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Robert Morgenthau, a former district attorney for New York County, says the American deportation effort is putting about 1000 people out of the U.S. every day. He calls it a deportation effort that has gone wildly astray. Here he says the new leadership of Jeh Johnson is likely to be better than her predecessor Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano in ensuring that the agency can move in a direction that ensures fairness for immigrants who are law abiding. Morgenthau says in his long experience as district attorney he has learned that the trust and cooperation of the immigrant community in New York is essential to going after the criminal elements that are a danger to society. And some of this trust has been eroded by the actions of the ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, part of Homeland Security Department, through large scale and record breaking deportation approaching about 400,000 a year. A report for the last fiscal year shows only 14.5% of the deportees in immigration court were criminals or suspected of terrorism....

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New UBS CEO, Sergio Ermotti, plans to scale down UBS investment banking operations because of stricter regulations and a changing market environment. He said in an interview that UBS will go back to what it was in the 1990's, that he now sees the investment banking boom of the last ten years as an aberration. He also sees rival banks taking the same route. The plan is to shrink risk-weighted assets from 300 billion Swiss francs today to 145 billion Swiss francs by scaling back or exiting in areas such as asset securitization, complex fixed income structured products and trading in some equity products. UBS will cut 2000 investment banking jobs to 16,500 in 2013. The focus will shift to foreign exchange, commodities and mergers and acquisitions. Investment banking made a profit for only one of the last 4 years, taking up two thirds of the bank's capital and earning 26% of the group's the pretax profit in the last year. The new plan will reduce the size of the investment bank so that it makes up less than half of the group assets by 2016....

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A sharp increase in imports leads to a growing trade deficit affecting the outlook for the Pakistan rupee. The central bank allowed the currency to devalue by 3% in the last week. The IMF has called for a weaker Pakistan rupee to narrow the trade deficit. The Pakistan rupee stands at about 109 rupees to 1 U.S. dollar, according to Thomson Reuters data. Experts say it is overvalued by about 25%. Pakistan gets about $20 billion in remittances from overseas for 2016, about 7% of GDP, and the central bank has now reversed an earlier policy of intervening in currency markets to prop up the rupee. A lower value for the rupee is now seen as good for economic growth.

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How temp services companies such as Kelly Girl and Manpower were started in the post war period. What this means in today's economy with the increase in temp and part-time workers without worker protections and benefits. The trend to temp workers without contracts or protection is seen in Germany, Spain, Japan and other countries. Hatton cites Census Bureau statistics showing one third of adults experiencing poverty are working, one fourth of jobs in America pay less than the federal poverty line of $23,050. In the U.S., Europe and Japan it is not only the jobs that matter but the kind of jobs. Even in countries such as Germany that reduced the unemployment rate this came with a downside in the higher number of lower paying jobs. Temporary workers almost doubled in two decades in Japan to 33% of workers by 2007. Some of the difficult work after the nuclear accident in Japan was performed by temporary workers.

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The negotiations between the Justice Department and S&P that are likely to lead to a settlement with S&P paying a fine of $1 billion for bad ratings on mortgage securities. This would wipe out operating profits of one year for S&P. It comes after S&P initially responded that the civil suit was a punitive action as a result of its downgrade on U.S. Treasury debt.

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Serious problems are ailing the television channels in the US. This is because the siloing of channels into political spaces as audiences converge to watch particular channels is resulting in these channels unable to take positions based on the merits of issues. Climate change is one example- today no television channel in the US asks the question what would happen to the climate if the US loses another 4 years 2024-2028 in dealing with the climate challenge- makes no investment in climate change action. This is a grave and serious matter that needs to be at the top of discussions alongside the forest fires and floods that show up at the top of news pages every day. This is now the central issue at one of the channels as James Murdoch and his wife Kathryn ask this question of their own family business in television channels in the US and Europe. This is also a larger issue facing the television business.  Another issue is that internet business such as Twitter X, Facebook, TikTok are also concerned with ratings, and think mistakenly that being neutral about climate change action is acceptable, that it is someone else's problem, not theirs. It would cost upwards of 1 trillion dollars in 2028 for the US to simply to address the climate change problems arising from no action for the next 4 years. The problem may become hard to control by then regardless of how much money is put into tackling it, making life difficult on this planet. ...

