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The mysterious activities and losses of a South Korean/Japanese venture capital company Softbank which has been part of the massive misallocation of capital away from infrastructure and health care services during the decades before the pandemic. It has emerged recently as the mystery investor in options on tech shares that led to shares losses of 7 billion pounds for Softbank.

It lost half of its value in an earlier dotcom crash. A few investments in China during the early period of its development based on gut feel of the founder, including Alibaba an e-commerce company based on Amazon's success in the U.S. and other investments in China, is the basis of its business model. This model puts huge amounts of U.S. and foreign capital with estimated pool of capital at $100 billion into ventures that set the wrong priorities for investment- leading to misallocation of capital at this time of the pandemic. 

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Gretchen Morgenson provides an account of the history of activities under Countrywide Financial management and board of directors. Mozilo was CEO of the company before its activities led to the mortgage financial crisis of 2008. The subsequent wave of foreclosures had a devastating effect on the middle class and the U.S. economy.

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Rosa Ines Rivera, a cook at the cafeteria for the Y.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University, with 2 small children, describes the protests over the increase by Harvard administration of the premiums charged on health insurance that now take up over 10% of the income. She says she lives in public housing with her parents as she lost her apartment because she is behind on the rent, and now cannot afford to pay the increase in premiums. About 750 workers at Harvard are on strike on this issue. She says dining hall workers want the current pay of $31,193  a year increased to $35,000 to provide a living wage that helps them afford medical care, because of the high cost of living in Boston.  To get some idea of the plight of workers who provide the kind of nutritious meals that a lot of students depend on for healthy living- Rivera says she takes in about $450 a week after taxes, or about $1800, rent is $1150, which leaves $650 for herself and two children for all food, and expenses in Boston. The $4000 in premiums for health insurance would be about 330 per month, leaving her about $320 for food and living expenses with 2 children. Why the need to bring up children in poverty in America, for generation after generation, after putting in a full day of work? ...

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Oil prices and the US war with Iran -Straits of Hormuz how much of it remains open, European supplies, and drop in production in Gulf region, how these risks are managed will have an impact on inflation. Inflation could end up at 2.9% instead of 2% says Greg Ip. Gep Ip does not take into acocunt new flexible oil policy under which India gets a waiver to buy oil supplies from Russia, China sources more of its supplies from Russia to make up for the supplies lost from the Middle East. Russia steps in for a temporary period to keep oil prices lower. US ramps up Venezuelan and its own oil production to meet the needs of other countries such as Japan and S. Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Europe. Conservation measures are enacted to reduce oil use for the same level of GDP as taken in Japan and Germany.

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Enlargement of the prostate is a condition that affects many men as they age. The diagnosis of this condition for Britain's King Charles III gives an opportunity to explain to people what this condition is and how men can manage it proactively with lifestyle changes and modern medicine. The prostate is a walnut size gland which sits below the bladder and surrounds the urethra, a tube that empties urine from the bladder and carries sperm out of the body. It affects as many as half of all men starting in their 50's. When the prostate enlarges it compresses on the urethra, leading to making it more difficult to urinate or ejaculate. The enlargement says an expert at John Hopkins is a result of less cell death and more cell proliferation, two processes that cause prostate growth in size. 

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Google is investing a big chunk of its $98 billion stockpile in AI with an uncertain future. It's ad business remains challenged. Ruling on the Justice Department lawsuit for Google's monopolistic behaviors in its ad business is awaited and could still breakup the $250 billion Google ad business. Google is going back to the drawing board on its decision to get out off the despised cookies tracking people on the computer. Its "privacy sandbox" is under criticism and Google is looking for other solutions.

