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Americans have changed their habits after pandemic and now try to leave office at 5.01 pm to go home, giving room for exercise, cooking dinner, children, and other activity at home. There is a pushback to avoid staying till later in the evening for after hours activities at the workplace.

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This WSJ Investigation into workculture and poor treatment of women and minorities shows behaviour has not changed over the years. Some of the internal investigations go back to the time when Sheila Bair was head of the FDIC in 2009. The FDIC plays an important role in regulation of the banking system. It is not attracting younger employees with the workculture. That this has been ignored for so long is over decades is beyond comprehension, that such behaviour could exist as reported in the WSJ is astonishing. 

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This WSJ editorial says president Obama's inaction, including the smaller step of not putting in place a safe zone in Syria, comes at a price for Liberals. The recent action by Governors in Michigan and other states turning down Syrian refugees, it says is one of the moral consequences of Obama's policies. For Liberals it says a policy of inaction and turning America's back to the needs of ordinary Syrians during the Arab Spring is not neutral, it also has consequences. The consequences for Liberals is the steady stream of refugees to Europe, and the greater intolerance in western societies as the safe havens created by these policies in the Middle East lead to terrorist actions in Europe or the U.S. In short doing little or nothing carries risks for the kind of society liberals want to see. Through developing policy in response to the Bush Administration's policies the Obama administration makes a series of errors of its own that compromise liberal values, including the collapse of the Arab Spring without American and western support, and the creation of a huge refugee crisis in Syria, Iraq, with a spillover to Jordan and Turkey, and further spillover to Europe. Liberals in Europe also face a similiar situation, including Liberals in France....

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At a Congressional hearing Hillary Clinton defends her record at the State Department following the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, including steps taken to make certain that this does not happen again.

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Of all 5 comments to this editorial in the Economist, all did not think it made any sense to support the Karzai government and risk American troops on the ground with an increasing presence.

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Problems reconciling security interests with interests for civil rights inside the US and the beliefs in using coercion within the code of civilized nations. The story of American prisons in Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Tata's new water filtration device called "Swach," for pure, sells for 999 rupees ($22.50), and is expected to sell 1 million units a year. The head of Tata Chemical's water-purifier business, Sabeel Nandy, says the demand in India is huge, about 250 million households. The goal is to put a purifier in these households to save them from water-borne diseases. The device has similiar potential in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.

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The country David Toscana describes is Mexico. Yet Mexico is not alone. This could be India, or some other counry in Latin America or Asia. Mexico takes the penultimate spot of 108 countries in a UNESCO assessment of reading habits, says Toscana. It is not just schools, that are a problem, as children start reading with encouragement from adults in the home setting, and reading is valued in the society for its own sake.

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Facin competition from RIM's Blackberry, Apple's IPhone, Smamsung and LG, Nokia has seen its market share in the USA take asteep dive from 35% in 2002 March to 10% in 2008, and 7% in June 2009. Nokia say experts made adecade of mistakes. It failed to design new phones , failed to anticipate consumer tastes in America, like flip phones and touch screens, and failed to accomodate the CDMA format using instead the European GSM standard.

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Infrastructure, crumbling road and rail and transport systems, sewage systems, flood control systems, lack of high-speed rail, and the lack of good methods to finance are becoming an important issue right at the top with security and protection of banking and financial systems. America spends only 2.4% of GDP on infrastructure, compared to 5% in Europe and 9% in China. The existing methods of financing roads like the petrol tax are not working.

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The epitome of massive distortions in the way capital is allocated in capital markets of the last two decades even as healthcare, childcare, manufacturing technologies and infrastructure was starved of captal funding is Masayoshi Sen and Softbank which posted a $23 billion loss in the April-June 2022 quarter. This is one and half times the loss in the first quarter. Heard on the Street in WSJ dismisses Mr. Sen's contrition on these losses as this will continue into the future it says, and is simply the style of these types of extreme speculation funds. It obscures a larger problem in society and in America and Europe of capital markets giving the pass on such wasteful use of capital on huge scale amounting to trillions of dollars and not funding desperately needed healthcare, education, infrastructure, childcare and other needs of the 900 million people in these countries. Even the claims of profits hangs hollow on the necks of these investments, with dubious selection of many projects. Capital returns are insignificant or zero as the WSj says many of Softbanks funds have net zero gains since 2017. Yet extravagant demands for capital are met with extravagant supply where the needs or reasoining are the least credible in today's distorted capital market allocations causing egregious harm to the 900 million people of the US and Europe.   ...

