LyrArc Article Gist
GM plans to bring the Chevy Volt, a plug in type of car that will run more on the battery than the Toyota Prius- which uses gasoline support as soon as it picks up speed- to market in 3 years. But it doesn't yet know how it will do it. What created the opportunity is that Toyota is having a hard time of its own trying to figure out a battery that can provide more electric power, more punch, that would raise the Prius mpg from 46 to about 80 mpg. Its lithium ion technology batteries to achieve this haven't passed the safety tests so Toyota is pushing this back to 2011. This created a opportunity for GM to come up with its own for a plug in Chevy Volt. Its looking a small companies in the US that might supply these batteries. GM has come up with 2 consortiums of suppliers, one from MIT called A123 that is based on the work of MIT Prof.Yet-Ming Chinag who works with iron phosphate technology that is less prone to fires and safety issues. The other is led by S. Korean chemical maker LG Chem. Toshiba is working on research for a lithium ion battery for cars that will be safe on the Japanese side. It is not clear how this will turn out because batteries for laptops have had fires and safety issues, but the R&D is on in earnest for a new safe electric battery for cars. And automakers know its not just about an electric car. On it rests the image and innovation leader perception that is so important in marketing that no amount of advertising can fix, as the US automakers have learned to their extreme grief. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Ivan Rogers, UK ambassador to the European Union for three years till 2017 was sharply critical of the British government and forecast some of the Brexit problems. He has a book "9 Lessons in Brexit," which appeared in Feb. 2019. Here he is interviewed by Der Spiegel. He says he expected some of the problems but is still surprised that 4 weeks before the deadline the political class in Britain has not yet figured out what kind of Brexit they want. Here he points out that Cameron and Blair represented the centre in British politics. But that centre has now collapsed after the financial crisis and the period of austerity led to widening gaps between the different parts of British society. The public is now deeply alienated from both major parties. In both parties the populists on the left and the right have gained a bigger influence, as a result there are no centre right or centre left figures who command public influence. Rogers is a civil servant of high rank who has worked with several prime ministers including Blair and Cameron. His comments are worth listening to.  Was Theresa May the right person to tackle Brexit? Her problem says ROgers is that she started with a hardline position of reducing the number of people entering the UK from inside or outside the EU. Once you do this you cannot have free movement of goods, services and capital, so you have to leave the single market. And if Britain wanted a fully autonomous trade policy then it cannot stay in the customs union. Rogers thinks Theresa May never really understood what this meant- that it was going much further out of the European Union than Norway or Switzerland, or even Turkey. Now as she is trying to go back her right wing cries betrayal. Do British prime ministers understand the single market, the customs union, or how the EU really works? Rogers worked on European issues for a long time and he says after working very closely with British prime ministers that none of them had a deep understanding of how the European Union works. Plus they lack any emotional attachment to the EU, because of the mercantile relationship Britain has had with its neighbors. About the relationships in Europe between the Germans, the French, the British, what is it and what will it be like? Rogers says he has not seen a thinner relationship in his lifetime. He thinks the European political elites are not talking to each other anything like what was done 20 or 30 years ago. He says the Brits have to take a lot of the responsibility because the British political class lost interest in Europe. What could the Europeans have done? Rogers says the chaos continues because the British don't really know where they want to go. It opaque about the relationship on purpose. Have the Europeans thought about what kind of a continent they want to see after all this is over? This interview tells you more about the Brexit problem that many reports and opinions, bringing a thoughtful way of looking at the problem. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Mitch Daniels, former 2 term governor of Indiana, and president of Purdue University, describes the damage done to hope for the future by putting so many people in so much debt- with estimates by WSJ-Experian showing 70% of recent graduates as borrowers and the average borrower graduating with $33,000 in debt. 40 million young people are affected, as they postpone marraige, postpone childbearing, postpone buying a new home, stay away from starting a new business. Daniels put his own social and moral obligation to the test as he brought the cost of an education at Purdue for 2 successive years- with a 3 year freeze on tution and cuts in room and board, textbook costs. Purdue student borrowings have dropped by 18% since 2012, adding a new metric in evaluating the delivery of quality education for the country, and a moral and social obligation for all the leaders in our society.

