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Adam Bryant interviews Steve Case, founder of AOL online, on the lessons learned from the failure of the AOL Time Warner merger and failures in execution.

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China's BYD started in electric batteries and expanded into electric cars. It has emerged as the dominant electric car company in the world as China now has half of the electric cars on the road in the world. 35% of exports of electric cars are from China. Keith Bradsher of NYT reports from Shenzen that its first car was made in 2007 of poor quality, similar to Toyota in the 1930's as it tried car manufacturing for the first time. It has surpassed Tesla in making electric cars. In each of the last 2 years it has increased electric car sales by one million to reach electric car sales on 3 million. EV sales in China were up in 2023 to 9.49 million cars giving BYD the largest share of 31%., by comparison US electric car sales were 1.2 million. New assembly lines are being built in Brazil, Hungary and Thailand. And new lines are planned for Mexico and Indonesia. This kind of growth was seen only by General Motors in 1946 after the end of the war. It also shows the progress China is making. In solar panels something like the addition of 900 million solar panels meeting the entire increase in electricity demand for each year, so that emissions targets can be met earlier than planned to tackle climate change.  The same changes are happening in electric cars. China now has 40% of electric cars or gasoline/electric plug in cars going up to 50%. For export China is building large carrier ships, the first that will take 5000 cars for export to the Netherlands. The lowest priced electric car model the Seagull was priced at $11,000. BYD's lowering of manufacturing costs have given it the ability to price the cars to attract new car buyers.  Wang Chuanfu who studied at Central Southern University in Changsha known for its battery research, was an engineer who started the company in the 1990's to make batteris for Motorola. Between 2003-2006 he experimented with making cars in the hope of making electric cars. Stalled efforts in 2009 and 2011 were met with arenewed effort in 2016 trying a new approach to cut costs by developing a battery where supplies of lithium or cobalt would not be a constraint. He developed a new battery using iron and phospate to replace lithium cobalt batteries. A big break came in 2020 with the Blade battery that increased range to the level of cobalt lithium batteries at a much smaller cost. BYD hired German Audi designers for new model design. This time BYD was in the right position to build a car company matching all others with costs lower by about 35% than VW for some models. This comes from- lower costs to make in China, making its own parts inside the company for 75% of parts compared to VW only about 35%, and by the savings from its battery research.  BYD has shown ability to shift with market needs and opportunities. In 2022 assisted driving was facing hurdles, BYD had second thoughts about the new technology, by 2023 as it was increasing in use BYD committed $14 billion in autonomous driving technology. Driving range is a problem for people in urban areas going back to their villages in China. BYD has an advantage here compared to Tesla- it makes hybrid plug ins that account for half its sales. Toyota has also had emphasis on hybrid plug ins where it missed the opportunity was that it moved very slowly on all electric cars not realizing how fast things were moving outside it's world. This is the situation America also faces in 2024 and beyond who can deliver on the infrastructure capabilities, new research ,and tap American potential to compete in this new world where one innovation will follow another. ...

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China's state investment company which holds $200 billion of the country's estimated 1.4 trillion dollars in foregn exchange reserves, will not take large equity stakes in western companies, and the Blackstone deal in which it invested $2 billion will be more of a rarity. This according to Jesse Wang a member of the company,s preparatory group, the company will outsource the investment to western fund managers adnd take stakes in the broader economy, much closer to the model used by Yale or Harvard for their endowment funds. It will be overseen by Lou Jiwei, a former deputy minister of finance.

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Uncertainty in China's stock market with the ban on stock selling by large institutional investors. Goldman Sachs estimates that $184 billion in shares could be put up for sale if the ban was unambiguously lifted. The price swings on the market would be accentuated say analysts because of a decline in trading volume.

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China takes a different approach to the stock market declines on August 24-25, 2015, after the earlier failed interventions in July and early August called into question the transparency and integrity of the financial markets. The main Shanghai index opened 6% lower on August 25, and ended down 7.6%. This time the government let the market find its own level. Li Jiange, vice chairman of state owned investment company Central Huijin, wrote in his blog post that "The trade volume of the market can reach 2 trillion yuan ($300 billion) a day, which means if it collapsed no one could save it...The issues of the market should be handled by the market itself." In July and the early part of August Central Huijin was reported to have intervened to support the market. On Aug. 14, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) stated achange in policy to intervene "only when the market changes dramatically and introduces systemic risk." It is important to note that even with the 40% decline in the market index since June 2015 peak, it is still up 35% compared to the prior year....

