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Iran plans an ambitious $50 billion investment program to expand oil and gas output in the next 4 years. About half of that coming from Iran and the rest from outside oil companies. Iran expects to earn $54 billion in oil exports in 2006 vs. $47 billion in 2005. Iranian production represents 5% of global supply, about 4 million barrels a day. Only about 2.5 million of this is available for export. Iran has 2 problems in oil use and production. Gasoline use is growing at about 10% a year. And oil production is declining by about 5-6% a year from existing fields. The investment program over the next 4 years would increase production from new fields by about 1.3 billion barrels, but with existing fields generating less each year this will only generate about 500,000 barrels of additional output beeyond the 4million barrels today. And with domestic use growing rapidly and new refinery capacity being added to meet domestic demand of 500,000 barrels a day even this would leave no more for export than the current level of 2.5 million barrels a day, or probably less with growing gasoline use inside Iran. These are Iranian Oil Minister Vaziri Hamaneh's numbers. What this means is that with economic sanctions the whole global supply picture and the world price of crude oil would be seriously affected by economic sanctions in the next 4 years, as the 2.5 million barrels a day export number would be reduced by the increase in domestic consumption of gasoline by 10% a year, and the decline in existing fields of 5-6% a year. In the short term two year horizon this adds upto loss of some 700,000 barrels a day, about 400,000 from decline in existing oil fields and 300,000 in increased domestic use, which are no longer available for export. Hamaneh pointed to the investment as evidence of Iran's good intentions as a supplier in an interview with te Wall Street Journal. He says Iran sees the importance of preserving its credibility as a reliable supplier. It does not want to cause hardship to consumers around the world. Another reason for the pragmatic position taken by Hamaneh is that Iran depends on oil exports for 40-50% of government revenue....

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The enthusiasm for Six Sigma was carried by McInerney from GE to 3M. 3M was sluggish at the time and growing bureaucratic over time so an outsider and the efficiency focus of getting more for every buck spent and focus on quality in all processes and designing for quality and reduced defects may have helped to bring a new dimension to 3M. But as the author reflects and Buckley who stepped into McInerney's shoes says aloud, as well as several B School Professors, this imposed on a culture like 3M's that thrived on innovation, the post it note being a classic example, was not going to produce the best results in the long run. Interestingly GE itself under Immelt has emphasized innovation, research and development in addition to Quality Control. Going back over the years Japanese QC actually was taken from earlier work at GE in the 30's and 40's in Quality Control, so it was natural for GE to return to its own accomplishments in this area after a period when it had lost its leading edge in Quality. But foremost GE was about innovation and creativity and new products, back from its origins with Thomas Edison's company. The other GE person Nardelli at Home Depot also tried to bring a numbers only focus and doing it in a marine corps seargent type of way stumbled badly and resigned. So this piece on McInerney and buckley and 3M reflects a quiet shift to thinking of new ways to approach the complex global markets of today and the global competition of today. And the rapidly changing marketplace where shifts in buyer behaviour and competitor innovation create a constantly changing playing field. Is Tata Motors small car at an incredibly low price going to change the car industry, if the same companies can then make better cars at a much lower cost after developing lowcost high quality technologies? What is happening as Apple and then HP achieve success by selling their brands through stores and Dell starts to slip? Why is P&G and Unilever looking at the prospects in selling to consumers with smaller budgets and shifting its focus to these markets for growth? Doesnt this require one to think on ones feet and listen and observe and reflect on what these changes mean? Roger Martin of the University of Toronto has a piece in BW, May 21, 2007, with a similiar thought. ...

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Revised auto fuel efficiency standards win the support of GM, Ford, Chrysler, Honda and Hyundai. These standards would lower the average fuel economy to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, a decline from the initial target of 56.2 mpg. The revised proposal calls for a 5% average annual increase in fuel economy for cars and a 3.5% increase for light trucks through 2021. After 2021 both cars and trucks have to meet a 5% annual increase. Useful innovation in the new standards is to provide credits for hybrid pickup trucks, and give credits for technological advances that improve fuel economy but don't show up in EPA tests such as the one that shuts of the engine when a car is idling. Other credits would be offered for solar roof panels on electric vehicles. It includes incentives for "promoting early market penetration of tailpipe CO2/fuel consumption reducing technologies." This comes after a long period in which the U.S. lagged behind other countries in fuel economy. It could be one of the main achievements of the Obama administration, and help build a new auto industry around new technologies....

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Sergio Marchionne, CEO of Fiat-Chrysler told a conference in Michigan -"these are people who did not grow up and become conditioned to doing business in Detroit. " He cited this as one reason the new generation of leaders at the U.S. auto companies had embraced the new fuel efficiency standards. Another point he made that was well received was that "anybody who surrenders 14 years before the date ought not to be in business." He was referring to the 2025 deadline for the new standards. This view was well accepted by the other auto companies and by the UAW workers union, showing the big change that has come about in the U.S. auto industry.

