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In his foreign policy address following the northeast state primaries Donald Trump outlines a policy with less foreign engagement in trouble spots, and greater reliance on partners in Europe and Asia contributing to joint defense. It also includes building up the military and nuclear arsenal. It criticizes the Bush administration for intervention in Iraq that benefitted Iran, and the Obama administration for policies that led to the rise of Islamic State. Because Trump is not for supporting foreign engagements in trouble spots the difference in Trump's policies is not announcing or signalling in advance what U.S. response would be, instead keeping it unpredictable. It is not clear how much this would work given that any president would inherit the situation before him, and also the complexity of the situation would not change, such as the need to have Iranian cooperation and Saudi cooperation to tackle Islamic State. The Bush administration started with a similiar intention to focus on domestic policy, till the 9/11 surprise attack steered it away towards nationbuilding overseas. The pendulum swung in the latter years of the Bush adminstration to the Iraq intervention, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, followed by a swing in the other direction to allowing Libya and Syria disntegrate leading to millions of refugees. Complexity, surprises, and swings of popular opinion, are unlikely to go away, even as caution is exercized and military capabilities enhanced....

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Japanese firms have $2.65 trillion in excess reserves as of June 30, 2014, according to the Ministry of Finance. Yet slow growth and falling prices in the last decade have made Japanese companies overly cautious in increasing wages. A declining yen makes imports more costly. Real wages were up for only 4 months during the Abe administration in 2013-2014. The first increase in the national sales tax in April 2014 to reduce the large deficit has also hit consumers, leading to a recession in the third quarter of 2014. Prime minister Abe made an effort in 2013 to get companies to increase wages, but results were modest in Spring 2014 as smaller companies held back. At the time prime minister Abe promised to do his part by reducing corporate taxes and implement pro-growth strategies, expecting companies to adjust wages upward. Analysts now say tightening labor markets are likely to create a situation where businesses will have to raise wages. A Bank of Japan survey of business sentiment in Dec. 2014 shows the number of firms seeing a shortage of workers is at the highest proportion since 1992. Declining oil prices will reduce Japan's fuel import bill by 9.6 trillion yen in 2015, and give more money to consumers offsetting the effects of the increase in the consumption tax to 8%....

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The new cabinet of prime minister Valls in France includes Segolene Royal as Ecology minister. Michel Sapin, labor minister in the outgoing cabinet, becomes finance minister. Sapin was finance minister under the Mitterand government in the 1990's. A critic of austerity policies Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg, continues in this position with a wider role. After losing badly in local elections in March 2014, president Hollande has asked the new cabinet to combine planned tax cuts for businesses with efforts to increase spending power of households. Finance Minister Sapin faces the task of convincing the EU and Germany that France should have more leeway in plans for deficit reduction to boost its economy and especially reduce unemployment. Unemployment is at a high of 11%. Sapin is seasoned in the ways of operating in EU circles. In his role as finance minister in the Mitterand administration he pushed for the passing of the French referendum on the Maastricht Treaty that laid the baiss for the euro currency....

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This report by Juan Montes in the WSJ shows how much Lopez Obrador has changed since he lost by a small margin in the 2006 Mexico presidential election. His campaign manager, Tatiana Clouthier, says broadening his appeal to women, evangelicals, middle class Mexicans, rich and poor, is needed for Obrador to win in 2018. In elections in 2006 and 2012 Obrador continued to be seen as the candidate only of the working class. An effort is being made to change this image. Obrador, 64 years old from the party of the left, formed his own party in 2010 after leaving the PRD party. He is a former mayor of Mexico City. Five recent polls show Obrador leading by an average of 7.5 points over Ricardo Analya, the PAN candidate for president which now has the support of the PRD. PAN on the right and PRD on the left are other opposition parties. PAN party formed the government under Felipe Calderon before the current PRI president Nieto now tainted by corruption scandals became president in 2012. If he were to win Obrador would change the way Mexico was governed for 5 decades. His first step would be to review the 91 exploration contracts given by the government under the Nieto administration to check for signs of graft. Corruption is a key platform of the parties running against the current government of president Nieto, for both Obrador and the PAN/PRD alliance candidate Anaya. Obrador says he would keep balanced budget deficits and respect the central bank's autonomy. The shift would be from the current export model that Mexico has supported for 35 years, to one based on import substitution policies, higher salaries, and more government spending for education, jobs programs, healthcare, new oil refineries. With the Trump administration's stance on trade and immigration Mexicans are now showing anger and frustration, with 75% of Mexicans in a Reforma poll looking for change. Both the PAN/PRD and its new face in Ricardo Analya, 38 years old, and the Obrador party see corruption and with it in the Mexican context the rule of law as a key issue.  ...

