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An Italy based auto analyst for Global Insight consultancy, Pierluigi Bellini, says Marchionne understands how the system works in the US compared to Daimler executives, who had a difficult time understanding and integrating themselves with the Americans at Chrysler. Marchionne has worked in North America, and brings a youthful culture with plenty of creative energy, which could work well with Chrysler. Chrysler is also at the similiar stage that Fiat was in 2004, when Marchionne came in from outside- it is broken and everyone including the Obama administration is looking for a fresh start. In such a situation its easier to tear up the old organization charts and bring in fresh blood, young people with new ideas, and make a fresh start. Wth the government providing the financing, the financial risk is minimized. What remains is the risk in a drastically smaller and rapidly declining market. Here the lack of mass market small cars in the US, may work to the advantage of a European maker with fresh ideas and speed, and popular European small car models, which is what Fiat has at this time. It is quite possible that the idea that Americans do not like small cars may turn out to be not true. The market is changing and the demographics and economic situation is changing dramatically, cost conscious Americans may like to have a popular small car. Americans with larger cars may like to have a less conspicuous, and easy to drive and park car for short city driving, as their second or third car. If a economic recovery does not occur for several years and Americans downscale in everything from homes, appliances, electronics, and cars to what their European and Asian brethren are used to, both from an environmental point of view, and from a practical commonsense point of view of gettting rid of excess and extravagance, size may be sacrificed for convenience and practicality. Smaller cars are well equipped in Europe with all the comforts and electronics so small does not have to be cheap. In short in a growing small car segment, innovative design and speed of development, with quality engineering may be the ticket for Fiat and Chrysler to the American market....

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How their strains in the the the Toyota manufacturing system and how Toyota's quality is not what it once was. Its image as a environment conscious company is also suffereing with its attempt to stall new fuel economy legislation in Congress like th Big Three American companies. And new hybrid engines are being introduced in joint development between Mercedes, BMW and GM so the novelty of Toyota hybrid may just wear out. And competitors from Germany and the US are now working harder to reduce Toyota's advantage by producing quality cars. As styling design and creative innovation has not been Toyota's strong point the Americans and the Germans have an opportunity to come up with something new. Even the incentives Toyota has to offer to sell its cars have now come up to what the Gm, Ford and Chrysler had to offer. According to CNW Marketing Research Toyota's dealer incentives have almost tripled in the last 3 years to an average of $3752 per vehicle. This is not a good sign. And we may have reached a point where the difference in quality between the GM Malibu and the Honda Accord from the Toyota Camry may really not be that much. No surprise that this is shaking up Toyota. The "Customer First Initiative" in response to quality issues and recalls is to have more power put into the hands of the chief engineer for any product launch to ensure quality problems are addressed early. And the dealers have EN2 (everything matters exponentially to address quality issues at the dealer level. And there aren't enough sensei or teachers of the Toyota Production System to meet the rapid growth of plants and the Global Production Centre was designed to meet this need by training teachers in an accelerated way in Japan. But there is a sense that a lot of the old Toyota magic may be fading just as Toyota reached te peak of its popularity sometime last year or 2005. Not because Toyota hasn't made the effort but because the whole dynamics of the car industry keep changing and Germans and the Americans are also pushing harder nowadays....

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Americans loaded up with debt may be turning to older thriftier ways of an earlier generation. This this will affect consumer spending, have an impact on Chinese exports, and on the Japanese economy which is dependent on China for growth. Some argue that there is a culture of consumer spending that runs through recent American history. Even after one boom was over the stock boom was replaced by a housing boom, each boom and easy credit offering free spending and borrowing lifestyles. Is it going to change now? But it could be that a point has been reached where the finances of households and of the nation's credit system can only go so far, and culture won't matter if banks tighten up credit. There is a limit for the Fed to act to lower rates, and household debt has reached highly serious proportions. The savings rate went from one tenth of income in 1984, to 5% in 1994, to slightly negative in 2008. Today for those who borrowed against their homes in 2003-2007, 34 million households or one third of the US households, savings rate was negative 13% in 2006 June. Thhis came down to 7% in end of 2007, according to Moody's Economy.com, which suggests that the cutback in consumer spending from this group of people had already begun. What will this mean for consumer spending in the USA? It means that even though the top fifth of American earners who generate half of all consumer spending according to Barclay's Capital, will continue spending though a bit more carefully than before. The rest of the American people will be cutting back, especially the one third of the nation that is heavily in debt, and the unemployed if job numbers aren't that good. Which could be why Goldman Sachs predicts that Japan is already in recession using the Japanese definintion of decline in output, and China may be slowing down more significantly than is understood because of the poor data that is coming out of China. The Chinese economic activity too chaotic to accurately measure, and with large time lags before what is actually happening is detected and quantified correctly. ...