LyrArc Article Gist
Paul Ryan asks President Obama to put forward his plan for deficit reduction the day after the passage of the August 2, 2011 Debt Ceiling and Deficit Reduction bill in Congress. Ryan points out that health care cost increases are on an unsustainable path with costs going up by 8% in 2011 and projected to go up by 8.5% in 2012. The Obama Health Care legislation tries in Ryan's view the same failed bureaucratic efforts of the past to cut health care costs. Without a genuine and sure plan to cut costs the only way to pay for Medicare with new mandates is to increase taxes again and again. He cites the CBO's Long Term Outlook in June that total tax revenues would have to double by 2050 to finance the current rate of spending on Medicare and other programs. For Ryan the failure of the Obama administration to come up with its own plan for deficit reduction after passing the Health Care legislation- with expanded mandates and no certain cost control in the reform - is the most difficult to swallow. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Krugman points out that the prevailing bias in the US distorts the facts about Europe's performance. Frankfurt, London and Paris he says are just as lively and modern as New York and Chicago. They are not poor and backward. When you factor out population growth in the USA, since 1980 per capita real GDP which is what affects living standards has grown in America at about the same rate as the 15 European Union countries: 1.95 percent in the USA vs. 1.83 percent for the EU. And for the 25-54 years working age group unemployment in the EU 15 countries in 2008 was 80% of adults (83% in France), which is about the same as in the USA. The French and Germans work fewer hours but output per hour is close to American levels.

LyrArc Article Gist
Whirlpool shifts 80-100 jobs from its Monterrey plant to an Ohio factory producing machines for laundromats. The Monterrey plant will not lose jobs because it is making more washing machines for the expanding Mexican market. Electricity is cheaper in the U.S. than in Mexico which provides some of the savings. Transportation from Mexico also offsets the higher wage costs in the U.S. of $18-19 at Whirlpool plants. According to Reshoring Initiative- which supports shift back of offshored jobs, the loss of jobs to offshore locations continues but is now being offset by job inflows to the U.S. Some of these inflows that receive less attention are manufacuring facilities being setup by foreign corporations in the U.S. as costs of energy decline and labor become more competitive.

LyrArc Article Gist
How Darren Walker and other heads of foundations saved Detroit in 2014.

LyrArc Article Gist
A final settlement approved by Judge Rhodes for Detroit to pay banks $85 million to terminate contracts called interest-rate swaps.

LyrArc Article Gist
A shift to a limited agenda based on increasing the minimum wage, immigration reform and use of executive orders to get things done.

LyrArc Article Gist
Pete Domenici of the Domenici-Rivlin deficit reduction commission and Sam Nunn are part of the initiative- Strengthening America- Our Children's Future. Other members of this initiative are Warren Rudman and Evan Bayh. Here they provide ideas on how to address the fiscal cliff of automatic cuts in spending that are approaching at year end under an agreement between Republicans and Democrats in Congress. The agreement was designed to offer the worst outcome for Republicans (huge cuts in defense spending) and worst outcome for Democrats (cuts in entitlemnt spending) as a last ditch effort to force the two parties to come to an agreement on deficit reduction. It comes after president Obama failed to accept the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction commission proposals as a basis for working out a plan and as Republicans in Congress were dead set on avoiding any tax increases. In a recent WSJ editorial praising the CEO statement of 80 U.S. CEO's- organized by the Fix the Debt initiative inspired by Simpson and Bowles- the Journal called the CEO's support for tax increases encouraging and was critical of Republican "deadenders" who flatly opposed any tax increases. Domenici and Rivlin say kicking the can down the road again as Congress has a tendency to do is not the answer and a vigorous effort by responsible members of Congress is needed to come up with deficit reduction using the proposals of Simpson-Bowles commission and Domenici-Rivlin commission. This will end the uncertainty plaguing business confidence that is leading to decline in business investment- decline of 1.3% in the 3rd quarter of 2012- and a weakening of economic recovery. To this end Domenici and Nunn have brought together 35 members of Congress to push forward and held four public forums with experts including hearing from John Taylor, Martin Feldstein and Larry Summers....

