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Sri Lanka's foreign exchange reserves drop from over $7.5 billion in 2019 to about $2.8 billion in July 2021. The tourism industry on which Sri Lanka depends for foreign exchange and which supports the economy has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. Sri Lanka rupee has depreciated by 8% in 2021 and the country struggles to maintain food imports with declining dollar reserves. Sri Lankan government declared an economic emergency last week with rising food prices.

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US ceasefire proposal July 3, 2025 for Gaza accepted by Israel and Gaza/Palestine. An end to Gaza/Palestine war July 3, 2025 with US Egypt UAE mediators after months of fighting that have left Gaza in ruins, Iran and proxies in disarray, and leadership in Gaza changing three times. This opens up a path for humanitarian help to the population of Gaza/Palestine, ending hostage crisis, and finding a new path to Palestine/Gaza living in peace with its neighbors, Egypt, Israel, UAE and Gulf States.  It marks the end of another chapter of failures in the wars of the Middle East starting with Afghanistan/Pakistan under Reagan and Soviet leader Brezhnev on opposite sides, then Iraq/Iran interventions under Reagan/Bush/Bush first on one side then on the other, Afghanistan/9/11 under Bush Jr., Syria under Obama and Trump, Iraq/ISIS under DJT, and Afghanistan closure under Biden, Iran/Gaza/Israel under DJT second term. Forty Five Years War is an appropriate term reminiscent of the Thirty Years War in Europe in the 17th century, this one that destroyed Soviets and the American administrations priorities of Reagan to Biden 1980-2025. ...

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Hou You-Yi of the KMT and Tai Ching-Te of the DPP are candidates for the Taiwan elections in 2024. The Guardian looks at their differing positions in relation to China and the US.

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45 cities in China which represent 40% of China's economic output are now in full or partial lockdowns in the second week of April 2022, according to one tally, says the WSJ.

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A second election technology company Smartmatic has a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News Network. It says FNN falsely implicated the company in a bogus narrative about vote rigging in the 2020 presidential election.

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China's rare offer for disarmament or first use restraint talks with the US as both sides increase their military nuclear missile arsenals in 2024 and increase military spending. How should the US respond?

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Pat Oliphant was a celebrated cartoonist for the Washington Post. Ann Telnaes takes up this role in her cartoons about 2024 as America chooses which directions the Nation and the World will take till 2030.

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This NYT analysis of fund raising by the Republican and Democratic parties for the 2020 election campaign shows Republicans hardly raising any money from people with incomes over 250,000 and very little from incomes over $200,000 with most funding coming from the base white working class and lower and upper middle class. For Democrats fund raising is significant at the levels of income over $200,000. Geographically the Democrats get most of their funding from the east and west coast areas.  This reflects the changes in the parties starting in the the 2008 elections when higher income groups in software, finance, and in professions of law and medicine and Silicon Valley tech shifted to Democrats. The Democrats also held onto minority votes. In 2016 this changed with a sharp turn with tech on the west coast and finance professionals on the east coast shifting to the Democrats. The PPP agreement under Obama favored tech over the auto industry, and renewal fossil fuels such as solar were favored over the oil industry and fracking. In 2016 this helped shift the votes in Michigan and Pennsylvania to Republicans. Older manufacturing industries, oil and fracking were supported by Republicans who pushed back against ceding global dominance in manufacturing to China. By 2020 these changes are now entrenched with white working class voters in industries decimated and communities destroyed by foreign imports mainly from China, supporting Republicans. Republicans under Trump have made regaining the manufacturing leadership of the U.S. that was the situation after World War II, a top priority for the U.S.  The minority vote shifted with Hispanics moving towards Republicans to a much larger degree than before. The urban rural divide is similar to Europe where the similar impact of foreign imports mainly from China have destroyed older industries and led to sharp decline in older towns and communities outside major cities. This is the situation facing the U.S. and Britain, France, Italy Spain, and Poland. Germany as a manufacturing country dependent on exports is also affected but to a lesser degree. The unwholesome aspect of this is that the larger urban areas are divorced from the rest of the country  and rural small towns, smaller cities. In some form reintegration has to take place. The vast majority of the working class classified in today's terminology as the less educated lacking a college degree and white are  paradoxically with Republicans, and the wealthy professionals and industries in software, finance with Democrats. Nothing makes this more evident than a quick look at the map of the U.S. with blue on the opposite coasts for Democrats and mostly red in between and in the south. This is unprecedented in American history. A rising tide that lifts all boats in the U.S. and the return of the U.S. to the position it held after World War II could change this in the next decade. ...

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Remote work has fueled demand for PC's from HP and other manufacturers during 2020.