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Hubbard was Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under President Bush. His plan is for the government and Congress to allow all residential, mortgages on private residences to be refinanced into 30 year fixed rate mortgages at 5.25% and place those mortgages under Freddie and Fannie. The idea is to have a low enough rate to support house prices. Where the homes are worth less than the total amount of the loan balance the mortgages would be refinanced into a 30 year fixed rate loan to be held by a new agency modeled on the 1930's era Homeowners Loan Corporation. New mortgages would be made of upto 95% of the current value of a home, with owners and servicers of the loan splitting the losses on refinancing the mortgage with the government agency. Servicers would have to accept refinancing on all or none of their mortgages, no cherry picking. And the government could take an equity position in return for the mortgage writedown so that taxpayers do well with a better housing market....

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J.P. Morgan Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon, and his relationship with the Democratic Party and President Obama. Dimon was a strong backer of Obama during the early part of his first term, which affected how the president viewed regulation of the banking industry. Dimon strongly opposes the Volcker Rule and other regulatory changes for "too big to fail," designed to make the financial system safer after the global financial crisis of 2008.

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Instant information, too much information, can bring its own set of problems including making people unable to figure out what information to trust. Here Evan Williams, a co-founder of Twitter, describes the problems and his second thoughts about progress and the internet. His new startup Medium hopes to encourage long form writing, but even this is shorter than the longer form articles that were common in prior decades.

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Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal headed the Joint Special Oprations Command from 2003 to 2008. He is a hands on guy who spends m ost of his time in the field. He is good at building up a sophisticated network, and using his Rolodex to have extensive contacts with people in the field. He used this to track down insurgents and Al Quaeda in Iraq, helping destroy the insurgents leadership.

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Maria Bartiromo's questions to Treasury Secretary Paulson on the SIV Superfund that Treasury has supported.See the related article on the housing crisis and the difficulty with a Superfund. If it takes out the most creditworthy securities the superfund would leave only credit impaired securities in the remaining SIV and would it not then lose value precipitiously thus making it more likely the banks would take big losses on the remaining securities.

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11 Pacific Rim nations form the Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2018. The Obama administration supported the trade pact alienating supporters in its union base particularly in the midwestern states. Mr. Trump opposed the TPP in his election campaign and made it a significant issue for swing voters in midwestern states after job losses in the auto industry. With the opposition of president Trump the U.S. decided to withdraw from TPP.  The 11 nations agreeing to join a revised agreement are Japan, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. So far six countries have formally approved the deal, Australia, Canada, Mexico, Singapore, New Zealand and Japan, setting the stage for two rounds of tariff reductions starting December 30, 2018. Agricultural products duties will be duty free within 3 to 7 years including for Japan and Mexico. Australia, New Zealand, Canada are major agricultural exporters. Japan supported the deal as a way to counter China's influence in the region. In the U.S. the gains would be in intellectual property rights but losses for workers in the auto and manufacturing industries, a point Mr. Trump recognized in his election campaign as he campaigned in the midwestern states. Mr. Obama pursued TPP over objections of workers organizations and unions including auto workers union, with his advisors suggesting this as a way to counter China's influence in the region. By 2018 the Democratic party support base fractured on this as one of the major issues.   ...

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  Rachel Louis Ensign of the WSJ describes one moment in the Madison Square Garden Trump rally. In it Lutnick who Ensign describes as embracing controversial crypto finance business, and EV's Musk, say they plan to  create a Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE, also the name of a cryptocurrency. The US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the central banks of China, India have warned of risks and dangers associated with Crypto currency which has no backing of the government. In one moment of the rally at Madison Square Garden as reported in the WSJ. Lutnick says- "How much do you think we can rip out of this wasted, $6.5 trillion Harris-Biden budget?”   “I think we could do at least $2 trillion,” Musk said.  Fitzgerald says "Yeah" A budget that the large part of includes spending for Social Security, Medicare, Defense, Education, and other departments of government. Howard Lunick is Donald Trump's head of Human Resources in 2024, for hiring people to run the government under his administration. In 1993 he was running the company Cantor Fitzgerald and taking his son to kindergarden when the bombings of the World Trade Center by terrorists killed 980 of the company's employees. Fitzgerald has contributed to Kamala Harris's campaign for US Senate in 2016, and calls himself a fiscal conservative and social liberal. In 2023 he was invited by Trump to help his campaign. Fitzgerald says the Democratic party left him with its immigration and other policies. This report by Rachel Louis Ensign in WSJ says Cantor Fitzgerald's company has embraced crypto, which larger companies have stayed away from. It says the WSJ has reported that a Hong Kong based owner of the stable coin tether used Cantor Fitzgerald to help oversee its $39 billion bond portfolio. Crypto finance is reported as playing a large part in 2024. Rachel Louis Ensign of the WSJ describes one moment in the Madison Square Garden Trump rally. In it Lutnick and Musk say they plan to  create a Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE, which is also the name of a cryptocurrency. The problem with cryptocurrency is that the US Federal Reserve does not support it, China, India and the European Central Bank disapprove of it and it is banned in China even though some of the crypto companies have connections with China. In one moment of the rally at Madison Square Garden as reported in the WSJ. Lutnick says- "How much do you think we can rip out of this wasted, $6.5 trillion Harris-Biden budget?”   “I think we could do at least $2 trillion,” Musk said.  Fitzgerald says "Yeah" ...

