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Why small cars are no sold just as nofrills cars on cost basis anymore. Buyers are paying more and getting fully loaded small cars. (Does this increase the profit per small car for automakers?) A buyer may have and SUV, apickup and a small car on his driveway and use them interchangeably to save on gasoline if he is making long commutes.

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President George Bush said in 2005, that if someone wanted to get a glimpse of how he thinks on foreign policy, he should read Nathan Sharansky's book "The Case for Democracy." Sharansky was an aide to soviet physicist and human rights advocate Andrei Sakharov. Here he is interviewed by David Feith of the Wall Street Journal. His outspoken activism in favor of the right of Soviet Jews to emigrate got him 9 years in the Soviet Gulag. He was released from prison in 1986, with the strong support of President Reagan. He emigrated to Israel and served in ministerial posts and in the Israeli parliament. Sharansky says the recent protests in Egypt prove his fundamental points. That there are limits to how much you can control people through the use of fear, and that all people, regardless of religion and culture, desire and want freedom. This is a very human message, it showed its power when the Berlin Wall fell, and it is true today in the Arab world. He says the fear that this endangers the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty is not well founded. Over the last 30 years the border with Syria has been quiet, because it is really Israeli deterrance that is responsible for this and the quiet border with Egypt. He adds there is no justification for Mubarak remaining, as it only creates hostility in the Arab world against the US and Israel. And he says that Mubarak was no friend of the Jewish people, because even as he made peace with Israel, he continued to let anti-Semitism thrive and used Jews as the enemy to enhance his control. Sharansky says Gaza and Hamas control after the election was an unusual situation because of the corruption of the people around Arafat, so that even Christian villages supported Hamas. And he says the longer a dictatorship is in place the worse the situation becomes in creating more hostility to all those who support the dictatorship, including the US and Israel. For Sharansky, the Obama adminstration's response to the Iranian protests after what is seen as a stolen election in Iran, were one of the greatest betrayals of freedom in modern history. To prevent a one time, one person, one vote, Sharansky says the democratic institutions have to take root and this will take more than 8 months, so guarantees need to be put in place that this is not allowed to happen. Safeguards put in place to ensure that whoever is elected cannot survive if democratic institutions and reforms and democracy building does not occur. Dissidents like Mr Ibrahim and others should enjoy the ability to build trade unions and women's organizations. Sharansky says this is a real chance, a chance for the US and the free world to become a partner in change. In change that will help Egypt pass the town square test. Can people freely protest and express their grievances in the town square. And move from this fundamental change to establishing democratic processes and institutions. ...

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Ayn Rand's philosophy. She writes in "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" - "Economic crises and runaway government power grabs don't just happen by themselves; they are the product of the philosophical ideas prevalent in a society, particularly its dominant moral ideas." Rand says the message in our society is always "selfishness is evil; sacrifice for the needs of others is good." But Rand's message is selfishness rather than being an evil is a virtue." Adam Smith wrote about this but in adifferent way, saying that man looks to people around him and is looking for the respect of his peers, this itself is a needed good, something that men and women need badly, the respect and esteem of their peers. For this reason they temper their selfish actions for the common good, or this motive can be tapped for the common good to emerge from self interested actions. The question and the answer not like Rand's which is categorical, is put by Smith in the context of how a man views his actions, and what is best in his enlightened self interest. The answer depends on the values in a society at a particular time, because if everyone is pursuing this self interest by distorting things so that he can pretend to himself that he is doing something for an enlightened motive when there are the crasses motives behind it, like Mr Mozilo of Countrywide promoting mortgages for the poor and unqualified, and society or his peers don't call him to account, or others of more respectable background like Mr Thain and Mr Rubin and many others do the same in nore fashioable ways, then the whole fabric of society is corroded. When the fabric of society is corroded then it doesn't matter which philosophy is held, Marxist, libertarian, free enterprise, right or left as used up terms, because its moral underpinnings which are the only true support are corroded. This may be the reason Smith wisely talked about this in somewhat moral undertones such as winning the respect of peers in society for what you do, given that society had the moral element built into it its mores, customs and ways. This is the difference between Smith and Rand, and Smith and Marx, and Smith and other philosophies that are categorical and rigid. That Alan Greenspan was a member of the Collective or group that was closely associated with Rand, and with Rand's philosophy, may have put blinkers or concealed things from him, which he might have seen if not biased by such views of categorical and rigid nature about the virtues of laissez fairre capitalism in all situations. Reagan's admiration for Rand also may have created a bias in favor of laissez fairre capitalism, when what was needed was an effort to avoid excesses in the other direction of state involvement, without getting tied down to some rigid philosophy that might seriuously impair one's ability to respond in a very different situation of excess in another direction, of individuals promoting their self interest to the ruin of the economic fabric of American society....

