I Don't Care What Barron's Al Root Says, I'm Blaming Oracle's Larry Ellison For Today's drop In GE Vernova (GEV)

And if I ever find myself on Mr. Ellison's yacht I will let him know it.*

From Barron's, December 17, updated 4:27 pm EST: 

Santa delivered some coal early for investors in the power-generation and technology company GE Vernova GEV -10.50%.

GE Vernova stock was off 7.8% in midday Wednesday trading, the worst-performing stock in the S&P 500. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average were down 0.8% and 0.2%, respectively. It was

AI jitters look like the reason for the steep decline. A chip start-up named Mystic has created worries similar to the DeepSeek situation encountered earlier this year. That is apparently all it took to catalyze the selloff.

The company raised $125 million in a new round of funding. While that is a tiny amount of money relative to the sums being spent on AI, Mythic is trying to design AI chips that use less power.

Rising demand for electricity, thanks to the buildout of power-hungry AI data centers, is the biggest reason for increased optimism in GE Vernova stock.

AI has been great for GE Vernova stock, which has more than doubled this year. However, shares are vulnerable to any AI tantrums the market might have.

The Mystic situation is a little like the DeepSeek problem Nvidia and the AI sector faced in January. At that time, a Chinese AI model was apparently producing good results with cheaper chips that use less power....

....MUCH MORE 

I've only seen Ellison's boat in pictures but I'm thinking the lady attorney's could pinpoint its exact location. They are yacht stalkers. I've mentioned them in passing over the years, here's a hit from 2014 - "Natural Gas Retreats After Gains; CME Raises Margins for Trading"

You've probably noticed the dearth of posts on natty.
There's a reason for that, we don't want to lose any readers. The market is so whippy right now that I could be writing "Buy-Sell-Hold", "Short-Flat-Long" all day long and never get any work done. Plus, if anyone missed a single post they'd get wrong-footed, possibly lose money, get crabby and have to talk to the lady attorneys whose mellifluous voices may or may not bring them back into the readership.

And then the lady attorneys get mad at me because they should really be in Monaco for the end of the Primo Cup - Trophee Credit Suisse regatta and no they don't want to go to the Florida State Championship instead and I've wrecked their whole season and...arrrgh. 

And 2018: 

Monaco, Nov. 01, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- GasLog Ltd. and its subsidiaries (“GasLog”, “Group” or “Company”) (NYSE: GLOG), an international owner, operator and manager of liquefied natural gas (“LNG”) carriers, today reported its financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2018.

For God's sake do not mention the dateline on this release to the Lady attorneys.
They missed last month's St. Tropez regatta and will immediately glom onto Monaco and start thinking of the Primo Cup – Trophée Credit Suisse and the houly will jump as they get new hobnobbing duds and...ugggh.... 

Or 2010: Time to Get Corporations and Unions Out of Politics

***** 

....I checked with the Lady attorneys, they said the constitutional basis for overturning Santa Clara County is sound and that other than the little matter of taking on GE and the SEIU, Boeing and AFSCME and Google and the AFT all at the same time they saw no problems.

Then they went back to discussing the merits of Tuscany v. Monaco and whether the Saint-Tropez regatta is really worth the effort.

And Mr. Ellison? He has his own set of problems:

Larry Ellison’s $490 million megayacht ‘Rising Sun’ was so enormous that it could only be docked next to oil tankers and cruise ships. The 454-foot vessel felt like walking in an empty mall, so the eccentric billionaire sold it and bought a smaller $160 million superyacht

—LuxuryLaunches, February 2, 2025 

God forbid having to park next to a cruise ship. 

Also:

November 22 -  "Cost of insuring against Oracle debt default spikes as September seems a long time ago" (ORCL)

November 25 - "Billionaire Larry Ellison says a vast AI-fueled surveillance system can ensure 'citizens will be on their best behavior'" (ORCL)

Mr. Ellison may be past his sell-by date. 

He's 81, has been on the Forbes 400 richest Americans list forever (since at least 1997), was briefly the richest person in the world, and has been living in his self-created bubble since at least 1977.

December 10 - "Oracle Shares Tumble as AI Spending Outruns Returns"

December 12 - "Oracle delays some of its OpenAI data centers from 2027 to 2028 - report" (ORCL)  

December 12 - "Oracle denies report on OpenAI data center delays" 

December 17 - "Oracle Stock Falls After Report on AI Data-Center Funding Talks" (ORCL; NVDA; GEV; SOXX)

Yes Virginia There is a Santa Claus Rally and You Should Know Your Reindeer: The Various Caribou (reindeer) From Around The Arctic

The New York Sun long ago (September 21, 1897):

DEAR EDITOR: 

I am 8 years old.
Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
Papa says, ‘If you see it in THE SUN it’s so.’
Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus? 

VIRGINIA O’HANLON.
115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET.

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

 Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus Rally. It exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.... 

First up, via Redbubble:

And a flashback to a very grim December at the market, 2018:

Dec. 20 
Hulbert: "Santa Claus is coming to Wall Street — after Christmas" 

....And here to answer the question once again is Mark Hulbert at MarketWatch, Dec 18, 2018 5:18 p.m. ET.
While calendar-based trades are usually bunk, at this time of year it's good to reflect on the true meaning of Christmas.

Santa will be a little late with presents for stock investors...

***

...Virginia, the DJIA may be down 453.22 (-1.94%) at 22,870.44 but Santa is coming, so ask him for some OTM calls on the ES. Or get your name on some triple leveraged long ETFs. He's on his way.

And I will drop Mr. Hulbert a line re: the 1914 shutdown and reopening and remind him he knows the details and could have taken another paragraph to explain index construction.

 Well, as we all know the major indices continued lower right up until the Christmas Eve early close, the DJIA's intra-day low that session was 21,792.20 but come Boxing Day: Hooray!

Dec. 26
Equities: Thank You Santa

I received the options on the S&P futures and I have to say, earlier this morning I thought XXL was far too big 

And on top of that I was a bit nervous about having gone public with December 20's Hulbert: "Santa Claus is coming to Wall Street — after Christmas", reiterated as the first sentence in Dec. 23's Equities: "Nothing Goes to Hell in a Straight Line, Not Even Stocks". 

If you hadn't come through, all those young people on the internet might have lost faith and stopped believing,
But you delivered Santa, you did!
Right down to the minute!....

January 20, 2019 

Equities: Dear Santa,

Thank you for The Best Christmas Ever......scratch that: Thank you for the best Christmas in a long, long time...

I'm done playing with the triple leveraged long ETFs you brought me and will put them away.
Regarding the options on the S&P e-mini futures: what is my tax basis on a gift?
Thanks Santa 

January 23, 2019
IBD: "Dow Jones Rises 3,100 Points From Dec. 26 Low; 6 Top Stocks Break Out"

Yeah, yeah. We've already thanked Santa and cut the risk profile, letting-go of the triple-leveraged index stuff and figuring basis on the S&P e-mini options. On to the individual issues and maybe a sinkhole of a Broadway production.

