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The new Ford Focus being unveiled at the Detroit Auto Show in 2009, is a new kind of car for Ford. This is a new kind of effort, a new discipline that Ford CEO Mullaly has advocated from the beginning. Making one car for all markets worldwide. Early on Mullaly told Ford's chairman Bill Ford that Boeing did not have a 737 for Europe and a 737 for the US and a 737 for Asia, why was Ford building a Focus for Europe and a Focus for the USA. In fact before Mullaly the Focus for the USA was a stripped down version of the European Focus and did not make much of an impression. The new Focus will have 80% common parts and 75% of parts from the same suppliers worldwide, so that a Focus made in Germany and the USA will share the same parts as a Focus made in Russia and a Focus made in China. And all of these plants will go into production at about the same time with the new Focus. To accomplish this transformation of Ford for "One Ford" worldwide, which is also on every business card carried by Ford managers, Mullaly appointed Derrick Kuzak as head of global manufacturing. See link for Derrick Kuzak. And the strategy was announced in mid-2008 with the start of retooling of truck factories in Mexico, Kentucky and Michigan, to make small cars designed in Europe for global markets. The task of coming up with one design for a global car was given to Martin Smith, a British designer based in Cologne, Germany. Smith says tastes are converging worldwide with the internet use, and customers are more unified than one would think, and whats emerging is a new kind of global cool if one looks for it. This is what happened when Focus protypes were shown to consumer panels in Europe, the USA and Asia, with a good impression created in all 3 markets. Aligning the US and European tastes was easier, China was a bit harder and the yellow leather interior popular in Shanghai had to be crossed out. Another challenge that had to be met in adisciplined manner was the varying safety rules and emissions around the world. For example European designers liked to have the windshield further forward, and Ford's global small car chief had to tell his engineers to move it back to meet US crumple zone standards. Similiar challenges had to be met in purchasing by global purchasing chief, Tony Brown, with a massive coordination effort needed to be done globally. And plastic trim from Michigan has to fit perfectly with sheet metal stamped in Michigan, and Ford used a virtual manufacturing system that allows the car to be built in cyberspace, and the bugs taken out at that early virtual build stage. The entire change is part of a metamorphosis at Ford, a change of culture and mastering a new discipline in coordinated effort worldwide for "One Ford." One year ago the Wayne Truck plant here in Detroit made the Navigator and the Expedition large vehicles.. With a $550 million investment this plant will make the Ford Focus a year from now. ...

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Jonathan Lu succeeds Jack Ma as CEO of Alibaba in March 2013.

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Alibaba's new CEO Jonathan Lu.

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New CEO Jonathan Lu of Alibaba.

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Zombrun describes the effect of low interest rates on savings for the bottom half of households in the U.S., the pressure to invest in stocks without the skills and experience of the better educated part of households in the top 20% of households by wealth and income. This resulted in a negative effect, a depletion of savings compared to an increase under a higher interest rates scenario with less pressure to take risks in a volatile stock market. This is the direct cost of the crises in stock and financial markets of 2000 caused by a internet bubble, and the larger crisis of 2008-2009 caused by the bubble in mortgages and housing. The secondary effects of the mortgage price bubble and faulty mortgage securities was in the millions of homeowners who went into foreclosure in 2009-2013, which further depleted wealth and savings of households in the bottom half lacking the experience and skills to navigate this type of housing market. The failure of the Obama administration to stem the foreclosures with practical steps which would have helped not hurt the banking sector, as suggested by FDIC's Sheila Bair and Harvard economist Martin Feldstein in many WSJ op-eds in 2010-2012, added to the erosion of savings and wealth of the bottom half. Minorities in particular were hit hard. A third effect is of communities across America that are feeling the effects of job migration to emerging markets such as China that has been underway as part of the globalization of the last three decades. A fourth effect in the rising cost of education, particularly since 2000, has reduced the opportunities for struggling working class people to enter the middle class and enjoy the higher incomes in precisely the very period when the divergence of incomes between less educated, less killed people and the more educated and better skilled people was taking place. The last two effects were neutral as part of the overall process of emergence of a globalized economy with a premium on more skills and education, requiring action by the government, universities and business for a concerted effort to mitigate in some places the negative effects and enhance in other places the positive effects. The first two effects were man made crises which required managing in constructive and positive ways for the entire American people, taking risks where necessary such as fears about the financial system if foreclosures did not go through. The risks of a long period of extremely low interest rates for savers and the middle as well as working class were poorly understood by the Fed since 2000. A similiar crisis is being faced in Europe with extremely low interest rates. Janet Yellen was only doing the honest thing by acknowledging how far and how different the situation is now compared to the period of three decades following 1945- a question not just of values cherished in America, also of the need for societies to advance through creation of wealth across all sectors of society or regress, as described by Smith in the Wealth of Nations....

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The rapid spread of emoji chracters originating from Japan in our daily text conversations. This is bringing emotional state into daily conversations with a simple click on a smartphone. Shigetaka Kurita a designer for Docomo in Japan noticed the use of a picture of the sun in Japan for sunny weather not the use of words as in the U.S., and the use of a bulb over a head for someone with a smart idea, hearts common in Japan for affection, and this led him to the idea of creating a whole set of characters for different moods and emotional states to use in mobile conversation. Apple was the first to adopt them on its smartphones after the emoji were already popular in Japan for about 10 years.

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A study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism of the Pew Research center, looked at six major story lines that progressed for one week in July. What it found is that 83% of the reports in the local news media were basically repetitive and had no new information. Of the stories that contained new information, 95% came from old media, which then set the tone for narratives done by other media outlets. The study covered the Baltimore Sun, Washington Post, their websites, several smaller papers in the area, and new online news sites. Another finding was that on one story of budget cuts, the reporting done in 2009 was less than one third of that which was done for the budget cuts in 1991. This confirms the point made by traditional media that new online news outlets do little more than repetition and commentary.

