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Interesting when 53 economists were surveyed by the WSJ 51% attributed the rising fuel prices to demand from China and India, only 15% attribute it to supply constraints, and 15% attribute it to foreign exchange issues and 11% attribte it to speculation. That is that 3 times as many economists think demand from China and India is the culprit compared to supply constraints, and twice as many economists think foreign exchange speculation and central bank issues are the cause than supply constraints. Why? Once you remove this outsize demand from China and moderate the growth there then the supply constraint does not become so critical. In previous years declining prices made exploration less attractive or the fact that price was not stable going up and then coming down making it difficult to invest based on a stable return. Now the basic component of additional energy for countries like India and China's people increasing demands could be accomodated within existing and new supplies coming onstream, without the red hot demand component of growth rates at above 10% and close to 10% in India and China exacerbating prices upto some current estimates of $200 per barrel. In effect the price spikes would reverse the demand growth, and the essential needs of more people needing everything from electricity and fuel and gasoline to improve living standards in China and India at a moderate pace would prevent oil prices from falling to levels that make aggressive search for new oil finds and increased production from more difficult locations unattractive. This would correct the previous imbalance where exploration at low prices near $30 or $40 a barrel and uncertain price levels made for little new exploration while consumers were on a consumption binge in the use of gasoline which created this present situation. And in future oil at sustainable price levels would make it easier to meet the needs of poorer people in countries like China and India as more aggressive growth resumes at some future date after this expected worldwide slowdown. So correcting the previous and current imbalances helps to create a better situation in the future to better meet the hopes and expectations of millions of people in the developing countries for better nutrition, better electricity supplies and other needs of modern living....

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A great transformation is taking place for 172 million people -after the grueling experience of pandemic followed by effects of Ukraine war, and climate change- in building external resilience. The quick IMF action in Bangladesh in contrast to Sri Lanka. After taking in the shock of pandemic and the war in Ukraine Bangladesh faced large drops in remittances and in export revenues. Added to that problems in foreign exchange reserve management and exchange rate management. By getting immediate access of aid from IMF $4.7 billion and additional assistance from India Bangladesh is now in a position where in less than a year it has rebounded with current account surplus reaching $2 billion in the first half of the 2023-2024 fiscal year, as reported by Xinhua. Increasing productivity, education of labor force, increasing female participation in the workforce, social investment in economy, will give Bangladesh a chance to reach from LDC to lower middle income status by 2031.   ...

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Friedman in the NYT says China overreached especially since 2012 on trade, technology transfers, and in relations with American allies Australia, India, Japan, and America underperformed for its people by not investing in infrastructure, in workers incomes and in health and public services, education. Underinvestment in the very structure and backbone of American society while billions were wasted in foreign wars and in misallocation of investments by Silicon Valley and other investors. The coronavirus failure to get adequate warning through WHO and China's cooperation for American teams to be admitted immediately after January 10 request by the U.S. for Wuhan was a turning point.  

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India amass a 175 run lead with three wickets in hand against England in the First Test with Rahul's 86 and Jadeja's unbeaten 81 runs.

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It is a sign of hope in Europe that the period known as the "Troubles" is over. Emma Little-Pengelly of the Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland has dropped the boycott of the Assembly. She is assuming the post of second minister.  Little Pengelly says that we are shaped by the past but we are not defined by it. The party with most seats in the Assembly gained by looking out for people of both communities for housing and other basic needs is Sinn Fein's Michelle O'Neill. This is a new form of what PM Modi has called "Nari Shakti" or women's outlook and strength in Britain bringing peace and development to the island of Ireland. The Indian parliament was recently opened by a woman president Ms. Murmu and the Budget presented the next day by Ms. Sitharaman. Michelle O'Neill says we are not asking to move on, we are asking only to move forward. Such are the changes happening on opposite ends of the former British Empire as Modi moves forward with "sab ka vikas sab ke sath," development for all by all, and in Ireland with release of $4 billion by the Sunak UK government northern Ireland can move forward with meeting people's needs. Both Catholic and Protestant communities are asked to work with each other under the Good Friday Agreement and power is shared for helping people of both communities get better housing, education and other needs for themselves and their children. ...