Virginia, if you are interested see also:

Trading the Santa Claus Rally Based on 31 Years of Data Analysis

...The Santa Claus Rally refers to a phenomenon in the stock market characterized by an increase in stock prices during the last weeks of December through the first two trading days in January.

Based on our data analysis, the Santa Rally phenomenon is indeed observable. Our findings indicate average stock price rises of 1.74% in October, 2.40% in November, and 0.56% in December. Weekly analysis reveals that week 52 exhibits the highest strength, with 68% of instances showcasing an average increase of 0.86%.

Keeping in mind that long-ago December 20 post:

....While calendar-based trades are usually bunk, at this time of year it's good to reflect on the true meaning of Christmas. 

You know what looks cheap? GE Vernova looks Cheap (GEV)

The last time we used that locution was with Nvidia after the Deepseek hubbub, and tariff trauma, at $111.*

It went lower, with a spike down into the mid-$90's and then went over $200.

Today's Oracle news knocked GEV below the gap-up from the Investor Day enthusiasm.

From TradingView:

 

The December 9 - 10 gap-up is from $628.02 to $690. The stock is currently a $613.43 down, $72.78.

*March 7 -  "As NVIDIA’s Quantum Day Nears, Analysts Suggest Event is More Than a Gesture" (NVDA)

You know what looks cheap? Nvidia looks cheap.

That's not to say it can't get cheaper but to quote some of the old-time traders: "Well bought is half sold."

$111.29 last, up $0.72 (+0.65%) in late pre-market trading.

Nvidia's April 7 spike down actually got to $86.62 but I don't think even a round lot traded ther, it closed the day at $97.64. The November all-time-high, $212.19, was similar in that I don't think you could have gotten 10 shares off at that price.

Great Powers: "What if everyone loses?"

From EuroIntelligence, December 10:

Critiques of the US's foreign policy pivot and China's economic model might have a point, but it won't stop Europe from experiencing the blowback

One of Henry Kissinger’s best-known and most controversial quips, about the Iran-Iraq war, was that it was a pity both sides couldn't lose. Kissinger has a reputation as a cynical but ultimately clear-sighted strategist, but on this point, he is definitely wrong. Discourse about geopolitics is replete with various analogies to zero-sum games – chess, poker, maybe even backgammon. But it isn’t always so. It is very possible to have win-win situations, and perhaps even more so to have lose-lose ones.

In Europe, we would do with keeping this in mind when we assess how to respond to both the US and China. The US’s latest National Security Strategy has caused predictable outrage in the EU. The NSS goes beyond the standard Donald Trump complaint that Europeans are freeloaders. Both the document itself and a more detailed addendum that reportedly existed first are hostile to the EU itself.

It would be easy to dismiss this as bloviating. Parts of the NSS do read like a hissy fit from someone who has spent too much time arguing with self-righteous Europeans on online forums. But Trump’s problem with the EU goes beyond guff about civilisational collapse. It is more fundamental. His approach to diplomacy is transactional, and that is really hard to do with the EU. Decisions take a long time to make between member states if at all. Even when political will exists, the EU’s legal structure often mandates a certain procedure. Announcing a tariff, or dropping it, from one day to the next is not something the EU is capable of doing.

From the outside in, this, and talk of setting up a so-called C5 with China, Russia, Japan, and India, looks like someone burning down their own house because they don’t like the wallpaper. The multilateral world order – including the legal framework underpinning the EU’s existence – exists in large part because of, and to the benefit of, the US. It ties these countries to a US-centric way of doing things that is more durable than the whims of any particular leader or government. The US may give up its ability to demand any price from these countries, but it gains leverage.

But if you’re a fickle and transactional character and you want to deal with people like yourself, you have to realise they are also fickle and transactional. The most obvious flaw in the plan is that if you screw the Europeans, everyone else will be well aware you’d be perfectly willing to screw them too. The NSS also reads like it is premised on the Trump administration being in power forever, which is probably not something China and Russia are banking on. Aside from that, they know the US’s intention is to play them off against each other, because the US keeps loudly announcing it. Why would they fall into this obvious trap?

However, pointing out this will do precisely nothing to stop the Trump administration from ploughing ahead with it if they want to. In Europe, we are dependent on the US in any number of respects – most significantly for our security, but also trade, as European industry depends on trade surpluses on the back of the US. Economically, we have fallen behind the US too, with our productivity suffering after missing out on the tech boom from the 1990s onwards. We have gravely overestimated how much influence we have on the US, something that probably wouldn’t change with a new US administration. Even if the US burns its own house down, if we’re in the spare room we’ll still be set on fire.  

The same applies to China. An export-oriented economic model, combined with China’s clear lead on innovation, threatens to wreck European industry. China’s own trade surplus over the EU has grown significantly since the pandemic, and continues to. November customs data show year-on-year growth in Chinese exports to the EU of almost 15%. The trade surplus grew year-on-year by almost 30%. China’s trade surplus in November with Germany, its biggest EU trading partner, was almost 180% higher than a year before....

....MUCH MORE 

Ahead of Tomorrow's CPI Report, The Cleveland Fed's Inflation Nowcast

Tomorrow's report will be for the month of November, the report for October's CPI was lost in the government shutdown with the surveys of prices not being conducted. 

From the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, December 17:

Inflation, month-over-month percent change

Month	CPI	Core CPI	PCE	Core PCE	Updated
December 2025	0.27	0.24	0.25	0.24	12/17
November 2025	0.32	0.25	0.27	0.23	12/17
October 2025	0.18	0.25	0.19	0.23	12/17

Inflation, year-over-year percent change

Month	CPI	CoreCPI	PCE	Core PCE	Updated
December 2025	2.90	2.99	2.84	2.93	12/17
November 2025	2.99	2.95	2.87	2.88	12/17
October 2025	2.96	2.99	2.71	2.76	12/17

 ....MUCH MORE

"Oracle Stock Falls After Report on AI Data-Center Funding Talks" (ORCL; NVDA; GEV; SOXX)

And worse, "when they raid the whorehouse the take the good girls with the bad."* 

From Barron's, December 17: 

Two companies at the center of the artificial-intelligence data center investment boom are parting ways, according to a report from the Financial Times. Oracle ORCL -4.62% and alternative investments firm, Blue Owl OWL -1.96% Capital, had teamed up to create joint ventures to build AI data centers, but talks to fund a new one gigawatt data center in Michigan have fallen apart. 

Oracle’s stock dipped on the news, falling about 4.4% in early trading.

“The FT story is incorrect,” Oracle spokesperson Michael Egbert said in an emailed statement. “Our development partner, Related Digital, selected the best equity partner from a competitive group of options, which in this instance was not Blue Owl. Final negotiations for their equity deal are moving forward on schedule and according to plan.”....

....MUCH MORE 

The iShares semi ETF is down 3.2%, NVDA is down 3.8%, GE Vernova is down $50.00! (7.2%) and on and on.

