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Anderson Clayton 25 years, grew up in a rural part of North Carolina. She won the state leadership election and has clear ideas about what went wrong with the Democratic party. She gets asked not to keep saying "we've left Democrats behind." And responds by saying: "We have, we've left people behind." During the Obama administration the party became more of a metropolitan party and lost sight of rural voters. It also neglected towns that were dependent on factories that moved overseas. Her plan is to reach out to rural voters in North Carolina, and to the hundreds of thousands of students there. Clayton feels that rural and blue collar voters have been forgotten by the Democratic party and she wants to get this right. She won her race against a 73 year old candidate who had the support of the Democratic party establishment. Clayton who studied at Appalachian State University, is an organizer, and wants to be active throughout the year meeting and organizing rural voters and students. ...

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Although the Russian economy has weathered the Ukraine war with 3.6% growth estimated by Rossstat and 3% by IMF in 2023, this comes with the economy dependent on heavy military spending. Military spending on defense budget increases to $119 billion in 2024, and increase of an astounding 90% from 2021. It has boosted wages in construction and aided certain industrial regions near Moscow and St Petersburg, and boosted manufacturing with more products made at home. The oil and gas revenues decreased by 23% in 2023 over 2022. After 2 years of war and particularly after contraction in 2022 the Russian economy is recovering and has surprised most forecasters. The problem with military industrial complex growth is that it leads to uneven growth with negect of some areas. In Russia the reduced access to western advanced technology is compensated by increase in technological capacity of countries such as China. A bigger problem is the loss of human resources during the war in Ukraine, and Russians who left the country seeking better lives in other countries.  ...

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US president Biden renews the US commitment to Asia on the second day of Quad meetings in Tokyo. Lessons from Ukraine were uppermost in the thinking of the Quad leaders from the US, Japan, India and Australia as a new framework is envisioned for Asia. That framework is envisioned through an economic framework the IPEF including South East Asia, the Quad as a core nation setup similar to the G-7, and direct ties such as US-India, US-Japan. Latin America is part of the US direct ties to Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Chile. Europe is included through the Europe Trade and Technology Council and direct US ties with the European Union, Germany, France and Italy. President Biden is giving the kind of leadership of the Free World that Harry Truman gave following the Berlin Soviet Blockade and the US Airlift of 1948-1949 and the Korean War between 1950-1953 with Soviet and Chinese forces supporting the attack of North Korea against South Kporea similar to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  ...

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If you love soccer or football you should see this interview by Frank Lampard of 2024 Ballon d'Or winner, Spanish player Rodri Fernandez. Rodri plays for Manchester City. The interesting thing about this Premier League You Tube video of Oct 29, 2024 is that British player Frank Lampard, and now coach, is he shows Rodri moments in each game on an iPad and asks him how he does it- the moves he makes as a midfielder on the field, including the picture in his head about the field in those moments.

Lampard does an excellent job showing Rodri at his best, the skills, the instinct, the preparation and the hard work, the discipline, and the extraordinary humility of Spanish footballers.

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By 6-3 vote Supreme Court of US says the Transgender medical treatment Tennessee ban is constitutional. The Cass Commission in the UK review for the NHS UK looked into transgender medical treatments and has emphasized the risks to children and adults. It points to the "shaky foundations" for transgender medical treatments and suggests a more holistic approach. Much of the US had gone in a different an untested direction under previous administrations ignoring the important points in the UK NHS Cass Commission's findings in its Report in April 2024. It also played an important part in the defeat of politicians in 2024 with a lax attitude to important health and safety concerns of American parents.

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Efforts by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to mediate differences between Qatar, which supports the Muslim Brotherhood, and Egypt's military government under Sissi, as the security threats in the region intensify. At the Gulf Cooperation Council meetings an effort to reduce differences between the Saudis and U.A.E. with Qatar, as the Middle East fragments bringing conflict to Libya and Iraq, in addition to Syria. Islamic State now threatens Saudi Arabia. The U.S. operates its main command center from Doha, Qatar. Iran supports the U.S. and Iraq under the Abadi government as it works to reduces sectarian Sunni-Shiite tensions and push back Islamic State. The Saudis and Iran now find themselves on the same side and see the need to reduce Shiite-Sunni tensions to restore peace to the region. This is the new background to the efforts to heal regional tensions in 2014-2015, as a reluctant Obama administration takes up American responsibility to restore peace to the region and avoid fragmentation....

