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One third of US homeless are in California, 75000 in Los Angles alone. Many live in RV or cars because that is all they can afford, and rents have gone up. Shown in FR24 is the situation for housing in California.

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BBC News provides a look at the first proposals of the Boris Johnson minority government to the European Union. This includes replacing the Irish backstop. The Irish backstop is a way set up by the EU and the previous UK government of prime minister May in negotiated agreement to prevent a hard border in Ireland. It means Britain would remain in the customs union with the EU after December 2022 if no agreement for withdrawal is reached by then. Conservative Party hard liners oppose it because they say it leaves the UK indefinitely in the customs union. The EU insists on this to protect the interests of a member state Ireland. The moderates in May's Conservative government agreed to it to keep the peace accord in Ireland. Boris Johnson wants to get rid of it, and his proposals include customs checks between Northern Ireland and Ireland which removes the free flowing border between the two Irelands, a major achievement of the Irish peace accords.  Which is why the negotiations could end up going nowhere, with each side presenting the other as the side that wouldn't negotiate terms of withdrawal. The Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party, and the Labor Party except for its leader Corbyn's neutral stance, oppose leaving the European Union. And parliament opposes leaving without a negotiated agreement pitting Boris Johnson against parliament and the opposition.  Another referendum or a general election would settle the issue with Boris Johnson thinking he can flip former safe Labor seats in working class areas in the north of England to win the election. Labor party's McDonnell says he has miscalculated and Labor party is buying time to organize an effective election campaign to get back the working class vote lost under Blair with his confusing Third Way that lost workers on the way.   ...

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The concerns that China was going to overtake the US and become the largest economy is a misconception of how countries have developed through industry and technology. Britain and the other countries of Europe, Germany and France, went through rapid development in the 1930's and 1960's then at some point after saturation were relatively stagnant. China for the first time in 250 years of the Industrial revolution began to develop rapidly and urbanize in the 1990's. China is at that same point of saturation and it's economy moving to relative stagnation with 4% annual growth in 2026-2030 and 2-3% annual growth beyond to 2047. India is taking place of China as parts of India (large states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra with population 500 million) can achieve 15-22% annual growth in 2026-2030. A quick idea of this can be seen here in the WSJ. China as a percentage of the global economy was 18.5% in 2021 and has since declined to 16.5% of the global economy in 2025. China was three fourth of the US economy when it peaked in 2021 and has since declined in 2025 to two thirds of the size of the US economy. As a percentage of the global economy China will go down to 12% over the next 5 years as India advances, and the population of US, Canada, Australia with their continental spaces continues to grow and with it GDP growth. This is validated from the Japanese experience of peaking at becoming 18% of the world economy by 1996 and then dropping by 2006 to about 11%, 2016 to 6% and 2025 to 4%. The combined effect is to reduce the size of China's economy as a percentage of the overall global economy at a point of time in the future 2030, 2040, 2050. Japan is a good example. There are other factors in play including technology and capital access as technology and capital shifts to other parts of the world where it can be better deployed and conditions are suited for rapid development as in India/Indonesia and in the US/Canada/Australia regions of 1.6 billion people and 450 million people from China (saturation overbuilding), the Middle East (wars and mismanagement). ...

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An unimaginable gap exists between whites and Asian students in California in educational opportunity which poses risks for social cohesion in the US. Asian Americans in the UC California system are overrepresented in the colleges to an extent that would have been unimaginable in the 1950's. With just 15% of the population of California Asian Americans makeup over 40% of the UC college system. By comparison Whites have lost ground in a way that would have also been unimaginable in the 1950's with only 18% in UC colleges and 37% of the population.

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In 2024 one third of the mortgage payment is the average cost of insurance and taxes. Insurance went up with natural disasters fires and floods, taxes go up as home prices surge as they have in 10 years without enough new housing being built.

 For half of people in 5 major Metro areas, Rochester and Syracuse in NY, Omaha in Nebraska, New Orleans, and Miami, at least a quarter of borrowers spend more than half of their mortgage payment in insurance and taxes. Nationwide in US 9%, up from 4% in 2014 spend more than half of their mortgage payment on insurance and taxes.

