The global sup­ply chain of a semi­con­duc­tor chip is com­plex and spans the globe.

For exam­ple, a cam­era image sen­sor pro­duced by On Semi­con­duc­tor is first cre­ated with wafers in Tai­wan for pack­ag­ing and test­ing, then to Sin­ga­pore for stor­age, then on to China for assem­bly into a cam­era unit. The cam­era unit is sent to a Hyundai com­po­nent sup­plier in Korea before being mounted on Hyundai vehi­cles in auto fac­to­ries around the world, accord­ing to Reuters.

A short­age of that image sen­sor has resulted in Hyundai Motor’s plant’s idling in South Korea. Other automak­ers such a Ford Motors Co, Gen­eral Motors Co, and Volk­swa­gen are expe­ri­enc­ing issues.

The exam­ple of On Semiconductor’s image sen­sor wind­ing jour­ney around the world shows just how dif­fi­cult it is for the chip indus­try to increase capac­ity to address the cur­rent short­age.

Mean­while, Pres­i­dent Biden is attempt­ing to address the short­age and has called for a mas­sive effort to bol­ster the domes­tic chip indus­try. He’s pro­posed $50 bil­lion to build out the chip indus­try as part of his $2 tril­lion infra­struc­ture pro­posal. In doing so, the chip sup­ply chain would be far less com­plex and able to adjust to mar­ket fluc­tu­a­tions much quicker.

Cur­rently, the US only pro­duces 12% of world­wide semi­con­duc­tor man­u­fac­tur­ing capac­ity, down a whop­ping 37% since 1990. Asia, on the other hand, com­mands more than 80% of the chip man­u­fac­tur­ing market.

The com­plex­ity of the semi­con­duc­tor global sup­ply chain is out­lined below:

The need to con­dense pro­duc­tion for semi­con­duc­tor chips appears to be nec­es­sary as it seems the cur­rent short­age is hard to solve with sup­ply chains span­ning the world.

Authored by Mike Shed­lock via MishTalk,

Let’s check in on EU’s green energy pol­icy and how coun­tries meet green invest­ment targets.

Green Smoke­screen

The EU man­dates that that 30% of all EU expen­di­tures be allo­cated to green projects. Euroin­tel­li­gence dis­cusses the Green Smoke­screen and some amus­ing math as to how those tar­gets are met.

If you took this tar­get seri­ously, you would have to reform the Com­mon Agri­cul­tural Pol­icy. But the EU failed to do pre­cisely that when they had an oppor­tu­nity last year. Instead, the EU resorts to cheating.

The Euro­pean Com­mis­sion clas­si­fies invest­ment in terms of 0%, 40% and 100% green con­tent, and rounds up the num­bers to the next higher tar­get. So 1% becomes 40%. 41% becomes 100%.

You can always rely on EU lead­ers to put appear­ances ahead of content.

Reform of fis­cal rules, a cap­i­tal mar­kets union, and changes in tax rules would pro­duce more envi­ron­men­tal invest­ments and employ­ment than a sense­less com­pe­ti­tion for numer­i­cal cli­mate change targets.

I also don’t believe this cha­rade will work polit­i­cally. When the men­dac­ity of the EU’s cli­mate pol­icy becomes appar­ent, the cen­tre will not only have lost the vic­tims of the eco­nomic cri­sis, but an entire gen­er­a­tion of young voters.

This is the thing with smoke and mir­rors: when the smoke lifts, you see clearly.

Green­washed Out

The above arti­cle was pub­lished on March 13, 2021.

Euroin­tel­li­gence reports today in “Green­washed Out” that lob­by­ists con­sider the above demands as too strict.

The Com­mis­sion has been work­ing to update its green finance tax­on­omy because the most recent set of guide­lines, pub­lished in 2019, were deemed too strict by some mem­ber states and indus­try lob­by­ists.

In layman’s terms, projects that are not green will still be labelled green, which defeats the pur­pose of the entire endeavor.

Nine mem­bers of the 57-​strong group have threat­ened to quit over the lat­est pro­posal because it would allow com­pa­nies that are not cur­rently con­sid­ered green to claim invest­ments, such as highly effi­cient steel pro­duc­tion, and clas­sify them as taxonomy-​aligned.

This means that the pro­posal will main­tain a long­stand­ing prac­tice of mis­la­bel­ing green invest­ments. Under a pre­vi­ous set of guide­lines, a sys­tem called the Rio mark­ers was used to round up the green con­tent of invest­ments and projects. A project with even a tiny amount of green con­tent would qual­ify as 40% green, and any­thing with more than 40% green con­tent was rounded up to 100% green.

Too Strict!?

Clearly there is a need to round 1% up to 49% and 50% up to 120% or whatever.

In addi­tion, let’s label steel pro­duc­tion as green-​aligned.

You may love or hate Trump’s approach to green projects but at least he was hon­est about what he was doing.

Global Net Zero Cli­mate Change Tar­gets are ‘Pie in the Sky’

By 2050 the world pop­u­la­tion is fore­cast to grow 9.8 bil­lion, up from 7.9 bil­lion in 2021.

That’s a huge increase in car­bon demand even if we reduce per capita demand.

Cherry Pick­ing

Cherry Pick­ing?

What the hell do you think is going to hap­pen when every­one in China and India using mostly coal want higher stan­dards of liv­ing?

You reaf­firm the big prob­lem ahead is totally out­side US con­trol.

Yet, Biden, AOC, etc. think the US can solve this with dollars

— Mike “Mish” Shed­lock (@MishGEA) Feb­ru­ary 15, 2021

Even if the US foot­print fell to zero (it won’t) it’s pos­si­ble the net effect would be meaningless.

For dis­cus­sion, please con­sider Global Net Zero Cli­mate Change Tar­gets are ‘Pie in the Sky’

For the first time in seven years, New York City has lost its title as the world’s bil­lion­aire cap­i­tal.

Statista’s Niall McCarthy reports that in 2020, the Big Apple was dis­placed by Bei­jing which recorded a net gain of 33 bil­lion­aires. Bei­jing is now in top spot with 100 indi­vid­u­als worth a bil­lion dol­lars or more, nar­rowly ahead of New York’s 99.

You will find more info­graph­ics at Sta­tista

The find­ings come from the 2021 Forbes World’s Bil­lion­aires list which shows that a quar­ter of its 2,755 mem­bers live in just 10 cities with more than 10 per­cent res­i­dent in just four Chi­nese metrop­o­lises. Along with Bei­jing, Shang­hai, Shen­zhen and Hangzhou also make the list of the world’s top-​10 bil­lion­aire cap­i­tals. Hong Kong, a spe­cial admin­is­tra­tive region of China, is also present on the list and it comes third with 80 billionaires.

Even though New York is in sec­ond place, the col­lec­tive worth of its bil­lion­aire pop­u­la­tion amounts to $560.5 bil­lion, beat­ing Beijing’s col­lec­tive $484.3 bil­lion. Zhang Yim­ing is the rich­est res­i­dent in the Chi­nese cap­i­tal with a net worth of $35.6 bil­lion while Michael Bloomberg is New York’s wealth­i­est inhab­i­tant with a $59 bil­lion fortune.