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Greg Ip points out that the stronger dollar in 2018 is creating serious problems for Argentina, and will have an effect on Turkey, Indonesia and other developing countries. Dollarization hurts because it increases debt as debt servicing becomes costlier with dollar denominated debt and imports denominated in dollars become costlier. The dollar has increased in importance in the global economy. This is why the economic growth has suffered in developing countries in 2018. It is also why president Trump believes he can cut off Iran from the U.S. banking system to increase chance of new negotiations to fix flaws in the Iran nuclear deal, says Ip.   Argentina has seen internal problems compounded by the rising dollar causing the peso to drop by 17% so far in 2018. 88% of Argentina's imports are denominated in dollars. A rising dollar means it costs more in pesos for imports. Argentina's different levels of government have $98 billion in dollar denominated debt, and private sector has an additional $68 billion, the total being a third of its GDP. A decline in the peso means this is harder to pay off. About 40% of world trade, according to Harvard economist Gita Gopinath, is invoiced in U.S. dollars, four times U.S. share of world trade, and developing countries together owe $2 trillion in dollar denominated debt according to BIS. This makes it harder for developing countries such as Indonesia, Turkey, India, Argentina, Brazil, as they now face rising oil prices in combination with a rising dollar. In Argentina a poor crop for soyabeans and other agricultural exports in 2018 creates additional woes.   ...

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Bernanke's defense of the action of the Fed's monetary policy making committee, on November 3, 2010, (with a vote of 10-1) to buy an additional $600 billion of Treasury securities over the next 8 months. His defense focusses on the prospects of deflation- how low inflation can morph into deflation (falling prices and wages), that can create a long period of economic stagnation. In addition, with low and falling inflation, Bernanke sees spare capacity in the US that can be utilized to reduce the number of jobless people. He points to the rise in stock prices and fall in long term interest rates in anticipation of the Fed's action, as evidence that this Fed move would improve financial conditions. Lower mortgage rates would make housing more affordable, higher stock prices would increase consumer wealth, confidence and spending. Spending would lead to higher incomes and profits for economic expansion, from this viewpoint. The situation in November 2010, was a deepening housing slump anticipated for 2011, gridlock after the 2010 midterm elections and no agreement on additional stimulus for 2011, the need to rebalance the global economy lacking cooperation from China (with China increasing imports and reducing exports and the US increasing exports and reducing imports). Fed's Bernanke does not mention these factors, and only hints at the gridlock towards the end of the statement. This Fed action will push the dollar lower, just as efforts to improve exports and the trade balance are underway. The Fed's committee sees the risks of commodities inflation as an acceptable risk in the current situation, and the use of a cautious approach assessing the purchase program regularly as sufficient measure of safety. As to difficulties of the unwinding of these policies, the Fed sees present danger outweighing the risks of no action. For emerging markets such as Turkey, India, Australia and other countries seeing even more inflows of capital, the risks are left to these countries to manage. The central banks of India and Australia moved to increase interest rates at the same time that the Fed made its move....

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Was president Biden right to get the Fed, the FDIC and Treasury to cover the uninsured deposits in Silicon Valley Bank. Is it a good use of taxpayer money? $25 billion was provided by the Treasury to the Fed to stabilize other medium sized banks. The answer from the administration is that it was necessary to protect working families from any effects on the overall economy of the ripple effect on medium sized banks that were left unregulated by former president Trump's 2018 roll back of regulation on banks with less than 250 billion in assets.The Office of the Budget has shown that the government recovered all except $31 billion from the much larger bailout of 2008. Paul Krugman in NYT says the assets of SVB are invested in long term US Treasury securities which have value and should cover most of the cost of insuring depositors. Moral hazard is covered by the management at SVB and Signature losing their jobs and by the losses in stock value and bonds which are left unprotected as a cautionary signal to investors. A much larger impact is hidden in the hearts and minds of Silicon Valley who will be expected to reflect on the nature of their self serving deal where they oppose regulation of tech monopolies and of regulatory action except where it serves their  own interests, and see a laissez faire system that works for them but not for workers and families across communities in states across America. A situation made worse by the loss of America's manufacturing base on which issue Silicon Valley neither reflected or acted. ...

