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Alexander Van Der Bellen, a pro Europe independent candidate supported by the Green Party wins Austria's presidential election with 53.3% of the vote. The anti immigrant Freedom Party candidate Norbert Hofer wins 46% of the vote. Van Der Bellen is for an open Europe and is pro Europe. The election is seen in Germany as "lifting a great burden off of our shoulders," in the words of Sigmar Gabriel. This is important for the future of Europe as France, Netherlands and Germany face major elections in 2017.

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ECB president Draghi tells the European parliament on Jan. 16, 2012: "I cannot underline these points enough. Only a well-coordinated, coherent and properly timed strategy will yield the desired results." He made his comments as head of the European Systemic Board, which oversees systemic risks to the banking system in Europe. Speaking after a series of downgrades by S&P, Draghi said there should be "much less mechanical reliance" on ratings agencies. On Greece's debt burden and servicing costs he pointed out that the evaluation of Greek debt made in October 2011 "needs to be clarified whether its realistic," given the deteriorating economic situation in Greece. On Greece's talks with bondholder Draghi wants to see new servicing of debt conditions make it possible for Greece to bring down its current debt level of 190% of GDP to 120% by 2020.

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This Journal editorial says Germany and France will have to pay for preserving the Eurozone one way or another. It suggests a direct approach of the German and French governments injecting capital for recapitalizing German and French banks that would take losses on bad loans to Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain; combining this with bondholder haircuts for creditors, and reforms that include spreading the burden for Irish bank debt and cleaning up the cajas savings banks mess in Spain. This would mean exactly the opposite of what is taking place now, including the abandoning of individual country rescues and bailouts; which the Journal calls extending loans and pretending the problem is not with German and French banks that would have losses on the bad loans. The problem is that this places the entire burden on austerity measures in each bailout country which reduces growth and raises unemployment to levels that make the problem much worse than before. This is not happening because of a serious failure to reach agreement on the shared sacrifice and cooperation between the governments, creditor banks, the ECB and other parties in the eurozone, on a serious debt restructuring across the eurozone that would put the euro back to stability with some mechanism for serious financial discipline in eurozone states....

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IMF Managing Director, Christine Lagarde says Greece should have 2 more years to achieve the deficit targets. Speaking at a news conference during the annual meeting of the IMF in Tokyo in Oct 2012, Lagarde said: "it is sometimes better, given circumstances.. to have a bit more time... This is what we advocated for Portugal, it's what we advocated for Spain, and it's what we are advocating for Greece, where I have said repeatedly that an additional two years was necessary for the country to actually face the fiscal consolidation program that is considered." A two year extension would add an estimated 20 billion euros to the financing cost for Greece, at the same it improves the chances for growth and means having a program that is more likely to work.

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How the Frankdurt Auto Show was a kind of watershed for the European auto industry, where the German carmakers decided to commit resources and move technology in the direction of reducing emissions and improving mileage, with cleaner diesel engines, reduced emissions from gasoline engines and all round improvements in technology that was environment friendly. Mercedes and BMW appear fully committed to meeting new EU goals for emisssions of 120 grams per kilometer for 2012. At this show Mercedes had 8 cars equipped with Blue-Tec technology for cleaner diesel engine and 7 hybrid cars. It has new Dies-Otto technology that it is developing for delivering the best properties of diesel and gasoline.

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In this op-ed in the NYT Matthew D'Ancona, former deputy editor of the Daily Telegraph, is sharply critical of British prime minister Theresa May for planning to remain in office after the election losses of the Conservative party in the June 2017 election. He calls her decision deplorable and the alliance with the Democratic Unionist party of Northern Ireland with its 10 seats and less than 1% of the total vote a huge mistake, because of its extremely conservative views on social issues which are out of touch with socially liberal conservative voters. His prediction is that the parliamentary majority will be under constant attack, making governing difficult. He expects the government to collapse.

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1.1 million EVs were sold in US in 2024, compared to 1.4 million hybrids. Hybrids have made a comeback as sales of electric cars are slowing in US in 2024. Constraints being lack of enough charging stations, price of electric cars still high, driving range limited before recharge. Hybrid car sales are surging helping Toyota after a too cautious entry into EV's. Now the Biden administration is looking at the targets and how to make the transition smoother. Toyota is pushing back on strict environmental rules that expect 67% of cars to be electric by 2032.  The 2021 executive order by president Biden was for 50% target by 2030 and this included hybrids.  The gradual shift would make it less costly for the public to replace the cars and help first time buyers wanting to try it out do this with hybrids as an option. As a quick guide 12000 pounds of carbon dioxide for global warming are given out by gasoline only cars, half or 6000 pounds by hybrids like Toyota's, and half again 3000 pounds of carbon dioxide by all electric like BYD China's or Tesla/GM/VW. The actual numbers are confirmed by Dept of Energy 2022, and MIT 2019 studies- 2727 pounds all electric, 6898 pounds hybrid, and 12594 pounds all gasoline. ...

