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Coca Cola's new Turkish-American CEO Muhtar Kent is interviewed by the WSJ's Mike Esterl. Kent answers questions about obesity and Coke, about management style, plans with Coca Cola's cash reserves of $13 billion, and his olive grove in the Aegean part of Turkey. He says he is a hands-on person and spends one day in the market every week wherever he is, keen on learning something each time. He points to the time spent on trucks during the seven and half months in 1978, when he joined the company. His response to the obesity issue is that Coca Cola is now a 500 plus brand, 3000 products company, of which 800 introduced in the last 4-5 years are calorie free or low calorie.

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Honda plans to move more of its manufacturing to the U.S. as the value of the yen drops below 80 to the dollar in 2011. Honda faces problems from parts shortages after floods in Thailand, and U.S. market share down 1.5 percentage points to 9% in 2011. Honda's profit declined by more than 50% for the third quarter of 2011. The yen trading at 77 to the dollar in Dec 2011 is making it impossible for Honda to make a profit from vehicles made in Japan and sold in the U.S. Honda plans to double the capacity of the Civic plant in Greensburg, Indiana, increase capacity at its other assembly plants. It will build a new plant in Celaya, Mexico, in 2014, to manufacture the Fit subcompact. This will raise North American production from 1.29 million vehicles to close to 2 million. About 200,000 to 300,000 of these vehicles will be exported to other international markets. Profits on small subcompacts are small, making manufacture of the Fit more economical in North America than in Japan. In 2011 Honda manufactured between 30-40% of vehicles in Japan, the new plans are to reduce this to 10-20% in the next 10 years, a major shift....

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The May 6 episode of the stock market plunge of 900 points in the U.S. and then recovering had the effect of rattling investors nerves especially retirees. The impact of this episode is recorded in the experience of one Charles Schwab broker office in Englewood, Colorado. By the end of that day this broker had 50 calls on his answering machine from a fifth of his clients, all seeking to know what happened. Charles Schwab, who helped launch a period of individual investing in the U.S. after 1982 by cutting fees and going after the average investor, (along with others like Jack Bogle of Vanguard Funds), is also on edge. He says he has not seen anything like this since his early days. Schwab confirms Yale Prof. Shiller who says (see link) that his index for markets shows a lot of nervousness. Saying that 98% of people are still very concerned, coming after the May 6 incident, and the Greece and eurozone crisis that impacted US stock markets. One other factor he points out is the constant flow of headlines that suggest certain business people engaged in fradulent practices, something that fuels a lack of trust. Charles Schwab ponders from his office across the San Francisco Bay Bridge, whether words like safety and soundness mean anything anymore. Another factor of concern, Bogle points out, is that institutional investors now own 70% of American corporations, up from 35% in 1975. And the advantage has veered sharply in their direction as institutions, hedge funds, and investment banks trade on their own account, with wealth moving in that direction. This leaves the individual investor and especially the retiree or those about to retire in a severe predicament....

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See pictures of the new La Guardia airport, and the work of the team that made the new Terminal B happen. The old airport was called a "third world airport" by president Biden. A reflection of what had happened in America with the defunding of infrastructure leaving subways and airports that were simply breaking down and dilapidated.

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Sober travel is surging among young people in America. This report shows sober travel meaning no alcohol in wineyard trips to Sonoma, California, or in the foothills of the Andes mountains in Mendoza wine countryside. For them it makes good sense, wellness, beautiful landscapes and fine dining. This NYT report shows a growing trend of travel of this kind.

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Kamala Harris is expected to announce more details about her Economic Plan as she sees the opportunity for Harris-Walz building on the achievements of Biden-Harris to make a stronger statement on the economy. Now that she gains more confidence of voters in her Economic Plan for the Way Forward for America compared to the former president.