*From Barry Popik's The Big Apple:

“When they raid the whorehouse, they take all the girls” (Wall Street adage)

“When they raid the whorehouse, they take all the girls” is a Wall Street saying, meaning that when stocks start to strongly fall or to strongly rise, the market takes all the stocks in the trend. The saying has been cited in print since at least 1973: “...in Wall Street’s timeworn analogy, ‘When the police raid a bawdy house, they take all the girls.’”
     
A version of the Wall Street adage with a piano player—“When you raid a whorehouse, take the piano player, too, because no one is entirely innocent”—has been cited in print since at least 1980.
     
Google Books
The Mutual Fund Trap
By John Lawrence Springer
Chicago, IL: Regnery
1973  
Pg. 165:
The record shows quite plainly that you cannot count on a fund to choose stocks that will go up while the market turns down; or, in Wall Street’s timeworn analogy, “When the police raid a bawdy house, they take all the girls.”
     
Google Books
EgoSpeak: Why no one listens to you
By Edmond G. Addeo and Robert E. Burger
London: Bantam
1974
Pg. 15:
“Sounds like they squeezed the shorts and then fell out of bed.”
“Not really. When they raid the house, they take all the girls!”
“What a bucket shop!”
Two reprobates in a Nevada house of ill repute? No. Just two stockbrokers playing a variation of JobSpeak for the benefit of a third party at San Francisco’s Iron Pot Restaurant.
   
Google Books
The Dow Jones-irwin Guide to Modern Portfolio Theory .
By Robert L. Hagin
Homewood, IL: Dow Jones-Irwin
1979
Pg. 168:
There is considerable evidence that securities tend to move with the market. Whether based on such time-honored Wall Street aphorisms as “when they raid the brothel, they take all the girls,” or Brealey’s less colorful statement, “when the wind of recession blows, there are few companies that do not lean with it,” it is true thatin major market moves, most securities move in the same direction.
   
Google Books
How Charts Can Help You in the Stock Market
By William L. Jiler
Burlington, VT: Fraser Pub. Co.
1990
Pg. 157:
As the old Wall Street saying has it, “When they raid the house, they take all the girls — and the piano player.” In other words, when the market is in a strong downtrend or uptrend, it will carry with it, sooner or later, a large majority of stocks, including many that, on their own merits, would be behaving quite differently.
 
Google Books
The Right Time The Right Place
By Charles Wohlstetter
New York, NY: Applause
1997
Pg. 22:
In the months that followed, everything, good and bad, was in free fall, confirming the age-old adage that when they raid the whorehouse they take all the girls. There were an unprecedented sixteen million shares traded on that day as the Dow Jones Average plummeted more than thirty points.
 
Google Books 
Done Deals:
Venture capitalists tell their stories
By Udayan Gupta
Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press
2000
Pg. 188:
My old boss at Fireman’s Fund used to say, “When they raid the house, they take all the girls. They don’t distinguish between good girls and bad girls, they take them all.” In this industry that means that all the stocks go down—good stocks go down with the bad stocks.
   
Google Books
Understanding Wall Street
Fifth Edition
By Jeffrey B. Little and Lucien Rhodes
New York, NY: McGraw-Hill
2010
Pg. 279:
BEAR MARKET: “When they raid the house, they take all the girls . . . but the madam and the piano player get bailed out first.” 

This Year, "Why Not Give Your Nearest And Dearest The Gift Of A Classic Financial Market Boardgame?"

From the quant elves at Winton, December 2017:

Gaming the Market
Why not give your nearest and dearest the gift of a classic financial market boardgame? Here we present 10 ideas from the Winton archive.

Winton's historical archive contains 114 financial market games that require a mix of skill and luck reminiscent of real-world investment. Some are almost 100 years old, and all say something about the intellectual fashions of the era in which they were launched.

Monopoly, probably the most famous board game, is itself such a game, focusing as it does on real estate investment. While Winton owns several versions, including the Berkshire Hathaway Diamond Edition, we have chosen instead to focus on lesser known games.

From the selection below, there are games released at the height of stock market booms, in both 1929 (Ticker) and 2000 (Contango). Others, like 1975's The Beat Inflation Strategy Game, reflect contemporary changes in global economic conditions. Hostile Takeover (1987), meanwhile, epitomises the mergers and acquisition boom of the 1980s. More recently, Bailout (2009) provides a blackly humorous take on the global financial crisis.

Some of the salient features shared by several of the games include the ability to trade on inside information, the prospect of regular market disruption and the importance of knowing when the odds are stacked in your favour.

Hostile Takeover (1987)

A game of luck and skill that might have been designed by Gordon Gekko himself. Hostile Takeover was launched in the middle of the 1980s, the decade when big-ticket corporate mergers became all the rage, as depicted in Barbarians at the Gate, the breathless account of the leveraged takeover of RJR Nabisco. Channel your inner Carl Icahn or Jimmy Goldsmith, and build an industrial conglomerate that makes a mockery of antitrust provisions.

• Catchphrases: “The Game of Wealth, Power and Insider Trading”, “The Wall Street takeover movement has come home”, “Learn firsthand what those Wall Street contenders have known for a long time. Greed is fun.”
• Goal: To be the most valuable conglomerate: either at the point at which all players bar one have run out of cash; or when no more conglomerate groups can be formed.
• Starting money: $14.5 billion

Rules:
Age: 12+; 2-4 players

One player acts as the auditor and must keep tally of the market values of the various companies. Stock prices change according to the various cards drawn.

Players can attempt to buy companies using either cash or bank loans, but may face resistance from other opponents who own the stock. By way of example, targets are able to thwart predators’ advances by playing a “random walk card”.

Features:
Hostile Takeover includes a lively potted history of corporate mergers and acquisition from its beginnings in 1974, when Canadian nickel producer INCO bought US battery maker ESB, up until 1987.

It is also replete with the evocative jargon of M&A. All of the following – and more - are in evidence: shark repellent, poison pills, the scorched earth defence, the crowned jewel defence.

Bailout (2009)

 

In this - the 10^th anniversary of the global financial crisis - why not re-live the drama of the era by playing Bailout, a game in which the usual rules of finance are turned upside down – much as they were as the US subprime mortgage market started to sour in the summer of 2007.

• Catchphrase: “When You Lose, You Win!”
• Goal: To be the player (bank) that acquires the most amount of debt.
• Starting money: $2.5 billion

Rules:
Age: 14+; 2-6 players. Each player is the Chief Financial Officer of a US bank. The aim is to preside over the institution with the largest debt pile when all players have reached the BAILOUT square, thus securing the right to be bailed out by the government.

Features:
Choose to be one of the following six US banks:

Washed Up Mutual; Bankruptcy O’America; Worth Farless; Greedy Investors of America; Liquidation Brothers; No Cashvia

When players land on the BANK STRESS TEST space, they must disclose to every other player the details of their banks’ balance sheet.

Stopping on the Bank Holiday square forces players to transfer all of their banks’ debt to the BAILOUT banker (i.e. the government).

When players land on the Frantic May and Frivolous Mac spaces, they draw a card that adds a specified amount of losses to their overall exposures from mortgage-backed securities and collateralised debt obligations.