LyrArc Article Gist
A major shift in public opinion happened between 1990 in the public's perception and tolerance of gay people and gay marraige. Support for gay marraige in Journal/NBC News polling shows young people, especially people 18-34 year old, were leading the way. In this group support for gay marraigne increased from 47% in 2009 to 57% in 2012, going up to 74% in March 2015. The increase is also shown in suburban residents, political independents, Midwesterners and Hispanics. A key factor in the change is that many people now know of one person in their work or personal lives who is gay. Technology, television and internet media also helped changed attitudes. In 1990 7 of 8 Americans said sexual relations between the same sex were wrong. In 2004 only 3 of ten Americans supported same sex marraige. A vote in Maine shows the dramatic shift- in 2009 same sex marraige was rejected by 53%, in 2012 53% approved it. The change in attitudes is faster than happened for miscegenation, which took 30 years after the Supreme Court ruled against anti-miscegenation laws to reach a point where a majority of Americans approved marraiges between black and white people. The Supreme Court's 5-4 decision on June 25, 2015, now makes gay marraige legal in all 50 states, and strikes down bans in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Yet there are a significant number of Americans who do not favor same sex marraige especially in southern states such as Texas, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama. A Pew Research Center poll shows 73% of white evangelical Protestants do not approve of same sex marraige. Other groups who do not favor same sex marraige in the Pew polling are conservatives and persons born before the post World War baby boom. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Sheila Barr is brining her innovative ideas to help homeowners at IndyMac Bank which is being run by the FDIC. It could be a blueprint for the entire industry and is formulated upon a simple idea that a homeowners mortgage payment should not exceed 38% of his or her income. FDIC says those taking part in the fastrack loan modification have seen their monthly loan payments lowered by $430 on average. It is a blueprint for solving the mortgage foreclosure crisis that economists from Martin Feldstein to Hubbard and Alan Blinder think is at the root of the problem in the worldwide financial crisis. Bovenzi, the senior FDIC executive who is serving as CEO of IndyMac is overseeing the effort. He is an FDIC veteran who worked at the agency durng the savings and loan crisis of the early 1980's and 1990's. And one the key lessons from that period Bovenzi and Sheila Barr believe is that debt workouts help lenders and borrowers. A key statistic Bair pointed out in a Sept 17 speech to Congress is that the FDIC's recovery rate on nonperforming loans or loans in foreclosure averages just 32% of a loan's value. If the loan is kept current by making payments affordable and preventing foreclosure the agency has recovered 87%. And Sheila Barr's efforts are the one or two bright spots in an otherwise bleak picture for troubled homeowners, in which the Republicans have ignored two of their last 3 Presidents' key economic advisers, head of the Council of Economic Advisers under Presidents Reagan and Bush senior, Marty Feldstein and Hubbard, and not supported efforts for loan modification to help homeowners avoid foreclosure. Shortsightedness, lack of foresight, or simply not able to grasp the true nature of the crisis....

LyrArc Article Gist
A cross-referencing initiative by the new government of Mario Monti in Italy called the "income-o-meter," will be setup in the next few months. Under this initiative the government will cross reference different transactions and compare bank accounts with declared income to take action against tax evasion. Tax evasion is so widespread in Italy that an estimated $150 billion is lost in uncollected taxes. This would help Italy bring down its defict and reduce the debt burden in the current crisis. Attilio Befera, director of Agenzia delle Entrate, Italy's internal revenue service, says that the new cross-referencing initiative will prevent someone from declaring income of $26,000 and buying real estate worth $1.3 million. Tax officials say that in a country with 2.5 million luxury cars, only 2% of 41 million taxpayers showed an annual income of more than $260,000.

LyrArc Article Gist
Coronavirus cases on a daily basis exceed 70,000 in one day in Brazil with 26,000 in Sao Paulo alone. Brazil's cases now exceed 2.5 million, the worst hit after the U.S. followed by India. President Bolsonaro has failed to provide leadership in the pandemic, himself contracting the virus and not following social distancing, mask covering till recently.

President Macron of France gains in popularity with over 50% satisfied with his performance after his hard fought gains in getting the 390 billion euros nonrepayable common debt funds for the European Recovery Fund for hard hit pandemic countries. Macron was able to get the full support of Merkel of Germany to get this approved after Dutch premier Rutte's effort to stall the aid effort in weeks of long negotiations. It is a show of European solidarity and brings Europe together, giving much needed aid to Spain and Italy.