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The title about Indians in America as an Experiment is a misnomer, and reflects a loss of understanding of American and European civilization, the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions that created the Modern World starting in Britain and the US, and of India's aspirations for modernization. When both China and India aspire to the modern world that the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution have created.  India's Mohandas Gandhi read Emerson, had the support of FDR, of Christian missionary Charlie in the Bardoli Satyagraha, of a British Admiral's daughter at the Gandhi Ashram,  and Gandhi's prayer service included his favorite Christian hymns. This report shows no appreciation of this India and its relations with America. No country does that, what the US has done for 2 decades according to the National Science Foundation cited in this article, not the countries in the European Union, not France, Germany, Italy and Britain, not India, not China- provide tution and stipend and educate more foreign students than Americans or citizens of the home country in advanced engineering. It has never happened in the history of the world for the major nations that participated in the Renaissance in Europe and the Scientific Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, that have created the Modern World. It puts at risk what we know as the Modern World. It also puts at risk the countries such as China and India in addition to the US, as either these Indian or Chinese engineers stay in the US and take jobs and lower wages for Americans, or go back to their home country and help the development of their home country which has invested vital resouces for their previous education. Only if they return to their home country can 2.4 billion people of China and India gain from the investment made in these engineers education. This is particularly true for India, which is now emerging as the fastest growing country in the world with the access to pools of capital, labor and technology needed to match the US and China in modernization and development. For India these computer and other engineers can play a vital role in development for 1.4 billion people.  India like Germany, Italy and France in Europe and Japan, Indonesia Philippines, need the US and Britain as the leader of parliamentary democracies with a long history of parliament since 1600. Need Britain and the US as the cradle of the scientific and Industrial Revolutions, and see their vital interests in the making of a strong Nation in the American continent that can fulfill this role through it's religious values, scientific spirit, pioneering spirit, and generous impulses towards other nations. ...

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This WSJ report looks at the work of Sandberg in building up the advertising revenue part of Facebook. Ms Sandberg took many risks which were highlighted in WSJ investigations of Facebook. This showed the toxic effects on young girls mental health, on democratic processes, on an angrier discourse with algorithm changes to reverse falling user engagement. 

This period of social media growth, and tech growth at other companies such as Google and Apple, which turned into monopolistic behaviour has damaged America's social fabric. This period is now coming now coming to an end as America looks to the future to rebuild after decades in which its manufacturing was ceded to other countries with the loss of  manufacturing communities in America through actions of tech companies. And the growth of social media has disrupted the normal discourse and discussion in America.

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48% of British voters see immigration as the most important issue says Ipsos. And 31% say their local area is housing more than its fair share of asylum seekers growing to 61% of Reform UK voters. Reform UK is now leading party with 34% of the vote to Labour's 25% and Liberals 11%. The report in the WSJ on Augu 28 shows how the Labour government did not live up to it's talk on immigration. It also shows how the Conservatives and Boris Johnson failed by opening up non EU immigration from Asia on the grounds that it would bring in the brightest and yet dropped the basic colege degree requirement paradoxically. Lobbying from health care home care increased migration for this field under Conservatives and is only now being reversed by Labour. Labour has been too slow and the culture of Britain and Labour has not changed enough to grasp the problem. Their are vested interests in Britain such as universities and home care health care that have influenced the conduct of policy so that migration on non-eu has replaced eu migration after Brexit but not attracted the most qualified immigrants. The 4% of the British population that entered Britain after Brexit as immigrants, millions arrived and now when Labour is trying to bring this down faces a large number of dependent applications.University students are now bringing in their dependents at rates that have skyrocketed. ...

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In a nutshell why the economy is lopsided benefitting some, ignoring many. Labour's (salaries of all working people including professional classes) share of gross domestic income is 50% in 2026 the lowest since 1947, and profits highest since 1950 at 12%. Then you have hourly wages up 3% since 2019, while profits are up 50%. Greg Ip of the WSJ says the causes are complex and implications sobering. He says you can be a red blooded capitalist and still worry- is something wrong or unsustainable? Political stability, good governance structures, good institutional structures that were set up since Lincoln (the beginnings for the Industrial Revolution), by TR and FDR/Frances Perkins (the basic institutional and good governance structures of modern America and now the industrialized world that allied labor and capital with fairness to all), the entire setup needs to be rebuilt and renewed. The problems are also appearing in Europe and causing dismay, with calls for rebuilding and renewal. ...

