Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Mar 10, 2014

choi

(1) Romesh Ratnesar, Power of Delusions. (under the heading Opening Remarks)
www.businessweek.com/articles/20 ... ce-off-over-ukraine

The penultimate paragraph:

Joseph Nye, a professor of political science at Harvard University and a former assistant secretary of defense [says,] ‘We are going to find there are areas [other than Ukraine] where, in a realpolitik way, we’re going to need to negotiate and bargain with them even if we don’t see eye to eye.’ Embracing this brand of pragmatism requires, among other things, that the US accept the limits of its influence. America is undoubtedly less globally dominant today than at the end of the Cold War, but some perspective is in order. The tendency to see every regional crisis as a referendum on American power is myopic and self-defeating. Nye points out that the U.S. was never in a stronger position than it was after 1945, when it was the world’s sole nuclear power and accounted for half the world’s gross domestic product. ‘What happened next? We lost China, the Russians developed a nuclear weapon, shortly thereafter we couldn’t protect Vietnam, and by the end of the Eisenhower administration, we lost Cuba,’ he says. ‘That was a period of American primacy, and you still had a set of significant losses. The fact is, we don’t control the world now and we never did.’

My comment: That is not what the America’s right likes to hear. There is no need to read the rest.

choi

(2) Bruce Einhorn with Penny Peng, For FedEx in China, It’s Hurry Up and Wait.
www.businessweek.com/articles/20 ... rs-to-renew-permits

the first three paragraphs:

“This is a good time to be in the package delivery business in China. Last year, Chinese bought 1.85 trillion yuan ($300 billion) worth of goods online. There were 9.2 billion deliveries in 2013, a 60 percent increase, worth 143 billion yuan, according to the Xinhua News Agency. Only the express delivery market in the US is bigger.

“All that activity should translate into business for United Parcel Service (UPS) and FedEx (FDX). Both have been building China operations for decades, with FedEx entering the market in 1984 and UPS following in 1988. By 2009, FedEx had 58 Chinese branches to UPS’s 33.

“But the two have gone into reverse since then. Not only have they not opened new branches, but they also have had to seek reapproval for existing operations. After a new law governing the industry was passed in 2009, the State Post Bureau 国家邮政局 decided that all carriers, local and foreign, needed new licenses. FedEx and UPS are still waiting for the regulator to grant many of theirs. Neither has official approval for domestic operations in Beijing, though they can make deliveries between some other Chinese cities.

Note:
(a) summary underneath the title of print: Stymied by new rules, FedEx and UPS need permits to restart official service on all their old routes.
(b) Quotation 1 says China in 2013 was the second largest nation in package delivery. But it does not say by volume (number of packages) or by revenue.

choi

(3) Mark Glassman, Connectivity and Income. (under the heading Correlations)
www.businessweek.com/articles/20 ... ectivity-and-income

Note: “A recent Pew Research report suggests Internet access in emerging and developing nations is associated with higher per capita income.”

Emerging Nations Embrace Internet, Mobile Technology; Cell phones nearly ubiquitous in many countries. Global Attitudes Project, Pew Research, Mar 13, 2014
www.pewglobal.org/2014/02/13/eme ... -mobile-technology/

View graphics only.

choi

(4) Ira Boudway, Why Sluggers Pay Attention to ADHD.
www.businessweek.com/articles/20 ... -fake-adhd-epidemic

Note: summary underneath the title of print: Many diagnoses in pro baseball players may be valid after all

choi

(5) Gopal Ratnam, Afghanistan’s Minerals Awaits a Ghost Train.
www.businessweek.com/articles/20 ... ait-vital-railroads
(“In 2010 the Pentagon estimated Afghanistan is sitting on mineral deposits worth about $1 trillion. In 2011 the Afghan government put the value at $3 trillion. This potential wealth has remained largely untapped, because there’s no way to safely and reliably ship the minerals from the country’s mines”)

Note:
(a) summary underneath the title of print: The country struggles to transport its vast natural resources
(b) quotation underneath the title of print: “Railways are absolutely vital” to its future

