What's all the fuss about with the Toyota car recall?

The Japanese Toyota president was compelled to fly over to Washington from Tokyo and make a grovelling public apology under intense media scrutiny inside the US Congress. Politicians know they can get a lot of free press by stoking the popular perception that Toyota somehow knew the gas pedals were "dangerous," but installed them anyway, violating U.S. laws and regulations. U.S. automakers are doing everything to encourage this hysteria. This was just plain old fashioned bullying...

However, let's look at the facts so far. The probability these accidents resulted from the use of an ill-designed component of accelerator pedals getting stuck and causing fatal crashes, I had to consider the numbers: 34 people died in accidents blamed on the pedals. That's a pretty small number, but maybe enough to raise some concerns... until you realize that's the total number of fatalities since 2000.

Toyota has recalled more than 8.5 million vehicles in the U.S. Assume the owners drive those vehicles an average of 10,000 miles a year (that's less than 30 miles round-trip a day...conservative in the vast spaces of the US - and a factor of 10 makes the maths simpler). This means Toyotas are logging more than 85 billion miles a year in the U.S. or 850 billion miles during the last 10 years.

By dividing 34 deaths into 850 billion miles and the odds of a Toyota owner having one of these accidents is one in 25 billion for each mile driven...or your cahnces of being are a fatality are one in 2.5 million. That's a random event. If Toyota were using faulty equipment, we would have seen thousands more accidents and deaths...and you can bet in a litigious society like the United States, claims would have been filed by savvy lawyers and piled high in the law courts by now, on par probably with cigarette-induced diseases.

You're more likely to get killed by lightning: 60 people died from lightning in the United States just in 2009. The odds of a hole-in-one in golf are only 5,000 to 1.

Statistics aside, the allegedly defective accelerator part is made in Canada by Indiana-based CTS Corp. Many makes and models use this same part. For example, the Pontiac Vibe uses it. Ford sells a van in China with the component. Why aren't we hearing about those cars? None of the drivers with American cars that use identical parts ever experienced a stuck accelerator? US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told people to stop driving Toyotas... and then retracted it saying it was "obviously a misstatement."

I'm confident those parts are safe. It makes sense for those driving recalled Toyotas to get the pedal replaced and ignoring the recall voids the warranty.

Look for Toyota to be one of the consistent performers of the decade too...

Linking 1 trillion dollars to the founding of modern Rome...

When I was at school, it wasn't long before I was drawn to the fascinating subject of history. With great teachers who were quick to engage young minds, I was quick to absorb all the best and worst achievements of mankind... nothing quenches the thirst for knowledge more than anchoring a few memorable dates, the names of kings and queens from ancient Egypt to modern Britain, titanic battles fought on land, sea and air plus the rich tapestry of discoveries and inventions stemming from the plain wheel to the rocket engine.

I was trying to figure out what a trillion dollars (one milllion million or thousand billion) mean to people nowdays. It can be hard to get one's head around this (unless you live in Zimbabwe where they have issued a trillion banknote in 2009). There were two ways I approached this:

1. If one were to print and spend 1 million a day, how long would it take to go through a 1 trillion...
- The maths would be 1,000,000,000,000 (that's a whopping twelve zeroes) divided by 1,000,000 = 1 million days. That would be 2,740 years.
- Another way to look at this is, you would have had to go back to 730 BC (before Christ) and keep spending a million dollars a day non-stop up to today. That goes back to the era of the founding of Rome by Romulus and Remus in 753 BC! Staggering!
[The insignia of the Roman Standard was SPQR: Senatus Populusque Romanus - "The Senate and the People of Rome", or should that be Spending Plentifully Quickly Redux, because it was spending over-reach that led to the demise of the empire in the end.]

2. What does US$ trillion physically look like?
Below are graphics from the Centre for Research on Globalisation (California) / pagetutor.com on what US$ 1 trillion looks like.