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Issues about getting the American narrative right in America's museums. The American continent was settled in the 1500's by the Spanish, and in the 1600's and 1700's by the French and the British with the founding fathers coming from the generation of British settlers families in the 1700's. Much of this early period is covered by the classic history of this period by Francis Parkman. This history much of it unknown to most Americans in 2025 starts with Count Frontenac in 1620 and ends with the contest between Montcalm and Wolfe of the French and English Empires, long before the founding fathers of the United States, which contest Parkman says could have gone either way but for some flaw in the French. From this emerged two nations Canada keeping it's French heritage in Quebec and the United States. South Carolina and Georgia formed only a small fragment of this vast continent and its history, starting with the Indian tribes that had first settled this continent going back to 1000. ...

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This astounding story in WSJ by Jiyoung Sohn in Seoul and Yang Jie from Tokyo, shows how South Korea stopped the illegal transfer to China of entire  computer chip factory setup information of Samsung by a South Korean engineer in Singapore. This shows president Biden has accomplished what no other president has been able to do in the last 40 years. Biden brought Japan and South Korea together reminding them that their differences over wartime occupation can be overcome, leading to the US, Japan and South Korea forming  close cooperation in 2023. After all it was the US that helped setup the democratic framework in the two Asian neighbors after 1945. This story shows how the problem of South Korean and Japanese technologies illegally transferred is being tackled by both countries in 2023. This is part of overall cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region that includes India and Australia, for an open Indo-Pacific region based on the rule of law. ...

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As president Jinping begins a second five year term his focus is on the small communities like Chashan, only a 6 hour drive from Beijing, that were neglected in the rush to industrialization. He has vowed to get rid of poverty in China by 2020. About 43 million people live in rural communities that have mostly older people and live on 95 cents a day. There is another challenge say experts which is the much larger popuation that lives in rural and urban areas- including urban migrants without property and residence rights- who live on less than $5.50 per day, $165 a month, according to the World Bank. This is about 1070 yuan per month, or in Indian rupees for a comparison with India- which was at a similar stage of development in 1990- of Rs 10,000 per month. About 40% of China's population or 560 million people are in this group. With a rapidly aging society as a result of the earlier one child policy, China faces the risk of not advancing from the level of a middle income country, in the way that South Korea and Japan have moved to levels similar to Western Europe and the U.S. As China's growth level slows and with an aging society this remains a major challenge. As this report shows there is great pressure on local officials to eliminate the poverty level of people living below $30 or about 200 yuan a month, as targets are set at local levels and corruption weakens the effort. There is concern at the lack of an effort to improve the living conditions of the 200 million rural migrants living in cities, who under China's "hukou" system are not considered residents and are not getting education and health benefits. ...

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Farmers protests asking for minimum support price to be extended to other products beyond rice and wheat. About 260 million people are employed in agriculture in India with many farmers on small plots, and large farms depleting water supplies. Efforts to introduce market pricing that would increase farm incomes and to shift more agricultural labor to the industrial sectors that build modern infrastructure and to factories are designed to improve standards of living. The pandemic and the years of slow growth before 2014 and lack of infrastructure building in earlier decades means the kind of shift of agricultural workers to factories that happened in China will be the task of the next ten years. The next budget for 2024-2025 shown in adjoining powerpoint shows the increase of capital expenditures of 11.1% in the coming year for infrastructure that is meant to catch up to the advanced industrial economies of the world with sustained investment at scale over the next decade. ...

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Ignorance about the risks and benefits of good healthcare was once seen as a problem in less developed countries such as in South Asian region. The coronavirus is changing this so quickly that it leaves one incredulous. This report in WSJ shows how people in the U.S. are questioning the risks of coronavirus, skeptical about prevention measures, and questioning the value of a vaccine. From El Paso, Texas to Boise, Idaho in smaller towns and cities across the U.S. there are higher daily cases because of this attitude. The U.S. had daily cases of new infections of 195,000 on december 2 during the second wave. Compare this with 31,000 in India on December 1 for 4 times the population and one can see that nothing can be treated as given or a state of affairs that will exist in the future- the capacity for change is upto oneself. Even this reversal for the U.S. can be changed starting with a clean slate and a clean heart after lessons are learned.

