The governor of California is walking with his dog along a nature trail. A coyote jumps out and attacks the governor’s dog, then bites the governor. The governor starts to intervene, but reflects upon the movie Bambi and then realizes he should stop because the coyote is only doing what is natural. He calls animal control. Animal control captures the coyote and bills the state $200 for testing it for diseases and $500 for relocating it. He calls a veterinarian. The vet collects the dead dog and bills the state $200 for testing it for diseases. The governor goes to the hospital and spends $3,500 getting checked for diseases from the coyote and getting his bite wound bandaged.

The running trail gets shut down for six months while the California Fish and Game Department conducts a $100,000 survey to make sure the area is now free of dangerous animals. The governor spends $50,000 in state funds implementing a ‘coyote awareness program’ for residents of the area. The Legislature spends $2 million to study how to better treat rabies and how to permanently eradicate the disease throughout the world. The governor’s security agent is fired for not stopping the attack. The state spends $150,000 to hire and train a new agent with additional special training, re: the nature of coyotes. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) protests the coyote’s relocation and files a $5 million suit against the state.

The governor of Texas is wheeling along with his dog along a nature trail. A coyote jumps out and tries to attack him and his dog. The governor shoots the coyote with his state-issued pistol and keeps jogging.

The governor spent 50 cents on a .380-caliber, hollow-point cartridge. Buzzards ate the dead coyote.

And that, my friends, is why California is flat broke and Texas is not.

The South China Morning Post reports, citing Caixin, that HSMC employees received an offer to quit their jobs through the WeChat app. The message contained information that HSMC had no plans to reopen and release products. The initiators of the layoffs did not mention any other explanations, and the employees were not offered any material compensation. As a result, about 240 people are expected to lose their jobs.

When the local authorities acted as one of HSMC's investors in November 2017, they expected to offer jobs to 50 thousand employees over time, and annually produce products worth up to $9.25 billion. A couple of years later, the plant construction project faced financial and legal problems - site the land on which the construction was carried out was arrested by a court decision. The reason was the delay in financing, which led to the bankruptcy of the main contractor.

In 2019, HSMC managed to attract Chiang Shang-yi to the post of CEO, who managed to work not only in SMIC, but also as vice president of the Taiwanese company TSMC. By the summer of 2020, he left HSMC, officially citing personal motives, but privately citing the dire state of affairs at the company. HSMC even has one ASML lithographic scanner at its disposal, which allows it to work with 7-nm lithography, but it will most likely be sold to some of its competitors to cover the resulting debts.

AliExpress is the most popular trading platform on the Russian Internet, according to the measurements of the research company Mediascope. In December 2020, the daily audience of this marketplace on mobile devices and desktops was 9.7 million Mordor orks over 12 years old, the same figure for Wildberries was 7.1 million, and Ozon was 4.8 million.

In 2020, AliExpress Russia's revenue exceeded RUB 25.8 billion, with a net loss of RUB 13.3 billion, Mail.ru Group said in its annual reporting.

In 2020, Wildberries' turnover almost doubled - by 96%, to 437.2 billion rubles. The company does not name revenue and profit.

Ozon, which became a public company at the end of last year, has not yet reported on the results of 2020. The company only reported that, according to preliminary data, its turnover grew by 140%, to 195 billion rubles.

In terms of revenue, Ozon is several times higher than AliExpress, according to the already published results of the first company for nine months of 2020. In January-September, Ozon's revenue reached almost 66.6 billion rubles. with a turnover of 121.6 billion rubles.

In January-September, Ozon's net loss approached 12.9 billion rubles.

Revenue from online sales of Detsky Mir in 2020 increased 2.4 times, to 34.8 billion rubles, according to the retailer's reporting. Internet sales accounted for 24% of all consolidated revenue for Detsky Mir last year.

The country's largest food retailer X5 Retail Group (Pyaterochka, Perekrestok, Karusel chains) in 2020 increased the revenue of its digital businesses (Perekrestok Vprok, express delivery 5Post) more than 4.5 times, to RUB 20.1 billion But so far, in total revenues, this is only 1% of consolidated revenues.

M.Video-Eldorado Group, a leader in the household appliances and electronics market, discloses the share of its online sales in terms of turnover only: in 2020, they doubled to RUB 300.4 billion. (including VAT), which is almost 60% of the total turnover.

More online things, fast rise of big marketplaces and already existing monopolies. Almost all of them are producing losses as they fight for total domination. Small guys suffer and close in tens of thousands each month.