Gyroscopic Investing

Yokich understood Detroit’s ruthlessly short-term business model -- put lots of cheap sheet metal on an outmoded truck chassis and layer on a gargantuan markup. He conceded that Nissan and Daimler would soon start making fuel-efficient, technologically sophisticated SUVs that would steal that market segment, too. Japanese companies were more innovative in part because they enjoyed much cheaper capital; the real interest rate in Japan, suffering through its lost decade, was 0 percent. But for the Big Three, the SUVs being designed in Tokyo and Stuttgart would be “next year’s problem.”?