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The difficult situation facing a six term Congressman from New York who is the new Minority Leader in the US House of Representatives. Mr Hakim Jeffries faces a difficult debt ceiling vote in the US Congress during his first year as Leader for the Democratic party in the House. All 213 Democrats have signed a special petition that would force a vote in the House if the debt ceiling negotiations fail. This is 5 votes short. The vote would then require 5 moderate House Republican members to support it for it to pass. The idea is that only if push comes to shove and no agreement is reached leading to financially disastrous results for Americans in which they would be blamed by their constituents for not acting, moderates from states like New York might join the Democrats.

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The National Health Service in Britain is struggling under the effects of budget cuts, covid delays, and an aging population, says the WSJ. With the cost of living crisis and the Tory resistance to wage increases when nurses are found turning to food banks there is now a strike by healthcare workers. A former head of the NHS says the UK healthcare system is facing a crisis like nothing he has seen in his career. The UK has mistaken cheapness for efficiency in its approach to health, and it is now coming to roost. It is coming apart- people with heart attacks have to wait average one and half hours for an ambulance. Hospital beds are scarce tuning patients away. One in ten are on waiting lists for non emergency surgeries. 

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Mark Landler of the NYT says about the return of Boris Johnson as PM of Britain after 45 days of Truss- it is at once both incredible and inevitable. It would give a sense of incredulity and become a rallying point for a demoralized Conservative party say some Conservatives, much as he has done throughout his political career.   Boris Johnson already has the support of 52 MP's and needs 100 in parliament to be nominated for PM again. If of 367 members of parliament one of the three candidates Mordaunt, Sunak or Johnson withdraws the election would then be decided by 160,000 members of the Conservative party with whom Boris Johnson is very popular. Others believe that it was Johnson who won the election by a landslide and it is Johnson who got the mandate. 

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The view presented that Ambedkar's conversion to Buddhism was because of frustration that he had agreed to give up his demand for separate electorates for the lowest castes with the Poona Pact that he made with Gandhi in 1932. Gandhi saw separate electorates as one more effort at continuing divide and rule by the British to keep India divided and weak. This report in Indian Express says Ambedkar addressed a huge gathering of Mahars in Bombay in 1936 and advocated conversion to Buddhism. How much this was done to practice Buddhism is not clear. The Four Noble Truths are described as being dismissed from being part of Buddhism. Yet Buddhism as practiced in Sri Lanka, Japan and other countries consider it to be central to grasping the idea of Buddhism.

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Abdulrazak Gurnah, a native of Zanzibar and Tanzania writing in English wins the 2021 Nobel Prize for Literature. His prose has inflections of Arabic, Swahili and German. He left Zanzibar at age 18 years after a violent uprising in 1964. In "Admiring Silence" he reflects on the experience of migrant refugees caught betwen two cultures and remaining silent about their true feelings. The prize is given at a time of migrants reaching Europe in large numbers from Africa and the Arab countries of North Africa to Germany.

The chair of the Nobel Committee Anders Olsson says about Gurnah- "He ha consistently and with great compassion penetrated the effects of colonialism in East Africa, and its effects on the lives of uprooted and migrating individuals."

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Food costs for eating at home have actually come down by half since 1960. Charts on the US Department of Agriculture site (USDA) show US food costs for family budgets at 13% of personal disposable income for eating at home in the Kennedy years the 1960's. This has come down by half to 5.7% in 2024. In that period eating at restaurants and outside has doubled to 5.7% of personal disposable income. When people complain about food inflation this is an important factor, eating outside also leads to less control of intake and right nutrition, consequently leads to poorer health outcomes, and a growing share of health expenditures in America's national budget. It hits both the family budget and the national budget and then comes back to hit health outcomes.

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The difficulties posed by the absence of Xi Jinping at New Delhi G20 Summit are discussed here in the WSJ. Today September 9 the G20 leaders from 20 nations meet, absent will be Mexico's Obrador, China's Xi, and Russia's Putin. China's premier will attend the meeting. China's Xi met with India's Modi at the BRICS meeting in Johannesburg, last month. China's premier is a close associate of Xi's and his chief of staff for decades, so that any suggestion that Xi is reducing contact with other world leaders in 2023 is incorrect. Xi will meet Biden at the APEC meeting US is hosting San Francisco Nov. 12-18 that will focus on Asia Pacific nations.