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Andrew Rosenfeld, a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, and chief executive of an investment advisory firm, says the Public-Private Investment Program proposed by Secretary Geithner has serious flaws. It risks government money, and expects too little from private investors. The government will essentially finance the private investor's purchase of these toxic assets at an auction, with the private investors putting some money of their own, to buy these assets at prices emerging from the auction. It runs right smack into the problem that Secretary Paulson under President Bush faced when he suggested the auction plan as a way for these toxic assets to be sold off to buyers. It was never clear how shuch an auction would work, and whether it would work at all. Meantime the worsening credit crisis required direct injection of capital into banks. Now Secretary Paulson's abandoned effort has been essentially revived in the Geithner program, with the same problems but with the carrot of government taking up most of the risk with its financing. Rosenfeld argues that under this plan the government assumes all the risk of losses, and if private investors make too much money off of it it will create a public outcry and the risk of an AIG type situation. This might lead to lower bids and the money generated for the banks might end up being too small to make a difference. There is a better way he says, and this is for the government using existing authority to seize banks that look insolvent. Its fairer because the government will own the toxic asets, and the bank, and the proceeds for the sale of the bank, and these would be offsetting the cash that it would inject to recapitalize the bank. The way it would do it is to inject cash in the form of Treasury notes as equity in the bank, and at the same time remove the bank's toxic assets and place them in the basement of the Treasury building, while it waits to see what they turn out to be worth. Bank regulators would swap Treasury securties for the toxic assets "at par," which is at the amount of the original purchase price of assets removed. Within a short time, a month or a few months, the bank could be sold to private investors. This is sounder because it takes away the pricing problem which looks like its never going to be resolved, as banks and investors are never going to agree on toxic asset price. And the new bank could start clean and start lending flowing in the economy. If the bank turns out to be so badly managed and with so many bad bets that it cannnot be sold, its essentially insolvent and irrecoverable, so it should be liquidated. Nobel winner Krugman says some of the same things in his columns in the NYT. He has a sense of despair seeing the return of the failed Paulson solution of auctions with a new twist, even as the economy is flailing in the wind, with job loss numbers over 600,000 and jumping each month....

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Consideration is a term being used in Detroit auto company marketing efforts, if a customer gives little consideration to a company or brand or if its not on his list of brands or companies to consider, then snap you are not even in the running. The customer does not even visit your dealer showrooms, and no matter how well you make your cars its not going to make a difference. It has to take a lot of neglect of customers for this sort of situation to arise, but its exactly the situation Detroits auto companies face. They are trying marketing ploys such as this one by Ford's advertising agency, but its impact is uncertain. The efforts at GM also focus on marketing but again efforts to put Honda Accords and Toyota Camrys in Saturn dealerships next to the Saturn Aura, for side by side test drives have not had much impact on Aura sales. So a similiar effort for the Chevrolet Malibu in Chevy dealerships has been scrapped. There is even skepticism that a lifetime warranty on engines and transmissions by Chrysler on its vehicles will have much impact, so large is the customer resistance and ingrained perception of American car manufacturers. Over time perceptions may change but it will take a while to convince the American customer who feels he was once treated with disdain, and who will give a good hard look at things before he changes his mind. The figures bear this out. Years of neglect of car buying public and focus on SUV's and trucks is showing up in a 51.3 % share of the market for the American Three companies down from 60% 4 years ago. So half the market has pretty much been conceded to the likes of Honda and Toyota. Actually in the West and East coasts the numbers probably range to 60% and 70% depending on the local area in these 2 regions. So that means more established dealerships for cars, years of marketing effort focussed on cars, sales contacts and so that may take years to dislodge to any degree. The figures behind consideration by JD Powers show that 54% of car buyers are import loyalists, a slightly higher figure than the 51.3% showing that the trend is even more defection to imports in the 1-3 years ahead. And 22% consider both domestic and import cars. With this segment there is more selection in the imports beause only now are the American Three carmakers building up their car model lineups, especially Ford, so this will be ahard fought segment with no certainty that the Detroit Three carmakers will come out on top given the lead and established networks of the carmakers like Toyota and Honda. Only 25% are domestic or American carmaker loyal. A lot may depend on the way a customer is treated from reading letters to the editor in the media by buyers of US and import cars. A car buyer treated with no respect and sincere concern for his needs and preferneces is likely to remember the treatment for a long time. Not just products but attitudes and people in sincerity will have to change....