(c) “At the Naibabad freight terminal near the northern Afghan town of Mazar-e-Sharif, workers rush to unload wheat and construction materials from Uzbekistan that have arrived on Afghanistan’s only railroad. Trucks will have to carry the cargo through the icy Hindu Kush mountains to the rest of the country because Afghanistan, which encompasses almost 252,000 square miles, has only 47 miles of train track.”
(i) Mazar-e-Sharif
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazar-e-Sharif
(The name "Mazar-e Sharif" means "Noble Shrine", a reference to the large, blue-tiled sanctuary and mosque in the center of the city known as the Shrine of Hazrat Ali or the Blue Mosque)

Uzbekistan’s border is the narrow strip of land true north to the city.
(ii) Hindu Kush
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_Kush

choi

(6) Ashlee Vance, The Smarter Pizza Makers.
www.businessweek.com/articles/20 ... fine-tune-the-world

My comment:
(a) summary underneath the title of print: Valor Equity brings manufacturing expertise to fast food and Tesla
(b) my summary: Valor Equity Partners, a Chicago-based private equity firm, invests an odd range of enterprises from Little Caesars, Dunkin’ Donuts, Red Robin, and Sizzler restaurants to health services, beauty supplies, Tesla Motors, and SpaceX--as franchisees in retail Little Caesars as prime example) and major stockholders in Tesla, for instance. Rather than close shops and lay off employees of the companies it acquires, Valor’s approach is to find a growing, promising company, pair its own engineers and manufacturing specialists with the management of the company it has acquired or invested in and then applying a combination of lean manufacturing techniques, software, and attention to detail to wring the most out of these businesses. The franchisees of Little Caesars make pizzas at lunch or dinner time, whether they receive orders or not, so that a customer will not have to wait when she does call in. Valor also redesigns shop so that workers (in Little Caesars, say) do not have to walk around to much. In print, there is a quotation on the upper right corner of the photo (in Web page 1): “‘If you’re walking around, you’re not making pizza.’  [Valor] Operations specialist Mark Vadaro”  (In the left upper corner in print is: “‘Za Overhaul” where ‘za is a world play on both “the” and “pizza”--the latter accounts for the apostrophe.)
These are not new to me. The only thing interesting to me in this report is the two consecutive paragraphs:

“ONE OF VALOR’S MOST SUCCESSFUL EFFORTS BEGAN IN 2004, WHEN Gracias heard about an electric car startup named Tesla and its wealthy backer, Elon Musk. HE WAS IMPRESSED; [e]ven if Tesla failed at selling its Roadster sports car, HE FIGURED, IT WOULD LIKELY HAVE SUCCESS LICENSING OR SELLING OFF ITS ELECTRIC POWER TRAIN TECHNOLOGY. Valor became Tesla’s biggest outside investor. TESLA’S STOCK HAS SOARED MORE THAN 1,400 PERCENT SINCE THE COMPANY’S JUNE 2010 INITIAL PUBLIC OFFERING. AFTER SELLING AN UNDISCLOSED AMOUNT, VALOR STILL OWNS ABOUT 46,000 SHARES. GRACIAS OWNS 90,000 SHARES.

“As Tesla’s Roadster started to come to market around 2008, Each vehicle cost THE COMPANY $120,000 to build; VS. A RETAIL PRICE OF $110,000. At [Tesla CEO Elon] Musk’s request, TESLA EXECUTIVES TEAMED UP WITH VALOR’S TIMOTHY Watkins[, [a top deputy of Gracias,] WHO HAS DEGREES IN INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS AND ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING, AND HAD FIGURED OUT A WAY TO AUTOMATE A SWISS METAL STAMPING FACTORY SO THAT IT COULD RUN 24 HOURS A DAY INSTEAD OF THE USUAL 16. AT TESLA THEY revamp the supply chain AND BROUGHT much of the manufacturing THAT had been DONE IN Asia in-house to reduce shipping costs and delays. From October 2008 to June 2009, the Roadster’s production cost fell to almost $80,000, AND Tesla became a viable company. ‘I don’t think we would have made it without Antonio’s help,’ Musk SAID DURING A SPEECH AT the Economic Club of Chicago IN 2012.

(i) The words in the upper case are those that appears online only, but not in print.
(ii) Spanish English dictionary
(A) gracias (interjection): “thank you”

The “gracias” is also the plural form of noun feminine “gracia.”
(B) gracia (noun feminine; from Latin noun feminine grātia “grace, thankfulness”):
"grace, mercy, good humor, punch line of a joke, pardon"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gracia
(c) Tesla’s Roadster had battery made in Japan and (electric) engine in Taiwan.