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The art of storytelling is important to startup companies and to job candidates in any field. What makes you interesting or different and worth the commitment as a startup or job candidate is the silent question that is posed in encounters with the public or the interviewer. Alina Tugend touches on the personal narrative we all need to get right for advancement. The Freytag pyramid provides a structure for the storytelling- with the first part the scene, second the rising action, third the turning point, fourth the denouement or closing which gives the listener some sort of release. For it to be effective our narrative has to be about our unique experiences with detail, it has to be genuine, it does not have to be perfect, just make that connection and gain empathy, trust of the listener, hopefully a new fan. For it to be real it becomes important to not self-censor. Other people may have the same experience but it is not talked about much, that itself may add to its newness and claim to being something fresh, and it may take some courage overcoming fear of ridicule to tell the story. Telling stories also can work to bring an organization or different departments work better around shared perceptions, values and goals. In this sense stories and narrative are about everyday life and anywhere we are trying to achieve something worthwhile. ...

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Elliott Abrams quotes former President George Bush from November 2003 when he asked the question: "Are the peoples of the Middle East somehow beyond the reach of liberty? Are millions of men and women and children condemned by history or culture to live in despotism? Are they alone never to know freedom and never even to have a choice in the matter?" Abrams, former deputy natonal security advisor for President Bush, says the autocratic regimes and dictators of the Middle East have offered a false choice to the US- its us or the Islamists. Roger Cohen also points this out in a recent article in the New York Times. For Tunisia he says this was never defensible. It is a largely secular nation with a literacy rate of 75% and per capita GDP of $9,500, and Ben Ali, the dictator of Tunisia, jailed moderates, human rights advocates, editors, anyone who represented hope and change. Abrams says Mubarak has done the same in Egypt. And he warns that if you make moderate politics impossible as Mubarak in Egypt and Ben Ali in Tunisia have done, then you make extremism more likely. Ruling by emergency decree for decades creates a real emergency, as has happened in Egypt. Bush made that speech at the 20th anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy, and he reminded Americans that "sixty years of Western nations excusing and accomodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe- because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty." He admits that the Bush administration did not always conduct US diplomacy in this vein, but the President took the lead and the Obama administration's abandonment of that mindset is nothing short of a tragedy. Obama's policy of "engagement" actually endangers the US position as a supporter of liberty and freedom wherever it is stifled or muffled, because it turned a blind eye to the people themselves as it engaged with the dictatorial regimes in the Arab world and other countries. When the elections in Iran were stolen the Obama administration hesitated, waffled in its committment to liberty, fearing that it would affect nuclear negotiations. Obama did not -as of late Friday night Jan 28, 2011- call for free elections or clearly demand democracy. The law school analytical processes that Obama brings to the presidency and the demands of geopolitical diplomacy are impervious to the loud voices demanding freedom in countries denied liberty. Obama has forgotten the very same voices he passionately heard when he wrote in his first book that in the words "we hold these truths to be self-evident" he could hear the spirit of Douglas and Delaney, as well as Jefferson and Lincoln, the struggles of Martin and Malcolm and unheralded marchers to bring the words to life. He could hear the words of interned Japanese families, the voices of Russian Jews in lower East side sweatshops, of dust bowl farmers during the depression, all these voices clamoring for recognition and asking the question about what is community and how it can be reconciled with freedom. This failure to recognize these voices clamoring for freedom and economic opportunity is all the more striking because it was vision and a bold sense of purpose that energized the Obama campaign and both the vision and the bold sense have eluded the administration. Abrams calls for a clear unequivocal committment by the US government in favor of freedom and peaceful efforts to achieve it in the Middle East, because he says that as the demonstrators are telling the world outside supporting freedom is the best policy of all. ...

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The planned merger of Random House owned by Bertelsmann, and Penguin owned by Pearson, creates the largest consumer book publisher in the world with a 25% market share. Bertelsmann will control 53% of the new entity, and Pearson 47%. The merger will help the new entity better handle the challenges presented by the shift to electronic books and internet retailing, and respond to the power of large companes such as Apple, Amazon and Google in this field. This creates pressure for mergers among the other large publishers, Hatchette owned by Lagardere in France, HarperCollins a part of News Corporation, Macmillan part of Georg von Holtzbrinck in Germany, and Simon & Schuster a part of CBS.

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India's Aakash tablet priced at $42 for the Indian market at subsidized 50% by the Indian governmnt for students at colleges and universities in India.

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The Chicago Sun Times files for bankruptcy. It owes the IRS $510 million in back taxes for 1996-2003 when Hollinger International, which controls the Sun Times, was owned by Conrad Black, who was convicted of fraud. It had an operating loss of $344 million in 2008. Its newspaper the Sun Times has a circulation of 313,000. The Sun Times had expected advertising revenue to drop 30% this year. The Tribune Company, which owns the CHicago tribune and the Los Angeles Times filed for bankruptcy in 2007 Dec. Other papers that filed for bankruptcy include the Philadelphia Newspapers and the Star Tribune Holdings of Minneapolis. Sun Times stock which was at $6 in early 2007 was at 2 cents in April 2008!

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Google's Schmidt reminds newspapers that they can opt out of Google Search and Google News with a single line of simple code. Schmidt understands that the Web runs a serious risk of becoming a wasteland as reporting declines. Only a few brave reporters take up the immense burden of keeping the U.S. public informed in international crises, at important international events, and as major changes take place in different parts of Asia and Europe. Reporters in the U.S. perform similiar tasks, with fewer reporters assuming bigger responsibilities for informing the public. Newspapers in other advanced countries Germany and France face a similiar situation.