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What Handan Iron and Steel in Hebei Province 300 miles south of Beijing and ThyssenKrupp in Dortmund, Germany, have in common. The transplanting of Germany's aging defunct iron and steel furnaces and plant to Handan, boxed and crated away- its unreal that in 1998 Handan Iron and Steel bought and transferred an aging polluting plant to a city where the steel works are located in China which has 8.5 million residents. When years later the steel works were debated to be moved to a distance away from the city with Baoshan Steel, the decision was made to instead put a new plant there instead. The solution was to make pollution payments to residents of Handan. It was Mao's dream to build a steel industry in Hebei province ,which has large deposits of iron ore and coal and a rail line. Couple of questions come up to mind- one why did the first steel works go up right in Handan, and same is true of Dortmund, labor supply perhaps but couldn't homes be built nearby instead and these plants located away from cities. Second the deal for bringing the ThyssenKrupp plants was as recent as 1998, by this time China was already a big steel producer (producing more than the US by one estimate) and in a few years Chinese steel production was to exceed the US, Europe and Japan combined. With steel production already on the rise why didn't China move more carefully. Some of the Thyssen Krupp assets were built only a few years before 2000 and met stringent environmental control. China bought these.. Why didn't China pick out the best assets instead of old aging blast furnaces. The possible answers are that they were available at cut rate prices, but were they worth it. The second is that Hebei must be competing with other parts of China, and there wasn't a rational allocation of capital as would happen if a sophiticated company like a Mittal or a Tata Steel is involved. Is China operating on a outmoded concept- nationalism, competition between provinces with local government officials running the show? The other question is that in the case of the automobile industry a different pattern is seen, the most modern technology was selected , and in the case of Cherry, the most recent technology was selected for manufacturing cars, then why was this same pattern not adopted in the case of steel. In the end China has a surplus of steel mills, which makes this rush into steel production without carefully thinking through this appear to have been a mistake. The visual picture if one flies into Dortmund of manmade lakes, green park areas and residential housing and shopping from the $22 billion the EU and Germany are investing to turn the Ruhr valley region of Dortmund into a centre of education, technology and tourism now contrasts sharply with Handan in Hebei province. Can emerging countries do better, build manufacturing for jobs but keep living conditions in mind, be patient and work to achieve the best overall results, and build education, technology, appropriate for their own situation. ...

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At the height of the Eurozone crisis in December 2011, David Brooks points out that it is important not to forget what the Germans are saying in this crisis. They are arguing for truth in accounting, which the government in Greece failed to do, and which may have more to do with negative opinion in the media and with the public in Germany about Greece than any other factor. They are arguing against speculative excesses that enabled Greece to borrow recklessly. And they are making the argument that the only way to put the finances of the eurozone on a sound basis is to have the financial discipline that is necessary for a sound currency. Anthony Faiola pointed out recently that one estimate for tax evasion in Italy is $340 billion a year- Washington Post, 11/25/2011. Greece has a similiar problem, which needs to be addressed. This view has credibility and the backing of every principle of sound financial practices, irrespective of country or region. For ordinary Germans who have gone through years of wage restraint during the period of high unemployment, their attitude is captured in one German workers response to Greece's situation - when she said there are "poor children in Germany also." Years after reunification were a difficult experience for Germany, and left parts of the country still affected by the experience. The period of high unemployment is still a fresh memory, as the economic recovery is fairly recent. There is a feeling that the situation is precarious, depending on exports, as the 2009 downturn showed. These facts remain even when one considers the criticism levelled at Germany. Germany benefitted from the bubble in the economies of Southern Europe through surging exports- from a currency that was undervalued in relation to neighbors- because of the common currency. German banks lent heavily to Greece, Ireland, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, along with French and British banks, and bear responsibility for reckless lending and not doing due diligence for loans to Greece and other countries. Germany also carries the burden of memories of hyperinflation in the 1920's, and the sense along with France that partnership is necessary for peace in Europe. Germany's position on austerity measures also has one underlying weakness - if this leads to shrinking economies in southern Europe in the name of fianncial discipline, then the plan fails as tax revenues decline and budget deficits increase. Given this experience Germany faces the challenge of convincing neighbors of the need for good governance and sound spending practices for long term stability of the currency, even as it leads the effort for providing short term funding. In the short run this reaps criticism for Germany, including criticism for some members such as Greece having to leave the euro as a way to regain competitiveness and growth. Experts have suggested that this would be a better option for Greece than a shrinking economy after strong austerity measures, and the referendum proposed by former prime minister Papandreou on strict austerity measures is likely to have gone in this direction. ...

