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Denmark's shipping company A.P. Moeller-Maersk plans to split into 2 different divisions, one for transport and one for energy. Maersk Line, the largest container operator in the shipping industry, will become part of the new Transport and Logistics Division. Oil interests of Maersk will be combined to form the Energy Division. In June Maersk replaced CEO Nils Anderson with Soren Skou from the shipping business. The container shipping industry is suffering from a sharp downturn with freight rates falling in price wars, and shipping lines barely covering fuel costs. Hanjin Shipping is a South Korean company that has filed for bankruptcy protection. There is a process of consolidation taking place in the shipping industry as smaller lines are finding it difficult to survive on their own. Experts say the 20 biggest container operators could lose about $8-10 billion in 2016. Maersk has shifted to $139 million net loss in 2nd quarter 2016.

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British prime minister Theresa May's EU withdrawal agreement was defeated in the House of Commons by a vote of 344 to 286, a margin of 58 votes. 5 Labour MP's voted in favor, and 34 Brexiteer MP's in the European Research Group voted against. The Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland voted against. The vote did not include a declaration on the future relations with the European Union. The vote happened on March 29, the deadline for Britain to leave the EU. A new deadline of April 10 has been set to seek a longer extension.

Options going forward are to use a longer delay of a year to come up with consensus, have a second referendum, or hold a general election. Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn called for Mrs. May to resign and hold a general election. Britain will hold European parliament elections in May.

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Chennai, a city of 10 million in India faces a water crisis. It is approaching a situation of Day Zero when the water utility in the city can not any longer provide regular supplies of water through tap water. Tankers with water are used instead. This situation is a result of the 4 reservoirs used for Chennai water suffering from drought in the area- two are dry and the other two are almost dry. Water tankers supply water at the cost of an average salary of 9000 rupees  a month as shown in this story in the WSJ.

Cities such as Shimla, Managalore, Hyderabad, Delhi, also face water supplies crisis. All over India 600 million people live in water stressed areas, according to NITI Aayog, a government policy think tank. By 2030 the demand for water is expected to double. With weak monsoon rains the government is calling for water conservation.

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This WSJ report shows how the Twitter account of Barack Obama and Elon Musk and other prominent individuals were hacked by a 17 year old Florida teenager who was into online gaming and bitcoin currency. The teenager acted as a co-worker from the IT department to convince a Twitter employee to provide access to company internal information. After doing work fo taking over and selling online accounts the teenager started an effort to penetrate Twitter's internal systems. The teenager Mr. Clark setup several fake phishing pages, including one for the internal Twitter Okata login portal. Okta is used for securely logging into to Twitter's internal company systems.

The hourslong hack of Twitter accounts happened on July 15 with A message put on Mr. Obama's Twitter account by  saying-"All Bitcoin sent to the address below will be sent back doubled. If you send $1000 I will send back $2000."

 

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The basic outlines of new health care legislation takes shape as Senators Dodd and Kenedy come up with a plan that scales down subsidies to low-income people to buy insurance. Attached to their revised outline is a budget office analysis thatprojects the plan costing $611 billion over 10 years and with expected changes from the Senate Finance Committee would cover 97 percent of all Americans. And earlier plan received much criticism because the Congressional Budget Office estimated its cost at $1 trillion over 10 years and left 37 million Americans uninsured. In addition there is the revised Medicaid expansions for aid to the poor that would add a couple of humndred billion dollars to the total tab. The administration's goal is to keep the cost down to $1 trillion over 10 years. The legislation as it stands includes the public option which is designed to control insurance costs. Mr. Obama said this week that "the public option would keep insurance companies honest." Employer mandated insurance is part of the Kennedy-Dodd legislation proposal. Employers with 25 or more workerswould have to provide coverage or pay the government an annual fee of $750 for each full-time worker and $375 for each part-time worker. The government pays the startup costs for the public insurance option as a loan to be repaid, and premiums would make the option self-sufficient....

