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Meg Whitman, H-P CEO, repeated her statements that a recovery was four or five years away. She sees little sales growth till 2015 and predicts losses. H-P's share price fell by 13% on Oct. 3, 2012. Whitman said in an interview that H-P has failed to invest in research and development. She was critical of lack of R&D investment under Mark Hurd. But says many of the problems go back to when Carly Fiorina was CEO in 2005 and made the acquisition of Compaq. The acquisition approach has worked poorly for H-P, with lack of R&D within H-P. H-P's financial position also worsened with the $10 billion paid by Leo Apotheker, Hurd's successor, for Autonomy Corp. Internal software systems disconnected costs from revenue, so that in 2011 field selling costs increased by $1 billion even as revenue decreased by $5 billion. A series of management changes made things worse through poor decisions, inconsistency and lack of focus, all of which will take years to correct.

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Nokia struggles with loss of sales and market share in the low end of the market as Asian competitors bring in better phones at low price points in emerging markets. At the same time its launch of the Lumia 900 smartphones using Microsoft's software is facing headwinds competing with established competitors such as the Apple's iPhone and the Android phones which have more apps.

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A look at the views of candidates running in the U.S. presidential election of 2016 on mass incarceration. Benie Sanders, Democratic Senator from Vermont, says the situation worsened for incarceration during the Clinton years when a policy of building prisons and increasing law enforcement was adopted. The 2.2 million persons in prison today are double that for the years before the early 1990's, said Sanders. Under president Clinton the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act was passed creating tougher penalties for drug offenders, and putting $30.2 billion for more police officers and new prisons. Hillary Clinton called for putting "an end to the era of mass incarceration." Adding in other remarks that missing African-American men means "missing husbands, missing fathers, and missing brothers."

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Yuka Hayashi describes the remarkable comeback of prime minister Shinzo Abe in Japan, his "Japan is Back," strategy and its personal overtones. He describes a visit- by Japanese known for taking that second or third chance and making it work through difficulties- to the prime ministers residence for discussion on the theme of "the second chance." The premier tells the visitors that Walt Disney would never have been heard of if he had not tried the sixth time after five failures, and not succeeded in Japan, which has a risk and failure averse business environment. Encouraging risk taking to setup new ventures and open up new frontiers and markets is part of the growth strategy for Japan. His personal struggle with ulcerative colitis during the period of his first term as prime minister, and the new drug discoveries that made it possible for him to recover, give Abe a fresh burst of energy this time. His story and Japan's story now coincide. Abe says the mission of the new LDP is to make sure that talent now flows from mature industries to the industries of the future....

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Coy cites Paul Krugman's Willie Coyote scenario for the dollar, where the famous character runs off a cliff, but starts to fall only when he starts to look down. One foreign exchange expert says there is a 40% chance of the dollar falling into a crisis point. Two forces are working in that direction. Near zero rates in the USA is making it a speculative play to borrow dollars cheaply, and then sell them to buy other currencies where stocks and bonds yield higher returns. The other is that experts feel that the US may eventually make its huge debt affordable by devaluing its currency. David Malpass does not see rising import prices and inflation as healthy for the US economy. He says the fall of the dollar in the 1980's gave the Japanese the buying power to strengthen their automakers. Coy also sees the risk of a major failure of a financial institution, as a possibility, if it made a bet that made it vulnerable to a falling dollar. At this point 88% of derivatives credit risk exposure in the USA is residing in 5 banks in the second quarter in 2009....

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Alan Meltzer would like to see the Fed reverse its quantitative easing, and lower excess reserves gradually starting now. By this he hopes to see the Fed avoid the mistake of making a big shift from excessive ease to severe contraction further down the road. He also warns agains excessive deficit spending. He says a weak economy is not the time to cut spending or raise taxes, and he is not talking of draconian immediate steps. He would like to see a multiyear program to increase fiscal probity and reduce deficits size and frequency. As it stands now he takes both parties to task for lack of fiscal discipline and honest accounting. About $1 trillion in deficits each year on average for next 10 years is in the works, and is an underestimate because the savings of $200-$300 billion in medicare spending have still to be realized, and states do not have funds for increased Medicaid spending, and payments to doctors have still to go down by 25%. Chinese government purchases of half our debt will postpone the day of reckoning says Meltzer, but far better for us to strike at the problem now, before we blow a hole in the dollar and start a downturn. See the separate report on the shrinking UK economy....

