Whitepill: I can assure you this happens all the time.
That's all part of the intellectual property theft as well. By offshoring manufacturing, these designer-label companies provided the right equipment and taught the Chinese how to make these goods. But did the Chinese shut down shop at 5 pm and let the workers go home? No, of course they didn't. They kept the luxury brand's equipment running for a night shift and made knockoffs of the exact same product they were contracted to make during the day. In addition, they had Chinese engineers come in and make knockoffs if the equipment so that the luxury brand couldn't shut the factory down by canceling the contract and taking the equipment back. Losing the contract means they just go to making knockoffs 24/7.
That's not suspicious totally not at all.
What intellectual property is in a purse? The Gucci logo? Who gives a shit beyond Gucci shareholders?
Libertarians are useful idiots for the Uniparty that are allowed even less control than the greens.
To summarize:
Meanwhile, if this were happening at any other time, the Fed would be rushing to bail out the system. After all Powell cut a jumbo 50bps in Septemebr 2024 when there was zero stress in the market plumbing... But he can't do anything now because he would be seen as aiding Trump, especially since the narrative now is that yields are surging because of stagflation fears. Only, that's not the case at all - indeed, yields were tumbling until Friday, when the basis trade started to get unwound, at which point they shot straight up.
- Multi-trillion basis trade is blowing up and countless funds and banks are unwinding positions, but...
- There is not nearly enough liquidity in the system
- The lack of liquidity shockwave is rampaging across all markets, sending stocks plunging (liquidation panic), bonds crashing (yields up 50bps in 2 days), and a flight to safety in FX (yen soaring... but at some point the inflection point will get hit and there will be an acute shortage of dollars as the global synthetic dollar short at around $6 trillion is even bigger than the basis trade).
- We have critical liquidity drainage events as soon as tomorrow (the 10Y auction followed by the 30Y auction on Thursday), and if there is not enough liquidity in the system, we may have an unofficially failed auction - yes Dealers would in theory take down the whole thing, but if we get a 40 or 50% dealer award, it's the same as a failed auction.
And the biggest paradox is that the more liquidity is drained, the higher yields will rise, the more the Fed will misinterpret the signal sent from yields as one of stagflation ("let Trump fix that, he just needs to undo tariffs") instead of what it really is: imploding liquidity and an imminent market crisis.
Oh and lest we forget, if Powell were to cut tomorrow, or launch QE, the Democrats would never forgive him as they would see such an action as bailing out Trump.
Only Powell no longer has a choice, because if he lets Trump crash and burn, the Fed Chair will also be allowing the entire financial system collapse!
In retrospect little did we know how prescient this tweet from more than a year ago would prove to be...
And now we wait to see what the Fed will do because the next 48 hours may well be the most important in the recent history of the US.
I realized in hindsight that Libertarians stretched the concept of "leaving people alone" into shameless promotion of all sorts of degeneracy. Some people don't deserve to be "left alone" (pedophiles). And not worrying too much about two guys fucking in the privacy of their own home is a lot different from defending a tranny flashing their balls in a little kid's face at a Drag Queen Story Hour, which is the Libertarian interpretation of "Leave people alone". Some people and some behaviors NEED to be shamed, otherwise they'll start forcing their perversion into mainstream society and doing it in public. I know that now.
I'll go one step further with this: Covid-19 was circulating in the US as early as late December 2019 in communities with military bases. The soldiers came home for a Christmas leave, and their families got sick and spread it to others by the end of the month. I wonder if they'll ever admit that. They still insist that it didn't hit the US until March of 2020, but I KNOW that's a lie.
Nothing like the legendary inferiority complex of jeets.
The pattern, materials, logo, and the entire design? The construction processes? Kind of a weird question honestly unless your mind processes all purses as unrendered containers each exactly the same. Some of these things go for like $20k and it's not because the girl heard the name of the brand once before
It's terrible that those boomers and fund managers gonna get a 10% loss instead of their 10% increase every year. We'll cry.
Pretending any of that is special is a fairly recent development in human history. It's also why such "IP theft" is so widespread in Asia: their culture has never been programmed to value such meaningless things. To them people want to buy this thing that looks a certain way so let's make that thing that looks a certain way and sell it to them.
A great deal of engineering goes into high-end bags. They're not just gunny sacks with a zipper and a logo. You can't make them with an awl and a piece of rawhide string. They're almost as complicated as handmade shoes, with the exception of the custom fit. It takes a lot of research and design work and specialty machinery to make the first designer bag come out right. Then you can copy the first one endlessly to make the rest (unlike custom shoes). But if they're copied endlessly, they're no longer exclusive, and idiots who will pay used-car prices for a single exclusive handbag won't buy them at all. The whole market is stupid, just like the collector shoe market, but it was lucrative, and the Chinese have stolen it.
Profound.