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There is a sense from Remainers and Brexiters in the Conservatives and in Labour that Brexit is "acting as a drag on UK growth and limiting its potential" after the pandemic and inflation. Senior members of both parties are meeting in Oxfordshire including David Lamy of Labour and Michael Gove of the Conservatives, and the heads of banks and large business. Gove and Boris Johnson led the campaign for Brexit, and Gove is now interested in ensuring Brexit is not viewed as a failure in the long term. The Office of Budget. Responsibility says Brexit will reduce Britain's per capita GDP  by 4%, over the 15 years from 2016. Labour sees it as a threat to any future Labour government to leave unaddressed the relations with the European Union. In a bipartisan effort what sort of conversation to have with the EU so that Britain's economy benefits? President Biden's effort in working with like minded Republicans for America's renewal may be seen by Labour and the Conservatives as reason for doing the same in Britain to ensure European recovery.   ...

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The Oxford vaccine developed in partnership with Astra Zeneca aims to be the vaccine for the world. The partnership has said it will make 2 billion doses and will provide this without making a profit at about $3 for one dose. Serum Institute of India was the leading supplier of vaccines to the world before the pandemic. Now it is preparing to make 1 billion doses of the Oxford vaccine. Already Astra Zenca has setup agreements for manufacturing  in other countries, with about 24 manufacturing facilities in countries such as Brazil, Japan, and Australia. Arrangements are also made with Russia and Mexico. The Russian partner has capacity to make 1 billion doses of the vaccine. In May the U.S. agreed to buy 300 million doses for $1.6 billion and manufacturing facilities are already being setup in the U.S.  The U.S. and other governments are sharing the risks as Astra Zeneca is hiring other companies to build the manufacturing capacity and working with them to install the new machines and supply the vaccine ingredients. For this the U.S. has Operation Warp Speed a $10 billion vaccine initiative and its organization, including the military. ...

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A supply chain crisis, shortages of coal and oil are affecting major world economies. The Guardian looks at the economies of Britain, the US, Germany, Russia and Australia. Inflation is above 4% in Germany for the last month. Shortages of workers is affecting most economies. Ports are filled with container ships that have not downloaded their shipments because of a lack of workers. There were a record 10 million job openings in the US mostly in the restaurant and entertainment industries. Low wages have led many to reconsider their careers during the pandemic, a phenomenon called the Great Resignation. Other people have dropped out of the workforce because schools have not reopened and there is a lack of good affordable childcare. The chairman of the US central bank Jerome Powell, says "It is frustrating to acknowledge that people getting vaccinated and getting Delta variant under control remains the most important economic policy we have. It is also frustrating to se the bottlenecks and supply chain problems not getting better- in fact at the margin getting a bit worse." ...

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Bread and bakeries have a special place in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and most of Europe. DW.com looks at one bakery in the city of Bonn, Kugel's Bakery with 13 employees and the concept slogan "Where there's only bread" (Da wo's nur Brot gibt) written on each and every white packaging bag. There are 10,000 bakeries in Germany many of them small family run bakeries that specialize in bread. Click on original article to see this report. Max Kugel takes over his parent's bakery, but first visits Vancouver, San Francisco and London, to learn new concepts and invests in new special equipment with a $200,000 loan. The new equipment lets him switch from one type of bread to another easily and keeps his costs down. He does not depend on Ukraine grain imports as he uses local organic grain grown in Germany. With 10,000 bakeries total sales in Germany are $15 billion for bread, and Germans take in 123 pounds of bread and baked goods in a year per person. ...

