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The Economist magazine says Mr. Trump's claim that he could fix things because he is an outsider is now quickly proving to be false. The lack of experience works against the Trump administration as it stumbles from one crisis to another. The tweets that were used to turn voter sentiment against opponents now work the other way. There are other problems that are noted here but not emphasized to the extent they need to be. Mr. Trump, as Peggy Noonan, a Reagan aide, has pointed out in the WSJ, risks alienating the very blue collar vote, and older voters whose interests he claimed to defend. This happened with the Ryan Republican House health care bill as millions of poor Americans approaching retirement were one of the worst affected groups. The Economist points out that the next project to tackle tax reform has the same possible consequences for the Trump blue collar base, as it says Republican plans for tax reform are seen as regressive. Tax reform has eluded previous administrations, and requires more experience in building coalitions which the Trump administration lacks in its confrontational attitude towards Congressmen on both sides of the aisle who disagree with him. Improving the U.S. trade position, infrastructure investment are other areas that the administration plans to tackle, yet the first 100 days show that the lack of experience and the lack of a calm composed mind is hurting the Trump administration, to the point of policies that hurt the very voters who put their faith in the Trump administration to improve things. A similar process is unfolding in Britain as it faces a Brexit negotiation that the Economist points out has been badly handled by prime minister Theresa May, and could lead to worsening the economy if no deal is reached because the European Union sees that it is not in its interest to do so, and Ms. May realizes only later that she has taken nationalist sentiment a bit too far for a European economic arrangement to work and provide mutual benefit. A continent wide economic arrangement that it was the wisdom of past leaders from Britain, France and Germany to support for over six decades is not easily undone by one vote, or one government. ...

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On my bookshelf is NY financier Felix Rohatyn's 2009 book, Bold Endeavors, citing the bold investments America has made in the past from Louisiana Purchase, Erie Canal, Transcontinental Railroad, Land Grant Colleges, Homestead Act, Panama Canal, Rural Electrification, Interstate Highway System, and how this needs to happen once again. NYT lacks this vision. In this Op-Ed it  leaves the field open after comparing Mamdani to De Blasio's failure to run NYC. NYT Editorial Board says Mayor Bloomberg was an effective manager and ran the city better than other mayors, it describes the accomplishments of Andrew Cuomo but does not give Cuomo second chances to use his experience to serve New York City, after Michael Bloomberg comes out in favor of Cuomo. This is  NYT and NYC dysfunction. It says there is so much to do in NYC to improve life in the city but refuses to make the tough decisions needed to make things happen, turning into someone who decides who gets second chances to serve the city and the country.  The Washington Post was clear in warning about the danger of a "free everything" Mayor as this has never worked and fiscal chaos happened in NYC in the 1970's, a NYC near bankruptcy in 1975 which Rohatyn tackled as head of NY's Municipal Assistance Corporation and $10 billon in bonds backed by New York state. NYT and NYC residents have short memories. Most have forgotten Rohatyn and his vision in Bold Endeavors, or were not part of the American fabric of the 20th century, which again points to the importance of history, civics and education. ...

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Biden's last 100 days in office. His effort to make things better, a conviction that he would have won enough white working class voters to win the election. Turnout was way way higher when Biden ran in 2020. It dropped by about 10 million voters in 2024 compared to 2020. Many white working class voters of the 82 million who voted for Biden in 2020 simply simply did not turn up to vote while DJT clung on to the 75 million votes he had in 2016. Transgender, a sense that everything was changing too quickly culturally, the fentanyl crisis adding to migrant surge creating a backlash for Harris. Biden makes an effort to lock in the gains made in the last 4 years in a number of areas. A remarkable life and one that brings back the Democrats closer to their roots under FDR in 1932 and his uncle Teddy Roosevelt a Republican fighting for the working class since 1902, that FDR inherited. The nation under DJT simply inherits the role played by TR as Republican in 1902 fighting for the working class after two southerners Carter and Clinton let Democrat ties to working class wither and support for China entering WTO and taking over manufacturing leadership. Obama letting Silicon Valley distance Democrats from workers even further and dragging on wars that served no purpose for America. ...

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The Cajas, local savings banks, are a symbol of the excesses and lack of financial controls of the bubble years in Spain. The local savings banks were run by authoritarian leaders who remained in office for many years, and were influential in the political system. The Cajas expanded into real estate during the real estate bubble, and many of the cajas had to be merged by the federal government under new management after the bursting of the bubble. Minder describes the culture at Cajas banks in Galicia, the region in the northwest of Spain that is the home region of prime minister Mariano Rajoy. Julio Fernandez Gayoso, or known as Don Julio in the old baronial manner, was one such bank executive who ran the the larges cajas bank in Galicia as his own fiefdom till he was 80, and only quit when forced to resign in an investigation.

