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  • yeeeeman - Friday, July 5, 2019 - link

    Simple solution, they will make stocks for longer periods.
  • basroil - Friday, July 5, 2019 - link

    I don't think you realize just how expensive these things are and how little cash the companies have. A typical fab is cash flow negative for most of the year, and typically only make money at the close of a quarter/ end of year. They can barely afford the next quarter's material costs until they are almost out of material, so the only way for them to stock more is to charge more. Want to have your next CPU cost 20% more?

    Also don't forget that most of this stuff is volatile and has a very short shelf-life before the container introduces enough contaminants to throw off production yields.
  • vanilla_gorilla - Friday, July 5, 2019 - link

    They won't have any problem borrowing the cash. These companies have excellent credit and produce the majority of these products for a world wide market. This is about as safe as investment gets from the lender's perspective.
  • basroil - Friday, July 5, 2019 - link

    Unfortunately they are already very much in debt since systems don't come cheap and even a low end etcher sets you back a million. For example, SK Hynix, which will be thrashed by this new situation, already has total debt to equity of 15.5 and even it's short term liquidity (which would be needed for this type of transaction) is 1.5. And these numbers are better than average since SK Hynix has other assets and industries which keep it more stable. From a bank's perspective it doesn't make sense to invest in an industry that can already barely make debt payments on a regular schedule
  • Azethoth - Saturday, July 6, 2019 - link

    Read his post. Who cares if they can finance and stockpile more if they cannot actually be stockpiled that long.
  • quadibloc - Friday, July 5, 2019 - link

    The United States should simply inform Japan that this defiance of countries against which it committed aggression is unthinkable, suspend the operation of Japan's government, and place it under a joint U.S.-South Korean-Taiwanese occupation. After a few years, when Japan has its independence returned, it will understand that, as a nation that committed a horrible crime of aggression, it has no place to speak against the commands of the democracies among its victims.
  • porcupineLTD - Friday, July 5, 2019 - link

    China should do the same to the US for what they did to them in the second opium war.
  • Sttm - Friday, July 5, 2019 - link

    They can take it off the bill they owe us for ending a war they would have lost against Japanese. Or nation states can stop acting like petty children and dragging up event that had been settled for over 50 years!
  • porcupineLTD - Friday, July 5, 2019 - link

    "Or nation states can stop acting like petty children and dragging up event that had been settled for over 50 years!" This was my point.
  • ballsystemlord - Friday, July 5, 2019 - link

    Never heard of that. Do you have a citation?
  • Andy Chow - Friday, July 12, 2019 - link

    The opium war was a UK deal. UK != US.
  • Calin - Friday, July 5, 2019 - link

    The US, South Korean, Taiwanese and North Korean. Not to mention Phillipines, Indonesia, and China (Japan had a million men army on Chinese soil in the second world war).
  • APK000 - Friday, July 5, 2019 - link

    The left wing government of Korea started anti-Japanese propaganda again from 2018 for their approval rate as well as distracting people from noticing that it is ruining the economy, diplomacy and national security lol. Some citizens think the current government is committing collusion with North Korea Kim Jong-Un. The government even started Https Blockage with ISPs on their citizen lmao. No one else on the earth except China and North Korea would do this. South Korea has already got tremendous money from Japan in the past 70 years but they are still trying to get more despite that this issue was already settled many years ago. Japanese government is angry about them using anti-Japanese, anti-US, pro-North Korea propaganda for the approval rate of the corruptive left wing party.
  • krydres - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    Disclaimer: I've just registered to reply to this comment. I am Korean. Please bare with my poor English.

