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Karen Elliott House, a former publisher of the Wall Street Journal, who won a Pulitzer prize for reporting on the Middle East, is now researching Saudi society. She now writes this scathing report from Saudi Arabia. She says that just as in Egypt, an old corrupt leadership continues in power for several decades, an old corrupt leadership in the form of 7000 princes in a vast royal family. King Abdullah is in his eighties and the ruling princes have an average age of 83, and have illnesses for which they are under medical treatment. They continue to lead a nation where 60% of the people are young people under the age of 18! Itself an astounding fact. Karen House points out that the internet and social media have also made the young very knowledgeable about the conditions in the country- where 40% of Saudis live in poverty and 70% cannot afford a home. Bad managemet by the princes has affected basic services including the sewage and drainage problems in Jeddah after the floods. It is astounding that far less wealthy Gulf sheikdoms are doing a better job of providing education, jobs and health care. Thirty years of visiting Saudi Arabia, and the last four years of intensive reporting, has persuaded Karen House that this situation is at an impasse that might end up resolving itself through some sort of upheaval. To Karen House this looks like the last days of the aging leadership under Brezhnev before the Soviet Union collapsed....

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The sense of a forgotten American soldier as the war winds down in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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Temasek's investment in Merrill approaching 10% could reach 14%. Temasek's Senior Managing Director Kejriwal says its confidence in Mr. Thain and his team remains high and Merrill's management team has grown stronger in the last 8 months, in an interview. Temasek has $10 billion invested outside Asia. Its total shareholder returns by market value have dropped from 27% the previous year to 7%, and Temasek's Chairman Dhanabalan sees the danger of stagflation as a major threat to the investment environment and sees it posing socioeconomic and political risks for the next three to five years.

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PM Modi launches the PM Cares children's initiative for Rs 10 lakh for orphans from the pandemic in India. It also includes scholarships and money for studies. A monthly stipend will be given from the money earned from investment of Rs 10 lakh.

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Geithner gets the help of a seasoned economist known for thoughtful and vigorous articulation of policy. Ted Truman has spent 26 years at the Federal Reserve and is one of the most senior people at the Fed, and has worked as Geither's deputy when he headed the international department at the Treasury during the Clinton administration. Now Geithner has him back to help strengthen the US effort to get the countries like France, Germany, Canada, South Korea and Brazil to build up their stimulus spending. Geithner has expressed this in a softspoken manner that may not have registered with the G20 leaders meeting in Washington. Truman has toughened up the tone and message. Truman gave Geithner a memo stating how the G20 and the IMF should address the crisis. And Geithner reflecting this memo has now put this in forceful language instructing the G-20 "to commit to substantial and sustained actions for a period that matches the likely duration of the crisis. Truman wants the IMF to keep a scorecard to enforce the coordinated plan and identify countries that are not doing their part, part of an activist approach that Truman wants to see happen. Considering how shortstaffed Geithner is, the addition of Truman at such a critical moment is necessary and useful. ...

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The Economist quotes experts saying that drug innovations would not be affected by price controls on drugs. Pricing reforms can accomplish the reverse, spur innovation by doing as Britain and Germany are doing- pioneering comparitive reviews of drugs effectiveness and cost-benefit analyses aimed at reimbursing firms for new drugs based on their performance. Sanford Bernstein, a financial advisory firm, says in its study that a 20% reduction in what Medicare pays for drugs would not kill off innovation, it would reduce earnings per share of big pharma firms by 3-8%. As drug research is now done in many countries, and its a globalized industry, innovation is not likely to be automatically affected by price reductions in one country like the USA, according to Alna Garber of Stanford University and Patricia Danzon of Wharton Business School.

