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If not passed by Congress, the extension of unemployment benefits expires by July 4, 2010. This would leave an estimated 1.6 million people without the average check of $309 a week. A bill when passed is expected to reduce benefits and reduce aid to states and local governments facing budget deficits.

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Blue skies and what China needs to get them, a strong independent civil society to act as a watch dog says Friedman.

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Friedman on the $43 billion infrastructure he saw in China and the crumbling infrastructure in New York City and driving from dilapidated La Guardia airport in New York city into the city vs the new Shanghai airport and the magnetic levitation trains into Shanghai. He says don't forget that they are mere snapshots. And he is very aware that you go 100 milews outside Beijing and you find a poor developing country. So which is the real China, no easy answers. Give credit to their dedication and all the hard work and the motivation and planning to Chinabut still ask the questions about what we should do here in America and what countries like India have to ask what they should do and go about doing it. China will have its own questions and problems to think about too as it has to figure out what their best allocation of capital will be, what their policies should be from the birth rate and demographic changes, to the environment, and to ways to bring the rest of the country and farmers into the picture and see that the gains from now on reflect the imbalances in growth. The country building the latest infrastructure will always have the latest infrastructure and that will be the next country around the corner with the capital and energy to do it, the USA or India or Russia or some other country. The real progress is in the quality of life, of health and the resources for living productive healthy lives for most of the inhabitants of any country or region and that goes beyond politics or nationalism or rivalries or vested interests of groups of people, as it depends on learning from the best that every productive mind anywhere in the world or any productive place anywhere in the world has to offer. And the thing about this is its never a goal only because in a true sense the road well travelled is the destination for this kind of progress. ...

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Changes in Chinese policy that stem from a realization that the old model of making China the world's manufacturing center based on cost efficient labor and cheap energy is becoming obsolete. And the need for green technology and policies and for moving upscale to more sophisticated mind intensive less polluting products.

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The lives of China's female migrant workers many of them as young as 15 or 16 right from the villages and rural interior. Leslie Chang a Chinese American spent time living with them in Dongguan and gives an account of their lives and struggles as they leave the farm for a new life in the factories of China.

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The global financial crisis is expected to reshape the direction of globalization. Western finance will be re-regulated. Second as concerns about food security take prominence in countries like India and China inflation and how it affects food prices will result in governments taking an active role in this area. Thirs America will lose economic clout and intellectual authority. Emerging economies like Inida, China, Brazil and Russia and other countries are having a large influence on the direction of global trade now this will also extend to global finance. But even after the re-regulation of finance in western countries and changes also in emerging countries that are seen as necessary in the light of the global crisis, the global economy will still find the model of markets if carefully done and respect for individual initiative with a proper role of government but limited role, he attractive model to follow. Easterly comments on this for developing countries. See the link.

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Land reforms in China to improve rural incomes and increase agricultural production with larger farms to keep food price inflation down two key goals in today's China. And both long neglected in the headlong rush to industrialize and urban centred modernization which left a huge gap which now must be fixed that gap in incomes for the rural 700 million peopr in the countryside who have seen their incomes stagnat and the rural -urban gap widen with farmer protest against corrupt officials seizing land for factories exacerbating the situation for years. Only the 10-12% a year growth has kept the situation under some control as rural folk could depend on income from migrant labor or the young women who left the countryside to work in cities where factories for exports turned out goods for western markets. With this market in serious trouble in debt burdened western societies China may be looking at growth of half the previous rate down to 6%,and so this is move to change the focus to building a bigger domestic market through raising rural incomes as well as urban incomes and shift China's focus to the domestic and Asian markets like India and other Asian countries....

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Gordon Brown, former prime minister of Britain from 2007 to 2010, chaired the April 2009 G-20 meeting that came up with ways to tackle the global financial crisis. Brown also led the way by recapitalizing British banks, a step the U.S. followed. He comments on the volatility in financial markets in August 2007 following the S&P credit downgrade of the U.S.. Brown gives an incomplete grade to the tasks the 2009 G-20 set out to accomplish. He points to three goals the G-20 had set in the middle of the financial crisis in April 2009. The first was to prevent a recession from becoming a depression. The other two were to establish a financial stability regime, and a compact for growth. These two became paper promises says Brown. Brown sees the best approach to prevent a lost decade is for U.S. and Europe trading their way out of a downturn as the Asian market absorbs more industrial goods from Europe and the U.S. This includes policies that would keep commodity prices low and ways of coping with currency shocks. Analysts have pointed to an export led recovery as one of the solutions the U.S. was hoping to achieve with a lower value of the dollar. This has had only limited success because of deep structural problems- high consumer indebtedness, bad debt at the banks, weak housing sector following the mortgage crisis, and a rising U.S. deficit- which will take some time to clear. Brown does not come to grips with these underlying imbalances built up during the boom years of the last decade, both in Britain and in the U.S., during which he was the finance minister of Britain....

