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Pemex's new CEO, Emilio Lozoya, and his plans for improving the oil company's operations. He sees the opportunity to create efficiency and savings for Pemex as large because of the way the company has been run upto now. In this interview by Jose De Cordoba and Laurence Iliff, the new CEO cites as one example that only one airport in Mexico receives jet fuel by pipeline, the airport of Mexico City, the rest receive it by trucks. Lozoya is the son of a former energy minister. He is 38, has a Masters degree in economic development from Harvard and worked as an investment banker in New York. Lozoya says he will draw from the experience of other countries, including Brazil and Colombia which have sharply increased oil production after making their oil companies more competitive and transparent. In this interview he announced plans to setup a separate company to explore and produce shale gas and deep water oil in the U.S.

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The WSJ's Juan Montes, in an exceptional report from Mexico City, tells the story behind a landmark achievement for Mexico- Pacto Por Mexico of Dec. 2, 2012. The major political parties of the right, centre and left forge an agreement for the way forward for Mexico- beyond monopolistic pricing and industry structures in Mexico that hurt consumers, to increase foreign investment and new technlogies to modernize the national oil company Pemex operations, change labor laws, and create a climate for higher growth. The pact is broad ranging, shows a grasp of the problems facing modern Mexico, and ranges from anti-monopoly laws to getting junk food out of schools considering Mexico's high obesity and diabetes rate. It covers 95 goals. It is hard to overstate the significance of this achievement for modern Mexico. Montes describes the initiative of the PRD leader Zambrones in rebranding his PRD party as a moderate left wing party open to new ideas. This happened after the departure of Lopez Obrador from the PRD to form his own party in September. Zambrano and PRD moderates brought up the idea based on what happened in a landmark deal in Spain in 1977, that helped transform Spain after decades of stagnation under the Franco dictatorship. Around July after the presidential election, PRD president Zambrano, and the PRD's Jesus Ortega, held meetings in Mexico City with Jose Murat, a senior PRI politician, and PRI president elect Nieto's top advisor, economist Luis Videgaray. The decision was made by president Nieto and economist Luis Videgaray to pursue the discussions for joint agreement on vital issues facing Mexico. The PAN party was brought into the discussions. By mid-September nine people from the PRD, PRI and PAN started work on a draft agreement at Murat's home. The ground rules were set for discussions to be private, to have agreement on all points or assume nothing had been agreed, and not let current events disturb the talks. The nine participants set up the broad principles, and then a group of three, one from each party was given the task of coming up with the right language for the pact. By the end of November a 34 page draft was put together. A night of intense work to 2 a.m. followed the inauguaration of president Nieto on Dec. 1, with the Pact ready for announcement on Dec. 2, 2012. The Pact is a landmark achievement in its potential for changing Mexico and creating decades of economic progress similiar to that envisioned by the Spanish parties for Spain in 1977. ...

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This exceptional report in the New York Times shows the results of a NYT investigation into Trump's taxes. Trump used a $916 million loss on his tax return for 1995. This was at a time when casino losses had mounted in Atlantic City and Trump was having financial difficulties. Trump used a tax avoidance maneuvre that was considered stretching the law by tax experts. Under tax law when debt is cancelled it has to be reported as taxable income. When Trump had some of this debt cancelled for his casinos, he would normally have had to show it as taxable income. He used a tax maneuvre to not show this taxable income- to be able to show a loss of the magnitude of $916 million for 1995 tax returns. The cancelled debt would make it possible to wipe out $50 million in taxable income for 18 years, says the NYT report. Trump used the losses of $916 million to offset other income from branding, television. Trump's debate comments to Hillary Clinton was why she had not closed the loopholes he had used. Hillary Clinton was one of the senators who had this loophole closed when legislation was passed in 2004. According to Mr. Buckley, the former chief of staff for Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation, this violated a key principle of American tax law, that you cannot deduct someone else's losses. Only the bondholders for the casinos who cancelled some of Trump's debt should be allowed to use these losses according to that principle. So Buckley says of Trump's tax return maneuvring- that "he was double dipping big time." What does it mean for the average citizen- it simply increases his tax burden. ...