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Arvind Panagriya, Prof. of Economics at Columbia University, points out the key initiatives of the Modi government in its first four years which will show results in future years for development of the country.  He mentions the Swachh Bharat Mission and cites results that show rural households with toilets are now 84% up from 38%.  By 2019 the whole country will be defecation zone free on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi. The Dhan Jan Yojana DJY accounts opened for rural households are up to 316 million. Aadhar cards for identification are up from 650 million to 1.2 billion. The Aadhar and DJY work together to enable direct transfer of benefits to poor households, eliminating the leaks in benefits transfer and ghost accounts of the period since independence in 1947. Not mentioned by Panagriya is the Health Insurance scheme for lower income households that enable families to survive a sudden medical expense that could put them in dire straits.  These efforts work in a way to change India from the ground up from its villages and rural areas as envisioned by Mahatma Gandhi in the struggle for independence. The land acquisition law amendments were put on hold till farmers concerns could be better accomodated, an area of concern for industrial development cited in an editorial in the Hindu newspaper. Fiscal consolidation and inflation targeting have resulted in an average inflation rate of 4.3% for the 4 years of the Modi government. Inflation was over 9% in the last 2 years of the previous Congress UPA government with GDP growth dropping to 5.9% for the last two years. Average GDP growth for four years for the Modi government is 7.3%, even after the changes to implement GST taxation for one national tax eliminating state barriers in interstate commerce and demonetization to fight corruption and black money. Rate of GDP growth should be higher after the gains from the initiatives and the new GST integration of the country are felt, with increase in investment and FDI, after infrastructure improvements and land acquisition arrangements are made. Transportation infrastructure modernization initiative pushes ahead with the first bullet train in the pilot project for Ahmedabad- Mumbai set to start in 2022. This is a $17 billion project financed for $13 billion by the Japanese government at 0.1% loan for 50 years, moratorium on repayments for 20 years, using E5 Shinkansen series technology. Implementation of this project on a sound financial basis should lead to transformation of the Indian rail network, raising the level of technology implementation across the entire Indian rail system. Such an achievement would rival the first introduction of railways into India in the nineteenth century under the British. A new bankruptcy law is intended to free up capital for investment by putting behind the large number of non performing loans in the Indian banking system. Changes made by the central bank RBI are designed to speed up this process so that loss making enterprises are absorbed, consolidated or shut down, a legacy from the earlier period.     ...

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Instead of a jinx much to the contrary the US economy outlook for 2030 in Feb 2026- a surge in investment spending in 2026-2030, new manufacturing investments and lower energy costs, moderating inflation, are likely to propel the US economy ahead to 2030.The effect of tariffs as a policy making tool has been muted because of exemptions, reversal of tariff rates once key objectives were secure for tariffs as a way to get action on foreign policy as with Indian purchases of Russian oil, deals with Japan, South Korea and China, India, UK and the EU. Some sources such as the Philadelphia Fed see price rises reaching 3% in some inflation guages more than the moderate 2.5% in the consumer price index for January 2026. These sources see the hiring slowing down just as layoffs begin to happen in the latter part of the year which is a possibility but less likely. At this point in Feb 2026 there is a tendency not to layoff and to hang onto employees, and hiring has been slow in 2025. January's report of 130,000 jobs added is the first sign of strengthening of the jobs market. Overall a cautious view would be to call it a soft landing after the inflation surge of the covid period. Another way of looking at is is more in line with the strategic direction of the US economy- freeing up the economy with investments in energy,  reducing the key costs of production, tax policy of Bessent's complete one shot depreciation of equipment increasing business investment, tariff policy making the world trading system fairer and now more attuned to US interests, all creating an investment and jobs surge in 2026-2027. There is an added benefit from US efforts to free up the world trading system from the stranglehold placed on it by China with its control over world manufacturing. A dominance and unwise concentration gained from the serious mistakes of the Bush-Clinton period of not putting in safeguards for US factories and jobs (that form the backbone for families in neighborhoods towns and regions across the US), and US business interests growing indifference to the very communities they were based in by outshoring to China destroying whole regions in America. Even where it is criticized or seen as negative there are huge benefits when the US acted. Tariff increase on India is a clear example- it built Indian resilient attitude in June-Feb 2026, and during this period it cut funding Russia's war in Ukraine by sourcing energy from other sources, the US policy led to India and EU+ Germany signing trade agreements to double their effort and double trade and scientific cooperation ( a goal secured for the US as it reduces concentration in China), was followed by US signing its own trade agreement with India within days, and increases world trade of US and EU and Germany in ways that will bring 2.5 billion people into a strong partnership that overshadows anything that happened in China in the Clinton-Bush-Obama years of failure. ...

