Earlier quoted context omitted.
What happens when a country fails?
South Africa is a good example of a country that is currently in that trajectory.
Right, so you expect Germany be like South Africa soon?
How Nissan and Honda's $60B merger talks collapsed
161–170 of 311 posts
Re: How Nissan and Honda's $60B merger talks collapsed
#162Re: How Nissan and Honda's $60B merger talks collapsed
#163Nissan, Honda & eventually Toyota are going to go the way of Nokia/Motorola after iPhone came out. Cheap and reliable Chinese EVs will take over the market (like Android), while Tesla will probably maintain a halo premium product like iPhone.
Honda will be fine. They own the motorcycle market, especially in Asia.
Re: How Nissan and Honda's $60B merger talks collapsed
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The SEC found that he had over $140M in undisclosed compensation, much of it hidden from Nissan’s management: https://www.sec.gov/files/litigation/complaints/2019/comp246 ... That looks to be one side's claims, and even this one-sided telling acknowledges that he never received any of that money, and that the CFO and finance department signed off on what happened. > It didn't come out in the court case because he f…
> Even this one-sided telling acknowledges that he never received any of that money, and that the CFO and finance department signed off on what happened. It absolutely doesn't say that.. and it's not a credit to Carlos that many of his schemes to steal tens of millions of dollars in the future were discovered before he could do so. > In addition to the more than $90 million in undisclosed and unpaid compensation, Gho…
> it's not a credit to Carlos that many of his schemes to steal tens of millions of dollars in the future were discovered before he could do so.
It's weird and misleading to describe money he never received and will never receive as "undisclosed compensation".
> Nissan’s CFO was falsely told that the LTIP awards were a broad-based grant to numerous Nissan participants rather than that the vast majority was for Ghosn and included exchange rate protection on the inflated retirement allowance. Relying on this false information, Nissan’s CFO approved and signed off on the LTIP expense request, and the amounts were recorded over three fiscal years. Nissan’s CFO would not have approved booking the LTIP expense without additional disclosure if he had known the truth about its actual intended use.
Right, that's the same part I was reading. The CFO is evidently claiming now that he was deceived back then, let's see what the evidence for that looks like.
From the fact that we have all these detailed figures and calculations, it looks to me very much like the CFO, board and finance department were in on the whole thing. This isn't him secretly taking money out of the vault, it's the company doing accounting tricks to pay him in a way that's more tax-efficient and then flipping it into saying he was stealing from them when they decide to get rid of him.
Re: How Nissan and Honda's $60B merger talks collapsed
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
Canada doesn't feel like it's winning despite what the graph says*. Bringing in tons of working-aged immigrants has caused housing (and other living) costs to explode, which in turn has lead to less people having children, which leads to more immigration to fill the gap and the whole thing has been spiraling. Not fun at all. * https://population.un.org/wpp/graphs?loc=124&type=Probabilis...
The problem with just "living by the graph" is that it ignores whether the country has the capacity to provide basics like food, clothing, shelter, and employment to the population. You need to have both to have the working-age population be able to engage productively in the economy. The problem Canada created is that it tried to reset it's population graph without ensuring that there was an adequate supply of said…
Yeah there has been a pretty definitive drop in overall productivity in Canada since the sudden increase in population.
I believe the economic term is population trap, where your society / economy can't expand fast enough to make efficient use of the addition in capital.
It is pretty clear based on the constantly decreasing GDP per capita.
Re: How Nissan and Honda's $60B merger talks collapsed
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ghosn was trained as an engineer at École des Mines de Paris after a humble background in the 3rd world including continual sickness from unsanitary waterwater. He worked from the bottom up in R&D at Michelin and did the impossible turning it around during hyperinflation period in Brazil. By all estimations he's a genius with as good of chops as anyone could ask for his responsibilities, with a unique set of citizens…
“Even his escape from Japan was just stunningly executed and the perfect selection of professionals with technical competence to pull it off.” I’m only generally aware of the series of events here. Any good write ups?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/carlos-ghosn-escape-japan-priva...
There is a series on Apple as well.
Re: How Nissan and Honda's $60B merger talks collapsed
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tesla gained a reputation of being the best EVs around, by virtue of being essentially the only company making EVs able to truly replace a gas car for close to a decade. It's easy to be the best in a category with just one competitor. Now that other companies are making EVs that compete directly with Tesla, they aren't reliably best-in-class or best-in-price-point anymore. Compare the Rivian R1T to the Cybertruck, or…
> their CEO throws Nazi salutes at political rallies Come now, even the Anti-Defamation League, hardly a habitual supporter of Musk, disagrees with this take. Your opinions are your own and you're free to believe he did Nazi salutes, but it does make you sound like you have an axe to grind.
Both my grandfathers fought in Europe in WWII.
When they were alive, if I had done what Elon did in front of either of them, that would have been problematic.
I think that's a decent yardstick. The absolute best interpretation is that Elon is someone who does not care if he does things that look like Nazi salutes.
Re: How Nissan and Honda's $60B merger talks collapsed
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its too bad since Honda has seemed to have totally lost its luster the past decade or so. Honda was Apple to Toyota's Microsoft for a long time, now their cars are bland and undifferentiated, rather than the innovative leaders they used to be.
Still pissed they removed the Jazz from the australian market. It was honestly my definition of perfect small car for 10 years.
The end of the honda element makes me grumpy too.
Re: How Nissan and Honda's $60B merger talks collapsed
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Even this one-sided telling acknowledges that he never received any of that money, and that the CFO and finance department signed off on what happened. It absolutely doesn't say that.. and it's not a credit to Carlos that many of his schemes to steal tens of millions of dollars in the future were discovered before he could do so. > In addition to the more than $90 million in undisclosed and unpaid compensation, Gho…
> it's not a credit to Carlos that many of his schemes to steal tens of millions of dollars in the future were discovered before he could do so. It's weird and misleading to describe money he never received and will never receive as "undisclosed compensation". > Nissan’s CFO was falsely told that the LTIP awards were a broad-based grant to numerous Nissan participants rather than that the vast majority was for Ghosn…
> It's weird and misleading to describe money he never received and will never receive as "undisclosed compensation".
That's literally just basic accounting. If you are required to report all compensation someone earns and they get $100k salary, $100k bonus, and you put $800k into a retirement account with their name on it - you can't say they only made $200k last year. They only reason he will never receive this undisclosed compensation is because the plot and the blatant illegality was discovered.
And lol, of course his is using the pilfered funds to setup his son in Silicon Valley where he worked for Joe Lonsdale.
Re: How Nissan and Honda's $60B merger talks collapsed
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
South Africa is a good example of a country that is currently in that trajectory.
Right, so you expect Germany be like South Africa soon?
I was merely asking your question about what happens when a country fails. I have no expectation of Germany turning out like South Africa.