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Its generally known that US airlines except for Southwest fly older planes but the extent to which this has been going on may not be gauged especially when compared to the foreign airlines. Because of bankruptcies and reducing the number of seats available by shrinking their fleets to keep prices at levels that sustain their margins, airlines are not ordering new planes and using the existing planes. The average age of the big jets in US airlines is now 12.2 years according to Airline Monitor. Boeing has a huge backlog of orders for its new planes but its mostly from foreign airlines. Only 43 of 710 Boeing 787 Dreamliners are going to domestic airlines, 25 to Continental and 18 to Northwest. And none of the 165 giant Airbus A380's are going to US carriers. These numbers are amazing because they suggest the new airplanes more comfortable more fuel efficient with more space and better air quality are just bypassing the US domestic routes. Quite amazing. Of the airlines Northwest has 109 of the oldest jetliners in the industry with an average age of 35 years. And worse still they could remain in service for another 5 years as there are no plans to replace them. Airline cleaning is not as frequent as before because of cost cutting and the dirt and grime, the conditions of the lavatory, all show their age and passengers can tell the difference. The seating is cramped and one passenger described a Northwest plane seating as feeling like being in a tuna can. And the airlines in the US are using these planes for longer routes with more chance of mechanical bfailures leading to more flight delays which are a huge problem this year especially into and out of the New York area. American flies a fleet of 300 older MD-80's which actually cost more to operate because they are gas guzzlers compared to the newer planes. Credit Sights estimates that this will continue for another 5 years because airlines are trying to save a cash cushion for leaner times, payoff debt and strengthen their balance sheets, and shareholders want some of the money returned to them. US Airlines had cash of about $28 billion as of June 30, 2007 but this is not enough. J.D. Poer and Associates estimates that US airlines need to spend $280 billion over the next 20 years to replace the aging planes. Meantime discount airlines in Europe are ordering new planes and Asian airlines have big orders. Air Berlin has about 85 737's on order and Wizz Air of Hugary ordered 50 Airbus A320's. ...

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Richard Barrett, former head of overseas counter terrorism operations of Britain and now head of the UN AlQuaeda and Taliban monitoring group, in aspeech to the Washington Institute of Near East Policy, says Al Quaeda is a diminishing threat because a new generation of Muslims who have little recollection of the events and are less interested in religion. And CIA officials say they are having greater success penetrating Al Quaeda, because of vastly improved intelligence capabilities. In terms of intelligence and capabilities, the technical colllection, intercepts are much better, and overhead surveillance is much better. The human intelligence is much better and they have fewer competent people.

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Mr Obama's vision of a nuclear weapons free world going back to his days at Columbia University. There as a senior he took Prof. Michael Baron's seminar on international politics and American policy. In a paper for that course Mr Obama analyzed how a President might go about negotiating nuclear arms reductions with Russia. Baron says Obama has been thinking about these issues for a long time. About this time Obama wrote an essay in the Columbia Sundial student newspaper. This was the time when the Greens movement for a nuclear weapons free world was strong in Germany, and Reagan was pushing for a nuclear arms development race with Russia. The article was titled "Breaking the War Mentality." As a senator Obama joined Senator Dick Lugar -who has worked hard for non-proliferation- on a trip to Russia to monitor efforts by Ruusia to scrap nuclear arms and secure atomic materials from theft or diversion. He allied himself with four Reagan period veterans Kissinger, Shultz, Perry and Sam Nunn, who in a 2007 WSJ op-ed article, argued that it was time- as the headline for the article said -to work for "A World Free of Nuclear Weapons." The steps in practice Obama plans to take are the following. A Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, which would bar all nations signing it from making fuel for their atomic bombs. Rewriting crucial provisions of the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, strengthening inspection provisions and closing loopholes that let N. Korea drop out in 2003. Countries would have to give up the freedom to make fuel for reactors and instead buy it from an international fuel bank. Global consensus and prevention when it comes to deviant states hoping to enhance their own security, or regimes or terrorist groups, will be crucial in setting up a new system for a nuclear weapons free world....

