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The day following Theresa May's visit to Berlin and Brussels angela Merkel told a special parliamentary session in the Bundestag: "We have no attention of changing the Brexit deal."  Merkel also replied to questions from parliamentarians saying: "I can only tell the citizens of Germany that we are working hard for an orderly Brexit and at the same time we are preparing for the eventuality that things are not orderly." The EU position is to let the UK crash out of the European Union on March 29, 2019. Reports in The Times of London say this break in trade with the EU would badly hurt Britain's economy. No deal Brexit is seen by most Britons as bad for the country, and this prospect increases by the day as Theresa May now faces a no confidence motion from her own Conservative party. The EU says Merkel will work out contentious isues related to Ireland after Britain's exit. Merkel seemed to very spirited in the parliament telling AfD members she could not respond to their mixture of value judgements and facts, that "such polemics don't help,"and calling the left parties in Germany's support of the yellow vests protest in Paris as "scandalous."  If anything Merkel seemed energized now that she has resigned from her party leadership position. ...

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Cochrane says the best option today is for Europe to accept a sovereign default for Greece. He says the European Central Bank which stands behind the euro, should not be used for buying bonds of troubled countries with shaky "collateral." This would only lead to a situation where EU countries would have to recapitalize the ECB. He emphasizes the fact that Greece will not pay back this debt. And the only way out is to have a situation similiar to Argentina where it needs to start over, and it would at some point be able to borrow again. Austerity is deeply unpopular in Greece and with higher unemployment Greece's financial situation is rapidly deteriorating. Making austerity something that was tried to buy time but will not work. Cochrane also makes the point that the euro itself acts like the euro bonds that EU countries are reluctant to support, it means the ECB backs the currency and supports it- which makes it vital to keep the ECB whole and prevent the dilution of its financial strength. Axel Weber, former head of the Bundesbank, resigned to express his opposition to the ECB buying the bonds of troubled eurozone countries, which he said was outside the ECB's mandate to conduct monetary policy....

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Mitt Romney states the case for supporting free trade both in principles and practice. Acceptance of the staus quo allows China to game the world trading system, says Romney. In the end accepting the status quo may do more damage to the world's trading system than any efforts to correct the misalignment in currencies and failure to rebalance the world economy. He questions the passive approach of some members of Congress and the Obama administration on the grounds that starting a trade war makes them nervous. China with $273 billion more in exports than imports to the U.S. has reason to see this issue objectively, even with all the noise it is making about trade retaliation, suggests Romney. Other experts have pointed to the problems the misalignment creates for China's economy. A New York Times editorial on October 15, 2011, cites figures from the Peterson Institute of Economics showing this costs China $240 billion a year through trade surpluses in dollars that are declining in value. For years China's fears are that this would lead to higher unemployment. This New York Times editorial points out that jobs have increased by about 1% a year since 2004, even with 10%+growth, because many of the manufacturing jobs use advanced manufacturing technologies. A firm response today also makes it possible to avoid the kind of sudden response that could take place later on if public opinion overwhelmingly shifts away from trade with China under status quo conditions. ...

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Walt Gillette started at Boeing in 1964. He has been behind major advances in most of Boeing's planes- from the Dreamliner 787, 747, 737, 767. Gillette was the inspiration behind the use of twin engines for long haul flights, with the 767 wide body twin engine aircraft. He also helped solve problems related to putting powerful engines on the wings of a 737, using analytical methods called (CFD) Computational Fluid Dynamics. The studies led to using five parameters in a new combination that remains a trade secret at Boeing. The Dreamliner is his greatest achievement. What amazes Gillette is the huge advances in air travel, with about 600,000 people travelling around the world in Boeing planes on a single day. "I wanted to work on something that benefits the world," says Gillette.

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Rep. Paul Ryan got his start in politics in 1983 when he was hired to work for a think tank Empower America. This think tank was formed by Weber, Kirkpatrick, Bennett and Kemp, to preserve Reagan era ideas of focussing on economic growth generated by private investment. This was followed by working as an aide to Senator Brownback of Kansas and Rep. Jack Kemp till his election to Congress in 1996. Kemp was the big idea guy and it was Paul Ryan who delved into the budget details at the time to support Kemp's ideas. Kemp was Republican vice presidential candidate, the same position that Ryan is in today. Ryan represented the area around Janesville, Wisconsin, in the U.S. Congress. He graduated from the University of Miami, Ohio.

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IMF Managing Director, Christine Lagarde says Greece should have 2 more years to achieve the deficit targets. Speaking at a news conference during the annual meeting of the IMF in Tokyo in Oct 2012, Lagarde said: "it is sometimes better, given circumstances.. to have a bit more time... This is what we advocated for Portugal, it's what we advocated for Spain, and it's what we are advocating for Greece, where I have said repeatedly that an additional two years was necessary for the country to actually face the fiscal consolidation program that is considered." A two year extension would add an estimated 20 billion euros to the financing cost for Greece, at the same it improves the chances for growth and means having a program that is more likely to work.

