Marketmakers owe no fiduciary duty to clients, and offer no warranties; their responsibility, he argued, is to make sure those they serve are getting the risk exposures they seek.

This goes a long way towards explaining why chipmakers, like farmers, have a tendency to oversupply the market, particularly if they sell memory chips, an undifferentiated product (like winter wheat).

In contrast, European carmakers such as Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen are growing more aggressive: VW offers American buyers diesel engines in several models, such as its Passat saloon and Touareg SUV.