LyrArc Article Gist
The Economist points out that a third of the output of Japanese companies is made overseas. Japanese firms are increasing profits with the weaker yen but not sharply reducing prices. South Korean companies have also moved production overseas. As a result the Economist says concerns about the weaker yen leading to depreciation by other countries are not realistic.

LyrArc Article Gist
Public opinion experts in Israel say President Obama's policy in the Middle East is seen by a majority of Israelis as reflecting a sound judgement. Obama's approval ratings in Israel are up 13 percentage points compared to 2010. It is now 54%, according to December opinion polls by Mr. Telhami, a University of Maryland professor who supervised the surveys on Israeli opinion. Only 19% of Israelis now support Israel attacking Iran's nuclear facilities without U.S. support, according to the University of Maryland survey by Mr. Telhami of 500 people, that was annouced last week.

LyrArc Article Gist
Experts point out that Saudi oil price policies are set on a technocratic basis by a small group of advisors. An oil industry veteran Naimi, 79, leads this group of advisors. This means the new King Salman is likely to follow the same course as his predecessor King Abdullah. Gulf oil officials were expecting a drop to around $50 to $60 a barrel, the drop below $50 has surprised even the Saudis. NYT cites IMF estimates of a loss of oil revenues for Saudi Arabia and its allies in the Persian Gulf of about $300 billion in 2015. The Economist and WSJ reports say that for the long term shale oil production and advance in technologies are likely to play a lasting role in keeping oil prices low. At a time when Saudi society is changing, population growing, an older generation likely to transition to a younger generation in government, the cost of the social safety net and ample benefits will remain a concern for the Saudis for the long term.

LyrArc Article Gist
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.

LyrArc Article Gist
At the end of the 2012 Communist Party Congress in Beijing, Xi Jinping assumes the post of chief of the Communist Party of China. He also assumes the post of head of the Central Military Commission, which makes him head of the armed forces of China. Li Keqiang, the incoming prime minister, is the only member of the party Politburo Standing Committee selected by current president Hu Jintao. Jinping is supported by Jiang Zemin, former president. Four of the other five members are older party leaders placed in these positions by former president Jiang Zemin, who succeeded Deng Xiaoping and started China's three decade long modernization. The seven member Standing Committee governs China by consensus. This will limit the room for change, especially as the other five members are in their mid 60-s and favor the status quo. Xi Jinping is 59, Li Keqiang is 57. Xi becomes president in the spring of 2013, and Li becomes prime minister to run the government ministries. The optimism for Li who is the best educated of China's leaders, holding a doctorate in economics from Peking University, and an early interest in constitutional law, is restrained by the institutional arrrangements that favor the status quo. Some experts in China see the new leaders likely to make major changes only if confronted by a crisis. In his live television acceptance speech Xi focussed on China's "rejuvenation," with improvements in the party bureaucracy, tackling corruption, and improving the lives of ordinary people, for better schooling, jobs, incomes, health care, better housing conditions, social security and the environment. From the rush to modernize and build infrastructure attention is now shifting to creating better conditions for the Chinese people....

LyrArc Article Gist
On the surface Turkey's implementation of an IMF program to reduce its deficit in 2001 has lessons for Greece, but looked at closely the situation has some serious differences. Turkish tax collection was weak and this was corrected by the incoming Erdogan administration, salaries were capped and spending was reduced, taxes raised and state assets sold to improve the deficit. But as Tim Ash an economist at RBS bank points out, achieving GDP growth will be very difficult for Greece. For one thing Turkey's lira fell 54% against the dollar in 2001, spurring exports and increasing growth. Greece is part of the euro currency system and this won't be part of the solution. Also Turkey's debt approached 80% of GDP in 2001 (down to 46% of GDP now), compared to 115% for Greece in 2010, so Greece is in a much worse position than Turkey in 2001. Ash sees a restructuring of debt as the best way to restore growth in Greece.

LyrArc Article Gist
The Indian government reports the benchmark wholesale price index for April 2012 was at 7.23%, up from 6.89% in March. The wholesale price index measures bulk sales between corporations and is considered a better measure than the old consumer price index, which lacks representative data from all regions. The wholesale price index does not include services, which make up half of the economic output. A new CPI has been introduced, but more data has to be gathered for it to become a dependable measure of inflation. Core inflation excluding food and energy, which focusses on the manufacturing sector, increased 5.1%.

