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With the death toll over 10,000 on March 7, and a rise of 16% over the previous day, French public health authorites have set new rules for exercize with a daytime jogging ban. Jogging is allowed only when the streets are at the quietest in Paris and not allowed between 10.00 and 19.00 local time.

France's lockdown is strict unlike that in America. Anyone going outside has to carry a document giving the reason- shopping for necessities, visiting a doctor, or exercize within 1 kilometre or half a mile of their address. Police have fined hundreds of thousands of people for breaking these restrictions.

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The Chinese Academy of Environmental Planning, under the Ministry of Environmental Protection, has estimated cost of pollution in a new study of the costs of environmental pollution in China. The cost is estimated at $230 billion for 2010, or 3.5% of GDP, and close to 4 times the cost in 2004, showing the rapid degradation of the environment from rampant industrialization. The first such estimates were made in 2006 and since then come out spradically from the Environment Ministry. For 2004 the Environment Ministry estimated cost of pollution was $62 billion, for 2008 partial cost estimate was $185 billion. Even the $230 billion figure fo 2010 is incomplete say researchers. Only after strong public protests over Beijing's air pollution have government officials allowed candid reporting on environmental costs. Environmental costs extend to food contamination. A report on China Central Television recently said farmers in a village in Henan province used wastewater from a paper mill to grow wheat, which was then sent to cities as farmers in the village grow wheat for their own use from well water. A Deutsche Bank report in Feb 2013 says there will be a continuing decline in the environmental degradation for the next decade under current policies, higher coal consumption and growth in automobiles....

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Epic Systems of Verona, Wisconsin, is one of the companies engaged in digitizing health records. It has helped develop records for 40 million patients in hospital systems such as Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, Kaiser Permanente, the Cleveland Clinic, and John Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore and the Weill Cornell Physicians Organization of New York. Epic provides the software, the IT systems, the training and support. Epic is one of the pioneers in this, having been in the business for 30 years. About 40% of primary care doctors in the U.S. and 25% of hospitals use electronic patient records. The Federal government has provided $2.7 billion in funding from $27 billion of Stimulus funds assigned for the purpose of conversion to electronic medical records. This is likely to speed up the conversion. Other providers are Cerner, Allscripts, Meditech, Siemens Healthcare, G.E. Healthcare, and IBM. Epic Systems is considered the defacto standard in the industry for medical schools and some of the major hospital systems in the country. New contracts are leading to a major expansion of Epic Systems which employs 5100 people. Epic plans to hire an additional 1000 people. Revenue for the privately owned company are estimated at $1.2 billion, a 45% increase over the prior year. Epic is expected to have 127 million patients under medical records by mid 2013. To get the feedback essential for such a large conversion, CEO Faulkner relies on feedback from 250,000 doctors who use the Epic systems software, and on nurses and doctors from Epic who visit customer's sites to see first hand how it works and what needs improvement. Judith Faulkner started Epic more than 30 years ago. A project for the Psychiatry department led to other projects after she graduated in computer science from the University of Wisconsin. Epic continues to attract programmers to Wisconsin by making the Epic campus a fun environment and a great place to work. ...

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Nokia announced a loss of 929 million euros for the first quarter of 2012. Sales declined from 10.4 billon euros to 7.4 billion euros in the same quarter prior year. The only bright spot for the company is that the Lumia 900 sold throught AT&T has made a successful launch in the U.S. Nokia CEO Elop says the phone is sold out in stores in the U.S. Lumia sales were 2 million in the 1st quarter of 2012, at an average price of 220 euros ($290). Nokia's strategy now is to bring the Lumia line including the lower end Luma 610 phone to Asian markets by June- to China, Singapore, Vietnam, Taiwan, Indonesia and Malaysia. Nokia's biggest problem is the older Symbian phones, which consumers are passing by and which now have to be discounted rapidly or replaced quickly with the Lumia line. The other related problem is falling margins on basic phones as Chinese competitors discount heavily- basic Nokia phone prices fell 18% to 33 euros ($43) from 40 euros or($52) the prior year. The speed in the drop in business for mobile phones can be guaged from the sales decline of 40% in the 1st quarter from $9.3 billion to $5.6 billion. Things are made worse by the 772 million euro ($1 billion) charge taken for Nokia Siemens Networks, a network joint venture with Siemens. Sales for Nokia Siemens fell 7% in the first quarter to $3.8 billion. Nokia Siemens has 53 contracts to build new mobile networks with Long Term Evolution Technology more than competitors Ericsson and Huawei, according to Nokia Siemens. Everything now depends on the speed with which Nokia can move to its Lumia line across the board, especially in China....