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E.J. Dionne, of Gerogetown University and the Brookings Institution, says the current situation in U.S. politics resembles the 1912 presidential election when a Princeton professor Democrat Woodrow Wilson called for stronger curbs on big financial institutions, and Republican Teddy Roosevelt, a former president, called for tighter regulation. During his presidency Roosevelt had helped pass legislation to curb monopolies, and represented the Progressive wing of the Republican party. Taft who was president was Teddy Roosevelt's protege and vice president before becoming president, and alienated Roosevelt by moving away from progressive actions taken during Roosevelt's administration. Dionne says Hillary Clinton's views are similiar to Teddy Roosevelt's views, and Bernie Sanders' views to Wilson's views. Wilson won 435 electoral votes to Roosevelt's 88, and Tafts 8. The big difference now is that on the Republican side the progressive wing that Teddy Roosevelt established is non existent, with Cruz's positions similiar to Reagan's, Kasich and Cruz at best close to Jack Kemp's views on broadening the Republican base with concern for working class issues, and Trump's views not clear because of lack of clear policy or programs beyond the personality based campaign. Dionne points to the problems facing the "progressives" of Sander's young supporters staying away from the polling booths with Hillary Clinton as the nominee, putting a Republican nominee into the White House. Overlooked here is the idea that much of the election campaign even in an advanced country like the U.S. is fought on slogans, leaving out some critical facts. The problems progressives face emerged during a period when a Democrat was president, and the influence of lobbyists had not diminished. Outsiders on the Republican side are focussed on diminishing the power of lobbyists, the political calculus of elections, and other interests that have affected policy in the last 8 years hurting the middle class and working class. ...

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With the ITU voting to let governments control the internet, the decision of the Obama administration to not renew the Commerce Department agreement with Icann to provide oversight and governance looks increasingly ill advised. China, Russia and other governments lack the same committment to an open global internet that the U.S. has. Esther Dyson, founder of Icann, says this is a bad idea. Icann provides the .com and .org addresses for the internet. For Dyson UN oversight is "a fate worse than death."

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The global economic map is rapidly redrawing bringing US and Europe closer. The US has imported more goods from Europe this year than from China. In September alone says WSJ Germany exported 50% more goods to the US year over year with the weaker euro increasing the momentum. European FDI foreign direct investment in the US increased by 13.5% in 2021 to $3.2 trillion. US FDI to Europe increased by 10% to $4 trillion. There is a push on both sides of the Atlantic to increase local manufacturing, and to increase trade, and shift supply chains away from the overdependence on China.  

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The Labor Department reported U.S. payrolls increased by a seasonally adjusted 163,000 jobs in July 2012. A survey of U.S. households showed unemployment edging higher to 8.3%, up by 0.1%. Private companies accounted for all the job additions of 172,000. Governments reduced jobs by 9000 and the federal government reduced jobs by 2000. Manufacturing added 25,000 jobs. Professional and business services added 49,000 jobs, with temporary help and computer systems design being the largest sources of jobs in this area. The health care sector added 12,000 jobs. A broader measure of unemployment including job seekers and part time workers is at 15%, up 0.1% from the prior month.

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Lego chief executive, Jorgen Vig Knudstrop, sees strong growth in Japan, S. Korea and China, and weak growth in India because of a lack of a developed retail distribution system. Sales increased by over 50% in Asia and 23% in the U.S. in the first half of 2012. Lego benefitted from a new product launch called Lego Friends, which is construction toys for girls. Product introductions based on movie themed sets also helped increase sales. Knudstrop says in an interview that he sees weaker U.S. sales in the next 2-3 years because of higher taxes to reduce the deficit and less consumer spending.