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Central bank officials say interest rates will stay at zero for about 3 years, to 2023.

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The number of coronavirus cases in South Africa passes 400,000 by the end of July 2020.

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In a decline in living standards for 9 months since March 2016, the longest stretch since 1975, UK household disposable income declined again in 2017. UK household's disposable income fell 1.4% on the quarter in the first 3 months of 2017, according to the Office of National Statistics. This decline for the third quarter in succession comes from weak wage growth, rising prices, and higher taxes. This also shows that Brexit has certainly not helped the British economy, and provides further evidence that it is hurting the British economy. With increasing uncertainty after the parliamentary elections, a weak government, serious questions about Brexit, further weakening of the annualized growth of 0.9% at this point is not ruled out by experts. One evidence about Brexit's impact- the steep decline in the value of the British pound since the June 23, 2016 Brexit referendum has accelerated inflation in May to 2.9%, significantly surpassing any slight growth in wages. This leaves Britain worse off than before, with the future uncertain under Brexit talks.  ...

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After the failure of 3 prime ministers selected by president Macron to form a functioning government and pass the Budget in 2025, it looks increasingly apparent that Macron has failed as president in 2025. He has hung on to power through one protest after another, yet has failed to bring together people with a plan to improve the living standards of the French people from all sectors and parts of society, including the lower income groups and rural parts of the country. France has become more fractured politically than ever under Macron, with the result that no one or two parties can form a viable government with enough support in parliament. Macron started out as Minister for the Economy under Socialist president Hollande, but never really supported the Socialist party, preferring to branch out on his own seizing a political opportunity to call all other parties part of the old system with a hastily put together Movement of his own. It has managed to win and hold power for nearly a decade for lack of better alternatives, yet today it is clear that this Movement did not have the power that comes from a genuine effort for the improvement of the lives of the people of France from all parts of society and all income groups, and both urban and rural parts of France. It is a missed opportunity for France and a failure of a president who failed to grasp the needs of France and of the French people. It has pitted different sectors and ideas, rural and urban, parts from neglected industrial development and thriving regions, against each other instead of pulling together the country into a coherent whole for improving the lives of the people. Tactical moves replaced a larger sense of strategy and purpose, and personal power replacing the interest of the nation as a whole for all parts of the country. ...

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Seen as a rural urban divide, less educated and well educated and tech workers the situation in France looks similar to that in the US in the elections of 2016 and 2020. With business in the US and European Union shifting manufacturing to China and the governments neglecting rural areas, decline in standard of living for people on pensions that have not kept up with the cost of living, the situation in France as in the US is decades in the making. Bernie Sanders and Melenchon were appealing in different ways to younger people yearning for change and a system that would correct these changes.   Melenchon coming this close to less than one percentage point of Le Pen in the first round of French elections shows that a straight Macron Le Pen version of what has happened is an oversimplification, just as seeing the changes in America under president Biden vs Trump would be a simplification, as voters for Sanders who voted for Biden are changing the Biden agenda and setting America on a new path. A path to reshoring jobs that were sent to China, rebuilding American manufacturing, increasing workers wages and restoring workers leverage for higher wages, investing $2 trillion in child care, housing, supporting worker incomes and families, supporting older Americans on pensions. In the same way beneath the idea that nothing has happened after the yellow vest protests for cost of living, that has not only not gone away- but increased in the concern for cost of living in this election with the surging inflation - new developments are happening.  Even as Germany under Merkel appeared not be changing in 2020- 1 year after Merkel the situation will have changed completely to address social concerns that were ignored earlier and to invest in infrastructure in a big way. Behind this is a fundamental change that is taking place. Facing a challenge from totalitarian states the fabric of society in the free world, the US, Germany, France, other EU states, India, and nations in the free world will have to respond with changes that restore the fabric of society to what it was before this kind of fracturing, bringing all parts of society together to bring all the energies in place for rebuilding, investing in infrastructure, restoring local manufacturing and renewal. It requires a unified effort to be put in place to respond in the right way.     ...