Let's start with a humble US$100 note, the largest denomination in general circulation:









A packet of one hundred $100 bills is less than 1/2" thick and contains $10,000. Fits in your pocket easily and is more than enough for week or two of shamefully decadent fun:










This next little pile is $1 million dollars (100 packets of $10,000). You could stuff that into a carrier bag and walk around with it:


While a measly $1 million looked a little unimpressive, $100 million is a little more respectable. It fits neatly on a standard pallet:













And $1 BILLION dollars... now we're really getting somewhere...














Now, figure this out...US$ 1 TRILLION...a million million or one thousand billion and notice it's double stacked.


This has convinced me the US government with its US$100+ trillion debt mountain (I guess you can picture this now) of liabilities (eg. from current and projected annual fiscal deficits, Medicare & Medicaid healthcare programmes for an increasingly aging population and massive military commitments overseas) is already bankrupt and will never be able to settle in full with its creditors China, Japan, Middle-east oil nations. Given the hard choice between a reality that is hard to accept and a delusion that is impossible to trust, I will pick the reality. The US dollar will descend from current reserve currency status to "Monopoly" money and not be worth the paper it's printed on. The last refuge for stores of value will be in physical commodities like precious metals, crude oil and farmland.

How to plan for and protect yourself against the implications:
How the Greenspan Guidotti Rule foretells a currency crisis?

Valentine's Day distilled...funnies on love

It's Valentine' Day today...and New Year's Day too in the Chinese calendar. That puts some Oriental folks in a bit of a quandary...what gives?...attending to the New Year well-wishing rituals centering around their close families and joyfully dispensing & receiving red laisee packets...or being attentive to their lovers' needs. It was Mao who stated "Women hold up half the sky..." in recognition of their pivotal importance in society, albeit spelling out the blindingly obvious, but an anachronism that blights modern China today.

Since the dawn of the human race, understanding your partner or new-found-love has been the ultimate voyage to self-discovery. Moving right along, we will enter the risky theme of the differences between Mars and Venus. Political correctness and economic reality will therefore be temporarily suspended...

ROMANCE MATHEMATICS
Smart man + smart woman = romance
Smart man + dumb woman = affair
Dumb man + smart woman = marriage
Dumb man + dumb woman = pregnancy

OFFICE ARITHMETIC
Smart boss + smart employee = profit
Smart boss + dumb employee = production
Dumb boss + smart employee = promotion
Dumb boss + dumb employee = overtime

SHOPPING MATHS
A man will pay $2 for a $1 item he needs.
A woman will pay $1 for a $2 item that she doesn't need.

GENERAL EQUATIONS & STATISTICS
A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband.
A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.
A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend.
A successful woman is one who can find such a man.

HAPPINESS
To be happy with a man, you must understand him a lot and love him a little.
To be happy with a woman, you must love her a lot and not try to understand her at all.

LONGEVITY
Married men live longer than single men do, but married men are a lot more willing to die.

PROPENSITY TO CHANGE
A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn't.
A man marries a woman expecting that she won't change, and she does.

DISCUSSION TECHNIQUE
A woman has the last word in any argument.
Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.

Love makes the world go round, sends women dizzy and puts men in a spin. That's what I call manna from the orbital heavens!

Black clouds gather over Europe...a Greek tragedy playing out...

Greece is in trouble. At first gradually, and then with alarming speed, the country has lost credibility with investors because it borrowed too much money and now it can't afford to service its debt. Greece's problems don't directly influence most Chinese and American businesses, but they remind us of the greater issue that's still out there...

The whole world is carrying too much debt. Years and years of artificially low interest rates, lax lending standards, and a belief that assets can't fall have clogged our arteries with bad investments and unserviceable debts. We had a heart attack in 2008. It hurt, but it didn't kill us. We should have learned from it. Instead, we ordered the world's biggest plate of pancakes and bacon. We took on another huge slab of debt and we supported all the malinvestments. Greece's problems are like chest pains after you've just left the hospital. They make your family nervous... Given the massive debt levels, investors are demanding a very high rate of return at 7% because the risk of default is high, compared with 4.5% a few months ago.. If Greece is not able to raise capital, it won t be able to meet its obligations.




















