EconAir

All Together Now, Comrades Robot Production and Use in 2024 This is a summary of 2024 statistics from Google AI. Most of the numbers come from the annual report of the International Federation of Robotics. In 2024,  over 542,000 industrial robots were installed globally. This was  a 10% increase from the previous year, with Asia leading installations. China became the largest single market and manufacturer for the first time. China's domestic market share grew to 57%, surpassing foreign suppliers. Other notable trends included a 30% worldwide increase in professional service robot sales and a growing trend in digital twins for robot optimization.   Global Industrial Robot Production and Installation   Global installations:  Installations have been over 500,000 for the last four years, with no trend in growth. Regional dominance:  Asia accounted for 74% of new deployments, with Europe at 16% and the Americas at 9%. Top markets:  China was the largest m...

You go around to farmers with cows. You buy all the cows and pay the farmers a small fee to milk the cows and sell the milk. You pay for the cows with ass(et)-backed securities called MBSs (Milked Bovine Securities) that you tell investors are udderly safe. But some of the cows don't give enough milk (cow flow problems) or give no milk at all. You take some of the asset-backed securities, say they're backed by the subprime cows, and use them as collateral to sell another set of securities called CMOs (Cow Milk Obligations). Then you buy CDSs (Cow Dried-up Swaps) from AIG (Angus Insurance Company) to insure the CMOs when the cows stopped giving milk. If you work it right, you collect more on the CDSs than you pay out to retire the CMOs. The money you get from selling the dead cows go to pay the CLOs (cow leather obligations). You could also sell CDOs (cow dung obligations) that depend on how much cow dung is produced. This is a typical Wall Street product - turning s...