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Li Keqiang, China's new premier, is a member of the "Class of 77," who gained entry to Peking University when university entrance exams were reinstated after Mao's death. This is a period of great curiosity in China about the outside world. Li described it this way in 2008: "In this period knowledge was expanding with the speed of an explosion. I came here not just for knowledge, but to mold a kind of temperament, to master a kind of academic discipline." This he did by working extremely hard trying to master the English language and Western legal theory. He is now the only leader in China who can speak fluent English and is familiar with western concepts of law. For this he owes much to one of his professors, Gong Xiangrui, who studied at the London School of Economics in the 1930's and supported a multiparty system for China. Li was selected as one of the students to translate "The Due Process of Law" by Lord Denning, a British jurist. He spent the next 15 years in the Communist party's Youth League and moved up through the ranks. Many of the "Class of 77' " are still close friends and in academic positions in Singapore, Hong Kong and other universities. He understands the weaknesses in China's legal system because many of his close friends are lawyers, judges and law professors. Evidence of his intellectual openness, is his return to Peking University for a masters degree in economics years later, his thesis on urbanization, and his sponsorship through the Development Reform Commission think tank and the World Bank's Zoellick, of the report published in 2012, "China 2030." That report called for China to change course and reverse the role of state owned firms in the economy, giving consumers a bigger role. Like many of China's leaders this openness also meant during the period of turmoil of the Mao period and the decades following this, of a reticence to talk about political change that came over the entire country, in the words of the 2012 Chinese Nobel Prize Laureate's name, Mo Yan, a kind of "Don't Speak." Taking any kind of political position was simply too risky. The presence of 4 older Politburo members in their mid-60's who are close allies of former president Jiang Zemin and likely to preserve the status quo, also suggests a cautious approach in making changes. One key difference between Jinping- Keqiang from the Jintao-Wen Biao leadership is that Jinping has experience in provincial leadership positions in Hebei, and Keqiang was provincial leader in Henan, China's most populous province, as well as leader in industrial Liaoning province. By odd contrast Hu Jintao was a leader in the remote Tibet region and Wen Biao was a geologist in the northeast for many years. This gives the new leadership team a first hand knowledge of conditions in populous provinces, and the connections with the World Bank's Zoellick a kind of window to the outside that no other leader has had. Jiang Zemin, a former mayor of Shanghai, China' most westernized city in the 1930's and today, was himself a experimenter in his own right when he initiated the changes tht gave China entry into the World Trade Organization. His support of Xi Jinping gives Xi the needed backing for making change happen when the time comes....

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Li Qiming gets a six year prison sentence for drunk driving and manslaughter. Defence lawyer says the legal process was flawed in this case.

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HP's Apotheker emphasized in an earnings call "the tablet effect is real and sales of the TouchPad are not meeting our expectations. The velocity of change in the personal device marketplace continues to increase as the competitive landscape is growing increasingly more complex especially around the personal computing area." By the tablet effect Apotheker means the Apple iPad. The tablet is becoming popular but not the other tablets from Samsung, HP and other makers. It is the iPad that is the product customers turn to and the tablets of competitors are not accepted as a substitute. As a result CEO Apotheker plans to exit the tablet and PC business.

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This report in NYT shows the movement of Mexicans who migrated to the US in the 1970's in an earlier migration and the problems they faced seeking a better life in America on the east and west coastal cities. In 1971 Ruperto and Eustacia Enriquez migrate from Puebla, Mexico to New York. They make two migrations within the US after a mugging incident in Brooklyn in 1980. First to Santa Ana, California where they find life difficult with gang crime in neighborhoods, and move to an affluent suburb in the east side of Seattle. Their son Daniel gets a Bachelors degree in philosophy from the University of Washington. In 1996 he returns to New York to study for a Masters degree in Latin American Studies at New York University.  After 25 years in New York and taking up a jobs two financial firms he reflects a strivers mentality, always looking for self-improvement. He helps his younger sister with an application to win a Fullbright scholarship in Germany. Another sister works in Washington as a business analyst. He helped a brother who became a school teacher in New York public schools. Daniel found an apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn and by 2013 joined another financial firm in its global investment research group coordinating publications.  The story reflects some of the growing pains of Mexican Americans who migrated to America in the 1970's in the earlier migrations. In 2022 Daniel Enriquez 48 years was shot on the subway while going for Sunday Brunch, 25 years after returning to New York City. Crime was once again up in the city after the pandemic. 950 crime offenses happened in the subway system for the year till May the same as in 2019. Subway ridership was 40% lower in May this year.   ...

