Well, that appears to be that. Game over

On 12/19/2011 5:28 AM, Charlie wrote:

And yes, if we'd control our desire for cheap (at any price!) consumer
goods things would be different. Problem is that consumers go to WalMart
(or whatever the local equivalent is)and buy the cheapest things they
can get without regard to the future costs of such items.

I've been saying, for some time now, to avoid Chinese made products and
buy locally/domestically made ones wherever possible.

--
I'm never going to grow up.

On 19/12/2011 13:25, PeterD wrote:

You can't blame consumers from going for the cheapest option available.
  You can blame the manufacturers for opting to have their products made
in crunchingly illiberal countries.  If Levis and iPods were made in
Brazil, and cost 5% more, would people really object if they were the
only such things available?  They would still have aspirational value.

I know it's hopelessly idealistic, but we should simply isolate China.
Nixon, Heath and others did the free world a great disservice by
embracing China. It might otherwise have imploded, as did the USSR. Not
that modern Russia is all that great an advertisement for liberalising a
command economy, of course.

On 19/12/2011 13:49, Charlie wrote:

Are the Chinese really the problem?  GM did not want them (the Chinese)
to have SAAB or am I missing something.  People do not want buy SAABs,
I had the pleasure of having 3 and now I am on my fourth.  Surely we
can't blame the Chinese for it.

On 20/12/2011 01:00, Charles wrote:

Clearly there was a problem predating the Chinese, partly because we
were driving our Saabs for hundreds of thousands of miles and refusing
to buy new ones!  My issue is with their negotiating tactics.  They have
been screwing around for months, promising a deal but not delivering.
They have been running the directors ragged, and the company into the
ground.  They are dishonest.

Now that it is apparently bust, who will be the only game in town to buy
the assets for a fractional amount? The Chinese.  They played the same
game with Rover, and they are trying it with the Spanish company.  You
may say that's the capitalist way, and you'd be right.

My contention is that the democratic countries should not be so feeble
about allowing state-backed corporations in undemocratic countries,
whose accounts and business practices are not subject to the same
safeguards and scrutinies, to eviscerate our economies. We are being
feeble, naively trusting and pathetic, and we are being rolled over by a
homogeneous state which has a potential slave-labour force (and, to be
melodramatic, army) amounting to about one-fifth of the planet - and
effectively zero human rights. We are playing cricket/baseball, and they
are playing war.

So, yes, I blame our governments but I blame the Chinese.  My first
boss, many years ago, said of the Chinese: "Everyone says they are an
inscrutable people, but for my money they are all too bloody scrutable".