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The museum exhibit that tells a transnational story of the slave trade in the world will travel to South Africa and to Senegal. It shows what happened in Brazil with Portuguese slave trade in addition to the US. In 1793 Upper Canada Lt. Governor Simcoe passed the National Act against Slavery. In 1824 Mexico abolished slavery. In 1834 the Slavery Abolition Act abolished slavery in the British Empire and freed 800,000 slaves in the Caribbean, Canada and South America. Lincoln and the North Northeast Midwest US fought slavery in the 1850's long before 1861 and Emancipation during the Civil War in the US. The US is the only country to have fought a war with millions of soldiers to cleanse itself of the ills and sin of slavery, Lincoln was steadfast so was much of the US. It was not till 1888 that Brazil abolished slavery, the slave trade was abolished in Brazil in 1850. In Brazil Portuguese slave trade brought 5 million to its shores. 500,000 were brought to the US according to this NYT report on the museum. British pressure helped end slavery in Brazil. ...

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The country's past was a factor in the new prime minister of Thuringia, a state in Germany, resigning after a flawed election in which the FDP's head with barely 5% election support was made prime minister. This happened with support from right wing parties including odd combination of local CDU and AfD parties. Merkel on a visit to South Africa called for this to be reversed. The Die Linke Left party from post war East German roots was the leading party with 31% of the electoral vote, CDU at 22% and AfD at 23%, SPD at 8% and Greens at 5%. Because Die Linke has roots in East Germany's communist party CDU as centre right party had competed with Die Linke in the election.

The Left and the SPD had 40% of the vote and with the Greens and CDU in the centre had about 70% of the votes in Thuringia, making Merkel at the head of a CDU-SPD coalition keen to reverse the result of a FDP premier with 5%-23% support.

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Economic mismanagement that Barrack Obama deplores in some of the African countries that are independent. Zimbabwe stands out in the extent of collapse of infrastructure, living conditions and complete collapse of currency. And strikingly leaders of its neighbors in South Africa and other larger African countries have not spoke out. Mugabe's government has stolen elections and not tolerated any opposition. The MDC Movement for Democratic Change led by Morgan Tsvangirai is trying to correct things in the coming elections but does it stand a chance if Mugabe again intimidates the opposition at the elections.

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The drop in oil prices in 2014-2015 leads to a decline in the value of Nigeria's currency, the Naira, by over 10% in 2014. The Naira dropped to 186.9 to the dollar by Dec. 2, 2014. The foreign exchange reserves drop to $2 billion in Dec. 2014 from $20 billion in 2008. Investment in infrastructure and the electricity grid is badly needed. Imports of arms for the military add to budgetary strain as the government tackles the Boko Haram terrorist threat in the Kano region. The central bank puts out a revised budget based on an oil price of $73, as Brent crude dropped to $68. Like Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone dependent on iron ore exports, Angola and Mozambique on oil revenues, Zambia on copper, and South Africa on mining exports, much of Africa's economy is dependent on commodity exports. About 80% of Nigeria's government revenue is from oil exports, according to the IMF. And the entire budget for the nation with the largest population in Africa is only $30 billion.

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The message of the Five Star Party of Beppe Grillo against cronyism, the older politics in Italy, corruption in government, unrestricted immigration, clearly resonated in the south of Italy with the party winning in southern Italy. FIve Star brings younger faces to the Italian parliament just as Macron's movement did in France. The Democratic Left Party under Renzi was a clear loser as it won about 20% of the vote compared to 32% of the vote and over 216 seats in parliament for Five Star. Renzi and the left parties clearly failed to gauge the voter's mood and frustration with economic conditions- 11% unemployment and 18 million Italians at risk of poverty reports BBC News. About 600,000 immigrants entered Italy from North Africa and other regions creating anti-immigration sentiment that shifted support to Five Star and the right wing Northern League under Salvini, which had broadened its appeal from its local base in Milan to all of Northern Italy under Salvini, 44 years old. The Northern League won in most of Northern Italy and with the Forze italia of Berlusconi won 37% of the vote. A coalition of Five Star and the Nrothern League would bring together 2 Euroskeptic parties. ...