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Niall Ferguson, a history professor at Harvard, and Moritz Shularick, a economic history professor at the Free University of Berlin, coined the term Chimerica, to describe the Chinese export machine and the American overconsumption right down to negative savings. Now they call it an economic monster that needs to be given a burial. It does little good for America. For America its a 10-10 deal the authors say, 10% growth for China and 10% unemployment int the USA. The mood in the USA is no longer to go on with this arrangement they warn, and ask that the Obama administration take steps to end this arrangement. The USA should ask China to make a 30 % depreciation of the renminbi say Ferguson and Schularick. Krugman makes a similiar point and warns of dire consequences in aworld out of balance on the same page of the NYT, see the link. Ferguson and Schularick point out that unlike China, both Germany and Japan let their currencies appreciate by 60% for Germany and 50% in Japan, at a similiar period in their country's development. China's renmibi is pegged at 6.83 renminbi to the dollar, and China's government used $300 billion in reserves to keep the renminbi from appreciating this year. Throughout the 1980's and 1990's it was pegged at around 8.28 renminbi to the dollar. For the USA this has been very costly, with a distortion in the global cost of capital significantly reducing long term interest rates, and helping create the real estate bubble in the US. They point out that with Japan and Germany dollar reserves increased roughly in line with growth of American GDP at about 1% and stable before moving slighltly higher in the 1970's. By contrast China's reserves have grown from about 1% of Ameica's GDP in 2000 or $165 billion to 5% in 2005 and 10% in 2008 and headed for 12% in 2009 end. This is simply unsustainable any longer; carrying on any longer risks China losing the very basis of its economic success which is the open global trading system....

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There is a two week period before the 25% tariff on steel coming into the U.S. goes into effect. This gives time for Canada, Mexico, the EU, Japan and other countries to come up with offers to negotiate or as with the EU come up with its own plan to put tariffs on some American goods. An exemption for Canada is supported by the United Steel Workers Union, as many American companies make steel across the borders. Canada sends the most steel and aluminium to the U.S. With the departure of Gary Cohn as economic advisor, Mr. Lighthizer, the U.S. Trade Representative who pushed for the tariff plan becomes a trusted advisor to the President. Lighthizer is to be seen in Lyrarc pages as having consistently supported fair trade and protecting U.S. workers in these situations since his work in the Reagan administration. The other advisors who are ascendent are Peter Navarro, a trade expert, and Wilbur Ross, the Commerce Secretary. Ross is an experienced business veteran in consolidation of steel and auto parts companies, who pushed for a moderate position to renegotiate NAFTA and convinced president Trump to pursue renegotiation instead of rejecting NAFTA following calls from president Nieto of Mexico and Trudeau of Canada. ...

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Tyler Cowan writes about the problems of crony capitalism and lack of opportunities in American capitalism as it is practiced today.

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Republican Jeb Bush's address to the 2013 CPAC conference focusses on the decline of social and educational mobility in the U.S. to its lowest point since 1945. In this address he points out that " the central mission of conservatives is to reignite social mobility in this country- restoring the right to rise." His focus on restoring the right to rise is on doing everything to increase opportunities for "quality education," an issue on which he focussed as governor of Florida. He sees technolgy and relative youthful population compared to China and other countries in Europe, as giving America a unique advantage. On this and individual efforts he pins the broad hopes of the middle class revival he sees. He puts the problems of America's middle class and working class as wages declined and the economy suffered from misallocation of resources in stark terms- "Today, the sad reality is that if you're born poor, if your parents did'nt go to college, if you don't know your father, if English isn't spoken at home- then the odds are stacked against you. You are more likely to stay poor today than at any other time since World War II." And he sees Conservatives having a response to this situation, and restoring the idea of America as a land of opportunity for all....

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Much of India's relations with Britain as a colonial power, and the US as the first real democracy (defined in a new way without colonial interests) after Britain in the modern world, were set in the period when Gandhi mentored by Gokhale and Tilak in 1900 set the independence struggle of the 1930's and 1940's. Modi merely restored the Gandhian spirit with a development focus and honest administration. This enormous contribution of Gandhi revered by all leaders including Modi is a benevolent one recognizing the important and one might say virtuous role played by the US under Wilson and Roosevelt to colonized nations such as China and India as can be seen in the personal letter to FDR written in the 1940's by Gandhi. There are two defining relations of the US, the first related to its founding as a British colony and a war of independence fought with the help of the French. And the other related to Asia, to Japan, China, and India as they modernized in 1900-2000. Of this the relationship with the most ancient of ancient civilizations in India is the dominant US relationship in 2025, because it unlocks the mysteries of westernization without the religious ethos of Buddhism in an imperialist Japan and now expanding Communist China. This religious ethos of China, Japan and Vietnam lies in Indian soil and in the ethos of the Indian people, and where Gandhi drew his inspiration. From this ethos comes the idea that India as a true friend of America and a Europe (that includes Russia) cannot ignore the devastation of Ukraine and inadvertently find itself a participant through its purchase of Russian oil at $119 billion a year (even when China under a expanding Communist government purchases Russian oil at $136 billion a year). The cost of the war is about $213 billion in a Russian wartime economy which also hurts the Russian economy and the cost of living through inflation for the Russian people. India will seek to do some soul searching and find the right path Gandhi would hold on to for Britain, America, and rest of Europe including the Russian people. ...

