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Through 2015 oil companies expect to spend $15 billion a year on pipelines and to retrofit refineries to process heavy sands Canadian crude, and production of heavy sands crude is expected to go up to 3.7 million barrels a day by 2020 from 1.2 million barrels a day today. This is changing the way crude pipeline map looks as the diminished supply from Mexico and Venezuela means less crude going north, and more going south from Canada.

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An Arabic channel for the BBC television to brodcast 12 hours a day followed by 24 hour programming by yearend 2008 to reach viewers in the Middle East, Persian Gulf and North Africa with a $50 million budget to cover events in the region with an international perspective and opinion that does not favor any one country. It will have to gain this credibility over time just as BBC radio brodcasting has done in the past.

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Lower volatility in oil prices as a result of a new stream of shale oil supplies at competitive prices is good for oil producers and for consumers. This report in the WSJ shows that volatility and swings in oil prices have gone down with the ability of shale producers to respond to price signals or geopolitical situations and increase supplies. Shale producers can increase supplies in months compared to the years it would take for oil producers in offshore drilling. The new technologies in shale rigs have tripled production since 2011 for the same number of rigs operating in the U.S. Permian Basin from West Texas to New Mexico. The core producers can now supply and be profitable at $40 a barrel.  Supply cuts from OPEC and Russia as currently the policy of both countries mean inventories do not rise too high. And geopolitical problems such as Yemeni attacks on Saudi oil facilities, the reinstated sanctions on Iran by the Trump administration that reduce oil supplies, Venezuela's problems, can be met by increased supplies from the U.S. shale industry in a short time to prevent inventories from dropping too much.      ...

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Pope Francis calls on the Catholic communities to respond to the needs of hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants making their way to Europe, saying on September 5, 2015- "Every parish, every religious community, every monastery, every sanctuary in Europe, take in one family." The Vatican will take in 2 families of refugees.

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Nizhar Mhani, a 30 year old oral surgeon in Cardiff, Britain, returns to Libya in Febrary as democracy protests erupted in Tripoli. Here he decribes his activities in the Tripoli underground resistance movement. He used a satellite dish to inform people in the capital. His activities included draping the old black, red and green Libyan flag on bridges at night and painting it on roads, and set up loudspeakers on street corners broadcasting the old Libyan national anthem.

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Stephen Moore says both Paul Ryan and his mentor had a singular grasp of the importance of faster economic growth on the deficit and fiscal problems. Though spending restraint is necessary the key to avoiding a fiscal crisis is economic growth generated by private investment. He says the increased focus by Ryan on spending restraint compared to Kemp reflects the difference between that era and this one, with the deficit much larger now. And not a reflection on Ryan's grasp of problems of the urban poor and struggling working class, something Kemp grasped. The problems are large on the spending side but says Moore this can only be solved by pushing hard for economic growth of 4% as targeted by Romney and Ryan. It is also important says Moore for the Romney-Ryan campaign to emphasize growth as the key message and not having this message lost in a back and forth with the Democrats about Obama's economic failures and voter fears about cuts that lead voters to tune out the conflicting messages....

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The National Association of Realtors reports that sales of previously owned homes dropped by 27.2% from June, to seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.83 million homes. House prices gained ameasure of stability in 2009, after dropping since 2006. Now that measure of stability may be lost as house prices weaken. The expiry of a home-buyer tax credit was expected to dampen sales but not by this much. Paul Dales of Capital Economics expects a further drop of 5% in house prices. Combine this with sluggish consumer spending and prospects of deflation in 2011, a weak Obama administration HAMP homeowner relief program, fading stimulus and the likelihood of no further stimulus because of deficit fears; and the picture shows serious problems. The underlying picture of housing is not changing. One in four homeowners with mortgages owe more than their house is worth. Banks are handling over 5 million loans that are delinquent, if these loans are modified or short sales are permitted by banks, there would be support for housing prices. HAMP has failed in this regard, see the link to this....

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The Nissan NV 200 designed from scratch as the next taxicab for the 13,000 cabs in New York City. Nissan won the Taxi for Tomorrow contest, and a 1 year contract worth $1 billion. New York's Taxi and Limousine Commission will require all medallion owners to buy the Nissan NV 200 as they replace the old cabs. It costs $29,000 and will be phased in over a 3-5 year period. The Nissan NV 200 was designed from scratch for New York City. It has a French designer working out of a studio in California. The design team went through each detail in great detail. The designer Mr. Farion took a month hailing cabs throughout the day just to get a feel for what the cabs today are like and what needs to be improved. This includes horn sound to the inside of the vehicle and the wear and tear that the cabs are subject to on New York roads. New York roads are rough because of potholes and other problems.

