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Exxon to invest $600 million in producing liquird transportation fuels from algae- organisms in water called oilgae. Its a research effort that will take 5-10 years to bring results with large scale commercial production. The project will be conducted in partnership with Synthetic Genomics, abiotechnology companyfounded by genomics pioneer Craig Venter. Algae generated energy is apromising technology which yields 2000 gallons of fuel per acre of production each year compared with 650 gallons for palm trees, and 450 gallons for sugarcanes which Brazil uses for producing energy. Corn which has become controversial in recent years yields 250 gallons per acre with energy, and water supplies required to grow corn, and the impact on food supplies. Exxon is also showing support for the work of Dr. Venter, ascientist who is known for decoding the hman genome in the 1990's. In recent years he has done research in searching for micro-organisms that can be turned into fuel. Algal biofuel called oilgae by environmentalists is made from algae that have molecular structures that are similiar to petroleum products like gasoline, and is compatible with the existing transportation structure....

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Greg Ip of the WSJ provides this exceptional report offering readers remarkable clarity on what the Republican Tax Law does- its high and low points.  High Points 1. It reduces the corporate tax rate to bring it in line with other advanced industrialized countries. The corporate tax rate in Germany and Japan is 30%, in the UK it is 19%. For 5 years businesses can write off capital equipment immediately instead of depreciating over a couple of years. This could boost investment and growth. 2.  The law takes aim at deductions that led to distortions. It limits the mortgage interest deduction, and caps the deduction for state and local taxes. This removes the incentive to pay more for homes that exacerbated the housing crisis in 2008. The Alternative Minimum Tax is largely removed. The Low Points 1. The biggest drawback is that lawmakers did not properly fund the tax cuts. Of the 10 costliest tax breaks nine were not touched, including employer health insurance, retirement savings, capital gains. Only the state and local taxes deduction was reduced. And a new tax deduction  was created, a 20% tax deduction for small business (proprietors and partnerships) paying taxes on their individual tax returns. Taxes on the wealthy or value added taxes, reducing tax breaks, is how other advanced industrialized countries paid for the corporate tax cuts, but did not happen here. Additional economic growth  to generate added tax revenues is the way Republicans in Congress say this is funded. Yet this is a questionable assumption as Britain reduced the corporate tax rate to 19% without seeing a surge in economic growth, as Greg Ip pointed out in an earlier WSJ article. At best the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates $500 billion over a decade in added revenues from added growth leaving $1 trillion to be added to the deficit. The WhartonPenn Budget Model (WPBM) estimates only $140 to $367 bill from the additional economic growth resulting in added tax revenues. Under this model only 0.03 to 0.08 percent added U.S. economic growth per year is expected from the Republican Tax Cuts. Such a situation would be bad  for the U.S. as the gradual improvement in Debt to GDP ratio to 78% following the financial crisis of 2008 would be sharply reversed taking the ratio to 97% by 2027. An unsustainable trajectory which will require tax increases in a few years and hurt investment in education, health and infrastructure into the future. This is what worries many experts most on both sides of the political spectrum today about what the Republican Congress has pushed through for a legislative "victory." This is why experts believe this is not serious tax reform and will require a new effort after 2019.   ...