“Important strategy advice: pay attention to all of the other players’ assets and debts during the game.”

Ticker: The Wall St Game (1929)....

....MUCH MORE

Will The Defense Bill's Requirement To Declassify Intel On Covid Origins Reveal Anything?

Some very powerful forces in play here.

From the text of the National Defense Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2026:

....SEC. 6803. DECLASSIFICATION OF INTELLIGENCE AND ADDITIONAL TRANSPARENCY 
              MEASURES RELATING TO THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC.

    Not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this 
Act, the Director of National Intelligence shall, jointly with the head 
of each element of the intelligence community--
            (1) perform a declassification review of intelligence 
        relating to the origins of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), 
        including--
                    (A) research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of 
                Virology or any other medical or scientific research 
                center within the People's Republic of China;
                    (B) information relating to Gain of Function 
                research and the intention of this research;
                    (C) information relating to sources of funding or 
                direction for research on coronaviruses, including both 
                sources within the People's Republic of China and 
                foreign sources; and
                    (D) the possibility of zoonotic origins of COVID-
                19;
            (2) perform a declassification review of intelligence 
        relating to efforts by government officials of entities of the 
        People's Republic of China--
                    (A) to disrupt or obstruct information sharing or 
                investigations into the origins of the coronavirus 
                disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic;
                    (B) to disrupt the sharing of medically significant 
                information relating to the transmissibility and 
                potential harm of SARS-CoV-2 to humans, including--
                            (i) efforts to limit the sharing of 
                        information with the United States Government;
                            (ii) efforts to limit the sharing of 
                        information with the governments of allies and 
                        partners of the United States; and
                            (iii) efforts to limit the sharing of 
                        information with the United Nations and World 
                        Health Organization;
                    (C) to obstruct or otherwise limit the sharing of 
                information between national, provincial, and city 
                governments within the People's Republic of China and 
                between subnational entities within the People's 
                Republic of China and external researchers;
                    (D) to deny the sharing of information with the 
                United States, allies and partners of the United 
                States, or multilateral organizations, including the 
                United Nations and the World Health Organization;
                    (E) to pressure or lobby foreign governments, 
                journalists, medical researchers, officials of the 
                United States Government, or officials of multilateral 
                organizations (including the United Nations and the 
                World Health Organization) with respect to the source, 
                scientific origins, transmissibility, or other 
                attributes of the SARS-CoV-2 virus or the COVID-19 
                pandemic;
                    (F) to disrupt government or private-sector efforts 
                to conduct research and development of medical 
                interventions or countermeasures for the COVID-19 
                pandemic, including vaccines; and
                    (G) to promote alternative narratives regarding the 
                origins of COVID-19 as well as the domestic Chinese and 
                international response to the COVID-19 pandemic;
            (3) release publicly the intelligence products described in 
        paragraphs (1) and (2) including such redactions as the 
        Director, with the concurrence of the head of the originating 
        intelligence community element, determines necessary to protect 
        sources and methods and information concerning United States 
        persons; and
            (4) submit to the congressional intelligence committees an 
        unredacted version of the declassified intelligence products 
        described in paragraph (3).

The big ($900 billion) bill has passed the House of Representatives and is now before the Senate.

"Only Creative Destruction Will Boost European Competitiveness"

The author, Philippe Aghion,is a 2025 Nobel laureate in economics.

From Project Syndicate, December 10:

Now that major geopolitical developments have forced Europeans to rethink how they will ensure their own prosperity, security, and sovereignty, policymakers must not take innovation for granted. This primary engine of economic growth will not run smoothly unless it is properly tuned and carefully maintained.

PARIS – While debates about Europe’s flagging growth prospects have been ongoing at least since the turn of the century, the 2020s have lent them new urgency. Not only did Russia’s invasion of Ukraine expose a dangerous dependence on imported energy, but a change of administration in the United States has forced Europeans to rethink how they will ensure their prosperity, security, and sovereignty in the future. Moreover, with America and China racing ahead in AI – widely assumed to be the next general-purpose technology, on par with the internet – Europe’s lack of dynamism has become an emergency.

The problem is not just the commonly cited gap between per capita incomes in the European Union and US. It is that Europe has long been falling behind technologically, boasting few globally recognized leaders in the digital platform economy, AI, the new space race, and other sectors that will be central to competitiveness and security in the 21st century. Deeply dependent on advanced technologies made elsewhere, and unable to generate the growth needed to finance its strategic objectives and future liabilities, Europe is a textbook example of why creative destruction – the toppling of less productive firms by innovative new challengers – matters. Forego it, and moderately reduced growth prospects are only the start of your problems....

....MUCH MORE 

If interested see also:

October 13 - Innovation and Creative Destruction: Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion, and Peter Howitt win Nobel Prize in Economics

October 18 - Once Upon A Time At Harvard: "What The Gospel Of Innovation Gets Wrong

"The electric car transition unravels slowly, then all at once" (F; TSLA)

We have dozens, if not hundreds, of posts on this topic, stretching back to 2022 or so.

Some that pop up on a quick search of the blog:

January 2024 - "China could be on track to dominate the world’s EV market, even if not in the U.S."
Elon Musk, who seems to have some insight into the industry, says there will be 10 surviving manufacturers, 9 of them Chinese.*

*****

*Here's December 8's [2023] "Western Legacy Automakers Probably Won't Be Long-Term Survivors":

Because their current business is being mandated and legislated out of existence the Western marques, barring some serious breakthroughs in small-scale hydrogen or methanol, will have to pivot to EV's.

And they won't be able to compete.It almost appears that the gifting of the electric vehicle and solar industries to the Chinese was deliberate. 
First up, from Electrical Engineering Times, December 6....

And the headline story from Bloomberg via The Japan Times December 16/17:

The global transition to electric vehicles is beginning to unravel the way major changeovers often do: slowly at first, then all at once.

This week brought a cascade of signals that the EV era is entering a more uncertain, more contested phase. The European Commission backed away from what had been the world’s most aggressive timeline for phasing out internal-combustion engines, granting manufacturers and consumers more time to move off gasoline. A day earlier, Ford announced $19.5 billion in charges tied to the retreat from an electric strategy it vowed to go all in on eight years ago.

The pullback is no longer confined to a few laggards or skeptics. From relative newcomers to legacy giants, the signs of reckoning have been mounting for months.

Take Tesla, the U.S. company that did more than any other in the world to kick-start the EV uprising. The Elon Musk-led manufacturer was never going to keep up the meteoric rise pulled off at the beginning of the decade, but it’s no longer just slowing down — worldwide vehicle deliveries are poised to drop for the second year in a row. Musk’s interests have wandered from pursuing a $25,000 electric car to developing humanoid robots and driverless taxis.

China’s BYD will become the new No. 1 purveyor of battery-electric cars in 2025, though it too is now having growing pains, with total sales falling each of the last three months. The company is still producing one plug-in hybrid with a gas engine under the hood for every battery-only EV, and its momentum is stalling in part because authorities in Beijing are increasingly scrutinizing pricing practices.