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Ford plans to reduce the weight of its F-150 pickup truck by about 700 pounds, a 15% reduction in weight, by switching parts of the body from steel to aluminium. The new F-150 pickup truck is designed to be introduced in 2014 and capable of meeting new fuel efficiency standards through 2020. This would enable a 25% increase in fuel efficiency and help meet the Obama administration fuel efficiency standards of 2011, which require the U.S. vehicle fleet to average 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.

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IHS Global Insight estimates that output in the US for the auto industry for 2009 will be 9.5 million vehicles, with capacity of 16.9 milllion vehicles this amounts to 56% capacity utilization number which is very low. Center for Automotive Research estimates that the sales began moving ahead of trend in 1996 and really accelerated after 1998. The easy financing fueled the boom. Now the 16-17 million sales years that were considered normal are seen as inflated and way above the trend. All this suggests that there is a lot of restructuring ahead for the auto industry.

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Stanford Prof. Robert Sutton on the advantages of continuous feedback over formal performance evaluations. Performance evaluations if not done right can do damage especially ones that are designed to promote individual excellence over teamwork and achieving goals as a team effort.

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The new 600 page book by Attorney General William Barr in the outgoing Trump Administration is titled "One Damn Thing After Another" published by Harper Collins of News Corporation. The WSJ provides early details of the book including a meeting on Dec. 1 with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office, and the words exchanged as Trump insisted there was massive vote fraud and Barr replied there wasn't anything the Justice Department could find. Trump told Barr- "Leave and don't go back to your office. You are done right now, go Home," says this WSJ report. 

Barr now urges Republicans to look at an impressive list of younger candidates for the future of the party.

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Brinksmanship on both sides as Greece's Syriza government continues negotiations with the EU in June 2015. Syriza's Tsipras attends the St. Petersburg Economic Forum as the IMF's Lagarde calls for restoring dialogue "with some adults in the room." The German media describes Greece's finance minister Yannis Varoufakis as "amateurish." Germany says a Greek exit from the eurozone is an option. Creditors are pushing for changes to the pension system before releasing $7 billion, including $1.6 billion owed to the IMF on June 30, 2015.

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Spain's central bank was lauded for macroprudential supervision before the housing bubble burst. Will China's central bank and financial authorites which have managed the housing bubble upto this point face similiar problems? Can China be the sole exception even as housing bubbles burst with wide repercussions in the U.S., UK and Spain? Nicholas Lardy, of the Peterson Institute of international Economics, says urban housing stock makes up 41% of Chinese household wealth in 2011. The same figure for the U.S. is 26%. Chinese buyers invest in homes because low interest rates on savings accounts cannot keep up with inflation. Real estate investment was 13% of GDP in 2011. Home ownership is a recent development in China, only since 1990, Chinese have never experienced large price declines. Household debt as a percentage of disposable income has increased significantly in recent years, up to 53.6% in 2011 from 31.3% in 2008, according to Lardy.

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Questions about the euphoria for US stock market performance in 2011. Negative impact of housing market, rise in food and fuel prices, and the precarious condition of state and local government finances, raise concerns about the economy and stock markets for 2011-2012. John Makin sees a one third chance of sovereign debt crisis in the eurozone, and a 40% chance of China not making a soft landing, in a video interview with Wessel of the WSJ, December 30, 2010. This would impact stock markets in the US. WSJ's Brett Arends column also expresses similiar skepticism. Robini sees housing losses in 2011.

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How to best integrate iPad reading to children with reading paper books to children and libraries is an effort that is still being developed.

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In 2013 growth shows signs of strengthening in the U.S. and the eurozone countries see improvement from the severe recession in Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and weakness in Italy. Developing countries see growth slow down to about 5% in India, 7% in China and 2% in Brazil. Growth improvement in Japan. Overall the situation appears to be reversing with growth picking up in the developed countries and slowing in developing countries and emerging markets. This was also reflected in equity markets performance with U.S. and European stock markets showing strong performance and emerging markets weak or declining performance.

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Glassman cites Ronald Reagan who once said economists are people who look at things in practice and then see if they can prove this in theory. He co-authored a book on "Dow 36,000" in 1999. What happened and why? He correctly says the Dow is up to 12,000- and this only after Fed chairman Bernanke's $600 billion quanitative easing on top of low to zero interest rate policies after the 2008 crisis- in the 12 years since. So what happened? Glassman says what he did not account for is the huge decline in the prospects for the U.S. economy, with Congressional Budget Office estimates of 2% growth over the next 70 years, compared to the 3.5% growth in the first 50 years of the 20th century. A lot goes go into this, including the debt buildup, the lack of investment in human capital and K-12 education. The other is the huge volatility in stock returns, and the "discontinuous" risks stemming from things like the home price crash, terrorist 9/11 attack and other such developments. He says he is tired of telling investors to hold on in the face of such huge volatility and uncertainty. He advises a cautious strategy, a pull back from stocks to reduce the downside on returns and a smaller allocation to stocks....