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Details of the $825 billion stimulus plan. Renewable energy does well under the plan including production tax credit for renewables, with $32 billion for a "smart" electrical grid for which GE makes components and lobbied for. Renewable energy producers win an extension of production tax credits now convertible into cash for companies whose losses leave them unable to use the credits. Transportation infrastructure green projects did not do so well, with $32 billion for transportation projects and only $10 billion for mass transit projects.The Natural Resources Defense Council had compiled a list of more than 80 environmentally friendly infrastructure and transportation projects worth about $405 billion. Only a small number of these projects made it. What is in the stimulus to create jobs and stimulate capital investment? Businesses get bonus depreciation, which speeds up depreciation deductions for companies that invest in plant and equipment. The stimulus doubles the amount small businesses can immediately write off for capital investments and purchasing new eqipment, and gives incentives for businesses to invest in renewable energy. States get help with $90 billion going to increase the federal share of Medicaid payments, and an additional $79 billion to help states avoid cutbacks in education and other services. And there is a "Make Work Pay" tax credit for $500 per worer and $1000 per couple. Experts say the effects of the stimulus will be felt in the latter part of 2009 and into 2010. Which is one reason the view of economists that there would be a second half recovery does not reflect conditions on the ground. Goldman has revised its view to 2010 and even that may be optimistic. One example of what has happened in the stimulus in this respect is that the earlier optimistic view of largeinvestments in science and technology, broadband networks, and transportation projects for fast rail and transit have all been trimmed down. Part of the reason may be that the bill for the nation's banking system revival may be larger than realized as an additional amount of $15-20 billion is being negotiated for Bank of America and more money will go to Citigroup. $6 billion is shown for highspeed internet access for rural and underserved areas. Science facilities get $10 billion. Repair of public infrastructure (read roads and bridges) gets $31 billion. School modernization gets $21 billion. And modernization of health information technology systems gets $20 billion which its hoped will provide equivalent or higher returns to pay for some of the universal health care costs, and preventative care gets $4 billion. There is a tax credit for R&D work on energy innovations and renewable energy production of $20 billion, and $32 billion for a "smart electricity grid." These are the proactive parts of the stimulus that create something new and make improvements. They add up to $144 billion. So much money goes to shore up the existing services and supplement incomes, and to relieve stresses on the banking system, and other ways to shore up the system, that the proactive expenditures are only a small fraction or 17% of the $825 billion stimulus. And all the time the federal deficit and debt increases with these huge outlays just to shore up the system. The Heritage Foundation Data Analysis Director Mr. Beach told Congressmen at a discussion chaired by Congressman Cantor (R), on January 16, 2009, that the federal debt would reach 92% of the nation's GDP in 2009 from 58 billion or 70% in 2008, with the $825 billion for stimulus. The federal deficit would go up to $1.31 trillion or 9.2% of GDP up from $541 billion in 2008. See the research paper on the Heritage website. ...

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More than 6.7 million persons are displaced inside Ukraine most of them from the war torn eastern part of Ukraine, and most of them women and children. In addition over 3 million are refugees in neighboring countries such as Slovakia and Poland. 

The war is now extending to the Donetsk region with about half of the population of the population in eastern Ukraine having left that region for safety in central and western Ukraine. The rolling farmland and old coal mines of the region, the destroyed infrastructure and industrial facilities, make the area of no use to Russian forces. A fraction of the Russian population in the area has also left says this report in the NYT. 

The scale of the damage and the refugee situation is hard to imagine and can be seen in the pictures in this NYT report. Boarding trains and buses civilians have poured out of cities in eastern Ukraine where the war has intensified.
 

 

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Angela Merkel of Germany and other EU leaders decided to back "global supply chains" and declined to support the EU Commission in Brussels at a virtual summit attended by 27 leaders of the EU states. It was also attended briefly by Joe Biden. Ursula von Leyen said 21 million doses of vaccine had been shipped from EU to Britain, of which 1 million were from Astra Zeneca and the rest from Pfizer and other makers of vaccines. A total of 77 million doses made in the EU wer shipped to 33 countries since 1 December 2020. Governments of Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium and Sweden were not in favor of blocking shipments from the UK because of the effect on supply chains. Pfizer is strongly opposed to the move to block shipments. Merkel emphasized the need to respect the global supply chains while making efforts to ensure EU countries get a fair share of vaccine supplies. The problems of UK vs Britain on vaccine supplies comes from the yield problems at a Belgium plant of Astra Zeneca and the company's refusal to divert supplies from the UK. Of the 120 million promised only 30 million could be delivered to EU. The UK's contract with Astra Zeneca states that supplies from its plants in Oxford and Staffordshire must be delivered to Britain first. The UK is facing an acute shortage of second doses even though it has given 31 million jabs. At this time 45 out of 100 people in the UK have jabs, compared with 13 out of 100 in the EU.   ...

