Corruption and Growth: Billionaire Raj

Billionaire Raj by James Crabtree compares growth of the economy in South India to South East Asia, which is an apt comparison. Crabtree’s book is an overview of the billionaire oligarchs who rose to power post the liberalization of Indian economy in 1991.  The name  “Billionaire raj” (“raj” ~ empire/rule) is a homage to the phrase “license raj”. License Raj was the term to describe the rule of the erstwhile socialist Indian government that used to pick winners with license to operate. [...]

New TSMC Plan(t) in America: Lessons from Foxconn

WSJ reports that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s largest contract manufacturer of silicon chips, would spend $12 billion to build a chip factory in Arizona. I have been arguing on this blog for sourcing suppliers closer to the customer…

Four Stages and A Funeral

A famous meme due to Senator Ted Stevens analogizes internet as “a series of tubes”. Like bustling cities, it is a fuel that converts the potential energy constrained in orderliness, to a kinetic energy of human endeavor.  Internet releases the atoms of our thoughts to escape parochialism. Internet is messy, disorderly and increasingly ruled by social media monopolies, but it can be where “the mind is free”. [...]

Decline in Dual Income Families

I have been occasionally commenting on the nature of workforce in the United States. I was browsing around BLS Data and this fact surprised me, even though this trend has been happening for a decade, right under my nose, but I hadn’t noticed.

Tesla Moving out of California?

Recently, Musk was again in news due to his tweets — probably not his most famous or costliest tweet ever — for threatening to move Tesla HQ out of California and manufacturing out of the Fremont CA plant. Supply chains and production has been sputtered in the US and elsewhere due to COVID. It is true that maintaining idle plants is prohibitively expensive. I take a look at how Fremont plant works well for Tesla, and how shifting capacity is complicated.

Toilet Paper and Occam’s Razor

Supply Chains ran our lives quietly and without fuss, but due to the pandemic, they have gained media attention.

The pandemic has created stress on business and efficient supply chains. Many journalists seek to write on why we are seeing massive stock-outs for some products and not for others. The best strategy would be to directly talk to supply chain experts and practitioners who deal with global supply chains. This post is a quick note arguing, no, toilet paper shortage are not due to asset bubbles like tulip mania. It is just supply inflexibility for a functional product, what we call as “bullwhip” in supply chains.

Review: Notes From China

Every reader likely knows Barbara Tuchman as one of the excellent writers and historians from the 20th century. This book was an apertif before heading into her Pulitzer-winning book on Stilwell. These notes are based her visit to China with her…