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The Russian economy has proved stronger than other emerging markets in a similar situation. The ruble has declined from 35 to the dollar before the Ukraine crisis and sanctions in 2014 to 86 to the dollar in Jan. 2016. Foreign currency reserves dropped from $600 billion to $385 billion in 2009, when Russia with memories of 1997 when the ruble collapsed, decided to prop up the ruble. In Nov. 2014 Russia's central bank let the ruble float, this time responding in a different way following western sanctions over Ukraine and a emerging markets crisis. Interest rates were increased to tackle inflation.A key rate was raised to 17% in Dec. 2014, dropping by Jan 2016 to 11%. Inflation was 12.9% in Dec. 2015, the target for 2017 is 4%. The economy has contracted by 3.7% in 2015, and expected to contract by 1% in 2016, according to the IMF. Alexsei Kudrin, former finance minister, expects modest growth in 2017.

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Rattner looks with alarm at recent figures showing that of 2.65 million jobs created in the U.S. in 2015, only 30,000 were in manufacturing. He reflects on growth in manufacturing with the recovery in automobile manufacturing between 2009- 2013 - during this period employment in the U.S. auto industry went up by 23 percent to 690,000, and employment in Mexico's auto industry went up by 60 percent to 589,000, showing much faster growth overseas. Manufacturing has also experienced decline in private sector wages of 0.8% since 2009, with auto industry wages down 12.7 percent, says Rattner.

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The surging demand for children's reading activities at New York's neighborhood branch public libraries in 2015.

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The critical exchange between oil companies and auto companies about who is at fault for the energy crisis. In one ad that ran last year, Chevron argued that "if automakers improved fuel economy across the board by just 5 mpg, we'd save over 22 billion gallons of gasoline a year." The criticism is also sparked by the high price of oil which is hurting sales of pickups and large SUV's that the automakers depend on for profits. One ad by Exxon Mobil shows a cartoon of a large SUV filling up at a gas station and hints that the problem rests with the automakers who have failed to build the kind of highly fuel efficient vehicles that are needed. The ad says that the average fuel economy of new U.S. autos has not gone up much in two decades, the small gains have been offset by the increases in the size and weight of vehicles.

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Strikers at a Honda transmission factory in Hoshan, 100 miles northwest of Hong Kong are asking for raises of $117 or 800 renminbi in cash above the $132 a month or 900 renminbi that they are now paid. About 950 of 1900 workers at the plant are trainees, young people from vocational schools or high schools earn $132 a month. Older employees earn upto 1500 renminbi or $220 a month. The significance of this strike is that the Chinese government is tacitly encouraging the strike as it begins making moves to increase domestic consumption and make the economy less dependent on exports. This requires consumer's having larger purchasing power and higher wages. It also means that China will not remain the low cost manufacturer for manufacture goods makers around the world for very long. Consider the size of the increase and the policy change of the government and this implies a significant shift by China.

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James Glassman, has published a new book, "Safety Net." In the book he makes an admission that he was wrong in his theory and understanding of the stock market described in his earlier book, "Dow 36,000," published in 1999. That book called for stocks to triple in value in 5 years. Glassman wrote then, at the height of the tech boom, that stocks could immediately double, triple or even quadruple as was happening at that time for tech stocks going public, and they would still not be too expensive. Part of the arguments rely on a definition of risk. Glassman said in his earlier book that stocks and bonds are equally risky in the long run, because stocks had never lost money over the long term and over long periods of time their returns were constant. But Glassman is using a technical definition of risk as how much returns can deviate from the average. What investors face in the real world is a common sense definition of risk, which is- what are the chances you will lose money? This point says Jason Zweig, is clearly stated in Howard Marks coming book, "The Most Important Thing." And what about the point about stocks never losing money, the central point in Glassman's thesis? Here research from Dimson, Marsh and Staunton of London Business School is useful. This research shows that in France from 1912 through 1977, stocks lost money after inflation. The upshot of this is to emphasize the need for looking at risks as real in the real world, where things have changed to the point where the current stock market rally is attributed by the Fed chairman to vigorous efforts to fight a downturn in the economy. For investors these risks are not going away with a sudden surge in stock prices....

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Gerald Seib points out that the choice between the Islamists and the military has always been a false one. The young people who are a large part of the population in the Middle East and their hopes for a better future are left out in this choice. The young protesters were the main force behind the ouster of Mubarak. These young people have to be brought into the political process for Egypt to move forward.