Comments by "HKim0072" (@HKim0072) on "China Observer" channel.

  1. lol, they are selling military style MREs to the public. Those things are garbage (apologies to the MRE Youtube guy).
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  2. The beauty of Apple is its reliability in the OS. 15 years with the iPhone and never had any issues. I have no need to jailbreak and run weird Android programs.
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  3. Banks are mildly concerned about homeowners mortgage defaults. But, they are pretty aggressive in seizing and selling properties. Then, the homeowner is still responsible for negative equity for the rest of their life. But, if these brick and mortar stores all go under and commercial real estate defaults, whew. There is no recourse. Banks are going to take the loss. It's all opaque though. No one on the outside has a clue what is really on the books.
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  4. I've been casually following the Boogie Woogie guy for years. The dude just wants to play piano with random people.
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  5. Loved my work Thinkpad back in the day, but it was right after IBM sold them. Was extremely sturdy and had almost a metal like top casing (was probably really hard plastic).
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  6. Incheon airport is a good measure for a control group: Yearly passenger traffic at Incheon International Airport is expected to rebound to nearly 80 percent of the pre-pandemic levels, the airport's operator said Wednesday. December 20, 2023
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  7. Naw, people at that age have less stamina to work long hours. Like the video said, employees are doing the job of 2-3 people now.
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  8. That’s one good thing still with HK. You can (mostly) trust their numbers. They still have a few old school HK bureaucrats in the government. Have a feeling this will change over time and they’ll just make up data.
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  9. Yeah, it's not even close of a comparison. The US was barely oversupplied in the housing market and it quickly went to undersupplied by 2010. And, it's a completely different model since people in the US can claim bankruptcy.
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  10. That’s how small businesses operate. Even big businesses. Very few people have the full upfront cash to dump into a business opening.
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  11. Starbucks and Estee Lauder said their China businesses aren't rebounding as they should either. Estée Lauder stock was falling Wednesday after the cosmetics company lowered its sales outlook for the year as softness in China is expected to continue. Starbucks revised its projections for global and U.S. same-store sales growth to a range of low single digits to flat from its previous forecast of 4% to 6%. Same-store sales in China are expected to decline by single digits, down from the prior outlook of a single-digit increase.
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  12. Ironically, the cash would be useless to spend there since you need Chinese apps / bank account.
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  13. Why are we quoting prices from 20-30 years ago like a boomer? That's the price when I was a kid. (although any price comparison is silly without comparing the food weight as well.)
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  14.  @NetflixForeign  Advertisers are the least of the problems. They are selling it to insurance companies.
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  15. All the big online companies are extremely profitable. But, they aren’t growing revenue very fast except with international businesses.
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  16. Was shopping for a DVD player (or some other electronics) years ago and I was looking at the “Made In”. Was disappointed that I couldn’t find any Japan ones as they had moved to SE Asia at that point.
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  17.  @dcc70  Obviously, the dudes from Africa selling the passes.
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  18. In the US, that is illegal and regulated by Weights and Measures (FTC).
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  19. lol, how?
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  20. I've been saying this for the past 1-2 years. Healthy economies run off discretionary purchases. All the services and goods that are "unnecessary" is the engine of the economy.
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  21. 5:40 This just makes no sense. Banks don't load up their balance sheet with EM debt. It's a specialty shop business or a very low portion of the investments. Too lazy to look it up, but lots of this debt is heavily discounted already.
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  22. If they are all in poverty, no one will be able to tell the difference. -Pooh Bear
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  23.  @karenstraborvsky5235  People tend to assume things work the same where they live. In the US, people don't grow large crops without having a contract. (or they use a middle person system.) The smaller farmers are usually the more organic ones that sell for higher prices possibly in markets. It's obvious that things work different in CCP China.
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  24. You realize that's an arbitrary number the Russian Central bank set right? A non-market number not based supply and demand or fx trading.
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  25. Always odd when Americans bring in "home" politics to a different subject matter.
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  26. Would be really easy to split the country in regions and give half the people off. Then, take 1 week break to not overlap travel and give the other half a week off 3 weeks total).