Ford has had plenty of company in struggling to catch up with the electric leaders.

Its archrival General Motors recently incurred $1.6 billion in charges tied to paring EV production capacity, and flagged more such moves may be in the offing. Stellantis has scrapped plans for a fully electric Ram pickup and revived gas-guzzling V-8 engines that it will have no trouble selling in a U.S. market that has hollowed out fuel economy and emissions standards.

When Volkswagen — Europe’s carmaker that was once most motivated to chase Tesla — ends output of electric ID.3 hatchbacks this month in Dresden, it will be the first time in 88 years the carmaker will have ceased production at a German assembly plant. VW too has taken substantial financial blows, booking €4.7 billion ($5.5 billion) in charges tied to its subsidiary Porsche reversing from EVs.

For all the challenges the industry is having, the transition isn’t being abandoned....

....MUCH MORE 

Tesla stock just hit its highest level ever and that investor enthusiasm is not based on electric vehicle sales. Musk saw something a bit over three years ago that scared him enough to reorient the company. 

As Intel's Andy Grove famously said:

“Business success contains the seeds of its own destruction. 

Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. 

Only the paranoid survive.”

Mr. Musk has his blind spots but China sneaking up on Tesla probably isn't one of them. He knows that Western companies will eventually lose the battle for electric vehicle dominance and something that he saw sometime in the last couple years seems to have scared him into action on the fronts where Tesla has a competitive advantage: access to some truly brilliant people; artificial intelligence facilitated by a long history with Nvidia and autonomous vehicles.

So again, we wish him luck, and think he'll succeed but this stuff is serious business.  

Here's the stock price action over the last year:

FinViz

June 2024 - Morgan Stanley Analyst Adam Jonas Writes A Love Letter To Tesla (TSLA)

A confession of bullish bias up front, from April 24's "Tesla Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript (TSLA)":

In pre-market action the stock is up $17.47 (+12.07%) at $162.15.

Below are the words that are adding billions ($50+) to the company's valuation. 

Personally I think Musk is going to pull it off, but that's just me—perhaps informed by posting on the company and its stock since before the June 2010 share flotation (which, adjusted for the 5:1 and 3:1 stock splits gives a $1.133 IPO price)—however, there are plenty of other opinions to choose from if one doesn't care for that one....

More from that post after the jump.

As noted July 8 with the stock at $249.07: "Chartology: Tesla Stock Now Has A Very Wide Range To Churn Through (TSLA)". And September 5 A Word Of Caution On Tesla's Stock (TSLA):

Now don't get me wrong, I'm as much into Elon's/Baidu's/Nvidia's vision of flying cars and robotaxis as the next person and haven't changed this opinion on the company from April 24's "Tesla Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript (TSLA)":

...In pre-market action the stock is up $17.47 (+12.07%) at $162.15.

....One quibble. The line "Tesla has relied on price cuts since late 2022..." reads like a bad thing but the fact of the matter is that the entire industry has been cutting prices and Tesla getting out in front of that reality has kept them competitive in the battery-electric-vehicle business.

As we've been saying for quite a while now, Mr. Musk saw something a couple years ago that led him to a) the price cuts and production efficiencies that are proving crucial to survival in not just EV's but in the wider automobile market as well. Volkswagen talking about possibly laying off 30,000 of their German employees was inconceivable five years ago. And b) whatever it was he saw also led to the emphasizing of things they been working on for a decade: robotaxis and AI and supercomputers and robots.

So, for patient reader, having read this far, here's my two cents worth: 

Deliveries will be in-line this month and the next few months and the robotaxi unveil will be written up as a bust. The people who write the headlines hate Elon Musk and nothing he does will ever, ever change that. The financial question is: will the self-driving taxis be contributing to sales and earnings in two years?

Based on the fact that Waymo is now booking 100,000 rides per week I think the answer is yes but your mileage may vary. To repeat the comment on the April earnings call transcript:

Personally I think Musk is going to pull it off, but that's just me—perhaps informed by posting on the company and its stock since before the June 2010 share flotation (which, adjusted for the 5:1 and 3:1 stock splits gives a $1.133 IPO price)—however, there are plenty of other opinions to choose from if one doesn't care for that one....

In late pre-market action the stock is trading up $1.17 (+0.45%) at $262.80 after closing Monday at $261.63 also up $1.17 (+0.45%).

And on December 16 2025 the stock set both intraday and closing highs, $491.50 and $489.88 respectively. In pre-market trade the stock is down 39¢  (-0.08%) at $489.49.

Atlanta Fed: U.S. GDP Expanding At 3.5% Annual Rate

That seems hot, we'll have to compare with the next release, December 23.

The last official number came out on September 25:

Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 3.8 percent in the second quarter of 2025 (April, May, and June), according to the third estimate released by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the first quarter, real GDP decreased 0.6 percent (revised). The increase in real GDP in the second quarter primarily reflected a decrease in imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, and an increase in consumer spending. These movements were partly offset by decreases in investment and exports.

And from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta's GDPNow December 16:

Latest estimate: 3.5 percent — December 16, 2025

The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the third quarter of 2025 is 3.5 percent on December 16, down from 3.6 percent on December 11. After this morning’s releases from the US Census Bureau and US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the contributions of consumer spending and inventory investment to third-quarter real GDP growth fell slightly to 1.84 and 0.09 percentage points, respectively.

The next GDPNow update, which is subject to change, is Tuesday, December 23. It will also be the first model nowcast for fourth-quarter GDP growth....

....MUCH MORE

"Pax Silica Marks End of Globalization’s Golden Age"

From the electrical engineering wizards at EE Times, December 15:

Last week’s launch of the Pax Silica Initiative marked a significant shift in global geopolitics. Convened by the second Trump administration, this coalition signals a move away from post-Cold War globalization toward a new model of economic statecraft focused on securing artificial intelligence (AI) and semiconductor supply chains.

The Pax Silica Declaration brings together nine core nations—the United States, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Australia—to collectively secure the strategic foundations of the digital economy.

The initiative’s name intentionally references past hegemonies, such as Pax Romana and Pax Americana, implying that modern peace and stability will depend on control of silicon and computational power rather than military strength alone.

The end of efficiency
For thirty years, the global semiconductor supply chain prioritized efficiency, relying on just-in-time manufacturing and concentrated production in East Asia. The crises of the 2020s revealed the vulnerabilities of this model. The Pax Silica Initiative reflects a shared belief among allied nations that economic security is national security, a principle strongly supported by the Trump administration.

This urgency arises from the understanding that AI is a transformative force for long-term prosperity and military advantage, not just another industry. Jacob Helberg, the initiative’s chief architect and Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, summarized this shift: “If the 20th century ran on oil and steel, the 21st century runs on compute and the minerals that feed it.”

The coalition seeks to eliminate single points of failure by establishing a more resilient economic order. This directly addresses the growing risks of dependency on China, which controls about 90% of rare earth refining needed for advanced semiconductors. By treating compute, silicon, minerals, and energy as shared strategic assets, the alliance aims to secure the physical infrastructure of AI from unauthorized access or control.