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With a unanimous vote of the company's board on Nov. 28, 2011, American Airlines filed for bankruptcy. Gerard Arpey, CEO since 2003, is known to have resisted the move. Arpey decided to retire and will be replaced as CEO and chairman by Thomas Horton, the president of American Airlines. Analysts and management say the move is a proactive effort to take action before AMR's financial posiiton deteriorates further. AMR has about $4.1 billion in cash and short term investments. One airline analyst described it as an offensive bankruptcy to reduce labor costs and leasing costs in a proactive manner. American Airlines management has said in the past that its costs are $800 million higher than other airlines, because its pilots fly shorter hours and have more liberal work rules. Cost per available seat mile, an industry metric including labor and operating costs, is about 10% higher for American compared to Delta Airlines. American is also hit by higher fuel costs especially because about a third of its fleet uses older McDonnell Douglas MD-80's, and its regional carrier American Eagle flies 50 seat jets that are less efficient. American has total losses of $11.4 billion for the period 2001-2010. Additional loss was incurred for $982 million in the three quarters of 2011. Efforts to increase fuel effiicency of its fleet which is on average 15 years old, are underway. A $38 billion order for 460 new single aisle planes from Airbus and Boeing, with $13 billion in financing from the aircraft companies, was placed in July 2011. AMR says it will keep the order as planned. The end result is likely to be a smaller airline with fewer employees, fewer planes, fewer routes, and cuts at AMR's smaller hubs in Los Angeles and Chicago, says one aviation specialist....

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The FDIC chairman, Mr. Gruenberg has defined the agency's strategy under the "orderly liquidation authority" given by the Dodd-Frank legislation to deal with financial firm failures. The Lehman Brothers collapse ruffled fianncial markets worldwide because of the lack of such authority and a organzed well defined plan to deal with bank failures. Gruenberg described the plans to the WSJ. Once the Treasury Department and federal agencies agree that a financial institution has to be taken over, the FDIC would first unwind the parent holding compay of the firm by putting it in receivership and revoking its charter. Unlike the situation for Lehman, the firm's subsidiaries can continue to operate, with financial support from the FDIC held parent company provided by the U.S. government under Dodd-Frank legislation. The next step would be for FDIC to create a "bridge company," with most of the firm's assets going into it. At that point equity holders would be wiped out and a debt for equity swap would be made with creditors. The firm would come out of this process as with a Chapter 11 bankrupcy, as a new recapitalized private firm. The FDIC is trying to build credibility in the markets that it has the ability to do this smoothly, and Gruenberg admits that till it happens its hard to convince markets in a decisive way. Another problem is that 85% of the international assets and derivatives of top U.S. banks are in the UK. Former Fed chairman Volcker is guiding the FDIC, and he sees the FDIC's efforts to work closely with the UK very favorably. These efforts are significant and vital to avoid the worldwide disruption in financial markets that ocurred after the Lehman collapse, and provide a well planned action plan in place of an ad hoc day by day response....

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China's new prime minister Li Keqiang makes his first foreign trip with a trade delegation for talks with Indian representatives and business leaders, showing the importance he places on India. India offers China's companies access to large opportunties in infrastructure development, and China can benefit from India in the area of information technology and pharmaceuticals. Trade is envisioned as expanding from $70 billion in 2012 to $100 billion by 2015, and expanding rapidly as the two economies grow. Economic contacts also would provide an anchor for future relations as China faces difficulties in its relations with Japan, and S. E. Asian countries, and a U.S. wary of China's capabilities. This was pointed out in the joint statement. Li Keqiang also emphasized this in an editorial page article in India's daily newspaper, the Hindu, saying India and China have "to work hand in hand," to promote Asia as "an anchor for world peace." A peaceful India-China trade and economic relationship opens the way for investment and participation in development by China alongside Japan, Germany, France, UK and the U.S. in India, as the next major source for global economic growth. This also serves to defuse Asian tensions as both economies grow, and increased contacts between cities in India and China with the twining of cities program launched in the meetings. India can use China's capabilities in infrastructure development, the two countries share the need for information sharing on lowcost solutions in healthcare, in managing urbanization, and solutions for clean water in rural areas, and use of IT solutions in development, where much remains to be accomplished through cooperation. Some of these themes are the focus of Li Keqiang in his efforts for urbanization in China. ...

