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Stephanie Pope is good for Boeing and good for America. Pope headed the parts and services business, and is now the CEO of the commercial aircraft unit. With quality defects a major issue for Boeing leading to two CEO's leaving early, the last being Mr Calhoun a finance executive leaving in December 2024, there is strong opinion that an engineer is needed, yet merely an engineer is not enough as Muilenberg an Iowa State engineer stepped down in 2019. Stephanie Pope has an accounting degree from Missouri State, joined McDonnell Douglas in 1994, which merged into Boeing in 1997.  She says "Culture beats strategy. If you have wrong culture you never succeed." and "Out of failure comes success. You can't be afraid of failure." It's rare to hear that. It also tells one that she has the right idea and practices about the process and hard work that gets results. Pros- she loves the company her grandfather was sheet metal inspector for the company, her father electrical mechanic, at McDonnell Douglas based in St. Louis, Missouri.  She has worked 30 years at the company. She aspired to be a teacher- and its good to have humility.  A VP in the parts and services unit describes how she helps out when quality issues come up in a hands on way bringing in engineers and other resources to help. The Chief Engineer says she is comfortable in the technical space.                                                  Cons- She has an accounting background. There is a sense that Boeing wanted to push planes out of he factory floor as fast as possible to meet production targets. Stephanie Pope with her humility, hands on style, her attitude in work with others, treating assembly line workers with dignity, her attention to the culture at Boeing, persistence in the face of failure,  all present a rare opportunity for Boeing and for America to engage in the task of renewal under a new leadership conscious of its responsibilities.        ...

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Bayer AG CEO Marijn Dekkers talks to the Journal's Geoffrey Rogow about the company's pharmaceuticals business and job retention. Dekkers says profits are reduced by the tight budgets of European governments and the pressure on pricing. He cites the 16% mandatory rebate in Germany on prescriptions. For Bayer diversification through the chemicals business offers a way to handle the ups and downs in the pharmaceuical business with patent expiration. He is not interested in acquisitions because of the high premium involved and the difficulty of recovering this for investors. Bayer like other drug companies has extensive operations in China. Bayer is training salespersons in top and second tier Chinese cities. It has a program to train 10,000 physicians in rural areas of China working with the local government. Dekkers makes an interesting point about jobs and job retention in the U.S. He says a lot of jobs were outsourced in the 1990's and its difficult to bring them back. Germany has done a better job with job retention with "kurzarbeit" and other programs working in partnership with industry. In his view this could have been managed better in the U.S. with active programs such as this in the last two decades....

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Prof. Peterson of Harvard and Hanushek of the Hoover Institution, authors with Woessmann of the book "Endangering Prosperity: A Global View of the American School," offer some startling reminders about the importance of education to economic growth and incomes in countries. Simply by raising the math standards in the U.S. to the higher standards in Canada would raise GDP by three fourths of one percentage point. One advantage that the U.S. enjoys comes from its good university systems, open markets, rule of law, tax rates, and open immigration policies, which give it about two thirds of a percentage point in higher GDP growth per year. The estimates are from the authors calculations. For the period 1960-2009, a period of rapid growth in Asian countries Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong, higher test scores in math and reading compared to the wrold average as measured by NAEP test and PISA, have led to 2% higher GDP growth. NAEP shows only 32% of U.S. high school students proficient in math compared to 45% in Germany and 49% in Canada and 63% in Singapore. By contrast to Korea and Taiwan, Peru, Argentina, the Philippines and S. Africa have about 2% less in GDP growth because of lower scores compared to the world average....

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Clements provides an exceptionally useful reasoning for the average investor to give an important role to high dividend paying stocks in retirement planning. This applies to today's low interest environment with stock market volatility. The higher dividends help reduce the need to sell stocks in a volatile stock market and limit this to occasional selling. Using estimates from Yale Prof. Shiller's website for past 100 years data diversified U.S. stocks with high dividends pay about 4.4% in annual dividends outpacing the inflation average of 3.2%, and 5.6% appreciation in value of the stock each year. This helps preserve retirement capital. As many high dividend large cap stocks are also value stocks there is an additional value effect in holding these stocks.

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This editorial in the WSJ argues against Trade Representative Lighthizer's move to increase the percentage of North American content in a vehicle so that it creates more jobs. Currently Nafta rules require 62.5% of a duty free vehicle be made in North America. Lighthizer wants to lower the content coming from Asia or Europe. This is not favored by Canada and Mexico and it makes Mexico less competitive than it is now.

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The WSJ's Monica Langley provides insights into Donald Trump's campaign strategies, some of them right out of his book "The Art of the Deal." His target voter is from a think big strategy to get voters across a broad spectrum using the slogan "Make America Great Again," with a knack of tapping into a deep well of voter frustration with the political establishment. How to get attention in the media is the next step Trump tackled by using social media to the fullest - using Twitter often, making statements that attract attention such as the ones on China, Mexico, Senator McCain and Muslims that tap into failure of political correctness to address voter frustration on trade and jobs, immigration and terrorism. The Trump campaign has 14 million followers on Twitter, and 50 million "engagement" accounts on Facebook- that cost very little. Social media is to Trump in 2016 what community networking on the PC dashboard was to Obama in 2008. As the WSJ pointed out in an editorial, the splitting of the Republican vote among many candidates, and the failure of candidates to grasp the nature of the unconventional campaign waged by Trump- descending into attacks based on target groups of voters on every candidate except Trump- created the opportunity Trump has grasped with his knack for improvising along the way. Commonsense campaigning without sophisticated strategies, improvising often along the way, using the available medium of social media at little cost to get the message and slogan across, helped Trump make the deal with voters to upset the political establishment. The Sanders campaign is also based on careful repetition of the same slogan and facts about inequality and lobbyists, over and over again, offering strong action on health care and college tution just as Trump offers strong action on China trade, immigration with the idea of the wall, and barring entry of Muslims for terrorism till "we figure out what's happening." The difference being that Trump thinks big and targets the entire electorate of his party's voters in the primaries from the beginning, and a broad based campaign on many issues. Underestimating your opponent carries many risks in politics, never more so than when you are out of touch or not listening to voter frustration, and fail to speak up to it....