Building on the Biden foundation
Although the initiative is a signature policy of the second Trump term, it is built on diplomatic groundwork from the previous administration. The inclusion of the Netherlands and Japan stems from a confidential trilateral agreement reached in January 2023 under the Biden administration, which aligned export controls to restrict advanced immersion Deep Ultraviolet (DUV) lithography tool exports from ASML to China.

Pax Silica formalizes and expands this arrangement into a comprehensive economic security framework, shifting from simple restrictions to active supply chain integration. This continuity demonstrates bipartisan agreement in Washington on limiting Chinese technological ambitions, though the Trump administration has added a more transactional approach.

Departing from the previous strategy of total blockade, President Trump has allowed Nvidia to sell its advanced H200 AI chips to approved customers in China, with a 25% fee paid to the U.S. government. This approach monetizes Chinese demand for compute while maintaining oversight, representing a notable win for Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who opposed complete market exclusion.

Corporate and geopolitical winners
The signatories were chosen for their control over key choke points in the semiconductor value chain. The alliance’s “Iron Triangle”—Japan, the Netherlands, and South Korea—forms the industrial core of the initiative....

....MUCH MORE 

"Japan’s Prime Minister Takes on Bond Market Vigilantes"

From Foreign Policy, December 16:

Sanae Takaichi’s massive spending program could be a risky political win. 

Recently elected Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has proposed an ambitious 21 trillion yen ($135 billion) spending program that puts new stresses on already heavily overdrawn government coffers and raises the specter of a Liz Truss-style market shock. For international investors, it adds further uncertainty, but for the Japanese bond market, it is déjà vu all over again.

The plan fulfills Takaichi’s campaign promise of a “proactive fiscal policy” that is designed to bring Japan out of its long stupor since the collapse of the bubble economy back in 1990. Taking note of public opinion polls, a major part of the spending will be intended to help people cope with higher prices through various subsidies rather than taking more painful steps to control inflation itself.

While still low by global standards, Japan’s inflation rate of around 3 percent is being felt by consumers, especially since much of the increase comes in higher costs for food, up 6.4 percent in November compared to levels one year ago, including a 40.2 percent increase in the price of the daily staple of rice. Takaichi has proposed measures that include subsidies for electricity and gas bills as well as cash handouts for households with children.

In addition, she wants to make targeted investments in sectors such as semiconductors and shipbuilding, plans that recall the glory days of Japan’s state economy in the 1950s and 1960s, when the powerful Ministry of International Trade and Industry played a key role in the economy—and arguably helped to create the postwar “economic miracle.”

While few would argue with the hopes for a fast-growing Japanese economy, there seems to be little reason to think that Takaichi will succeed where all her predecessors have largely failed. Prior attempts at fiscal stimulus, especially ones attempted in the 1990s with a focus on big infrastructure projects, did little for overall economic growth while pushing the debt load consistently higher.

Despite regular lip service to the idea of “fiscal responsibility,” administrations through the past 30 years have found it easier to spend than to save. The government debt load has soared from just 48 percent of Japan’s annual GDP in 1980 to a peak of more than 258 percent in 2020, according to data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). By contrast, the much-debated U.S. debt load is at 125 percent of GDP, according to the IMF.

Takaichi has said that her additional spending will not be a problem, since it will create higher growth and therefore higher tax revenues.

“As we build a robust economy and raise our growth rate, we will reduce the government debt-to-GDP ratio, realize fiscal sustainability, and ensure the confidence of the markets,” she confidently predicted when she rolled out the program in late November.

Markets have been skeptical, and analysts have been quick to compare Takaichi’s claims with the debacle that resulted from a similar attempt by British Prime Minister Liz Truss in 2022. Soon after taking office, Truss announced a robust spending package that she claimed would be a cure-all for all that ailed the economy. The market reaction was quick, with a sharp fall in the value of British government bonds and quick market intervention by the Bank of England, followed by Truss being rapidly ejected from office by her own party.

Such talk of a looming Japanese debt crisis is far from new. As the debt burden has steadily marched into ever higher record territory over the past 35 years, there have been regular, well-reasoned forecasts of how a debt burden that is the highest ever recorded by a major economy (Britain came close during the Napoleonic wars and just after World War II) would create a panic in government bonds. The markets are still waiting.

Through this period, Japan also had among the world’s lowest interest rates, making the debt less expensive to service. This dichotomy prompted one of the most memorable comments on Japan, made by a clearly frustrated Willem Buiter, then the chief economist for Citigroup, who mentioned Japan at a New York meeting in 2010, when the debt level had reached 220 percent of GDP. “Japan is the hardest economy in the world to understand,” he said. “If this were physics, then gravity wouldn’t work in Japan.”....

....MUCH MORE 

How Serious Is China's Demographic Doom? Almost Beyond Comprehension

A repost from January 2024.

From Asia Times, January 20:

China’s falling population could halve by 2100
Shanghai Academy of Social Science projects China’s working-age population will decline to 210 million in 2100 – a mere one-fifth of its 2014 peak 

China’s population has shrunk for the second year in a row.

The National Bureau of Statistics reports just 9.02 million births in 2023 – only half as many as in 2017. Set alongside China’s 11.1 million deaths in 2023, up 500,000 on 2022, it means China’s population shrank 2.08 million in 2023 after falling 850,000 in 2022. That’s a loss of about 3 million in two years.

The two consecutive declines are the first since the great famine of 1959-1961, and the trend is accelerating.

Updated low-scenario projections from a research team at Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, one of the first to predict the 2022 turndown, have China’s population shrinking from its present 1.4 billion to just 525 million by 2100.

China’s working-age population is projected to fall to just 210 million by 2100 – a mere one-fifth of its peak in 2014.

Deaths climbing as births falling
The death rate is climbing as an inevitable result of the population aging, and also an upsurge of Covid in the first few months of 2023.

The population is aging mainly because the birth rate is falling.

China’s total fertility rate, the average number of births per woman, was fairly flat at about 1.66 between 1991 and 2017 under China’s one-child policy. But it then fell to 1.28 in 2020, to 1.08 in 2022 and is now around 1, which is way below the level of 2.1 generally thought necessary to sustain a population.

By way of comparison, Australia and the United States have fertility rates of 1.6. In 2023 South Korea has the world’s lowest rate, 0.72....

....MUCH MORE

How does a country lose 80% of their working-age population in 86 years?

"OpenAI in talks with Amazon about investment that could exceed $10 billion" (AMZN; SAM)

From CNBC, December 16:

• OpenAI is in discussions with Amazon about a potential investment of $10 billion or more, though that number isn’t set, CNBC confirmed.
• The agreement would also include use of Amazon’s chips. 

OpenAI is in discussions with Amazon about a potential investment and an agreement to use its artificial intelligence chips, CNBC confirmed on Tuesday.

The details are fluid and still subject to change but the investment could exceed $10 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the talks are confidential. The Information first reported on the potential deal.