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Alexander Van Der Bellen, a pro Europe independent candidate supported by the Green Party wins Austria's presidential election with 53.3% of the vote. The anti immigrant Freedom Party candidate Norbert Hofer wins 46% of the vote. Van Der Bellen is for an open Europe and is pro Europe. The election is seen in Germany as "lifting a great burden off of our shoulders," in the words of Sigmar Gabriel. This is important for the future of Europe as France, Netherlands and Germany face major elections in 2017.

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As the coronavirus pandemic reaches the 20 month mark in October 2021 and the government reaches a target of 1 billion vaccinations given in India, prime minister Modi talks about his experience handling the vaccination drive in this interview. It covers a wide range of topics from his initial experiences in development in Gujarat, translating this experience to the national setting, the multiple yojanas or projects from Swachh Bharat (Clean India), toilets for all, bank accounts for the whole population, cooking gas for women, decisions taken for Aadhar, digitization, GST. His 35 years spent in poverty as a social worker that gave him a clear idea of the aspirations of the working poor. On the achievement of one billion vaccinations- It was the careful preparation that happened as early as March 2020 that carefully anticipated all possible problems and tackled each one of them that made it possible. "Vaccinating such a large number of people comes with its own share of complexities. Ensuring proper temperature control of complexities, cold chain infrastructure across the length and breadth of the country, timely delivery from the manufacturing plant to the remotest vaccination delivery point, supply of needles and syringes, training of vaccinators and preparing for adverse reactions, from quick registration to certificate generation to reminder for next appointment. We needed to look at the entire logistics, planning, and progress of the vaccination drive." To understand the person completely one has to go back to the origins of his experience, skills learned, and his inspiration for the effort. Modi entered the chief minister's office in the western Indian state of Gujarat facing the Arabian sea in 2001. He entered office at the time of the Bhuj earthquake in Gujarat and describes his taking the chief minister's office as accidental as he had been a social worker for 30 years. "Let alone reluctance to join electoral politics, I had nothing to do with the political domain itself. My surroundings, my inner world, my philosophy- these were very different. Right from my younger days,my bent was spiritual. The philosophy of "Jan Seva Hi Prabhu Seva" Serving the people is akin to serving the Divine, which was propounded by Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Swami Vivekananda inspired me. It became the driving force in whatever I did." In 2014 it was with the inspiration from Swami Vivekananda and taking up Vivekananda's vision for the Indian people that Modi began his campaign to lead the BJP party. It may be looking back that Vivekananda guided Modi in all his projects for a Clean India, Jal Jeevan, Indian infrastructure that benefits the last man in the queue in the country, commitment to hard work. "Global experience says government should be there for those whom nobody is there. Government's whole focus should be on helping them." To do this, to meet the needs of that last person left out in India, he could see that old notions of opposites had to be set aside. "Outdated theories such as the private sector vs the public sector, government vs. people, rich vs. poor, urban vs. rural, are still on people's minds and they try to fit everything into this." Governments since independence in 1947 followed the same political and economic thought. After Gandhi negotiated with the British government for self rule or Swaraj an experimental form was set up with provincial governments ministries with limited powers formed in the 1930's through elections. Many of these ministries had the same problems that were found after independence in 1947, as one sees in the writings in the Gandhi library. They lasted for a few years before they were dissolved by the British government. These problems were more evident under Nehru and Indira Gandhi right into the 1970's and beyond. This was followed by a period of relative stagnation. Most ministries failed to seriously address India's economic problems, urbanization issues and agricultural issues remained unaddressed, and industry building was done with a limited vision and scaled down goals. In some ways the elections created a political class interested in perpetuating itself and did not build administrations based on learning, hard work and delivering on projects with scaled up targets to match the dire needs of the country. One sees similarities with France before 1960, before De Gaulle. A mosaic of peoples all separate from each other, with agriculture the main occupation, and most agriculture done the way it was in the nineteenth century by hand and using horses and cattle- this is the picture of France shown in Nous Paysouns, We Farmers, a documentary on Le Monde French television in October 2021. It was De Gaulle who supported a shift to presidential form of government for France that helped with the transformation through modernization and infrastructure development. Tractors were introduced in 1960 to mechanize agriculture. Road, bridges, rail transport, logistics were planned in the way Gati Shakti master plan for India is now being executed. There can be no transformation without this. Unstable coalition governments in France and lack of clarity and decision making before 1960 made such development impossible. India entered such a period in the 1970's. "The politics of our country is such that till now, we have seen only one model in which governments are run to build the next government (sarkar banane ke liye chalayi jaati haye). My fundamental thinking is different. I believe we have to run the government to build the nation (desh banane ke liye sarkar chalani haye)."  Chalta haye, Chalne do. What is will not change. Families, farmers and workers in India, for a long time accepted this without questioning.  "I take decisions based on Gandhiji's talisman that sees how my decisions will benefit or harm the poorest or weakest person." "While taking decisions, I stop even if the slightest of vested interests is visible to me. The decision should be pure and authentic, and if the decision passes through all these tests, then I firmly move forward to implement such a decision."           ...