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How Lehman Brothers CEO underestimated the situation facing his firm and failed to realize the true extent of the economic environment that the country is facing. He did not move fast enough for the speed with things deteriorate in this new environment which is nothing like the environment they faced before. In the end he held out for a better deal when he was negotiating with potential partners till the other side walked away. As a trader who led the firm for 14 years he was used to snap decisions so when he negotiated with Korea Development Bank and things were difficult he grew frustrated according to the Wall Street Journal and threw up his arms and the meeting ended. After the two sides parted subsequent talks faltered. At that August meeting the Korea bank proposed to invest $4 billion to $6 billion into Lehman and on the other side the CEO of Korea Development Bank had once been the head of Lehman Brothers in South Korea. The Journal report says that the Koreans felt their approach was realistic and were prepared to move forward but that Mr. Fuld was holding out for a better deal. The Koreans would have received a large stake in the firm. But not reaching the deal in the negotiation with the Koreans in June and then again in August and not marking down the firm's large holdings of real estate to reflect new conditions, and relying too much on the access to capital from the Fed, may all prove to be the undoing of Lehman because its stock has dropped precipitiously in the last few days losing more than 40% of it value in one day and then continuing down a slippery slope. Mr Fuld has led the company for 14 years and is the decision maker in this company, being called by employees as "the chairman" or "the gorilla". In these 14 years he gained a reputation for driving hard deals and in this case he may have not realized the crtical situation the company faces required a more urgent approach and a willingness to consider different deals some of which may have led to giving up some of the complete independence with which he operated....

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Russian ambassador to Kabul Mr Kabulov talks about his experience in the Russian Afghan war when was the top KGB person in Kabul. He describes what he learned from the war, which he is telling Americans there and Nato forces leaders there. He makes a couple of important points. First, he says the Soviet record is largely unknown or unpresented, when it comes to helping modernize Afghan society in the cities like Kabul. This modernizing mission led to billions of rubles being spent on education, advancing the role of women, and building roads, dams and an industrial infrastructure. Of the mistakes Americans are making, he lists them one by one. "Because we deployed very easily into the major cities, we did'nt give much thought to what was happening in the countryside." He says there is an "irritative allergy" in the countryside, which is hard to control in a vast mountainous region, has historical basis which the British experienced, and is easy to stir up by sending large number of troops from European or Western powers. When these troops have to take retailatory steps such as destroying villages where insurgents are found along with the civilians there. That is why he thinks increasing American troop levels to double troop strength from current Nato levels of 65,000, can only stir up this"irritative allergy." The Soviets had 140,000 troops and this did not help. What he thinks would have beeen better was to let the Afghan army do the job, and for the Russians to say goodbye. America may be about to do just that, but in the meantime there may be an effort to create a respected Afghan government and army which inspires confidence and support in the meantime. What is clearly different here is that America is not fighting a proxy war with a superpower, and it is fighting awar for the soul of Pakistan now, so that at some point the wholehearted support of the people of Pakistan may be marshalled, especially if the Taliban alienate moderate Islamic Pakistanis and America can wean away Afghan Islamic moderates and get rural support from tribes and other sources....

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Privileged minorities ethnic or white among large native populations. Amy Chua argues that free markets that empower the white minority giving it special privileged status, and democracy that empowers the native peoples, leads to conflict and exacerbates tensions. She talks about the Venezuelan experience with Chavez. Before Chavez Venezuela had free markets and elections in which two parties alternately controlled the government. Even before Reagan era and post Reagan era promotion of free markets and democracy this existed. However people were fed up with corruption and the native peoples did not see their lives improve. They tried a populist politician in Chavez who redistributes petroleum wealth to the poorer classes. Some of this tension is inevitable, but if all sides use good sense and understanding, and manage this tension constructively there still exists a better situation than there was before- when looking at overall public welfare and considering the welfare of the people and the educated professional classes. When there is a failure to work together it shows the shortsightedness of both sides, the poor understanding and lack of joint effort for mutual benefits, and not the shortsightedness of free markets and democracy. And one is not talking of free markets as American type, but free markets as crafted for each individual country based on its own history, culture, time and place, as free markets are not the same in America, Britain, Germany, France, Japan and South Korea, China and India in the post war period. China is not even a democracy and has practiced one of the wildest kind of free market economy based on its own unique situation, calculated consensus to use exports, foreign investment, and domestic investment in infrastructure as engines of development- its own peculiar use of free market ideas for its own situation. If it works, for as long as it works its good. Now as the situation changes with loss of export markets expected in 2009, China is changing to another kind of use of free market ideas tailored to its idea of free markets for development of the Chinese economy and distribution of benefits to urban and rural areas. ...

