In a fit of American solipsism, we tend to disregard what’s going on in the rest of the world (the current situation in Iran aside). When it comes to bailouts, the American government is not the only group throwing money at problems. For its first bailout, the Japanese government has given $1.7 billion in both public and private money to Elpida Memory, the only maker of DRAM (dynamic random access memory) in Japan. This amount is only a fraction of the $21 billion the Japanese government has set aside for more aid to private companies. While I don’t want to use this space to talk about the economics behind bailouts in general, I do want to focus in on why Elpida may not be the best way to invest such a large sum of money.

While it’s undestandable that a country may want to keep the only company it has working in a certain aspect of industry, the semiconductor sector is one that’s set to see a lot of closing of companies in the near future. An analyst prediction from back in April, which seems pretty well-founded, predicts that …

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