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Susan Jaccoby brings up a major issue facing healthcare in America from personal experience. A third of the Medicare budget, she says, goes to the last year of life, and a third of this goes to the care in the last month. At the same time public opinion polls show Americans see the problem being too much medical intervention rather than too little. Especially when there is no hope except to prolong life for the patient with an highly deteriorated qulaity of life for a few months or a year, doing no service to the patient or future generations who may see their basic services cut when they most need it as a result of the unaffordable spiralling cost of Medicare. A Pew Research Center poll in 2006, shows 22 percent say a doctor should not always make efforts to save a sick person's life, and 70 percent believe that patients should be allowed to die in some situations, when it only prolongs life for a few months for instance and patients live in pain. The problem only gets worse in future years as an estimated 8.5 million Americans are expected to be over 85 years in 2030 with these same choices facing patients, their families, Medicare and the country....

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The battle of Dien Bien Phu has another significance as looking back it was not the cold war conflict with the soviets but a struggle for freedom and independence from French colonial rule. The conflict cast a shadow over the Kennedy administration, and after John Kennedy lost his life in Dallas, led to a loss of Kennedy's vision of the New Frontier, ideas that were lost for 4 decades of mediocre or inexperienced leaders from Nixon to Clinton, Bush and Obama and Trump that embroiled America in distant wars and wasted resources needed at home for infrastructure and needs of the people. FR24 looks back at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu 1954, that gave Vietnam freedom from colonial rule and independence. The French ended their rule and Vietnam was divided into 2 states. The US was drawn into the struggle by support and advisers to the new government in the South. Just 6 months after Dien Bien Phu the French were faced with another conflict with the Algerian war of independence that went on till 1962. In the South Vietnam situation it happened in the backdrop of the struggle of the US with the Soviet Union and the People's Republic founded by Mao in 1949, called the Cold War. In 1956 Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest to crush the Hungarian revolution. It is in this context that president Kennedy was pulled into the conflict of North and South Vietnam. Would Kennedy in a second term have handled it differently than Lyndon Johnson who with the Tonkin resolution had America drawn into the conflict left behind by the colonial French power. It is possible Kennedy would have handled it by consulting Congress and the people and looked for solutions outside Cold War conflict. The result and the end of Kennedy's term led to the vision of the New Frontier and Kennedy's imaginative leadership being forgotten with a series of mediocre presidents Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump for three decades leaving America into expanded wars in Cambodia, Star Wars competition wit the Soviets, Iraq, Afghanistan and wasted America's resources, neglecting its infrastructure and needs of its people in health and education. ...

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Till 1997 there was a limit on how many and what drug ads could be placed on television. During the year Bill Clinton was president  the US Food and Drug Administration under Acting Commissioner Michael Friedman is reported by the WSJ as opening up American television for a flood of drug advertising that is damaging for the Nation's health leading to overuse of drugs in the US for three decades. 31% of ads on US evening television news programs are from drug brands in 2024. DJT said while appointing RFK Jr as Secretary of Health and Human Services- Drugmakers and  big food companies, “have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation.” RFK Jr. says- "We are one of only two countries in the world that allow pharmaceutical companies to advertise directly to consumers on television. US and New Zealand. Everybody agrees it is a bad idea. Not surprisingly, Americans consume more pharmaceutical products than anyone else on the planet. As I said earlier on my first day in office I will issue an executive order banning pharmaceutical advertising on television." ...

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A CBS/New York times poll shows that 63% of the American people approve Obama's performance as President. And 77% are optimistic about him being the President for the next 4 years. 55% of Americans are just making ends meet, and more than 6 out of 10 fear that someone in their household may lose their job. Most say it will be years before any significant improvement. Over 53% feel the stimulus plan will improve things, half of them say it is not likely to shorten the recession, and two thirds expect more money will be needed. Nearly all Americans are concerned that the cost of the economic programs will have significant long term effects on future generations, with 65% being very concerned. Yet about 75% say they are more concerned about the economic crisis. On the partisan politics, of those polled 63% say Republicans opposed the legislation for political reasons, not policy ones. 79% want Republicans to work in a bipartisan manner. And 56% surveyed want Obama to folow the policies he proposed during the campaign, rather than working with Republicans, and to make this his priority. All this suggests that a large number of Republicans are supporting the President, even though both Republicans and Democrats are concerned about the cost of programs, because a large majority of those polled are more concerned about the effects of this crisis on jobs and the economy....

