Ready for a market correction?

[Joemailman]

Damn...

Not too worry. Stocks are on sale tomorrow. 300 points is just over a 2% drop. Not exactly a bloodbath.

Actually the close today of -311 was 140 points off the low. It will be interesting to see if that rebound continues early tomorrow.

[LL2]

Market is falling again.

I decided to check our 401k portfolio and it's down 6%! Yikes! It's still up 22% for the year, so I'm not complaining. I was happier when it was up 28% though. Everything will rebound by the end of the year.

[Freak Out]

Gold fell as well but bonds did ok, all stocks are getting it for the most part. Grain futures are up.

Stupid fucking 0 down no credit checking greedy bastards.

[Freak Out]

Did I forget to say that the dollar is getting ass raped again?

[Kiwon]

For Merlin.... Unions have been ruining Korea's domestic economy for years. Workers strike over anything, Globalization, FTA, in sympathy with other unions, etc.

This is an editorial from an English language newspaper, The Chosun Ilbo.

More Preposterous Union Demands

Unionized workers at Kia Motors have been holding sporadic strikes since June 28. On June 28 and 29, they downed tools to protest the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. And from July 3 to 19, they held eight separate strikes demanding a pay rise. They are demanding a performance bonus equivalent to 200 percent of their monthly salary, plus a W128,805 (US$1=W915) pay rise. Also among their demands are clauses that ban Kia from outsourcing new car production, while promising to maintain the same pay level even though Kia’s Korean production facilities may see a decline in production due to the establishment or expansion of manufacturing plants overseas.

This year alone, unionized workers at Kia have called 10 strikes. Kia’s union has the dubious distinction of striking every year since it was formed in 1991. Those strikes have led to a combined sales loss of W4.8 trillion for the automaker. In terms of the total number of strikes, Kia’s union has even beat the feisty union at Hyundai Motor, who have striked every year except one since forming in 1987.

Production efficiency must undoubtedly be poor in a manufacturing business with such a track record. It takes Kia 37.5 hours on average to roll out one car, which is much slower than General Motors (22.2 hours) and Toyota (22.1 hours). It costs Kia W890,000 in labor costs to assemble one vehicle at its Korean plants. That’s double the W440,000 at the automaker’s Alabama plant and 14 times more expensive than its Chinese plant, where it costs W58,000 per vehicle.

Last week, Kia reached the conclusion that 1.69 workers were doing a task that just one could handle and called on its unionized workers to accept a rotation-based system. That would give more flexibility to the company by allowing it to deploy more workers to the production of cars that sell well and is used by most automakers around the world that are more advance than Hyundai. Kia says the rotation can save the company W460 billion a year. But Kia’s unionized workers rejected the system, opting to hang on to their comfortable schedules.

url: http://english.chosun.com/w21data/ht...707200027.html

[Freak Out]

I remember seeing some crazy strike footage coming out of Korea in the past. Riots and all that, I take it there is a law that requires a certain percentage of manufacturing to be done in country for companies like Kia and LG?

[Scott Campbell]

For Merlin.... Unions have been ruining Korea's domestic economy for years. Workers strike over anything, Globalization, FTA, in sympathy with other unions, etc.

That reminds me of when Schlitz went on strike in Milwaukee for (among other things) a bartender for their beer breaks.

Thank you Ronald Reagan, for firing those Air Traffic Controllers.

[Kiwon]

I remember seeing some crazy strike footage coming out of Korea in the past. Riots and all that, I take it there is a law that requires a certain percentage of manufacturing to be done in country for companies like Kia and LG?

Megacorporations like Hyundai, Samsung, LG, Daewoo, Kia, etc.... while not government owned are basically properties of the nation. They exist in people's minds in order to advance the nation of Korea itself.

Remember, this is a group-oriented society and 99% of the people are ethnic Koreans (same language, history, culture, etc.). They have kept it that way intentionally for 5,000 years. Mixed-married couples and especially mixed-raced children are just basically completely shunned. They almost all end up living abroad.

You will never see a large Korean firm being bought out by a multinational. It will NEVER happen. It took about 5 years for a GM-Daewoo partnership to be formed with a bankrupt Daewoo Motors to build cars. The worker unions sabotaged parts plants, threatened everything, pledged to never work for foreigners, but finally after years of being out of work and no other domestic buyouts in sight they decided to okay the merger.

Workers totals were set and not everyone was rehired. Despite all the BS and concessions on top of concessions by GM, the new company made money (exporting cheap cars to China and the Middle East). After a couple of years, guess what, all the original workers were hired back. Lesson learned? I doubt it.

These folks are used to having jobs for life and globalization is like an electric shock to the Korean psyche. They are adjusting but the FTA with the USA is widely unpopular (American beef brings Mad Cow disease, etc., etc).

As for the demos (demonstrations), they are completely orchestrated. The unions announce when they will hold one and get a permit. The government shows up with the riot police (mostly young people doing their national service) and they yell at one another and push back and forth. Occasionally, some protestor will set himself on fire to go down in infamy.

Ridiculous, but it makes for dramatic TV.

[Kiwon]

For Merlin.... Unions have been ruining Korea's domestic economy for years. Workers strike over anything, Globalization, FTA, in sympathy with other unions, etc.

That reminds me of when Schlitz went on strike in Milwaukee for (among other things) a bartender for their beer breaks.

Scott, seriously, tell me you are kidding.

