Top Reads, Listens, Follows & Takeaways of the week

The End of the Affair

Takeaways:

Michael Cembalest’s 2023 outlook titled The End of the Affair is a must read. Below are some notes and charts that stood out to me.

On speculation:

On China:

“One interesting aspect of the US-China relationship: it’s not as one-sided as it seems. Over the last decade, US companies made large investments in Chinese subsidiaries. As of 2020, the US trade deficit with China disappeared once sales of in-country subsidiaries were included. In other words, US companies were doing almost the same amount of business in China as Chinese companies were doing in the US, but through local subsidiary sales rather than exports”.

On Semiconductors:

“When fully deployed, the $50-$60 billion in the US CHIPs bill would only bring the US to ~15% semiconductor self-sufficiency”.

“TSMC has cited high operating costs, lack of trained personnel and construction snags in its efforts to bring the Arizona plant online. TSMC mentioned that the same plant would be less capital intensive to build in Taiwan, and that the all-in cost of its US chip production could be 50% higher than in Taiwan”.

“As of 2021, Taiwan accounted for a 70% share of Chinese chip consumption. TSM produces 10% of China’s chips in its factories in Nanjing and Shanghai, and exports the remaining 60% from Taiwan. There may be no example anywhere in the world of one country so reliant on another for a specific high-value import; China’s 70% reliance on Taiwan dwarfs Europe’s pre-war reliance on Russian energy”.

Give Cembalest’s piece a read, and if these posts are valuable to you, please share them with a friend.

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Reads:

The End of the Affair by Michael Cembalest (here)

What gets measured gets managed... sometimes disastrously by Michael Green (here)

The Many Ingenious Ways People in Prison Use (Forbidden) Cell Phones (here)

U.S. Weapons Industry Unprepared for a China Conflict (here)

Peru’s Democratic Dysfunction (here)

China and the Population Bomb That Wasn’t (here)

Next up for George Santos, a Ponzi! (here)

Listens: 

Daryl Morey on systems thinking in sports and why soccer has the worst rules (here)

Buying Franchises, a primer (here)

Suspect, season 2, a true crime podcast (here)

Follow, Watch & Other great content:

Crime documentary recommendation - Low Country: The Murdaugh Dynasty (here)

Dave Portnoy on creating his watch company (here)

60 Minutes: What's in the heads of heroes? (here)

History Of Immigration To The US in an animated map (here)