AND NOW THIS: Reduced silicon output in China is leading to increased chip production costs. “Silicon makes up around 28 percent of the Earth’s crust by weight, making it the second-most abundant material on the planet. However, the ongoing energy crunch in China has had a huge impact on the production of high-purity silicon, sending prices through the roof in the span of just two months. This further compounds the negative effects of other material and component shortages and is similarly expected to lead to higher prices for a wide variety of consumer and industrial products.”
Author Archive: Stephen Green
October 5, 2021
WHAT WOULD THEY DO WITHOUT TRUMP? THIS: More Good News: SNL Tanking in the Ratings.
F— JOE BIDEN… AND MORE: Profane Meditations On Current Vexations.
A WELCOME MOMENT OF LUCIDITY: Sarah Silverman Goes Off the Reservation on Iron Dome.
CHINA: Empty Buildings in China’s Provincial Cities Testify to Evergrande Debacle.
Rows of residential towers, some 26 stories high, stand unfinished in this provincial city about 350 miles west of Shanghai, their plastic tarps flapping in the wind.
Elsewhere in Lu’an, golden Pegasus statues guard an uncompleted $9 billion theme park that was supposed to be bigger than Disneyland. A planned $4 billion electric-vehicle plant, central to local leaders’ economic dreams, remains a steel frame with overgrown vegetation spilling into the road.
The structures are monuments to the once-grand ambitions of China Evergrande Group, now among the world’s most indebted property companies, and a case study in how China’s dependence on real estate as an economic engine helped feed those ambitions.
Evergrande is in trouble in part because it developed properties aggressively in places such as Lu’an, where its debt-fueled building spree came as the city’s population dwindled.
In the end, there’s nothing harder than easy money — an old lesson our own “leadership” refuses to learn.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): The Hayekian theory is that the damage is done in the boom, as cheap money produces malinvestment. That malinvestment — for example in empty buildings that are never used — accounts for the damage that becomes visible later in the bust. You can see that quite clearly in China and it’s becoming apparent here, too.
Meanwhile, time to plug Russ Roberts’ brilliant Hayek/Keynes rap video. It just gets better.
AN ENCOURAGING SIGN: No One Trusts Public Health Officials — Not Even Health Care Professionals.
BUT THE PEOPLE WHO PAY FOR IT WON’T: Coloradans receiving SNAP benefits to purchase food will see significant increase a month starting Friday.
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR WEEKLY INSANITY WRAP: Democrats Will Cut $3.5T Spending Bill by Not Cutting It.
Plus:
- Getting rear-ended is white privilege and we have the video to prove it
- The very latest in getting self-owned, courtesy of Kamala Harris
- Twitter is sharing your data with the Pentagon — what could go wrong?
So much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
POSTMODERN FEMINISM IS ALL ABOUT FORCING WOMEN TO THINK AND ACT IN THE APPROVED MANNER: Feminist Rag Jezebel Says It’s Okay to Bully Kyrsten Sinema in a Bathroom Stall.
Parents trying to raise their kids are criminals. Illegal immigrants breaking even more laws are just exercising their rights as Americans.
PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.
Matt Margolis: Move Over, Blackface… Here Comes ‘Jewface.’ “Actress Sarah Silverman thinks Hollywood has a problem of repeatedly casting non-Jewish actors to play Jewish roles, coining the term “Jewface” in the process.”
Megan Fox: Don’t Be Distracted by the Facebook ‘Whistleblower.’ “The glaring thing that’s missing from this interview is any major bombshell about how Big Tech is actively censoring one side of the political spectrum in America.”
Yours Truly: Employee Exodus, Toxic Culture: Blue Origin Space Troubles Leaked in Insider Docs. “They chased the wrong market with the wrong product, yet somehow still haven’t managed to produce the product. They believe the way to get ahead is to push its employees harder at a time when attrition is already double the private sector average — employees who must feel like they’re working for a company without a mission.”
HMM: Taiwan asks for Australia’s support in possible war with China. “Over the weekend, I looked at the recent air incursions into Taiwan’s controlled airspace by Chinese warplanes and the chances that this situation could escalate into open warfare. While that still seems unlikely, at least in the short term, it’s clear that Taiwan is taking the matter seriously. They’ve been scrambling their own jets multiple times per day in response, heightening tensions above the Taiwan Strait. Yesterday, the country’s Foreign Minister tossed another log on the diplomatic fire by publicly calling on Australia to deepen its alliance with the island nation, sharing intelligence and other resources in preparation for a possible war. And if China wants a war, Taiwan is promising to give them one.”
Australia would be smart to draw their own defensive line at the Taiwan Strait rather than the Solomon Sea.
BALLSY MOVE: Pennsylvania Democrat Wants ‘Inseminators’ to Undergo Mandatory Vasectomies After Three Kids. “Rep. Chris Rabb, a Democrat in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, has introduced a bill that ‘will require all inseminators to undergo vasectomies within 6 weeks from having their third child or 40th birthday, whichever comes first.'”
On a long enough timeline, every lefty program boils down to who gets to live or reproduce.
JOE BIDEN’S RETURN TO DECENCY: Biden Calls Disgusting Harassment of Sinema and Manchin ‘Part of the Process.’
Biden is basically inviting continued harassment of senators of his own party but, hey, no mean tweets.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Seems like this gives Sinema and Manchin an excuse to switch parties and blame the Dems’ activist wing. Sure they’ll get grief from that, but when you’re already being chased into the bathroom. . . .
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Sadly, the Great Facebook Outage of 2021 Was Only Temporary. “It’s no secret that we in conservative media have a rather fraught relationship with the social media giant. Our fortunes are still somewhat tied to the behemoth but, as I explained last week, we’re working on ways to combat that. It’s pretty safe to say that I didn’t experience any heartbreak over the tough Monday Zuck and Co. were having.”
WELCOME BACK, CARTER: ‘Stagflation is here,’ following months of rising prices, BofA analysts say. “Fears about higher prices are coming to the fore, with BofA Global Research analysts declaring in a Friday note that “stagflation is here” and a government report showing U.S. inflation still at a 30-year high as of August. Even central bankers appeared to be starting to capitulate this week, with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell saying that high inflation could run into 2022.”
October 4, 2021
FACEBOOK LEARNS WHAT IT’S LIKE TO GET SHUT OUT OF FACEBOOK: Facebook Is Having a Very, VERY Bad Day (Cue World’s Tiniest Violin).
UPDATE (From Ed): This Facebook outage is huge — It’s their worst since 2008, when they only had 80M users! And speaking of getting shut out of Facebook, “Was just on the phone with someone who works for FB who described employees unable to enter buildings this morning to begin to evaluate extent of outage because their badges weren’t working to access doors,” Sheera Frenkel of the New York Times tweeted earlier today.
Meanwhile, at America’s Newspaper of Record: Hackers Warn That If Demands Aren’t Met They Will Reactivate Facebook.
UPDATE (From Ed, 5:55 PM EDT): It was too good to last — Facebook is currently back online.
(Updated and bumped.)
NEITHER CLOWARD NOR PIVEN COULD BE REACHED FOR COMMENT: Dems Tuck Multibillion-Dollar Handout to Illegal Immigrants Into Reconciliation. “Biden’s $3.5 trillion spending bill gives migrants same child benefits as Americans.”