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Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan's early years in Washington D.C. working for Senator Robert Kasten as an intern and on his staff, at Empower America for Jack Kemp and in other jobs.

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Michael Gerson offers his assessment of president Obama's 7 years in office, saying that after this period the public has lost faith in American liberalism, that Obama held it all together through a self-centredness that is now replaced by public rage that has brought out other self-centred politicians in the Republican party, such as Donald Trump. Deutsche Welle summed up its view from Europe of the Obama presidency as a period that was little more than a transitional presidency. Gero Schliess writing in DW.com, says one of the tragedies of this presidency is that the much talked about change would come about only under a successor, in a best case scenario under a Democratic successor. Yet if Gerson is right Americans are losing faith in American liberalism after the Obama years, with the setbacks suffered by the white working class and the middle class in these years, and the political deadlock that has prevented action to help them. Speaker Paul Ryan recently convened a conference on this subject. In October 2014 Fed chairwoman Janet Yellen described the problem at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston conference on economic opportunity and inequality, questioning whether the trends were "compatible with the values rooted in our nation's history, and the high value Americans tend to place on equality of opportunity."...

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Former Defense Secretary in the second term of the Obama administration, Chuck Hagel, says U.S. president Obama hurt his credibility when he failed to act on his own comments of a "red line" being crossed following the chemical attacks in Syria by the Assad government. Hagel was critical in an article in Foreign Policy magazine of the way the national security advisor, Susan E. Rice, ran discussions on foreign policy issues, with too many meetings and discussion followed up with deferring difficult decisions.

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To understand the way DJT has selected key people- it follows a traditional Republican pattern getting the best qualified Republicans on board. Some of them may not be as good as the ones they replace but some may be better administrators with good judgement. Sheila Bair of Wichita, Kansas, ran the FDIC from 2006-2011 and was one of the finest at FDIC who also contributed to solve the 2009 financial crisis.  Gary Gensler was slow in acting on cryptocurrency and other regulatory matters. He is one of the first to go in the new DJT administration. At the SEC a former SEC commissioner now legal officer at Robin Hood, or law partner at Sullivan and Cromwell. At CFPB a law professor at George Mason University or a previous Comptroller of the Currency. To understand where DJT is headed there are opposing ideas cap credit card interest rates at 10% that no Democratic administration ever brought up, and discarding a rule challenged in courts that caps credit card late fees. The VP Vance's instincts also come into play as he has also fought to lighten the burden on consumers. The Comptroller of the Currency- A law partner at Jones Day, who was Deputy Comptroller of the Currency in the past. The five member FDIC can only have maximum of 3 members from one political party. For the FDIC to replace Martin Gruenberg who had to resign for not taking enough action to correct a toxic workplace that was unfriendly to women, DJT will consider the Republican Vice chairman of the FDIC, or one of the Republicans board members on the FDIC  ran an investigation into the FDIC.  ...

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This report in the WSJ says about Evergrande and China's housing boom that it was a risky race against time in which developers took in billions of dollars of borrowed money from buyers in cash to launch project after project in every Chinese province. The 25 year old company founded by 37 year old Hui Ka Yan in Guangzhou was setup in 1996. Its name stands for "constant" and "big" in Chinese and during the rapid expansion of the Chinese economy after 2000 it played a part in meeting dream of home ownership. It did this by taking in full cash payment for apartments that were delivered years later. It is the largest symbol of debt for housing developers in China $89 billion in outstanding debt and millions of unfinished properties, 42% of debt due in less than 1 year. Today Evergrande is collapsing, unable to pay creditors, and paying creditors in construction with unfinished properties, says this WSJ Report. Capital Economics estimates that Evergrande has presold 1.4 million apartments valued at $200 billion that are not yet finished. Typical is a woman in retail sales in Shenzen who invested 1.4 million yuan or about $217,000 in 2018 for one 400 square foot apartment in a high rise building.  The Chinese government is unlikely to stop Evergrande from collapsing. Its only interest is in protecting the people who paid in cash for unfinished apartments. ...