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Scott Shane and Jo Becker provide this exceptional account of the events that led to the unraveling of Libya. Saying they were not going to do another Iraq, senior policymakers and president Obama failed to realize the importance of basic steps that needed to be taken to secure the large arms arsenal of the Gaddafi regime, providing the assistance and support for transition to peacetime of the many militias in the country, and arrangements with Arab allies of the U.S. such as Qatar and UAE and other Arab neighbors allied with the U.S. to secure the arms arsenal and secure borders. It was clear from the beginning that Gaddafi had discouraged the development of institutions that would hold the country together- handholding was essential for the Libyan project to succeed. Instead as Shane and Becker document here Libya received neglect with strong conditions set for U.S. assistance such that neglect was assured. It is not clear from this report that Secretary Clinton supported the policy because this is what she would have done, or because of a sense of being a team player in the Obama administration, though it leans on the latter. Observing her role in supporting a Libya free of the dictatorship supports the idea that Hillary Clinton would have seen the need to help build institutions where none existed, and the basic step of transition of militias to peacetime. The weakness of the Libyan government is cited here, which only reinforce the need for the U.S. to be involved in a transition to peacetime Libya, after enabling the Libyan people to remove the Gaddafi regime. The militias allied with Qatar and UAE on opposing sides helped worsen the situation, with the U.S. having sufficient influence with western allied governments to ensure a unified internationally supported policy for transition with basic security....

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Moderna is placing a big bet on vaccine production into 2022 by adding more production lines both for the US use and for export to other countries. From 1 billion doses it plans to triple production with partners around the world to 3 billion doses in 2022.

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Matthew Kaminski gives his assessment of Angela Merkel's years in office. He cites a former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt's words: "People who have a vision should go see a doctor." She is no Konrad Adenauer or even Helmut Kohl. A scientist by training she is dispassionate, intelligent, diligent and takes the time to understand the details of the financial situation from her advisors, then sorting out the situation in her own mind. She gets less credit for bold action than she deserves because of her down to earth manner.She gave banks no option as bondholders to share losses in late night meetings at EU headquarters, called the president of Italy and secured a change in government after Berlusconi lost the confidence of the EU. In the current impasses between the Bundesbank and the ECB's Draghi over sovereign bond purchases with Jens Weidmann, Germany's representative at the ECB, supporting Mario Draghi's position, she has navigated the fine line between the German public's reluctance to take on the debts of its neighbors in the eurozone and the need for lowering the borrowing costs of Italy and Spain to save the euro. After the visionaries from Adenauer to Monet, todays eurozone leaders are focussed more on the nuts and bolts of making this idea of Europe work, requiring the skills and ability to learn and grow that she has demonstrated....

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Musk DOGE 2025 and the 1941 Truman Committee- cutting waste in $4 trillion in spending.  With the Biden Infrastructure Act and other infrastructure, science and chips spending of $4 trillion the US needs to act to have oversight on waste and overspending in 2025. We just want to show that it is in the American tradition of democratic government, that an obscure Senator from Missouri, Democrat Harry Truman initiated such an effort called the Truman Committee when he addressed the Senate on Feb 10, 1941. The US Senate site describes this Special committee to Investigate the National Defense Program adjacent to this article. As the US prepared to enter World War II in Feb. 1941 an obscure Senator from Missouri rose up in the Senate to call for oversight over the $10.1 billion Roosevelt had got approval from the US Congress to spend on war efforts. The oversight was to fight overspending, waste and fraud in spending the huge amounts dedicated to the war effort. The result was the Truman Committee in the US Senate with as chairman of the committee Harry Truman 1941-1944, James Mead (NY) 1944-46, Harley Kilgore (Wisconsin) 1946-47, Ralph Brewster a Republican from Maine in 1947-48. These were the years when the US spent on the war effort- $330 billion in 1945 dollars, $4 trillion in 2024 dollars $212 in US government borrowings, $136 billion in war bonds With the Biden Infrastructure Act and other infrastructure, science and chips spending of $4 trillion the US needs to act to have oversight on waste and overspending in 2025. ...

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US president DJT State of the Union Address to Congress Feb 24, 2026. BBC Analysis shows the president going on the offense to take up the issue of illegal migrants, cost of living, and business investment to get the economy to grow. DJT compared the $1 trillion in business investment under Biden over 4 years with the $18 trillion that he had secured in his first year. He said the tariffs were here to stay whatever the Supreme Court decision stated because all the agreements with EU, UK, China, India, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, other countries will remain in place as all countries want it that way. The president stated that through tariffs he had secured benefits for getting manufacturing back to the US to create jobs and raise incomes. The Big Beautiful Bill also added to business investment through its writeoff in one time for equipment and plant. The oil price per gallon had gone down to $1.85 a gallon at the pump lowering the cost of living and inflation. He pointed out that the economy was strong with low inflation lower than 3%, unemployment at 4% and ecponomic growth in 2025 close to 3% with some quarters exceeding 4-5%. The US ice hockey team attended the event and the Congressional medal of honor was given to soldiers in the Venezuelan helicopter dangerous mission, and to a World War II pilot who was 100 years old. Transgender was shown as an issue with parents shown with their daughter who had suffered from transgender laws that he asked Congress to change. Calling some of this crazy as parents and families were suffering as a result. ...