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A study by Dr. McCormick of the Harvard Medical School and professors at the City University of New York School of Public Health at Hunter College, shows that the anticipated savings from conversion to medical records may not materialize to the extent expected. This study of data from 1100 doctors of 28,000 patient visits shows that with access to digital records doctors actually increased the number of tests ordered- from 12.9% of visits without digital records to 18% of visits with digital records. For more advanced tests such as MRI and CT scan the rate was 70% higher. Dr. McCormick says this may be because the new digital technology may have made it easier to order tests.

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With $3.5 trillion dollars of commercial real estate debt outstanding, amid collapsing real estate prices, there is concern that this will hamper economic recovery. About $700 billion of commercial real estate mortgaes were packaged into securities and sold to pension funds, college endowments, foundations and other investors. This means the pain will be felt across the country, even in this small Ozark town of Springfield, Missouri, where the police and firefighters union has invested its entire 11% real estate allocation of $12 million in PRISA, a real estate fund of Prudential Insurance. Prudential in the boom years like 2005, was making as much as 25% return and large fees, and it marketed these products across the country. Even in a loss year of 2008 this generated $89 million in fees for PRISA. It decided to build 11 Times Square with a developer, 1.1 million square foot skyscraper in New York city, and the piece of that in the form of a security was marketed in this small Ozark town at a meeting between a Prudential representative and the towns pension fund board members, 1 policeman, 3 firemen and 2 city officials. The pension fund valued before the financial crisis at $131 million is now valued at $91 million, with 10% tied up in PRISA. A request for redemption of $5 million was rejected. The irony is that the pension fund was trying to boost returns to 7.5% from 5% on the advice of actuaries, to better fund the retiree obligations. The developer of the skyscraper Pozycki only comitted $15 million, or 4% of the equity, in exchange for developer's fees, having been burnt by earlier deals in the 1990's. As the building is nearing completion in 2009, not a single tenant has signed up. A loss of 50% is expected by 2009, because of so much vacant office space in New York city. Prudential will continue to collect its fees. And in Springfield the the losses will lead to budget cuts, reducing how often park lawns are mowed, and roads maintained, eliminating the summer concert series, multi-family housing inspections, and aservice to trap skunks and feral cats....

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Dudley Althaus looks at Mexico's 2018 election from a working class suburb of Mexico City called Valle de Chalco. Once a squatter settlement outside Mexico City this area was courted by the ruling PRI Institutional Revolutionary party for 3 decades with a social investing program building sewers, water and power lines. Today this area like others in the state of Mexico have turned to a new party Morena led by Manuel Lopez Obrador, to find a way out of the corruption, violence and failure of the rule of law under the PRI. Obrador left the socialist PRD party to form Morena in 2014 after running for president on the PRD ticket twice. The thirst for change is widespread inside Mexico giving Obrador a higher vote margin in state of Mexico than the 53% he won overall in Mexico. The PRI won just 16% of the vote. The old politics of piggy bank and patronage of the PRI is now discredited in Mexico.  The reason the old politics does not work anymore is the change in places like this from a shanty town of tin shacks to a bustling city of 400,000. This place has a technical school, a state university branch, rows of well kept cinder  block homes along with malls and wealthier homes. With basic necessities being met Mexican workers are turning to larger issues of national identity and how the next chapter can be written in the social contract. Obrador's nationalist message and criticism of the globalized economy struck workers and middle class as the right direction for Mexico. This came just as president Trump brought new views on immigration and NAFTA on the other side of the border challenging Mexico to find its own direction and independent position in the world economy, even building new links to other countries in Europe and Asia. ...

