Rich, SAIC is one BIG company! During my drive around today, inspecting all of northern San Diego [and the mist-shrouded beach in the middle of the sunny day] I saw a LOT of SAIC buildings.
What do they DO all day? Well, they did say on the entrance to at least one building "check saic.com " so I guess I'll do that.
Is it in fact CIA's secret Condor projects in conjunction with the Atomic Research facilities and biological warfare biotechs spread all over the same area? It's all very suspicious. San Diego [that area] is made up of Qualcomm, SAIC, Biotechs, UCSD, Atomic Research and LOTS of wishful thinking property companies who are in the process of building, or have finished, dozens of big, flash, buildings ready for somebody to move into. SAIC is CIAs in reverse?! I see IDEC has a new building nearing completion. For Zevalin I suppose.
SAIC should be able to win a yacht race against a bunch of sheep farmers. We'll see in three years.
Regarding Auckland's investment in waterfront facilities, it's interesting how money travels around. I worked here and there, saved my pennies and ended up with 120 [or was it 160?] QUALCOMM shares. Q! hired engineers from China to help make CDMA work. They got Mexicans to help make the phones. They sell the phones and stuff in Australia, Japan and China etc. Q! gives me the profits. I give some of those profits to the local politicians [they actually steal it by force, but that's another story] and buy local phone services and stuff which funds MV 'Black Magic'. I buy other stuff from Japan, Australia and HEAPS from China.
It goes round and round. Now Zhu Rongji seems to have lost his senses and has taken to charming Taiwan with comments like 'marry me or I'll shoot you'. The Taiwanese quite sensibly voted for somebody who will have nothing to do with such a crazed, violent, 'blood-shedding' suitor.
Meanwhile, in an early epidemic of madness, Bill Clinton and the USA, those citadels of free enterprise, capitalism and free trade are fixin' to ban exports of Alaskan crude oil because some truck drivers wasted fuel stropping around the circuit outside Capitol Hill and the White House and the papers are full of whining SUV townies who have finally figured out that if OPEC cuts production, the price of gasoline will go up!
It was going on a year ago that OPEC was planning some crude oil production cuts which SHOULD have dinged the stockmarket in June 1999, but the irrational exuberance and The New Paradigm just roared on ahead anyway.
Now there is a bit of a fright!
So, let's get it over with. Here's the 21st century and already we are fixin' a war with China, India and Pakistan are lining up nukes and the great free-trade exponent [USA] which can't compete with that major economy, New Zealand, on sheep, [or sailing yachts] is going to start interrupting trade flows. To ensure they really mess things up, they'll do it with an important product like crude oil. Meanwhile, watch how, suddenly, Saddam is deemed to be well-behaved and under control, at least as far as external affairs are concerned, and oil will be allowed to flow freely from Iraq. Saddam had it right while he was still occupying Kuwait when he said that oil export restrictions would be kept on. They have been. For nearly a decade. What a fortune that has handed the oil industry over that time. Now it's getting to be a bit much so something needs to be done say the truckers and the politicians.
Plus ca change. Call me cynical!
Just a small rant for old time's sake.
Mqurice |