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The U.S. Government Accountability Office says only $179.5 millon of the first $1.5 billion- in a five year aid program to Pakistan worth $7.5 billion- has been spent. USAID's director for Pakistan, Andrew Sisson, says the $1 billion from prior ununsed funds was spent in Pakistan in 2010. This includes $500 million for aid during the disastrous floods last year. Projects include the Gomal Zam Dam in South Waziristan, at a cost of $20 million. That project helped build a spillway to apower plant bringing electricity to a remote region in Pakistan. That dam was built by Chinese engineers from the Sinohydro Corporation. The Obama administration wants to see large signature projects to which it can point to as signs of success. With a failing economy, corruption and a weak civilian bureaucracy- especially with a weak and ineffective civilian government- getting projects implemented has proven extremely difficult. The U.S. government has committed to spending 50% of the aid money through the Pakistan government and not through civilian contractors with large overhead expenses....

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Scott Sperling, co-president of THL Partners, one of the oldest private equity firms, says rather than be anticapitalist the Obama administration is capitalism at work, as the restructuring is rebuilding two auto companies through bankruptcy by reducing unsustainable legacy obligations and making the bankruptcy process work right for these two companies. It also helps these firms get a new start. The process of "creative destruction" that helps make capitalism work is put to work in an enlightened way so there is creation as well as destruction, destruction through the tough choices that all stakeholders had to make, and creation through the new structures that are coming up. Preservation also works here through keeping what was good in these firms, which are the employees who had no part in management's mistakes, and workers who may be just as badly trapped in union ways. Scott also explains why the government's offer of 10% ownership shares to debtholders is fair, considering that without the government's money Chrysler would be worth little....

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The clout of China's environmental agency the State Environment Protection Administration has grown significnatly in the past 12 months. SEPA rejected 110 projects in 2006 for environmental damage, and in 2007 it rejected 187 or about $91 billion worth of projects for environmental damage. China requires environemntal asses ment for sttell mills, power plants and other projects as part of the approval process. So even as criticism of the Chinese government has built up for environmental damage SEPA is getting new clout and the government is rethinking how all these projects can some day come back to haunt the administration for environmental impact if something isnt done very quickly to cancel all projects that dont meet environmental quality standards. This is something to keep watching first because it ensures longterm sustainable economic progress and second it reduces the cost of cleaning up which would reduce economic growth in the future, third because the quality of air and water lead to really sustainable economic development in the future. This is a Watch Link for sustainable economic development. ...

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Hubbard was Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under President Bush. His plan is for the government and Congress to allow all residential, mortgages on private residences to be refinanced into 30 year fixed rate mortgages at 5.25% and place those mortgages under Freddie and Fannie. The idea is to have a low enough rate to support house prices. Where the homes are worth less than the total amount of the loan balance the mortgages would be refinanced into a 30 year fixed rate loan to be held by a new agency modeled on the 1930's era Homeowners Loan Corporation. New mortgages would be made of upto 95% of the current value of a home, with owners and servicers of the loan splitting the losses on refinancing the mortgage with the government agency. Servicers would have to accept refinancing on all or none of their mortgages, no cherry picking. And the government could take an equity position in return for the mortgage writedown so that taxpayers do well with a better housing market....

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Is a cup of coffee at inflated prices a completely discretionary expense especially when a Dunkin Donuts or a McDonalds can get you on that is reasonably close for flavor and quality? And how much is the Italian cafe like atmosphere worth in a economic dowtturn? Starbucks is closing 600 stores this year and laying off 12,000 full time or oart time retail employees. But it has 172,000 employees as of 2007 and 11,000 stores, of this an astounding 70% have opened since the fall of 2005 showing how big an expansion happened in the closing days of the boom economy just when Starbucks was losing its grip on customers and Dunkin Donuts and McDonalds were moving upscale into its territory at lower prices.

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Huaxi, Jiangsu province, a few hours car ride northwest of Shanghai, is a village of 2000 residents. It has built a 74 story skyscraper, with a concert hall and a revolving restaurant. The village residents have joint ownership through Jiangsu Huaxi Corporation with the companies 2009 report claiming it has investments in businesses that return 50 billion renminbi or $7.7 billion in income. About 25,000 workers, mostly migrant workers, are said to be employed by the village. These workers work and live in an area outside the village. The whole story appears to be more that a bit bizarre. There is no other information on where this money is coming from and who is managing it. If anything this kind of story suggests how inflated and bizarre the property market in China has become. Even the word bubble may be understating what is happening. A massive misallocation of capital is taking place with the lack of transparency and corruption making this possible, which will very likely affect long term development....

