Fortune (April 27)
“The Iran conflict has confirmed a transformation in the economics of warfare toward cheap, mass-produced weapons, forcing a wholesale rethinking of military procurement.” Iran’s strategy “is the opposite of the West’s model of precision lethality.” It deliberately embraces mass losses because “even the most advanced defenses can be overwhelmed with sufficient volume” and “cost asymmetry” places tremendous burden on the enemy. In this case, “cost asymmetry is worsened by severe production and supply-chain constraints.” The U.S. has burned through 50% of its THAAD interceptors, with the next delivery of THAAD interceptors not expected until April 2027.
Tags: Cheap, Conflict, Cost asymmetry, Economics, Iran, Mass losses, Mass-produced, Military procurement, Precision lethality, Production, Rethinking, Supply-chain constraints, THAAD interceptors, Transformation, U.S., Volume, Warfare, Weapons
Minnesota Star Tribune (October 27)
“The cheap-and-tasty paradigm that makes junk food so appealing is collapsing: Many of those guilty-pleasure treats aren’t so cheap anymore.” The American diet has been shaped by “irresistible sweets, savory snacks and fast food… with big flavors and minimal nutritional value for a century now.” Healthier habits and alternatives “have chipped away at that. But most of all, shoppers seem to be collectively drawing the line of how much is too much for junk food.” This has left “big food companies” struggling “to sell more food in recent years. Any revenue growth tends to come from price increases, not more unit sales.”
Tags: Appealing, Big flavors, Cheap, Collapsing, Diet, Fast food, Guilty-pleasure, Irresistible sweets, Junk food, Nutritional value, Price increases, Savory, Shoppers, Snacks, Tasty, Treats, Unit sales
Oilprice.com (January 9)
“The last month has been a month of celebration in the European Union. Gas demand is down because of the unusually warm weather. As a result, prices are down, and the crisis, according to analysts, appears to be averted.” Nevertheless, “these prices are not going to go much lower for the very simple reason that LNG could never be as cheap as pipeline gas.”
Tags: Analysts, Averted, Celebration, Cheap, Crisis, Demand, Down, EU, Gas, LNG, Prices, Warm weather
Fortune (September 24)
“Nowhere is this crisis more pronounced and more dangerous than in Europe, where a long-standing gambit on cheap Russian gas has backfired.” With winter, it looks certain to get even worse. “Even the slightest uptick in energy demand… could push entire sectors of Europe’s manufacturing industry to shut down entirely, devastating European economies with a wave of unemployment, high prices, and in all likelihood public unrest and divisions between European nations.”
Tags: Backfired, Cheap, Crisis, Dangerous, Devastating, Economies, Energy demand, Europe, Gas, High prices, Manufacturing, Pronounced, Russia, Unemployment, Uptick, Winter, Worse
Institutional Investor (August 29)
“Now that investors can get factor-based funds on the cheap, they’re pushing quants in new directions.” This presents new challenges. “One is a move away from a heavy reliance on decades of historical data and back tests to tying this in-depth research to the realities of the current economic and market environment.” Another challenge is “getting the right people” to do this. “Many quant managers historically hired people with expertise in data,” but “now it’s the background in economics and finance that’s become critical.”
Tags: Back tests, Challenges, Cheap, Data, Economic, Economics, Factor-based funds, Finance, Historical data, Investors, Managers, Market, Quants, Realities, Reliance, Research
The Economist (April 19)
Coal is a “cheap, ubiquitous and flexible fuel” that will be “the fuel of the future, unfortunately.” Although it remains very dirty, coal “offers the best chance for poor countries wanting to get rich” and even for some rich countries, like Japan and Germany, seeking nuclear alternatives.
Tags: Cheap, Coal, Dirty, Fuel, Future, Germany, Japan, Nuclear alternatives, Rich, Ubiquitous