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Once again the unemployment statistics lie- women's unemployment at 5.7% in 2014 does not reflect the real story. The number of women employed in 2014 is 55.2%, worse than in Oct. 2010. Many women looking for work give up and drop out of the work force, these women have not vanished, they are simply not being counted in the frequently quoted unemployment statistic. This spells bad news for Democrats in the midterm 2014 elections- today the households making less than 30,000 are almost evenly split on whether they vote Republican or Democratic 43% to 46%, according to polls by Pew Research Center, compared to the 2012 presidential election figures of 35% to 63%. Interestingly the reverse is true for voters with incomes over $100,000 where voters are about evenly split for Republican or Democratic choices for Congress. In 2012 presidential elections the Republicans had a 10 percentage point lead for this income group. Democratic advisors Carville and Greenberg advise not even mentioning the word "recovery" for the U.S. midterm 2014 Congressional elections. About 6.7 million people had multiple jobs in 2010, the figure now is 7 million. About 2.62 million people say they had part time jobs because they could not find full time work in April 2014 up from 2.57 million in Oct. 2010. A separate piece in the WSJ May 20, 2014, shows 10 million U.S. households under water on mortgages and another 10 million households having less than 20% equity in their homes in 2014....

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The issues China faces as it plans the next phase of massive urbanization. Urbanization is a major priority of prime minister Li Keqiang, which was also the focus of his postgraduate work in his student days. In the early 1980's about 20% of China was urbanized, this has changed over three decades to where the figure is 47%, plus 17% for workers working in the cities but classified as rural, a total of 64%. China's plan is to fully integrate 70% of the population or 900 millon into cities by 2025. In 2013 only 35% of the population has a urban residency permit, or hukou. The permit is needed for residents to register their children in local schools or qualify for medical programs in urban locations. One of the problems is the huge cost of doing this which it is feared could lead to inflation and higher debt levels. Currently local governments bear these costs using land sales, and central government transfer payments, but without added financing and unable to issue their own bonds, the local governments strictly limit the use of local school and health services to their own residents keeping out rural newcomers. Local government taking over farmer plots, often without enough compensation is highly unpopular in China. Other problems are- providing a steady stream of earnings for new urban residents from farms, if no employment can be found. So they can sustain themselves- especially as they get past 40 years of age when factory employment is harder to find. The government planners see the larger urban population as a way to shift from a largely export based economy and slowing growth, to a consumption based economy. But critics say the risk is that for this to happen new residents from the farming villages have to find jobs, something the government will have difficulty accomplishing. A permanent underclass of unemployed and other financially strapped citydwellers living around major cities, as has happened with the progress of urbanization in Brazil and Mexico, is something the government would want to avoid. ...

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Ed Wallace is very much on target when he says the esteem and loyalty has faded with the new generation replacing the older generations in the U.S. automobile market. The two generations have completely different perceptions of GM and Ford. He gives the background and paints the picture of their world, the perceptions and feeling of the older generations loyal to Detroit cars. His conclusion that this is gone forever may not be entirely true, as nostalgia cars or cars which go back to an earlier era may still have customer appeal. The perceptions also vary across regions, and is true for the west and south and other parts of America which have a higher proportion of foreign brands.