LyrArc Article Gist
Janet Yellen preceded Mr. Powell as Fed chairman, to head the U.S. central bank. Mr. Powell has warned that it took 8 or 9 years for the Fed policies to work to get tighter labor markets where minorities and other less advantaged groups could find employment. A better solution has to be found. Crises should be anticipated and prevented such as the mortgage crisis of 2009- banks, business, regulators in government, bank policy and political leaders all have a responsibility to ensure this. A mediocre leadership in each field alone could have led to the crisis of this magnitude in 2009. The pandemic is a second blow to these same groups in society struggling to make a living and has added many more. Two large whole sections of society were hurt in the rescue from that banking debacle with shoddy mortgages. The rescue involved low interest rates and the offshoot effect of this was to reduce the return on savings of people in retirement or close to retirement who in the past could depend on interest rates of somewhere between 5 to 8% annually to increase their savings over a decade. The high costs of medical care as a result of artificially inflated medical costs and poor managing of this cost are a burden for this section of society- with diminished savings from both low interest rates and loss of employment from the financial crisis. The young people with high tuition burdens were the other section of society hit hard. Tuition costs are also out of control similar to medical costs, putting great burdens on whole sections of society in an unconscionable way for a society that claims to be "for the people." Mr. Mnuchin, Mr. Trump's Treasury Secretary, did not have a close understanding with Mr. Powell. As Mr. Powell enters the last year of his term as Fed chairman, his close relationship with Ms. Yellen at Treasury is seen in a positive way by the WSJ. Powell worked at Treasury in the 1990's. After 2012 to 2018 both Powell and Yellen were at the Federal Reserve, working closely and having adjacent offices. Will this duo make a difference? ...

LyrArc Article Gist
One Big Beautiful Act passed in US Senate with Vance casting tie breaking vote. It renews the tax cuts from DJT's first term in office in 2017 and provides tax cuts to seniors, middle class, and small business. It provides 100% expensing for business to increase investment. Mothers get child care credit that is doubled, senior citizens over 65 years get a $6000 deduction. The seniors deduction means 88% of seniors will now pay no taxes on social security benefits from 64%. Medicaid changes so that able bodied Americans will have to put in 80 hours of work to qualify.  Note that the Medicaid program was becoming unworkable and unsustainable- starting with the idea of helping people unable to work and transitioning those who could work, it jumped to $228 billion cost in 2000 from $28 billion in 1980, ten times over 20 years. Going up to $918 billion in 2024, 4 times the 2000 level. Medicaid is now 62% of what Social Security costs, $918 billion compared to $1480 billion for Social Security. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Walmart new CEO John Furner from the University of Arkansas with deep connections to Bentonville similar to retiring CEO McMillon. Mcmillon made a decision not to buckle under pressures of Wall Street/CNBC and NYSE in the fall of 2015 as he invested $2.7 billion to build cleaner better stores and to raise wages from $7.25 an hour to $9.00 an hour that year, even though share price dropped 10% and continued to drop. Wages are now $18 an hour in 2025 and parental leave, free college and technical education, planned promotions, other benefits made Walmart a good place to work. Walmart has grown every year since. Its sheer size with 2.1 millon employees means that it is a bellweather for the US economy. Other companies copied Walmart and this has raised wages across the board for lower income workers. With cost of living concerns in 2025 imagine where we would be as a nation without courage of the men who run the companies that run America's economy if wages had stagnated at levels below this for people who still live paycheck to paycheck. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Tax cuts initiated by the Bush administration and to a smaller degree by the Obama administration account for $6.3 trillon of the $10 trillion deficit in 2011. This is about half the $12.7 trillion gap between the $2.3 trillion surplus predicted by the CBO a decade ago for the year 2011 and the current deficit of $10.4 trillon. Two wars and higher defense spending add another $2 trillion. The Stimulus added $700 billon. The Prescription Drug Benefit for seniors $272 billion. This is based on new analysis of CBO data by the Pew Fiscal Analysis Initiative. The record shows unrestrained spending by both parties has led to the current mess. Pete Domenici who chaired the Senate Budget Committee at the time of the first tax cuts in 2001 says "in the end the floodgates were opened." This also shows how quickly the situation can change if sound fiscal practices are abandoned. Two wars were financed entirely with borrowed money for the first time in U.S. history.

