LyrArc Article Gist
While much of the focus is on the brief air war in the Punjab region in the media. In China, India and the US the real and major challenges are economic. As US tariffs is really about getting back its industrial base from the EU and China, China faces the challenge of adapting to this situation and loss of access to EU and US technologies for the next generation, and India with a smaller industrial base faces challenge of building a large enough industrial base for modernization with full access to US and EU technologies. This is then the study of change starting right here in Uttar Pradesh and in the city of Kanpur. New Metro in Kanpur, new power plants, and new manufacturing plants and infrastructure. PM Modi says- "There are two most essential conditions for the industrial progress of a state: first, self-reliance in the energy sector — that is, uninterrupted electricity supply; and second, infrastructure and connectivity. Today we have inaugurated several power plants: the 660 MW Panki Power Plant, 660 MW Neyveli Power Plant, 1320 MW Jawaharpur Power Plant, 660 MW Obra C Power Plant, and 660 MW Khurja Power Plant. This is a major step toward fulfilling Uttar Pradesh’s energy needs. With these power plants, electricity availability in UP will increase significantly, giving a boost to industries here. Today, development projects worth over $6.7 billion (Rs 47,000 crore) have also been inaugurated or had their foundation stones laid.” ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Keith Bradsher of the NYT points out that the tariffs war between China and the U.S. is not just about trade and competitive advantage. He says this marks a fundamental shift in the way China operates as the world's manufacturing floor. Gradually change is taking place as production moves out of China to places such as Vietnam, Indonesia, India, and other countries in Asia. The entire supply chain for manufacturing is affected in the tariffs war and the U.S. insistence on China changing its policies subsidizing manufacturing plants to maintain an export advantage in violation of WTO principles for fair trade.

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India gets 4,100 megawatts from nuclear power or only 2.7% of capacity of 152,000 megawatts. It currently has 17 nuclear power plants. THe US-India Nuclear Cooperation Treaty signed in October 2008 wil give abig push to nuclear energy in India. Six new plants will be built. Nuclear power will rise to an estimated 40,000 megawatts by 2020, and Prime Minister Singh said it could generate 470,000 megawatts by 2050. THis week India's Hindusthan Construction Company signed adeal with Amec PLC, a UK engineering and project management company for taking up nuclear energy plants in India. About 500 engineers are eventually expected to work for the company.

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DJT says Iran does not want to talk to the Europeans, it wants to talk to the Americans. He says it is hard to stop the war when one side is winning. Russia and the US have better relations than under the Biden administration which is proving to be an important factor in this war. As it is about nuclear proliferation, not regional powers- the Israelis, the Saudis and the Iranians. Both Russia and the US are technologically sophisticated powers with different interests, they are world powers because they have first and foremost important responsibilities in nuclear non proliferation and the health of the planet. By allowing regional conflict in Eastern Europe to cloud this fact and not engage with Russia as a world power the US under Obama and Biden had failed to grasp a key principle of peaceful relations since World War II. We argue that "western powers" is a concept of colonial powers France and Britain, and western civilization is the reliable concept that includes Russia, and includes China and India that have embraced the creation of the modern world by western civilization. ...