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This New York Times editorial asks whose side the Republicans are on when they try to water down needed financial reforms. Are they simply speaking for the banks who stand to lose billions of dollars in profits through unregulated derivates trading but increase systemwide financial risk. The NYT supports senator Blance Lincoln, an Arkansas Democrat who is chairwoman of the agriculture committee, and who took a strong position in favor of controlling derivatives. Her proposal requires nearly all derivatives be traded on exchanges with exemptions only for unique contracts which would be supervised by regulators, and for a strictly defined group of companies with specific purposes.

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Moderate far right, right and socialist have less meaning in the context of the French government of prime minister Michael Barnier. The NFP as the largest single party sees the turning down of it's moderate candidate Lucie Castets by Macron as not representative of the vote. Michael Barnier's choice as prime minister from the Les Republicains party with 47 members in the new National Assembly, the smallest of the top four parties NFP, Renaissance, RN and LR, means he will have to depend on Marie Le Pen's RN party to remain prime minister. Together the Les Republicains of Sarkozy and the Ensemble of Macron  have 213 members in the National Assembly representing the status quo, 168 for Ensemble Macron and 45 Les Republicians the Gaullist party. These two parties are the largest bloc combined compared to 182 seats for the socialist NFP Front Populaire and the Le Pen party with 143 seats. The strange twist is that Macron started out in the Socialist Party and was part of the Socialist administration of Francois Hollande, who formed his own party Renaissance (now Ensemble) to bring younger faces and replace the old political parties. This led to the decline of the Gaullist Les Republicains party. In 2024 Macron is back to the old parties- becoming part of an alliance with the old Les Republicains Gaullists. Yet the financial crises of 2009, the pandemic, and the inflation crises in France have changed France from what it was in the Gaullist De Gaulle period in the 60's to 90's, with a struggling lower and middle class who have shifted their support to Le Pen and to the Socialist Front Populaire. Barnier is left with the challenging job of combining new immigration policies (Le Pen) with socialist policies to help the middle and working class. A new consensus that says stopping migrants is part of helping working class (in Denmark and other EU countries) is how Barnier has to approach this situation to bring together different parties. ...

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Economic aid from Qatar enables the Morsi government in Egypt to defer agreement for an IMF loan of $4.8 billion which requires Egypt to cut social programs, further aggravating a difficult economic situation for the people of Egypt. It also comes as Egypt's economy has suffered a decline from two years of protest and its foreign exchange reserves have hit new lows. Qatar gave Egypt $3 billion in low interest loans at 3.5%. Earlier Qatar deposited $4 billion at the Egyptian central bank, and gave $1 billion in grant aid.

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New rules set by Brazil for investment in the oil industry give about 80% of revenues generated back to Brazil. The rules require 30% participation for Petrobras, Brazil's state owned oil company, in all projects and operating of oil fields. The rules also mandate sourcing of equipment inside Brazil to develop local suppliers. Shell and Total, eager to add to oil reserves, will participate in development of the Libra oil field. BP, Chevron and Exxon declined to participate. The Brazilian government faces the difficult choice of keeping as much of the benefits of oil production inside Brazil and yet making it attractive enough for major oil companies with the knowhow for deep water drilling to participate. Delaying development for years means pushing revenue generation further into the future even as the growth rate for Brazil is slowing- down to 0.9% in 2012 and expected to be 2.5% in 2013. The street protests in 2013 making it even more important to show that the benefits of oil production will stay inside Brazil and yet not delay the generation of revenues needed for investment in Brazilian education and infrastructure....