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The legacy of extremely low interest rates near zero left by Italian banker Mario Draghi has he leaves the European Central Bank to be succeeded by French head of the IMF Christine Lagarde. There is considerable division in the ECB as Draghi launches yet one more program of bond buying called QE for quantitative easing- in effect reducing the interest rate of the ECB to minus 0.5%. All this is being done to address problems of economic growth in the eurozone which originate from other causes such as poor banking practices, overborrowing by member states and lack of transparency in countries such as Greece, the lack of investment in infrastructure, increase in part time workers in economic uncertainty generated from poor banking, essentially a lost decade. The ECB's monetary policy committee staff oppose the move and so do 7 of 25 members in the governing council.  Instead of tackling root causes this had the adverse effect of hurting savers in Europe and the U.S. leading to higher inequality and wearing out of social safety nets.   ...

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Dana Milbank of the WP says the views of some Democrats on Trump as a good Republican nominee based on the notion that he has high negative perception with voters is fraught with dangers for U.S. democracy. Milbank points out that this ignores what is good for the country. Having Trump as the nominee of one of the two main parties would create a divisive atmosphere and is not good for the country, says Milbank. In comparing Trump with Cruz, he says Trump is likely to follow his instincts to operate outside the U.S. constitutional system. Cruz as a person believes in the U.S. constitution and would never endorse violence or action against minorities. Cruz has not done enough to come across as a likable person with his persistent focus on conservative or Reagan values to the exclusion of everything else. This is changing in mid-April 2016 following a CNN interview with the Cruz family, a MSNBC town hall answering questions from undecided voters, and NYT coverage of Cruz at a Brooklyn bakery, that shows a different human face that people have never seen about Cruz. Cruz's self-deprecating humor in a NYT article where he talks about voters not liking "a hectoring scold," is part of this needed change that could have happened earlier in the campaign. About Trump Milbank cites Conservative party prime minister Cameron who says Trump would unite all Britons against him if he ever came to Britain....

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A new WSJ/NBC poll shows Trump and Clinton with high disapproval ratings with all registered voters. Clinton's and Trump's disapproval ratings are higher now after increasing negative coverage in the media. Trump has a 65 percent negative rating and Clinton a 56 percent negative rating with all registered voters. Among Republican voters Cruz has a gap of 15 percentage points between him and Trump for negative ratings- Cruz at 27 percent and Trump at a high of 42 percent. In positive ratings Cruz edges out Trump by 3 percentage points 45 percent to 42 percent. Among all registered voters Cruz has nearly 50% negative rating compared to Clinton's at 56 percent, and 26% viewing him positively only 6 points behind Hillary Clinton at 32 percent. These new figures suggest Cruz would be competitive with Clinton if Clinton were to get the nomination, and Cruz were to win at the second ballot following an improving result at the primaries including California because of Trump's huge gap in negative ratings with Republican voters compared to Cruz. The 1912 election provides a glimpse of how national party conventions were determined by shifting support- Clark the Democratic candidate with the most delegates was not nominated when the Tammany Hall machine supported Clark leading to the withdrawal of support from William Jennings Bryan of the liberal wing of the Democratic party. The nomination then went to Woodrow Wilson, the next leading candidate, on the 46th ballot....

