Well he hasn't made money for a bit to be honest, and has made some seriously bad blue-chip gambles that fell flat on their face too. Which has a lot of people wondering if he's simply hit the senile point and he's out of touch with the markets. I remember reading hmm was it zerohedge or somewhere else, that he hasn't made money in over 3 years on any investments he's done.
That's not true. He has made money in the last 3 years, at least according to his portfolio. For instance, he paid about USD$1/share for BYD in 2009, today it's around USD$2/share (although it did go up to as high as USD$11/share in late 2009).
Google Earth images show that the 24 trucks at the "Brown Squares And Blowed Up Trucks" site were actually neatly parked with equal distances apart between May 30, 2005 and Nov 1, 2006, and didn't seem to have much activity (much the same tyre tracks around the site). On July 3, 2007 some of the trucks moved toward the centre and there were many more new tyre tracks around the site. On July 14, 2010, some trucks had been blown up.
Something interesting:
On the East of the "Bomb (cluster?) hits on that base: 40.489307,93.500476" site, there are like a million "barrels" covering an area of over 4km by 200m. Each barrel is of the size of a truck. According to images on Google Earth, they weren't there on July 26, 2003 and the site wasn't constructed then. The barrels appeared on May 7, 2005. They've been left there at least until March 7, 2007. On June 14, 2010, you can see quite a few trucks working near those barrels and some of the barrels have been cleared.
We know governments are reluctant to piss China off nowadays, saying that you're blocking them out loud isn't going to be well received. But who said you're trying to block them? Just slap regulations on top that will (hopefully) produce that side effect. Of course, at the end you won't be doing any blocking but *controlling* -- just like countries who don't like many immigrants, they have strict laws that indirectly give them control. It'll work on most if not all topics. Say, outsourcing - if you want to reduce outsourcing to China, then just slap something on top requiring that a certain number of existing senior management to reside in the destination country. Otherwise, flood them with taxes. With that constraint, nature and economics should sort itself out such that the trend will shift toward East European countries away from China. At the same time, countries of poor living qualities will be improved in order to be attractive. Several birds, one stone. If this works out for outsourcing, then something along this line will work for controlling tech buying.
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Well he hasn't made money for a bit to be honest, and has made some seriously bad blue-chip gambles that fell flat on their face too. Which has a lot of people wondering if he's simply hit the senile point and he's out of touch with the markets. I remember reading hmm was it zerohedge or somewhere else, that he hasn't made money in over 3 years on any investments he's done.
That's not true. He has made money in the last 3 years, at least according to his portfolio. For instance, he paid about USD$1/share for BYD in 2009, today it's around USD$2/share (although it did go up to as high as USD$11/share in late 2009).
Google Earth images show that the 24 trucks at the "Brown Squares And Blowed Up Trucks" site were actually neatly parked with equal distances apart between May 30, 2005 and Nov 1, 2006, and didn't seem to have much activity (much the same tyre tracks around the site). On July 3, 2007 some of the trucks moved toward the centre and there were many more new tyre tracks around the site. On July 14, 2010, some trucks had been blown up.
Something interesting: On the East of the "Bomb (cluster?) hits on that base: 40.489307,93.500476" site, there are like a million "barrels" covering an area of over 4km by 200m. Each barrel is of the size of a truck. According to images on Google Earth, they weren't there on July 26, 2003 and the site wasn't constructed then. The barrels appeared on May 7, 2005. They've been left there at least until March 7, 2007. On June 14, 2010, you can see quite a few trucks working near those barrels and some of the barrels have been cleared.
We know governments are reluctant to piss China off nowadays, saying that you're blocking them out loud isn't going to be well received. But who said you're trying to block them? Just slap regulations on top that will (hopefully) produce that side effect. Of course, at the end you won't be doing any blocking but *controlling* -- just like countries who don't like many immigrants, they have strict laws that indirectly give them control. It'll work on most if not all topics. Say, outsourcing - if you want to reduce outsourcing to China, then just slap something on top requiring that a certain number of existing senior management to reside in the destination country. Otherwise, flood them with taxes. With that constraint, nature and economics should sort itself out such that the trend will shift toward East European countries away from China. At the same time, countries of poor living qualities will be improved in order to be attractive. Several birds, one stone. If this works out for outsourcing, then something along this line will work for controlling tech buying.