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New information shows a crisis is developing in higher education as student debt passes $1 trillion with the unrelenting rise in the cost of college. Higher debt levels is leading to higher droput rates. According to think tank Education Sector, 30 percent of college students taking out loans dropped out of school, compared to 25% ten years ago. And work can be a large factor as students take parttime jobs to lower the loan burden- half of college dropouts attributed dropping out to work, according to a 2009 study by Public Agenda. It also adds another burden to the productive potential of the U.S. economy. The director of the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University, Anthony Carnevale, estimates the cost to the U.S. economy at half a trillion dollars in terms of skills not available for increasing economic output and income lost for dropouts.

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There is more ot it than just the monopolies crushing new competition and small firms in their space. The gatekeeper role for information that Google and other tech monopolies have is a danger for democracy in a way that the Rockefeller's monopoly of the oil business by Standard Oil never was at the turn of the previous century. TR took up the role of government ensuring that fair competition exists by breaking up the monopolies in the oil business at that time. Today this is left to the courts and they take far too long and come up with decisions that do not address the main probem points brought up by the US Justice Department. Judge Mehta after 5 years did little to address the problems of tech monopolies and it is now left to other remedies and other leadership to come up with ways to break up these monopolies.

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Ratan Tata welcomes Air India- formerly founded as Tata Airlines in 1932 by an accomplished pilot JRD Tata who flew the maiden postal flight in South Asia from Karachi to Bombay in 1932- back to Tata Group. JRD Tata assumed the position as head of Tata Sons in 1938. Nehru nationalized Air India in 1953 after years of bureaucratic interference in the management of the airline. Ratan Tata was selected by JRD Tata to run the Tata Group in 1990 and was present during the early formative years of the airline. The decision to take 100% ownership of Air India in 2021 appears to be a good one considering the difficulties JRD Tata had- and which Ratan Tata is familiar with- from interference by the government in the management of the airline in the early period after independence in 1947. This gives Tata Group a clean start to build a new airline. By taking responsibility for three fourths of the debt of Air India with Tata Group taking on the other one fourth, the government gives the new airline a good start. Air India was losing 3 million dollars a day according to a report in DW.com. This transfer also frees up this huge investment for use in other areas of the economy such as infrastructure building, healthcare, education, logistics for exports. ...

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California, New York and Washington are  three states, with 30 other cities in the U.S., and 100 large businesses, forming the U.S. Climate Alliance, saying they will  follow the Paris agreement on climate change. Former Mayor Bloomberg of New York City is organizing the effort, and he says in the U.S. it is cities, states and businesses that actually do the work of reducing emissions, not the federal government. Bloomberg said: "The fact of the matter is Americans don't need Washington to meet our Paris commitment." Governor Jerry Brown of California says the response will be for California and other states to set even bolder standards for reducing emissions.

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Homeland Security and ICE needs new resources- $175 billion from Congress is part of the plan from Republican Senators to boost support for action in immigration. To deliver on plans to control illegal migration there is a need for funding the agencies involved. Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) says in this report that Homan was “begging” for funding from Congress. Much of the migrant action is hard to undertake with current resource levels. Graham’s committee adopted a budget blueprint for legislation to boost border security and immigration enforcement by $175 billion. Republicans say it is intended for three parts in funding: personnel, facilities and infrastructure, support for state and local officials. It includes pay raises, hiring and retention bonuses for ICE agents; immigration judges and support staff; assistant U.S. attorneys; the border wall; additional detention space and local and state law enforcement agencies to aid ICE, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. ...

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Medicaid Cuts - cutting costs for a program that went from $20 billion in 1980 to 918 billion in 2025, went up 45 times in 45 years. Projecting it out at this rate would leave little for other priorities for the Nation. Hence the need to set priorities- helping one means not helping the other in need. Helping a able bodied person means not helping the elderly who need help as by eliminating Social Security tax for about 90% of recipients over 65 years for instance. Medicaid was originally intended for able bodied. Critics of the plan say there is a lot of red tape and reporting at state levels. The correct solution would be to cut the stringent reporting requirements, cut the bureaucratic reporting, make it simple easy to report and not frequent. California, New York and other states will likely make the reporting easier. For impact on rural hospitals Collins and Murkowski have setup a $25 billion fund in this Big Beautiful Act to support rural hospitals. ...