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Mr. Trump's conflict with the Justice Department in the last weeks of his presidency to appoint a new Attorney General with intent to contest the results of the presidential election of 2020, is shown in this report in NYT. This created risks for American democracy. The cracks in social cohesion following four decades of foreign wars 1980-2021, irresponsible behavior of financial institutions leading to financial crises and impoverishment of America, incompetent elites, neglect of rural America, ceding of technology and competitive position to China, failure to fund education, healthcare and infrastructure, under presidents Reagan, elder Bush, Clinton,  Bush, Obama, led to a situation of revolt against the status quo by a maverick politician using a new and proven dangerous form of communication social media. Ultimately this put democracy at risk. Lessons from this are only now being learned as people in the Biden administration and outside of it reflect on what happened. In this WSJ report Mr. Trump is seen pressuring officials of the Justice Department to agree to appointment of a new Attorney General shortly after the election. This was seen as an effort to question the results of the 2020 presidential election. A leading senator on the Judiciary Committee says this would lead to "shredding the US Constitution to stay in power." Of this and also of four decades of neglect in America Washington has this to say in his first Inaugural Address on April 30, 1789- "The blessed religion revealed in the word of God will remain an eternal and awful monument to prove that the best institutions may be abused by human depravity; and that they may even in some instances be made subservient to the vilest of purposes. Should, hereafter, those entrusted with the management of this government, incited by the lust of power and prompted by the supineness or venality of their Constituents, overleap the known barriers of this Constitution, and violate the inalienable rights of humanity: it will only serve to shew, that no compact among men (however provident in its construction and sacred in its ratification) can be pronounced everlasting and inviolable- and if I may so express myself, that no wall of words, that no mound of parchment can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the one side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other." ...

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A nuclear plant in a war zone with repeated shelling? This is taken up in this debate video of 44 minutes in FR24 which you can click on. The world has not seen this since the start of nuclear energy from plants in the 1950's. Calder Hall the first UK nuclear power station and the first in western Europe started in 1956. Eisenhower opened the first US nuclear power station Shippingport on the Ohio river in Pennsylvania, 50 kilometres from Pittsburgh in 1958 as part of the Atoms for Peace Program. The US built 54 nuclear plants that are operating today in 2022 generating 50% of the renewable energy in use today in the US. The question is what does the unthinkable conducted by the Russians and Ukrainians, by weaponizing a nuclear plant do to public perception of the safety of the Atoms for Peace Program initiated by president Eisenhower in 1954? What does this damaging of public safety perceptions after Fukushima do to the Atoms for Peace type of programs in China India, and European Union that are part of the emissions cutting programs in the world? These are serious questions at a time when climate change is not simply a word but means floods, fires, drought, and declining food production all over the world from Spain to Pakistan, from Germany to China. China and India are affected. China has 53 nuclear plants in 2021 with 50 GW and plans to double this by 2030. India has 22 nuclear plants  with 8 GW in 2021 and plans to triple this to 22 GW by 2030. How will climate change be tackled with public safety perceptions affected with another nuclear accident like that in Fukushima arising from shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. As the president of the UN Security Council Zhang Jun of China clearly stated at the UN SC meeting last week that China opposed use of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant by Russia (or Ukraine) in any way that could lead to damaging nuclear safety leading to an unintended accident. China only gets about 5% of its energy from nuclear, India about 3%, and this will need to increase multiple times to tackle climate change. France gets 70% of its energy from nuclear, the US 20%, by comparison. Nuclear energy safety and clear rules to prevent weaponizing of nuclear plant zones is essential and a solution like that developed for the food grain shipments from Odessa through Black Sea to the Mediterranean has to be arranged quickly. ...

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The new data security law that went into effect Sept 1, 2021, limits the amount of sensitive information China will share with foreign companies, and investors. All data related activities are subject to government oversight says this report in WSJ, including collection, storage, use and transmission. Companies in China now are reluctant to share information.  Because the law is ambiguous about what is sensitive information this makes companies more reluctant. The result is a China that is more opaque than before. It is driven by antagonism in the US over the effect on American workers of manufacturing and supply chains shifted to China. The response of the Chinese government is to turn the country inward, looking to self sufficiency, data security, and an environment that looks at foreigners with suspicion, says this report in WSJ. The pandemic has increased this view of foreigners in China, after China's experience with a deteriorating trade relationship with the US. Xi Jinping has not left the country since the pandemic started in January 2020. China has also seen an alarming drop in passengers going overseas or coming into China from 50 million in the first 8 months of 2019, to 1 million in the first 8 months of 2021, a drop of 49 million passengers, according to data from the Civil Aviation Administration. Government directives are to minimize foreign travel as a result of the pandemic. People in the US see the operations in China of companies such as Apple and now Tesla as a sign of how well the system of international cooperation is functioning without realizing that these companies never had the understanding of the history and culture of the country after two centuries of struggle against colonialism. When the situation takes a different turn as it has after Mr. Trump raised the issue of American workers and loss of manufacturing, and after the pandemic created unexpected distrust, there is very little these companies have to offer to keep the relationship between two of the world's population blocs, between North America and the closely related population of South America, with the people of China, a billion people on each side. This shows that the relationship cannot be left only to the business and private sector driven by profit and business interests, that all sections of the population in China and in the US need to be involved for a stable relationship with ongoing human and cultural contacts at all levels. ...

