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Estimates including one by Fimat, of $80 per barrel when the security premium for oil goes even higher after the Iran backed Hezbollah war with Israel in Lebanon. oil markets jittery.

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MacKenzie Scott who cofounded the early startup on books of Amazon with Jeff Bezos, and her foundation gift giving to the underprivileged, native Americans, Black Americans, and other causes by 2026. Scott's stake is $18 billion in Amazon in 2025. Data driven approach she adopted gets through 6490 organizations and narrows that down to 822, and comes up with 384 grant recipients, says the WSJ. No applications just a call and $20 million or $50 million is the approach she has taken and the money is given on trust no monitoring.

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Saudis and UAE take different positions on Project Freedom to clear Hormuz for shipping because of Saudi deal with Iran to export from pipeline at Yanbu in Red Sea free of missile attacks. That pipeline ships 50% of Saudi oil through Red Sea an alternative route. Saudis are concerned that Houthi rebels in Yemen on the Red Sea would attack the pipeline and lack assurance that their oil exports will not be affected by missile attacks from Iran. One effect of this is that UAE is the major target for Iranian missile attacks.

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The 800 foot Chinese ocean carrier Zhen Hua 29 sails into Kingston, Jamaica, from Shanghai on the long route with 5 cranes in epic 3 months voyage through the Indian Ocean around Mozambique- the last of the globalization voyages. As globalization dims these are the last of these voyages. US policy is for its control of the Panama Canal, the Monroe Doctrine in the western hemisphere, pushing out a globalization that hurt American industry and jobs in the USA. China continues on with its surplus capacity make for export policy, the US wants out from these imports, and the EU is wary of imports dependence.  Gemany's Foreign ministry under Wadephul is forming a commission to investigate German dependence on China made products. This is the last of the globalization that started with Clinton, and went on with Bush and Obama, wrecking huge parts of the American industrial base. Cranes- no longer made in the USA, one by one, including ships- no longer made in the USA. The great shipyards of Britain and the US languishing in disrepair! ...

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US DJT Tariffs impact 1 year later- global trade has held up well with US unemployment at 4.4% and economic growth at 2.1%. China imports down from 20% in 2016 to 10% ten years later in 2026. For DJT that was a promise kept leading to a sharp decoupling of the US economy from the Chinese economy that was leading to huge trade deficits of 1 trillion dollars. Too much of the world's supply chain was tied up with manufacturing in China. It got so bad under Reagan, the two Bushes, Clinton/Obama that the US and EU were facing deindustrialization with huge risks to the future of the US and Europe as industrial powers. 150 years of industrialization and scientific advancement, the great achievements of Europe and the United States since 1860's was going up in smoke over reckless policies of Republican and Democratic elites who gave little thought and barely understood the long run effects of their policies and textbook theories of the economy. Most economists from ivy league universities got it completely wrong. ...

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U.S. president Trump announces U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization on May 30, 2020. Earlier the president had sent a letter to the WHO as a 30 day ultimatum and that he would reconsider membership if the WHO did "not commit to major substantive improvements within the next 30 days." The U.S. has given $450 million a year to the WHO compared to $50 million by China, yet China president Trump says has "total control over the WHO," showing deep seated dissatisfaction at the way the WHO has under current leadership has handled the coronavirus crisis and failed to take early action for an early warning system as were taken by earlier heads of the WHO such as Gro Harlem Brundtland of Norway during the H1N1 crisis in 2003, who was cited in Mr. Trump's letter.

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Atsuyoshi Koike of Japan's Rapidus co-developing with IBM new 2 nanometer chip for production in 2026, wafer by wafer in 15 days instead of in batches taking 50 days. Koike says he will charge a Shinkansen fee referring to the bullet trains in Japan. He sees the failure by Japan to join the US in co-producing chips as a mistake, ceding ground to Taiwan's TSMC and South Korea's Samsung. Japan's government supports Rapidus with $600 million in funding and anotehr $1.7 billion comes from Japanese companies Sony, NTT and others. By comparison TSMC will invest $56 billion to produce advanced chips in scale in 2026. Japan is step by step getting back into the chip business by making a joint effort with the US.