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While the Fed will continue to carefully monitor conditions and the changes resulting from DJT's actions in immigration and tariffs, and federal workforce cuts, Powell says "the economy is in a good place," though it remains to be seen what happens with spending and investment with these changes. On changes in rapid sequence in first 100 days of DJT second term Powell says- "The new administration is in the process of implementing significant policy changes in four distinct areas: trade, immigration, fiscal policy and regulation,” Powell says at a University of Chicago Booth School of Business economic forum in New York City. “Uncertainty around the changes and their likely effects remains high. “We are focused on separating the signal from the noise as the outlook evolves. We do not need to be in a hurry and are well positioned to wait for greater clarity.” ...

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A careful examination of the Case-Shiller 20 City Index shows that even though housing prices increased by 5.9% year to date through July 2012, when looked at year over prior year only 2 cities Minneapolis and Detroit show an increase over 6%, other than Pheonix at 16%. It increased only 1.2% over the prior year in July 2012. Sixteen cities showed increases, Atlanta, Chicago, Las Vegas and New York showed declines. For this reason the interpretation of this one month data should be done cautiously as it can be skewed by unusual factors such as lower short and foreclosure sales according to experts.

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A former mayor of Mexico City wins the election for president in 2018 with 53% of the vote. Obrador's margin was over 30% over Ricardo Analya of PAN party who had 22.5%, and ruling PRI's Antionio Meade with 16%, with 72% of votes counted according to Mexico's election agency. Issues in this election were corruption, with many corruption scandals for ruling PRI under president Nieto, and failure to maintain rule of law. The last time that a president won this size margin of victory was in 1982. Morena as Obrador's party is called, won 306 of 500 seats in the lower house of parliament and 70 of 128 seats in the Senate, winning majorities in both houses of parliament. It also won 4 of 8 state governor races and the Mayor's office in Mexico City. FOr the first time since 1997 one party will control both houses and Mexico City. Obrador formed his own party after leaving the PRD party, calling it The Movement for National Regeneration. Most Mexicans were highly disturbed by the violence and corruption that prevailed in local administration under president Nieto's PRI government. The PRI's dominance in Mexican politics is now broken. Obrador says he will work to put more emphasis on helping the poor in Mexico in framing his policies, distancing himself from the politics of the PRI which had distanced itself more and more from grassroots and ordinary workers in Mexico. This means adapting the free market economic model to suit Mexico's own conditions, the differences between northern and southern Mexico, and pushing for more worker friendly policies. It also creates more room for agreement with the U.S. as both Mr. Trump and Mr. Obrador agree on raising labor standards and wages for factory workers in Mexico ...

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Tennis player from Serbia is disqualified for hitting the line umpire with a tennis ball. Djokovic was behind 6-5 to Carren Busta of Spain and lost his serve when this happened. Once before in that match he hit a ball at the stands in frustration. The Organizers of the U.S. Open decided there were clear reasons for him to be disqualified and lose all points he had earned at the U.S. Open. Djokovic had earlier come under criticism for his playing in events where there was no social distancing. Tennis has lost much of the graceful behaviour from the time when players like Althea Gibson, Ken Rosewall and Rod Laver played the game in an earlier era. Too much of the money is focused on prize money, television advertising, star status and number of grand slams won, bringing the game down to a level where the fans enjoying a good game is left behind and focus is all on individual players. The same is true for soccer where so much focus was placed on Barcelona and Messi and the 700 million transfer fee. The message from reality comes from the 7-2 win by Bayern Munich over Barcelona with a traditional approach to the game based on using new players costing far less money, a good dose of common sense and hard work. Coaches at Manchester City and Liverpool, and Real Madrid all attributed their success in the game to hard work and discipline of players, with every player playing for the team and for fans, and not for star status. ...

