Thinking Point: Grown Ups Play Hard Ball

The battle of the titans is between globals and nation states.

For the last 8 years the most important nation state was run by "too busy being busy" children. Now that the grown ups are in charge it's being played by equals. After a while, it might be sooner than later, a new ecology will emerge. Value chain government and globals are morphing into user network government and globals.

Winners can be plausibly predicted in user networks using systems thinking and the lens of evolutionarily stable strategy. It's the strategy that describes biological evolution. It also describes the evolution of user network economies. The faster globals move to ESS game theory to make decisions, the more likely they will thrive.

When changes happen they present as Black Swans or Tipping Points. Lehman, AIG, GM, Chrsyler. Kodak's Market Cap went under $1 billion on Friday. Years in the making, months in the presentation. It was not that "no one could predict. "It was the powerful people were "too busy being busy" and reaping proximate rewards from command-and-control value chains that are too slow, insulated, expensive and vulnerable.

Consider that Amazon, Google and Walmart continue to grow nicely.

As for the snippet below, I'm going with the thing about the ongoing GM negotiations. It's why I'm betting that GM stock is a reasonable bet over the long term. Consider what happens when the entire US car inventory has to be replaced with fuel efficient vehicles. Then consider the Volt and FIAT engines in Chrysler bodies.

Chrysler vs. Debtholders: Who Will Win? --
from Seeking Alpha:
"Why was the government (lender) advised by lawyers to NOT settle with debtholders. It would have taken just another 600 million to settle as these holders were asking for 60% recovery. Why were they instead advised to take the course of Chapter 11 (with all it's drag, loss of confidence to the overall economy), even though they appear to have weaker case? I really don't have an answer. I can only speculate.

Maybe Fiat insisted on it as it may allow dealerships to be restructured.

Or maybe the government was setting a precedent to influence the stakeholders in GM's (much bigger elephant in the room) case to negotiate and come to terms."