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In commenting on Rishi Sunak, a former hedge fund manager's sudden rise from anonymity three years ago when Boris Johnson became prime minister to leadership of the Tory party and prime minister, The Hindu cautions that it is of limited symbolic value, this kind of connection between India and the UK. The Tories are a house divided against itself, with many factions. Truss was brought down by Gove and others on the backbench who were not included in the government. Other Conservatives on the backbenches today, and Johnson, Jacob Rees Mogg, represent factions that are not represented in this government as was evident in questioning by Opposition leader Starmer in QA in the House of Commons. Other problems remain also evident in Starmer's questioning for Labour in parliament, including questioning about non domicile status in the family for tax purposes. Privileged Tories with connections to free markets such as Jacob Rees Mogg or Sunak without an awareness of the pain of ordinary working families, are not what a country with a cost of living crisis sees as leaders who can point to the way forward for Britain. As The Hindu points out he faces the same difficulty that Johnson with his style and personality was able to sidestep, that Truss naively tackled with quick unraveling of tax cuts for the upper incomes, and which Sunak with his experience with financial hedge funds may appear to have grasped but find escaping his grasp. This is the difficulty of matching traditional Tory policy of tax cuts and austerity, at a time when all major countries of Europe and the US are providing significant cost of living assistance to working families. Even small bits of austerity policy, or lack of conviction to help working families may now be seen by the Opposition, Labour, and even within some part of the Tory party and the vast majority of working families as oppressive.  Starmer is keen to remind working people of where Sunak stands as he did with the question in parliament Q&A about the comments made by Sunak at a small gathering that he had transferred money from poor districts to more affluent Tory districts. Would Sunak correct these erroneous funding formulas, Starmer asked. The Hindu also mentions Suella Braverman's appointment as Home Secretary only weeks after her resignation. It was poor judgement shown by Johnson in an appointment that cost him Tory support a few weeks before his resignation. Starmer brought this up from the beginning of parliament Q&A- asking whether a deal was made for her appointment to get far right wing Tory support from Braverman's faction in the party. For India and the Indian people there are so many genuine connections with Britain and the British people, some set when Mohandas Gandhi won the hearts of English working families during his visit for negotiations with the British that are are a better basis  and that will be remembered forever in the hearts and minds of the British people. ...

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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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The ruling in a 5-4 decision requires the EPA to consider cost when the agency makes environmental rules. It does not remove the regulations on mercury emissions and does not prohibit the EPA from setting rules. A lower court will have to rule on how the case should be handled. Its likely effect is for the EPA to consider the price for industry compliance in setting environmental rules. The majority decision wirtten by Justice Scalia says the EPA "must consider cost- including, most importantly, cost of compliance- before deciding whether regulation is appropriate and necessary." The current EPA environmental rules were set in 2012, and were put into effect in early 2015. During the early part of the process of setting the rules the EPA did not consider cost. But in the later stages the agency estimated costs of compliance for utility sector at $9.6 billion and public health benefits of at least $37 billion. Justice Elena Kagan alluded to this in her dissenting opinion. Some utilities have received an extension on installing scrubbers to remove mercury pollutants, and these plants would now receive more time. Of the 600 power plants the EPA regulates as part of the rule, 450 are coal fired plants. Of these 35% were given a 1 year extension for compliance. About 21 states heavily dependent on coal and power companies brought this case before the court. ...

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Affordability should be a major factor in figuring out what is the best place to retire. Climate gets Arizona and Florida the top two spots. Yet considering today's higher cost of living and smaller retirement savings in the U.S., Britain, and European countries, and the higher cost of living in India, China, and other Asian, African, and Latin american countries, affordability should play a much larger role so that savings stretch out and one can afford a better standard of living, more travel and room for better choices in food and other things.  Bankrate for instance gives 40% importance to affordability in its retirement assessment of locations. Climate gets only 15% in this assessment of location. Places which are friendlier, with which you are familiar ar attractive for other reasons. Bankrate gives Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri top ratings in this commonsense approach.  Also important after affordability, are access to healthcare, weather, culture and crime. Bankrate analysis gives affordability 40%, wellness and healthcare 25%, culture 15% weather 15%, and crime 15%. Access to healthcare is a factor that is also included in Affordability as the premium in Florida for Medicare Supplement, is $286  month vs $90 a month in Nebraska. Using a similar approach places in India, China, other African, Asian and Latin American countries countries that are in high demand and have rising cost of living may not be the best places to retire. Using Affordability, wellness and healthcare, culture, and friendly atmosphere and familiarity with having lived there for a time, may be the best criteria with less importance to weather. A better standard of living and access to better things in life with one's dollars or rupees or whatever currency one uses stretch is important.   ...