    Well, I don't know who you're, but I think it is possible that some Japanese people think in that way. Of course, there are, for sure, a few brain-washed Korean who might think in that way. But in general, in Korea, we think that this situation will help Abe maintain his popularity in Japan. Just the same mechanism you postulated: setting an external enemy to make the nation more unified. Whatever the truth to Japan is, I wanted to point out that you're mostly wrong about Korean internal affair. I admit the government made a bit mistake regarding Https blockage. Now we cannot access pornhub without a VPN (thank god I am living abroad this year!). Other than that, well... The thing is that we don't even talk much about the ugly, sad history of WWII in connection to this situation. We think that's only a pretty wrapping of the ugly gift. Do any Japanese people really think this trade dispute started because of the historical thing? (Still, I like that now many more western people will learn what kind of tragedy Japan did to the rest of Asia during WWII) But, I think this situation is all about a politician trying to get more vote even by disrupting a huge industry that we all Anandtech users care a lot.
  • krydres - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    And, it's bit too much to call the current Korean government "left wing". There are one major more left-wing party, and many more minor ones. Current government and the leading party is definitely not right-wing. But they're in the middle. We Korean citizen taken down the useless previous president (who gave Japan an Indulgence of the "sex slavery" crime for a tiny amount of money, as small as any single random millionaire would donate this Christmas with NO official words of apology nor any detailed action list) with our hands, and then elected Moon. No president can go that much wrong in just two years. How come a anti-US, pro-North Korean president and US president can meet at DMZ with Jung-Un Kim?

    It was quite an emotional comment, sorry. I am mad not because I guess APK is a Japanese, but a "brain-washed" Korean. I'd never hear this kind of argument on Korean streets, but only scarcely on the web.
  • Surfacround - Monday, July 8, 2019 - link

    like that is going to happen...
    what about the two Atomic bombs the US dropped on japan... did the US compensate Japan for that?
  • rrinker - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Yes, we rebuilt their entire damn country, to the detriment of many of our own heavy industries like steel.
  • evernessince - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link

    You can rebuild the structures but what about the hundreds of thousands of dead citizens and irradiated land?

    And please, America did not rebuild Japan alone. Give the Japanese some credit from their own revival. They worked their asses off for decades to turn the country into the world's 3rd largest economy.
  • evernessince - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link

    lol, that's rich.

    America has zero ground to stand on when the land they own now was stolen from the natives.

    How about America stays out of disputes that have nothing to do with it for once.
  • zodiacfml - Friday, July 5, 2019 - link

    LOL. "Toshiba & WD NAND Production Hit By Power Outage: 6 Exabytes Lost"
  • Teckk - Friday, July 5, 2019 - link

    Just when you thought RAM prices are finally sane
  • PeachNCream - Saturday, July 6, 2019 - link

    RAM prices are fine if you don't have a system that requires new, off the shelf memory. Everything I have here at home is running DDR3. It's either 1333 or 1600 and you can snag lots of that for almost nothing off eBay or Amazon. You just have to be smart about the computers you own and the things you do with them.
  • kludj - Friday, July 5, 2019 - link

    Thank you for writing this; it was well-written and informative, and news not covered by other sites I check.

    Your articles are top-tier; "in-the-weeds" tech sites are plagued by sloppy writing, and it's only because it's very clear you care about your writing style that I humbly suggest you be mindful of phrasing indecision. For example, you wrote "the short-term future, or for the next couple of months." While the comma signals your probable intent (that both phrases mean the same, not that they are two separate possible outcomes), it does require readers make an assumption. Even if it did not introduce slight uncertainty, it's an unnecessary redundancy which could be avoided by instead only writing "the next couple months."
  • Axphxia - Friday, July 5, 2019 - link

    After WW2 - Germany's efforts at reparations and official apologies to fellow European countries and other countries around the world were viewed sincere enough at least to start the healing process and helped normalize relations. Japan, however, has always been involved in numerous controversies regarding its remedial efforts and attitudes after the war. MOST likely because Japan's current Prime Minister is direct descendant of the Japanese government leadership that were responsible in moving Japan to war in the first place so any apologies issued would mean their ancestors did wrong LOL.

    Also, while the tension between South Korea and Japan has always persisted after the war - this trade "war" was primarily instigated by the fact that Japan did not like South Korea government saying "NO" to radiation infected seafood due to Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown that Japan was trying to export to Korea.

    Japanese government is not only lying to their own citizens regarding radiation safety after the meltdown, they're trying to lie to the world so that they can hold their "precious" Olympics in Tokyo without embargo.