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Airbus and Boeing are expected to announce a net increase in orders of 50% in 2010, net of cancellations. Higher airline traffic is one reason, the other reason is that airline leasing companies are coming back in a big way. Lessors account for more than 35% of all orders at Airbus this year, up from 5% last year. At Boeing lessors have placed 21% of the orders, up from 12%. For Airbus and Boeing combined, the 27% of all orders placed by lessors is the highest proportion since 2000, according to Ascend Worldwide. Airbus and Boeing see lessors as more reliable buyers than airlines which are locked into their routes. Leasing companies are benefitting from funding by private equity, investment funds and commercial banks, which have taken up more than $18 billion in equity and debt issued by airplane lessors, according to Gary Liebowitz, an analyst at Wells Fargo Securities. Many lessors are yielding 10%, far above what can be gained in other sectors. Banks are skittish about lending to airlines, but see lessors as less risky. Airlines need planes, but banks have restricted lending to airlines. Stricter financial regulations and higher borrowing costs for banks have reduced lending to all but the strongest airlines, says Kostya Zolotusky, managing director of capital markets development for Boeing's finance division. Investors like lessors because they can move planes to where they are needed worldwide, which is what happened after the financial crisis of 2008. Lessors make money by getting discounts on large orders of planes and then renting them out at higher rates to airlines. Airlines lease the planes for a few months to a number of years, when they can't afford to buy planes or need flexibility. The shift is significant, as Boeing expects one in two planes to be owned by lessors, compared to one in three today. AIG's unit, the International Lease Finance Corporation, faced problems during the crisis. ILFC has raised $9.4 billion in new debt issues in 2010 that allowed it to refinance existing debt and repay loans to the US government. There are risks, say some executives, if speculative orders and competition among lessors get Airbus and Boeing to make too many planes. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
For passengers air travel nowadays is travelling on planes that are often totally booked. This is because airlines are cutting flights. And with fewer passengers after the economic crisis hit, airlines are having a difficult time cutting flights enough to meet the continuing drop in the number of passengers. Before the crisis business and international travel was a good source of revenue, now this is fading as there is more competition on transatlantic routes with about 50 airlines offering flights between US cities and European cities. The liberalization of air travel between the two continents with the 2007 "open skies" agreement is keeping downward pressure on prices. The International Air Transport Association says the number of passengers travelling on business and first class tickets between N. America and Europe was down 18.4% in April 2009, compared with same month in 2008. Traffic between N. America and Asia was down 26%, for the same period. This is hitting Lufthansa ansd KLM-Air France hard, but is helping Easyjet, Ryanair, and Air Berlin. As demand drops airlines will continue to cut capacity, and this will be done by cutting the number of flights on a route and using smaller planes. After all this capacity cutting takes place by September, OAG Aviation estimates that the seats on domestic flights will drop to 66.5 million from a peak of 84 million in 2001, a drop of 21%. Some airlines which rely less on corporate travellers will not see as steep a drop. These airlines are Southwest, JetBlue and AirTran. Airlines that may not survive the effects of the economic crisis, with tight credit and drop in air travel, and volatile oil prices, are United Airlines and US Airways. United relied heavily on corporate and trans-Pacific fliers before the economic crisis. Fitrch Ratings cites this in reducing the credit rating for United to junk status, as well as the heavy debt maturities in 2009 and 2010. In June 2009 United raised $175 million by issuing new debt, but at an interest rate of 17%. At US Airways the combined airline with America West after a$1.5 billion merger is struggling. It has the thinnest cash position of any airline according to a Morningstar research analyst, and may need further borrowing to meet debt payments. With all assets already mortgaged US Airways may have little borrowing capability left....

LyrArc Article Gist
WSJ asks the question how are companies run in America by CEO's during the 9 month old pandemic? To answer that question it looks at Emerson Electric, based in Ferguson, Missouri, with its 90,000 employees in the U.S. and around the world. David Farr is CEO of American conglomerate Emerson Electric that makes products in a number of industries, for longer than most CEO's in America. At 65 years today, he has managed the company since he became CEO at the age of 45. It has 8000 employees in China and 10,000 in Mexico, and plants in the midwest, all hard hit by the pandemic. Add to this racial riots after killing of a black man in Ferguson, Missouri, and you have a challenging situation for any CEO.    As a son of a plant manager at a Corning plant in Corning, New York and growing up in a manufacturing environment in England, his instincts are that customers are what matter the most. That shrinking production could lead to some competitors making it and others shrinking if they did not act quickly to protect their supply chains. His goal is to keep factories running to have parts ready for their customers who made the finished product in the oil and gas industry and in factories where Emerson supplied the automated processes. As a first step he has 7 charter planes fly parts from a Nanjing factory to Shanghai when the trucks stopped moving. He campaigns with the Mexican ambassador to the U.S. to have the company listed as essential business to be kept open in a lockdown but fails. He gets up at 5.30 am and works till 8 pm and spends most nights reading, lounging with 2 spaniels, and going to bed early. He tells his son who works at Caterpillar company to get back to work as soon as he can as he believes being on the job is really really important. Yet he is worried up his daughter working as a pastry chef in New York and wants her to come back home to the midwest. He is a manager in the old style saying he wouldn't hire American workers because the Obama administration was out to destroy American manufacturing with its environmental rules forgetting that he was doing just that in the end-  and what had America and the concept of a free nation and a free people with opportunities for all have anything to do with like or dislike of any president or party. He also has his quirks, keeping 5 baseball bats and swinging a bat while he took walks and did some thinking. Passionate, hard working, and getting it done he keeps Emerson in the game as an industrial competitor from the U.S. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
United Airlines fuel bill will go up by a huge amount from $3.5 billion to $9.5 billion. As a result United will cut its fleet from 460 planes to 360 planes and trim capacity and routes and trim its workforce. As a result big changes are ahead for the industry and may change the nature of flying, who flies and a what price.