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Development of the C919 aircraft by the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (Comac). The C919 would compete with the Boeing 737 and the Airbus 320. China accounts for 22% of Airbus's orders and 15% of Boeing's orders. Comac has orders for 90 C919's from state owned airlines and two leasing companies. It also has help from suppliers GE and Honeywell. Says Bob Smith, chief technology officer of Honeywell, which has 4 joint ventures with Chinese companies to supply parts for aircraft projects from flight controls to wheels and brakes: "we are not just here to build an aircraft, we are here to build an industry." Zhang Xinguo, vice president of AVIC, a state owned company helping build the plane, says the government wants to see jumbo jets, regional planes, business jets, helicopters, all made in China by Chinese companies.

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The story of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine is the story of 2 chikdren of Turkish immigrants to Germany. Sahin the son of a engineer working at a Ford factory in Cologne, and Tureci the daughter of a surgeon working at a hospital in Mainz Germany. Sahin was born in 1965 on the Mediterranean coast in Iskerundun, Turkey and he went to Germany when he was 4 years old, his father being recruited in a new effort to rebuild Germany with foreign labour. Both are motivated by scientific research and the drive to come up with some method to tackle cancer for patients with new research and cures.  Both did their doctoral dissertation on experimental therapies at the Johannes-Gutenberg University of Mainz in Germany, and both joined the faculty there. Sahin spent years studying the mRNA , genetic instructions that can be delivered to the body to help it defend itself against viruses and other threats. Much of this mRNA research was already at an advanced stage in January 2020 when Sahin heard about the coronavirus in China. At that point he saw the potential of retargeting the mRNA research to tackling the coronavirus. By this time he already had his own company with over 200 million euros invested in it  by investors including Helmut Jeggle, now supervisory board chairman of BioNTech. This report says he sat down one Saturday, January 25, 2020 and working on his computer designed the template for 10 possible coronavirus vaccines, one of which would become BNT162b2, the vaccine now approved in Britain. On the same day he told a surprised Jettle that he would refocus the company on the new virus that had not yet hit Europe. Shain he says cited the Hong Kong flu that claimed 4 million lives. Why Pfizer. Pfizer had already been working with BioNTech on a new flu vaccine based on mRNA technology. A cooperation deal was signed with Pfizer in March for organizing clinical trials, manufacture globally, and distribute the vaccine. BioNTech then acquired a U.S. company and a German pharmaceutical factory in Germany. ...

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It took a week longer for each country to impose a lockdown. In China first Wuhan then the whole country went into lockdown and quarantine. The same process is repeated in Europe and in America as authorites see numbers of infections increasing rapidly without strict controls. First the Lombardy region in Italy around Milan, then the provinces in Northern Italy, followed by a complete lockdown in the country on March 10 as infection spread faster without lockdown and enforcement of lockdowns. Germany and Britain follow Spain and Italy on March 20. France followed Spain in the days after Italy's complete lockdown. Macron ordered the lockdown on March 16 with stringent enforcement. Infectious Disease specialists at Imperial College warned of "unintended consequences for the entire nation" if a lockdown of Britain did not take place. The goal is to limit the spread of infections from rapid to slow as public health systems and economic measures are ramped up in preparation for the crisis. Most countries were lacking the preparatory steps having lost time waiting to see what happens next or analyzing data in the vain hope the virus does not spread.  Bad economic results of lockdowns were initially a concern, but this concern became less important as the coronavirus spread rapidly in Europe. Decision makers in Europe decided that not acting forcefully would lead to equally or worse economic outcomes. Public health systems overwhelmed would diminish public confidence rapidly and lead to equally bad or much worse economic outcomes. The European Union executive body has supported state aid, stimulus action and border controls in this crisis. In America and in Europe the hope is that shoring up the safety net with massive aid to businesses and households would buy time to tackle and overcome the coronavirus through a combination of lockdowns, quarantines, contact tracing, large scale testing and medical technology measures. The examples of China, South Korea, Taiwan showed this pathway exists for phased control and reducing fatalities to zero. ...

