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German chancellor Scholz is making a 2 day trip to the US to meet president Biden. There is a surge in discussion on looking for a way out of the Ukraine war after meeting between US's Blinken and Russia's Lavrov at the G20 meeting in India. India is pushing for both sides to engage in talks to end the war. Brazil has also offered to mediate to bring an end to the conflict. 

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The head of the European Union, Ursula von der Leyen, says Russia is trying to provoke a world food crisis by attacks on Ukraine ports and infrastructure, and preventing the export of 20 million tons of foodgrains. She said the EU was working to get these foodgrains out of the country. Mr. Scholz, the German chancellor on a visit to Africa, also pointed out that the Russian attacks were having serious effects with food shortages in many African countries.

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Paul Krugman says the movie Oppenheimer reminds him of the role played by immigrants and intellectuals in the scientific part of the war effort, in radar and atomic research. He describes the role of Isaac Rabi in the cutting edge research at MIT's Radiation Laboratory that gave the US a radar system the German submarines could not detect, leading to protection of the sea lanes and winning the Battle of the Atlantic in 1943. 

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The Guardian looks at work culture in Sweden, with 15 minute coffee or fika breaks, zero overtime, the German practice of feierabend of cutting off from work at 5 pm, holiday allowance for taking holidays. Employees can control their own hours in a flexible way, working longer some days and shorter other days. This kind of healthy work culture actually increases productivity of employees. Better the health of employees, better is the output of work they can perform.

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As it makes gains in the Kursk region Russia appears hesitant at this moment to sign on to the ceasefire deal the US and Ukraine agreed to this week. Kursk was part of Russia before the current war. It was also here that the Germans were defeated in 1943 after the Battle of Stalingrad (now called Volgograd). The war now has nationalist overtones for Russia making it more complicated than the earlier invasion of Ukraine, and requiring both patience and persistence to reach a lasting settlement for all sides.

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Left party Syriza did better than the government parties in the EU elections. A new parliamentary election would have to be called if prime minister Samaras cannot find the 180 votes needed to elect a new president in Feb. 2014. Syriza is calling for writeoff of some of the massive 318.6 billion euros of debt owed, 85% of it to France, Germany and other foreign governments and IMF. To offset Syriza's popularity Samaras is likely to use the improved confidence of investors in Greece to raise funds on capital markets, and access funds from a Stability Fund. By exiting the IMF program early and not taking 12 billion euros of IMF funds due for 2015-2016, Samaras can take independent steps to revive the Greek economy and reduce the burden of cuts. Greece will run a primary budget surplus before interest payments in 2014, as it did in 2013. GDP is down about 25% and unemployment is at 26%. Anger in the early years reflected in Athens riots, is now replaced with anguish and despair among ordinary Greeks and some public suicides. The current debt repayments is for debt to be repaid to IMF in 10 years and the EU loans in 32 years, with 10 years of interest payments at 1.5%. Even then the debt is already at 178% of GDP, way above the initial target of 124% of GDP set by IMF-EU for 2020. As a backup strategy German officials including Asmussen and Schauble, and ECB's Draghi are meeting with Mr. Tsipras of Syriza to ensure a smooth transition if this becomes necessary, without the uncertainty in financial markets created by earlier Greece elections....

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Scholz of Germany and Xi of China meet for private talks at the G-20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2024. Efforts are made to avoid tit for tat tariffs on EV's and settle Ukraine war.

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Aldi plans to open 200 stores in the US in 2025- it's low cost model is working as Americans change their buying habits to get the best value from grocery stores. The German discount grocery store chain carries low cost produce and other items straight from the truck to the shelves for super discounted prices without the individual shelf byshelf stocking of larger grocery chains such as Kroger's. Aldi's like the Trader Joe chain stores are smaller and customers say it is hard to build up a large grocery bill when one reaches the cashier counter.

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The European Union is drafting a ban on oil imports from Russia, says this report in the NYT. The European Union now pays Russia about $1 billion every day for oil imports from Russia. Under chancellor Merkel Germany actually increased its dependence on Russian natural gas from 36% during Russian annexation of the Crimea to 55% today. In this way creating some of the conditions that emboldened Russia into its invasion of Ukraine, creating over 4 million refugees and immense destruction. Oil revenues of this magnitude of about $1 billion a day from the European Union help finance and prolong the invasion with enormous cost of human life. The longer the war lasts it affects a grain producing region in Ukraine that would lead to world food scarcity and famine.

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 The average work has declined in Europe, and increased slightly in America. It is about one day a week less in Europe for the 5 largest European economies, according to the OECD. Shorter work hours set by employers and furloughs are affecting workers in Europe. This is because many European businesses used shorter working hours to avoid layoffs during the pandemic. 

Nearly 2 million Europeans are in furlough programs with governments making up the lost pay.