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A look back through Lyrarc at how rainforest deforestation was taking place in 2007 and amazing UN pictures of maps of Borneo island for 2000, 2005, 2020 showing how deforestation was taking out most of Borneo's rainforest by 2020. This is a call to action from Lyrarc after the pledge of Brazil, Russia, China, India, US, Indonesia to stop deforestation at the COP26 Glasgow.  This report from Surabaya, Indonesia, by Tom Wright, in the July 3, 2007, Wall Street Journal WSJ shows how this was extensive deforestation of one of the few remaining rainforests on the planet earth was taking place and is a must read for everyone. The links show work by a British ecologist journalist who fought hard to prevent continued deforestation in Sarawak, Malaysia, where she grew up as a child when her father was a colonial period police officer in that region. She could see the disappearing canopy in the rainforest and her protests were carried out from the outside.  ...

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Seantor Dan Sullivan and the WSJ say Alaska's economic potential and its standard of living was ignored with blanket blocking of any development of its resources. WSJ says under the Biden administration the state was turned into a nature museum.  WSJ says the state's leaders know that spoiling the environment would be mistake. Yet developing some of the state's resources would help the US in sourcing natural gas and rare earth minerals for renewable energy products. This would achieve a policy balance. One of the arguments North Dakota Governor Borghum and new US Interior Secretary makes is that China is building a coal plant every 2 weeks with 12 built in the first 6 months of 2024. As of July 2024 Statista shows China with 1161 coal plants operational, 6 times the 204 US coal plants and 4 times the 295 coal plants in India, 89 in Japan- and 90% of new coal power capacity added. This means climate change issues remain no matter what the US does. By using natural gas fired electricity the US gets transition time for the shift to renewables and can attack the cost of living, export to the EU.  ...

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Delta is focussing attention on upgrading planes and improving customer service. Delta had the highest number of customer complaints in the first half of 2010, according to the Department of Transportation. Delta ranked 14th in on time performance. Delta is upgrading planes with video and TV programs and flat-bed seats. The airline is spending $1.2 billion to upgrade its terminal at JFK airport in New York.

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The US supports F-16 training for Ukrainian pilots. Initial training showed Ukrainian pilots able to learn flying the planes in just 4 months. President Biden made this decision and informed G7 leaders in Hiroshima. Biden also agreed to NATO allies transferring F16s to Ukraine. The changes are coming as Ukraine launches a counter offensive against Russian occupation of parts of the country in the east and south. This report says the idea behind it is that it would bring Russia to the negotiating table to arrange an armistice even though it does not settle the key issues behind the war. It would bring an end to the war through a cessation of hostilities. Tighter controls are also put on economic sanctions to limit Russian ability to finance the war without also seeing its effects.

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Boeing $50 billion new fighter jet program with profit guaranteed in the development stage. Boeing beat Lockheed to get the defense contract from the US government. In earlier defense contracts cost overruns led to Boeing losing money. Defense makes up a third of Boeing revenues. Boeing has reported six straight annual losses after problems with 737, a strike over wages, and safety problems on its planes, problems on the assembly line in quality control. The private equity type of management from finance executives has not worked well for Boeing as these executives lacked knowledge of what is happening on the manufacturing assembly lines. Boeing, a American icon for most of the twentieth century needs to get back to the basics of making good planes.

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"My economic plan is working and we are just getting started," says president Biden about the US economy as it registers growth of 2.4% in the second quarter. Inflation is cut to 3% from about 9% last year. Even US central bank Fed increases in rates by 5 percentage points since March 22 at consecutive bank meetings has not slowed down the US economy enough. Biden says there is nothing accidental about this. Biden pushed investment in the US. Business investment increased by 56% in the last quarter accounting for a third of the economic growth, much of it in infrastructure, in bridges and roads, in manufacturing plants. Biden administration has allocated $299 billion in infrastructure funding for projects, another $503 billion is done by private investment. And more is coming down the pipeline.