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The meeting planned between Xi and Biden is important for stable US China relations after the Trump administration angry rhetoric, the Covid pandemic, and when imbalances in the poorly managed trade relationship with the entire supply chain shifted to China with millions of its American jobs has shaken working class communities in the US. China's and Xi's views on Hong Kong and Taiwan have also affected the relations. After the Ukraine war this will be the first meeting between the two leaders, and follows a visit by German chancellor Scholz to Beijing. Under Bush America appeared to be distracted by middle east wars, under Obama and Trump America appeared weak or angry but not resolute. Under Biden America appears resolute and sure of itself. This makes a difference for US China relations. Following the Ukraine war both the US and Germany, and China, appear to have grasped the dangers of nuclear threats such as were made in recent weeks. India has also shown its serious concerns about wars for territorial gains, and the world community of nations has expressed this through the words and actions of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres speaking for Europe, and the rest of the world.  Under Biden America seeks decent Competition with China and not conflict, and this is in the interest of both countries and of all the countries in the world. Neither China or America represent the largest share of the world's peoples, and in a world of advanced technologies other regions such as India, Europe, South East Asia and Japan, have just as great a determination and influence to seek a mutually beneficial peaceful coexistence in the interests of all the peoples of the world including the continents of Africa and Latin America. ...

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This BBC Travel story about mindfulness, a sort of meditation with nature, and getting close to nature as a sort of healing inside, comes from the southern region of Western Australia, 360 kilometres southeast of Perth. It could have come from native peoples in America, Asia, Africa or other parts of the world. The author visits the Noorang people, part of the 750,000 native people who lived there when the first British settlers arrived there in 1788. Captain Cook had just landed there in 1770 as part of British Navy and Royal Society expedition on the ship HMS Endeavour. Today this is part of the Botany Bay National Park in the Sydney region of eastern Australia. The author visits the streams rivers and hills in the region near Perth as he undergoes a kind of spiritual reconnection with nature. The less the vibration man has the more the mindfulness and ability to connect with nature and the inner self, the author is shown as he lets things go soaking himself in a river. Many native people's rituals and are ways to respect nature and connect to it as to a mother.  In India modern people relate to ancient civilization through yoga and spiritual writings from an earlier period. There too the idea of nature or rivers and mountains as spiritual and healing, strengthening of body and spirit can be seen. The Narmada river flowing from east to west across mountain ranges in India is seen as a spiritual  mother just as rivers are in this story about native peoples in Australia's southern region south of Perth, western Australia. ...

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Reporters in this report from the Brussels Bureau chief and the White House reporter, also include bureau reporters from Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America. They all say that Kamala Harris has a firm grip on international affairs. Harris goes beyond this in 2024- a unique and special understanding of the role of women in the renewal of Western and Asian societies. Society does best when women have a large role and make significant contributions is lost on Europeans and Americans yet a core belief in Asia and in India, where it is is seen as part of the reason for collapse of Asian civilizations to Europeans in the 18th and 19th century. From Europe Chancellor Scholz of Germany says of Harris whom he knows from her attending 3 consecutive Munich Security Conferences as Biden's representative. “She is a competent and experienced politician who knows exactly what she is doing and has a very clear idea of her country’s role, of developments in the world, and of the challenges we face." France's Macron has spent hours with Harris on her 5 day visit to France to soothe French feelings as reassure them following the US deal with Australia for nuclear submarines that excluded the French. During this trip she spent time at the Pasteur Institute where her mother Shyamala Gopalan once worked. From Mexico and South Korea one has another side of Harris where she has used official trips to hold discussions with women's groups to take notes and ask questions to understand women's issues around the world. This makes her exceptional as a choice for women in 2024, not just for reproductive rights but for a person who will listen with profound interest to what they say and relate to them. There is a saying in India that prime minister Modi also cites which says society does well only when it gives women the best place to make their own unique contribution. Lost on Europeans and Americans is this idea that Asians and particularly in India, see the failure to do this as part of the collapse of Asian civilizations to European advance in the 18th and 19th century. From Seoul, South Korea-"I was most impressed when she said that a society that helps its women fulfill their dreams and pursue their professional careers without discrimination is an advanced society,” said Baik Hyun Wook, head of the Korean Medical Women’s Association. ...