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Because of anti Bush and anti american feeling every crank politicain or simply gangs fighting turf wars and even bandits or thieves can call themselves Taliban. Also the Wahabist religion of militants is not the religion in the Sind and Punjab 2 main provinces of Pakistan. And some of these areas like the Northwest frontier province and the areas bordering Afghanistan like Afghanistan itself have an independent streak and don't take well to any foreigner be it the Russians, the Pakistanis (Punjabis and Sindhis) and to the Americans or going back to the colonial era the British. Its convenient and a easy label for a lazy media that hasnt done its homework, and for politicians who lack the education and disposition to do their own homework or a cultural barrier that makes this difficult to call all this one label Taliban, or some other label, but its dangerous as the manner of dealing with this may be quite different given a correct understanding of whats happening. When turned over to the American people living in a modern world or to modern world Europeans for response to these labels there is only the gut instinct of them versus us the core feeling of something different and alien which is hostile. As this writer points out the Pakistani people themselves by and large are simply like people everywhere, may just be looking for better lives like the rest of us, and are not keen on the militants though they may carry anti Bush feelings. And the Pakistani people resentment for the USA not because of some innate or inherent hostility but because they feel left out of the modern world and its benefits of development like infrastructure, hospitals and basic services, just like most of the developing countries, which have alternated between hostility and friendship towards the USA, just as the USA has alternated between truly benevolent policy towards the developing world and policy thats more in tune to a prior colonial period of its partners in Europe like the British and the French. And in this sense the Pakistani people desire for economic progress may not be automatically construed as expressed through the politicians as they are corrupt and selfserving. Its a complex state of affairs sure but its not made easier but made more complicated by lazy man's labels without understanding the situation on the ground first hand and doing one's homework. ...

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Mike Pence on DJT and the Republican Party in 2025. Mike Pence puts a score on the First 100 Days of the DJT administration. The WINS- The Border- Mike Pence says border crossings are down. Crossings were 140,000 in March 2024 under Biden, a year later they were 4000 or 3% of the previous crossings. A video of gangs was shown at the DJT rally in Warren, Michigan, the Linken Riley Act and other efforts to put spotlight on victims of crime- this is doing what even legislation would take time to produce results, putting into effect a democratic mandate and the rule of law, this is not arbitrary or by force. US military capabilities- Mike Pence points to the attention to defense, yet makes no mention of the US Navy. How can the US build when it has stopped building ships to the point that it takes 6-7 years to build simple frigates in the US by European companies, when 55% of shipbuilding is done in China with ships built in 1-2 years. How is the US without restoring its industrial base going to build its Navy? This is a question Mike Pence, the Conservatives in the Republican Party have to answer. Or if they do not take on this question are they using a playbook that is obsolete, was obsolete for a decade, and is now dangerous as if this opportunity to rebuild is not taken USA may lose its leadership in the world. Foreign Investment coupled with US and US Government investment- Mike Pence and Conservatives in the Republican Party, Wall Street interests say the US is losing foreign investment through its tariffs program, and faults it for targeting Europe, Canada, India, America's allies. DJT includes these countries because it makes it easier to come to an agreement with China that offers to abide by the original rules of fair trade when it is not singled out. It is to convey beyond a doubt to China that the US intends to play fair and expects the same from China as one of China's friends throughout its struggle with British and Japanese imperialism and colonialism. In this Wall Street fails to understand what happened to China, the history of Gen. Joe Stilwell in China in fighting the Japanese in China 1920-1945 A fact check shows Mike Pence and Wall Street are not right, foreign investment as shown on the White House site is about $5 trillion in commitments, it includes a commitment by Korean, Japanese and European, America's own companies to invest in American manpower and jobs, in American communities across 51 states.   ...

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IBM performance may be affected by the shift to the cloud computing environment. Businesses increasingly prefer to rent computing capabilities and software in smaller packages and easier implementation than the costly software packages IBM sells. IBM shares declined by 8% on April 19, 2013 after revenues declined by 5% in 1st quarter 2013.

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Keir Starmer of Labour says he stands behind every word in the ad that shows Tories including Sunak are weak in prosecuting crimes against woman and children. Labour says it will halve violence against women and girls. Starmer says- he will "make absolutely zero apologies for being blunt." That Labour will continue to use the Conservatives record on crime as legitimate criticism no matter how squeamish it made some people feel. "For the first time in my lifetime, everywhere you look from the economy to the NHS to the chaos on our streets- we have been set on a path of decline." Starmer said the last decade had seen the UK "become a country where thugs, gangs and monsters mock our justice system and make decent people's lives a misery." Starmer was head of public prosecution in Britain from 2008 to 2013. As early as 2002 he was Queen's Counsel. He was also a human rights adviser for Northern Ireland Policing Board and Association of Chief Police Officers. Starmer cites his work in improvements in Northern Ireland policing as one of the key factors in his decision to pursue a political career. The issue in the ad is a subject in which Starmer has much experience. ...