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A recent study by the IMF shows that China has accumulated foreign exchange reserves that are twice what would be needed for traditional purposes such as supporting the economy in a financial crisis. China is still very much a developing country with per capita annual income of $3000, low consumer spending, and rising inflation. This makes the policy of accumulating reserves and preserving an undervalued exchange rate to support export companies counterproductive. There is growing debate about this as inflation is becoming difficult to control. Yu Yongding, an advisor to the PBOC monetary policy committee says China as a developing country should not be exporting capital, which should be used to raise living standards. A rising exchange rate would increase spending power of people throughout China. Fan Gang, head of China's National Economic Research Institute, was a member of the central bank monetary policy committee. He wrote in a recent essay arguing for a higher exchange rate, and societal, tax and other changes that help increase China's household spending. Central Bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan said recently that China's foreign exchange reserves have exceeded reasonable levels that the country needs, adding to inflation risks and making it difficult to conduct monetary policy. The reserves are now over $3 trillion, pasing that mark in March 2011 after increasing 25% in the last year....

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Local reports indicate that in Brazil alone the damage could be $30 billion from betting the local currency against the US dollar in complex derivative contracts issued by banks. With the Mexican peso and Brazilian real rising against the USdollar many latin american companies bet against the dollar. Mexico's No 3 retailer La Comer decalared bankruptcy with losses of $1.4 billion. Cemex lost $711 million and Gruma which makes corn tortillas $684 million.

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More revelations such as Pandora papers may not do much because the inertia is institiutionalized and the political system is available for hire, says Prof. Prem Sikka of the University of Sheffield, UK. He says armies of accountants, lawyers and financial experts support this system, the regulatory system in the UK is ineffective, and too many MP's are on the payroll of corporations, says Prof. Sikka in The Guardian. It is the sheer size of the problem that is staggering and could be an indication of how it reduces upward mobility in society, leads to financial crises, and defunds infrastructure, defunds healthcare and housing in US, Europe, Britain and India. The size of illegal money and tax evasion money in the world today is according to this article in The Guardian simply astonishing- $3.6 trillion. 

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Russia's takes on a tough negotiating position in the winter of 2025-26, just when the Russian economy suffers decline in oil revenues. Opaque loans in the defense sector that make up 25% of loans or $202 billion could be a problem. Cost of the war in 2025 are over $200 billion. Other problems are the finances of Lukoil and Rosneft, the increasing amount of sanctioned oil that is sitting on tankers in the sea with no buyers. Gazprom has a loss of $12.9 billion in 2025, with cash reserves depleted from $22 billion in 2022 to $6-8 billion in Jan 2026, with $20 billion of additional debt taken on. Rosneft profit dropped 70% in 2025 to $3.6 billion. Consumer spending is down by about 9% in December 2025 compared to 2024. Yet this is unlikely to lead to social or political problems in Russia. It will make it more difficult to finance the war compared to previous years. The Ukraine economy needs $135 billion for the next 2 years for funding the budget which now depoends on laons from the EU. Both Russia and Ukraine are fighting an exhausting war as it enters the fifth year of the war, exhausting their economies and their population, as the leaders of Russia and Ukraine fail to reach an agreement. ...

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U.S. Fed chairwoman Janet Yellen, says the Fed will be prepared to respond to the "twists and turns" in the recovering U.S. economy in 2014-2015. In many ways Yellen finds the recovery "disappointingly slow and consistent expectations for a pickup in growth dashed over a number of years." She sees the labor market behaving in "some perplexing ways and showing patterns that are novel." The high rate of long term unemployed is an abiding concern and Yellen says a healthy job market is "more than 2 years away." This clarifies remarks made at her first press conference, which were interpreted to mean the Fed would raise rates in a much shorter time frame. U.S. stock markets responded favorably to her remarks after declines and volatility over several weeks following the previous press conference.