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Following the Wisconsin primary Ted Cruz plans his campaign to prepare for a contested convention. The strategy is to focus on California, and states such as Nebraska and Indiana, and on delegate selection, so that Trump has little chance of winning the required 1237 delegates on the first ballot at the Republican Convention. To do this Cruz plans to hire additional staff, and work at the local city and county level winning endorsements from local and state officials. A similiar process unfolded in the Wisconsin primary, with local Republican base support that was crucial to his win. The focus inside California is on Orange County, San Diego county, San Fernando Valley, rural agricultural Central Valley, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo his wife's home town. In the New York primary where he is behind Cruz is planning to win delegates in heavily Democratic Congressional districts, using ads by pro-Cruz super PAC Trusted Leadership, to add to his delegate count. Cruz is depending on mid-size donors with the help of Jeb Bush and previous backers of Senator Rubio, for additional fundraising to increase campaign efforts....

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Obama's 2009 Stimulus package sets aside money to promote new mass transit infrastructure building, but no money is set aside for operating budgets of existing mass transit systems. With prices of diesel fuel doubling in 2008, and revenue from state property sales and fuel taxes down from the economic downturn- on which the mass transit depends for operating budgets- many systems are considering service cuts and fare boosts. Transit agencies are facing huge shortfalls in New York, Washington DC, San Francisco and Chicago. Th Metropolitan Transportation Authority which runs public transportation in New York city and greater New York has a shortfall of $1.2 billion in a $11 billion operating budget. It will be forced to cut fares by 23% and severely cut services, including some lines like the Z line and shorten hours, to meet budget. All this is happening as use of public transportation is surging, and is at the highest level in over 50 years. In 2008 Americans took 10.7 billion trips on the country's 6,500 public transportation systems, according to the American Public Transportation Association's recent report. Some of the systems are old and need renovation. New York's operates 24 hours aday and handles millions of riders. Repairs are needed on its 90 year old signalling mechanisms. The MTA has maxed out the money it can borrowfor repairs, and debt service costs on its loans will reach $2 billion a year. Additional Stimulus needs to set aside money for the modernization of existing mass tranist systems, which would deliver value just as significant as the new mass transit infrastructure building that is planned....

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It is shocking that San Francisco spends $700 million on homelessness with a lot of the money not getting people off the streets. There are large issues of how American society in 2024 had neglected the needs of large sections of the population, and not made investments in the right places, lost jobs from deindustrialization. San Francisco's new Mayor is Daniel Lurie of the Haas Levi Strauss jeans business family. His mother Miriam Haas is the billionaire widow of Peter Haas, descendent of Levi Strauss, who was president of the company. Daniel Lurie is taking a $1 salary, and his motivation for this job is to get San Francisco hit by high homelessness and crime, drug use, and office vacancy, back on its feet again. Levis Strauss was founded like Bank of America in this city on the west coast. Lurie found it hard to explain to his two children the homelessness and the dismal condition of parts of the city. He is helping hotel workers get a decent wage in a society that has created a huge gulf between the low paid with less and less access to things essential for a healthy life and people in Tech work who have vast surplus income for such access. It also means getting the police force down to 600 back up to 2000 and with good morale and public support to clean up the city. ...

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Plastic water bottle use surged with a shift to single bottle use of bottled water as a preferred option to using sugar drinks and sodas. In the U.S. this use has surged 284% since 1994, with 67% of the bottled water sold not in jugs but in single use convenience type plastic water bottles.  Manufacturers of plastic water bottles have failed to come up with a technology that makes the kind of plastic that can be easily recycled. Danone's bottled water company Evian brand makes about 30% of its plastic water bottles from recycled plastic and no aims at shifting entirely to recycled plastic by 2025.  Images of bottles filling landfills and hurting sealife have led to consumer opposition to their prolific use. Ocean Conservancy says plastic water bottles are behind cigarette butts and food wrappers the thrid most item washing up on shorelines.  Curbs- Cities in Massachusetts along the coastline are banning their use. New York City is banning the sale in parks, beaches, of these bottles. And the European parliament  is backing laws for member states to collect 90% of these bottles for recycling by 2025. Mumbai has banned this year eater being sold in small bottles. The importance of this is now sinking in. ...