If Germany bails out Greece, it just makes the problems in Europe worse. Greece stops trying to fix itself, and now every other broke European country knows they can have a bailout, too. They also stop austerity measures. And meanwhile, the debt burden is still there. It hasn't gone away. They've just pushed the default farther into the future.


Greece, in other words, is the fiscal Petri dish that reveals in gory detail what could happen if soveriegn governments fail to maintain the confidence of investors. It is not merely that those interest rates are already inflicting an awful toll on borrowers in Athens and beyond. It is that they are sending the national government towards a full-blown debt spiral, in which the cost of its annual interest bill becomes so unmanageable that it can hardly afford to supply its citizens with basic services.

But on the bigger matter of what this euro collapse country by country means: in the usual sequence, if Greece were still using its own drachma, the world would write down the currency, devaluing it in exchange terms. The holders of Greek bonds would take a big capital loss and the system would eventually regain a better trade balance as Greece wouldn’t be able to afford to import as much at the same time that exports would increase thanks to cheaper labor. But with the European Union in place, the exchange rate can't move, so Greek interest rates have jumped.

Greece is not a major economic power. It only represents 2% of Europe s GDP. The market is paying close attention to this situation because Greece is a microcosm of Europe. Many other nations are in a similar situation (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania and even the United Kingdom). Enormous debts have resulted from liberal social programs (national healthcare, pensions, welfare) and many governments have been spending beyond their means for decades. A year ago, they were not in a financial position to spend billions of dollars on bailouts and stimulus programs but they did. Now, they are dangerously close to the breaking down completely.

The situation in Greece might be resolved in the next two weeks, but the next problem is just around the corner. Last week, Portugal tried to raise $1 billion in a one-year auction and they had to cancel it due to low demand. When a country can t even auction short-term maturities, it is in dire straits. Spain s unemployment rate is 19.5% and their debt has been downgraded. Spain is a much bigger problem as the country represents 13% of Europe s GDP. All countries are struggling with their own deficits and they can t jeopardize their own well being to help other nations. The dominos are lined up and wobbling, and almost anything – even a concerted push by speculators – could set them in motion. It seems to me that the euro is turning out to be much more complex to manage than the US dollar and could be very vulnerable for years to come.

To play offense, you can short the Euro ETF "ProShares UltraShort Euro" (EUO:NYSE). Block-tackling through defence, consider going switching to US Treasury bonds as a safe haven this year.

US Bonds: a safe haven to diversify away from the PIGS (but for 2010 only) ...

US Bonds: a safe haven to diversify away from the PIGS (but for 2010 only) ...

A revealing analysis by Bloomberg has found US bonds haven’t declined in consecutive years since the 1950’s. Given 2009's 11% decline and the continuing low inflation environment bonds just might have history on their side:

“Last year’s return, based on the note’s price change and interest payments, was negative 11 percent. This was the worst performance ever recorded by the St. Louis Fed, whose data goes back to 1928. The previous mark was set in 1999, when the 10-year security posted a negative 8.3 percent return. In the following year, the note returned 17 percent. Similarly, the total return swung from negative 8 percent in 1994 to 23 percent in 1995.”

The financial hurricane unleashed into the equity markets during 2008 followed by the bounce in 2009, which now increasingly looks this was merely the eye of the storm passing, has opened in 2010 with a slow brewing crisis in Greece, the birthplace of western civilisation. This is going to be much bigger than the Dubai debacle in December. It also threatens to draw in Portugal, Ireland and Spain whose economies are in equally if not worse shape. This grouping is colloquially known as the PIGS. The European Union's constitution does not allow for bailouts of member states. Individual states must keep their deficits below 3.5% of GDP or administer their own harsh fiscal medicine. If they do not have the political will, the Euro will be in big trouble. Greece is now in this predicament. The markets sensing blood will pick off the weak states first before moving inwards towards the core like France, Germany and UK. Contagion will spread quickly...just like the 1998 Asia financial crisis.