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In this essay in Der Spiegel, Charles Hawley says that the Trump movement has become a movement of patriotic downtrodden whites, with a whole range of interests-of extreme right talk show hosts, Tea Party politicians, white power supremacists, those left out by globalization in the working class especially in the midwestern states. The danger he says is that this movement of which Trump has become a part, rejects the narrative on which America is based of the Constitution and the Founding Fathers establishing a country based on principles of "the inalienable rights of man," that have evolved through the years to include black people, women, and minorities.  To put this in perspective, president Obama writing for The Economist magazine in October 2016, puts this movement in a different context- that of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, Know Nothing Movement of the 1800's, the anti-Asian sentiment in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, periods when anti-immigrant or anti-foreign sentiment gained prominence. Obama's view is that it is not fundamentally economic. In this he is right in that some of the forces on the far right do not stem from globalization. Yet he would be missing a great deal if he did not address the economic problems for the middle and working class that have given such views the support of a broad segment of the population, especially in some midwestern and older industrial states compared to say the economy of California or New York. Obama is aware of the problems in his essay as he points to the problems of workers trying to get a decent wage, of job losses through globalization, and the aggravation of these problems by the financial crisis of 2008 when some of the potential physicists and engineers as he calls them went into the financial sector to create faulty mortgages. Yet he goes back to the free trade and global networks of supply chains as having reduced global poverty, without showing a keen awareness of how it has through a combination of events and decades of policy indifference to manufacturing communities in the U.S.- as documented by experts and shown in Lyrarc, with David Autor and Gordon Hansen in the WSJ, 2016- 08-16. A Gallup Study, WSJ, 2016-05-16, supports Obama's assertion by showing that many of Trump supporters are actually self-employed and not in economic distress. Yet the movement would not have taken its proportions without the merging of different groups particularly largely disadvantaged working class voters, and fortunately Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, have a better sense of this than the president. It is by their efforts that income and wealth disparities can be tackled in a way that restores the social fusion of all parts of society- in Hillary Clinton's emphatic words in the final debate by "growing the middle," growing the middle class. This is the task of the next decade, or possibly two decades. (For Gallup study see WSJ, How Economic Anxieties Explain Trump's Appeal- And Where They Fall Short, Nick Timiraos, 08-16-2016. And for Autor, Hanson, see Tallying the Toll of U.S.-China Trade, Justin Lahart, 08-27-2011)   ...

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"This is a very, very, very, big deal," says Chuck Schumer about the Climate Change bill that is expected to pass in the Senate of the US this weekend August 6-7, 2022. This is the biggest climate bill in history, and may also be called the Schumer-Manchin bill after the compromise reached to give oil and gas some support with big moves for climate change action between now and 2030. It gets Biden and the US to within 40% reduction of carbon emissions over 2005 emissions by 2030, when the commitment by the US at COP26 Glasgow is for 50% reduction over 2005 emissions by 2030.

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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. 

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The Obama administration announced a policy of increasing the number of refugees accepted in fiscal 2017 to 110,000. This will be an increase from 85,000 in 2016, and 70,000 in the prior 3 years. Secretary of State Kerry says the target is consistent  with the idea that all countries need to do more, and if we could do more we would. After 3 years of cautious policy president Obama now follows Chancellor Merkel's lead.

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Amitabh Kant reflects on his 6 years at Niti Ayog planning for development in India. He says energy transition is an important part of development for India. The integration of India as a major part of a new supply chain for the free world is a critical part of India's development. Kant talks about the aspirational districts program that covers transformation of the lives of 80% of India's people living in 112 districts. Moving India up by 79 positions on the World Bank Ease of Doing Business rankings is also one of the tasks he looks back at with a sense of achievement. Parmeswaran Iyer who headed the Swachh Bharat and Jal Jeevan Missions will now be new head of NIti Aayog, the organization that is driving India's development to 2030 and 2040. Niti Ayog stands for National Institute for Transforming India. Its pillars are- 1. Pro-people  2. Pro-Activity  3.Participation 4. Empowering 5. Inclusion of All 6. Equality 7. Transparency It has a maximum of 4 members. Suman Bery is vice chairperson appointed in March 2022. The members are appointed by the prime minister. It is different from the earlier Planning Commissions under Nehru in that it does the work of being a think tank yet the allocation of funds and decisions come under the prime minister and the finance ministry. ...