Big media has been beating the drum that if Detroit built more fuel-efficient vehicles, buyers would flock back to their showrooms. But there is an inherent lie in this line of thinking. And if investors buy into this lie, they could end up on the wrong side of the trade when it comes to considering the major American auto makers any time in the future.

Walk less than a mile from my mother’s home in South Africa’s lush Eastern province of Kwa-Zulu Natal and the smell of curry will never be far away. There are more than a million Indians in South Africa. Many South African Indians are descendants of labourers. Most came in the mid-19th century to work the sugar farms…and of course the coal mines!