Commentary: Japan’s ‘no first-time customers’ reservation policy may help some restaurants

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” YOUR MEAL IS OVER”

For restaurants and restaurants, getting consumers into the seating is one point, attracting people who actually appreciate what you do is another. That point was made by a narrative about the great New York chef&nbsp, David Bouley&nbsp, that circulated after he died in February.

According to the story, Bouley had only received a new source of beautiful Copper River salmon of the highest caliber from Bouley, whose eponymous restaurants were a defining part of Manhattan’s epicurean enlightenment in the 1980s and 1990s. He prepared it for dinner that night, and he served it as a first course, complete with thick spinach rice and pea puree.

However, to his surprise ( and his team, who had been oohing and aahing over the fish ), the pair they served the dish returned, claiming it was strange and could have the shrimp instead.

The restaurant was angry. He ordered the child’s table from the wrong side and instructed the frantic monsieur d to let them know” their meal is over.” The restaurant erupted in applause. And the mysterious ( though ostensibly” surly” ) couple sped out, never letting the doors of a Bouley restaurant ever go dark again. Or but I assume.

I can recall arriving at my favorite restaurant to soon to receive the final serving of a fantastic pork chop. The bar’s patron sitting next to me received it. He merely consumed the lean beef after carefully removing all the large. I was exasperated: The entire point of the food was its unctuousness, the animal was raised for its large.

I was n’t the only person outraged. The client who took apart the never- quite- empty plate came up with a text from the house: &nbsp,” Sir, the restaurant noticed that you did n’t end your food. Was all okay”? The meal was unimpressed and mumbled things. &nbsp, It was the restaurant ‘s&nbsp, polite way of putting him on see: Never do that again.

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Commentary: There is a bigger threat to US trade than Chinese chips

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Opposition IN AEROSPACE

In each of the previous three decades, selling of aircraft, including related parts and equipment, made up the majority of imports to China. Those times are long gone. & nbsp, Over the past three years, that ratio has decreased to just 3.4 % from its previous level of 18.8 % in the 1990s and 9.5 % from the decade to 2019.

Export peaked in 2018 and have since decreased by two-thirds on an annual schedule. Boeing’s selling to China peaked in that same year before declining by a comparable number.

The COVID-19 pandemic is partially to blame for this drop, but COMAC started working on the C919 more than ten years ago, when flights were halted and airlines were forced to garden planes in the plain.

Boeing’s 737Max suffered fatal collapses and nbsp in 2018 and 2019, which led Beijing to meet regulators around the world in outlawing the aircraft. This time, service airlines on those models resumed in China, with Air China announcing that 12 Max aircraft will be delivered there in 2023 and beyond.

That temporary raise didn’t last. There is little chance of going back, as evidenced by various & nbsp, instances of spying, and an increasingly violent trade war. To build the C919, COMAC consulted outside partners while utilizing engines from General Electric and components from all over the world. The organization and Canada’s Bombardier entered into a cooperation agreement in 2011, and after that agreement included the sharing of cockpit technology and designs. & nbsp,

Beijing has been very busy acquiring & nbsp, know-how through the back door, despite the fact that China’s aerospace sector and NBP have attempted to procure technology via joint ventures, licensing agreements, and the front door.

A Chinese nationwide and nbsp Air Force contractor assisted the People’s Liberation Army in obtaining more than 630, 000 documents pertaining to the Boeing C – 17 Cargo plane in two separate cases, one of which was uncovered by the FBI in 2017 and involved Chinese intelligence agents who directed a project to take engine technology from GE Aviation, and the other.

Years may pass before the international intelligence community can determine how much of the C919 or the upcoming twin-aisle CR929 was constructed using stolen technologies.

There are a lot of parallels between the aircraft and semiconductor industries. Both have great entry barriers, heavily rely on technological advancement, and grant their countries sizable national security advantages. However, there is one significant distinction that makes US preservation of its power even more crucial.

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Commentary: Warren Buffett’s intriguing bet on Japan

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THE CURRENCY FACTOR

The foreign currency earnings of the sogo shosha, backed by hard commodities from sources around the world, set the trading groups apart from companies with revenues and costs that depend more heavily on prices in domestic markets. They create multiple ways for Buffett to profit from his investment, even if the trading companies’ vaunted plans to reinvent themselves for a world without fossil fuels do not proceed as planned.

Among the most tantalising is the fact that Buffett has bought shares in companies that earn a portion of their profits in dollars, while funding his purchase with long-term debt denominated in yen.

If the Japanese currency were to depreciate, the dollar value of Berkshire’s outstanding yen-denominated debt would fall. At the same time, the value of the sogo shosha stakes in dollar terms may not decline so much because of their foreign currency earnings. If the value of the debt falls more than the shareholdings, then Buffett could reap a profit even without much change in underlying business performance.

It is surely not Buffett’s intent to bet against the yen. And using borrowed money to buy stock in companies with significant foreign earnings is not, of course, the most practical way to do this. Set that misgiving aside, if only for a thought experiment, and you can see how a trade like Buffett’s might in theory look attractive to a very different kind of investor.

Speculators of an atavistic bent are eyeing the monetary institutions of the developed world with increasing suspicion. Gold is trading near all-time highs, and while a rupture in the systems of economic exchange may not be anyone’s base case, it lies uncomfortably close to the universe of historical possibility.

Ray Dalio, the Bridgewater founder whose investments are informed by a close reading of economic history, notices a striking pattern in the rise and fall of the “reserve currency empires” of the past 500 years.

Throughout that time, he writes, “seismic shifts always took the form of too-large debts that couldn’t be paid with real money so there was a lot of printing of money”. That, in turn, “led to big debt restructurings via writing down and monetising debt”.

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