Strange as it may seem, the US Treasury bond market inspite of the fiscal calamity wrought by the extreme rescue measures of the Obama administration in 2009, may yet prove a temporary safe harbour as the winds ratch up a few more knots in 2010.

A government cover-up bigger than tobacco and asbestos? Your mobile phone...

"The machine has got to be accepted, but it is probably better to accept it rather as one accepts a drug—that is, grudgingly and suspiciously,...like a drug, the machine is useful, dangerous and habit-forming. The oftener one surrenders to it the tighter its grip becomes." George Orwell.



Though the scientific debate is heated and far from resolved, there are multiple reports, mostly out of Europe's premier research institutions, of cell-phone and PDA use being linked to "brain aging," brain damage, early-onset Alz­heimer's, senility, DNA damage, and even sperm die-offs (many men, after all, keep their cell phones in their pants pockets or attached at the hip).

In contrast, any research that connects cell phones to increased cancer rates is not widely reported in the U.S., which reminds one of the non-disclosure tactics once used in tobacco, asbestos, and Agent Orange research. Even if there’s no real danger here, the above recent article (click on the image) by GQ shines light on things you probably didn’t know about cell phones.

Recent Findings:
- Interphone researchers reported in 2008 that after a decade of cell-phone use, the chance of getting a brain tumor—specifically on the side of the head where you use the phone—goes up as much as 40 percent for adults. (Study sponsored by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, in Lyon, France. Scientists from thirteen countries took part in the study, the United States conspicuously not among them.)
- In the summer of 2006, a super-Wi-Fi system known as WiMAX was tested in rural Sweden. Bombarded with signals, the residents of the village of Götene—who had no knowledge that the transmitter had come online—were overcome by headaches, difficulty breathing, and blurred vision, according to a Swedish news report. Two residents reported to the hospital with heart arrhythmias, similar to those that, more than thirty years ago, a US neuro-scientist Allen Frey, induced similar frequency micowaves in frog hearts. This happened only hours after the system was turned on, and as soon as it was powered down, the symptoms disappeared.
- In a study by researchers associated with the venerable Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, which hands out the Nobel Prize for medicine, the massive expansion of mobile phones in Sweden during 1997 was found to have coincided with a marked but subtle decline in the overall health of the population. Might it be, the Karolinska researchers asked, that Swedes fell victim to the march of the first big microwave mobile phone systems? The number of Swedish workers on sick leave, after declining for years, began to rise abruptly in late 1997, according to the study, doubling during the next five years.

Where is all this going for big business? There are massive vested telecoms and digital infrastructure interests at stake in all developed and developing countries. Military-industrial complexes are built upon such platforms. Government communication strategies are also starting to deploy digital platforms. With the relentless march of mobile telephony and wi-fi networks, instances of urban living with huge mobile antennae perched on the tops of buildings, a walk down the street to your local super-market, entering public buses and descending down to mass transit trains will inevitably subject you to this constant "low-level" barrage of microwaves. Is modern society starting to be dumbed-down overall? Education authorities increasingly report instances of short attention spans for today's youngsters perhaps due to the prevalence of personal video games. Perhaps we should look no further than across our living rooms to that humble mobile phone and the Wi-Fi modem which is silently emitting non-stop microwave signals.

Back to the neuro-scientist, Allen Frey, "It just so happens that the frequencies and modulations of our cell phones seem to be the frequencies that humans are particularly sensitive to. If we had looked into it a little more, if we had done the real science, we could have allocated spectrums that the body can't feel. The public should know if they are taking a risk with cell phones. What we're doing is a grand world experiment without informed consent."

I'm reminded of the closing scenes from The Terminator (1984)movie.
Sarah Connor asks the gas attendant: "What did he just say?"
Gas Station Attendant: "He said there's a storm coming in."
Sarah Connor: [sighs] "I know."