The Bakery That Bakes More Than the Town Can Eat

I once knew a baker who could turn out a thousand loaves while the neighborhood bought three hundred. He hauled the rest across town, and the farther he drove, the more the other bakers fumed about his cheap bread. He comes to mind every time I look at China’s car numbers. September. Domestic passenger car sales came in at 1.63 million, down 28.1% from a year earlier. That is twelve straight months of decline. Exports: 923,000 cars, up 73.2%. No retouching needed. Nobody at home is buying, so the cars get shipped around the world. The factories hum, the assembly lines turn, and the home customer seems to have stepped out for a cigarette and never come back.