Readings: China story, Water crisis, Angel investing
- The Atlantic: China’s Way Forward
Let’s begin by considering how bad things could get, for China and those it influences. The clearest approach I’ve heard to this question comes from Michael Pettis, the Beijing-based finance professor whose side business as a rock-music impresario I described in the March Atlantic. To think about China’s predicament in the late 2000s, he says, you should think about America’s in the 1920s.
Heaped on my desk are other sector-by-sector analyses suggesting that the rebound may come more quickly than the gross-demand figures indicate. “When can we expect to see signs of life in the mainland economy?” asked Andy Rothman, of CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, in one such report, about the cement and steel industries. “Our answer is, March or April 2009,” when the first orders from the stimulus program will reach steel and cement companies.
- Bloomberg: Special Report: Global Water Crisis
Water upheavals are intensifying because the population is growing fastest in places where fresh water is either scarce or polluted. Dry areas are becoming drier and wet areas wetter as the oceans and atmosphere warm. Economic roadblocks, such as the global credit crunch and its effects on Mulroy’s attempts to sell bonds, multiply during a recession.
Yet local governments that control water face unyielding pressure from constituents to keep the price low, regardless of cost. Agricultural interests, commercial developers and the housing industry clash over dwindling supplies. Companies, burdened by slowing profits, will be forced to move from dry areas such as the American Southwest, Udall says.
- Paul Graham: How to Be an Angel Investor
How do you be a good angel investor? The first thing you need is to be decisive. When we talk to founders about good and bad investors, one of the ways we describe the good ones is to say “he writes checks.” That doesn’t mean the investor says yes to everyone. Far from it. It means he makes up his mind quickly, and follows through. You may be thinking, how hard could that be? You’ll see when you try it. It follows from the nature of angel investing that the decisions are hard. You have to guess early, at the stage when the most promising ideas still seem counterintuitive, because if they were obviously good, VCs would already have funded them.