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During 2022 the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank issued 6 warning citations to Silicon Valley Bank, saying that its bank practices did not allow for enough cash in the event of crisis. By July 2022 in a full supervisory review it was rated deficient for governance and controls. At a meeting with senior leaders of the bank the possible exposure to interest rate losses related to Fed increasing rates was also discussed says this report in NYT. The Fed regulators stated that the bank was using wrong models showing that SVB bank would do better as interest rates increased. Questions are being asked about why things that were in plain sight were overlooked by the regulators- 97% of deposits were uninsured by the federal government. In the event of a crisis depositors might try to get their deposits out causing a run on the bank which is what actually happened with $42 billion attempted withdrawals in one day. Michael Barr is the vice chair for Fed supervision. A investigation report is expected by May 1. March 29 the House Financial Services Committee will hold ahearing in Congress. Peter Conti-Brown, an expert on financial regulation at the University of Pennsylvania calls it failure of banking supervision, and says it will become clear from the investigation whether the supervisors failed in their work. One of the problems is that the CEO of SVB bank, Gregory Becker, was on the Board of the San Francisco Fed. NYT says the optics of this is bad. Bernie Sanders, Senator from Vermont, calls it absurd that he was appointed to the Fed board of the institution that was regulating SVB bank. Another problem is that Randall Quarles, vice chair of Fed supervision 2017-2021 carried out a 2018 regulatory roll back law of president Trump in an expansive way says NYT. This law exempted banks with less than $250 billion in assets from strict banking supervision that larger banks were expected to go through. Fed chairman Powell is criticized for not  flagging these steps as potentially dangerous for the banking system in the way this was done by vice chair Lael Brainard. Brainard is now head of Biden's National Economic Council. She never favored the Trump law and had grasped early the risks of such deregulation. Sanders will bring a new law to prevent bank CEO's from sitting on Fed boards, and Senator Elizabeth Warren has called for an independent review that does not include Powell.     ...

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Prime minister Theresa May of Britain announces her plan to spend an additional 20 billion pounds a year on the National Health Service. Over five years the commitment is for an additional 70 billion pounds. By 2023 this will bring the UK to the point where it is spending the same proportion on health care as France. This also fulfills a promise made by the pro Brexit campaign. May says some of this would come from higher taxes, and 9 billion pounds that the UK contributes to the European Union each year would go to pay for the additional funds to the NHS. The 2017 British election with Labor winning 40% of the vote has affirmed the shift in public sentiment to greater commitment of funds for health and education. Poorer communities in Britain that were left behind tended to vote for Brexit, with a large gap widening between London and the rest of the country. Higher commitment to NHS is part of the shift in perception that the needs of health, education and underserved communities are the new priorities. ...

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The US economy declined by 0.2% in the second quarter of 2022 or 0.9% on an annualized basis. What does this mean? NYT provides a look with a breakdown of where this comes from. Business and residential construction went down by 11-12% as they are interest rate sensitive sectors and the Fed has raised interest rates by 0.75 of a percentage point twice in 12 months. Yet consumer spending was holding up and increased by 1% in the second quarter. 

Fed chairman Powell told a conference yesterday that he still sees a pickup in spending in the second half of 2022 as buyer balance sheets are good, the labor market is strong, and wages are increasing.

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See the full text of the speech by president Biden on the "Battle for the Soul of the Nation" which was delivered at Independence Hall in Philadelphia on September 1, 2022. It is the place where the Declaration of Independence was debated and written by Thomas Jefferson and the founding fathers. See  the Lyrarc Gist for the speech given by president Abraham Lincoln in the same Hall on Feb. 22, 1861, on his way to the White House as the Civil War began. 2022 marks a turning point for the nation as it seeks to remain the beacon to the world that it was under Jefferson and Washington, and it was under Lincoln and Stanton.

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WSJ looks at the situation for the Republican party in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and places like Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 2023. It says Republicans face problems in the suburbs and that this has not changed.

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Peter Landers of the WSJ shows how Japan is becoming an attractive destination for American investment in 2023. Prime minister Kishida has created new interest in Japan after the G7 Summit in Hiroshima.

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After the pandemic and during high inflation, economic troubles and having to turn to the IMF for conditional loans, Argentines find cause for celebration for their performance at the World Cup Soccer Final in December 2022.

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The US looks at outpacing Europe with faster economic growth because of a rapidly progressing vaccination drive. The slow pace of Europe's vaccination drive will affect tourism in Europe in the summer of 2021.