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After the coronavirus pandemic the whole picture of life in retirement and aging is expected, says this report in WSJ.  Retirement homes are not viewed as a good place and about 30% of these homes in the U.S. are expected to close with financial difficulties. Most people will now work longer and continue to live at home. Telemedicine and other technology will help make this possible. Experts say most people will age and stay at home and financial incentives will be given for this to happen.  Aging will also be seen differently because of the resilience of older people during the coronavirus. People will be seen as productive and living a full life well into their seventies and eighties. Community services will expand. Government services including under Medicaid will consider that it is less costly to stay at home than in long term care facilities and provide financial coverage for caregiver or homecare aides help at home. Many new services and technology assisted services are being planned with a focus on older people and living productive lives, as America and Europe other countries shift their focus to this group. After coronavirus people are also looking to spend their years in a productive way, to do things that really matter and add meaning to their lives.. How to spend the next 10-20 years in the most meaningful way. ...

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The mirage of progress presented from Silicon Valley in the form of FTX crypto exchange ends with $8 billion in losses to investors and a 25 year sentence for the founder in 2024. More proof of the excesses of the "free to choose" post-Reagan era with misallocation of capital leaving the vital needs and priorities of America unfunded, underfunded, or totally neglected from infrastructure, health, education to climate change action. An aversion to government taking action where it is needed that goes back to the 1930's when Franklin Roosevelt said in the State of the Union speech to Congress in 1935- "We have, however, a clear mandate from the people, that Americans must forswear that conception of the acquisition of wealth which, through excessive profits, creates undue private power over private affairs and, to our misfortune, over public affairs as well. In building toward this end we do not destroy ambition, nor do we seek to divide our wealth into equal shares on stated occasions. We continue to recognize the greater ability of some to earn more than others. But we do assert that the ambition of the individual to obtain for him and his a proper security, a reasonable leisure, and a decent living throughout life is an ambition to be preferred to the appetite for great wealth and great power."   ...

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See the adjoining report in DW.com that covers the planned meeting between Japanese PM Kishida and Kim of North Korea to reduce tensions in the region. Kishida is taking a proactive approach as the ideological positions have failed and talking directly to North Korea as Junichiro Koizumi had done in 2004 (with a visit to Pyongyang when Kim's father was president) is now the right course. It is now twenty years that this was not tried. Former president Trump met Kim of North Korea at the Demilitarized Zone DMZ near Seoul in 2019. Not much changed after that meeting. North Korea has increased missile testing with ICBM missiles and increased its nuclear missiles with improvement in technology since then. One aspect of the Reagan/Weinberger era policy was its sense that America would keep investing in defense and at some point everyone else would fall behind. This has not happened. After a slowdown in its economy in the early 1990's opportunities to build Russia relations were left to business interests and opportunities were lost. The memory of that period of Russia's economic collapse lingers and feeds a sense that somehow Russia was diminsished by waht happened after the abrupt collapse of the Russian position in Eastern Europe.  In fact the only nuclear missile tests conducted in this 21st century were conducted by North Korea.  ...

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Will a war in Ukraine affect the world's food supplies? Yes here is how. It would affect mainly the countries of North Africa that depend on wheat imports from Ukraine and Russia. Egypt is the largest importer. Many of these countries depend on imports to keep their people fed. The cost of shipping it is less from the Black Sea ports of Ukraine and Russia than if this wheat came all the way from America or Australia.  Much of Ukraine's wheat grows in the Kharkiv Oblast region in eastern Ukraine close to the border with Russia. With Russia putting 100,000 troops and prepared for an invasion of Ukraine both sides could be affected. Of the approximately 200 million metric tons of exports of wheat each year Russia and Ukraine make up about 29% or about 65 million metric tons. About two thirds of this from Russia and one third from Ukraine. Prices of wheat are already at an high of $310 a metric ton. Experts say this could double in the case of war or go up 20% even in a minor incursion. Western sanctions would affect Russian exports of wheat on top of the effects of war and devastated agriculture in Ukraine. When there are wars there are ripple effects- in this case all the way to North Africa.  ...