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Fact check looks at the facts and what candidates claimed happened. Jeb Bush is right says fact check about the casinos Trump tried to get started in Florida. Fiorina overstates what she accomplished at H-P. Kasich is largely right about fixing the finances in Ohio. Trump is wrong about the U.S. being the only country with birthright citizenship- there are 30 countries according to The Center for Immigration Studies. Trump throws the number out of $200 billion, as what it is costing the U.S. for illegal immigrants. An estimate by The Federation for American Immigration Reform put this at $113 billion a year in welfare programs. From this one has to deduct what illegal immigrants pay in payroll taxes to get a good estimate. Trump says he never went bankrupt, he means not him personally- his companies have filed for bankruptcy Chapter 11 protection. Considering how many times Trump has misstated, it would be useful if the network broadcasting the debate would have an independent company do the fact check at the same time as the misstatements are thrown around, and show this on the bottom of the screen or during the advertising breaks, because it is very important to viewers to get the right information. In our opinionated partisan environment it is important to let candidates know that they cannot get away with it by misstating facts, over and over again....

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S&P said it will maintain India's credit rating of triple B minus, the lowest investment grade rating, yet it may downgrade it to "junk status" in the next 2 years. S&P said this could happen "if the external position continues to deteriorate, growth prospects diminish, or progress on fiscal reforms remains slow in a weakened political setting. India's growth rate declined to 6.9% in the year ending March 31, 2012, down from 8.4% the prior year. The problem is that India's current account deficit is growing rapidly with the high import bill for energy supplies. The current account deficit is now at 4% of GDP. The trade deficit increased to $185 billion in this fiscal year, up 56% over the prior year. Additional problems are finding ways to finance the deficit with foreign capital, as European banks are pulling back during the current eurozone crisis. Commerce Secretary Rahul Khullar says this could be a big problem. Net foreign capital investment is declining rapidly from $72 billion in February 2012 to $387 million in March, with a net outflow of $27 million in the April 1-25 period. The budget deficit, which has drawn the attention of the RBI, India's central bank, and of S&P, is at 5.9% of GDP for fiscal year ending March 31, 2012. This is larger than the government target of 4.6%. The government has set a deficit target of 5.1% of GDP for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2013....

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The Reagan Memo released by WSJ and the June op-ed in WSJ by Glenn Hubbard, a Romney economc advisor, point to the way an economc recovery like that accomplished under Reagan could be achieved if Romney takes office. Krugman points out that contrary to thinking Reagan actually increased spending, partly through defense programs and partly achieved by federal transfers to state governments that increased spending when the deficit had not reached the levels it has today. Also important is the cause of the economic slump when Reagan took office, which was deliberately caused by Federal Reserve increasing interest rates to control surging inflation. The Federal Reserve reversed policy and lowered rates during Reagan's term in office and supported the other growth inducing policies of the Reagan administration. Improving business confidence by promoting expectations for consistent growth and stable policy was part of the game plan of the Reagan economic team led by George Shultz, as is evident from the memo. Krugman says the situation is different this time as interest rates are approaching zero and the U.S. is recovering from a housing bubble at the same time that spending by local and state governments is declining as the Stimuus spending of 2009 fades. Under Reagan in the first quarter of 1984, and for Obama in the first quarter of 2012- compared to 4 years earlier, real per capita government spending was 14.4% higher than previously for Reagan and 6.4% for Obama. ...

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Signs of a serious bubble in house prices in Canada. Home prices in February 2011 rose 8.8% from the year before, to 365,000 Canadian dollars. This is more than double the average home price of C$158,145 in 1999, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association. A comparison with the U.S. shows home prices going up 58% between 1999 and 2006, according to the National Association of Realtors, and falling 18% after the subprime mortgage crisis. By contrast home prices in Canada went down in 2008-2009 during the global financial crisis but are now back up and surpassed the previous high. This suggests the Canadian real estate market is facing a serious bubble comparable to or exceeding the bubble in the U.S. Trends that have supported the market such as Chinese buyers in Vancouver and Toronto, depend largely on the strength of the high economic growth in China and overseas buyers. Other weaknesses- the Canadian Association of Accredited Mortgage Professionals pointed out in a study in January that of the 400,000 first time home buyers during 2010, about 50,000 would have high-debt service ratios if interest rates, now at between 2-4%, were to rise to 5%. The Canada economst at Capital Economics, David Madani, says he expects a correction of 25% in the next 3 years, as this boom unwinds. He points out that house prices are now 5.5 times disposable income per worker, compared to an historical average of 3.5....

