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The choice of new Federal Trade commission chairperson shows that president Biden is making a complete break from the Obama era White House and the favor Tech in Silicon Valley had under Obama, says this report in the WSJ. Antitrust probes by Justice Department and FTC are expected to limit power of tech companies. Ms. Lina Khan is new head of the FTC. Biden says "its just wrong" that Amazon pays little in federal taxes. This report says Mr. Obama feted Silicon Valley at a White House festival called "South by South Lawn."  And that 80% of the 334 people registered to lobby for Apple, Amazon, Google last year previously worked on Capitol Hill or the White House. 

Mr. Biden's Families plan and Jill Biden's commitment to education are more in line with the heritage of FDR and Harry Truman, even Eisenhower, presidents who fought on behalf of the working men and women of America.

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Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama campaign together in swing states such as North Carolina. Hillary Clinton capitalizes on the surging popularity of Michelle Obama, who has a 64%  approval rating, according to Gallup, 10 points more than president Obama, and above Hillary's 43 percent. Both women show a mutual admiration and sisterhood as they campaign together with rising crowd enthusiasm. For Michelle her unprecedented effort as First Lady is a result of the dirty campaign fought by Donald Trump to turn off voters to the political process, and her effort is meant to counter this. She says about this demeaning of women, "Enough is enough." Both women are drawn together with a campaign for a woman as president. And the slogan coined by Michelle has taken off  "When they go low, we go high." It has energized the very African American and millenial voters that have played an effective role in previous Democratic campaigns.

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About a third of French children are obese. DW.  France 24 looks at this problem related to eating habits and exercize. These figures are up by 75% showing that current lifestyles with overuse of mobile phones and lack of exercize, poor nutrition, play a role.

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Republican Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell has differences with Mr. Trump. He made this clear in recent years on many issues and has remained silent on the Trump indictment. He is the senior senator from Kentucky.

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Is Norway endorsing the position of a former president of the US to "Drill, Baby Drill.?" It would cost upwards of 1 trillion dollars to fix US inaction on climate change to 2028. Norway is drilling like crazy to help Germany tackle the cutoff from Russian oil and gas supplies. It is also pursuing climate change action and green energy. The result is some confusion about where it is heading. The Guardian comments on this position taken by Norway. It can only be seen as oil and gas meeting a transition period's needs, yet with the severity of cliamte change events in the form of fires and floods in the world in 2024, is this a tenable position? Norwegians will say their cleaner fossil fuel production takes the place of dirty coal plants in Europe. How could Germany manage without Russian oil and gas without Norwegian supplies they ask. Others say Norway gets a quarter of its GDP from oil and gas. It is at the same time the country that is way ahead in renewables, most of its grid runs on renewables. And yet it has cut greenhouse gas emissions only by 11% since 1990 4 times less than Germany. Norway will come up for more criticism considering that its push on fossil fuels in 2023-24 is reducing investment for shift to a fossil free world. It is not an issue that can be talked away or not confronted head on as it is the harbringer of something worse- doing nothing for 4 years to 2028 that is proposed on the back of stuff that is being done by Norway- a US presidential candidate promising to relegate climate change action to zero by denying it exists and by saying "Drill, Baby Drill," at the RNC Convention in Milwaukee. ...

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Southwest pioneered lower cost domestic travel under founder CEO Kelleher. It did not charge fees for checking in bags and seats were not assigned. This model is now being questioned as baggage fees are generating $1.3 billion at American, $1.2 billion at United and $1 billion at Delta Airlines. Even a smaller airline like Spirit generates $1 billion from baggage fees. Additional sources of income are passengers charged for seat selection. Southwest generates about $70 million from baggage fees and does not charge for seat selection. Southwest sees not charging for baggage as part of its culture and current management is not changing the status quo.

Other problems are that Boeing can deliver only a fourth of the plane Southwest ordered. As a result the airline is facing a crisis and Eliott Investment Management now owning 11% of the company is pushing for change including ouster of the CEO and the Board.

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Surges in capital value can be wildly misleading. Nvidia a rapid computing company propelled in stock value. From the growth of crypto currency that led to losses and was perceived as a danger to the financial system by central banks and governments. This is happening when capital investment is a dire need in education and schools, good teachers and good classrooms, when only a third of American students pass NAEP tests on reading comprehension. Today's capital allocation system was never designed to accomplish this even as it sends hundreds of billions of dollars in one single day to a single company. Nvidia is now seeing a surge from chatbots computing coming out of ChatGPT,  leading to $184 billion change in its market value on May 25, 2023.  Nvidia was mostly a graphics processing company setup to make graphics on PC's look better. In 2006 Jensen Huang made the decision to open it up to developers to tinker with it and develop more computing capabilities. This has led to Nvidia designing much more powerful computing chips that perform thousands of calculations at the same time.   Nvidia designs the chips and sends production out to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. Suddenly Nvidia sees its share price surge and it joins companies such as Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Tesla that have seen one day surge in the value of the companies by over $100 billion shown in this WSJ graph by date. Huang says he thinks that this is the beginning of a ten year period in which companies will redo their data centers to build them up with AI computing capabilities. WSJ also says China's top nuclear weapons research institute has bought these advanced chips even though it is on a US export blacklist since 1997. In 2022 the Biden administration imposed new licensing requirements on export of the most advanced chips. Since then Nvidia is following specifications for chips that allow it to export to China, says the WSJ.     ...

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As China shifts from an economy that was built on low cost manufacturing in factories that polluted the skies and water, to an advanced economy with modern factories the nature of industry has changed. More recently the focus is on advanced technologies and increased productivity. As a result the hours worked are declining every year with modernization following the trend in western countries. There is also high unemployment of about 20% for young people. High university enrollment of about 60% means many graduates will have a hard time finding jobs in a slowing economy in 2023. With it comes a shift in attitudes to work.

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Alexander Kudascheff of DW.com, says the Berlin Christmas market attack on the Kurfstendamm, is likely to change the way Germany looks at the terrorist threats in the world. Smaller attacks had hit Germany earlier in 2016. This one resembling the attack in Nice on Bastille Day is likely to touch a nerve with Germans who did not see something like this possible for a Christmas tradition of Christmas markets in Germany, and right in Berlin's centre.  This means stormy waters for chancellor Merkel's refugee policies. The comments to this opinion in the DW.com show the public dissatisfaction with current policy. Many of the comments focus on too open an approach of liberal media, what is perceived as a spin on stories for refugees, and on the use of words "suspected terrrorist attack" even when it had become clear to most people that it was a terrorist incident. In other ways this incident is different as it puts Germans in the same situation as Americans, Spaniards, Turks, French, and other people in the way terrorism has made people less safe or unsafe in 2015-2016. Most of this is a result of the situation in Syria and Iraq, as is the refugee situation that has divided European opinion, and American opinion.  ...