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Under the coordinated action by central banks in the U.S., Canada, Japan, Switzerland and the ECB, the U.S. Federal Reserve lends dollars to the ECB, getting euros in return, and the ECB in turn provides European banks with the U.S. dollars. The European banks were facing a shortage of U.S. dollars in November 2011. Money market funds in the U.S. had pulled back from investing in eurozone bonds in the third quarter of 2011, adding to the shortage of dollars. This action eases liquidity concerns.

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The ECB reduced a short term lending rate to 0.75%. The People's Bank of China reduced its one year yuan lending rate by 0.31% percentage point to 6%. The Bank of England increased its bond buying program by 50 billion pounds to 375 billion pounds.

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Typical of so much of what is written about the World Health Organization and its role in the pandemic, this podcast in the WSJ fails to quickly convey the critical function of the WHO as an early warning system the world has depended on, including China. The H1N1 epidemic originated in Mexico. Asian countries including China and India depended on very quick response from the country where the epidemic originated  in allowing entry into the affected area for experts from advanced countries such as the U.S. The global response was then coordinated across countries quickly with complete transparency. The head of China's CDC himself faced a problem with transparency with the provincial authorites in Wuhan. 1.    Fundamentally this quick entry was denied the U.S. Request by U.S. to China was made on Jan. 6 for U.S. team to go to Wuhan, quick permission was denied and given only about 6 weeks later on Feb 16. This delay is the crux of the problem for the U.S.. Taiwan confirmed human to human transmission on Jan. 1, the WHO was saying this was not clear as late as Jan. 14. These costly delays are what the U.S.  letter is about.  The head of the CDC China Gao Fu called Dr. Redfield head of CDC in the U.S. on the next day after he suspected Wuhan provincial authorites were vague about what was happening. Gao Fu was alarmed when scanning the internet on December 30, 2019, about rumors of a vaguely worded lung disease in internal memos of Wuhan. He called Wuhan authorites and was not getting clear answers on that day, then deciding on December 31 to send his own team to Wuhan, as reported in German magazine Der Spiegel- Hackenbroch, Zand, 05/20/2020.  Der Spiegel says in its special report on the early period in Wuhan that Gao Fu was so alarmed about what was happening enough to be in tears in his series of calls with Dr. Redfield in the immediate days that followed. The date was shortly after the GAO Fu sent the team to Wuhan, December 31 and New Years Day 2020, as reported in Der Spiegel. See the link to Lyrarc gist of Der Spiegel's "A Failed Deception: The Early Days of the Coronavirus in Wuhan."  2.  President Trump points out the standards of the WHO- in the concluding point of his letter to WHO- when a three time prime minister of Norway, Gro Brundtland was head of the WHO during the SARS crisis of 2003. She acted quickly and decisively and no time was lost. It is this failure of the early warning system under the new president of the WHO after 2017 Dr. Tedros that alarms the U.S.  with about 100,000 deaths.  3.  This failure it can now be said was partly a result of a election in 2017 for the position of WHO president which was flawed. This was the first time a WHO head, an important position was put up for an election. The Executive Board was responsible for this appointment since the founding of the WHO as part of the UN, based in Geneva, Switzerland, after World War II. This system worked. The election was clearly a bad process for appointing the president of the WHO which should be done entirely on the capabilities of the person holding this position not on a flawed voting process. It is flawed because India and Bangladesh hit by a cyclone during the coronavirus have suffered greatly, as have other countries, but had only 2 votes for 1.5 billion people, when Barbados (385,000 population) and Laos (7 million) which had less than one  hundredth the population had the same number of votes. The U.S. had one vote. The election resulted in lobbying and a process in which many candidates stayed away because they simply would not go through such a process. The position was too important to the world- most of the advanced countries had forgotten about the danger of epidemics to let this happen by 2017, as shown in the way the austerity years led to cancellation of the preparations for pandemic in France and Britain. The austerity years and neglect of public health during these tech boom years in the western world made it possible for this to happen. 3.   Along with the 1 month ultimatum action is already being taken to restore the effectiveness of the importance of the Executive Board. The head of the health ministry in India, Dr. Harsh Vardhan, has been appointed the new chairman of the Executive Board on May 22. This restores the voice of billions of people in Asia in the process, and brings the major countries with the greatest risk in a pandemic into the decision process for tackling the pandemic, this includes the rest of the world.     ...