    And yes, war's been over for long time to most of us for decades but there are still survivors that never received proper apology or compensation from Japanese government for forcing them to prostitution and/or forced labor during most of their youth. So - NO - it's not "settled for over 50 years"
  • Oxford Guy - Saturday, July 6, 2019 - link

    The average person cares more about cheap NAND and RAM than about justice for old people. In fact, the average person cares more about cheap NAND and RAM than about justice for any people, other than those who are closely tied to them somehow.

    If justice were so crucial to people then unjust wars wouldn't happen in the first place.

    It really does seem, though, that all the stops are being pulled to get RAM and NAND prices sky high. As I recall, it was Japan that raised DRAM through the roof in the 80s when it had gotten US firms out of the action by flooding the market with cheap chips. Rinse, repeat, I suppose.
  • stanleyipkiss - Friday, July 5, 2019 - link

    This sounds like price collusion if I ever saw it.
  • PeachNCream - Saturday, July 6, 2019 - link

    Its sadly not. My mother is Chinese and ancient old. She's one of many Asians that spout rampant racism about Koreans and Japanese without a second thought and has no reason to since we're all just more random American citizens with as little stake in things that happen in the Far East as anyone else living in the US. Still, it remains at the forefront of her thoughts. That sort of deep distrust over old wounds and wars is more relevant and ever-present with Asians still living in their ancestral home nations. This really is an international spat between governments that has nothing at all to do with price fixing and profit maximization.
  • jordanclock - Monday, July 8, 2019 - link

    You might be onto something. This could be the biggest price collusion scheme in history. RAM, NAND and display manufacturers knew in 1937 that they would want to drive prices up in 2019. So they met with the Japanese government and convinced them to join the Nazis. After that, it was a simple matter of Japan invading China and Korea, committing horrific atrocities and then spending decades acting like they never happened. The Korean companies knew that with all that in place, in 2018 the Korean government would find Japanese companies guilty of aiding in horrible crimes against their citizens, instate severe fines and a year later, Japan would make exports of vital exports more lengthy and expensive.

    Yes. This sounds exactly like price collusion.

    /s
  • Samus - Saturday, July 6, 2019 - link

    Hey Japan,

    Apologize. You done fucked up in WWII. Own it and move on. Korea is your neighbor and friend. Man up bro.
  • PeachNCream - Saturday, July 6, 2019 - link

    So much this. As for Korea, drop it too and move on. We have bigger fish to fry these days. The past is worth studying lest we forget and repeat our errors, but inventing a dispute over long ago transgressions needs to stop.
  • 20th Century Boy - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    Drop it too and move on? why do they have to? I don't think they have to "move on" until they get proper apologies from the insane War Making Country
  • patek - Saturday, July 6, 2019 - link

    The current South Korean government has been demanding unreasonable requests from Japan and its corporations. Their have been many formal apologies and monetary compensations to Korea from Japan for the Japanese occupation of Korea that occurred about 80 years ago. But, every time, a new Korean government comes into power, they create a new request for the same past act. It's mostly because of internal South Korean politics. Nationalistic South Korean politicians use pseudo-patriotism to gain their votes. It's an enormously effective populist politics. Before each election, they make Japanese yet once again as enemy of Korea and proclaims that they would really do justice and get proper apologizes from Japan because whatever past South Korean government got were far inappropriate. They do this in every election, especially nationalistic left-wing party like the current one. Once they got the power, they had to do something to meet what they advertised during the election and, this time, demanded another set of compensations from Japan. Japan decided enough is enough and took an action. South Koreans got what they deserve. The current South Korea government getting blindly friendly with North Korea has become a major threat to Japan's security. Japan removing South Korea from the white list is justified.
  • Lemay - Saturday, July 6, 2019 - link

    It was a South Korean court decision that lead to Japan's removal of Korea from their white list in case you can't differentiate functions of government from those of court.
  • patek - Saturday, July 6, 2019 - link