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David Wessel points to some problems with the Paul Ryan budget proposal. Ryan's plan does not balance the budget till after 2030, and Congress would have to raise the debt ceiling each year till then. The changes to Medicare Ryan proposes would limit how much the government spends, but the savings from this do not come for a decade, as people expected to retire in the next 10 years will still have Medicare. Ryan's proposal shows how deep the cuts will have to be if deficit reduction is done without raising taxes. Pete Domenici and Alice Rivlin who developed a deficit reduction plan, said they were disappointed that the Ryan plan "fails to address the need for new revenue," which they consider crucial for truly tackling deficit reduction. The Obama budget failed to offer a comprehensive deficit reduction plan, leading to openness for new ideas. The health care delivery system in the U.S. needs to be efficient and costs need to come down. Ryan's proposal gives no idea where the efficiencies will come from. Would they come from competition between private insurers? How will escalating healthcare costs be controlled. Another consideration is that even with its problems Medicare is less costly to administer than private insurance. Everything depends on seniors shopping vigorously for the best premiums because risks and costs are borne by seniors, with the idea that this will somehow control escalating medical costs....

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Matt Bai's interview with Mario Cuomo, former governor of New York. The conversation covers different topics: Mario Cuomo's speeches, the affinity and the dissonance with his son Andrew Cuomo's idea of liberalism and his own, about the kind of triangulation practiced by Clinton and Obama, and his sense of being a liberal in the old fashioned way. The talk goes to a speech Mario made about helping the poor without crushing the middle class and the sense today that the task ahead is about helping the middle class without crushing the poor. Mario mentions a conversation with Bill Clinton about an offer to join the Supreme Court. Mario said he told Clinton he would not be able to debate and talk freely about his views if he accepted that position. Considering Mario Cuomo's speeches this is sincere. He is torn between the struggles experienced by his father and others of the most ordinary working men and women of the period between the wars, the idea that there had to be a better way, and the difficulties of making that better way work in the real world in the postwar period. There is a sense that one has been forgotten or is now out of place- the dissonance with the times- when a serious contribution was made at one time and place that will always be there. One generation taking over from the last, adapting in its own way, the values timeless....

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Norbert Rottgen, chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the German parliament is realistic about the prospects of Minsk 2, after the failure of Minsk 1, which was negotiated in the Belarus capital Minsk in September 2014. The Russians have the upper hand militarily and the demarcation line moves further to the west in current negotiations in Minsk. The breakdown in Minsk 1 comes as Putin continues to support the separatists in Ukraine, who declared a Donestsk People's Republic with elections held recently, and have now taken territory to make their positions in eastern Ukraine more defensible. The war could end there with a de facto split of eastern Ukraine on the Russian side, or lead to further guessing of Russian president Putin's intentions if the conflict continues. Italy's foreign minister Paolo Gentiloni, points out that arms aid by the U.S. to Ukraine would only fail as Russia could respond, and it gives the Russian president the added advantage of the narrative that the U.S. and NATO are a threat to Russia at its borders. All sides say they respect the territorial sovereignty of Ukraine, but the fact remains that Ukraine is deeply divided with the eastern region bordering Russia having close ties to Russia, and the western region near Poland having strong ties to a newly emergent EU that includes much of Eastern Europe. Prudence and restraint is needed on all sides for a settlement. ...

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Ailworth and Faucon describe the ways in which shale oil producers such as Continental Resources in Texas and S. Dakota are responding to the drop in oil prices. One strategy adopted is to put off 60% of the expense of production by not completing the final stages of production of hydraulic fracturing, but keeping the wells ready so that production can quickly be ramped up if prices go to the $60-65 range. EOG Resources, Andarko, Apache, Chesapeake Energy, are also following this strategy. There are about 3000 such wells, not pumping but drilled and ready for hydraulic fracturing, according to RBC Capital Markets estimates. This strategy would mean large shale oil supplies well into the future to keep oil prices low. Production from lower cost wells continues with U.S. oil production climbing to a new high of 9.4 million barrels a day for week ending March 6, 2015, according to federal data. This shows that this is a new situation and the resilience of shale oil supplies may have been underestimated. Another strategy adopted by other large companies such as Exxon is to continue to develop technology by learning to get the oil out of the rock in the most cost efficient way. The capital investment in U.S. shale oil has dropped by $50 billion in 2015 compared to 2014. The number of oil rigs drilling declined to 866 in the U.S. by March 2015, according to Baker Hughes....

