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President Biden asks for more authority for the FDIC so that bank executives taking excessive risks or mismanaging banks can be held responsible. The FDIC could then claw back compensation, impose civil penalties, and ban executives from working in the banking industry again.

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The FDA has found deficiencies and violations of safe manufacturing practices at 2 Ranbaxy plants in India. The FDA issued a ban on imports of 30 generic drugs from Ranbaxy in India.

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Michael Fathers reviews two detailed accounts of Mao's Great Leap Forward. From 1958-62 Mao launched an effort to industrialize China in its effort to surpass Krushchev's effort to surpass the U.S. and western nations in one decade. Yang Jingsheng's account in the book 'Tombstone,' is a result of decades of research to find what happened during this period. He lost his own father to starvation during this period when all Chinese agriculture was forced into communes with communal living and communal kitchens. The result were disastrous as agricultural production suffered badly leading to famines and loss of an estimated 45 million lives. The policy was continued even as the result showed a looming disaster by 1959. It was only by 1962 that Mao was forced to accept the failure of the program. As an editor of Xinhua news agency, Jingsheng had access to accounts of waht happened in provincial documents and archives. The other book reviewed is 'The Great Famine' by Frank Dikotter which provides an illuminating account of what happened in these years. Dikotter says the final responsibility rested with Mao for calling for higher grain deliveries from the countryside at the height of the famine and for continuing the policy of force and coercion leading to starvation- he quotes Mao who said: "It is better to let half the people die so that the other half can eat their fill." The truth about this period was hidden by propaganda and the mistake accounts of westerners who visited China including Francois Mitterand till the 1990's. Jasper Becker, a former correspondent in China for the Guardian, gave one of the first accounts of what had happened in "Hungry Ghosts: China's Secret Famine" (1996). What shocked readers was the extent of the dead, the violence, and the fear of speaking out even after 30 years. The fear of speaking out is evidenced in the pen name Mo Yan of the Nobel prize winner in Literature for 2012 which means do not speak out in Chinese because his parents were from a more affluent farming family in the village. Mo Yan uses animal and fairy tale characters and Chinese history in his novels and stories including his effort to describe the behaviour of arrogant local officials. The chronology of this period also tells a story. China's Communists took control in 1949, the famine and violent repression to establish the commune system occured in 1958-1962 only 8 years later, and the Great Proleterian Cultural Revolution was launched by Mao in 1966 and was to last a decade till his death in 1979- a period which saw a new effort of upending of China's countryside to establish communism....

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Water shortages, inflation of 50% and tax increases of 62%, economic protests in Iran and discontent with billions of aid for proxies. The political discontent is fueled by economic discontent and Iranians oppose sending billions of dollars in aid to proxies of Iran in the Middle East, in Lebanon and Yemen, involvement in other parts of the world. Women's protests happened in 2022, and this has merged into the general wave of protests. This Dw.com report says the situation is such that the prime minister says it is "difficult to govern the country." A year ago in Jan 2025 the currency Rial was 820,000 to 1 US Dollar, in Jan 2026 it is 1.45 million Rials. This makes everything harder to import.

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In a 50-50 Senate to pass president Biden's $3.6 trillion Families and Workers plan requires the vote of Kyrsten Simema, Democrat of Arizona. Simema is the lone holdout in the plan to raise $540 billion by increasing corporate tax rates to pay for part of the plan. Tax rate increases on capital gains would raise nearly $300 billion. A law passed by president Trump lowered corporate tax rates to 21% which would go up to 26.5% under the Biden plan. The top individual rate lowered to 37% would go up to 39.6% and capital gains rate from 23.8% to 28.8% under the Biden plan. Democrats say these new rates are fair considering how much wealth distribution is skewed and how much workers and families have failed to benefit in the policies pursued by different administrations since Reagan, through Bush, Clinton, Obama and Trump.

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All government workers are ordered to return to their offices full time by executive order of the president.

The Secretary of the Treasury says he will be in the office all days of the week and expects every worker at his agency to be in the office.

This will have some other consequences-

As workers return to offices it will increase the efficiency of government and its responsiveness to the people after the pandemic years.

It will set a model for the private sector to get people back to the office. As people return to offices this will reduce the demand for remote work travel that put upward pressure on prices of airline travel and hotel travel that increased the inflation in this area and sector of the economy.

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BBC's The Travel Show shows this video of the world's first solar powered camper van. The author goes to Eindhoven, Netherlands to see the camper. It can do 750 kms in one day on the road and take one to distant locations.

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Britain's economy shrank by 0.5% in the last quarter of 2010, according to Office for National Statistics. Unemployment went up to 7.9% and 2.5 million jobless. Inflation up from 3.3% in the year to November, to 3.7% in December 2010. Mervyn King, governor of Bank of England, says inflation will go up to 4-5% in 2011. The austerity plan is only now beginning to go into effect and creates a difficult year. The VAT, a consumption tax, goes up to 20% from 17.5% on Jan 4th, and public spending cuts go into effect in April. With consumption depressed, higher investment and exports are the two areas supporting growth. There is a risk that the Bank of England will have to raise interest rates, as it left interest rates at 0.5% in December 2010. Under these conditions not much of a recovery can be expected in 2011-2012.

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Walmart lifts pay to minimum of $14 an hour to close the gap with its rivals.

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Laurent Berger is the likely candidate for bringing together all social democratic and socialist parties in France.  French Socialist parties and leaders Melenchon, Glucksmann, and others in Greens party join together to contest the Assembly elections June 30, July 7. This means the socialist parties have finally made the decision to come up with ways to tackle the cost of living crisis, loss of manufacturing, lack of investment in infrastructure that can make a difference in the daily lives of working people. This was missing in Macron's plan as En Marche was built by Macron based on his detecting an opportunity during the last year of Socialist Hollande's term in 2017, not with a well thought out plan for renewal in France. The years of the presidential first and second terms did not work from a plan to tackle the issues facing working class families and benefitted as much from the alienation that had driven working class votes in different directions from the failures of Socialist or Social Democratic leaders. This happened in Germany with Scroeder, in Britain with Gordon Brown, and in France with Hollande, in the US with Clinton and Obama. The path that president Biden has taken to invest in infrastructure with bipartisan support, to invest in manufacturing with bipartisan support is what the Social Democratic and Socialist parties in France with bipartisan help now need to take up. ...

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NYC's Hudson Gateway Tunnel Project halted from frozen federal funding Jan 2026. It shows the need for the federal government and state governments to work together for building needed infrastructure. That is the only way its gets funded and built.