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A major problem for parents and the schools may be knowing this and use this knowledge to keep increasing prices is that the true value of education is about your own effort and the quality of teachers, that the major state universities provide everything one needs for a good education, one just has to work hard at it. There is nothing about a Northwestern or a Brown that cannot be done by studying in the UC state system universities or state universities across the Nation, yet paradoxically the idea is kept up of the added value of a prestige name when much of a good education can be achieved at state universities costing $13,000 a year or $52,000 for 4 years at a UC Riverside or UC Santa Barbara. Michigan state instate at $16,000 and Arizona State at $13,000 a year are similar to other options.Upper middle class families struggling to pay for colleges that charge anywhere from $38,000 a year to $96,000 a year for so called elite. A shocking 40% increase in college tution is not justified by the colleges who seem to be impervious to the impact of these price increases when no such price increases were seen in the post war decades that followed 1950. Here a father who works as a director of a manufacturing company with incomes in the range of $200,000-$250,000 a year faces the difficult decisions of letting children make the decision and yet having to make sober choices about affordability. With about $200,000 set aside for tution expenses for 2 children parents face tution that can cost for 4 years $160,000 to $250,000 for 1 child. In this situation Brown cost $93,000 a year but reduced it to $65,000, Northwestern and Cornell wanted $96,000 and $81,000 a year, Notre Dame $38,000 a year and UC Berkeley $52,000 for instate tution. This means there is little left for the second child's college tution when the first child 4 year cost is in this case $65,000 a year for Brown University and $260,000 for 4 years.  ...

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Ajla Tomljanovic takes on the challenge of beating Serena Williams in 3 sets at the US Open tennis championships.  Her father is a handball champion who plays for Croatia and wanted his daughter to take up handball. Ajla stuck to tennis and seemed oblivious to the crowds applauding her opponent's every point as she won 6-1 in the last set after a tie breaker in the second set. Ajla plays for Australia at the US Open.

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China says its students are subject to harsh questioning when coming to the US, and these students face racial discrimination in the US. 105,000 student visas for Chinese students were issued by the US embassy in Beijing and consulates in China in 2023 as the pandemic recedes and normal exchange relations resume. About 50,000 exchange program participants in the US are expected to visit China over 5 years. Nicholas Burns, 68 years, is the new US ambassador to China in April 2022. As the mood changes in the US with both presidential candidates ramping up their stand on trade with China and tariffs, US China relations face headwinds after the normalization of US-China relations following the pandemic, when Xi and Biden met in San Francisco in 2023. Chinese student facing racial discrimination in the US and the difficulties with learning English pose serious problems for Chinese students which Nicholas Burns in a diplomat sheltered world may have no idea of. This applies to students from mainland China and Taiwan alike. Burns may have too hastily dismissed this side of the perspective from Xi Jinping. ...

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Milan Cortina Olympics 2026 Medals table  Norway and Italy on top US France Germany Sweden France Switzerland and Austria Japan in top 10 for gold medals. Britain with 1 was surpassed by Australia with 2 gold medals.

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Gas prices at pump drop by 4% on June 24, 2026 in the US, even as oil prices drop by a third from over $100 a barrel to less than $70 as ships make it though Hormuz channel.

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Mervy King, Governor of the Bank of England and his position on the recent mortgage crises, rate cuts , moral hazard in the UK economy. Debate about his standing on principle and having to take action anyway as the crisis deepens as at Northern Rock. His approach contrasted with Bernanke's approach to reduce the damage and still focus on inflation. The issues where a principled stand may not be educated enough in the interests of the whole economy, and all the people in society who may be damaged by a principled approach if a crisis has devastating effects on unemployment, investment and confidence; even though some of those who helped build the crisis are helped along the way. Is the idea of a bailout and moral hazard taken at the surface too simplistic in the modern world with the economic fate of all mankind intertwined with the US economy and the other industrialized and leading economies of the world. Is it impossible to punish a few without punishing the whole? Are their other ways those involved would be chastised such as the CEO's of financial institutions losing their jobs, companies losing their reputation, being disciplined as new CEO's like Pandit at Citigroup and Thain at Merrill Lynch provide new leadership? ...