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Peter Schiff says home prices are still too high. They would have to decline another 20% just to fit the long term trend line indicated by the Case -Shiller index of an average 3.35% increase each year, based on long term historical data. He says economists underestimate how distorted the housing market has become, and how little it has normalized since 2008. This is based on average increase in home prices of 3.35% per year for the 100 years between 1900 and 2000, as determined by Yale economist Robert Shiller, which is just a bit above the average rate of inflation. Taking the January 1998 10 city index of 82.7 and following the 3.35% annual trend line, he says the index would be at 126.7 in October 2010. Case-Shiller showed that it was 159.0 for October 2010. Schiff uses this to show that the market needs to drop by 20.3% from the current level to get back to the trend line. He says that the home buyers tax credit, record low interest rates, and the increased presence of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing administration have for now put a floor on housing prices. Conditions in the US housing market with high inventories, the high unemployment, savings depletion and debt, point to this overshooting by 5-10% on the downside. See Roubini, who points to housing losses in 2011....

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The size of the stimulus package announced at 4 trillion yuan ($586 billion) involves only 1 trillion yuan in new spending according to analysts, the larger number was announced to bolster consumer and company sentiment. Export order are falling quickly from 27% increase in 2007 over 2006, to 21% increase in Sept 2008, to 19% increase in October 2008. over same month prior year. But imports are falling more quickly which is not good news for European exporters like Germany and for American exporters except for infrastructure exporters, and for commodities exporters like Brazil, Australia and Canada. In October imports slowed from 21% in September to 15% in October, which actually increased China's trade surplus from $29 billion in September to $35 billion in October. Exports of iron ore from Australia and Brazil are down and machinery from Germany. For China's urban middle class and rural poor the one relief is in inflation for fuel and food, the consumer price index rose 4% in October compared to 4.6% in September and down from a peak of 8.7% in February 2008. The spending will come in infrastructure including railways. Railways construction spending will be increased from 300 billion yuan in 2008 to 350 billion yuan and double to 600 billion yuan in 2009. This is expected to create 80,000 new jobs to replace jobs lost in the toys and furniture export sectors and other job losses. ...

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Alexandra Stevenson provides this exceptional account summarizing the reasoning in the minds of Argentine negotiators and holdout bondholders over a debt dispute remaining from the 2001 Argentine debt crisis and default. Over a decade later the repercussions of Argentina's 2001 debt crisis and default are still taking new twists ant turns. Holdout bondholders won in U.S. courts and Judge Griesa ordered Argentina to make full payment demanded by holdout bondholders. Argentina responded by depositing $539 million in Bank of New York Mellon as instalment payment to exchange bondholders. Judge Griesa responded by ruling that if Bank of New York Mellon made the payment it would be in contempt of court. Griesa also called for court mediated negotiations between Argentina and the holdout bondholders to come up with an agreement. Argentina and hedge fund holdouts negotiated in July 2014 but talks faltered. Legal experts say that if Argentina makes an agreement with holdout bondholders led by NML Capital which is asking for $1.5 billion, the risk is that the exchange bondholders could also ask for better terms. After the 2001 crisis following which Argentina defaulted on its debt, agreements were reached for bondholders to be paid about 25 cents on the dollar. Not all bondholders agreed, the bondholders who agreed are called the exhange bondholders, and the ones holding out holdout bondholders. From the Argentine government's point of view the risk of reaching agreement with the holdouts suing Argentina is that the other holdout bondholders not represented in the lawsuit could also ask for the same terms, and Argentina would have to pay all the holdouts costing it $15 billion. Risks if Argentina allows it to go into default are that exchange bondholders would come together to pressure the Argentine government to make a full payment of their discounted bonds quickly. This would cost Argentina payment of as much as $28.7 billion, according to JPMorgan estimates, under the right to "accelerate" payment if Argentina is considered as having missed a July 30, 2014 payment deadline. Legal experts say Argentina has to weigh this risk, which may or may not occur depending on the exchange bondholders taking such action, against the risk of having to pay out $15 billion to all the holdouts. Paying all holdouts would be politically very unpopular in Argentina, posing political risks for the socialist Peronist Kirchner government, already facing difficulties with the trade unions and the stronger opposition from centrist parties in Buenos Aires province. Default would affect Argentine access to capital markets, which is already highly restricted. Yet because Argentina has made the payment to Bank of New York Mellon, blocked by Judge Griesa, the nature of this default would be different. A worse case scenario for Argentina's Kirchner government is reopening negotiations with exchange bondholders for higher payment on debt than the 25 cents on the dollar already agreed to. Argentina faces an acute cash shortage with international reserves of only about $29.5 billion in May 2014, and a slowing agricultural export dependent economy. This is why the prospect of a technical default is being treated with relative calm in Buenos Aires....