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  27. Elections in a democracy as a check and balance seem to always outweigh the supposed efficiency of an autocratic government. The crazy EU discusses topics / projects so long and the levers move very slowly, but I'll take that over this pure waste of money (US is probably in the middle in terms of efficiency). It's like they did less research than a college student would do on a new bridge proposal.
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  28. My whole life has been numbers. And, this video has way too many numbers for me. Should have been bar charts or something.
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  29. Not the perfect indicator, but getting the CCP housing price-income ratio in line with the US would be a -75% drop in price from the peak. (And, that doesn't account for the CCP oversupply issue vs the US is undersupplied.)
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  30. Never be the first to buy something from a new manufacturer. It's one thing when Apple decided to produce phones. Very similar to iPod / laptops. But, a phone company producing cars? Even the iPhones had major issues (not Apple's fault). Worked in downtown SF in a modern relatively low floor building and our phones didn't work in the building. It was comical.
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  31. Yeap, because the dude doesn’t care about wealth.
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  32. US building codes are time tested and have safety in mind.
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  33. They can boycott NVDA and buy AMD GPUs from the other Taiwan CEO, lol.
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  34. Same level of confidence as South Africa electricity.
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  35. Need to go back further. They forcefully and unnaturally pushed an economic cycle into a tighter window. Stuff breaks down eventually. Breakneck speed growth that is artificially is not healthy. Short version: the middle class never had time to develop. At least when the Japanese went through their asset bubble, they had 40+ years of industrial development over time.
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  36.  @howardmaryon  Dude - it's extremely practical. Bankruptcy would be a nightmare. The size of unfinished, pre-sold homes in China is about 20 times the size of developer Country Garden as of the end of 2022, Nomura analysts said. “We estimate that there are around 20 million units of unconstructed and delayed pre-sold homes,” the analysts said
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  37. lol, from a VOA article on early ‘24. A Shanghai resident who for privacy reasons only gave her surname Ms. Shi, takes the high-speed train to and from Hangzhou for work every week. She tells VOA that white-collar workers like herself who commute weekly can afford the high-speed rail. She notes that most passengers who take the high-speed rail daily are business travelers who are reimbursed by companies or government agencies for the cost.
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  38. The reality is the average Chinese citizen is going to suffer. Really suffer. The only solution would be "remove" Xi, allow Taiwan to be an independent country, stop the genocide of the Uyghurs. But, there is zero negative infinity chance of this happening. The CCP has chosen a path and now it's time to face the music on their own.
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  39. My guess is the amount of flights is way less, so they charge whatever they want.
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  40. The stock market term is "catch a falling knife". (should be self-explanatory)
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  41. But, the CCP just reported that exports to Russia doubled. What happened? lol.
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  42. The term hypersonic is so misused. A true hypersonic isn't just about speed. It's that it has a random flight pattern, so it can't be shot down easily. https://youtu.be/iDjITK7Cy1U
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  43.  @FrenchTutorials  Took Japan 25+ years. It's pretty hard.
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  44. Go to Russia and try to get that rate. The bank will laugh at you.
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  45. I will re-up my past comment. Unemployment in the US peaked at 25% during the Great Depression in the 1930s. No way is it at 50%.
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  46. @wse3572 Dunno, Korea-CCP relations have been in the toilet since THAAD. Kpop and Korean dramas are still banned in China. Was a total inflection point though. Both industries turned toward the west and are way stronger today. Dramas are getting distribution rights 5x the Chinese paid by the US streamers. Kpop exploded as well.
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  47. Reminds me of the Matrix: That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.
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  48. Dumbest system ever. Bank deposits in the west are consolidated. A branch isn't a subsidiary of the company, but just an extension for customer service. No such thing as a local branch failing in the US. (some branches may have "paper" liquidity issues, but that's just based on how much paper money they store at the branch.)
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  49.  @mukadatar64  This has never happened in modern US history. And, it's "too" not "to". If you are confused, use "as well".
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  50. @ Not in the US. Data clearly shows the pay differences between high school educated, BA, Master's or higher. Also, people with college degrees always have a lower unemployment rate.
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