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Romney received the vote of 6 out of 10 seniors, and a majority of the over 40 age group. He did poorly with the 18-29 age group. He received only 8% of the black vote, 29% of the Hispanic vote and 25% of the Asian American vote. Republicans did well in the 2010 elections for the House of Representatives showing that a decent support from minorities and a sense of caring for ordinary voters including younger women is part of the winning mix for Republicans. The sharp positions on immigraton taken by Romney hurt him with Hispanics. His work at Bain Capital and perceptions about caring may have hurt him further with minorities and young people, creating a skewed picture in the national contest compared to contests for the House, Senate, and for Governors.

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Mario Monti, the head of the new Italian government after the resignation of prime minister Berlusconi, taught political economy at Bocconi University in Milan. He is the president of Bocconi University. He spent a decade in Brussels as a member of the European Commission. He was commissioner of internal markets, and then served as commissioner for competition. He is known for antitrust enforcement during his work as EU commissioner of competition. First, blocking the merger of Honeywell and General Electric, and then imposing a fine of $650 million on Microsoft for antitrust violations. He is also the honorary president of Bruegel, an economics research institute in Brussels. Monti is an outsider to Italian politics in Rome and depends on the goodwill of the political parties to implement his program.

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The nomination of Harvard economist Jeremy Stein, who has experience in monetary policy and financial regulation, to the U.S. Federal Reserve Board of Governors. The nomination of Stein was presented to Congress by the Obama administration with the nomination of a Republican, Jay Powell. Powell served in the Bush administration as undersecretary of the Treasury for domestic finance. Powell has experience in investment banking and private equity. Powell graduated from Georgetown Law School and is now a visiting scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center. Former Fed governor Laurence Meyer's firm, Macroeconomic Advisors, said in a letter to clients that the nominees would significantly help deliberations at the Fed, and bring expertise in areas that the Fed needs to strengthen. Stein's published work has endorsed higher capital standards for banks.

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Robert Selander, retiring CEO of MasterCard, talks about the questions he asks and what he looks for when interviewing and hiring for jobs in the organization. His experience in multicultural and multilingual environments like Brazil has shown him the value of not judging by linguistic skills alone how knowledgeable and capable a person is. He asks about strengths and weaknesses, and asks how the interviewed person is going to work on his weaker side to be able to overcome these barriers. He looks for chemistry and initiative, the kinds of things that tell him that that person would be right in the infield with him. For leaders he look for how they have brought in talent and pulled the team together to get a real business together from scratch, if it is a new business.

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The problems with a second phase of quantitative easing, go back to asking why the first phase hasn't worked to prevent the economy from sliding back. So far the Fed has engaged in buying $1.7 trillion in bonds in that first phase. This shows the limitations of this approach. A lot of money was injected into banks. And the banks have $1 trillion on their books that is not being used for lending. The reason being its hard to find borrowers, as borrowers are cautious and concerned about the economic future. The Quantitative Easing in this second phase is supported by the reasoning that deflation risks remain. But this raises another question, what level of quantitiative easing would work, and would such enormous levels itself cause bigger problems.

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A World Bank 2008 Report concluded that Brazil's current state of education would lead to its falling behind other developing economies, and act as a constraint on growth. Brazil's 15 year old chidren came in 49th out of 56 countries on the reading exam for the Program for International Student Assessment, with more than half scoring in the test's bottom reading level in 2006, with scores in math and science worse than that. Of the 25 million workers who could join the work force in 2010, about 22% are not considered qualified for the labor market, according to a government report. The World Bank Report says Brazil stands to miss out on the "demographic window," in which increasing numbers of younger workers make the economy more productive, unless it addresses problems in education.

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John Taylor on the dual mandate for inflation and unemployment and discretionary policies by the U.S. Federal Reserve that ended up creating booms and busts in the U.S. economy. He advocates replacing the dual mandate of "maximum employment" and "stable prices," which was inserted into the Federal Reserve Act in the 1970's, with a single mandate for "long-run price stability." Taylor points out that this will still give the Fed flexibility, as it is focussed on long run price stability. The Fed does not have to overreact to short run increases in inflation. And he points out that this actually will work well for unemployment as the booms caused by an overextended period of low interest rates such as that in 2003-2005, have led to booms followed by busts with high unemployment.

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Boeing's improvements in quality and production processes for the Dreamliner, as the first Dreamliner which will not need major additional work before delivery comes off the production line. Costs of production have reached the point to where Boeing is losing $100 million on each plane sold. Ony 300 small assembly tasks remained, closer to the 200 that is the company's goal, and improvement over the 6000 additional small assembly tasks remaining in the early versions. The Everett, Washington plant now can make a 787 Dreamliner plane every 6-7 days. It costs Boeing $242 million to make each plane, and it sells them for $113 million according to UBS analysts. Boeing will have invested about $20 billion in the Dreamliner by 2014, when analysts say it should turn a profit.