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When it comes to climate change China is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world- more than North America, Europe, South America and Africa combined. It emits about one third of greenhouse gas emissions in the world. When it comes to climate change action China is meeting its 2030 targets 6 years earlier, and it is meeting all the increased use of energy through renewables. Yet there is another side and this is that China is building coal fired plants at a rapid pace to meet its energy needs. Xie Zenhua meets John Kerry at Sunnylands estate in southern California to discuss how China and the US can cooperate on climate change action. No two nations are so critical to meet the challenges posed by climate change from fires to floods and drought.

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China agrees to drop a 40% tariff on American cars after a trade truce is announced following the Xi-Trump meetings at G-20 meeting in Buenos Aires. About $9.5 billion in car exports are made chiefly from Alabama with German plants, and the states of California, Kentucky and South Carolina. For China this is a small concession as this is only 4% of China's car market, or 1.2 million cars, and are aimed at the affluent market.

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Nineteen year old Belgian Zara Rutherford becomes the youngest woman to fly solo roundtrip around the world. Her parents are avid pilots and she learned to fly at the age of 14. She took off in a microlight plane Shark Aero on Aug 18 and landed after 52,000 kilometres of flying in Flanders on Jan. 20. She went through UK, Greenland, Americas, Siberia, Southeast Asia, India, Saudi Arabia and Europe. In that journey she went through freezing temperatures over Siberia, smog in India and wildfires over the US northwest.

She plans to study electrical engineering and would like to see more girls taking interest in science and engineering, and in flying planes.

Her approach was bold and straightforward. It was a trip that she thought was- impossible, expensive, complicated, dangerous, a logistical nightmare, so she never thought about it twice. 

LyrArc Article Gist
One reason why outside of the midwest there is not as much concern for Ford, and GM, is the entry of foreign automanufacturers. Good jobs are being created in the south by foreign auto companies, even as Ford and GM close plants there. And the appreciating won makes it more attractive for South Korean companies to build plants in the U.S. Kia Motors Corp. said it has chosen West Point, Ga., as the site for its first U.S. factory. The investment provides good news for a state that has heard both Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp. say they will close plants there as they restructure to cut costs. Also note the forecast of sales at 800,000 in 2010 for Kia, up from 275,00 in 2005, moving market share from 1.6% in 2005 to almost triple that. Where will it come from?

LyrArc Article Gist
The use of automation and robots is playing a large part in new capital investment for upgrading plants or setting up new plants by companies in the U.S. This is affecting the pace at which jobs are added in 2011-2013. The lower cost of capital with low interest rates and incentives for 2011 that enabled companies to write off 100% of investments in the first year have accelerated the investment in machines and software.

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Shoichiro Toyoda and Okuda who ran Toyota in the eighties and nineties to make Toyota what it is today, question Toyota's strategy. The precise criticism is outlined in this article at the timwe Tooyota was considering its eigth plant in Tupelo, Mississippi. Their criticism focusses on the complacency to tolerate higher labor costs, to accept less manufacturing efficiency in overseas plants compared to Japan, and put in billions of dollars in new plants which may not be profitable quickly when the same result can be accomplished by adding more assembly lines to existing plants. The Toyota Tundra plant in Texas has overcapacity as the pickup has not sold as expected and this could happen at other plants if Toyota is not careful enough. Also the decisions to build plants in many different states appears to be based not just on manufacturing efficiency but also on desire to win political support in those states- California, Indiana and 6 southern states. Has that gone too far even when it is cheaper to manufacture in Japan because of the weaker yen? If it helps to keep the targets for Toyota vehicle content made in the USA (when imports have increased significantly) cannot this be accomplished by adding more assembly lines to existing plants? These are the points made by Shoichiro and Okuda. Especially that complacency may be getting into decisionmaking at Toyota. Behind all this is the fear that the Big Three may finally be breaking free of the higher unionized wage and benefit costs that put them at a disadvantage. And at the same time the quality gap may be shruinking between Toyota and the US manufacturers. This is evidenced in other articles, one recently on Ford's progress in JD Powers surveys. Here the figure of 2.3 million vehicles recalled in 2005 by Toyota is cited as showing Toyota slipping in the quality it was known for....