The discussions come after OpenAI completed a restructuring in October and formally outlined the details of its partnership with Microsoft, giving it more freedom to raise capital and partner with companies across the broader AI ecosystem.

Microsoft has invested more than $13 billion in OpenAI and backed the company since 2019, but it no longer has a right of first refusal to be OpenAI’s compute provider, according to an October release. OpenAI can now also develop some products with third parties.

Amazon has invested at least $8 billion into OpenAI rival Anthropic, but the e-commerce giant could be looking to expand its exposure to the booming generative AI market. Microsoft has taken a similar step and announced last month that it will invest up to $5 billion into Anthropic, while Nvidia will invest up to $10 billion in the startup....

....MUCH MORE 

As can be seen in the simplified flowchart from "Reformatting flow diagrams for explaining complex processes," it all boils down to money:

 

Related: 

March 2011 - The computer model that once explained the British economy (and the new one that explains the world)

....Genius.
Here's the original Phillips (he of the curve) Machine:

From the headline article at the Guardian.

Here's the schematic, from the New York Times:

Two weeks ago, while visiting Cambridge University, I arranged to have lunch with my friend Allan McRobie. He’s a professor of engineering, so it seemed a bit strange that he kept insisting we meet at the department of applied economics. “There’s something there you’ve really got to see,” he said in his Liverpudlian lilt. “It’s utterly fab. Just brilliant. The Phillips machine — it uses water to predict the economy.”...MORE

 

Schematic diagram of the Phillips machine. (Click to enlarge.)

And here's the latest incarnation:

Genius squared.

The second schematic is from a post on GE's Mark I nuclear reactor at ZeroHedge! 

Uber CEO Says Robotaxis Are A Trillion-Dollar Business (Asia is the key)

From Business Insider, December 11:

Uber CEO says robotaxis are a 'trillion-dollar-plus' business — and one market will drive the boom 

• Uber CEO says one market will lead the robotaxi boom.
• Dara Khosrowshahi said robotaxis are a "trillion-dollar-plus" industry and Asia has major potential.
• The ride-hailing giant has been leaning hard into autonomous driving.

Uber is preparing for a robotaxi surge, and its CEO says one market will drive it.

Dara Khosrowshahi said in an interview with Bloomberg Television published Friday that robotaxis are a "trillion-dollar-plus" opportunity and Asia is a huge growth market for the ride-hailing giant.

"I expect to be in 10-plus markets by next year. And we want those markets to be in the Asia-Pacific region as well," Khosrowshahi said. Uber has self-driving vehicles in the US and the Middle East.

Analysts have long touted autonomous mobility as one of the biggest bets in the transportation industry. In 2023, McKinsey estimated that if robotaxis and roboshuttles scale, the shared-mobility market could reach $1 trillion by 2030.

Khosrowshahi said Japan has "great potential" for its robotaxi push, despite being behind in regulation.

"With an aging population, there's a real need for transportation, not just in the large cities but in the rural areas," he added. He also pointed to Hong Kong and Australia as potential key markets for its robotaxi services.

Khosrowshahi said Uber now works with more than 20 autonomous-vehicle partners — including China's Baidu, WeRide, and Pony.ai, as well as Waymo in the US.

"We will have access to autonomous technologies in the large cities and markets that really count," he added....

....MUCH MORE 

February 2015 - The End Of Mass Car Ownership Is Coming Mr. Ford 

May 2015 - Big Money: Uber Guts Carnegie Mellon Robotics Lab To Hire Autonomous Car Developers
Raising money at a $600 illion zillion fafillion valuation allows you to buy pretty much anything.
The way this is going to pan out is: you won't be able to own the vehicle but its use will be mandated. The car is autonomous but the people aren't.... 

Which led to June 2016's "Uber Is Stealing Scientists, But Only So It Can Lay Off Drivers":
Ain’t no partnership like an Uber partnership, cuz… an Uber partnership will leave your previously elite research institution bereft of researchers....

August 2015 - Understanding The Future Of Mobility: On-Demand Driverless Cars  

March 2017 - Remember that time Uber's Kalanick said having autonomous was crucial to the company's very survival? (a deep dive) 

 

September 2025 - "The economics of self-driving taxis" (GOOG; UBER)

You want economics? Here's a nasty person on the economics:

"When there's no other dude in the car, the cost of taking an Uber anywhere becomes 
cheaper than owning a vehicle. So the magic there is, you basically bring the cost below 
the cost of ownership for everybody, and then car ownership goes away."

—Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, May 28, 2014

 

And a few hundred more posts between the bookends. 

"Why many Asian megacities are miserable places And why Shanghai and Tokyo are not "

From The Economist, December 11:

FOR SEVEN decades Tokyo was considered the world’s most populous city. That was 15 years too long, according to data released last month by the UN. Until recently the organisation’s statisticians accepted national governments’ definitions of where their cities began and ended; their latest report accepts the reality of urban sprawl. By their new measures, Jakarta (pictured), Indonesia’s capital, jumps to the top of the board with 42m people, about as many as Canada. Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, with 37m, has also pulled ahead of Tokyo, with 33m. Delhi and Shanghai, with around 30m people each, fill out the top five.

The UN’s latest figures highlight tremendous urbanisation. These days 45% of humanity lives in cities (with at least 50,000 people); another 36% inhabit towns (with at least 5,000). The data also show that much of the growth is happening in middle-income Asia. Only one of the world’s ten biggest cities lies outside that continent. And only seven of the world’s 33 “megacities” (boasting over 10m people) are in rich countries. By 2050 Jakarta and Dhaka will between them add another 25m people, nearly as many as live in Australia.

These migrations should help make people better off. “Dhaka changed my life and secured my kids’ education,” says Clinton Chakma, who found a job as a waiter after migrating from a farm in 2022. Yet there is also a huge risk: that as Asia’s cities expand, squalor, pollution and gridlock increasingly undercut the economic boost they provide. “People move to cities to be part of the labour market,” says Alain Bertaud of New York University. But if the labour market does not work “you build a poverty trap”.

Jakarta, Dhaka and Delhi already rank among the world’s worst cities to live in, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, our sister company. Jakarta ranks 132nd out of 173 cities; Delhi is 145th. Dhaka comes third from last, with only Damascus and Libya’s Tripoli behind. If Asian countries are to break out of the middle-income trap, they must solve the problems that plague their cities. The best way of doing that is not through piecemeal projects, but by taking a hard look at the dysfunctional ways urban areas are governed.

Jakarta—nobody’s idea of a lovely city—is as good a place as any to see all this on the ground. After years of expansion it now encompasses the neighbouring cities of Bogor, Depok, Tangerang and Bekasi (see map). Yet there is far too little co-ordination among these neighbouring authorities. A settlement as populous as some countries is governed as coherently as a clowder of cats.

The cost of this fragmented governance is perhaps best seen in Jakarta’s notorious traffic. It is the world’s 12th-most congested place (Dhaka ranks third and Delhi seventh). Unable to afford housing near their workplaces, many Jakartans live in far-flung suburbs. A vastly inadequate public transport system encourages them to travel by two-wheelers or in cars, which jams up the roads and causes air pollution. All this cuts productivity. The government of Jakarta reckons traffic jams cost its economy $6bn each year.