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A 2024 US International Trade Commission report by David Riker of the effects on imports of 25% US tariff shows a 75% reduction in imports and a 5% increase in US prices.  It would lead to large new investments in the US auto industry in different states. Hyundai recently announced a $21 billion investment plan in the US and building of a steel plant in Louisiana. General Motors will increase investments in the US and expand production. Other Japanese companies will make large investments for a presence in the US market.

"A new 25% tariff on U.S. imports from outside of North America would reduce vehicle imports by 73.9%, increase average prices of vehicles in the United States by 5.0%, and increase variable profits from domestic production by 5.2%." David Riker, USITC

 

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Mangia is eat in Italian and this refers to eating less as away to longevity and health.The advantages of a Mediterranean diet with vegetables, nuts, legumes and fruits that unfortunately is less popular in Italy as diets have changed and obesity has increased, says this report from Italy. Another aspect of this is for wellness eating light and occasional days of very light food intake akin to fasting reduces effects of aging and increases healthy years of life past 60-70 years.

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Mr. Trump appears strong on the economy issue says this report in the NYT. About 9 million jobs were added in April, May and June after loss of 20 million jobs in March and April in the U.S. The Republican base of white voters is less affected by the loss of jobs- only one of five Republicans had the perception that they would lose their job. There is confidence about the economy in this base as small business and workers see conditions improving.

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Marketing to the under 30 age group in China. people under 30 are about 70% of China's Internet population, about 162 million, with 9 of 10 college educated Chinese having internet access. A big market for internet related products in this demographic age group.

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Some of the UAW union's key demands such as a 25% increase, cost of living adjustments, and other benefits leads to the settlement with Stellantis and Ford Motor Company. The 25% increase is spread out over four and half years so that the companies remain competitive.

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A magistate's court in Hong Kong orders Joshua Wong, who led the protests for democracy in Hong Kong, to do 80 hours of community service work for unlawfully entering a fenced area outside Hong Kong's government headquarters on Sept. 26, 2014. Another activist Nathan Law was ordered to do 120 hours of community service. Wong and Law have formed a new party called Demosisto. Law plans to run in the legislative election on Sept 4, 2016. The first pro independence rallies happened in Hong Kong in early August. Wong says he is pushing for self-determination after the "one country, two systems" framework operating since 1997 expires in 2047.

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Xiaomi is China's leading brand. It is very different from other companies in China and America. It is tightly controlled by its founder Lei Jun who has built a loyal following for the brand  through fan clubs and creating an enthusiastic following. Because the firm is run by founder Lei Jun it can make quick decisions to enter a market. Lei Jun was a computer science student in Wuhan in 1987 as China opened up to the world.  By 2017- in three years from being zero in the Indian market place in 2014- Xiaomi had become the largest smartphone company in India. The company was launched in 2010. Profit margins are thin about 1% in a very competitive pricing market.  Metrics are based on revenue per user of $9 per user from an installed base of 190 million smartphone users, spending 54 minutes a day using Xiaomi's app, game and other services, or 20% of the phone use time. Revenue per user comes from advertising, and from commissions on the apps and games it sells to its user base. In 2015 Xiaomi had a loss, in 2016 sales dropped, in 2017 new products led to a resurgence in the market with sales increasing 68%. As Xiaomi goes into its IPO, experts say much of the $10 billion from the IPO could go into reinvestment as Xiaomi reinvents itself and moves into other internet business. ...