LyrArc Article Gist
O'Malley, Sanders, and Clinton emphasize the issue of wages, income disparities, rising inequality, and a shrinking middle class in the first Democratic debate of the U.S. 2016 presidential election. Clinton points out that "at the center of my campaign is how we're going to raise wages." Sanders says that "the middle class of this country for the last 40 years has been disappearing." Clinton points out her opposition to the Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement because it does not help raise American wages. Clinton calls herself a progressive, but "a progressive who gets things done," and a moderate when it comes to getting things done. Sanders points to the "deep injustice, an economic injustice that threatens to tear our country apart, and it will not solve itself." Sanders points to the wealth concentration in the U.S. "with the top one tenth of 1 percent owning about as much as the bottom 90 percent, and 57% of all new income going to the top 1 percent." Clinton comes to Sanders defense on the issue saying "it's our job to rein in the excesses of capitalism so that it doesn't run amok and doesn't cause the kind of inequities we're seeing in our economic system."...

LyrArc Article Gist
About 15% of black men of working age in the population, and 21% of black women, were employed in the U.S. public sector, according to the population survey. The Labor Department reports 500,000 jobs in the public sector were lost since 2007. This reverses an historical trend of resilience in jobs for the public sector during economic downturns. If population increase since 2007 is figured in there are even fewer jobs considering more jobs might have been added, with estimates as high as 1.8 million. This is bad for black people in the U.S. because many work in public sector jobs driving school buses, in the post office, in the police and in other public services, with black people being 30% more likely than whites to hold a public sector job, and twice that of Hispanics. Thic comes at a time when the black community has seen a devastating impact from the foreclosures and other economic damage that followed the 2008 financial crisis. The result is shown in a study of foreclosures for 2005-2009 at Cornell University showing mostly black and Latino neighborhoods were affected by foreclosures at three times the rates for white neighborhoods. According to Pew Research Center the median white family had net assets of $142,000 compared to $11,000 for the median black family. With median black household income at 60% of that of white households the gap keeps increasing especially with high unemployment in black neighborhoods....

LyrArc Article Gist
Germany's social-affairs minister, Ursula von der Leyden, presents the "fourth poverty and wealth report," in March 2013. The issue of inequality is arousing public sentiment in Germany with this becoming an election issue along with the euro crisis and energy reform. The term Gerechtigkeit means "justice" in German and is associated with the idea of equality. The Social Democrats Party and the Greens talk about this in terms of "social scissors" opening wider. The Minder Initiative which passed in Switzerland enabling shareholders to restrict executive pay has led to public discussion in Germany for a similiar approach to be adopted by Germany. The ruling Christian Democratic Party (CDU) of Angela Merkel and the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) party are different from other parties in Europe because of their Catholic and Lutheran roots which favor social solidarity. The FDP party in the ruling coalition supports free market principles but lacks popular support. The Economist cites the work of the German think tank DIW on inequality, which shows inequality showing sharp rise after German reunification around 1991, especially in East Germany. The situation moderates with improvements in inequality in East Germany and a slight improvement in West Germany after 2005. Both East and W. Germany have moved up overall in the Ginni coefficeint which measures inequality from about 0.4 in 1991 to about 0.5 in 2010, showing that the situation has stabilized at a higher level of inequality. Part of this could be because of the shift to temporary workers at lower wages about this time as German industry made efforts to keep wages down and improve competitiveness, even as overall conditions in the economy improved in the last decade. The Economist cites another study by the Initiative for a New Social Market Economy, a German think tank, which compares Germany with other members of the OECD. Germany ranks closer to Scandinavian countries in seventh place in this study, but does poorly in equal oportunities with 14th place. Germany lags behind other OECD and European countries in opportunities for women to work full time. Germany lacks enough daycare facilities for small children so that their mothers can work full time. There is a shortage of about 150,000 for preschool daycare openings in Germany, acccording to information cited by Deutsche Welle from government sources....