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GM plans to bring the Chevy Volt, a plug in type of car that will run more on the battery than the Toyota Prius- which uses gasoline support as soon as it picks up speed- to market in 3 years. But it doesn't yet know how it will do it. What created the opportunity is that Toyota is having a hard time of its own trying to figure out a battery that can provide more electric power, more punch, that would raise the Prius mpg from 46 to about 80 mpg. Its lithium ion technology batteries to achieve this haven't passed the safety tests so Toyota is pushing this back to 2011. This created a opportunity for GM to come up with its own for a plug in Chevy Volt. Its looking a small companies in the US that might supply these batteries. GM has come up with 2 consortiums of suppliers, one from MIT called A123 that is based on the work of MIT Prof.Yet-Ming Chinag who works with iron phosphate technology that is less prone to fires and safety issues. The other is led by S. Korean chemical maker LG Chem. Toshiba is working on research for a lithium ion battery for cars that will be safe on the Japanese side. It is not clear how this will turn out because batteries for laptops have had fires and safety issues, but the R&D is on in earnest for a new safe electric battery for cars. And automakers know its not just about an electric car. On it rests the image and innovation leader perception that is so important in marketing that no amount of advertising can fix, as the US automakers have learned to their extreme grief. ...

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Changes Novartis CEO Daniel Vasella is making in the pharmaceutical business. He has hired Joe Jimenez, who is running Novartis's consumer health care business to be the new pharmaceutical division chief. Jimenez previously worked at packaged goods companies including H.J. Heinz Company. Jimenez is cutting 25% of the jobs at pharmaceutical division's headquarters in Basel to reduce bureaucracy and costs. In March he promoted Trevor Mundel and Andrin Oswald, 2 young executives, to head the drug developmet group which puts drugs through human testing and submits them for regulatory approval. This group had become too bureaucratic and slow to move and take initiative. To improve its functioning Jimenez is organizing it into small teams with each team assigned an experimental drug in Novartis's pipeline. Each team of 8 people including physicians, experts in regulatory affairs and marketing and toxicologists work together to spot potential safety issues early and discuss them with regulators to determine whether to put the drug through expensive clinical trials. Each team takes the responsibility to take its drug to the market. The pharmaceutical unit is also being organized to be more nimble. It solicits health systems early on whether its willing to pay for drugs. And Jimenez has startd 4 pilot projects in tough markets to improve relationships with payers, including the Pacific Northwest where Novartis has offered to train an HMO's nurses in aspects of heart disease. Vasella supports the generics division of Sandoz because the growth is in generics, with generics commanding 60% of the prescription volume in Germany and USA, and sales for generics up 25% this year in the generics division. And Novartis paid $39 billion for Alcon, a eye care company. Its also working aggressively in the vaccines business, which like generics enjoys double digit growth. ...

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Andy Grove of Intel teaches a class at Stanford- he taught aclass earlier this year- and talks about his experiences. Some see Grove's disciplined management style as areflection of his experience escaping the Nazis from Czechoslovakia. Dr Grove says it comes from his experience at the CIty COllege of New York He recounts this in one of his books, where aparticular Professor helped mentor him but who was in the beginning very tough on the young Grove. Grove says that what impressed him most in those early years at City College was the way hard work and talent were rewarded and where students challenged their Professors without any attention to rank. Interestingly this is still true at many universities, and meritocracy prevails there. The opposite is true when one thinks of this at many corporations which gradually fall into astultifying mode where senior managers are not challenged and politics prevails. GM is a good example. Grove says he experienced this at Fairchild -where he worked with computer chip pioneers Moore and Noyce -with its elitist, back-stabbing and lax corporate culture. Senior executives at Fairchild walked in whenever they felt like, and younger employees were penalized or fired for similiar behaviour. When he took charge at Intel Grove imposed a strict arrival time of 8 am with latecomers forced to sign asheet. He also did not go along with trends like flexi-time and teleworking. He became known as ablunt and demanding manager, but afairminded boss who rewarded good ideas whatever the source. Asked about the strict arrival time Grove says that people don't understand that he was never that disciplined himself and he was not even amorning person. His view is that he wanted to avoid what he saw as aoutrageous double standard at Fairchild. With a better culture he was able to attract the best talent to Intel, and he used the strong discipline to improve the lousy manufacturing at Intel. Three decisions shaped Intel. The first, is the recognition of the strategic inflection point when current strategy is no longer viable, because unanticipated external forces make an existing business strategy obsolete. This happened when Intel got clobbered by the Japanese in the memory chip field it had dominated. And at such moments there are internal forces and inhibitions to overcome that make starting over or doing something totally different extremely difficult. For Intel this was the habit forming tendencies from having done one thing so well- the companies roots and the founders and engineering staff's knowledge and preferences lay in memory chips- such that that it became an emotionally stormy thing to break from this past. Grove made a complete U turn to go in another direction which he describes so well in his book -Only the Paranoid Survive. Timing is critical, and instinct and judgement is all that you have got to rely on. Its like a group of hikers in the woods and after suspecting that they are on the wrong track one of them says, "Hey guys I think were lost." Grove even describes the scene with acomparison to a scene in the World War II movie Twelve O'Clock High, where a new commander is called in to straighten out an unruly and undisciplined squadron of fliers in sel-destruct mode. The commander on his way to take charge, stops his car, steps out smokes acigarette while gazing into the distance. Then he he throws the cigarette down, grinds it with his heel and tell his driver "Okay Sergeant, lets go." Grove says he related to this scene in this decision at Intel, with every fiber of his being experienced this crisis personally, and learned what it takes to claw your way through a strategic inflection point, inch by excruciating inch. He says it takes objectivity, the willingness to act on your convictions, and the passion mobilize people into supporting those convictions. The second and third decisions was less gruelling but also courageous. The Intel Inside advertising campaign meant building abrand with customers even though Intel had never done this before. The decision to not have secondary suppliers and press the issue of manufacturing quality within Intel till Intel got it right also had never been done before. Andy Grove's strategic inflection point is what GM missed and set the process in motion towards bankruptcy. See the links in Intelilinks. The management style is also relevant to that discussion. Grove also provides insights in the Cross-Industry Insight Mechanism. He sees strategic inflectionpoints in autos and health care industries. He says the auto industry is going to be increasingly divorced from oil and the next big company will come in the auto battery technology field. He also believes health care and the pharmaceutical industry can learn from chipmaking. The clinical trials in pharmaceuticals take way too long, are slow-moving and bureaucratic. The pharmaceutical firms can learn from the fast "knowledge turns" in chipmaking, so that cycles of learning are accelerated....