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Michael Barr was appointed in July 2022 to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors by president Biden, and made the vice chair of financial supervision. As a legal scholar at the University of Michigan with a number of books published on the plight of black Americans after the financial crisis of 2008, he is familiar with the problems created by banks from a laissez fairre approach to regulation.  Barr helped write the rules for the legislation on supervision of banks after the financial crisis of 2008 that hurt worker and families, and minorities particularly in places like Detroit. He is now responsible for correcting the problems created by the Trump legislation that exempted banks under $250 billion from this regulation. Barr will bring this down to $100 billion, the original 2008 legislation has a threshold of $50 billion for banks to be subject to oversight by the central bank and stress testing. In 2018 Barr said about Trump's legislation to limit regulatory oversight in an op-ed in American Banker- "The rules (after 2008) were not meant to apply only to the largest handful of systemically important firms. It is the very antithesis of macro-prudential supervision to focus only on the largest handful of financial firms and to ignore risks elsewhere in the system." ...

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The first proposal that led to the strike at Boeing offered workers only 27%. The new proposal offer 43% over 4 years. As this increase is over 4 years some of the wage increase is dissipated by inflation over that period. For 33,000 workers at Boeing it represented a fair settlement that would also help the company rebuild its finances, and it was approved by 59% of the workers voting at the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. Workers are back to work by November 12. Workers were upset about a deal 10 years back that let Boeing freeze a pension plan that guaranteed monthly retirement payouts. Boeing lost $6.1 billion in the 3rd quarter 2024 and raised $21 billion by selling shares to investors to strengthen its financial position. Quality control was a major issue, a series of financial industry professionals failed to understand the production assembly line processes. Julie Su, Labor Secretary facilitated the discussions. President Biden said “Good contracts benefit workers, businesses and consumers." The deal includes a $12,000 ratification bonus, compared to $3000 bonus in the initial offer. And it calls for improved retirement benefits, commitment by Boeing to build its next commercial airplane in the Seattle region.   ...

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Children in the US should not be directed to educational content developed by tech companies using writers in Kenya and Philippines who lack the education to do this. A data labeler that hires people in Philippines and Kenya at $8 an hour, hundreds of thousands of low cost contractors, to create content. Some of the content is of such low quality that it had to be redone by Scale employees, says this story in WSJ. It started out providing this to self driving technologies companies needing data labeling, and now does this for AI.  Samples of questions for content are - explain a moon landing to a 6 year old, says the WSJ. Serious questions about quality of content going to AI and the willingness of Tech companies including Google and Apple to not make this a priority.  Education requires a different approach for quality of content and the tech monopolies are not the ones who should be in this role to build the educational content that a team of scientists and faculty envisioned in cultural literacy for the US under ED Hirsch since the 1970's. More than at other times in US history this is important to preserve the Nation the founders envisoned. ...

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The Liberal Democrats Ed Davey attracted attention with some jet ski stunts just before the election. It showed the lighter side of him. Lib Democrats want to be a friend of Labour and Keir Starmer. Together  the 34 percent Labour voting and 12% Libs, 7% Greens adds to 53% of the vote, Versus the Tory 24% and Reform UK wing of Tory at 14% adding up to 38%. This was apparent in the Q&A session in parliament. Not so well known is that this kind of fits Davey well- he is caring for a teenage disabled son and has cared for his terminally ill mother. The Libs won safe Tory seats is how it all started with someone coming up with the stunts idea to get media to focus on the Libs.  In parliament it is strange as if Libs are the friendly Opposition in Q&A and Sunak unconvincing as Leader of the Opposition. With Tory conservative vote split into Farage and Sunak factions, the Libs won 71 seats. In parliament now Labour has 404 seats, Tories 121, and Davey's Lib Dems 72 seats, Farage Reform just 5 seats after so much work pulling down Tories, and Scottish Nationalists just 9 seats. ...

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Huaxi, Jiangsu province, a few hours car ride northwest of Shanghai, is a village of 2000 residents. It has built a 74 story skyscraper, with a concert hall and a revolving restaurant. The village residents have joint ownership through Jiangsu Huaxi Corporation with the companies 2009 report claiming it has investments in businesses that return 50 billion renminbi or $7.7 billion in income. About 25,000 workers, mostly migrant workers, are said to be employed by the village. These workers work and live in an area outside the village. The whole story appears to be more that a bit bizarre. There is no other information on where this money is coming from and who is managing it. If anything this kind of story suggests how inflated and bizarre the property market in China has become. Even the word bubble may be understating what is happening. A massive misallocation of capital is taking place with the lack of transparency and corruption making this possible, which will very likely affect long term development....

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Alexis Tsipras of the Syriza Party in Greece and the effort to reduce the face value of Greece's debt after elections in Jan 2015.

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Car sales have rebounded quickly in Russia. Total sales of 1.8 million are expected in 2010, according to Toyota. Sales should reach 2 million by 2011 according to analysts.