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How president Biden is listening to new voices such as Chris Murphy on what economic, social and national model America should base its future on . Tech monopolies, Big Phama, Billionaires paying 8.2% tax and resisting fair taxes, Citizens United keeping out people interested in public service who don't want to raise money from corporations asking favors (Pharma, Tech monopolies). How Biden says his model in a folksy Scranton sort of way about his grandfather saying "Joey just remember" yet has the basics right about investing in the Nation, Fair Taxes that cut Deficits yet rebuild the dilapidated Infrastructure and creates Jobs, Renewable Energy target for 2035 to tackle Climate change.  And Harris as AG bringing her approach to tackle big corporate power and specific down to earth cost of living action +child care action, + housing costs action,  and Walz bringing experience from a large upper midwestern state in implementing climate change action, wage and income improvement, student debt and educational opportunity for all. This is a strong beginning and we build from here as the foundations are laid down for the future to create an Opportunity for All Economy. Making the effort bipartisan in the spirit of the legislation that Biden has achieved with Republicans senior leaders Cornyn, McConnell, and With Lankford on immigration legislation that will be a top priority for Harris to sign into law. ...

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Much of this report concentrates on big name schools ignoring the facts about student debt and value delivered, and the shifts in perceptions in companies that see big name schools as not necessarily an asset as inthe past. In this new situation looking objectively at value delivered the US state university system is its strongest asset and the state universities offer higher value for local students without the unneeded debt loads of big ticket institutions with a lot of debt overhang, and little additional value. In the end education is about persistence, hard work, grit and determination. A  Kamala Harris at Hastings in San Francisco can do as well or better than someone from the big name schools. After the Supreme Court decision opposing quotas for affirmative action the first results of enrollment by ethnic group and race are mixed and sometimes confusing. Some colleges and universities are seeing the same enrollment and some are moving in opposite directions for ethnic groups and race. This NYT report says if universities can get to a fair enrollment for different groups without racial quotas then these quotas may not be essential to achieve their purpose. Schools are looking at students from rural areas in ways they did not in the past, and trying innovative approaches to building a better America after the pandemic because they think it is the right way. ...

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As to financing of $6000 child tax credit costing about $100 billion a year as estimated by Office for Responsible Budget some of it would come from the $360 billion in tax savings over 10 years by Medicare negotiation of prices with Pharma, other would come from taxing corporations and high incomes at rates that are similar to what firemen and teachers pay of 20-25%. In his speech at North Carolina Aug 15, 2024 at Wake Tech in Raleigh, president Biden said- "You know how many billionaires there are in America?  There’s now a thousand billionaires.  You know what their average tax they pay — federal tax?  8.2 percent.  Anybody want to trade with a billionaire — their tax rate?  (Laughter.)  Well, guess what?  If they just paid 25 percent — it’s not the highest bracket by a longshot — 25 percent — do you know what that would do?  That would raise $40- — $400 billion over the next 10 years.  Imagine what we could do with that.  We could fundamentally sh- — slash the federal deficit.  We could make sure there’s home care.  We could do so many things — consequential — including finally making sure that we take care of Ukraine from that butcher Putin.  (Applause.) ...

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89% in IPSOS poll support deporting illegal immigrants who have committed crimes, says the Washington Post. Americans both Democrats and Republicans want safer neighborhoods. There is majority support to deport all immigrants here illegally. The Washington Post-Ipsos poll in February says 51% of Americans support trying to deport all Americans here illegally estimated at 11 million. Not only this there is something in the air about building a Nation anew- that means a new effort to build cultural literacy is also taking off. Cultural Literacy is a title of a book by H.D. Hirsch, from the 1980's and is a movement about nationhood that is more relevant today than in the 1980's, as the results of three decades of education based on skills development have failed in America's school system for K-12. Content as the core of education was allowed to decline.This has created huge gaps in the nation in communication, in a grasp by succeeding generations of what this Nation was founded on and has been for over two centuries. Waves of immigrants with no knowledge of the culture and language necessary for citizens added to this situation in the educational system has not fostered the integration that happened in the 1850's, 1900's and the 1950's waves of immigration.  ...

