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Weak US Dollar Means Nintendo Favors Europe For Now
timeOday writes "The LA Times is reporting that the new Nintendo Wii Fit is hard to find on US shelves, due not only to strong demand but also the United States' declining status in the world economy: '"[Nintendo] is also is shrewdly maximizing its profit by sending four times as many units to Europe, reaping the benefits of the strong euro," says Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities. "The shortage demonstrates one consequence of the weak dollar. We're seeing companies ignore their largest market simply because they can make a greater profit elsewhere."'"
If there is such strong demand, why not raise the price?
I've no idea, but there's no real reason to hold a title back from the UK just because they haven't translated it into French, Italian, German and Spanish (assuming it's not one of those titles with a language select in it, which are rare these days).
It wouldn't be so bad, but they never bother to translate American English into British English, so really, what's the point in waiting?
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
Yes, at least in here in Poland it's a regular practice. What's totally fucked up is that english ones usually cost up to twice as much as the localised ones. Add that we aren't used to this kind of translations (movies in cinema are almost exclusively subtitled and TV uses voice-over via Gavrilov translation) and it just feels wrong to hear our language used by Stroggs and other alien invaders.
I mentioned the Wiis as signifier, not as a possible spur to economic recovery, and your attempt to distract from the actual conversation by depicting it as anything else is disingenuous at best.
With that said, a tide of social programs is one possible outcome. It was a possible outcome during the Great Depression, too, but in actuality we never really recovered from that until we began to receive and benefit from economic concessions from Germany and Japan following WWII.
This time it's hard to imagine where the money is going to come from. I'd like to see the public works projects, but they couldn't even bother to go save people's lives in New Orleans. I'm just not seeing it, sorry. Seriously, where does the money come from?
You doom-and-gloom predictions of "a lot of sweat to correct it" simply miss the point of what's really wrong.I really meant blood, but I didn't want to seem overly melodramatic. On the other hand, blood is the cost of the way we do business today - do you have any idea of what percentage of the shit we buy from China is produced in government-owned-and-operated forced labor camps filled predominantly with people whose primary crime is that they were the nails sticking up the farthest and they needed laborers? People are literally put into labor camps for being Christians... where they make the plastic shit that we hang on our christmas trees.
Closer to home, though, I really don't see things changing for the better without a major upset. I hope to be wrong.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The US is a war-driven ecomony, which is unfortunate on many fronts, let alone creating weapons and systems that kill innocents en masse -- there's an associated brain drain, and the goods created in most cases have no material use that would enhance wealth -- but rather, these devices are designed to destroy wealth as well as human lives.
China has manufacturing capability up the ying-yang (no pun intended), and as I've stated before, if they were to choose to stop propping up the USD, the US would have far more to loose than they would. Also keep in mind the Euro markets that they could -- and probably are -- transistion to if they're smart.
No, I'm afraid this is a different situation. It might be "ok" for the dollar to have *some* weakness from time to time, but you can't tell me it would be fine if the bottom fell out on the dollar entirely.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
Queue sound of music stopping to a screech...
"Toyota has stated it will build a new factory in Canada instead of the US because of concerns US workers are less skilled."
"Toyota President calls American's stupid"
http://forums.motortrend.com/70/38630/the-general-forum/toyota-president-calls-americans-stupid/index.html
And where do those raw materials, or even parts for those jet engines come from?
You are correct, the USA should immediately cease producing value added goods and produce iron ore and silicon.
OPEC is doing this with their oil as well.
Nobody wants dollars any more. That their value hasn't collapsed completely is due to the fact that every foreign national banking system has a vault full of dollars. Unloading them all at once would be the biggest run on the banking system you've ever seen. So oil (and many other commodity) producers 'officially' trade their product in dollars. Unless you happen to have Euros, Yuan, or some other desirable currency. Then you get a discount.
Have gnu, will travel.
If you read Israeli Kuwaiti security reports about Iraq their assessment was; Iraq is essentially a failed state extremely week from a decade of sanctions and poses no security threat.
Being defenseless is of course a prerequisite for the US to invade as we won't pick on someone that could actually defend themselves (would not be a very productive way to run an empire)
The worst atrocities Saddam committed was while he was SUPPORTED by the US. This is hugely important piece of information that gets downplayed with "the enemy of our enemy is our friend". But the US was supporting both sides of the Iran/Iraq conflict so there is no moral ground to stand on.