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This report in WSJ looks at the impact of the 2018 Trump tariffs retained by president Biden as the US seeks to reduce its overdependence on Chinese imports and bring back American manufacturing. This followed misguided policies of previous administrations since Clinton that weakened American manufacturing strengths. Have the US tariffs on Chinese goods worked? The WSJ graph with information from US Census Bureau shows that imports from China in 2022 going down to the levels in 2007 of about 16-17% as a share of US imports, down from a high of 21% before the Trump tariffs halted a rapidly rising curve. Imports from Germany, South Korea and Japan in 2022 were down slightly hovering around 4.5%. Imports increased from Canada and Mexico, the US's traditional partners in North America, around 13.5% as a share of US imports for each country. Also increasing were imports from Vietnam. Some of the imports from Vietnam are Chinese products shipped through Vietnam to evade tariffs, and it is not clear whether the figures from Vietnam have been adjusted for this. President Biden is looking at different scenarios in an effort to tackle inflation. One supported by Janet Yellen, an economist at US Treasury is for the US to relax some of the China tariffs. Most economists in previous administrations including Yellen failed to understand what surrendering American manufacturing to China on the scale and speed that happened would do to communities across America that depended on factory jobs. The devastation of these communities has led to increased divisions in America, weakened American manufacturing, and led to outflow of technologies vital for national security and national well being.  Republican senators, US Trade Representative Katherine Tai and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan are opposed to any relaxation of tariffs. Studies show the removal of the tariffs would have only a small impact on the consumer price inflation index reducing inflation by 0.26%. Lifting some tariffs on school supplies and summer bicycles as proposed by the US Chamber of Commerce would have little or no impact on the consumer price index for inflation. This is because the inflation is triggered by oil and gas price increases stemming from the Russian policies and invasion of Ukraine. This has also aggravated food and grocery costs  through blocking of agricultural imports from Ukraine. An additional factor was the increased demand after the pandemic easing in 2022, but that demand is already easing in July with glut in inventories at Walmart and Target, and excess warehouse capacity at Amazon. It would also send the wrong signal to China that the tariffs imposed by president Trump after a Section 301 trade investigation and based on improper loss of technologies to China are not being taken seriously by the US, says Republican Senator Hagerty of Tennessee. The Labor advisory committee to the US Trade Representative Katherine Tai also opposes any such move after the serious damage done to US workers and to US national well being and security. This happened under the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations with failed trade policies that ceded manufacturing to China. ...

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Jaishankar on the connection between the Indian and Pacific Ocean region into one integral whole with the emergence of independent nations from the British, French, and Dutch Empires in the region, and the growth of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Philippines and Thailand. The growth of trade and use of sea lanes for supply chains, modern shipping and logistics, have created sea lanes that stretch from the Gulf and Suez to Hawaii and Seattle. India plays a critical role with the US, Australia and Japan to ensure international law and open shipping lanes for all nations in the Indo-Pacific. Jaishankar also touches on infrastructure developments such as the new Trilateral Highway that connects India's northeast to Burma and Thailand. This opens up ties on land between the three nations with connections into Malaysia and Indonesia. That would enhance the movement open people and goods, and cultural connect that would create a new northeast- southeast Asian connection. It restores what was the long lost connection that India once had with nations from Thailand to Indonesia, and Vietnam to Japan through China. This is the connection that brought Buddhism from India's north east in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh to these countries.  Look East, Act East, the Quad, Indo-Pacific Economic Framework are all ways of saying the same thing of making the East connections the vital ones in India's social, economic and political, cultural life, restoring the connections in which India thrived and existed as one entity. It also brings life to the Gulf countries which are otherwise isolated in a sea of European nations on one side of the Mediterranean and Russia on the other side near the Black Sea that have different historical interests and cultures. This sees the central Asian connections through Afghanistan as being secondary and of less significance in the long history of nations such as India, China, Korea and Japan from the Buddhist era. That secondary connection brought an interruption of the long Buddhism and Vedanta civilization in India, intermittent wars, and the division of the country under the British Empire. It is a natural progression in a long history that seeks to restore the natural and intuitive connections to the Vedanta and Buddhist regions in the East that are part of the Indo-Pacific. These are now integrated with the settlers from Britain who sought to build better and fairer societies based on the rights of man in the new nations of Australia and America. This gives new life and meaning to this vast Indo-Pacific region. The British Empire and the other colonial empires simply bring back an orientation to the period of colonial wars of the nineteenth and twentieth century, which tore apart China and then Japan, and used resources in India for these wars, and which ended with the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These wars also leave behind memories in China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Japan and Korea that can only be truly be put behind by looking at Vedanta and Buddhist Asia as it once was from India to China to Japan. And to the regions of Australia and the US that brought new meaning to the modern scientific period and the rights of man in settler societies away from Europe. ...