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This Editorial in the WSJ says Obama's complete inaction in Syria led to problems later on. It destabilized the entire Middle East in a way that Reagan destabilized the region with intervention in the region. Russian unease with NATO at its borders was not sensed in US and EU- and no efforts to address these concerns to reach an agreement to create the right kind of environment for peaceful coexistence that is only now being beginning to be seen as needed. Other serious consequences were the migration from the Middle East to Europe after Arab Spring in 2011- migration to Greece and Italy and onwards to Hungary, Austria and Germany. During the Merkel years little was done to identify and act on the sources of the problem- instability in the Middle East and Africa and dealing with the problem at the source. This led to AfD in Germany taking up the unease felt by the German people at the size of the illegal migration. This led in ricocheting manner to migration fears in Britain and Reform UK taking up the unease felt by the  British people.  This problem of migration found new sources in 2024- Venezuela and Central America for the US and cross Channel migration in the UK and again it's size stirred up unease- because of the size of illegal migration in the millions. ...

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Biden's last 100 days in office. His effort to make things better, a conviction that he would have won enough white working class voters to win the election. Turnout was way way higher when Biden ran in 2020. It dropped by about 10 million voters in 2024 compared to 2020. Many white working class voters of the 82 million who voted for Biden in 2020 simply simply did not turn up to vote while DJT clung on to the 75 million votes he had in 2016. Transgender, a sense that everything was changing too quickly culturally, the fentanyl crisis adding to migrant surge creating a backlash for Harris. Biden makes an effort to lock in the gains made in the last 4 years in a number of areas. A remarkable life and one that brings back the Democrats closer to their roots under FDR in 1932 and his uncle Teddy Roosevelt a Republican fighting for the working class since 1902, that FDR inherited. The nation under DJT simply inherits the role played by TR as Republican in 1902 fighting for the working class after two southerners Carter and Clinton let Democrat ties to working class wither and support for China entering WTO and taking over manufacturing leadership. Obama letting Silicon Valley distance Democrats from workers even further and dragging on wars that served no purpose for America. ...

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This editorial in the NYT says Bill Clinton moved the Democratic Party to the centre in 1992. In 2016 about 25 years later, after the removal of the Glass Steagall Act led to the 2008 global financial crisis and a deep recession, after the trade relations with China led to loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs over two decades and the hollowing out of industry in the midwest, things have changed. The revolution led by Bernie Sanders, a shrinking middle class, smaller access to college education for the middle and working class, and wide disparities in income, are putting the Democratic Party closer to its roots and the days of FDR. The Democratic Party platform calls for a 21st century Glass Steagall Act to separate normal banking from investment banking, opposes the TPP to prevent any further export of jobs overseas, and goes for a $15 minimum wage. This was also evident at the opening day of the Democratic National Convention when Sanders told the gathering in Philadelphia that even though he was not the candidate, these are the planks of the platform that Hillary Clinton will be pushing for in her presidency. What the editorial does not point out is that the Republican economic platform also calls for reinstatement of Glass Steagall Act, opposes TPP and opposes any loss of American jobs to overseas locations. It differs on the minimum wage leaving it to the states, and it is likely to skew tax cuts towards the wealthy, but also possibly removing the lower income brackets from taxes as Britain has done under the Conservative Party. Both parties today are looking for support from the middle and working class and have directed their appeal to these two groups which are in upheaval. The election of Trudeau in Canada recently also followed this trend, after the hollowing out of Canadian industry in Ontario and Quebec in a similiar pattern as in the midwestern U.S.  ...

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Republican candidate Trump wins 51% of the vote in Iowa to De Santis 21% and Nikki Haley 19%. Trump won among evangelical voters with 58% support. In cities his vote declined. In Story County home to Iowa State University in Ames, it was 34%, and in Johnson County where University of Iowa is located 36% supported Trump. In 2024 18percentage points separate Mr. Trump's support in low levels of college or post secondary education to higher levels of college or post secondary education. In 2016 Mr. Trump received 29% of the vote in low college education areas to 22% of the vote in high college education areas- a spread of 7 percentage points. Iowa is a state with a large farm and agriculture sector. Other states with manufacturing in the midwest tended to move away from Democrats in 2016. Some of this momentum has reversed with union support for Mr. Biden who has taken a pro-union stance in a way that is not matched by any Democrat since FDR and Harry Truman in the 1930's to 1950's. The shift of Clinton to globalism and Obama to tech companies cost Democrats heavily in 2016 with workers in manufacturing- something that is reversed in drastic ways since 2020 with Mr. Biden on the picket line at UAW union auto strikes in Michigan. ...

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Pressure from the American Bankers Association and Barney Frank, House Finance Committee chairman, to have the uptick rule reinstated. SEC is considering reinstating the uptick rule that would put adamper on the shortselling of stocks.