EconAir

December 16, 2025. This post is a summary of articles I read, or read about, today. Ford takes a $19.5 billion write-off on its electric vehicle manufacturing assets. It will take over a joint project it has with a South Korea battery company to only produce large-scale industrial batteries. Ford's electric F-150 pickup truck doesn't seem to have caught on with America's macho truck customers. Big surprise. (Personal comment. Assuming the U.S. continues to ban Chinese cars, probably the growth segment of the U.S. EV market will be hybrid SUVs, small pickups, and maybe hybrid sedans.) Ford has a "skunk works" operation in California that is redesigning and reengineering how internal combustion and electronic vehicles are designed and assembled. Volkswagen (VW) closes a German assembly plant. This is the first time this has happened in the company's history. The faculty will become a research and development center, probably working with VW's new R&D cen...

FIND POSTS BY CATEGORY The Beginning of the Industrial Revolution The theme of the following four sections of the blog is that innovation, not price competition, is the basis for understanding economic growth, competition, and analysis. Basic Concepts and Theory Market Behavior and Structure Market Dynamics and Information:  How Markets Work Economic Theory and Markets Corporate Strategies There is beginning a historic change in future populations and their demographics. This will interact with other variables and have a serious, maybe profound, effect on future economic growth. Demographics and Economics China Geopolitics and the Global Economy American Economic History Management The world seems to be in the midst of radical political and social change. Where are we going? Can studying past periods and countries facing disrupting change help us navigate our times? Maybe. History American History World War I:  The Beginning of the 20th Century The Roman Republic and Amer...

  You need to know three things about management:   80/20 Rule Opportunity Cost Compound Growth   80/20 Rule (Also called Pareto’s Law)   This idea says that a relatively small percent of actions account for a relatively large percent of outcomes. Find and concentrate your efforts on the important influences on your business. The original studies were about the concentration of income and wealth. Recent  studies seem to indicate increasing concentration of income and wealth in the United States. A company's choice of target market and market niches is critical to marketing strategy.   Some hypothetical examples.   20% of your customers account for 80% of your sales.   Often, companies with a large product line with many variations find that 50% of their products account for over 90% of sales. An even smaller percent usually accounts for most of the profits.   20% of your SKUs account for 80% of your stockouts (and lost sales).   20%...