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This WSJ editorial say the Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau's plan to keep corporate taxes at 15% to give Canada an advantage over the U.S., and efforts to moderate spending are an improvement over policies pursued under the administration of former Liberal Party premier Pierre Trudeau.

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Important year end reveiw of the oil price forecasting work of so many anlaysts and where they failed . The IEA and the US Enery Dpt forecast have year after year underestimated this pirce by over 20%. Analysts change the price forecasts within a couple of weeks based on changing information and assumptions. Of all this the Saudi Arabian forecasts have ben within 12 % of what has actually ocurred according to a study by Ronald Berger Strategy Consultants of Muich, Germany. And whats their forecast for 2008. By extrapolating from the Saudi budget and the assumptions, used such as giving a wide margin to avoid a deficit in the budget if oil prices undershot by a wide margin, one gets $75 for US benchmark crude. Forecast by experts are in the neighborhood of $80 average for the whole year 2008. Goldman recently revised theirs upwards from $85 average for 2008 to $95 within a 4 week period. How good is the Goldman forecast. No one really knows. Lehman has a forecast of $84 average for 2008 and bases it on the opacity of the market because no one knows what OPEC will do with supply and China does not provide good information on demand. So basically anlysts are adding an uncertainty premium to the price of oil. And this is especially so because as the Chief Economist at IEA says global space capacity is so thin and any event can influence price. Last year the rhetoric about Irans nuclear intentions was enough to stir up the price, as were other smaller events disrupting supplies. But the Iranian situation has since cooled down and diplomatic solutions are in the works. So what to expect in 2008 in the way of political uncertainty. Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Lebanon have all seen a cool off in the ast couple of years and the Bush administration rhetoric has become outmoded as has other rhetoric from Iran so that does'nt look like it will stir up oil prices in 2008. Still there will be some uncertainty premium about supply from OPEC and demand from China and India. And demand from the Middle Eastern oil producing countries themselves as well as the increasing demand in India and China will mean that lower demand in the US because of a recession will still mean an increase in global demand over 2007 of 1.5 million barrrels a day over 2007's 85 million barrels a day. What will change the dynamics of this situation is the government mandated fuel economy for all vehicles on the road with Europe more aggressive in this area under the pressures of global warming. If this impacts India, China and Russia as these fuel saving technologies are transferrred there overall consumption should see an impact. Europe's targets are only 4 years away for 2012. And the environment may cause China to bring in newer technologies that both contribute to improving environment and conserving energy. Because China's environmental record is almost catastrophic one could see some of this happen much sooner than expected after the Olympics in 2008. All that might change the way the world looks at oil and its use, and all energy sources and their use. ...

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Jerome Boateng was 2016 Footballer of the Year in Germany. Here he talks about his own experience playing for teams after growing up in Berlin. He was born  in Berlin in 1988 of a Ghanian father and German mother, and practiced on Berlin streets before joining Hertha Berlin, Hamburg and then Bayern Munich. He has been an important part of the German team. 

Here he says education is important, most important, no child is born a racist. Boateng says " What we really need is to get stuck in and do something, be that working with children and doing integration projects. Everybody can help." The best thing is to be active in the community and helping in every way to educate children.

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So far Covax Africa is proving to be a failure. Consider the numbers 1 billion people only 31 million vaccines given. Another wave of the virus is underway with 130% rise in cases in Uganda, increase taking place in DRC, Namibia. About 30% increase in cases for all of Africa this week. The new Delta variant that is twice as contagious as the original virus is widespread in the UK and is an unacceptable risk in Africa and in Europe and the US.


 By comparison India has 1.2 billion people and 230 million people vaccinated with at least one dose.

US has 330 million people and has adminstered 300 million doses. UK and Brazil have each adminstered over 70 million doses.