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Easwar Prasad, Cornell University economist, and a former head of the IMF's China division, says the new report by the World Bank and the Development Reform Commission (DRC), is part of an effort by government officials in China to push the agenda for change forward during the transition to a new leadership. This includes Premier Wen. There is pushback from large state enterprises. The DRC and the World Bank had called for a change from the current situation to allow more private sector involvement in the economy, which means restricting the growth of the large state owned companies and letting the private sector operate in more parts of the economy. The alternative is to see growth slowing quickly and -some economists- say suddenly without warning. The role of Zhu Rongji, a former prime minister during the period Jiang Zemin was president, in pushing for changes appropriate to the period, is also cited. The last decade under prime minister Wen Biao is seen as one in which China relentlessly pursued its currrent export led model of development with large state run companies and state run banks dominating the economy. This has made change even harder to achieve because of the pushback to preserve the status quo....

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In a first at Davos World Economic Forum, China's president Xi Jinping uses the 2017 meeting to give a one hour long spirited defense of the world trading system, critical of U.S. president elect Trump's protectionist views without naming him. Xi pointed out that "no one will be winners in a trade war." And went on to add that restricting world trade was like "locking oneself in a dark room, keeping out wind and rain from outside but also light and air." For the first time Jinping stated that China would take the U.S. role of defending the world trading system from attack as needed. On climate change Xi defended the Paris accords, and gave China's commitment to pursue changes regardless of what the U.S. under president Trump does. This follows Chancellor Merkel of Germany's statements on the issue critical of the views of president elect Trump, and taking the lead to defend the world trading system. Xi also pointed out that many of the ills that led to voter discontent in the West were not really from the freeing up of trade but from the pursuit of excessive profit with the financial crisis of 2008.   ...

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The weaker dollar has given a boost to U.S. exports. The dollar has dropped by 9.1% compared to the prior year against a broad basket of currencies. U.S. exports have provided 1.4 percentage points of the 3.0% annualized growth since the 3rd quarter of 2009. The U.S. dollar is now 5% away from its all time low in March 2008, when tracked using the dollar index. Before the 2008 crisis the dollar had over a six year period lost about 40% of its value. Low interest rates in the U.S. and concerns about the deficit have contributed to the dollar's decline in value. While the decline helps boost exports, it also increases the price of oil in dollar terms and increases inflation. A Gallup poll in April showed 42% of Americans had no confidence in the Fed's policies for the economy, and 43% had no faith in Treasury Secretary Geithner. The decline is taking place even as Japan is recovering from the earthquake, and Greece is likely to have to restructure its debt obligations with European banks taking losses....

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Questions raised about the government's committment to serious health care reform. New leaders of China who took power in 2002 and 2003 with concern for the poor, did not put discuss reform till 2006 and during this crisis there isn't the urgency that is needed. Recent documents, says the Economist, that were circulated secretly within the bureaucracy for 3 weeks before being made public, provide no clear target about how much people would be reimbursed for medical treatment. The other concern is that the central government provides only 40% of the 850 billion yuan allocated for additional spending on health care in the years 2009-2011. This is about $125 billion. Burt local governments may not be keen on spending on health care as officials are still judged by how much they can boost employment and GDP growth. Over three years the central government's annual share of the additional spending on health care of 850 billion yuan is 111 billion yuan, according to Caijing, a business magazine.But the 2009 budget on health care is 118 billion yuan, so its not clear that things add up. The central government's additional spending in each of the 3 years is only $16 billion. How this can provide help to the 200 million uninsured, the insured who still pay a large amount for health care, and pay for essential pharmaceuticals on a list prepared by the government, and pay a portion of the expensive diagnostic tests that hospitals like to make money from, is not clear. The whole system will have to be overhauled so that hospitals do not have the incentive to prescribe these expensive tests and pills that cost more. The government says it will be 2020 when 90% of Chinese are covered by agovernment financed health insurance system- 11 years away. This only means that domestic consumption may remain depressed for a decade or so. With export markets collapsing, this leaves China dependent on infrastructure spending for growth for a long time, and lower growth rates with higher unemployment. ...

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Competing interests of the U.S. and China on issues such as jobs, currency and trade. Chinese stalling over currency revaluation.

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Shift of Toyota Highlander hybrid production from Japan to the U.S. with a $400 million investment in the Princeton, Indiana manufacturing plant. The Princeton plant will make 50,000 of the Highlander hybrid vehicles a year.

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The People's Bank of China's decision to reduce the reserve requirement for deposits at banks by 0.5% is not likely to have much impact, as banks already have enough money to lend. The problem is more a lack of demand for loans as the economy slows. Inflation fears restrict the use of growth tools such as lowering interest rates and the housing bubble limits the use of construction spending to increase growth. Political uncertainty with a leadership transition, and economc uncertainty in Europe also limit options.

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Charlie Rose talks to the prime minister of Singapore about China's role in world affairs, its view of America and of its own experience, what's uppermost in the minds of the leadership, and the rise of a post cultural revolution leadership which has grown up in 30 years of post cultural revolution market economy and internet access to information.