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Krugman says the Euro was basically flawed when a single currency was established without political or fiscal union. Because of this the problem can only be solved he says, by action in Brussels and Berlin. Greeks he points out work longer hours than Germans and are not lazy, the welfare state is larger in Sweden and Germany, and Greeks were able to finance imports through trade, shipping and tourism before Greece joined the eurozone. After joining the euro foreign money poured into Greece causing inflation and making Greece wages rise with labor productivity 25% below the European average, making Greece uncompetitive. A lot of the foreign money was wasted and should not have been loaned to Greece in the first place, except that foreign banks perceived the eurozone membership as an implicit guarantee.

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U.S. president Obama reinforces German chancellor Merkel's call for "a persistent presence in the Baltics," with a visit to Tallinin, Estonia, in September 2014. Obama told people in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia that he would work with the U.S. Congress to place more U.S. equipment in the Baltics and increase U.S. troop presence there. He stated the Baltics are "not post-Soviet" territory. Obama said at a concert hall in Tallinin about Russian support to separatists in eastern Ukraine- "It challenges the most basic principles of our international system- that borders cannot be redrawn at the barrel of a gun, that nations have the right to determine their own future. It undermines an international order where the rights of peoples and nations are upheld and cannot simply be taken away by brute force."

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Patrick Modiano wins the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2014. His work is on the search for identity, and is based mostly on France during the Occupation and after World War II. Le Clezio is the other recent Nobel Prize Winner for Literature in France. Clezio travelled widely and one of his novels Onitsha is based in Nigeria. By contrast Modiano is less well known outside France and writes for a smaller audience. Modiano expressed surprise on hearing the news. A German with a similiar post World War II theme covering a similiar period is Heinrich Boll, who won the Nobel Prize for literature. The focus in Boll is the hardships in Germany following the war. The war raised many questions inside France and Germany in the postwar years.

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Barley says Greece's debt buyback plan in Dec. 2012 is attractive for private investors. Earlier some private investors had bought Greek debt at 10-15% of face value. Greece now has 10 billion euros, including 0.5 billion for accrued interest to buy back Greek bonds at 32.1- 34.1% of face value. This should help Greece retire 28 billion euros face value in Greek debt, reducing the debt burden by 18 billion euros The IMF had pushed hard in negotiations for reducing Greek debt as a percentage of GDP by 2020 to levels where it could again access private markets. This is critical to making the Greece bailout work. Nomura estimates this will reduce Greece's debt by about 10% of GDP by 2020. Every little bit helps in Greece's struggle to recover financial stability.

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Sweden which appeared resilient in the early part of the eurozone financial crisis is seeing a sharp slowdown in exports. The government growth forecasts show a steep decline in growth to 1.1% in GDP and unemployment at 8.2% in 2013 as eurozone exports decline. GDP growth forecast for 2014 is at 3%. The decline is from the 3.7% growth in 2011. About a third of Swedish exports go to the eurozone countries. Sweden's steel company SSAB has put workers on a 4 day work week and a 20% wage reduction as demand declines. Finance minister Anders Borg says "Our assessment is that Sweden is facing a couple of lean years. It is becoming clearer that the crisis in Europe and developments in the U.S. are again costing jobs and weighing on growth in Sweden."

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Can Fiat get out new models fast enough to survive the current storm in the industry. Experts say the new Fiat based Chrysler vehicles won't come out till 2011 in the USA market. These include asmall Jepp, asubcompact car and aminicar, with amidsize sedan to follow in 2012. This time lag says Michael Robinet of CSM Worldwide is "an eternity" considering the severe fall in sales and the extremely competitive market today. The cutbacks in prouct development under Daimler and then Cerberus were deep, so deep that Chrysler has eliminated 40% of its engineering staff and delayed or cancelled work pn updating braking systems, interiuor enhancements, and even entire products such as the Jeep Wrangler, say insiders. This makes Fiat entirely dependent on Fiat's technology and engineering in the smaller car area.

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Some thoughts on taking away from the private sector its resources and ability to create or preserve jobs as a matter of concern, as the public sector or government can only create temporary work jobs which are needed but not to the extent where the private sector resources are diverted and it gets compromised. The other matter of concern is spending that does not take into account the impact of higher and higher taxes on the economy. These concerns and the importance to strike the right balance so that new jobs can be created in useful infrastructure and energy spending and at the same time preserving the vitality of the private sector. And not overburden the system with higher taxes by government spending that is not carefully targeted to get best results and wisely done.

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The part of the tax law that limits state and property tax deductions to $10,000 and limits deduction of mortgage interest is likely to slow the rise of housing values in 2018. Much of the effect is psychological as the impact is felt on the East Coast, California, Midwest and the D.C. area. The median U.S. county will see a decline of 0.8%, and some counties in New York could see declines of 10%, according to Moody's analysis. The impact is greater for higher priced homes, and where incomes are higher with big mortgages and big tax bills.