LyrArc Article Gist
Private companies such as Reliance Power and Tata Power control only 27% of India's power generating capacity of 205 gigwatts. The government controls most of the capacity in this sector for generation and transmission of power and has failed to invest enough to keep up with growing needs. The government has failed to achieve even modest expansion goals for power generation. A target of 78.7 gigawatts of additions to the national grid were planned for the five year period ending March 31, 2012, but only 70% of that target has been met. China during the same five year period added 418 gigawatts. State utilities sell power at discounted rates resulting in large losses, making it difficult to invest in upgrades in transmission technology and facilities. Rate regulations make it unattractive for private investors. Another problem is the shortage of coal, with coal production concentrated in one state owned firm Coal India that has failed to invest in new technology and improvements. The result is the kind of massive outages from overload of the national power grid in July 2012, affecting most of northern and eastern India....

LyrArc Article Gist
The BBC's security correspondent looks at the cyber espionage being conducted from Russia during the U.S. presidential election. The U.S. director of national intelligence has pointed to the Russian government as the source of hacking into U.S. databases. U.S. intelligence officials say this is intended to interfere with the U.S. election process in some way. It follows hacking into the DNC database of the Democratic Party.

LyrArc Article Gist
Not a very flattering picture of the chancellor. She has already lost 1.3 million CDU voters to the Greens, and about 260,000 to the far right AfD party. In all about 4.3 million CDU voters have shifted from Merkel's CDU to other parties on the right or the left and to the Greens, between the general elections of 2017 and the European elections in 2019, according to Infratest Dimap. It had 33% of the vote in 2017, now it polls at 27%, down 6 points. The Greens come next at 22%, in recent Politico poll. Merkel's sentiments may have overtaken the reality of how much Germans wanted to integrate war and economic refugees from Africa and Asia. She has since revised her judgement that it was a decision made at the time based on what happened at that time without enough time to prepare for the sudden influx of refugees from Budapest. A new party the Alternative for Germany AfD emerged from the migrant crisis in the eastern part of Germany that had 13% of the votes in 2016, building on discontent from reunification, depopulation of the east, and a sense of drift and neglect. Even a sense that the affluent western part of Germany was more concerned about refugees than its own economically insecure countrymen in the east. After being in power since 2005 Merkel's period shows signs of aging. Her record on investment infrastructure and health, education and child care is also found to be weak. The effort to maintain austerity for so long following the financial crisis of 2008 by profligate banking and bad accounting by member states in the EU including Ireland, Spain and Greece, has hurt parts of the middle and working class stuck with low wages and inequality in the EU and in Germany. The migrant crisis and refugees have split her party and German opinion adding to the problems of the economy in the EU and Germany.  ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Children's aid UNICEF shows a photograph of a young girl on top of a garbage heap taken by Arez Ghaderi, as the photograph of the year for 2016. It was taken in Iran at the border with Afghanistan, for Balochi tribe, with a bullet riddled school in the background. The second prize went for a picture of faces of children at a Greek refugee camp as they wait for a a film showing at a makeshift cinema. In both pictures the children seem happy and smiling, the opposite of the picture around them.