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The biography of Lula da Silva on the Brazil government site gov.br 2025. It shows Lula as one of 8 children from deep in rural Pernambuco state in northeastern Brazil. His mother brought the family to the outskirts of Sao Paulo Guaruja 60 kilometres away on a 13 day trip in an old pickup truck to leave the poor conditions in rural Brazil in 1952. By 1956 the had moved to Sao Paulo in the iparanga neighborhood. He worked at ascrew factory before joining a trade school Brazil's National School for Industrial Learning, studying to become a mechanical lathe worker, making him a metallurgist in 3 years. He then joined Industrial Villares, a large metallurgical company, in Sao Bernardo do Campo, ABC region of Sao Paulo.  This started his career as trade unionist in 1969 elected to the Board, 1972 elected First Secretary, and 1975 elected president of the Union of Workers of Sao Bernardo do Campo and Diadema, representing 100,000 workers. This was aperiod when the military dicatorship was beginning the proces of redemocratization of Brazil. Lula led strikes in 1980, formed the CUT Central Unica de Trabajodores in 1982, ran for Governor of Sao Paulo that year and in 1983 was elected to the Constituent Assembly. The Workers Party was founded on Feb. 10, 1980 during this period of redemocratization. Lular ran for elections as president losing to Cardozo twice in 1994, 1998 and wiining at ae 57 years in 2002.     ...

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By settling for a 15% tariff Japan was protecting its other industries from the higher tariff of 24-25% proposed earlier. US industry has operated with no assistance from the US government and faces a financial markets structure in the US that is not helpful to American industry making long term investments that overseas makers with support from their governments are able to make. US workers suffered badly over three decades and the ineptitude of previous US presidents in protecting American workers from this situation. The Europeans and the Japanese, South Koreans know this and understand that the US plays the critical role in the free world and without it, without the workers and rural communities of the US, their way of life and freedom will suffer irreparable harm. Japanese PM Ishiba and its business organization Keidanren are focused on implementing the US Japan Trade Agreement mitigating any effects inside Japan. Japan was able to protect it's auto export model to the US from high tariffs settling for a moderate tariff of 15%. A similar agreement was accepted by Germany when Leyen accepted the 15% tariff on German car export model. For decades Germany and Japan have used their auto export model to take a large share of the US market, joined by Korean makers, putting American car makers and their workers at a disadvantage since the 1980's. This creates a level playing field in world trade and is in the interest of workers in the US. ...

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Simon Wilde of The Times Analysis of a Test cricket series for the Ages, India vs England 2025- showing 10 Key Moments in the Series of 5 Tests over 25 days of cricket. He compares it to Ashes cricket series back to 1981, 2005, and 2023. I would go furhter back to the West Indies Australia series of 1960 which ended up tied, with both sides having the same score down to the last run. It was a series in which Richie Benaud and Gary Sobers played major roles. Siraj has Christiano Ronaldo on his phone screen with the words BELIEVE! as he prepares for the final day's bowling. The catch of Siraj that did not count as he went over the boundary line for Brooks, and the last ball of the match at the Oval that flattened the wicket of Atkinson, the fielding effort of Woakes that cost him a dislocated shoulder and his heroic effort to come out for the 10th wicket when it was painful to run, the burst of sixes and fours knock of Sundar as India went up to 396, and the tense nervousness of the crowd in the final moments, Gill's perplexed face as he arranged the fielding deep at the boundary lines to avoid fours and the final sigh of relief when Siraj bowled out Atkinson- these were the moments that linger in the memory of the final test at the Oval in London. ...