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NYT reporters Kantor, Abrams and Haberman describe the life of Ivanka Trump, and ways in which she has become the closest person to Trump. She has made an effort to study the issues relating to women and plans to act as a moderating influence on the Trump administration. This report cites aides who say the two have a special relationship and discuss thoughts from morning until late into the night. Ivanka Trump says she is perceived differently since the election campaign even though she is the same person. Even making a small influence on the president would be a great deal, says Ivanka Trump. At Trump's urging and the invitation from Merkel, she participated in a women's summit at the G-20 with Merkel and other leaders in Germany.

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Take a look at the new Notre Dame Cathedral after its restoration. One look from The Times at Notre Dame and the other from Le Monde in an adjoining article.

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Indian foreign minister Jaishankar describes the highly eccentric situation of lack of US India close economic and defense cooperation for over 50 years, when the natural flow of cooperation one would expect between the land of Washington and Lincoln and the land of Vivekananda and Gandhi was interrupted. The current form of cooperation has existed for about 14 years and accelerated after prime minister Modi was elected in 2016. This was a turning point in the US India relationship and in India US economic partnership. After president Trump was elected Mr. Modi and Mr. Trump held a huge public gathering in stadiums at Houston and Ahmedabad, in a way that was never seen before between an Asian country and America. What changed? For one thing India had a great weight lifted from its shoulders with the removal of the erratic Nehru policies of post independence India of forming a non aligned bloc with countries like Egypt and Yugoslavia. These were policies that had no connection to India and its history as the civilization where the East has its roots in Vedanta and Buddhism. It also resulted in alienating the Dwight Eisenhower administration and administrations that followed after John F. Kennedy, as the Cold War intensified and most of Eastern Europe came under Soviet domination. India never gauged the effect this had on America after the Berlin crisis in 1948, the Hungarian revolution of 1956 and similar uprisings in East Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Britain was no help even with the British Commonwealth, as the British perpetuated the idea that India was too divided to make up one country, having failed to grasp India's ancient civilization and  culture, and having built the Empire in India by using the division in the country. Mohandas Gandhi described this in Hind Swaraj in 1910 and told Indians that it was they who had invited the British into India, with rulers using military garrisons of the British commercial East India Company for help in their internal wars. Americans still unfamiliar with India till after 2000 simply accepted British colonial ideas about India. The new administrations in the US, the Trump and Biden administration, and the Modi administration in India have shaken this up and changed perceptions all around. Biden recently during the Modi visit to Washington DC said India US relations as he sees it would be "the closest on earth." So that today we have an ancient civilization roused to its depths in its youth for modernization, that extends from India to Indonesia all the way to Japan rooted in India's ancient civilization of Vedanta and Buddhism, with a population of about 2 billion people. That faces the US on its Pacific coast, united in its determination to build a new and common future with ideas of parliamentary democracy, participation of the people, and of modernization with science and technology, contributing to the betterment of all peoples. ...