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The British House of Commons voted on December 7, 2016, to commit the UK to trigger Article 50 for leaving the European Union by end of March 2017. The vote was 461 for and 89 against.

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David Enrich of the NYT looks at the collapse of Signature bank and SVB Bank and the role of lobbying that led to president Trump setting up new legislation raising size of banks facing Fed regulatory scrutiny from $50 billion to $250 billion. Signature Bank and the author of the regulatory law after the financial crisis of 2008 caused by faulty bank practices -who in one of the anomalies of Congress joined the bank's board for 7 years and resigned this week-  lobbied with SVB bank for less regulation and government oversight. President Biden has learned from the mistakes of this Obama period, as shown by Jim Tankersley in his reporting in the NYT. this week. And made clear from Biden's State of the Union address in 2023, his effort to focus on cutting the deficit by $3 trillion over 10 years by getting everyone to pay their fair share of taxes.

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The rule requiring health pass showing one is fully vaccinated goes into effect in France starting July 28 at restaurants, coffee shops, trains, and other public places. For the first week restaurants will not be fined. After this they can be fined 1500 euros for a single violation. The passe sanitaire in France is now required  for all public places where more than 50 people gather, such as events and museums including the Louvre in Paris. It will be extended to restaurants, cafes and shopping centres in August.

French premier Castex says 97% of the 18000  daily average new cases in France, up by 150% since the prior week, are from the unvaccinated. This has made health authorites and the government concerned about the delta variant high transmission rates and the high proportion of people still not vaccinated. For France this poses risk of a new kind of fourth wave, causing the government to take strong action to accelerate vaccinations.

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European banks have been slow to get rid of risky assets such as collateralized debt obligations, subprime mortgages and other risky assets after the 2007 financial crisis. As a result sixteen top European banks hold 386 billion euros of suspect credit-market and real estate assets, according to Credit Suisse analysts. The Royal Bank of Scotland has 79.6 billion of assets dating from the 2007 financial crisis. Over the three year period since the 2008 financial crisis, the top three U.S. banks shed 80% of this type of risky assets, compared to 50% for European banks. The four largest British banks have reduced these risky assets by more than 50%, and four French banks have reduced these assets by only 30%. At 29 billion euros, French bank Credit Agricole had the largest amount of such risky assets among the leading French banks. This adds to the difficulties facing French banks which also have large amount of loans to customers in Greece and Greece's sovereign bonds. Deutsche Bank has 20.2 billion euros in commercial mortgages and whole loans and 2.9 billion euros in U.S. residential assets including subprime loans. Mediobanca analysts estimate that Deutsche Bank's exposure to such assets is more than 150% of its tangible equity....

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The head of the Boeing 777 airplane program, Larry Loftis, is made the new head of the 787 Dreamliner program. The change is designed to improve the production timing of the Dreamliner program, which has suffered repeated delays and is three years behind the original plan. Boeing has a backlog of 850 customer orders on the Dreamliner.

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Colombia's GDP is $350 billion, in 2025 Venezuela's is $50 billion. Socialism under Chavez imitating Simon Bolivar as shown here starts out well with more housing, health care reaching poorer neighborhoods and parts of the population that were ignored. But only till 2011 in the early years. As mismanagement, corrupt cronies take over the nationalized enterprises, petroleum company fails to invest, and mismanagement of the economy sets in, educated classes leave the country in the class warfare, the results are disastrous. As much as 20-30% of the population leaves, hyperinflation, bad relations with the US, leading to the worst humanitarian disaster in the American continent since 1900.  It shows that the educated classes of every nation bear a major responsibility to  create a healthier society at the beginning so that the glimmers of hope of free services lead to the wrong people ending up in power and mismanagement on a massive scale destroying everything. New York City's educated classes should shoulder the responsibilities that people like Felix Rohatyn as head of MAC describes in his book- Bold Endeavors, that is the true spirit of the Nation (2009). ...

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The Airbus 350 maiden flight in Toulouse, France, on June 14, 2013.