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The WPost editorial says more money may be needed in the future than the $50 billion the government has already committed to GM. A lot of the basic steps have been taken in the Obama restructuring, closing brands and dealerships, cleaning up the balance sheet, bringing costs and benefits in line with foreigh nonunion plants. But, says the Post. the auto task force wanted to see 16 plants closed, the agreement will close 14 plants and three of them will be idled instead of shut down, with GM paying maintenance and other costs. Breakeven is at 10 million vehicles per year market but this depends on GM's market share. If the market at 9.5 million vehicles per year at present shrinks further in 2010, and GM's market share faces more pressures from competition, the prospects of GM making money will dim.

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Nickel cadmium batteries - this year 2008 the European Union is banning the sale of all nickel cadmium batteries. Question is why is the US not banning them. And why are companies like Energizer, Duracell, P&G, Mattel, Toys R Us and Walmart still buying them? Why is Panasonic making them? A toy costs $1.50 less to make using nickel cadmium batteries. Are parents aware of what it does to workers making them? Are plants safe in developing countries especially in corruption prone coercive environments like the one in factories in China? Some of the owners of such factories are in Hong Kong, Hong Kong based companies, are they aware enough of the risks and the ethics of doing is? This story is of an engineer who was exposed to factory conditions in a company GP that was supposed to be a good company to work for, and few knew about the effects of cadmium in the year 1995 when she joined. The Panasonic factory is in Wuxi which is not in some remote part of China. And note this about 10% of China's arable land is contaminated with heavy metals such as cadmium according to China's own State Environmental Protection Agency, and the metals are entering China's food supply. 12 studies have shown unsafe level of cadmium in fruits and vegetables. Is this a necessary price of industrialization or is it possible to find a way thats better- a challenge for countries like India. Can there be better protection of workers and still have industrialization? Wouldn't it make sense that a motivated well treated work force will perform better in better working conditions. Aren't there costs involved for workers and owners of such plants. Owners also bear costs, bad press, medical payments, workers leave and good workers are hard to find in the wave of bad publicity and health risks, customers in the west refuse to buy the product, the company's brand name is tarnished forever, as would happen for GP in this case. The coercive patterns of using police to suppress publicity for a Hong Kong Company shows owners in Hong Kong have the same disregard for worker rights, even when living in an area that one hears talk about democratic rights. See the link to chemical spills contaminating a river in China also by a Hong Kong based company. ...

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Has the world missed opportunities for progress in renewables? The 2022 Global Renewable Report by REN21 international policy network answers this question. The renewables accounted for 20% of world's energy use in 2011. In 2021 it advanced only 8 percentage points to 28% over 10 years. This is important because use of coal, oil and gas increased by 4% and carbon emissions by 6% in 2021 with the end of lockdowns from the pandemic and increased energy consumption, according to International Energy Agency.

Something is wrong also in the capital going into subsidies to reduce prices of oil and gas which are $18 trillion for 2018 to 2020, $5.9 trillion in 2020 alone. Compare this with the $366 billion invested in renewables in 2021 and one can see the huge dimensions of the problem facing the world, this planet Earth that we live in.

LyrArc Article Gist
Economy Minister Habeck says- "Our energy system will be structured differently: we will have 80% renewable energies by 2030."  Germany will close its last 3 nuclear plants this week. Germany is shutting down all nuclear energy when other countries are increasing reliance on nuclear energy. Westinghouse is building Poland's first nuclear plant. Britain, France and Finland are increasing nuclear energy with its very low carbon emissions. Biden administration in the US is backing the building of a new generation of smaller nuclear reactors. Mr. Habeck the Economy minister says for the short term Germany has its natural gas storage tanks half full with the winter heating season over. New LNG terminals and imports help replace Russian supplies. In the long term Germany is way ahead in renewable energy than other countries and will craft its own solution in its own way.

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Ukraine is in a position after the refugee outflow and closure of some industrial operations to send energy to Poland, Romania, Hungary and other countries in the European Union. Ukraine is speeding up synchronizing power lines in Ukraine to that in Poland so that energy can be exported easily. Ukraine could send 1.6 gigawatts of energy a day to EU countries up from 350 megawatts today once the changes are completed to the energy transmission infrastructure. Ukraine energy is cheaper than energy produced in Poland because of nuclear energy plants in Ukraine from the Soviet period. 

Workers are restoring a now defunct power line from a 2 gigawatt nuclear plant in western Ukraine to a nearby Polish city. Projects that would take decades are being done in months with US aid. Energy exports could bring Ukraine $1.6 billion a year.