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Republicans are divided in Texas in 2023 which could turn it over to Democrats. One forgets that Texas is the state that a Democrat LBJ Lyndon Baines Johnson was from and his base of support, first vice president under John Kennedy and then elected president. LBJ signed legislation for amending Social Security to create Medicare and Medicaid. He also passed Civil Rights Act of 1964 banning segregation and in 1965 enfranchised black voters. The WSJ in this editorial sees the divisions between Republicans in the House and the Senate over the impeachment of Attorney General Paxton as signs that Texas has one party dominance for too long. It says this could turn the state to a Democrat majority in 2024 as it was under LBJ in 1960, who helped create programs revered by all Americans.

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Gen. Milley is not alone in saying this- that the Joint Chiefs chairman takes an oath to the Constitution of America, which he calls "the idea of America," a Constitution that starts with the words "We the People." Enshrined in these words in the Preamble to the US Constitution is the idea of the "inalienable rights" of man to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Vice president Mike Pence affirmed that the oath was to the Constitution of the US before Milley, and Attorney General William Barr affirmed this before Mr. Pence.  Three of the senior most positions in the US government during the presidency of Mr. Trump. It showed a parting of ways of three of the most senior persons in his administration with Mr. Trump.

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Kristof of the NYT says about American unions that the basic reality is that with the decline of trade unions in the last two decades workers got stiffed. The wages of new auto workers at $17 an hour dropped to levels close to the minimum wage of $16 in California in 2022. At $34,000 a year these workers were below the Federal Poverty Level for families of $35,000 to $40,000. Workers lost dignity and standards of living declined. After 15 years of covering the crisis of America's working class he says he lost his disdain for unions, and he has come to believe that unions are not just good for the workers but also for America itself. Unions he says are imperfect just as capitalism is imperfect, but essential for America.

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Claire Cain Miller of NYT looks at how Americans feel about the economy. It is shaped mainly by the cost of living crisis. Over half of Americans feel housing is unaffordable. And most Americans see prices as way too high at retail stores, for food and clothing, and do not see that president Biden has helped increase their wages through his support for the labor movement. Another aspect of this is that even though Biden has brought changes in wages and reduced inflation to 2-3% from 10%, the American people are feeling the effects of three decades of neglect of infrastructure, public services, and manufacturing under prevailing free market economic theory; that caused the disruption in living standards with the 2009 financial crisis, and the shift of manufacturing to China that devastated whole communities.

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After the first round of elections Mauricio Macri threw his support to Milei. Macri was president from 2015 to 2019 when pro-market reforms led to unrestrained borrowing from overseas investors. It failed leading to high inflation and turning to the IMF for loan of $57 billion. Any time there is a drought or agriculture in Pampas fails reserves dry up as in 2016 and again recently. Macri was ousted in the next election and replaced by Peronist Fernandez. The problems persist with a return to Macri and Milei who was just elected president turning to dollarization when the country lacks the $9 billion needed to convert pesos to US dollars. Argentina has net reserves of $20 billion, borrowing from China of $17 billion and net reserves of  negative $10 billion. 

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Republican Speaker Johnson is setting Saturday April 20, 2024 votes in the US Congress for Ukraine-Israel aid in a weekend vote, as Israel and Ukraine face growing threats. Basically the bill Democrats passed in the Senate gets split up into 3 parts for that $95 billion in aid bill to be voted on individually for each part separately for Ukraine, for Israel, for Taiwan. A fourth bill would be for Ukraine aid as a loan, and a measure leading to national ban on TikTok.

"We're not the world's policeman, but we are going to do the right thing. And I think Congress is going to take an important stand."

"We have improved the process and policy. Every member of Congress gets to vote his conscience."

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Instead of killing the NAFTA trade agreement Trump and his advisors prefer renegotiating the treaty. Priorities for the Trump administration are reducing the U.S. deficit with Mexico of $61 billion. Trade with Mexico and Canada is worth $1.1 trillion and the complex supply chains works such that product components cross borders more than once to become finished products. Mexico promotes its auto and other industries as duty free access to the U.S. for foreign investment. Special tariffs would reduce the trade deficit with Mexico and firms that moved production to Mexico would pay additional taxes. A provision that allows Mexican and Canadian companies to challenge U.S. regulations would also be removed. Rep. Brad Sherman (Democrat) says he supports the renegotiation so that duties of 4% are imposed to reduce the deficit to $25 billion.