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Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares is an engineer from Portugal who joined Renault as a test track driver in 1981. In 2014 Fiat merged with Chrysler and in 2021 the PSA Group merged with Fiat creating the Stellantis car company with sales in Europe and the US. As CEO of PSA Group Carlos Tavares headed Stellantis. Tavares has skills in persuading unions in Europe to work with him, and motivates his people with his working style. At Chrysler even with losses from 10% absenteeism he has managed to reach operating profit margin of 16.4%. Stellantis plans investments of $35 billion in EV vehicles by 2025 which means it is putting back profits into investing in the future. Stellantis is today larger than GM or Ford. It has 47,000 employees in the US.  Earlier PSA had acquired lossmaker Opel from GM in 2017. Tavares is known for his careful attention to cost, and he has skills in negotiating with the labor unions in Europe for job cuts to stabilize loss makers.  ...

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Pidcock, mountain biking gold, says the biggest thing is to inspire people that's what he loves to do. It is bigger than cycling. Cut off from the rest of the cyclists after a 40 second puncture and being slow to change wheels, Tom Pidcock of England, faced huge odds. At first he wasn't getting any closer, he wasn't making any inroads. He had made too many mistakes he realized. He was suffering and fighting to make a comeback. Only with 3 laps left did things change when he cut 15 seconds off the gap in one lap. At that point Pidcock knew he could come up front. He chose to go for it and found a gap which he took. He was competing with Frenchman Koretsky and the French cheered him on. Pidcock prevailed. He had done this on one of the rides (Stages) in the Tour de France descending down the Alps. Inspiring young people goes beyond cycling. ...

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After the National Rally party of Le Pen wins 30% of the vote to Macron's En Marche 15% in EU elections, showing the unpopularity of Macron, Macron responds by calling for snap elections. Macron is taking an aggressive approach to stop NR party as so far  parliamentary elections in France  have led to voters on the left and right veering to the centre to avoid giving the far right National Rally of Le Pen a win. National Assembly elections also require getting 50% of the vote under different rules than EU elections.  Politico points out that the situation is different today as the NR is more in the mainstream of politics. Macron's hope is that the NR would increase its seat numbers from 88 but not as much, and that other parties such as the Republicains and the Socialist parties, the parties that governed France since 1945 would also make gains. He could then appoint a prime minister not from En Marche his party but from the Republicains party of Nicholas Sarkozy, French president (2007-2012), which supports Macron.  ...

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DJT administration 25% tariffs on Canada Mexico for not stopping fentanyl flows as domestic policy go ahead on March 4, 2025. This lays the ground to tackle aproblem that has led to 490,000 American deaths and devastated communities across the US - the flow of fentanyl into the US from Mexico, Canad and China. Separately an additional 10% tariff is going to effect on China on top of earlier tariffs on China.  The media keeps talking about this tariff as a economic action, not as action to stop all fentanyl flows as is repeatedly stated by DJT and the Administration. Most of the media has failed to talk about the fentanyl deaths over 12 years referring as one of the prominent media states as the "death of thousands" not giving the staggering number and the scale of the devastation of communities in America after the damage from the 2009 financial crisis caused by banks, the deindustrialization of America that was allowed to happen under Bush Republicans and Obama Democrats, and the covid pandemic crisis.  ...

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Emily Baumgaertner takes on the critics of children's vaccines. A major health advancement in tackling polio, measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria. The NYT says most Americans and doctors today have forgotten what a scourge these disease were in the last century. Polio one of the most serous killing or paralyzing half a million people worldwide in the 1930's and 40's. A scourge deadly as it happened suddenly in a day one could get paralyzed. US president FDR had polio which changed his whole life in the 1920's. In 1952 vaccines took this down from 22,000 in 1952 to just one in 1993.  Measles - the vaccine licensed in 1963. It is highly contagious. Tens of thousands hospitalized 400-500 died each year. It is 97% effective with 2 doses, its spread require 95% coverage rate. 16 measles outbreaks in 2024- about 300,000 children not protected, parents skipping it. Diptheira respiratory disease- 100,000 cases a year in 1920 to less than one today. One in 10 died from it says CDC. Vaccine TDaP. ...