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Under a new program the ECB will tilt the purchase of bonds for maturing debt towards weaker economies. Leading to purchase of $208 billion of bonds of weaker  economies such as Italy. Italy's bond yields climbed to 4.2% in June 2022. This will help prevent the fragmentation of the bonds in Europe into segments and is part of new thinking at ECB after the pandemic. Italy's bond yields dropped and stocks gained after the announcing of the decision. Under Merkel such decisions simply would not take place with the different thinking under that administration.  Today solidarity is uppermost in EU after the pandemic at EU in Brussels, at the ECB, and at the chancellor's office in Germany. No one even thinks twice about this.  Italian bond yields dropped from about and its stock index gained 3.2%. The stress in eurozone is reflected by the gap between the yields of 10 year German and Italian government bonds. It dropped from 2.4% to 2.13% after the decision. To keep the two yields close and not fragment eurozone yields is what preventing fragmentation means. ...

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This is the story of Jackie Robinson who ended segregation in American baseball in 1947. This was a turning point for the US during the Truman administration as the first moves to end segregation were beginning that would be heard during the Kennedy administration. Jerry Brewer describes the Robinson of the 1950's as he became a baseball icon and gave new hope to a new generation of Americans in the post war period. His son David says baseball was Jackie Robinson's way of creating opportunity in America and he did this in a relaxed way, holding back emotions, and keeping his smile against adversity. His wife Rachel 104 years is interviewed in this story and shows the same resilient spirit throughout her life. Brewer writes that Jackie Robinson's is a struggle that goes on, that nostalgia makes understanding difficult obscuring the struggles that got us to this point, and creating an idea that the bad stuff was handled long ago and is no longer there, that problems are exaggerated and society has advanced. Progress he writes is neither adequate or permanent, every generation has to learn and educate itself and share this with fellow citizens in its midst. ...

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Northwestern University has its federal funding  frozen. $790 million federal funds are frozen by the US government for toleration of anti-semitism on campus in 2024 and 2025. Northwestern cut a deal with protesters putting out anti-semitic slogans following an encampment, that was followed by other universities, says this WSJ report. This is not in the tradition of US universities and the Nation founded with the Christian faith that includes the Catholic, Protestant and Jewish faiths as one indivisible faith. Northwestern and others fail when new drug research leads to discoveries funded by federal dollars. Yet the universities get their portion of the return from the pharmaceutical companies, which then charge the average public exorbitant prices, making the universities complicit in the huge burdens placed on the American people. Similar to a Catholic Church  working with the nobles in feudal times- placing ever higher burdens on ordinary working people. Another issue is that universities are investing in new buildings, raising their prices, and operating as if they are unaccountable to the people, as young American men are being pushed away by high prices and foreign students are taking their places.   ...

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Carlos Slim's America Movil has expanded quickly throughout Latin America in the last decade. It now has 225 million customers. It offers innovative solutions in a region where credit cards are not as widespread and incomes are lower. Prepaid cards let customers of America Movil use its service in large numbers. It started with 10 million customers in Mexico, about ten years ago. A new strategy is to expand data streaming and internet services in the same way, by offering low cost prepaid cards that let people in Brazil use the service for 2 weeks, and similar pricing elsewhere in Latin America. America Movil has 60 million internet customers at this time. The target is to get 400 million people online using mobile phone devices iin the Latin American region.

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Cillizza describes how Sarah Palin turned into more of a political celebrity phenomenon than a serious politician with serious facts. By Jan 2013 Fox News Channel's decision not to renew Palin's contract meant her period in the limelight was over and she was fizzling out.