The problems of Saddam at his worst was he was being supported by an external all powerful military force with deep vested interests in resources of the area, giving him free hand to commit atrocities in the name of "stability" now Iraq has a government in place that commits atrocities in the name of "democracy" with the same power structure. This is not lost on Iraqis. The victims flesh burning white phosphors in Fallujah and the tortured of abu ghraib probably don't care much about the semantics.
... is the fact that the UK too used to get most games 1 year after the USA. And don't think that any actually got internationalized to UK English and voice actors with UK accents. Mostly it was the US game, 1 year later. No idea if that's still the case, but it wouldn't surprise me too much.
Even weirder was buying a US import version of Sega's PSO for the Dreamcast, over half a year IIRC before it got released in Europe. The weird thing is: the US version already had all the language options. I don't mean just that it also had Spanish, but it also had German and French. So someone from the USA could jolly well play the game in German or French, but the people in Germany or France weren't supposed to.
Exactly what they needed that delay for, I don't even know. Certainly not for translations.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I really meant blood, but I didn't want to seem overly melodramatic. On the other hand, blood is the cost of the way we do business today - do you have any idea of what percentage of the shit we buy from China is produced in government-owned-and-operated forced labor camps filled predominantly with people whose primary crime is that they were the nails sticking up the farthest and they needed laborers? People are literally put into labor camps for being Christians... where they make the plastic shit that we hang on our christmas trees.
What the fuck is that? Please show me where you got that information on China putting people into labour camps to produce commodity goods?Excuse me for saying this, but that paragraph makes you look like an ignorant dumbass. China is booming because, surprise, surprise, they embraced capitalism, and Chinese companies work very hard and pay very low wages, and their products sell well because of the resulting low prices. China is not a free country and open your mouth and criticise the government too much and you will get arrested, but they actually have a Chinese branch of the Catholic church (the Vatican and China have resolved a lot of their differences).
The last time China put people into labour camps for being Christian was during the Cultural Revolution, about 40 years ago.
You know, if people like you would actually read the news on occasion, and pay a little attention to what's happening beyond your borders, your economy might profit as a result of that enlightening knowledge.
Here in the Netherlands, US cars are advertised on the radio by mentioning the continuing fall of the dollar in a news styled manner while cheering is heard on the background. I'm not joking.
Free beer is never free as in speech. Free speech is always free as in beer.
Yes, well, here in Mexico we enjoy a nearly 100% markup over US prices (the Wii is US $470 and Wii Fit will run you US $150). And indeed you can see mountains of boxes in stores, even walmart stocks tons of wiifits and wiis. So while a lot of them will languish for a while on the shelf, Nintendo knows that those who sell will give them a really huge profit. By ignoring the economic reality of the country, where a cheaper console would indeed move a larger number of unis, they maximize their profit by catering to those who would indeed pay those sums for the console. Sadly that excludes about 98% of the population.
Ah, but if you include social protection in your base tax, then you have to include SocSec and MediCare/MedicAid in the US tax rate, in which case military spending is third. That's right, the US spends over double what it does on the military on basic social welfare.
One, lots and lots of countries have, over the past decades, hoarded US$ as reserve currency. They see investments of billions, in some cases trillions, of dollars rapidly deflate.
Two, the world markets have changed. Point #1 is true because for a long time you could buy anything, anywhere in the world, with US$. That's changing. Thus your devalued currency is falling not only in purchasing power, but also in reach.
And this feeds back directly to the strength and status of the US because the US is a huge importing nation. Since there's little it exports, there's little you - as a foreign country with three times your GDP bound up in US$ - can do to get rid of your rapidly declining reserve. You can buy some high-tech, and that's essentially it. The US exports too little to spend your money, and other countries aren't really interested in taking it, because they're also trying to get rid of the crap.
The net effect of that is that the US becomes less and less important as a trading partner, because what they offer - US$ - is becoming worthless slips of fancy paper that you're desperately trying to get rid of, instead of getting even more of them.
That's a lot of loss of strength and status compared to a time where most of the world was trying hard to do business with you.
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