LyrArc Article Gist
Ireland's prime minister Enda Kenny says following the Brexit vote that is seen as a disaster for Northern Ireland-"My first interest is Ireland's interests, the protection of the common travel area, the peace process, the open border." Other issues facing Ireland are economic- British people will find Ireland's exports costlier by 10 percent, and make Ireland costlier for British tourists who make up 41% of all Ireland's tourists. Ireland's effort to build an all island health system is also at risk. As Ireland tackles this economic problem it is also moving to attract new business to relocate in Dublin. Among ordinary people the fears are more basic- no one wants to go back to the old days and the sectarian strife and conflicts. For most people the open borders mean a great deal- an achievement that took a long, long time, and no one can see this being reversed overnight, which is why Northern Ireland voted 58% to remain in the EU. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Renault's low cost entry cars which were originally designed with emerging markets in mind, are now popular in France and other countries in Europe. Renault gets 30% of its market share, up from 15% in 2006, from low cost cars like the Logan, which cost conscious buyers buy for around $10,000, instead of buying a used car. This has helped Renault at a time when other segments are not doing so well, and when Peugeot had to arrrange a 1 billion euro emergency capital increase. The profit margin on these low cost cars is 6%, compared to 2-3% profit margin on other Renault models. Renault manufactures the cars under the Renault label or the Dacia lavel depending on where they are sold, and uses a factory in Romania. Renault's model is to set the margin first and then ask suppliers such as LG and others to try to come up with a low cost design that meets its margin requirement. This eliminates features that add cost and may be dispensed with for the customer in mind. It requires a fresh approach. Cutting edge is replaced by working with parts designed for older models that cost less. Renault also used the experience gained in the Romanian factory where some of the tasks are done manually instead of using robots, and waste is reduced. The process has taken time because the Dacia Romanian factory was acquired under a previous CEO Louis Schweitzer in the late 1990's, and the first Dacia Logan was made in the Romanian factory at Pitesti, near Bucharest, in 2004. The reliability of the Dacia made cars is well established, say experts. On the sales side the Logan is sold on a no discount basis with fixed price. Dealers are told no discounts are permitted. Total sales of these cars reached 814,000 in 2011 and are expected to cross 1 million in 2012. This is similiar to the achievement of Toyota with its low cost multipurpose vehicles for emerging markets, which is expected to cross 1 million in 2012. The difference is that Renault has achieved this with European buyers in a bold strategy. Tata Motors which pioneered the effort to build low cost small cars with its $2000 vehicle is planning its own entry in Europe, the Pixel as a low cost city-car in European markets in 2015. And Renault is moving further down in cost than the Logan, as its next step, with such a car manufactured in India by Nissan-Renault and regional partners....

LyrArc Article Gist
John Taylor, says Obama and Alan Krueger (Obama's new head of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisors), said some of the same things in early September, 2011, that were part of Obama's old plan to revive the U.S. economy. And the old plan has failed to produce results. The part that puts construction crews to work on the roads, railways and airports was tried earlier in the stimulus plan. Because of a lack of showel ready projects, and the state governments putting most of the money in their state coffers, this only increased infrastructure by a miniscule 0.05 percent of GDP, according to research by Taylor and John Cogan. Taylor's sees the moves by the Obama administration and the Bernanke Fed as not only being ineffective, but having the opposite effect of lowering investment and consumption demand through increased concerns about the federal debt, another financial crisis or the risk of inflation or deflation. The U.S. private sector has the money to make the investments that create jobs but their concerns have led to holding back. Taylor points to the need for a comprehensive economic strategy to replace these temporary interventions. The debt limit agreement of 2011 is a part of this strategy, and he agrees with reducing spending in a gradual way in a weak economy. The other parts of this strategy he says are entitlement reform, tax reform, regulatory reform, monetary reform, including a reappraisal of the role of government in the economy. This should lead to a more stable and predictable economic environment and reduced uncertainty about the future, which is critical to improving supply and demand....

LyrArc Article Gist
The midwest and east coast of the U.S. is hit by record low temperatures not seen in decades. Temperatures reached a minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit on January 31, 2019. WIth windchills temperature of about  negative 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Extremely low temperatures hit states such as Michigan Illinois, Indiana and Minnesota.

LyrArc Article Gist
After months of uncertainty and waiting for concessions, offering temporary exemptions, the Trump administration announced tariffs will go into effect on steel and aluminium imported from the European Union, Canada and Mexico. A tariff of 10% on aluminium and 25% on steel goes into effect on May 31st, 2018. The tariffs affect about half of the imports of steel and aluminium into the U.S. and are intended to keep promises to protect American industry made by president Trump during his election campaign.

Mexico and the European Union are imposing retaliatory tariffs. The European Union will impose tariffs on $3 billion of American goods in retaliation. 

LyrArc Article Gist
U.S. job growth slowed in February to just 20,000 jobs in nonfarm sector following strong gains in December and January. The 3 month average is 186,000 jobs created. Unemployment rate dropped to 3.8%. The figures are watched closely as Europe and China are showing slow growth. The European Central Bank said it will not increase interest rates till 2020 and announced fresh stimulus loans. The U.S. Federal Reserve is not expected to raise rates in the next few months. Economic output growth was 0.5% in the first quarter after 3% growth in 2018. Other reports show labor scarcity with wage growth outpacing inflation.