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Which dilapidated or broken road and bridge infrastructure will be rebuilt first under president Biden's plan? The WSJ looks at the $110 billion in new funding over 5 years to do this. In addition $66 billion for rail, and $39 billion for public transit. So much needs to be done. The list goes on and on. The head of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation, Mr. Tymon, says projects that were not going to get done in 6 years will now get done in 2 years. This is the big difference today, compared to the period under president Obama when little got done. After president Trump put a big spotlight on broken American infrastructure enough of a consensus exists to get on with the work in a big way. Normally the federal government provides about 50% of the funding for state highway and bridge projects. Take Rhode Island, Biden's bill would provide $300 million a year over 5 years, over $60 million over previous yearly levels. Of Rhode Island's 777 bridges 19% are deficient or dilapidated. The longer the bridge is deficient the costlier it becomes to fix. Bad infrastructure affects industry in multiple ways, a problem ignored for too long. Some of them date back to 1903, some to 1958.  In Woonsocket Rhode Island, 5 older bridges are deficient that are vital for local companies, including textile mill, and plastics manufacturer.  One deficient bridge at Naval Station, Newport, to Quonset Business Park with 200 companies is handling steady truck traffic. These are critical bridges for manufacturing says the city's Mayor.  Another state Missouri shows how the Biden investment will change infrastructure in the states. Annual capital funding of $1 billion will go to $1.5 billion over 5 years, says the Director of Missouri's Department of Transportation. That puts within reach all $3 billion of wish list projects that were considered high priorities. ...

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The Economist magazine describes Trump's business assets based on a few buildings in Manhattan, including one on Fifth Avenue. Compared to other real estate firms Trump's assets are small and lack the organization and structure typical of real estate firms. Asset values estimates also have a large range, as it lacks transparency. Not much can be concluded about his business skills says the Economist, other than that his company is not exceptional, has not raised permanent captal in capital markets, or developed a truly global business. Much of the business now relies on licensing the Trump name to properties, especially golf courses, following Trump's success with a television show "The Apprentice." In terms of cash flow the television show may have produced much of Trump's income in the last decade. The Economist says Trump's performance in the real estate business is mediocre when compared to his peers.

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Zillow's acquisition of Trulia is supported by the need to reduce costs and spending on marketing. The combined firms will spend $100 million on marketing in 2014, according to CFO Aggarwal. Aggarwal says antitrust issues are not a concern as Zillow and Trulia only get about 4-5% of the $12 billion real estate agents spend on advertising each year. As the deal wil close by 2015 this gives the two firms time to absorb recent acquisitions by Trulia of Market Leader and Zillow's acquisition of New York city centred StreetEasy and apartment HotPads. Both sites will continue as different brands servicing different parts of the market and reducing spending on technology and marketing.

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How to do the disposal of 99.1 million old television sets, that the EPA says sit in closets unused throughout the USA, in an ecologically friendly way is a challenge. State laws in 18 states and in New York CIty make manufacturers responsible for recycling electronics. Similiar stautes were introduced in 13 other states in 2009. When states like Maine and Washington have made it easy for people to take their old electronics PC or television sets to dropoff points the response has been very good. In Washington the drop off is free of charge, and there are 200 collection points in the state, with 15 million pounds of electronic waste collected since January.

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Carolyn Chen, a professor at Northwestern University, who heads the Asian-American Studies program, says efforts to cap enrollment at Ivy League schools such as Harvard and Yale are similiar to efforts to cap Jewish enrollment in an earlier period. Asian Americans make up 5.6% of the population in the U.S. but are now 12-18% of the students at Ivy League schools. Asian-Americans make up 40-70% of students at top public high schools such as Stuyvesant and Bronx Science in New York City, Lowell in San Francisco and Thomas Jefferson in Alexandria, Va. which are merit focussed. These Asian students try to get into Ivy League schools. Yale has a student population that is 58% white and 18% Asian American. The question she poses is whether white and Asian American applications should be viewed through lens such as "individuality," and "uniqueness," on grounds that a wide range of talents should be encouraged, and if this puts Asian Americans at a disadvantage with white applicants.