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Abercrombie & Fitch sees a sharp drop in sales and 33% decline in profits in the second quarter of 2013. CEO, Mike Jeffries, says younger consumers are struggling and not fully a part of the recovery in consumer spending in the U.S. Other retailers appealing to a younger demographic, Aerospatiale and American Eagle Outfitters are also seeing decline in U.S. sales. Many younger consumers are weighed down by student debt and a weak job market.

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On Gandhi Jayanti remembering American president FDR's contribution to Hind Swaraj. FDR rejected Churchill's ideas of retaining the British Empire's colonies while fighting the German Nazis in the name of freedom. FDR said- " India should be made a commonwealth at once. After a certain number of years- 5 perhaps or 10- she should be able to choose whether she wants to remain in the Empire or have complete independence." 

FDR (US president Franklin Roosevelt) said -"I can't believe that we can fight a war against fascist slavery, and at the same time not work to free people all over the world from a backward colonial policy."

 

 

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Japan's Premier Hatoyama admitted that he failed to win popular support for moving the American base off Okinawa. He said that it was hard to do it during my time, as the presence of China and N. Korea has made public opinion leery of making changes to the alliance with the U.S. However there remain questions about Obama's treatment of Hatoyama during the negotiations, by keeping Hatoyama at arms-length and refusing to compromise on the Okinawa issue.

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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. ...

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Biden's very conservative choices for his cabinet which one British reader of The Times calls UK One Nation type choices. Many of the cabinet members could easily have served under a Republican administration before Trump or a Democratic administration in the tradition of Harry Truman in the 1950's. No members of the cabinet belong to the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party.  A look at the Truman administration after 1950 shows John Wesley Snyder, who headed a bank in St Louis and worked for the Reconstruction Finance Corporation under Franklin Roosevelt performing a key role for integrating 8 million GI soldiers into the economy, and implementing the Marshall Plan. A similar job awaits another banking official Janet Yellen in Biden's cabinet to keep people employed during the pandemic. Xavier Becerra, currently attorney general of California, and formerly Congressman for 24 years, who endorsed "medicare for all" is the new Health Secretary. He grew up in a one room apartment with his Mexican parents. Secretary of State goes to Anthony Blinken, Dean Acheson was in this role under Truman as the Cold War surged with the Berlin crisis and the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe. Today the challenges from Russia and China are taking the shape of a revival of tensions. George Marshall who led American forces in the war, was secretary of defense. This position is given to a soldier Gen. Lloyd Austin who led forces in the wars in the Middle East. This has the potential to deliver better results after the years when America veered off course under the administrations of Reagan, Clinton, Bush and Obama, following the Truman, Eisenhower administrations that setup the recovery after World War II. Today after the banking crisis of 2009, disastrous healthcare and infrastructure neglect in the U.S., followed by the pandemic, a recovery like the one after World War II is needed.   ...

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In a 5 to 4 court runling the U.S. Supreme Court gives president Trump the authorization to use $2.5 billion in Pentagon funds for building a border wall with Mexico. This was a campaign promise and energized his election campaign after years of failure to reach agreement between Democrats and Republicans on how to tackle the migration issue. In the court's decision it overturned an appellate court decision.  The Supreme Court stated in its order that the groups challenging the administration did not appear to have the legal right to do so. This indicates that the Court's conservative majority is likely to support the Trump administration in the end.  The surge in migration from Central American countries such as Guatemala through Mexico has revived the issue of migration. President Trump also secured an agreement with Guatemala to cut down on the migration.  President Trump has cited the need to control flow of illegal drugs across U.S. southern border in addition to the migrants from Mexico and Central America. In bringing the case to the Supreme Court the solicitor general, Noel Francisco wrote that the Plaintiff (Sierra Club) "interests in hiking, bird watching and fishing in designated drug smuggling corridors do not outweigh the harm to the public from halting the government's efforts to construct barriers to stanch the flow of illegal narcotics across the southern border."  The dispute between the Trump administration and the Democrats controlled House of Representatives led to court decisions stopping the use of government funds to build the wall. This led to the declaration of a national emergency along the Mexican border by president Trump on Feb. 15, 2019, after a government shutdown during an impasse with Congress on this issue.  Now the Supreme Court has given president Trump access to Defense Department funds to proceed with the wall and meet a campaign promise.   ...