Working hours are less in Southern Europe because of a lack of full time work. About one third of workers in France and half in Spain and Italy would like to work more hours but cannnot find the extra hours. In Germany one fourth of workers choose to work less than 30 hours a week by choice.

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The Guardian looks at food poverty in the UK in 2022. About 800,000 children living in poverty in the UK do not qualify for free school meals. The rise in the price cap for electricity and gas this winter to 3549 pounds for the year from October means many homes will have to choose between heating and food. Energy price regulator Ofgem has allowed a 80% rise in the UK energy price cap. In Britain only children whose parents earn less than 7400 pounds are eligible after year 2 of school.

The energy price jump in UK of this type is unusual for the major countries of Europe. In France the price of energy is capped and Germany offers  financial support for energy bills for low income people. 

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The need to rest recharge after long days, weeks and months at work, is now being recognized as a necessity if knowledge workers are going to contribute to companies. At the other end is burnout that hurts both workers and companies. This report in NYT shows how company managers and heads of companies are pushing workers to take time off, go on vacation on a mandatory basis. A big part of the problem in the pandemic is that the work is out of the office and the lines of work and office are blurred. Disconnecting the way it should be done is not managed well these days, there is need for what in Germany is called "feierabend," disconnecting as a ritual to be followed at all times while working from home or office.

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Vance calls for hearing different voices in Europe to be heard. The anti-migration parties and voices were excluded by the conference chair Christoph Heusgen, who advised Merkel on foreign policy, and did little to prevent the mass migration into Germany and other countries. Vance called for the all voices to be heard even those which one disagreed. He said European countries are not as brittle as they think they are that all voices could not be heard and all views debated. Vance expressed his own view that people in Europe and the US were feeling endangered  after a decade of mass migration supported by politicians and parties in Europe. These politicians had not received support for their action at the ballot box said Vance, including with Brexit and in US with the election of DJT.

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The low voter turnout helped protest parties such as the National Front in France and the Independence Party in Britain. The average across the EU was 43% turnout, with turnout in Britain at 36%, Slovakia 13%. Renzi in Italy led the Socialists there to 40% of the vote, and Merkel's CDU got 35% of the vote in Germany. The UMP came in second with 20% of the vote to Marie Le Pen's National Front's 25%, and Hollande's Socialists at 13% in France. In Britain the Independence Party won with Labor and Conservatives in second and third place. There are deep misgivings in Britain for Jean Claude Juncker who is the candidate for EU President from the centre-right European People's Party, which has 213 seats in the 743 seat parliament. Misgivings stem from whether Juncker can deliver on promises for a EU without much of the bureaucratic tendencies for Britain's 2017 referendum. The German SDP party's candidate is also contesting the election for EU president. Next come the centre-left parties of Socialists and Democrats with 190 seats. In the past EU president was chosen not by parliamentary election but by government leaders....

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Many Italian university graduates lack proficiency in foreign languages or computer skills. Lack of on adequate on the job training programs compounds the problems as graduates are not able to pick up the skills at work. This discourages hiring of new graduates, especially graduates outside of engineering and technical areas. Technical graduates face another problem- the slow level of technological improvement and application in Italian business relative to Germany or the UK. R&D spending in Italy is only 0.7% compared to 1.4% in France and 2% in Germany, according to the OECD. Only 41% of Italian university graduates work in specialized areas, 44% in Spain, compared to 60% in the UK and Germany. Being overqualified is common for young people, or lacking other business type skills with a overemphasis on the humanities.

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Short time work programs, paid leave, aid to small business for employee retention with the government paying a big percentage of wages, and unemployment benefits till companies rehire employees with government paying for this, are all different ways in which the U.S. and Europe are coping with the coronavirus crisis.  In the U.S. 22 million have applied for unemployment benefits with the U.S. government picking up a substantial part of the wages till companies rehire these employees. In the UK the government has launched a program that gives 2500 pounds or $3100 to each worker each month upto 80% of the worker's pay. The money is sent to businesses for retaining employees. This could cover estimated 8.3 million workers in the UK at a cost of $52 billion. The U.S. has a similar program with the first phase $377 billion already distributed to small businesses which requires retention of employees for government forgiveness of these loans. The basic idea is retain employees who could stay at home or be in short work programs or work from home. The French government is paying the wages of 9.6 million workers, almost half of workers in the private sector by sending the money to 785,000 small businesses. In Germany the Kurzarbeit program covers 725,000 companies which supports the wages of employees in a downturn and is financed from a special fund. The cost for Germany, France and Spain is about $147 billion or 135 billion euros for such programs. The European Union will step in with a 100 billion euros loan package. ...

