Taking a short break - no post this week

I'm taking a short break from posting this week. I expect to post again on Sunday, March 1.

The return of resource nationalism

It wasn't supposed to be this way. The fall of the Berlin Wall was to bring about one, integrated world market where goods and services freely traversed borders without the interference of meddling ideologues—where the agricultural, mineral and man-made treasures of one country would be available to anyone, anywhere who was willing to pay for them: oil, gold, diamonds, soybeans, palm oil, wheat, computers, software and myriad other products of the earth and of human endeavor.

It's not working out that way. Not every country completely bought into this idea of an almost frictionless international capitalist order overseen benignly by global organizations created by treaties adhered to by all the world's nations.

Among the most obvious is China. China has started to treat rare earth elements—which are critical to practically everything electronic these days—the way the Atreides family, a ruling family in the Frank Herbert's science fiction novel Dune, treats "melange," a substance that extends life and increases mental ability and only comes from one planet, one that the Atreides happen to control.

Note to EIA: Major shale operator sending cash elsewhere

John Hess, CEO of Hess Corporation, a large U.S.-based independent oil producer, recently told a Houston audience where he's putting the company's money these days: Offshore drilling.

That should strike those who know of Hess Corporation's heavy involvement in the Bakken shale play (in North Dakota) as a bit strange. Hess says the company will "use cash flow from the Bakken to invest in longer-term offshore investments."

Hess told his audience that "key U.S. shale fields are starting to plateau, calling shale 'important but not the next Saudi Arabia.'" Setting aside whether Hess is actually getting investable cash from the Bakken, the constant refrain from the U.S. oil industry has been precisely that shale plays ARE the next Saudi Arabia.

Code blue: Pandemics and hospital surge capacity in a just-in-time world

We may be about to see the sad fruits of so-called just-in-time (JIT) inventory systems applied to hospitals in the United States and elsewhere. Fourteen years ago I first wrote about the vulnerabilities of such systems across society including health care systems. (Other observers have more recently noted this problem in health care.) If the corona virus spreads rapidly around the world, those hospitals which have adopted such systems will be least able to cope.

Here's why:  JIT systems are designed to minimize inventories in order to free up cash for other useful and profitable purposes. If you no longer have to store large inventories, you don't need to build and maintain substantial rooms and storage areas for that purpose. And, the money actually invested in those inventories, whether for auto parts or for medical supplies, can be deployed elsewhere to make a profit. With JIT, supplies arrive at your door as you need them. The "storage room," if it can be called that, is a delivery truck on its way to your loading dock.

The trouble is, a wave of corona virus victims showing up at hospitals could quickly exhaust lean inventories of medical supplies. And, the supplier providing those supplies may quickly run out as demand surges. After all, a smart supplier will be practicing JIT as well.