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US and UK complete a trade agreement, the first of its kind with major trading partners. US has a $11 billion surplus in $148 billion two way trade with UK which is just ahead of India and behind Vietnam in trade with the US. Vietnam has acted as aproxy for Chinese exports to US something the DJT administration is taking action to correct. UK first 100,000 cars exported to US will not face a 25% levy, and UK exports will only face the 10% levy on all countries, including on British aluminium and steel. This agreement happened Thursday May 8 after a night call from Trump to Starmer moving up the negotiations to get awin for the US and the UK, that will also act as a model for other countries to reach trade agreements with the US. India, Japan, South Korea, could be next followed by EU. It also opens up engagement with China on a trade agreement. UK's Starmer thanked president Trump. The agreement was a first and it boosts stock markets in the US, shows the US can do this. ...

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Kashmir region has a long history that has been lost in the coverage since 1947 as the colonial rule ended in the region with intermittent peace and conflict. For 7 centuries since 100BC there was Hinduism from the Vedic period, then Buddhism, followed by 7 centuries of Shiva religion, till the 15th century. In the 15th century  Islam entered the region for 3 centuries till the Sikhs and Sikhism a religion around deity Ram around 1819, and the British after 1850. The British set up a protectorate in Kashmir under the British Empire ruled by a Sikh king from 1850 to 1948. What this says is that after a unsettled period till 1948 to 2020, the region is likely to return to its history of tolerance for different people from South Asia, with one huge difference, the rapid modernization of the region in the 21st century replacing the feudal poverty and backwardness of a overtaxed and underdeveloped farmers communities. This is a trend back to Kashmir's true history over 15 centuries since 100BC which is irreversible. ...

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This report in the WSJ makes the America centric thinking mistake of forgetting where China started from in assessing progress and China's new priorities. In 1960 the World Bank shows China per capita at $90 which does not change much till 1990 when it was $300, the Deng opening to western technology and capital pushed it up to $3000 the year 2000 (US $36,000) and $4500 in 2010 (US $50,000) when the global financial crisis hit. Since 2010 the Chinese economy was burdened by high local government debt and struggled to get to $10,000 in 2020 under Xi Jinping's first two terms as president. Yet it paid a huge price for this -the chance of Bo Xilai (2014) upsetting the twin banners of Science and Modernization of the May 4th 1919 movement that set the course of China for 100 years uninterrupted through the Nationalists, the Japanese occupation, the Maoist CCP, the Deng CCP opening and Jinping CCP pullback. The huge inequality was seen as an opportunity for Bo Xi Lai or some other leader to capitalize on moving China in an unknown direction that posed risks for the future of China. Even then the first preference of Xi would be to carry on with what had worked after Deng. Yet it was clear that working class votes were shifting the dynamics of elections after the Trump election and closing the doors to open access to western capital, technology, and investment. With Trump in erratic and uncertain ways, with Biden after the elections of 2020 consistent and with single minded determination to limit flows. Not just Xi, any other Chinese leader would have had to have the internal discussions about the need to shift back to a model China was familiar with and one that worked before- that of state intervention in the economy, that of reducing the inequalities that posed risks for the CCP's survival as forging a path for stability to carry out the twin banners of the May 4, 1919 Movement - Science and Modernization as China's salvation. Unlike the hysteria about China posing a challenge to the US these internal debates of Xi and the party may have concluded that the US with about half the population of China's as it grows with immigration in the future and multiple times the per capita GDP was a country that no other country was going to come close to. In this sense the supply chains are deceptive as these are likely to be completely redone under the Biden administration to bring most important manufacturing back to China. It is in this context that Xi had limited room to manoeuvre and decided to focus on stability for the long term to fulfill China's dream of the May 4, 1919 Movement of the last 100 years for Science and Modernization casting aside the risks associated for instability of the inequality that comes with more of the western type of growth, and with the climate change risks also associated with it. Lower growth gives China a chance to correct some of the flaws of the hyper growth that was partly of its own making and partly thrust upon it by investors from the outside, so that the new climate would best serve the goals of the May 4, 1919 Movement of keeping high the banners of Science and Modernization. This kind of rethinking is also going on in the US in the same manner about inequalities and hardships for workers and families, with some of the anger directed at China as internal political sentiment- hence the trillions of dollars moved by the Biden administration to address the flaws of growth under free markets and intervene in the economy where needed as in climate change to give firm sense of direction. In a sense the direction taken in different contexts the American and the Chinese are the same - address the problems of workers and families, of the people, as Lincoln had pointed out and striven so hard for, so that Labor is the more important than Capital, and workers and families vital to the nation.   ...