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The Guardian makes a serious point that the German miracle 70 years ago after World War II, was based on giving debt relief to war torn Germany. Half of Germany's borrowings accumulated after two world wars were written off. Germany was allowed to repay a large part of its debt in its national currency. The cost of servicing the debt was kept at 5% of export revenues. In 2021 the comparable figure is 16% for poor indebted countries. Yet the generosity extended to Germany is not extended to poor indebted nations in 2023, says The Guardian. There is no space for them to gain industrial strength or control, says this editorial. Big powers are not in a hurry to let poor nations develop away from sectors such as agriculture and mining. Private bondholders would be the biggest ones to pay for international debt relief- institutional funds and investors lent 250 billion dollars to 55 most climate vulnerable countries, China 46 billion dollars. It calls on US and UK to pass legislation requiring private bondholders to take part in international debt relief, as bonds are covered under English or New York law. ...

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A report released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) shows growing income inequality in 34 OECD countries. OECD Secretary General, Angel Gurria says: "The social contract is starting to unravel in many countries. This study dispels the assumptions that the benefits of economic growth will automatically trickle down to the disadvantaged and that the greater inequality fosters greater social mobility. Without a comprehensive strategy for inclusive growth, income inequality will continue to rise." Countries with the largest ratios between incomes at the top and the bottom, are the United States, Turkey and Israel, roughly 14 to 1. Germany, Denmark and Sweden have ratios of 6 to 1, with their ratios up from the 1980's. Gaps in Chile and Mexico are at 25 to 1. The study covers the period from 1980 to 2008. Overall inequality went up by 25% in the U.S. from 1980. In 2008 the top ten percent in the U.S. earned $114,000, 15 times than incomes for the bottom 10%. The top 1% of Americans saw incomes go up from 1980 to 2008, increasing from 8 percent to 18 percent. The richest 1% having $1.3 million in after tax income, and the lowest 20% making $17,700. The trends have accentuated an increase at the highest end- the top 1% and top 10% of the people- and a sharp decrease for the bottom 20%, which can be grasped from the $17,700 and the $1.3 million, both at extreme ends. The study attributes the rise in inequality to a growing gap in wages for highly skilled workers as technology advances, a surge in foreign direct investment and a looser regulatory regime that reduces employee protections leading to wage premiums for financial jobs and smaller incomes for workers at the bottom. Income groups and professions and sectors that had the greatest influence in government were able during this period to get the greatest protection for incomes, and able also to maximize their incomes. Incomes in the financial sector increased dramatically in the last decade, as a result of deregulation leading to higher risk and speculative activities in the financial sector, leading to the financial crisis of 2008-2009. Financial crises further depress incomes at the lower end. Similiar income inequality trends can be seen for India and China. China has a Ginni coefficient of 0.5 according to researchers at Beijing Normal University, up from 0.3 three decades ago- a Ginni Coefficient above 0.4 is considered destabilizing. Another factor that played a part in these countries is corruption and lobbying by special interests for favored treatment of sectors or groups. Austerity measures taken in Europe and in the U.S. are likely to widen income gaps by depressing the lower end income groups, creating social unrest, especially in the absence of efforts to stimulate growth....