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This article clearly shows that Russia is turning the corner for full scale use of western technology to tap oil and gas fields in the North. Note the efforts to bring in western expertise include- 1. Efforts to hire Donald Evans, former U.S. Commerce Secretary, to be Chairman of Rosneft. Evans turned down the offer. The hiring of Peter O'Brien a former Morgan Stanley investment banker as chief financial advser.2. With China National Petroleum as a strategic partner. 2. The financial backing and expertise of state run oil companies around the world now give them the ability to contract directly with Schlumberger or Baker Hughes or other oil field technology suppliers. This changes the whole playing field with less need to negotiate with the major oil companies and the ability to do it themselves at their own pace and strategic advantage and execute their own oil policy. Previously negotiating with the oil companies meant giving up some of the ownership of the oil fields to the oil companies in return for the technology. The oil services companies sell the technologies on a fee basis. 3. The pressure to move ahead aggressively with new technology. Estimates from IEA in Paris by Chief Economist Fatih Birol, show that increasing oil production by one and half million barrels a day to level of ten and half million barrels a a day requires Russia to invest $900 billion dollars by 2030 or about 40 billion a year. The only way to generate this kind of investment is to grow its oil development capabilities, keep prices high but stable, invest in the latest technology and bring some of it inhouse....

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Italy's oil company Eni's new CEO Mr. Descalzi, is a 33 year veteran, who headed the oil exploration division under former CEO Paolo Scaroni. He faces the challenge of reducing its 5.1 billion euro debt at the end of June 2014, with the possible partial sale of its 43% stake in oil services company Saipem. Eni's stake has a market value of 3.5 billion euros. Other decisions he faces are to reduce geopolitical risk in Africa by selling stakes in its oil projects in Africa. Under Scaroni Eni sold a 20% stake in its Mozambique field to China National Petroleum Corporation for $4.2 billion. Delays at its Kazakhstan project ,chronic problems in Nigeria, the fighting between militias in Libya have hurt earnings and cash flow. Reducing risks in Africa is a priority because Eni aggressively pursued opportunities for exploration in places like the Congo and Mozambique, so that a larger part of its oil comes from unstable regions than other large oil companies. Profitability from these fields is not what it used to be because of oil theft in Nigeria and the fighting between militias and the government in Libya, with North Africa coming in at $18 per barrel and sub-Saharan Africa at below $15 per barrel, compared to $30 per barrel from Kazakhstan for the last 3 years, according to Kepler Cheuvreux. Another problem the new CEO faces is the 800 million euro loss at the refining operations in the last 2 years. The government has a 30% stake in Eni, making refinery closings a sensitive issue. Refinery product demand is down with the economic crisis in Italy....

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Paul Nuttall, a 39 year old history lecturer, takes over the leadership of the UK Independence Party, UKIP, from Nigel Farage. The Daily Telegraph cites a new analysis by the House of Commons that shows UKIP could replace Labor Party in 13 parliamentary seats if only one voter in fifty shifted to UKIP. Farage says UKIP inspired the Trump campaign in America. Nuttall in his acceptance speech said "I want to replace the Labor Party and make UKIP the patriotic voice of working people." Nuttall is seen as being the best bet for UKIP to retain its hold on former Labor supporters in traditional working class constituencies in the north of England.

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The bottom half of all U.S. households have only recently recovered the wealth lost in the 2009 financial crisis. They still have 32% less wealth than in 2003 when inflation is taken into account. The top 1% of households have more than twice as much as they did in 2003. Wealth is defined as net worth that includes houses , savings and stocks minus any debt. The wealthy have 85% of their wealth in stocks and bonds. For the bottom 50% half of the assets are in the house or family home. Economic and regulatory trends have happened in ways that favored the people investing in stocks, and rescued people investing in stocks with policies designed with this purpose by central banks and the U.S. government. By contrast for the bottom 50% buying a home is more difficult today. The problem this WSJ report points out is that the next recession would most hurt the bottom 50%, even before they have recovered from the last one which was a result of shaky practices of banks in financial lending and not some cyclical swing in the economy. Policy was then geared to provide a recovery first for stock markets as a way to economic recovery. The bottom 50% have little stake in the stock market, the top 1% have most of their gains from the stock market. Much of the popular anger comes from the way policies by both Democrats and Republicans differed little in past administrations in the way they approached this in shaping economic policy. As a result infrastructure building and investments in public services took less priority in this period of 30 years with trade imbalances with China building up on the external front, in another side to this development. The shift to Trump and to right wing populists in Europe is only the first phase in the corrective action that has to take place to return to a fairer distribution of wealth that existed before the last 3 decades. Eventually it is not right wing or left wing factions or parties, but healthy policies, that matter to create a better balance for society.  ...