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Focus of questions in the U.S. Senate in July 2014 on why GM General Counsel Mike Milliken still runs GM's legal operations following the GM recall and the issues raised about the legal handling of customer complaints.

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Gen. Dan Caine chairman Joint Chiefs video on Operation Midnight Hammer bombing of Iranian nuclear site at Fordow. Dan Caine traced the project for Fordow to 2009 when a small team was formed in the US Threat Reduction Agency inside the US War Department as the Fordow mountain site was being prepared- right from the outset of the beginnings of the Iranian efforts to bury weapons development deep inside a mountain. 15 years of work by the team leaders led to the US monitoring every aspect of work at Fordow for the day a US president decided it was time to remove that threat. DAn Caine showed in a video how the bombs actually work, not exploding like a conventional bomb but penetrating 2 shafts at the Fordow site and going down these shafts for 1000 feet before reaching the location where the nuclear centrifuges are located and the pressure inside doing most of the real damage during explosion at that point over thousand feet inside the mountain. The first 2 bombs removed the concrete caps put on the 2 shafts, subsequent 6 bombs each going through the shafts. This is the reason why the Guided Bomb Unit 57 which was made for this specific task mission at Fordow was effective. The CIA Director has stated he had a body of credible intelligence that the mission was effective and Iran nuclear program is severely damaged. ...

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With a unanimous vote of the company's board on Nov. 28, 2011, American Airlines filed for bankruptcy. Gerard Arpey, CEO since 2003, is known to have resisted the move. Arpey decided to retire and will be replaced as CEO and chairman by Thomas Horton, the president of American Airlines. Analysts and management say the move is a proactive effort to take action before AMR's financial posiiton deteriorates further. AMR has about $4.1 billion in cash and short term investments. One airline analyst described it as an offensive bankruptcy to reduce labor costs and leasing costs in a proactive manner. American Airlines management has said in the past that its costs are $800 million higher than other airlines, because its pilots fly shorter hours and have more liberal work rules. Cost per available seat mile, an industry metric including labor and operating costs, is about 10% higher for American compared to Delta Airlines. American is also hit by higher fuel costs especially because about a third of its fleet uses older McDonnell Douglas MD-80's, and its regional carrier American Eagle flies 50 seat jets that are less efficient. American has total losses of $11.4 billion for the period 2001-2010. Additional loss was incurred for $982 million in the three quarters of 2011. Efforts to increase fuel effiicency of its fleet which is on average 15 years old, are underway. A $38 billion order for 460 new single aisle planes from Airbus and Boeing, with $13 billion in financing from the aircraft companies, was placed in July 2011. AMR says it will keep the order as planned. The end result is likely to be a smaller airline with fewer employees, fewer planes, fewer routes, and cuts at AMR's smaller hubs in Los Angeles and Chicago, says one aviation specialist....