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The Labour party's support for not withdrawing from the European Medicines Agency is the subject of an argument after Prime Minister's Questions in the British parliament. Labour leader Keir Starmer confronts prime minister Boris Johnson in parliament after Johnson reminds Labour that it had on repeated occasions called for the UK not to withdraw from the European Medicines Agency.  The UK vaccination drive is far ahead of the vaccination drive in European Union countries including France and Germany, because of British initiative in boldly betting money on vaccine supplies with pharmaceutical companies, and earlier approval by the UK health regulatory authority. Here is the comment in the House of Commons by Boris Johnson- "If we had listened to (Starmer), we would still be at the starting blocks because he wanted to stay in the European Medicines Agency and said so four times from that dispatch box." Starmer disputes the statement. The Times cites Hansard, the official record of the House of Commons. It records that Starmer questioned why Britain would want to withdraw from the Medicines Agency in Jan. 2017. In 2018 Labour party supported an Amendment to the Trade Bill that called for the UK to seek participation in the European Medicines Agency. Germany, Spain and France are hit hard by the second wave of the coronavirus and the lack of adequate vaccine supplies is causing grief in European Union. The EU president Von der Leyen, another European Union style bureaucrat, seen as having bungled the handling of vaccine supply. ...

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US naval blockade of Iran in Arabian Sea starts April 13 2026. US destroyed Iran's larger ships 158 of them, yet Iran also has a fleet of smaller attack boats which it plans to use in Hormuz. These are harder to detect and can be hidden in coves along the Iranian coast and used against ships. The US with its naval blockade is now prepared to do what it has done also in Venezuela, stop and interdict fast drug boats on the Venezuelan side in the Atlantic ocean. By blockading Venezuela in the ocean US is using its strengths, and stopping drug boats its ability to pinpoint traffic on the ocean. Similar capabilities are well suited to Arabian Sea and Red Sea on the open oceans and away from narrow Hormuz playing to US strengths and capabilities. Aircraft carriers and destroyers and the US Air Force is in a position to do what it does best control open seas like the British did in their heyday of the Royal Navy for most of 1750-1920. This avoids options of Hormuz itself with its narrow 15 mile gap of water between Oman and Iran too close to mountainous terrain on either side, and of the Kharg Island option which would require special forces to be backed up with more ground forces. This is the most viable option and the interlude of couple of weeks has given the president an opportunity to make a better choice for positioning the US forces where the US has its strongest points. What is lacking is the individual powers of Britain and France whose leaders Starmer and Macron have popularity below 20%. Yet the US is better off making good choices and not having these nations alongside. The posturing by European nations is limited to France and UK, as Germany and Italy are in sync with the US position. Much of the media operates as if the goal of preventing the spread of nuclear weapons to the Middle East is not important for long term peace for nations such as China and India with about 3 billion people and the billions of people of Asia, Latin America and Africa. For the first time in 400 years since 1600 as Asian civilizations began a long decline China and India have emerged in 2000-2030 into the kind of modern economies and societies that exist in Europe and the US. The last thing they need is the risk of destroying the Modern World with nuclear proliferation when it took centuries to get to the right opportunity after 1950 to modernize China and India. Xi's and Modi's generation are the first to experience modernization in Asia after Japan's experience. ...

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Jorg Asmussen, Germany's representative on the ECB'S Executive Board, will take the position of deputy secretary in the Labor Ministry in the new coalition government of Angela Merkel with the SDP. He moves to Berlin from Frankfurt to be close to his two small children and family, who continued to live in Berlin after Asmussen moved to Frankurt ECB headquarters. Germany is likely to nominate Sabine Lautenschlager, member of the executive board of the Bundesbank, to Asmussen's position on the executive board of the ECB. The ECB Governing Council, including the six member executive board and the heads of 17 central banks, will now have the first female member. Ms. Lautenschlager's expertise is in banking regulation, which is relevant today because of the ECB's new role as regulator of banks in the eurozone. Asmussen, who is from the SDP, assumes a position under Labor minister Andrea Nahles. He will be responsible for introduction of the national minimum wage, which was a key demand of the SDP for joining the coalition with Merkel....