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Residential property investments are showing a consistent return in Japan. In 2013 residential property investments had a total return of income plus capital gains of 8.0% vs. 9.7% in the U.S., according to Investment Property Databank Ltd. In 2009 the worst year, returns were -3.8% in Japan vs. -16.3% in the U.S. Income gains support returns for residential investments. Investment is increasing with real estate investment up to 3.5 trillion yen in year to date Sept 2014, up 13% over the same period prior year. Blackstone is buying General Electric's residential real estate properties (about 10,000 non-luxury rental units in major cities), as trends show more people moving to cities.

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German chancellor Merkel says after a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Kerry, after disagreements over NSA spying activities- "Mutual interest will be the motor for finding common solutions step-by-step. We talk about such questions of NSA openly even when there are differences." In the first address to parliament as head of the new CDU-SPD coalition, Merkel said mass collection of phone data by NSA only led to mutual mistrust and in fact diminished rather than increased security. Germans are even more sensitive than the U.S. about such spying after traumatic experience under Gestapo and Stasi secret police during 1931-2090.

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Low bank wages for the U.S.'s 500,000 bank tellers. The median annual income of a bank teller in the U.S. is about $24,100 or $11.59 an hour, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. According to a report by the Committee for Better Banks, about 39% of bank tellers in New York rely on public assistance. Nationally bank tellers need $105 million in food stamps, $250 million in earned income tax credit and $534 million in Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program to get by. According to SNL Financial bank profits reached $141.3 billion in 2012, and median chief executive pay was about $552 million.

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This WSJ report looks at the U.S. unemployment report showing unemployment rate dropping from 14.7% to 13.3%. The hardest hit leisure and hospitality industry is rebounding first with the largest gains in jobs as the economy recovers. 1.4 million jobs were added in this sector. Construction is lso coming back with 464,0000 jobs added, Unemployment for Hispanics and Blacks is higher than for whites. Black unemployment rate is steady at 16.8%, Hispanic unemployment at 17.6% down from about 19%. Women are showing higher unemployment rate than men, partly reflecting their higher numbers in the leisure and hospitality, education sectors where social distancing measures are needed becauseof social contact.

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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. 

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India's options to respond to a terrorist attack in Kashmir in are limited by winter weather and the global political situation. Saudi Arabia and China have moved closer to China in recent years. Saudi Prince Salman visited Islamabad, Pakistan, and New Delhi. Britain is distracted by Brexit, and the U.S. president is engaged in a struggle with Congress over a border wall with Mexico.

With no powers making efforts to de-escalate the situation India's prime minister Modi- who faces elections in coming months- has to craft a response that meets domestic pressures to respond with restraint.

 

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Brent crude prices March 3 are up to $79 a barrel. Iran And Qatar Energy have stopped production of oil. Oil has more flexibility than gas supplies for alternative sources. There are also many tankers and ships inventory on the oceans that has built up which will help big importers like the Chinese who get 5 million barrels a day through these Straits (almost a third of the total 16 million barrels a day China uses). US has offered to insure shipping through its financial institutions and escort tanker traffic through the Straits of Hormuz. It is also taking action to reduce the risk in the Straits.

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Eni and Repsol the Italian and Spanish energy companies are owed $6 billion by the Venezuelan government for natural gas they supply from fields in Venezuela to the Venezuelan people. About 40% of natural gas supplies come from Ei and Repsol. Venezuela has not paid these companies as the economy collapsed. Eni and Repsol have continued the supplies because of the devastating impact on the people it it were cutoff. Under the new US arrangement where new companies can join Chevron as producers Eni and Repsol are planning to increase oil production in the country with some of the oil going to pay for the $6 billion owed.