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Spain's Finance Minister Luis de Guindos talks with reporters House and Perez from the Journal in March 2012. He says the situation Spain faces is very serious and the risks of declining growth are high. He points out that either way Spain loses, if the spending cuts and higher taxes lead to further decline in growth, markets are likely to penalize Spain with higher interest rates on its debt; and if Spain is seen as not doing enough to reduce its deficit, markets will penalize Spain. The yield on Spain's 10 year bond increased to 5.3% on April 2, 2012. The 2012 budget presented by Luis de Guindos calls for 27 billion euros ($36 billion) in cuts to reduce the deficit to 5.3% from 8.5% in 2011. Spain's situation is precarious because the cuts come when unemployment is at 20%, and youth unemployment exceeds 50%. A general strike in March 2012 over labor reforms brought protests drawing over 800,000 people. The government's forecast is for the Spanish economy to contract 1.7% in 2012. Luis de Guindos says half of the 2012 budget provisions have been implemented, with 15 billion euros of cuts implemented in December 2011, and new taxes presented in the 2012 budget implemented immediately. To help local governments with poor finances and owing suppliers 30 billion euros, the Spanish government has set up credit lines as a stimulus move. The net impact of the budget actions, stimulus move, and declining economic growth will be to increase Spain's debt to GDP ratio from 68.5% in 2011 to 78.5% in 2012, according to Luis de Guindos. Spain's plan is for gross issuance of government bonds of $86 billion in 2012....

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Ian Talley provides this excellent account of how this drop in oil prices is likely to add to economic growth in major world economies, removing any ambiguity about the positive effect on the global economy. West Texas Intermediate crude dropped to about $65 from $105 between June and December 2014. The IMF estimates growth in 2015 will increase from 3.1% to 3.5% largely because of the lowering in energy costs. JP Morgan Chase economists see an addition of 0.7% points in global growth in the first half of 2015. ECB president Draghi sees the lower oil prices as an unambiguous positive. Estimates from Rhodium Group show major oil importing countries seeing import bills cut by $500 billion if prices remain low for 6-8 months, with $90 billion going into the U.S. economy. IMF estimate is that only 20% of the drop in oil prices is from lower demand, about 80% from higher fuel efficiency, increased supply using new technologies, decisions by OPEC to lower oil price, increases in supply. Based on estimates by the Rhodium Group, IEA and the IMF, the extra money flowing into the economies of the U.S., Asia and Western Europe from reduced oil import bills, as measured in percentage of GDP is: the U.S. 0.5%, Germany 0.8%, Japan 1.2%, China 0.8%, India 1.8%, South Korea 2.4%. Italy and France and other oil importing countries benefit. The impact comes at a time when Japan, China, India and eurozone economies badly needed a boost after significant slowdown in growth in 2014. It could not have come at a better time and because it is technologically driven as in the case of highly fuel efficient automobiles and new oil exploration technologies, a self sustaining process. The corresponding impact for oil exporters is: Russia -4.7%, Nigeria -5.4%, Venezuela -10.2%....

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There may be psychological hurdles in China's growth with the effects on mental health from lockdowns in major cities, the revolt in the property sector with home buyers losing confidence in developers, the loss of confidence of foreign investors from US and EU. The dependence on the property sector to carry so large a burden of growth for the last 2 decades in China may now look like an error. The dependence on foreign investment may also be an error as the loss of confidence could mean some withdrawal and a lack of sustained investment.  It could even be said that restraints on both sectors property and foreign investors could have created alternative paths to growth, and reduced the shift of factories from the US and Europe to China that have now caused trade friction and and a reverse shift of investment back to home countries of US and EU. Trade friction has it appears backfired in a way that extends to the overall relationship which could have been prevented by preventing the hyper growth that happened. Greg Ip of the WSJ has argued that compared to Japan's growth in the sixties and seventies from a country of 100 million the hyper growth for a country of 1 billion for 2 decades created a massive impact on communities in US and EU that were dependent on factories that were lost to China. This has alienated large sectors of the public in the US and EU which could have been prevented by restraints on hyper growth in China. Ip says the growth was too large and too fast for the US to cope. It may have permanently damaged the relations between the two countries showing that trade and globalization had unintended effects when left to business and governments staying away from keeping an eye on how it was happening. ...