LyrArc Article Gist
Petrobras CEO, Aldemir Bendine, faces the difficult tasks of regaining investor confidence, establishing better governance, and carrying out a divestment program to cut the debt load of $133.9 billion. He is a bank executive from Banco do Brasil appointed in February 2015 following the corruption scandal at Petrobras. The new board at Petrobras following the corruption scandal is now free of political appointees, and includes academics, business leaders and technical experts. Bendine says, today there is not the same atmosphere as in the past with political appointees, and he sees no chance for government interference.

LyrArc Article Gist
Toshiba sets up a new board of directors in August 2015 following the accounting scandal. Seven of eleven directors are from the outside, all Japanese. Outside directors will head the audit, compensation and nomination committees.

LyrArc Article Gist
The number of student loan borrowers in the U.S with loans over $100,000 has surged from about 1 million in 2010 to 1.82 million in 2014, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Th borrowers are graduate students who have piled up so much debt in the last decade that 40% of student debt of $1.19 trillion in 2015 is from graduate student debt. A major problem is that there are no limits to graduate student borrowing and the rates are higher because of bad loans in the system, increasing the size of the burden of student debt on individual borrowers rapidly, ironically at a time of low interest rates. This leaves borrowers worse off with unpayable student debt affecting them all their lives, taxpayers paying more, prudent student loan borrowers paying higher rates, and all the time reducing the pressure on universities and colleges to reduce costs for affordable graduate education. This is now a major problem in the U.S. and a major issue in the 2016 presidential election.

LyrArc Article Gist
Wal-Mart's second quarter 2015 earnings decline by 15% over the prior year. Wage increases with minimum wage raised to $10 by Feb 2016. Wal-Mart is making investments in more employees per store, adding people at checkout lines to improve service, improving the look and feel of stores to get shoppers back and reverse earlier declines in per store sales. Per store sales increasd by 1.5% for the second quarter 2015, the fourth quarter of increases before a period of falling per store sales. Competing for sales are Amazon and dollar stores. Wal-Mart is also investing in online sales with the lower margins in this field. Wal-Mart's profit for the second quarter was $3.48 billion compared to $4.08 billion the prior year. Total revenue of $120.8 billion was close to what it was in 2014. Wal-Mart's strategies include asking suppliers to offer more price cuts and to put less into marketing, asking suppliers to pay additional fees for warehousing, and stocking from the shop floor for retail shelves instead of going to the backroom storage. Forecasts for online sales are lowered to reflect weaker international sales in UK, Brazil, with overall online sales growth now at high teens instead of the 20% range. The Chinese e-commerce site Yihaodian was acquired for $760 million for full ownership....

LyrArc Article Gist
This editorial in the WSJ points out the dangers to the Republican party in taking the stand on immigraton along the lines suggested by Donald Trump in August 2015- deportation for all illegal immigrants, no birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants, and no remittances allowed for illegal immigrants to their home countries. It points out that remittances actually improve the economies of the countries south of the U.S. border in Latin America and reduce illegal immigration. There is a need for seasonal workers in farm areas where there is a severe shortage of workers even at $17 an hour. Reducing immigration is better accomplished by more guest worker programs. A likely result would be the move of farms and factories to regions with low cost labor in Latin America or other countries. For the Republican Party this type of policy would bring back the period of the 1920's, says the WSJ, when Irish and Italian immigration was opposed by the party, alienating the two ethnic groups till they were won back in the Reagan period- a sure way to lose in 2016....

LyrArc Article Gist
The Washington Post points out the damage to civil society and the rule of law in Egypt in 2014-2015.

LyrArc Article Gist
The Washington Post points out the damage to civil society and the rule of law in Egypt in 2014-2015. It cites the Working Group on Egypt's conclusions that repression only works to increase the extremism in the region. A bipartisan group of seven senators including John McCain and Marc Rubio, in a letter to Mr. Kerry, the U.S. Secretary of State, says the U.S. foreign policy must always support human rights, political reform and civil society. It calls these core principles.

LyrArc Article Gist
Comments about immigration policy by Donald Trump, candidate for the Republican nomination for president in the 2016 election, create uneasiness in Mexico. Trump says he would block the billions of dollars that illegal immigrants from Mexico in the U.S. send back to Mexico, and deport millions of Mexicans in the U.S. illegally back to Mexico.