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Sri Lankan High Commissioner Milinda Moragoda, is interviewed in Indian Express in Idea Exchange, with Shubhajit Roy, moderating the questions. Moragoda explains what happened over the last three decades and how Sri Lanka got to this point. About politicians he says Sri Lanka has too many politicians, and the violence of the JVP in the south and LTTE in the north and northeast set the country back by decades. Leaders from J Jayawardene, Kumaratunga to the Rajapaksas all failed to understand the spiral downwards of the economy, says Moragoda. Debt increased and 80% of the government revenues goes to pay pensions and government employees, leaving only 20% for debt service and little for investment in the economy. He says there are 1.5 million government employees and 500,000 pensioners, for a country of 22 million people. Of the population of 22 million about one million Tamils left the country during the civil war, and another 1 million people are in West Asia. Moragoda says most of the borrowing came after 2009 as the civil war ended with $12.5 billion borrowed or 40% of the total debt. About 80% of government revenues goes to pay pensions and government employees and another 70% goes to pay interest on debt, but he does not elaborate or explain this. What one can say from the experience of other countries in debt spiral is that at some point the interest accumulates to create a vicious cycle of interest on the cumulative total which includes interest from earlier years. Argentina is a recent example. And he makes no effort to say how he sees Sri Lanka is finding a path out this situation with a $2.9 billion IMF loan on debt of $51 billion.  Of the $12.5 billion borrowed since 2009 Moragoda says "that's  40% of our debt." Yet the total debt on which Sri Lanka defaulted is shown at $51 billion. $12.5 billion is 25% of the $51 billion. He does not provide any details about the financing terms on which Sri Lanka borrowed. It is clear that the interest rates were high over 6% in many cases which can be very burdensome for poor countries dependent on commodity exports. Countries such as Greece with debt crises had very large numbers of pensioners and government employees in Europe during the eurozone crisis, but nowhere does it show that it took up 80% of the government revenues in Greece. The number of government employees range from 1 to 1.2 to 1.5 million according to different figures for Sri Lanka. Even in Greece the number of public sector workers in government were 616,000 by some estimates during the severe eurozone debt crisis years around 2015. They are now estimated at about 369,000 in 2020.  Without a clear idea of these figures and transparency it is hard for any economy to be managed in a prudent way. See the related report "Fallacies of Sri Lankan Debt Patterns," a report by the Observer Research Foundation, on this same page today which say that Sri Lanka borrowed at exorbitant interest rates for a poor country.  Moragoda has worked for administrations in different portfolios including in economic affairs. He says Sri Lanka's economy is too small to get attention and investment it needs from India, and that the Adani investment shows that this can still be made to happen. India remains Sri Lanka's key partner as it grapples with this crisis. ...

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Uber CEO Kalanick faces problems after the ride sharing app service company uses aggressive tactics in its business. Kalanick resigned after increasing pressure, with major investors on the board asking him to resign. Mike Isaac in the NYT says Uber is an example of how some aspects of Silicon Valley culture have caused a public outcry. A federal inquiry is under way into a software tool used to avoid law enforcement. Other complaints came up during the period Kalanick was CEO. The business conduct of CEO Kalanick has come under strong criticism and shows what can go wrong in the aggressive pursuit of business. For many it is an example of how not to run a company.

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A virtual meeting for 2 hours with premier Li Keqiang and president Xi for one hour by EU president Leyen leads to no assurances from China that it would not support Russia's position in the Ukraine conflict.  As part of the Merkel administration in Germany Leyen deepened economic ties with China and Russia. This combined with the fraying ties with China and Russia under the Trump administration and continued under president Biden may have led to the situation today where these ties are being reversed. The situation of assertiveness by Russia and China on territorial issues such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Ukraine, and competition with China while US and European business is heavily engaged in China may have created the situation faced today where abrupt changes are happening. This report by the WSJ says European Union is seen as a buffer in its heightened competition with the US, and China is making an effort to salvage its ties with the European Union. ...

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CDC has given no explanation for its new guidelines that say testing for coronavirus needs to be done only for those with symptoms, not for those exposed to someone within 6 feet who has symptoms. About half of all new cases are from people who are exposed to people with symptoms but have not yet developed symptoms. One of the reasons the virus spread quickly in February is CDC failure in developing of its own test on February 9 and policy that did not let private labs and labs of teaching hospitals develop their own tests and use them for another 3 crucial weeks.  CDC and Health and Human Services Department errors in February, combined with the stalling of an American team for 3 weeks by China to enter Wuhan in January,  have combined to let the coronavirus spread to the wider population. Once it spreads to a wider population the strategy of test and trace cannot be implemented the way it was first in South Korea and Taiwan, and later in Germany. ...

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Was Merkel right in setting an amendment to the German Constitution to limit the structural budget deficit to 0.35% of GDP. It is called the Schuldenbremse Amendment. It means there is no money to invest in the country's future, no money for infrastructure even when it is old and crumbling for roads, bridges rail stations and airports, no money for digitization of the economy in which Germany has fallen behind, not enough for defense, and no money to fund needs in education, healthcare, childcare. And not enough money to invest in climate change action. Absent this investment the German economy falls behind, jobs become precarious and public dissatisfaction leads to volatile political situation. Like the Republican party in the US which calls for tax cuts and no walk the talk for infrastructure investment, the CDU/CSU and FDP, have a mindset opposing investing in Germany. Investment that the Greens and SPD promised but could not deliver with the FDP in the Scholz /Habeck /Lindner coalition over 4 years. ...

