Poison Apple And the Spanish Fly
With this headline, you cannot fight the tide.
| Apple and Samsung Captured 99% Of Phone Industry’s Profits : 3 May 2012, Business Insider |
I bought the new IPad last weekend and told the shop that this is probably the last Apple product I’ll be buying in a while.
Apple is tiring and I get lost in the online Apps Store these days. It is relentless and there are so many products, I don’t even know where to begin.
| 5-May-12 | Business Insider | Apple Has Now Given Up Virtually Its Entire Post-Earnings Surge read.bi/Kw1Du8 |
I just bought myself a Samsung phone yesterday too.
This technology craze is finally biting me. Giving me new problems with synchronising my 6 years of Nokia data and I give up. Precious sms’s will be lost; the addresses, birthdays, directions, photos – not transferrable. And I love the matter of factness of the sales man that it is because I have missed out on the interim technological advances that necessitates me changing my phone every 2 years and I thoroughly deserve this fate. This is in the name of progress.
To hell with them and to hell to Spain too.
It all feels so toxic to me now.
Not changing my precious phone for 6 years has postponed the pain of losing even more data that I would have lost had I embraced the Apple/Samsung path earlier.
Not restructuring their debt for the PIGS (Ireland seems to be avoiding the headlines for the moment) will only prolong the inevitable outcome of a bigger moratorium in the future ?
“In both Spain and Greece the math just does not work. You can live in the charade or you can pull the covers up over your head and pretend but, in the end, the arithmetic will prove that neither country can continue to pay their debts as their economies and banks cannot support them. ”
Source : http://www.zerohedge.com/news/mightiest-weapons
I cannot see how austerity will turn the economies around without unimaginable social cost and perhaps, unrest. Stoicism has never been the forte of these former conquering states, all but Greece just within a millennium of their former glory.
Neither can I see the same for the great capitalistic model of America.
Without the geniuses of Krugman and Bernanke, both trained in the classical blue blood Keynesian school of economics, my humble layman take of the situation make be an insult to the intelligence of the learned. But here goes anyway.
Governments as companies. Making and saving money vs spending it.
When there is deficit, then there will be asset sales (like Australia). It is borrowing time and pawning the family jewels. Or, there is the option of borrowing more money which is collateralised against future profits and current savings (Japan) included.
Borrowing is easier and speedier outcome.
Ultimately, deficits will have to be reined in. Because we know that spending too much is bad for the children’s inheritance.
TARP, QE and LTRO is not spending. It does not increase the deficits of the government. It is tweaking with the money supply by increasing the cash in circulation by accepting securities from banks in return for cash, or buying securities in the open market or lending money directly to banks. It is lending.
This lending is supposed to spur the economy to boost the revenues while the government implements spending cuts and increases taxes. A pretty picture and eventually, the deficit will disappear assuming it all works out as planned on the population !
Population = people ! People = humans not machines.
People are not getting the QE directly to innovate their lives. They are relying on the charity of the organization benefitting from the QE etc. to enrich their individual balance sheets. The only direct impact would appear to be Austerity and Taxes.
Its Sunday – Greek and French elections. I am still wrestling with the Apple and Samsung pair, courtesy of short EUR/USD trade. Perhaps its just time to lose those memories and start some new ones.