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About 15% of black men of working age in the population, and 21% of black women, were employed in the U.S. public sector, according to the population survey. The Labor Department reports 500,000 jobs in the public sector were lost since 2007. This reverses an historical trend of resilience in jobs for the public sector during economic downturns. If population increase since 2007 is figured in there are even fewer jobs considering more jobs might have been added, with estimates as high as 1.8 million. This is bad for black people in the U.S. because many work in public sector jobs driving school buses, in the post office, in the police and in other public services, with black people being 30% more likely than whites to hold a public sector job, and twice that of Hispanics. Thic comes at a time when the black community has seen a devastating impact from the foreclosures and other economic damage that followed the 2008 financial crisis. The result is shown in a study of foreclosures for 2005-2009 at Cornell University showing mostly black and Latino neighborhoods were affected by foreclosures at three times the rates for white neighborhoods. According to Pew Research Center the median white family had net assets of $142,000 compared to $11,000 for the median black family. With median black household income at 60% of that of white households the gap keeps increasing especially with high unemployment in black neighborhoods....

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As OPEC members met again in June 2015 for the first time since the meeting in November 2014, there is a sense that OPEC no longer exerts the same influence on oil prices. There are 4000 oil companies in the U.S., says one U.S. State Department official, even if OPEC were to cut production the cuts could be matched by shale oil producers in the U.S. quickly increasing output. This is the new reality, say experts. OPEC expects to keep production at the same level of the current production ceiling of 30 million barrels a day in place for the 7th meeting in over 3 years. Algeria and Nigeria, both hurt badly by the drop in oil price, have called for cuts but failed to persuade the Saudis. With Russia unwilling to join a coordinated production cut, there is not much talk about doing this. The Saudis and Iraq have continued to pump more oil, with April 2015 production of 30.84 million barrels a day the highest monthly average since 2012. Other factors also remain in the minds of the Saudis and other producers such as the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar- policies on climate change, use of less energy and more from friendlier sources for the same amount of economic output demonstrated by countries such as Germany, advances in technology, energy saving transitions in emerging markets such as China and India....

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How Calpers went over its head and invested in risky properties at the crest of the real estate boom when there were signs of a weakening in property markets and did this with borrowed money for 60-80% of the deals, so the returns on the downside are magnified. Much of it is for land near Pheoenix and Los Angeles that are empty tracts and now worth little in the depressed property markets, with losses of over $ 1 billion on the Los Angeles area land deal which was a $2.5 billion deal. alpers expects paper losses of 103% on its housing investments in the fiscal year ended June 30. Calpers residential and property investments represent 10% of its $182 billion portfolio and its real estate holdings are twice the percentage of the portfolio of average pension funds. Its also showing a 41% loss on its stock portfolio. Greed seems to have motivated Calpers as it sought higher and higher returns even as the market was showing signs of weakness, with returns on real estate deals in the good years averaging 12%. Calpers is the pension fund of the 1.6 million stae workers in the state of California. The average employer contribution rate for California governments including cities and counties is 13% of payroll. Calpers has estimated that if its investments show a20% decline then the payroll of employers would be hit with another 2 to 5% increase....

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Shoichiro Toyoda's son Akio takes over as new CEO of Toyota. He got the MBA degree from Babson College in Massachusetts and joined the company at 27. Initially Shoichiro was opposed to Akio joining the company. Even today with the Toyoda family owning only 2% of company shares there is a faction that supports Akio and a faction that dislikes the founding family's involvement in running the company. So the job has not been an easy one for Akio. At one point Akio admitted himself into a hospital early in his career after friction with one of his bosses. Things settled down after that and eventually Akio headed the China operations, where he engineered the merger of Tinajin with FAW to give Toyota a more capable partner to expand in China. And to get Akio to take on the new role, the elders at Toyota like his father and others had to ask Fujio Cho to stay on as chairman, even though he has a back ailment that made him keen on resigning. Current CEO Watanabe will become vice chairman and help Cho with his duties. The idea may be to have more experienced people at the top as Akio takes over and makes changes to the conservative culture and bureaucratic ways of Toyota. This eases the transition especially if there are people who are wary of the founding family and Akio's more direct and bolder style of management....