In 2019 Jakarta got its first metro line. But it stops abruptly at the city’s official administrative boundary, short of commuter neighbourhoods. There is an urgent need for co-ordination within the agglomeration, says Adhika Ajie, the head of research and innovation at Jakarta’s city government. “Otherwise it’s useless.” Good luck with that. “Throughout my time there was very little conversation with other mayors of surrounding cities,” says a former official in the city administration.

Similar problems affect megacities elsewhere in Asia. Dhaka has enveloped satellite cites with which it has little co-ordination. But it also suffers from being run by two municipal corporations, a national development authority, several ministries and dozens of different agencies which are individually responsible for things such as water, sewage and transport. A mayor of Dhaka North City Corporation once complained that he lacked the authority to deal with 80% of the problems that affect his city, including traffic and flooding.

Parts of India, now home to five “megacities”, are in the same boat. Governance in Delhi is split between municipal bodies, a state government, the national government and several bodies created to oversee matters such as housing, planning and the metro rail. The Kolkata metropolitan area (the world’s ninth-largest) contains no fewer than 423 different governing entities, according to the World Bank.

How do successful cities do it? One model is Shanghai, which is run by the central government as a province rather than a city. It exercises strong, centralised authority over all major urban functions, from planning to transport. But China’s governance model is unique: pressure on leaders comes not from voters but from bosses in Beijing. Party leaders cannot afford to let areas of the city grow unruly.

A better model is Tokyo. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government (TMG) is responsible for big-ticket public services such as water, sewage and public hospitals. Beneath it sit 23 wards and a host of peripheral cities and towns. Each municipality has its own elected mayor and assembly, responsible for services such as schools, waste management and community planning. The TMG co-ordinates between them. It is a sensible split that clearly delineates authority while also making sure that decision-making is joined up.....

....MORE 

Economist home. 

Possibly also of interest:

November 2025 -  "Jakarta becomes world’s most populous city while Tokyo shrinks"

March 2011 - Most Populous Cities Through the Centuries (and diagrams of the principle high buildings of the world, 1884)

April 2018 - "Population: 'Future Hubs of Africa and Asia'" on where to focus efforts and resources:

...This demographic boom could, under the right conditions, result in a regional or even a global economic boom. These conditions are first and foremost 1) an increase in literacy and 2) an improvement in governance, in the poorest countries where the population is growing rapidly. Higher literacy, in particular among young women, sets off a chain reaction that drives down infant mortality rates and total fertility rates. In time, this evolution leads to a falling dependency ratio and creates an opportunity for the economy to realize a demographic dividend. This was in large part the dynamic that created the China boom in the past three decades....

 

December 2019 - Did Kinshasa Just Pass Paris As the World's Most Populous French-Speaking City?

November 2021 - "Cities that grow themselves: They are spreading like branching plants across the globe. Should we rein cities in or embrace their biomorphic potential?"

I for one, look forward to experiencing the mega-cities* of the year 2100.

Frankly, I look forward to experiencing anything in the year 2100.....

*The estimated seven most populous cities in 2100 via the construction mavens at B1M:

1. LAGOS, NIGERIA - 88.3 MILLION
2. KINSHASA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO - 83.5 MILLION
3. DAR ES SALAAM, TANZANIA - 73.7 MILLION
4. MUMBAI, INDIA - 67.2 MILLION
5. DELHI, INDIA - 57.3 MILLION
6. KHARTOUM, SUDAN – 56.6 MILLION
7. NIAMEY, NIGER – 56.1 MILLION

....MUCH MORE

None of the Chinese mega-cities makes the year 2100 top ten, nor does the current population champ, Tokyo.  

November 2022 - "Megalopolis: how coastal west Africa will shape the coming century"

As the old-timers used to say, "Pay attention or pay the offer."

And many, many more.  

"Departing SEC official warns of coming “winter” for US capital markets"

So no repeal of SEC Rule 10b-18?*

From the World Socialist Website, December 15:

The rise of Trump to the presidency of the US and his efforts to construct a fascistic dictatorship represent the violent realignment of the political superstructure to more openly and directly express the domination of the American economy and increasingly all aspects of life by a financial oligarchy.

In its mode of existence, its social being, this oligarchy, based on the endless accumulation of wealth through stock market speculation, financial market operations and parasitism, demands the abolition of all remaining restrictions on its activity.

One of the expressions of this process, which derives not from the personal characteristics of the individuals involved but from the objective logic of the system they head, is the evisceration of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the regulatory authority of the stock market.

The extent of this gutting operation was highlighted in a speech last week by Caroline Crenshaw upon her impending exit from the SEC. She first referred to the dismantling of the SEC block by block back in May and expanded on this assessment in her latest remarks.

Summing up what she called the “chaos” of the past year, Crenshaw said: “The appetite to deregulate has been rapacious; the analysis of the costs and benefits of our policies has been non-existent; and the repercussions… could be dire.”....

....MUCH MORE 

Also at the WSWS:

How can GM workers at Factory Zero in the US oppose layoffs? Answers from Socialism AI 

Since its launch on December 12, Socialism AI has provided thousands of users throughout the world with access to the revolutionary perspective of Marxism, drawing from more than 175 years of historical material and nearly three decades of WSWS coverage. With each interaction, it is helping workers and young people understand the world and how to change it.

This new feature will highlight selected questions and answers from Socialism AI—concise, clear and politically insightful responses to some of the most pressing issues of our time. If you come across an answer that you think should be featured in a future installment, use the form at the bottom of this article to submit it for consideration....

....MUCH MORE
*December 1, 2020:
Taibbi: "The S.E.C. Rule That Destroyed The Universe"

I've mentioned SEC Rule 10b-18 a few times, some links after the jump.

A lifetime of looking at this stuff has led me to the conclusion that in the U.S. stock buybacks are nothing more than a tax-avoidance scam with the added benefit of rewarding managers for things they didn't do by, well, managing the company rather than the stock price....

*****

...the answer is pretty straightforward, go back to the pre-1982 rules on share repurchases:

...II. Overview of Current Rule 10b-18
A. Rule 10b-18 as a "Safe Harbor"
In 1982, the Commission adopted Rule 10b-18,4 which provides that an issuer will not be deemed to have violated Sections 9(a)(2) and 10(b) of the Exchange Act, and Rule 10b-5 under the Exchange Act, solely by reason of the manner, timing, price, or volume of its repurchases, if the issuer repurchases its common stock in the market in accordance with the safe harbor conditions.5 Rule 10b-18's safe harbor conditions are designed to minimize the market impact of the issuer's repurchases, thereby allowing the market to establish a security's price based on independent market forces without undue influence by the issuer....

—In U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission—Final Rule—Purchases of Certain Equity Securities by the Issuer and Others,  Effective Date: December 17, 2003

The old rule considered it stock manipulation.