[Scott Campbell]

For Merlin.... Unions have been ruining Korea's domestic economy for years. Workers strike over anything, Globalization, FTA, in sympathy with other unions, etc.

That reminds me of when Schlitz went on strike in Milwaukee for (among other things) a bartender for their beer breaks.

Scott, seriously, tell me you are kidding.

Nope. I'm sure it wasn't their primary motive, but it did give the boys something to rally around. The unions in this country have gotten the pounding they deserve.

Thank you Ronald Reagan for firing those Air Traffic Controllers back in the early 80's.

[Scott Campbell]

I remember seeing some crazy strike footage coming out of Korea in the past. Riots and all that, I take it there is a law that requires a certain percentage of manufacturing to be done in country for companies like Kia and LG?

Megacorporations like Hyundai, Samsung, LG, Daewoo, Kia, etc.... while not government owned are basically properties of the nation. They exist in people's minds in order to advance the nation of Korea itself.

Remember, this is a group-oriented society and 99% of the people are ethnic Koreans (same language, history, culture, etc.). They have kept it that way intentionally for 5,000 years. Mixed-married couples and especially mixed-raced children are just basically completely shunned. They almost all end up living abroad.

You will never see a large Korean firm being bought out by a multinational. It will NEVER happen. It took about 5 years for a GM-Daewoo partnership to be formed with a bankrupt Daewoo Motors to build cars. The worker unions sabotaged parts plants, threatened everything, pledged to never work for foreigners, but finally after years of being out of work and no other domestic buyouts in sight they decided to okay the merger.

Workers totals were set and not everyone was rehired. Despite all the BS and concessions on top of concessions by GM, the new company made money (exporting cheap cars to China and the Middle East). After a couple of years, guess what, all the original workers were hired back. Lesson learned? I doubt it.

These folks are used to having jobs for life and globalization is like an electric shock to the Korean psyche. They are adjusting but the FTA with the USA is widely unpopular (American beef brings Mad Cow disease, etc., etc).

As for the demos (demonstrations), they are completely orchestrated. The unions announce when they will hold one and get a permit. The government shows up with the riot police (mostly young people doing their national service) and they yell at one another and push back and forth. Occasionally, some protestor will set himself on fire to go down in infamy.

Ridiculous, but it makes for dramatic TV.

The sort of protectionism you describe is a recipe for disaster. If Korea or any other country does not adapt to changing globalization, it will eventually suffer.

Your post makes me wonder how in the world Samsung remains so unbelievably competitive in so many markets.

[Kiwon]

The sort of protectionism you describe is a recipe for disaster. If Korea or any other country does not adapt to changing globalization, it will eventually suffer.

Your post makes me wonder how in the world Samsung remains so unbelievably competitive in so many markets.

The Confucianist, group orientation works to their advantage.

The work force is highly educated and infused with an extremely competitive spirit. Korea is #2 in the world in math and science. Many Middle Schoolers return home from study institutes around 10 or 11 pm. High School is even worse. Korean parents will spend almost any amount of money for the sake of their child's education. This is the norm. It's one of the reasons that the birthrate is the lowest among industrialized nations.

The employees at the Samsung corporation (electronics, engineering, finance, on and on...) are the cream of the crop. The same for LG and Hyundai and most of their related companies. These "chebols" has benefited from decades of sweetheart deals with the Korean government and advanced from simple reverse engineering to cutting edge R and D in IT, Biochem, etc. Broadband Internet has been the standard countrywide here for almost ten years. I noted that the new iPhone has a Samsung chip in it. Sweet deal.

A lot of manufacturing is also done overseas due to labor costs. The engine of the Korean economy is exports (cars, ships, chips). If that ever goes south then the gig is up. They know it and are fighting like mad to maintain their competitive advantages, especially in the area of electronics, until China's economy really gets cooking. They are getting burned now with China blatantly violating intellectual property copyrights. What goes around comes around it seems.

[LL2]

The sort of protectionism you describe is a recipe for disaster. If Korea or any other country does not adapt to changing globalization, it will eventually suffer.

Very true. I see globalization at work every day as a Customs Broker. I just got hired by a 49 billion dollar company to oversee their US import operations. "Made in the US" is a thing of the past. I have some relatives that are extremely pro Union. For some reason they can never remember what I do for a living, and I've been doing it for 10 years. Well, at a famliy get together recently they asked me again, and I said "You see all that "Made in China" stuff, I help bring it into the country." Needless to say, my pro union family members sat there all quite and pissed. I wanted to tell them to get a grip with reality, and your kids factory jobs will no longer exist someday.

[Kiwon]

The sort of protectionism you describe is a recipe for disaster. If Korea or any other country does not adapt to changing globalization, it will eventually suffer.

Very true. I see globalization at work every day as a Customs Broker. I just got hired by a 49 billion dollar company to oversee their US import operations. "Made in the US" is a thing of the past. I have some relatives that are extremely pro Union. For some reason they can never remember what I do for a living, and I've been doing it for 10 years. Well, at a famliy get together recently they asked me again, and I said "You see all that "Made in China" stuff, I help bring it into the country." Needless to say, my pro union family members sat there all quite and pissed. I wanted to tell them to get a grip with reality, and your kids factory jobs will no longer exist someday.

That's a good story. A true clash of cultures.

[Scott Campbell]

Needless to say, my pro union family members sat there all quite and pissed.

Darwin is stalking them.