It will all be OK....just take a deep breath. No wait, DON'T take a deep breath.

This is what Beijing, China has looked like for the past 7 days....smog so thick you can barely see across the street.  This is what China's 20-year unbridled growth spurt (tsunami?) has brought them.  And they say the average days aren't much better, either.  Yikes! 

Air pollution numbers registered this as 533 "Somethings" (my tech speak), with 20 Somethings being considered OK to breathe.  A reporter got on a train and traveled south from Beijing and it got even worse, topping out 480 miles down the line at 610 Somethings.  They had to travel over 900 miles south before it dropped to "only" 83 Somethings, still over 400% above the level deemed still healthy to breathe.

Where am I going with this?  We here in the West are worried to death about the rise of the Chinese Tiger.  Before long their economy will overtake ours experts say.  We already owe them over a Trillion dollars.  WE'RE DOOMED!

Or are we?  Wouldn't you imagine many of their 1.35 BILLION people will sooner rather later be dropping dead from breathing this soup?  I doubt that will be good for morale.  If I was the average Chinese guy I'd be sweating bullets, assuming I could somehow suck in enough oxygen for my brain to comprehend my dire predicament.

New topic:

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the heyday of the automobile industry may be behind us.  Yes, right now our automakers are enjoying record sales, up to 16m sales from a low of just 10.4M at the depth of The Crooked Banker Depression of '08.  But a lot of this is just satisfying pent up demand from the past few years....it probably won't be a lasting boom.

The news reports in recent years have led us to believe that the Chinese auto market is insatiable, and that they will buy more than enough cars to keep the automakers afloat long term.  Really?  See above story.

Here's the scary part to me:  many young people don't even like cars anymore.  *GASP!*

When I was a kid it was a rite of passage to spend the pre-dawn hours of your 16th birthday camped out at the DMV, waiting to take your drivers test and get your license.  Today only 69.5% of 19-year-olds have even bothered getting a drivers license.

This is how kids spend their time today.  I'm not sure if this is a B&W picture or if the kid is really just that pale?

Listen up you little f__kers!  Turn off your computers....learn to drive....get a car.  'Cause if you don't buy 'em they won't have the R&D money to keep making cool cars for me, and I like cool cars!

Ummm....well, turn off your computers and go out and learn to drive after you finish reading my blog.  :)

S

Things aren't always what they seem....

Remember back in the 1980's when we were all scared to death of "Japan, Inc"?  This was when [it seemed as if] Japan was kicking our economic butts, they just seemed so unstoppable.  Our economy was stagnant while theirs was skyrocketing.  Then the 90's happened, Japan, Inc stumbled and fell crashed, and they entered their "lost decade".

Now we see the real Japan, warts and all.  Their population is actually shrinking (has been for years) so precipitously that the big industrial companies years ago began developing personal robots.

These aren't meant to weld cars together or assemble little electronic thingies, but to wait on people.  The expectation is that before long there will not be enough care givers left to look after Japan's elderly.  These robots are supposed to clean their houses, cook and serve their meals, and I suppose even keep them company.

I read an interesting article yesterday in The Guardian explaining Japan's dilemma:  Educated Japanese women today don't want to give up their careers / independence, and Japanese men no longer feel economically secure enough to provide for a family.  (Women who continue to work after marriage are called "devil wives".  Ouch!)  Therefore many just forgo romantic involvement / marriage all together.

Apparently Japanese employers assume a female employee will immediately start having kids after marriage, so they kill off their careers.  And with "lifetime employment" agreements between companies and employees going the way of the Dodo bird, many men are scared they won't be able to provide for a wife and kids.  Many never marry at all, and a sizable number still live in mama's basement (for real).

Quite a fall from the heady days of Japan, Inc, huh?

This morning on the news they showed pictures of the worst smog I think I've ever seen.  It was in China, and was so bad (5x the level considered "unhealthy") you couldn't see across the street.  They also supposedly have a looming catastrophic water shortage, a "house of cards" banking system, and an increasingly restless rural population yearning to enjoy "the good life" like their city cousins.  

We always hear about their exploding economy, but rarely about these kinds of crushing problems just below the surface.  I wonder if we'll be looking back on "China, Inc" 20/30 years from now and wonder what all the fuss was about?

Perhaps so, assuming we can get our s__t back together by then, too.  I'm thinking the recent slap-down of the Tea Party was a step in the right direction.  Now we can take a good, hard, realistic look at where we are and where we need to go, without having to listen to the demagoguery of nut cases like Sen. Ted Cruz.  *back in your hole, Ted*

S

Heads we win, tails they lose

This is a news story I thought I'd never see:  The US is on the verge of becoming energy independent.  That outlook is gaining realistic credibility.  We're that close.  Every White House since Jimmah Cahtaa has put forth their plans to get us there, but their plans usually wound up as bird cage lining.  This is for real.


Now here's the rub....a lot of the new oil and natural gas we're producing is via a process called hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking" for short, and it's becoming more controversial by the day.  A chemical goop is injected into the ground under pressure, forcing oil and gas back out.   A LOT of oil and gas.  But there's also a lot of scary anecdotal evidence, everything from poisoned drinking water to minor earthquakes, that is giving rise to a bunch of activists opposed to fracking. 


The day may come when we can retire using nasty 'ol coal to produce our electricity (sorry Appalachia) and instead use much cleaner and cheaper natural gas.  This could help revitalize our industries, making them more competitive worldwide.  Think CLEAN AIR and JOBS!  And more than enough gasoline to power our cars and trucks and trains and buses.  We won't have to kiss up to those #$&^*&@ bastards in the Middle East any longer, either.  WooHoo!


Of course, the danger is we'll become complacent and go back to driving our land yachts that get 12 mpg, and put the development of new, clean, less polluting non-hydrocarbon fuels on the back burner.  Are we going to have the political will to impose enough taxes on oil and gas products in order to subsidize R&D looking for these better energy sources for the future?  (I doubt it.  Our politicians have never, in my lifetime at least,  been known for their stiff spines.)


So do we risk it?  Do we plow forward with more fricking fracking (too easy!) and hope we can overcome the pollution problems that come with it, and tell the rag hea....er....Sheiks....in the Middle East to kiss our obese American hineys, or say NO to fracking and just accept the status quo?


In my mind it's touchy, but I say go for it.  What say you?


S