    Majority of South Korea supreme court judges have been politically appointed by the current Korean regime. The judges and the executive branch officials are political allies. South Korea democracy is not what most westerns think it is. Most of South Korea media is controlled by the regime as their heads have been all appointed by the regime.
  • heartinpiece - Sunday, July 7, 2019 - link

    @Patek,
    No most (9 out of 13 were appointed by Lee and Park, whom are Pro-Japanese. Only five of the judges have been appointed by the current regime. Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_Sou...
    And as for the South Korean media, what you said ('South Korea media is controlled by the regime as their heads have been all appointed by the regime'), that is totally wrong. There are but a few broadcasting and printing press that are government owned (actually only KBS is government owned, and the other are not. Yonhap does receive part of its income from the governement but that is all).

    Also check out the 'freedom of press' index of South Korea: https://rsf.org/en/south-korea
    Title: 'Distinct improvement after a bad decade'
    During the 'bad decade' the index fell by 30 places.
  • patek - Sunday, July 7, 2019 - link

    Lee and Park are not Pro-Japanese, they are not anti-Japanese. There has never been a pro Japanese Korean president, ever. Lee and Park in fact had many troubles with Japan during their presidency. Lee by personally visiting the island having a dispute with Japan, and Park intentionally ignoring Abe in multiple public appearances over comfort women issue. There is a big difference between anti-Japanese (Moon) and not pro-Japanese.

    "Only five of the judges have been appointed by the current regime." All newly appointed are Moon's political cronies, ultra nationalists. Out of the remaining 9, 5 are conservatives, 4 are deemed neutral. One needs to understand that in Korea, most people are nationalists and far lefts are ultra nationalists who deem national pride over human rights, thus president Moon's silence over North Korea's atrocious human rights violations. When you throw in 5 ultra nationalists into already nationalistic judges, the result is inevitable, unnecessary conflicts with neighboring countries.

    "There are but a few broadcasting and printing press that are government owned (actually only KBS is government owned, and the other are not."
    2 most dominant broadcasting companies, KBS and MBC heads are Moon regime cronies. They got appointed after Moon came to power. They are supported by violent pro-Moon media labor unions whose violence the police cannot do anything about since they would get demoted or fired if they do something against the people supporting and protected by the Moon regime.

    Most foreigners don't understand how Korean politics and media work. It's very common for a labor union threaten and inflict physical violence on opposing media reporter or even a police without getting arrested.
  • 20th Century Boy - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    Have any idea why they always request apologies? Simple. Because there never have been any proper apologies. Money is not everyth man.
  • automator_devops - Monday, July 8, 2019 - link

    Well, according to the well sourced Wikipedia article, it looks like South Korea has no valid claims and pretty much bully Japan at this point. Japan already paid through their nose and their money made South Korea what it is today.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Basic_Rela...

    Excerpts:
    "There has been a constant call from the South Korean public (and to some extent, Japanese with left or liberal political leaning) that Japan should compensate Korean individuals who suffered from Japanese colonial rule."

    "In January 2005, the South Korean government disclosed 1,200 pages of diplomatic documents that recorded the proceeding of the treaty. The documents, kept secret for 40 years, recorded that the Japanese government actually proposed to the South Korean government to directly compensate individual victims but it was the South Korean government which insisted that it would handle individual compensation to its citizens and then received the whole amount of grants on behalf of the victims"

    "South Korea agreed to demand no further compensation, either at the government or individual level, after receiving $800 million in grants and soft loans from Japan as compensation for its 1910–45 colonial rule in the treaty"

    "Most of the funds from grants were used for economic development,[15] particularly on establishing social infrastructures, founding POSCO, building Gyeongbu Expressway and the Soyang Dam with the technology transfer from Japanese companies.[16] Records also show 300,000 won per death was used to compensate victims of forced labor between 1975 and 1977"
  • quote - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    In this case, the cause is not only problems between Japan and South Korea.
    South Korea is suspected by US and UN about illegal export of hydrogen fluoride to North Korea and Iran, that is necessary to enrich uranium and make nuclear weapons.
    Actually, export from Japan to South Korea is

    https://twitter.com/yatacrow5/status/1148427741865...

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