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President Obama comments on the Trayvon Martin shooting saying- "Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago." Trayvon is a black youth shot by police in a Florida gated community. Obama was critical of racial profiling and gun laws. Obama said three sets of experiences are shared by African American youth- being followed in department stores, hearing the click of car doors locking as they cross the street, or watching women clutch their purses nervously when they enter an elevator.

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India's Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar said at an Atlantic Council event in Washington D.C. that estimates have been made of what the British took out of India over two centuries and this has come to $45 trillion in today's value. India suffered humiliation for two centuries from 1756 to 1947 with British rule. The country was "bled" and this was first documented by a member of parliament Dadabhai Naoroji in 1901 in London in his book explaining the causes of India's deep poverty in his book with the title- Poverty and Un-British Rule in India. For the first time detailed financial figures were put together on what Britain took out of India and India's Mohandas Gandhi says this was how he learned about how much India suffered economically under British rule with the neglect of agriculture, the peasants and landless laborers making up the vast population of India. Taxation was burdensome on a poor population during most of the period. Railways and mass communication only helped keep the vast region together under British rule and most of the budget went into security and policing for the Empire. Investment in industry or agriculture was neglected for most of the nineteenth century and half of the twentieth. Strangely the first Indian edition of Naoroji's book was only in 1962 with most Indians unaware of what had happened and where this was first documented. Even Cambridge educated Nehru looked at the railways and mass communication as British contributions to india when in actual fact this was of a strategic security aspect for the British in a vast region, and little was done to improve the standard of living of the people in the villages who worked in subsistence agriculture. Gandhi's task was to increase awareness at the grassroots level of the condition of the country. Something he never hesitated to do even writing to the Viceroy who was in charge directly showing how the budget in the 1920's was entirely lacking in any funds for India's development. This letter can be seen today in the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, the museum for Gandhi in his home state of Gujarat. One of the lesser known facts about the independence struggle is that Gandhi wrote a little book in 1910 with title "Hind Swaraj" on a steamship making its way back to South Africa from Britain where Gandhi led a deputation for rights of Indian coolie laborers in South Africa. I picked up this book at the original home of Gandhi and his parents in Porbandar, India, recently. In this book "Hind Swaraj" written in 1910 we find astonishingly all the details of the planned struggle for independence that were to happen over the next 20 years. In 1930 with a new edition Gandhi wrote that he had followed this unchanged for 20 years and would change nothing except one line in the book. The book in 1910 was promptly banned by the government of Bombay, yet Indian editions appeared soon afterward. It is written in question and answer format with Gandhi himself posing the questions which he answers, some challenging his view of India, Britain, Indians and the British. He did not blame the British, and called for Indians to take responsibility for letting the British rule in India happen and what was the best way out.  ...

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With 40% of the people living below the poverty level, and 25% of working age people unemployed, S. Africa faces serious development problems.

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Fitch Ratings downgrades Brazil's bonds to double-B-plus in Dec. 2015, a junk rating from an investment grade rating. The yield on Brazil's 10 year benchmark dollar denominated bond increased to 6.97% from 6.7%. Other emerging markets such as Turkey and South Africa now expect ratings downgrades in 2016 as the U.S. Fed raises interest rates. Standard & Poors downgraded Brazil's sovereign debt to junk status in September 2015. GDP in Brazil declined 4.5% in the third quarter of 2015 from a year earlier. Brazil's currency, the real, declined by 32% in 2015, making it harder for companies that borrowed in dollars to pay off debts. President Dilma Rousseff is facing impeachment proceedings following a corruption scandal at Petrobras.

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The Economist makes an important point about the violence, poverty and terrorism in failing states. The failure of civil institutions and civil wars in Africa, have led to complete breakdown. Similiar situations playing out in Afghistan and Pakistan. At the very least says the Economist, "there is evidence that economic growthin countries next to failing states can be badly damaged." Even in South Asia where India has forged ahead with high growth rates, one can say that economic development has not made a significant dent in the poverty, malnutrition and lack of infrastructure across the country. It adds that a weak goverment may lack the wherewithal to identify and contain a pandemic that could spread globally.