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A decade after a precipitious decline in its stock price during the global financial crisis of 2008 stemming from its GE Capital unit, GE struggles with faltering stock price and poor performance stemming from other strategy errors in its core infrastructure business.  GE Capital is being shut down. Now one of its subprime lending units is likely to be put into bankruptcy protection. WMC Mortgage had losses under its GE Capital parent  of $1 billion during the financial crisis in one year alone. It has since faced a series of legal settlements and investigations. GE Capital has turned out to be a poor investment and a huge distraction for management for a company which considered its core business as infrastructure related.

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Lizette Alvarez and Manny Fernandez provide this rivetting account of two Hispanic Senators in the U.S., both with Cuban backgrounds, one growing up in the Miami area around Cuban Americans, and the other in all white communities in Texas. Marco Rubio identifies with his Cuban background, but has distanced himself from immigration reforms he advocated that would provide undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship. Cruz does not identify with his Cuban American story, as much as he identifies with an immigrant story- his father left the Cuba of dictator Fulgencio Batista when he fled to the U.S. in 1956- and would tighten immigration enforcement and controls. Hispanics in Texas say they do not identify with Ted Cruz, who even changed his Spanish sounding name to Ted follwoing the advice of his Irish American mother. Cruz also attended Ivy league schools- Princeton and Harvard Law School, while Rubio took on large student loans to finish his law degree. Hispanics across the U.S. are shown as distancing themselves from the 2 candidates, expecially the large Mexican American community which has traditionally voted for Democrats....

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Yan Xuetong, is professor of political science and dean of the Institute of Modern International Relations at Tsinghua University, Beijing. He is the author of Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power. In this essay translated from the Chinese, Xuetong says China's new leaders should borrow ideas from ancient Chinese philosophers and theorists like Guanzi, Confucius, Xunzi and Mencius who pointed to the importance of morally informed leadership as the key to success in the long term. Xuetong presents this as the best way for China to compete with the U.S. At the same time it gives Xuetong a basis for calling on the new Chinese leadership to create a less unequal society, with attention paid to social justice and balanced development free from corruption, similiar to the calls made in the U.S.

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The lack of education mobility in the U.S. with rising student debt and soaring tution.

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The rupee reached a low of 56.55 rupees to the U.S. dollar on June 20, 2012. Factors affecting the rupees include the large current account deficit and trade deficit, declining capital inflows and foreign investment in the Indian economy in 2012. Other factors are risks of further credit rating downgrades. Fitch Ratings lowered its outlook on India from stable to negative on June 18, 2012. Standard & Poors lowered the outlook in April 2012. The current rating is one step above junk rating, making India the only Bric country without an investment grade rating. The lack of decisionmaking to attract foreign investment within weak coalition governments in India because of the influence of regional parties is a major problem. Other problems include the poor management of coal, energy, electricity generation and the lack of funding for these sectors to power the economy.