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Shown here and in the adjoining WSJ interview by Ben Cohen of Morris Chang, 1985 founder of Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC), is the story of how as textile and other lower technology industries were shipped to China in the 1990's the advanced technology manufacturing industries that were to replace them for the American workers and their families were also taken away through the back door by companies such as TSMC- leading to the dislocation of the American worker and poorer manufacturing communities across the US. Hille and Sevastopulo in the Financial Times take an inside look at the situation of TSMC as an advanced chip manufacturer that has taken 92% of the world market for advanced chips by using Taiwan's manufacturing advantages in chip yield that was in 1985 about twice that in the US when Morris Chang founded the company. Morris Chang was an immigrant who came to the US after 1949 with the founding of the People's Republic of China. After gaining decades experience at Texas Instruments by age 52 in 1982 he felt he had reached the glass ceiling at the company. See the adjoining WSJ Ben Cohen interview with Chang on this part of his life. He was recruited  by Ki Li, a technology planner for Taiwan to  build Taiwan's first semiconductor company. Chang founded Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company in 1985 and based on his work in the US and seeing the cost advantage in engineering talent coming out of Taiwan and Chinese universities, and the willingness to work long hours in the zealous drive for modernization, he made the bet on Make in China (Taiwan + People's Republic of China.) It succeeded, and succeeded, and succeeded, just as it took advanced manufacturing away from the US, and deprived the US by replacing the cotton mills and textile factories, the less advanced industries that were being shipped to China by being replaced with modern more advanced manufacturing in new technology products, as it was how it was supposed to work. Economists and politicians and business failed to see this for two decades. It left America without both the old industrial manufacturing base and at the same time took away from the American worker the new manufacturing in advanced technology base that was supposed to give him new opportunities to replace the old. It has left America poorer in ways no economist, politician or business person could see when through the benevolent hand of friendship the US advanced a helping hand to China through WTO negotiation, WTO membership and foreign investment in China following the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of the 1970's that dislocated China's industry. ...

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Russian president, Vladimir Putin, tells academics and journalists at an event called the Valdai Discussion Club, he had reservations about expanding the state sector by approving the deal for Rosneft to acquire TNK-BP assets. His motivation for doing this was the endless shareholder conflict between the Russian partners and BP. Putin says he warned British prime minister Tony Blair that a 50%-50% ownership venture would not work as nobody was in control, and described this as so bad that "sometimes they were fighting each other with their bare hands." The injection of private ownership into Rosneft with the 20% stake for BP would provide stability for the company and was the bright side to this. Foreign academics and journalists participate in three days of discussions with Russian academics and journalists in this event. Putin has no new vision for this third term beyond consolidating and protecting the achievements of the last decade. He cited as his achievements- growth of the economy, expansion of the foreign exchange reserves, and the increase in the birthrate....

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German chancellor, Angela Merkel, appeals to members of the Christian Democratic Party to support the European project at a party convention in Leipzig on November 14, 2011. "We live in times of epic change. Our political compass has not changed. But the context is constantly changing," said Merkel. The 2 day convention used the motto: "For Europe. For Germany." Her message was that it will take years of hard work to fix the crisis and yet this has created an opportunity to put the European project on a sounder footing. Finance Minister Schauble put it succintly as he supported Merkel's appeal: "We now need to build the political union in Europe we never managed to build in the 90's." This comes as changes are taking place in Europe with new unity governments being formed in Greece by Mario Monti, a former EU commissioner, and in Greece by Papdemos, another EU official. And it comes as a head of Italy's central bank, Mario Draghi, who had pushed for stricter controls on spending by the Italian government, is now the head of the European Central Bank. Merkel also hit on the theme of a stricter financial union, and the need for courage to change the treaty underlying the European monetary union to allow strong, automatic sanctions for violations of the treaty. She also emphasized that the government had ruled out issuance of eurobonds that makes the EU as a whole responsible for the debt of individual countries. On that point she said: "Everywhere we look we find behaviour that cannot go on for long. Everywhere people are living as if there is no tomorrow."...