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Is time slipping away for Russia to restore what it sees as its special relationship with Ukraine, as Ukraine finds its own identity through its language and independent Orthodox Christian Church since 2019. This WSJ podcast report is by James Marson who lived in Kiev from 2007 to 2012, and Ryan Knutson, with the Archbishop of St Michael's cathedral in Kiev, and the editor of Elle magazine edition in Ukraine joining in.  To understand Ukraine one has to know that Russian is the language of the cities, which means people in Kiev speak Russian. People in the countryside Ukrainian. This is very unusual for a nation and it shows the condition of the country for centuries where intellectuals in cities dominated cultural and political life distant from the people in the countryside. For centuries Ukraine was dominated alternately by either Poland and Lithuania or Russia other than a period of 200 years around 1250-1400 when the Mongols were dominant. The peasants and countryside suffered greatly as in India and other parts of central Europe in the long history till the modern period in 1900.  Russians see their origins in the Kyivan Rus, a state bringing together the different ethnicities Ukrainian and Russian in the period 1000-1240 under the Byzantine Church in Constantinople. Kyiv, the modern capital of Ukraine called Kiev today being the capital of this state. This is the cultural connection that president Putin and Russians see as one they do not want to see drift away. After the Russian state drove out the Mongols in 1240 the northern provinces and Kiev became part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the rest became part of a new Russian state. After 1650 Ukraine became part of the Russian Empire and by 1800 with the partition of Poland was fully made part of the Russian Empire. Russian is now after 1800 the language of the intellectual class in Kiev and the cities, and Ukrainian language persists in the countryside. In 1804 Ukrainian is banned as a language and subject of instruction in schools. The end of the Russian Empire under the Tsars in 1917 ended the ban on the Ukrainian language and a period of respect of the cultures of the different soviet republics including Ukraine ensued. Putin has strong feelings on Kyiv, or modern Kiev, as the place where Russia as a country began. He wrote a 7000 word essay says this report in WSJ in 2010 on this relationship as he sees it.  Yet the period of protests in Kiev since 2010 has resulted in Ukraine building  its own identity as a nation. Magazines in the country are required to use Ukrainian for 50% of their circulation. People in Kiev now use Ukrainian instead of Russian as the sense of national identity is being revived. During 1917-1921 Ukraine fought a war with the Bolsheviks after the Russian Empire collapsed. This history is why Russia is acting now to push for Ukraine not drift completely away. It is also what makes Ukraine different from Poland which has cultural ties to Western Europe. It is why the US or Germany is not willing to go to war with Russia over Ukraine, as it would over Poland. It is also why Russia may not see war as the best option as about one third of Ukrainians say they will fight to defend their country, according to this report. The situation is complex and this is why both sides want to negotiate some way out in which Russia wants the US and NATO respecting its sense of connection with Ukraine in its history with Kyiv as the place Russian state started, and Russia not going further. Russia's tangible proposal is for no to Ukraine joining NATO or the European Union. The US and Germany want something else- the right of Eastern European nations that suffered from Tsarist or Soviet domination or German Hapsburg domination to finally be able to assert their own right of self-determination as democratic countries. This would include Finland. And also Sweden. Ukraine is not another small Eastern European country. Population is 44 million and it is the second largest by area in Europe after Russia.  Russia may also see the move to bring this up at this time as a way to unify the country against what it sees as threat from NATO. As Brendan Simms of Cambridge notes in his recent book -Europe, France went through a period after 1600 when it needed external danger as a way to unify the country, as much as unity of the country to fight external danger. The economic costs after building Nordstream II pipeline are to0 great for both Russia and Germany, and for the US and Russia during the pandemic, which means there is a real need to find a way out for all sides.     ...

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After struggles at home in France Macron finds a new role as a leader of Europe working with Kier Starmer of the UK, when Germany is still forming a new government following last week's 2025  federal elections.

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A nostalgia exists in Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, for the old Yugoslavia and Josip Broz Tito who led Yugoslavia after World War II. This DW.com report looks back at what happened and how Yugoslavia crumbled under ethnic divisions. After all Germans, French, Italians live together in Switzerland. Why was it hard to keep a state with Serbs, Croats and Bosnians, Slovenians together?

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Geert Wilders says he he is withdrawing support of his party PPV which won 23% of the vote in the last election from the Dutch coalition government because his 10 point plan for immigration was not being implemented. It calls for border closures for asylum seekers, deporting dual nationals who have committed a crime, and the military controlling Dutch borders. Wilders says "no more asylum centers. Close them." Germany is putting through strict immigration laws under the CDU leadership of chancellor Merz including control of borders, border checks, deporting dual nationals who have committed a crime.  This policy is being followed by the DJT administration in the US. There is little public patience with migrants after the experience in the US and Europe. What has changed is that centrist parties, Catholic/Protestant centrist parties such as CDU/CSU in Germany or business centrist parties such as Republicans are partnering with socialist parties such as Social Democrats in Germany, and many Democrats in the US with the clear goal of controlling borders. In the UK and in Denmark socialist parties such as Starmer's Labor in UK and Mette Frederiksen's Social Democrats in Denmark have clear goals to strictly close borders and send back migrants to home countries. ...

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The Iran nuclear deal of 2015 begins to unravel as the European Union takes the first step towards the reimposing of sanctions. Britain, France and Germany triggered a dispute settlement mehanism in the agreement which can result in the United Nations reimposing international sanction on Iran's economy, banks, and top officials within 2 months. This follows Iran's resumption of nuclear activities banned under the agreement. Earlier the U.S. withdrew from the agreement and the European Union tried to save the agreement. Recent tensions and the U.S. insistence on the renegotiating for a new agreement have led to this collapse of the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran.