Western art."

"He gave me the transparency, which sat on my desk until Philippe returned from vacation,'' Mr. Christiansen said, referring to Mr. Montebello. "He knew the painting was coming on the market, but I don't think he'd seen a picture of it. When I showed it to him, it took him about 30 seconds to say, 'We really have to have this.' "

I just think it's fascinating how someone in-the-know would be excited enough to spend millions of dollars within seconds of seeing it, when most of the Met's viewing public probably can't even pronounce "Duccio di Buoninsegna," much less understand his significance as an inspiring figure of the Italian Renaissance. I certainly admit that I have no knowledge of the guy, and I probably know more about Renaissance art than the average non-art-person. Looking forward to checking it out one of these days.

Untethered

Wow, this thing is shit-hot. Take a Sony tablet, and throw in a Bluetooth dongle for the wireless mouse and foldable keyboard. Sure, the computer's got built-in wi-fi, but what if you're not within range of a 802.11 hotspot? Well, that's where the cell phone comes in. Bluetooth link to the cellphone with GPRS Internet access for the win. Whole setup is 1.2 pounds and smaller than the coffee mug. Is that mug Bluetooth enabled, too? Because that would rock.

— Cool stuff courtesy of Engadget

That's the sort thing I'd do if I had unlimited free-time and unlimited disposable income, and if I were conscience-free enough to spend all that disposable cash. As it is, I've had to be content with slowly piecing together my SFF HTPC. Mom brought back another 250GB hard disk and the hardware-MPEG2-capable USB2 TV-capture box courtesy of Fry's/Outpost, along with other doodads. Unfortunately, the DVI-HDMI cable looks to be a bit of a bust as the Pioneer plasmas may not be capable of native-resolution display through HDMI. Damn. The USB-UIRT and Girder programming will have to wait until I get back from China, too. Hopefully the cheap-o USB-serial converter I picked up in Taiwan will be compatible with the MX700 so I can reprogram the remote. Of course, now that I have a Real Job™ I hardly have time to watch TV. Not that there's much worth watching on Taiwanese TV anyway, so it's off SuprNova for the latest and greatest BitTorrents hot off the American airwaves. With the combo of the ZoneEdit dynamic-DNS service and PHP4ABC, I can use Another BitTorrent Client's webservice to initiate the download on the PC at home from a webpage I can access in China. And by the time I've set all that up I'd rather sleep than watch crazy-ass reality TV anyway. Maybe I should just stick to porn downloads (no pun intended).

So I Hear There Was An Election?

It was amusing to watch the Internet Echo Chamber effect in action as we ramped up to Election Day, to see the hope and dreams crushed once again. The Democrats didn't win any upsets, and their record in national toss-up contests was dismal at best. Colorado Senate and Pennsylvania Presidential were the big toss-up wins, but even then the Dems were consistently polling better so it was more of a relief to not lose rather than being happy with a pleasant surprise. Even with three candidates running in Louisiana, which hadn't had a Republican Senator since Reconstruction, they couldn't keep the lone Republican under 50% and force a runoff. Of course, it didn't matter by then because the Republicans had already clinched a majority. They're not all that far from cloture powers, people.

Oh well, now it's back to the really important election, namely the race for the Taiwan Legislature. They may not be big on policy, but at least the fights are entertaining. The mini-trucks with the blaring bullhorns sure do get annoying, though.