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Unemployment has fallen more heavily on blacks in New York City, with 80,000 more unemployed blacks than whites, even though there are about 1.5 million more whites than blacks in New York City. This is from areport by the City Comptroller's office, and is as of the end of March. THe gap between black and white unemployment has widened substantially in the past few months and this may be because of the large numbers of black people in retailing and other hard hit service industries.

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By the time NYSE began the switch to becoming a technology company it was too late, says one expert. Other stock exchanges such as the Frankfurt Stock Exchange switched entirely to electronic trading even as the NYSE clung to old ways. All the time the trading floor of the NYSE was losing trading volume, handling only 20% of all trading volume in NYSE-listed stocks in 2012, down more than 40% from 2007, according to analysts. NYSE's Liffe, European derivatives business that came from the merger with Euronext in 2007 alone could be worth about $6 billion, close to the market capitalization of NYSE Euronext. Liffe was one of the main reasons NYSE was attractive to ICE. NYSE CEO Niederauer and the Board sensed the danger if NYSE remained by itself, according to people informed about discussions. The feeling was NYSE would fall further behind in a few years and lose control over its future. This created a new urgency to the talks with ICE, a doable merger from a regulatory perspective because there was not much overlap in the businesses. Niederauer's personal relationship with Sprecher of ICE provided the catalyst to move ahead and work out details such as headquarters locations in Atlanta and New York City, and sharing of management roles with Niederauer reporting to Sprecher. In his letter to employees Niederauer made it clear that ICE was acquiring NYSE. ICE started with electricity trading in Atlanta, embraced technology and electronic trading as its foundation, and took advantage of the opportunities in using technology to meet the requirements set by the Dodd Frank legislation for derivatives and futures trading....

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Leonhardt points out in the NYT that Hillary Clinton actually won in the popular vote by a substantial margin, by more than 2 million votes and more than 1.5 percentage points. He says that Democrats need to pay more attention to the working class in midwestern states- the job losses, crumbling infrastructure, and the plight of communities such as Detroit, Michigan which suffered through the bankruptcies of Chrysler and GM, and again with the foreclosure crisis, the financial crisis of the City of Detroit. With a similar situation in the neighboring states of Wisconsin and Ohio, in places like Toledo and other parts of communities facing industrial decline. While the Silicon Valley centred region powered the economy in California, and the financial industry and real estate powered New York, older midwestern communities never really recovered from a long decline stretching over 2 decades. The result was the loss of faith in Democrats among union workers and young people, leading to the loss of Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan. For most of its history the Democratic Party was based on its union and working class base including a large number of white voters. Only under Obama because of his unique candidacy was the coalition so dependent on the minorities vote. Before minorities were part of the Democratic coalition, but not in the way under the Obama candidacy. A return to its historic and normal base among whites in unions and working class communities, liberals, minorities, is a way to go back to the historic and natural base of Democratic support. In a sense dependence on tech communities for election funding and the tech booms, globalization, may have distorted Democrats sense of their historic role as champions of the working class and middle class communities throughout the country. There is now an opportunity to restore this lost mission of protecting the interests of the middle and working class who have seen huge drop in net worth as reported by Janet Yellen of the Federal Reserve at the Inequality Conference on October 17, 2014-"62 million households with a net worth of $11,000 for the year 2013." Poorly covered in the media and not made the utmost priority by Democrats (or Republicans). In the words of Janet Yellen, this was in the past several decades "the most sustained rise in inequality since the 19th century after more than 40 years of narrowing inequality since the Great Depression." She added the shocking words "by some estimates, income and wealth inequality near their highest levels in the past hundred years, and probably much higher than much of American history before then." Even discussion in the media goes back to the Obama coalition and treats it as a way forward for Democrats, when history shows it was different and the situation described by Yellen calls for a serious response. ...