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Russia raises interest rates by 6.5% to 17% on Dec. 15, 2014, as Brent crude prices fall below $60 and pressure on the ruble increases. Anticipation of the U.S. Federal Reserve raising interest rates in 2015 puts pressure on emerging market currencies, adding to pressure on the ruble. All emerging market currencies, the Brazilian Real, South African Rand, Indian Rupee, Indonesian Rupiah, Turkish Lira, also come under pressure as money flows out of emerging markets in a repeat of the situation in January 2014.

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Ghosn touches on another issue emerging in the auto industry. With prices of iron ore jumping steel prices are also increasing which will force automakers to raise prices in the foreseable future. With economic downturn in the USA and parts of Europe Nissan like other automakers will find it difficult to increase sales with higher prices. This makes the new markets of India, Brazil Russia, China and Africa and Middle East with exploding demand significant. As the president of Honda in India puts it its better to spread the profits and sales globally. Nissan laid the ground for a 1.1 billion plant south of Chennai, India, rather than wait for the infrastructure to deliver just-on-time in India, the infrastructure will come later.

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All the regional groupings of countries and the post second world war institutions such as the UN, The Security Council, and the economic institutions IMF, World Bank, and the OECD, and the G-8, and the difficulty and controversy of inclusion or exclusion of emerging economies like Brazil, Russia, India and China, as well as countries like Mexico, Indonesia, South Africa and so on. There are no easy answers but the gradual direction is for inclusion of emerging economies over time.

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The Oxford vaccine is shown to be effective for older adults over 70 years in age. One of the key features of the Oxford vaccine is that it is designed to be accessible in cost for not just high income countries but across all parts of the world including the countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America where some of the poorest people live. The cost will be a fraction of the cost of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccine. Results for regulatory approval are expected by Christmas. This vaccine is expected to cost about $4 a dose compared to $25 for the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. Oxford also uses a technology for the vaccine that has already been proved effective with least side effects fr other virus such as Ebola virus. Oxford researchers took the existing vaccine technology and modified it to tackle coronavirus in a way that proves effective for this virus also. Countries such as South Korea say they will not rush into the first vaccine that is available and have not responded to requests for sale from Moderna or Pfizer. India's Serum Institute is the leading manufacturer of vaccines in the world. It is preparing for production of the Oxford vaccine. India's vaccine effort includes other vaccines developed by its research institutes. The focus of India is for a vaccine that is effective as well as meet cost so that it can be used to vaccinate over 1.3 billion people. Because India has strong already established manufacturing capabilities for vaccines and is collaborating with Oxford and Astra Zeneca for a low cost vaccine it is in a position to drive the campaign for an effective plus low cost 100% accessible vaccine for people around the world. Another aspect of the Astra Zeneca partnership with Oxford is that it has committed not to make a profit from the vaccine. This is important for Oxford researchers and its organizational goals. ...

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This WSJ podcast looks at the Fedspeak, the language, the use of specific words that telegraph the US central bank's carefully thought out message to markets. Th topic is inflation. Is it persistent or transitory? Fed chairman Powell's word for it was "transitory." Then transitory" but longer than we thought, because our Fed models did not include supplychain bottlenecks.  In reality every new variant brings new lockdowns and slows the rise or reverses the increase in gas and fuel prices that are a main driver of inflation. Wage increases are a good thing after decades of lack of leverage of workers and economic distortions from this, this may be termed constructive inflation.  Supplychain bottlenecks are likely to ease and not be permanent so that the Fed could be right on that point. A less noticed aspect of the Fed's decision to raise interests without careful thought is that this will impact the ability of poor and moderate income countries to afford medicine and food as exchange rates make their currencies worth less. At the time of variants this is both a practical and a human consideration. What are called emerging markets in finspeak (financial language) are really countries that Stephanie Nolan is writing about on the frontlines of the pandemic in the NYT- South Africa, Zambia. Then there are other poor or moderate income countries- Brazil, Mexico, Russia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia. Today the Fed needs to think about them also. How much vaccine, medicines, or food imports can they afford with weakening currencies as the Fed raises interest rates? At the same time some accomodations for inflation are necessary, but carefully thought, with a lot of thought given to the current state of the world with new variants and weakened economies and no stimulus payments in large parts of the world to offset weakness. ...