Monday, March 30, 2020

Asia Covid-19: Lessons learned from past epidemics and high income helps

Kuala Lumpur: Coronavirus data for March 30th show that Japan (including the Diamond Princess cruise ship) with a population of 127m is just behind Ireland (population 5m) with 2,578 infections and 64 deaths; South Korea with a population of 52m has 9,661 and 158 deaths; Taiwan with a population of 23m has 298 and 3 deaths; Hong Kong (Special Administrative Region of China) with a population of 7.4m has 642 and 4 deaths; Singapore with a population of 5.7m has 844 and 3 deaths.

The health per capita spending as shown in the chart above (Taiwan's spending is $2,700) highlights how low the level is in several Asian countries.

Friday, March 27, 2020

Socialism for the rich: America's $532bn bailout of big companies

The top executives of most of America's biggest corporations are adept at dodging taxes, overpaying themselves, and buying back shares that they are invested in themselves rather than building rainy day funds. The Federal government and Federal Reserve are the backstops in the mythical land of free markets while the genesis of commercial pharmaceutical and tech innovations are often in public laboratories or institutions.

Fortune magazine noted last August that more than half of all share buybacks were funded by debt.

According to a January 2020 article in the Harvard Business Review, "in 2018, only 43% of companies in the S&P 500 Index recorded any R&D expenses, with just 38 companies accounting for 75% of the R&D spending of all 500 companies....The 465 companies in the S&P 500 Index in January 2019 that were publicly listed in 2009-2018 spent $4.3tn on buybacks, equal to 52% of net income, and another $3.3tn on dividends — an additional 39% of net income. In 2018 alone, even with after-tax profits at record levels because of the Republican tax cuts, buybacks by S&P 500 companies reached an astounding 68% of net income, with dividends absorbing another 41%."

Monday, March 16, 2020

Coronavirus - COVID-19: China "Sick Man" of Asia? US of Developed World?  

Get latest data Coronavirus Tracking Data from Johns Hopkins University

Data from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus database on March 16, 2020, show a fatality rate of 3.86%. However, this is not a reliable metric as the denominator is influenced by a recent spike in numbers while the numbers of people with the virus, not confirmed or showing no symptoms, are unknown.

Thursday, March 12, 2020

The Irish land racket and Dublin housing crisis

Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council and the Land Development Agency lodged planning application for 597 new homes at Shanganagh, Co Dublin, in Jan 2020.

The price of land is a key driver of housing prices and there has been a debate in Ireland and Great Britain for more than a century on the injustice of landowners near urban centres making huge gains at the cost of other country residents, without lifting a finger. Dermot Desmond, the prominent Irish businessman, raised this issue in an interesting opinion article in the Irish Times this month.

Friday, March 06, 2020

Zombie unicorns and struggling tech startups in Ireland and Singapore

This year's FT 1000 ranking of European companies that achieved the highest compound annual growth rate in revenue between 2015 and 2018, released in March, has 259 entrants comprising 189 technology firms together with fintech and e-commerce.