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As David Calhoun steps down from Boeing following the stepping down of the previous CEO Muilenberg, both for quality issues at Boeing this report in Yahoo Finance by Allan Sloan shows the effects of the accounting training and lack of awareness and conviction to put Quality uppermost. Calhoun joined GE at the time when Jack Welch was running the company. The book by David Gelles looked at Welch's period at GE with concern because of the use of accounting methods and finance businesses to make results look better- "How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland, and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America." Over the decades in which one sees American manufacturing neglected one also sees the rise of executives in finance who ran companies in America that showed little interest in the hard work of manufacturing and surrendered leadership to first Japan and then China. Boeing CEO Calhoun is shown as another of the CEO's from GE who trained  under Welch who joined Boeing and other companies.The adjoining video in WSJ points this out after the Alaska Airlines incident and other incidents of flawed plane design and manufacturing- the basic problem being a lack of Quality and Worker and Quality practices Friendly Culture at Boeing. WSJ says three layers of quality checks are essentially worthless without a emphasis on worker training, on quality culture, cost cutting to get planes out the door, and lack of investment in Quality Control and Inspection. ...

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The bonds developed between Kamala Harris as AG in the settlement with the banks for faulty mortgages with other AG's is shown here in NYT. Roy Cooper of North Carolina was one of the AG's Kamala had a lot of contact with in Washington and in Durham. Roy, 67 years, was elected governor twice in North Carolina. Beshear, 49 years, was AG in Kentucky at the time. He was elected governor of Kentucky, a Democrat in a state voting Republican. Roy took on the banks "for relief for homeowners who were wrongfully foreclosed upon,” Mr. Cooper said.  “I admired her tenacity then as I do now.” Mr Hood AG for Mississippi says Kamala was the fun AG with a sense of humor, and Roy Cooper was the affable low key guy, the gentleman lawyer who never raised his voice, and yet built coalitions and was effective. The AG of Pennsylvania who was elected as Kamala left office as AG and ran for the US Senate, is Ben Shapiro, 51 years. Shapiro came in as AG when Kamala left the AG office to run for the US Senate. He came to know Kamala when he was State Rep. and has stayed in touch over the years. He led a multistate effort that led to the Opioid settlement, and is popular in Pennsylvania with 61% approval and won the governor's office with help from the suburbs and rural counties in 2020. ...

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The Republican view supported by deficit commission panel members Paul Ryan and Jeb Hensarling, is that the proposals do not do enough to cut runaway health care spending. The Journal editorial says this is like doing a defense budget review and excluding Iraq and Afghanistan, and that Republicans should reject the report on these grounds alone.

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Anshu Jain, co-CEO of Deutsche Bank, will be replaced by John Cryan, a former UBS executive, who has no connections to investment banking. Deutsche Bank's investment banking operations would have to take on more leverage to be competitive with larger investment banks, according to experts. This would put the bank in serious problems with regulators. Another problem evident at the recent shareholders meeting is that the old management is perceived as part of the problem that led to large legal settlements with authorites. Anshu Jain leaves at the end of June, and the other co-CEO Jurgen Fitschen will leave in 2016. This closes a chapter in Deutsche Bank's history in which its image in Germany has suffered badly because of investigations.

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Mario Draghi, former head of the European Central Bank, who ran ECB policy to rescue the Euro currency in 2012 is being asked to form a new government by the president. Mr. Conte's coalition failed to get the support of Matteo Renzi's left party in parliament leading to its collapse.  Italians are wary of the austerity policies of Mario Monti,  professor and EU bureaucrat appointed by premier Berlusconi to the EU Commission, who was appointed  during the eurozone financial crisis in November 2011 by the president.  At the time prime minister Berlusconi had lost the confidence of EU officials. Mario Draghi has a different history after his work at the European Central Bank counteracting the austerity approach of German finance ministry. He also steered the ECB policy at a difficult time for Italy with rising interest on debt. Today Italy has lost about 89,000 lives, and 8.8% of GDP was lost in 2020. Moderate factions of all parties right and left wing are expected to support Draghi. Draghi also has the advantage of 200 billion in euro funds coming from the EU for Italy's recovery in 2021. Germany today is not the austerity policy Germany of 2011, as it supports going big and spending for the recovery. ...

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A detailed account on how Corzine ran MF Global, the motivation behind his decisions, and how his plan unraveled. The initial motivation for his decision to invest heavily in European sovereign bonds was to generate profits quickly to preserve MF Global's credit ratings. During his days as a bond trader at Goldman in the 1980's and 1990's Corzine was known to make risky bets to generate large profits. The same strategy failed to work in the highly volatile environment of 2011, when even the U.S. sovereign bond credit rating was downgraded.

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Questions remain about how the U.S. budget battle and possible shutdown of government will affect the political support for the Democrats and Republicans.