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Seattle's progress as a Tech Hub by 2014.

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Bill Gates on how to improve education in American schools by focussing on excellence in teaching. Excellence in teaching is the single most important variable in education, says Gates. The task, he says, is to identify the excellent teachers and transfer those skills to other teachers. He makes no mention of enriching the teacher pool, by attracting brighter education oriented people from society into teaching. He make some generalizations about class size and teachers studying for advanced degrees, saying they have no impact on educational achievement. This may be relative to the situation, depending on the actual class size and the numbers involved. And higher educational attainment by teachers is hardly a drawback in what the teacher can impart to students. It shows teachers actively engaged in the educational process themselves. Gates talks about improving education without additional spending, but does not address the issue of cuts in education spending in states that are reducing deficits. ...

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China's urbanization has proceeded to the point where the urban population now exceeds 50%. Urbanization as helped in the process of industrialization as young people went from rural areas to cities to work on the production lines. But further urbanization is running into problems as cities get congested and providing benefits such as affordable housing and schooling to migrant workers means raising taxes. The hokou system which classifies residents as urban or rural persists and efforts to reform it have run into difficulties in places like Chengdu and Chongqing. These efforts were abandoned earlier in Guangzhou and Zhengzhou because of the cost. The hukou system acts as a discriminatory system as migrants from the countryside are not allowed welfare benefits in the cities. They have only temporary status in the cities. And people from farming communities who migrate to the cities also have an interest in keeping land and homes they can go back to in the countryside. As they get into their 40's and 50's and no longer want to work on the production lines they can go back to the countryside. The government also sees the advantage of this as this acts as a safety valve for stability- during the 2008 global financial crisis about 20 million migrants went back to the countryside. The actual number of urban hukou holders in China is about 35% according to researchers at Peking University. Efforts to integrate rural hukou can be costly- the effort in Chongqing is estimated by local officials to cost $30 billion or 200 billon yuan to convert 3 million people. It has given 1.7 million people urban hukou in the past year with the conditions that these migrant workers must have worked in urban areas for at least 3 years. Migrants get to hold onto land entitlements in the countryside. But the urban hukou status would be limited to Chonqqing only. Nationwide the prospects for migrants obtaining the kind of urban hukou staus that gives them benefits of affordable housing and schooling are not good. The World Bank's Kuij's says local governments do not have the incentives or the resources to carry out the programs that are being tried in Chongqing. As the process of urbanization becomes more difficult, the rate of growth in China will be affected....

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Karen Carney played for England that night in Helsinki in 2009 when Germany won 6-2. She recalls that night and how the German team seemed better prepared. Now she says it is level ground as women players in Britain are getting better opportunities to play as professionals and treated that much better, not required to train at the park or go to the gym on their own time. 

Jill Scott she says is amazing for her longevity and her humility as the only player who is still playing from that night in Helsinki. She would tell any player to learn from Jill's work ethic and the hard work she put in to better herself and learn. 

Karen says Sarina Weigman is very special as the female coach, she would love to play for Wiegman, that she is inspiring. She sees this event at Wembley as really special for women's soccer.

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Former U.S. Supreme Court justice, Sandra Day O'Connor, started a nonprofit civics education group, iCivics, in 2009. iCivics has 19 free online games with lesson plans for middle school students to learn about how the branches of government of the U.S. work, and the Constitution. About 3.2 million students used these online games in 2016, according to iCivics. Justice O'Connor now considers this her most important legacy. She says civics has to be taught to each generation, that it is not inherited. In one of the games Supreme Decision, a justice has to cast the deciding vote in a case. Another online game is Win the White House, and it teaches students about what a candidate has to go through in an election, a political platform, what a liberal or conservative is, selecting a vice presidential candidate to broaden his appeal, and making compromises in his positions where necessary. Justice O'Connor started iCivics after she realized schools were not teaching student how to engage in the political and other processes of governance. Filament Games, a learning games company in Madison, Wisconsin, designed the games for iCivics. O'Connor came across educational interactive online games after retiring from the Supreme Court in 2006, and this has become a passion for her, to teach young people how to become engaged in the process of governance at an early age....