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China adopts a two child policy nationwide in October 2015, abandoning a one child policy adopted in 1980. Experts had warned for years of a policy that would lead to fewer young people, and a rapidly aging society. UN forecasts show China will have about 400 million people over the age of 60 in 2030, 25% of the population in 2030, compared to 14% today if current trends continued. Growth of elderly people would burden the pension and health care systems. The birth rate of 1.4 children per woman is lower than in the U.S. today.

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In three months since August 2011, the Indian rupee has fallen from 45 rupees to the dollar to 52 rupees. Analysts at HSBC see a decline in the value of the rupee to 58 rupees to the dollar. Foreign investment in India declined from $6.5 billon in June 2011, to 616 million in September 2011. The Indian economy is expected to see a sharp slowdown with growth estimated at 7.2% in the current fiscal year down from 8.5% in the prior year. Inflation is at over 10% for the last 12 months. The sharp drop in the value of the rupee is expected to worsen inflation. India's imports exceed exports by $80 billion. Any increase in exports in a slowing global economy will be offset by higher cost of imports. India pays for oil and other commodity imports in dollars, and subsidizes fuel and fertilizers, which would lead to a worsening of the large fiscal deficit. It is in this environment that the Congress led government decided to open up the retail sector by allowing 100% ownership in single brand retailing, and 51% in multibrand retailing. Foreign retailers will be allowed to setup stores in cities with more than one million people, of which there are 53 cities in India. Other restrictions are 50% of the required over $100 million investment has to be in back end infrastructure, and 30% of goods sold must be bought from small companies, according to Commerce minister, Anand Sharma. Each of India's 28 states would compete to individually permit retailers to open stores in their state. The investment in the retail sector will come over a number of years....

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Over the last ten years average growth in real per capita income has averaged 1.6%, with declines only in two years of the last twenty years, 2008 with the global financial crisis, and in 1991 a year before President George H.W. Bush lost the election to Clinton. A forecast by Mark Zandl of Moody's Economy.com shows real disposable income per capita is expected to increase by 0.4% by the end of the third quarter of 2010 from a year earlier. This will show up in consumer spending and will weaken the recovery. It is also likely to be reflected in elections in the latter part of 2010.

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The prospect of a combined vote of 30-35% for both major political parties of Samaras and Venizelos, with the rest of the vote splintered among right and left wing parties, in the 2012 Greece elections. This will make governing with austerity measures even more difficult.

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Analysts say the odds are now three in four that Greece will exit the euro. The young leader of the Coalition of the Radical Left, which came in second with 16.78% of the vote after New Democracy party's 18.8%, says: "We believe that the path of salvation doesn't pass through the barbarity of austerity measures." A new election is expected as talks to form a new government are expected to fail, with the likelihood that more votes would go to parties other than New Democracy and the Socialist Pasok party, the two parties that have governed Greece. This would mean a smaller vote for the two parties, smaller than the 18.8% New Democracy and 13% Pasok received in this election, relegating them to insignificance in the Greek political landscape. And opening a new chapter for Greece outside the euro.

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Wages remain stagnant, labor participation rate declines, and U-6 at 11.8%, as unemployment rate declines to 5.9% in U.S. labor market.

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Millenials are moving away from political parties to look at individual candidates in 2014. Attitudes are changing moving away from gender politics. A Pew Research Center survey of March 2014 shows 50% of millenials consider themselves political independents. And 31% believe there is not much difference between Democrats and Republicans.

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In one of its first major votes the newly elected U.S. House of Representatives approved the Keystone XL pipeline by a vote of 252 to 161.

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President Obama proposes changes in taxes to fund programs to aid students such as free 2 years of community college, aid for student loans, and financial help for middle class families. Senate Majority Leader McConnell says the proposals to raise income taxes for high income Americans with $320 billion in new revenues over 10 years, reduced prospects for changes in the tax system. He said the Obama proposals were designed " to excite the base but not designed to pass." Obama says "the shadow of crisis has passed," and calls for "middle class economics," and improving incomes for anyone making the effort. The call comes as inequality widened during the long recession and some of the Obama administration's policies such as on homeowner foreclosure, and lack of focus on unemployment during the first term, may have actually worsened inequality. The call also comes late in the second term in Jan 2015- with presidential elections in 2016- after the Republicans gain control of both Houses of Congress, which is why Republicans dismiss this as mere political talking points for the base....

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Economist John Spence on advice to the Chinese government to tackle problems of shifting from an export based economy to one more dependent on domestic spending. And managing the shift upscale to sophisticated technologies from basic consumer goods.