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Overworking in investment banking has become a serious issue with serious effects on health. It is the focus of a WSJ exclusive report on the casualties coming out of an erratic approach to worklife and health. WSJ says it has become a norm to ignore policies set banks a decade ago after similar death and toxic work situations. Bosses it says make impossible and unreasonable demands and younger workers in deference to this are put in a dangerous situation. All this for $200,000 in entry level positions- now Dimon CEO of Chase JP Morgan asks what can we learn from this, saying there are many people at Chase "who give a damn about the human beings at work in this company." The results delivered are also not what is good for the country. Much of the capital allocation that takes place though investment banking leads to enormous waste and poor investment returns. And this is happening as needed funding for infrastructure and other projects for education health and public services remain unaddressed. ...

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Luis Gutierrez, Charirman of the subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit, has a bill in Congress that is presented as a reform effort by the lending industry, many Republicans and some consumers. It would allow payday operators in the $50 billion payday lending industry, to charge what amounts to an annual percentage rate of 391%. Rep. Maxine Walters described the bill this way, "we've got to resist any attempt to make it look as if we are cracking down, when in fact we are opening the door to more abuse." This is what Countrywide's Mozilo does in a interview with BW, that he gave at the time the housing and mortgage crisis was breaking open in 2008. And this is the way those in both political parties in Congress, lobbyists, and businessmen who profited from all the unethical things that went on in the housing lending industry, all worked together to undermine the foundations of the country's economy by putting toxic assets at the centre of the credit and banking system of the US. They did this by saying that they were helping the poorer classes get access to housing, and used the term "a piece of the American dream," which seems to be the phrase that opens all sorts of caves in the American imagination, like Ali Baba and his magic lamp and his magic phrase did in Arabian times. And so the NYT editorial writer, facing the greater evil suggests that a smaller evil, an usurious rate of 36% that is an option afforded to military families is a desirable option, when at that rate the loan numbers would double in less than 3 years. All this when the government at federal state and local levels could assume this among the many activities it already undertakes, because it does best those activities, such as some of the public transportation and other services. The government bank could require proof of desperate need, and provide loans for purposes of medical care, care of elderly, care of children, educational needs, food and shelter needs, at rates of 10-15% to make up for losses in loans not repaid, and run it as a nonprofit. Capitalism is also of the good kind and the bad kind, the 391% payday loan capitalism or the loans at pricing that made them unaffordable to low income people, or loans to low income people who did not have incomes to afford housing (where the risk was then passed on to the owners of the securities after a false sertification of A rating had been obtained by undermining the rating process) is a bad kind of capitalism, and the 36% usurious rate for military families is of the tolerably bad kind of capitalism, and the 10-15% kind of payday government sponsored loan is of the good kind of capitalism. And critical to its understanding is what experience has taught us in the last 100 years- that for this good kind of capitalism, there is a critical social role for the government to play. ...

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Failure of U.S. regulatory agencies to implement an important provision of the Dodd-Frank legislation- instructing regulators to find all references to ratings agencies in their rules, and then replace them with better standards for judging credit risk. Treasury's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, is one of the agencies trying to gut this reform, says this Wall Steet Journal editorial. The S.E.C. voted unanimously in March and April to propose rules eliminating credit agencies in their regulations on money funds and stock brokerages. As the comment periods have ended, the Journal calls for the rules to be immediately made final. Officials from FDIC and OCC are dragging their feet on this. One problem they face is their assumption that the Dodd-Frank law requires them to come up with the perfect rule for measuring credit risk. This is not what the change is intended to do. It is enough says the Journal to return the responsibility for the right metrics and the hard work of analyzing a security back to where it belongs- to people who manage these assets and institutional managers. Even if they made some mistakes it would be far less than the systemic risk posed by having all major institutions making the same mistake at the same time and the entire system following flawed ratings by the big three credit ratings agencies. This happened in the 2008 mortgage securities financial crisis. S&P has stated that it does not support the old system. And new alternatives are appearing for ratings- CreditSights, Rapid Ratings, Kroll Bond Ratings which got S.E.C.' support, and other alternatives still to come....