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U.S. added 245,000 jobs in November. Unemployment rate drops from 6.9% to 6.7% as some Americans give up looking for work. The concern now is not the rate of job creation which is healthy but the drop outs from the workforce.  Concern arises from the long drawn out effects of the 2009 financial crisis and its effects which were seen over a decade. This report in NYT says the share of prime age Americans who were employed returned to the January 2008 level in 2019. And then the pandemic hits putting everything back again. This time if the lesson is learned about the long term damage to working families it is that this be tackled as a priority for the central bank, the U.S. Federal Reserve, an the Treasury, and Council of Economic Advisors, under the leadership of president Biden. Fortunately both Yellen and the new proposed head of the Council are students of labor markets and have stated this is one of the lessons they have learned and will act on. As this report says the opiate crisis, the risks of addiction increased, and there were links to the long period people were without jobs. The longer a person is without a job the more likely he will become permanently unemployed. The hope now is that the vaccination effort could bring people back to work quickly as business and life resumes in 2021, with workers being hired back. The share of prime age Americans working in November is 76.5% compared to 80.5% in February, which means this has to go up by about 4 percentage points. The people who are not in the labor force today but still want a job are 2.2 million. It is this that needs to be the focus of the new administration, central bank, and Congress. ...

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Donald Trump is acquitted in the second impeachment trial with a vote in the Senate of 53 in favor to 47 against. A two thirds majority is required to impeach a president. Senators Burr of North Carolina and Cassidy of Louisiana were Republicans who joined the expected ones to vote for impeachment- the Republicans Mitt Romney of Utah, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. The Republican defense lawyer insisted that Trump's speech to his supporters was not an intention to incite them on the day of the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021 but an expression of his rights to free speech guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution First Amendment. He made the point that the prosecution lawyers had selectively focused attention on the words "fight like hell" and taken them out of the entire context in which they were made, ignoring key parts of Mr. Trump's speech. The defense argued that the president had already left office and this made an impeachment unconstitutional. Seventy five million voters voted for Mr. Trump and he cited this as the most number of votes won by a sitting president. President Biden is shifting his attention to the president's agenda and needs Republican support to pass key legislation including financial help to households, unemployed, and business to recover from the pandemic. The U.S. health effort behind the vaccination drive and seeing the struggle in Europe to access key medical supplies of vaccine is also leading to new efforts to move beyond the rhetoric to the hard work ahead with support of all parties. As part of this the trial once it reached the Senate was quickly resolved in about 5 days. The defense used only a small fraction of the time allotted with bipartisan effort to not let the trial drag on, bipartisan effort to putting some statements simply on the record and not calling witnesses.   ...

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A former solicitor general questions the 4 page summary of Attorney General Barr as a misrepresentation of the findings of the Mueller investigation following the protest by Mr. Mueller himself that the findings were distorted in the summary. It defeated the very purpose of appointing the Special Counsel. It was upto Congress to come up with its conclusions according to how the U.S. constitutional process was intended to work on questions of national importance, and not the Attorney General appointed by the president. Neal Katyal helped draft the regulations about the way a special counsel is supposed to operate. He can show the findings on each matter whether the president is cleared or not cleared, bu it is Congress that has to make up its mind and come up to its own conclusions. That is Congress's role and not the Attorney General's role. By taking on Congress's role and drafting a 4 page report that exonerates the president Mr. Barr has violated the letter and the spirit of the regulations set for the Special Counsel's office. Mr. Katyal concludes this article saying -"There is no more sacred duty for Congress than gettting to the bottom of whether our president has taken care that the laws of this country have been faithfully executed." He says in drafting the special counsel office regulations he and others had thought of the possibility of there being "a nefarious Attorney General" though "we didn't predict this amount of duplicity."  The U.S. Congress now faces the challenge of getting to the bottom of the matter and drawing its own conclusions. Katyal questions polls showing that the public does not want further inquiry because he says the Attorney General has created confusion, misrepresented Mr. Mueller and delayed the release of the Mueller Report to the public.     ...