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Southwest hedged against oil price increases and has hedges through 2009 at $51 a crude oil barrel. This has proved to be a smart move as it has provided Southwest with a hedge worth over $2 billion with most of the hedges value being realized over the next 2 years. Airline fuel costs are substantial and evey dollar increase in the price of crude translates intoa $80 million increase in the fuel bill for American Airlines. The hedges for the first 9 months of 2007 cost Southwest about $42 million, so its surprising that other airlines, United, Delta, American, Jet Blue and Northwest did not hedge against rising prices. Maybe they thought that at prices of $52 at the beginning of this year why hedge if prices go down to $40. Or they were too distracted by looking for merger options, or pricing options or other things. What will happen now if oil prices keep climbing? Can airlines raise fares. Yes but revenue per mile is'nt going up significantly as the mix of seats changes with price increases, more of the lower priced seats are sold than the higher priced ones and revenue per seat has not improved. For example even in an environment where 6 industry fare increases ocurred in the 3rd quarter Southwest average ticket price for that period was $105.37 only 62 cents higher than the previous year. Southwest now hopes to gain in this cycle as the other airlines may scrap some routes or ground some planes and Southwest can expand in those areas. ...

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Gordon Brown in The Guardian on the Mandelson affair about using government influence to get lucrative jobs in private business during the 2009 financial crisis when Brown says he worked night and day to see that people's pensions and savings were safe.

"Already, two thirds of the British public believe that politicians are out primarily for themselves. The grim truth is that unless something fundamental changes, this week’s revelations will be acid in our democracy, corroding trust still further."

 "I have to take personal responsibility for appointing Mandelson to his ministerial role in 2008. I greatly regret this appointment. I made it at the end of his four years as the UK’s European commissioner on trade. "

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Rosie Millard takes up French at age 60 at London University. She lives just up the road from Birkbeck College. She comes back to the classroom in evening classes attended by people who work during the day. Here she describes her day at school learning French in a new environment of computers, the cloud, and a classroom of avid learners. Only 135,000 students in Britain took modern languages at GCSE A level with French doing the worst. Millard is bucking the trend. For seniors this is about resilience in aging as this as important as smoking cessation or cutting obesity habits say researchers to maintain a healthy vibrant brain well into the eighties and nineties.

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USA car sales drop 37% in January 2009 over same period in 2008. Sales at GM dropped 49%, at Ford 40% and Chrysler 55%, at Toyota 32%, at Honda 28%, at Nissan 30%. Subaru and Hyundai saw sales increases. Analysts at IHS Global Insight say the stimulus package may help prevent things from getting much worse, but it would be wrong to count on the stimulus package for a pickup in sales in the second half of this year. This is ominous for the Detroit car companies as they seek government help to avert bankruptcy. Chrysler is hoping to make tieup with Fiat, but it will be a year before Fiat cars make it to the US and longer for its cars to be made in the US, so it is not clear what will happen in 2010. Ford's economists think the market is nearing bottom, but if that is not the case it may prove risky for Ford.

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Asylum hotel protests and illegal migrants in Britain filing for asylum at 111,000 cases in first 6 months costing $5.4 billion in first half 2025 alone. The Times of London says Starmer is cautious by nature, but strong action is needed going back to the source of the problem that illegal migrants do not belong in any European nation including Britain. The stark truth says Cowley in the Times of London is that having a battalion of British infantry on the coastline of France as it was during the Paris Olympics in France, is needed to keep the boats out of Britain with Britain moving out of the European Convention of Human Rights. That convention was not intended for this situation, just as the British system of justice was not intended for this situation for the people of other countries on other continents illegally migrating over oceans. Just as much as there is no Asian Convention of Human Rights for Europeans migrating over oceans to China, Japan or South Korea now industrialized nations with high standards of living and social protections for health care. ...

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In a glut market for potatoes in Europe this is what happens. From $600 euros a ton in 2023 to zero for the price of potatoes in the spot market  in Belgium in 2026. Europe has asurplus f 5 million metric tons of potatoes of the kind used to make french fries. In the past it could be shipped as exports to the US. Not anymore US has tariffs to protect US farmers in Idaho and other states. An Idaho potato maker financed Micron in the 1960's which now is a major chip maker nearing valuation of 1 trillion dollars in the stock markets. You have this situation where a thousand tons of potatoes stacked 15 feet high in a Belgian warehouse is dumped back into the ground. The Belgian farmer D'haeyere took a loss of $160,000 euros on soil, seedlings, fertilizer and labor. He is planting only 17 acres for 2027 down from 170 acres he planted  this year. Belgium is the largest exporter of french fries in the world.