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Intel's new CEO was the CEO of Cadence Design Systems 2008-2021 which makes software for integrated circuits and systems on chips.   Coming from Malaysia and Singapore Tan got his Masters in Nuclear Engineering from MIT and founded Walden International in 1987. Making early investments in China's chip industry when China's chip industry was just starting in the 1990's, Tan's company participated in  40% of the chip industry investments in China made from the US between 2017-2021. Some of this is covered in a WSJ report from 2021 shown alongside. He served on the boards of China's Semiconductor Manufacturing and Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment.  A parallel to this is Morris Chang who after degrees at MIT started the semiconductor industry in Taiwan. A period back then in which the US chip industry dependent on market forces and without hidden government subsidies was eclipsed by new ventures in first Taiwan, then South Korea and China. During a period in which technologies were freely transferred with no long term grasp of the consequences to American technological leadership, and chip industry in the US. It was allowed to decline by administrations of Bush and Obama since 2000, ceding dominance through lack of investment in manufacturing technologies. In chips and science capitalism and market forces leave American companies to the mercy of markets when government support overseas is not matched by government support in the US to create an absolutely essential level playing field.  The US then feels the lack of synergyistic energies that go from chips to other advanced industries and technologies. Textbook economics from Dartmouth or Ivy Leagues is with totally theoretical stuff about comparitive advantage no help, and created the current situation for America in chips and science where a whole industry was ceded.  ...

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After all the media talk about tariffs inflation- inflation is at 2.4% in May 2025. Tariffs was part of the toolbox of strategies under Lighthizer and Jamieson on getting fair world trade, and not like Congressman Hawley in the 1920's who understood little about the workings of the US economy. This fact the official media such as the WSJ and NYT, Wash Post, BBC need to get it right about the Hawley Tariffs. Hawley was born in rural Oregon in 1864 went to country schools, and was president of Willamette University in Salem, when it's population was 4258. As House Ways and Means Committee chairman he wrote the failed tariffs bill Hoover signed in 1930. DJT's US Trade Representative Lighthizer in 2016 led the successful negotiations with Japan under Reagan, Scott Bessent who leads negotiations on tariffs with China with USTR Jamieson, has a deep understanding and grasp of today's financial markets. Tariffs is one of the tools in the US toolbox to get Japan, China, South Korea to even the playing field for US companies and bring back manufacturing to the US. Without it China would not budge from its unfair advantage and would not negotiate in fairness. This is proven in the way Japan in the 1980s and China today are responding to the US position preparing their economies for not relying on sudden surges in exports putting whole industries and workers in America and Europe out of work and out of jobs. DJT says- "No we are not going to accept that," the EU is catching on and adopting a similar position, China knows that.  The media is irresponsible in presenting tariffs in a negative way, irresponsible to American workers the 10 million put out of work since 2000, and to American families and the Nation.   ...

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This view from the Editorial Board comes as Republicans in Congress geared up for a legislative victory decided to ignore the expert opinion of the Joint Committee on Taxation and polls showing a majority of Americans disapprove of the tax law. It says a "corrosive partisanship" that is affecting the nation has led to this decision. Not an informed consensus necessary to make real and lasting changes to the tax laws that increase growth without disrupting hard won gains in social cohesion after World War II.  Republicans pushed through a trillion and half dollars in tax cuts in the law that reduces the corporate tax rate to 21% from 35%, and cut taxes in 2019 by 51 times ($51,400) for the top 1% of incomes compared to ($1000) for middle class families earning less than $100,000 (Tax Policy Center). The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates it will add $1 trillion to the U.S. deficit as only $500 billion is expected in increase in government revenues over a decade from additional economic growth. This is supported by evidence from countries such as Britain that implemented this type of corporate tax cut without generating much economic growth, says Greg Ip in the Wall Street Journal. The "victory" then comes at a high cost says the Washington Post- in years to come programs to help the growing lower middle class and working class will be subject to cuts and taxes will have to rise to balance budgets.   ...