A world without electronics is unimaginable.
Many people want to make their lives more efficient and easy by using electronic devices.
Like a computer and a mobile phone.
Is it difficult to make a computer?
Not at all.
Many companies worldwide make computers.
There are no secrets.
Is it difficult to make a mobile phone?
Not either.
This makes us ask why a company like Apple is so successful.
They make, among other things, computers, laptops, MP3 players and mobile phones.
And are incredibly successful worldwide.
How come?
Well, they are innovative.
And very good at marketing.
One of the secrets of their successful innovation is that they think from the world of the customer.
The starting point is always the person that is going to use the device.
Good example is software.
The operating system of most computers is Windows by Microsoft.
The Apple computers have their own operating system.
One is full of flaws, unpractical and complicated.
The other one is stable, consumer friendly and easy to use.
The driving force behind Apple is the CEO: Steve Jobs.
He announced he is not going to be present at the annual Apple meeting where new products are presented next January.
Immediately the stocks of Apple fell 4 %.
Out of fear that Steve Jobs might be ill and will retire from the company.
If Rick Wagoner, the CEO of General Motors, the automobile manufacturer, would announce he is leaving, GM stocks will not fall.
They are more likely to go up.
A company like GM is the opposite of Apple.
This is why Apple is not knocking on Government doors to get taxpayers money aid.
And GM does and will do again.
So we may wonder why flawed companies like GM and Chrysler did get over 17 billion Dollars last week.
In an undemocratic way decided by a President on his way out.
These days President Bush is leaving office thinking only of his reputation and how he will be remembered.
Like recently he went to some army camp to speak in front of many soldiers.
To defend his Iraq policies.
To suggest a conclusion that he was right all along to start the war in Iraq.
President Bush probably will turn out as the worst ever for the United States and the rest of the world.
That will make him not sleep peacefully so he forces himself and as many others as possible to believe in another truth.
A truth comfortable for himself and his cronies.
If he had been following the principles he has been advocating over the last 8 years, he would have accepted that potentially the American automobile manufacturers go into Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
This would have initially resulted in more unemployed people than we will see in the next few months in spite of the 17 billion Dollars.
Just recently GM closed a plant in Dayton, Ohio firing over 2.500 loyal employees.
But Bush has been thinking of his reputation.
Accepting the three automakers to go into bankruptcy would have been bad for his image.
Hence, the solution is to throw 17 billion Dollars at the badly managed companies to give them some breathing time.
Not to recover but to make time for himself to finish his Presidency and shuttle the problem to Barack Obama.
The American taxpayers just lost 17 billion Dollars because one man has been unable ever to admit he was wrong.
Strange things happening in the USA.
The representatives of the people and the Government decided some time ago to have $ 700 billion Dollars available for the financial institutions.
Tax payer’s money managed by the representatives of the people and the Government democratically decided to go to a specific purpose.
The three companies making cars and trucks in the USA, like the banks, went to Washington to ask for money as well.
This was refused by the representatives of the American people.
So they turned to the President of the USA and he gave them yesterday $ 17.4 billion Dollars.
From the money that was democratically destined to be given to financial institutions.
How is that possible in a democratic country?
The money is made available to two of the three automakers, but with a set of conditions.
Conditions that should have been implied years and years ago.
Like better controlling wages and pensions.
As Barack Obama was saying: “They need to reform bad management practices”.
But the automakers have a bad history of making promises and not fulfilling them.
So, what has the President of the USA come up with?
If the carmakers fail to prove viability, which is a positive cash flow and ability to make good on the loans, by March 31, they will be required to repay the Government loans.
How on earth can they live up to those conditions?
It is December 20 already: gives them only 3 months to turn things around.
Impossible.
Keep in mind that a company like Chrysler has closed down all its factories for one month.
Will that generate positive cash flow?
And if they can’t meet the conditions, from what money will these bankrupt companies pay back the Government?
The President of the USA has also been acting completely against his own political convictions of the free market.
He has more or less nationalized the American car companies by becoming stockholder now with absolute power.
Like the companies were in the former Soviet Union.
And we all know what that was leading to.
The President has also created a false competition: automakers like Toyota and Volkswagen have to compete now with Government sponsored companies.
Imagine a car that has an engine that only runs when it is needed.
When it needs to move.
An engine that stops when in front of a red light or in a traffic jam.
This would save a lot of fuel, wear and tear.
Next year Toyota offers such a car for sale on the European market.
Why are the Japanese able to innovate?
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It is not going very well with the economy in the USA.
The largest economy in the world is wobbling on its foundations.
For example, GM, a company that makes cars, announced yesterday it lost over 15 billion $ in the second quarter of the year.
This is not because there is a lack in demand of cars.
Toyota was outselling GM with 277,532 vehicles during the first six months of this year.
Not only GM, but Ford and Chrysler as well, have been focusing too long on building cars that are big and that are consuming a lot of fuel.
The problem with those companies is that they were having not a vision as enlightened as Japanese carmakers were having.
These large US car manufacturers are simply too slow in adjusting to the market, let alone that they can be innovative like Honda.
We may have serious questions about the quality of the management of big companies.
But we know some of the answers.
One is that managers of big companies make lots of money and get high bonuses.
Even if a company is not doing well.
While those same managers fire their employees and won’t sleep one minute less about how the unemployed will survive.
The jobless rate in the USA is the highest in four years.
This year, until now, 463,000 people lost their jobs.
In total there are 8.8 million people without work in the USA.
And our support and sympathy must be with those non-employed American persons.
For several months they get non-employment benefits and if they have not found a new job and income, they are on their own.
They can’t afford anymore the rent of their house or the mortgage payment.
They have to give up their home.
They fall into poverty.
Depending on food stamps, food handouts and help from friends and family.
It is a shocking reality in the so-called richest country in the world.
People forced to live in their SUV, in a Salvation Army shelter or in the street like in Calcutta, India.
Meanwhile the oil companies are publishing their economic results.
Chevron announced yesterday that its exploration and production arm doubled its profit to 7.25 billion $.
There have been efforts by the Democrats in Washington to have a windfall profit law accepted so that the US Government could stop these oil companies making these indecent profits while a simple American pays $ 4 a gallon for her gasoline.
And guess what, the Republicans torpedoed this law.
The world is watching and is seeing a country, the USA, where some people are making a lot of money and many people slide into poverty and misery.
The free market strategy is propagated worldwide by the USA as the most wonderful way to organise a society.
It tries to impose it on many countries with free trade agreements and financing.
But the rest of the world observing what is currently going on in the USA are less and less convinced.
In fact they say: “No, thank you very much”.
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