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WSJ talk of "reverse Nixon" shift of Russia from China Feb 2025- reminscent of how China moving away from Russia in Mao's last years by 1971- with DJT overtures to Russia. This report does not say that Lt. Keith Kellogg has said clearly and many times the main reason- it is a senseless war that is costing an entire generation of young men from Russia and Ukraine with loss of about 1 million young people in war zones including civilians. All coming after a pandemic has taken away millions of people of an older generation from China, India, US and Russia. PM Modi has also described it in this way.

Europe sees this but has become so entrenched in a view that there will be a winner in this war when there are no winners. America as a beacon of hope in the world takes a position that is in the interests of India, China, EU, Russia and the US.

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The dangers of crypto currency have not gone away says Eswar Prasad of Cornell University. Crypto currency companies have simply joined the bandwagon for acceptance using the two political parties into the 2024 elections, he says. He calls this a cynical bid by political parties for Silicon Valley cash and young voters. If anything he says the risks are greater today. Sam Bankman and FTX scandal are just the tip of the iceberg of these risks.  Prasad says not to be fooled. China, India and Japanese governments have kept crypto at a distance because of the dangers inherent in a currency that cannot have the backing of the central bank. Prasad says that crypto itself still has dangers of speculation, financial engineering and outright fraud. These dangers can then spillover into traditional banking and financial markets. The information technology that crypto has used is already being used in traditional banking so that this is no longer something that is characteristic of crypto just something that it has been using. This is a scant regulated market and crypto companies like tech companies in social media that threatens education and democracy through misinformation want to keep it that way.   ...

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Boris Johnson looks back to September of 2020 when he was at the Edward Jenner Institute in Oxford and scientists showed him the first slides of antibodies from the developing Oxford vaccine, and his realization that this was a cause for optimism, for Britain and the world.  Today its manufacture in India, Britain and other parts of the world show the meaning of Global Britain, says Johnson. By engaging with the world, both the world benefits and Britain gains. A larger view is that of protecting the values that originated in Britain and are part of the order in other parts of the world, including the rule of law, representative democracy, habeas corpus, freedom of speech. The new review of Britain in the world today is about how Global Britain engages with the world, with like minded nations, with democracies in Asia and Europe, America, to build a better future for all, and to advance those ideas and beliefs against those who oppose them, says Johnson. ...

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South Korean public opinion shows 80% of the public opposed to the release of slightly radioactive Fukushima water into the sea by Japan. Japanese public opinion is accepting this as unavoidable. This is weakening the position of South Korean president Yoon in coming elections. Yoon is a prosecutor who joined politics only a few years back and has seen his popularity drop by 7 percentage points to 35%. Yoon is known for his effort to bring South Korea and Japan closer together with the US in dealing with North Korea and China. Biden met with Kishida and Yoon at the White House only recently, and Yoon made a state visit to the US before India's Modi. Because Yoon is an outsider to politics he has been able to get South Koreans to accept the idea of settling past disputes with Japan tracing back to the colonial era and World War II, yet the Fukushima water release is opposed by the vast majority of South Koreans.

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To really understand American history from its founding with the Mayflower voyage read the two volumes of Francis Parkman of the period between 1600-1756 that is rarely read and understood about how the American Indians and the French, the British, lived and built new settlements on the American continent. It is told in a very readable and authentic way by the greatest history and story book teller of this period. Library of America published Francis Parkman's France and England in North America. The Washington Post said that a thousand years from now, if their are still Americans here, Parkman will be their Homer. Too much of the American story told by only one person and PBS documentaries. One can learn about it simply by reading about it through different books, asking one's own questions,  and coming up with one's own understanding of American history which would be more authentic. This would include excellent biographies written by authors such as David McCullough whose range and vision combined with other authors including Barbara Tuchman for the 19th century, and many British authors such as Roger Knight covering the Napoleonic period offer a better picture of European and American history intermingled, a better perspective than the monopoly business venture that history becomes with these PBS documentaries by one person.           ...

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An efficient well functioning civil service and public secor is vital for India's development. The Modi administration is taking action to correct serious problems in this area, with public servants in the bureaucracy often absent, or operating inefficiently, incompetently or in a corrupt manner. This has seriously hadicapped India's development since 1947.

