Indebted Chinese Businessmen Flee

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Also:

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Patent Reform Legislation

LINK - I am a few weeks late on this one, but President Obama has signed legislation overhauling the nation's patent system.

Chinese Bubble Is Act III In the Global Economic Crisis

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I truly am wondering how this is all going to play out. How is this going to affect Europe, which is already on the brink? And then the United States? People have been hoping that the bad economy, the global economic crisis, is at the beginning of the end, but we may really only be at the end of the beginning.

As a sidenote (which I think I have mentioned before on this blog, but can't remember), I am wondering if China's economy has really surpassed Japan's in size, or if that is just paper GDP in the form of lousy-quality infrastructure (such as the Shanghai garbage bridge), which would mean that in reality, China's economy may not really have surpassed Japan's.

Three Additional Fragmented Industries

Three additional fragmented industries I have found are:

1) Clinical laboratory testing industry (LINK)

2) Medical device contract manufacturing industry (LINK)

3) Hospital supplies industry (LINK)

Another industry that seems to be fragmented, but consolidating rather quickly is the instrumentation industry.  A still fragmented (but consolidating) area of this industry is life sciences equipment (also called the life sciences tools (and services) market); here is an article listing some companies in it: LINK

Interesting Article With Regards to Building a Large Company Out of Smaller Companies

     So I have written before about how one way to go about entrepeneurship is to find industries that are fragmented and see if one could go about consolidatng the industry by building a large company via the process of combining smaller companies in the industry together. Some entrepreneurs have done this, it is also a strategy used by private equity firms. Here is an interesting article I found on this subject, albeit a little dated, from the year 2000: LINK

CNBC Capitalism Commercial

I disagree with the notion about the rest of the world developing a "larger, more prosperous economy," I mean, larger, sure (the EU altogether is larger), but more prosperous? I think the U.S. will recover economically in time. We are going through some tough times right now, but the U.S. will recover. Otherwise though, I think it is a very awesome commercial about market capitalism:

Mattel and Industrial Espionage

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     So it seems that Mattel really did conduct industrial espionage against MGA Entertainment. What gets me with this is that even if you think a competitor stole your idea, then the last thing you would want to do is to engage in industrial espionage against them because if you get caught, then you completely lose the moral high ground. Mattel's claim was that MGA stole their idea by hiring Carter Bryant for his Bratz dolls, but that Carter came up with the Bratz idea while still working for Mattel, and therefore the Bratz brand belonged to Mattel. However, Mattel ended up ultimately losing their own case, meanwhile MGA countersued alleging that Mattel had engaged in industrial espionage, and Mattel lost here too.
     But even if MGA really had "stolen" Mattel's idea in that sense, it would have more been by accident or ignorance in hiring a man who had created the concept while working for a competitor (I don't know enough of the details about the case). But if you are in the right, the last thing you then do is to start conducting what are blatantly illegal activities.
     According to the second link, MGA is now planning to go after Mattel in Europe for their doing the same thing over there. Apparently Mattel has a history of being a bully in the toy industry. They tried to crush Isaac Larian but that guy sure is a fighter.

Industrial Policy (aka Lemon Socialism)

     So we have this company Solyndra, a solar-panel company, which the government gave a $535 million loan to and now it is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. apparently this is only one of multiple companies that were given such loans and are now in bankruptcy. I think this if anything demonstrates the problems with the form of industrial policy where government thinks it is fit to determine what are the industries of tomorrow. "Green technology" and "green jobs" and so forth, for the time being, are mostly a fantasy. The United States economy is not going to be turned around by trying to create green jobs. You cannot power the likes of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, etc...or any major city with the likes of solar and wind power. The technology just isn't there at the moment (and government-subsidized wind farms are another boondoggle I think).
     Another technological boondoggle I think is the push for electric cars. These are not going to replace gasoline-powered vehicles anytime soon. They take too long to charge up. Yet we see government pushing for cars like the Chevy Volt.
     It will be interesting to see what heads roll over this Solyndra incident. In addition to being an example of the fallacies of this type of industrial policy, it also seems to be an example of crony capitalism, as the company is backed heavily by George Kaiser, a major donor to the Democratic party and a man who helped raise a lot of money for the Obama campaign.