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In a 5 to 4 court runling the U.S. Supreme Court gives president Trump the authorization to use $2.5 billion in Pentagon funds for building a border wall with Mexico. This was a campaign promise and energized his election campaign after years of failure to reach agreement between Democrats and Republicans on how to tackle the migration issue. In the court's decision it overturned an appellate court decision.  The Supreme Court stated in its order that the groups challenging the administration did not appear to have the legal right to do so. This indicates that the Court's conservative majority is likely to support the Trump administration in the end.  The surge in migration from Central American countries such as Guatemala through Mexico has revived the issue of migration. President Trump also secured an agreement with Guatemala to cut down on the migration.  President Trump has cited the need to control flow of illegal drugs across U.S. southern border in addition to the migrants from Mexico and Central America. In bringing the case to the Supreme Court the solicitor general, Noel Francisco wrote that the Plaintiff (Sierra Club) "interests in hiking, bird watching and fishing in designated drug smuggling corridors do not outweigh the harm to the public from halting the government's efforts to construct barriers to stanch the flow of illegal narcotics across the southern border."  The dispute between the Trump administration and the Democrats controlled House of Representatives led to court decisions stopping the use of government funds to build the wall. This led to the declaration of a national emergency along the Mexican border by president Trump on Feb. 15, 2019, after a government shutdown during an impasse with Congress on this issue.  Now the Supreme Court has given president Trump access to Defense Department funds to proceed with the wall and meet a campaign promise.   ...

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Germany is well known for its auto industry and machinery industries. It lags well behind other countries in its investment in internet infrastructure. Germany ranks 33rd worldwide in average monthly fixed broadband connection speeds, and 47th in mobile, according to Speedtest Global Index. The U.S. ranks No. 7 in fixed broadband and 37th in mobile. To get a sense of how far behind the U.S. and Germany are in mobile infrastructure and in average monthly mobile connection speeds consider Croatia is No. 9 and Canada is No. 3, Australia No. 4 in mobile. Consider in fixed broadband Romania is No. 4 and Hungary No. 10. What happened? In Germany strict fiscal rules prevented investment in infrastructure without considering how much good essential infrastructure can add to economic growth. There was a decade of disinvestment under Merkel in the country's infrastructure. Consider that Germany relies on copper for rather than glass fiber for linking end users to the fixed line network. Deutsche Telekom laced a strategy for investing in a new network in the last decade when early on in the decade Telecom companies inFrance ad Portugal were rolling out new all fiber networks in keeping with a 2010 European Union report that recommended EU countries invest in fiber. So that today after a decade of disinvestment in essential infrastructure Germany is finally waking up to the fact that its development is uneven at best and lopsided for certain with production facilities in cars and other machinery but failure to invest in the technology that drives machines and cars. Even the updating excuse given by Deutsche Telkom of vectoring or reducing interference sounds strange a decade ago as stated in this report, using the same cooper connections simply reducing noise, a failure of singular proportions to modernize. As a result some of the fastest connections are now in Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea in Asia or countries such as Norway, Netherlands, Switzerland in Europe. ...

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A slight shift in American opinion favoring a deal with Iran is shown in a WSJ/NBC poll in July 2015 compared to the poll in April 2015. Support for reaching a nuclear deal with Iran remains stable at 36% in both polls, the opposed drops by 6 percentage points to 17% from 23%, and the percentage of people who say they do not know enough to formulate an opinion goes up to 46% from 40%. The intricacies of a nuclear technology deal and the sites involved lead to a high percentage of don't know enough to give an opinion. Factors hindering a deal include inspection of military sites, and Iranian intentions. Factors favoring reaching a deal now is the risk that this would mean Iran would go back into isolation and the opportunity to work with moderates might be lost. The Rouhani administration was an effort by voters to elect a government that could ease or remove sanctions to improve the economy and living conditions- its failure would lead to Iran losing an opportunity to open up to the world. The pressure from the U.S. Congress and Israel served to push for a verifiable and effective agreement to control development of nuclear technology for weapons systems. Behavioural factors involved are the very young population in Iran which has no memories about the period before the revolution in 1979- 70% of the population of 74 million are people under the age of 35. This group is eager for ties to the outside and could change Iran's outlook and policies int the future towards moderation. Risks in not reaching a deal also include the possibility of the Saudis developing nuclear technology and nuclear proliferation. Winners from a deal because of the flow of Iranian oil to world markets and a period of extended low oil prices are the U.S., Europe, China and India. Germany gains new markets to replace the growth in the Russian market after sanctions. Lifting of an arms embargo, an added risk in the last days of the talks, would be mitigated by making the lifting of that embargo very gradual....