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As the Indian economy experiences a slowdown in 2019-20 a revealing statistic that lack of loans in the banking system is playing a critical role comes from the central bank, the RBI. Compared to the 6 month period April to September 2018 when 800,000 crore rupees loans were made to borrowers in the first 6 months of 2019 the loan volume dropped to 90,000 crore rupees.

Bad loans in the banking system and mismanagement in the banking system have caused the drop in loans, leading to government efforts to inject money into banks and consolidate banks by merging failing banks into larger better run banks. Additional causes of a slowdown are the drop in consumption, sales decline in the auto and other industries. A cut in corporate tax and the 2020 budget with investments in infrastructure, relaxing fiscal limits to invest more.  are designed to stimulate growth.

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Australian prime minister Scott Morrison says "global health trumps everything else," that " we need to have the information, and we need to have the transparency." Australia is seeking support from other countries in an effort to launch an investigation into missteps early in the crisis that have led to the epidemic spreading to millions of people around the world. China has rejected such an investigation. It has threatened retaliation with a consumer boycott of Australian beef and wine, and tariffs on barley. Australia tightened its laws on foreign interference and counterespionage in 2018. U.S. and European calls for an investigation into coronavirus origins is making Australia reconsider its trading relationship dependence on China. India has stepped up its vigilance of Chinese investment so that state backed entities do not acquire local companies affected by the pandemic. Japan has set aside $2.2 billion of its pandemic support package to help Japanese companies shift their supply chains out of China. ...

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It took 25 years for the US to recover from the 1929 stock market disaster and the Great Depression. It took Japan 25 years to recover from the 1989 stock market collapse and the lost decades since. It is finally emerging from that period with a healthier economy and business structures. China faces a situation today of a struggling economy after years of excessively rapid growth that hurt the environment and climate and health. And the uncertainty that faced Japan after 1989 also faces China in 2024- growth is never linear over very long periods and has pull backs that could stretch for decades much too familiar for Japan. For India there are lessons to be learned from Japan's and China's experience. In environment not to risk polluting the environment as China experienced with breakneck unchecked growth, to be mindful of bringing up all sectors and parts of the population, and to manage growth so that the basic instability that resulted from excessive shift to China of manufacturing and deindustrialization in US that led to worsening trade and people to people relations between US and China is not repeated. ...

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The Financial Times interview with the PM of India as posted on the PM's site. It makes no mention of the efforts for Clean India Swacch Bharat, cooking gas for tens of millions of women, tap water for every household in India, access to the internet and 4G and transition to 5G at data rates that bring access to all, and the modernization of Indian Rail with new technology making transport fast and with comfort. It shows gaps in understanding that are mind boggling. The PM talks in language that the financial community understands- startups, economic achievements, and leaves out the material above that he talks to in every speech in parliament about the transformative effects in the life of India's 1.4 billion people that the financial community does not see as its first concern.  The financial community today is shortsighted and lacks a sense of history and transformations that have already happened. Japan's from the Meiji period and its phases of modernization by 1900, 1900 to 1930's, and 1950 to 1960's. China's after 1990 and between 2000-2019. And India's now underway with Indonesia following India is the largest such change in history for upwards of 1.7 billion people. It is the third phase of Asia's transformation and India is in the early phase of a massive transformation to give standards of living similar or better than the other advanced economies. It is hard for anyone to imagine what this means for upwards of a billion people in Asia. The first phase was to address the centuries old neglect of the vast base of the population at the bottom that was neglected and without hope and at the same time invigorating the drivers of industrialization in the middle class. The financial community today also lacks an understanding of the importance of not letting the infrastructure of the US and European economies deteriorate. This plays the same role as the infrastructure of India that is being built from scratch around the major cities and the second tier group of cities under a Master Plan or Gati Shakti. The financial communtiy has allowed the infrastructure of the US and EU to deteriorate when it plays a role similar to what it does in India and Indonesia. There is not even a mention of infrastructure in this interview. Gati Shakti  India's Infrastructure Plan is a main driver of India's transformation, yet it barely got mentioned in this interview of the Financial Times. At a time when president Biden with bipartisan support in Congress built from years of his hard work in the Senate has launched the biggest infrastructure building effort since the 1960's with investment in trillions of dollars in the US, it is the same effort in India that is beginning to accelerate, that is the biggest reason for hope for the people of the American continent and for the people of Asia.   ...