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The behaviour of the people at private equity in destroying jobs in the midst of the worst job market in decades. In this case the private equity names are Cerberus, Sun Capital, and Lubert-Adler and the jobs are the 30,000 jobs at Mervyns in 2004 when it was acquired by private equity firms for $1.2 billion from Target. All of these jobs are gone. Target bought Mervyns in 1978 for $300 million, but neglected Mervyns even as it focussed on the Target franchise using Mervyn's earnings to do that, it then sold Mervyn's in 2004 to private equity firms. The private equity firms took out $400 million in cash from the firm even as they burdened Mervyns with $800 million in debt. After the acquisition they formed two companies, one with the retail business and the other with the real estate assets of Mervyns, which they went out and sold to get cash out of the company. The real estate was then rented back to Mervyns by the new owners at twice the rent, as Mervyns had a lower rent negotiated many years ago. All that debt and the higher rent and the underinvestment in the brand put Mervyns into a death spiral, with the economic downturn killing the company and pushing it into liquidation, with workers losing even their vacation pay. What does this mean for the rest of the economy? According to Standard and Poors /LCD Group, from 2005 through the third quarter of 2008 private equity firms loaded a huge $741 billion of debt onto their companies'balance sheets. Its not that private equity firms operate without taking on debt, but in the low interest and high liquidity environment of recent years the debt levels soared. Now in the credit collapse lenders are pulling back and debt heavy companies cannot refinance, and fear has set in. According to Capital IQ, of 105 big USA companies that have filed for bankruptcy in 2008, 66 are owned by private equity buyout firms or spun off by them. Investors are nervous about these companies and loans made for these deals are trading at 33 cents on the dollar. ...

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Moody's revenue model before the early 1970's was based on charging for Moody's publications. This changed in the early 1970's when Moody's and other ratings agencies began charging for opinions. And in 1975 the SEC secured the ratings agencies positions by allowing banks to base their capital requirements on the ratings of securities they held. Before the early 1970's Moody's in the words of Thomas McGuire , a former director of corporate development who left in 1996, acted like a watchdog that regarded the financial markets as its turf and barked and growled when anybody it did'nt know came near it. And its founder Moody, took his mission seriously which gave the company its stern reputation as a safeguarder of the public's interest in the integrity and character of dealings in securities. McGuire was never happy with the change made by the SEC which relied on ratings as a form of regulation, because the ratings agencies would be able to sell ratings even if they failed investors and the public interest. He even states in a speech to the SEC in 1995, that the government regulators are inadvertently putting the ratings people in an improper position because they were ordinary people with ordinary motivations, and the government regulators would have to share accountability for any scandals that result when it let these ordinary people subject to the same pressures for profit and gain assume some regulatory duties. The rest of the story is one in which just such an ordinary person with pecuniary motives turned up in the form of John Rutherford Jr., who became CEO of Moody's in 1998, and focussed the entire company on profit in a way that it had never done before, even expecting each Moody's analyst to produce at least $1 million in revenue each year. In a business with its serious watchdog role that was never intended to be meant to be a purely profit business, but a private business run for profit but not for maximinzing profit, with the singular motive of its management in safeguarding fiercely its independence and integrity as its raison-de-etre. ...

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De Aenile describes the volatility in stock markets after the Brexit vote. Earnings growth is slow and expectations are declining. Indexes of emerging markets are trading at 10 times earnings, say experts. The S&P 500 ended the quarter at 19 times earnings, compared to historical average of 15, according to this report. Uncertainty remains high in Europe and the U.S., and monetary policy is stuck in a low interest rate environment.

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Toyota hit with a fine of $32.4 million in civil penalties, the maximum allowed by law, for failing to make proper disclosure of what Toyota knew about safety defects that led to a massive recall.

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Fisher and Taub in NYT give a brief history of Venezuelan politics and government since the 1950's to help readers understand today's economic and political crisis under president Maduro. How did a country with huge oil resources end up with depleted cash reserves to the point of creating shortages of basic goods on supermarket shelves, how did inflation reach over 700%, and how did the economy contract by over 10%, by some estimates close to 20%, in 2016? Venezuela's story is a reminder that populist movements do not hold the answer to political or economic problems, as they create corruption of their own as new groups of people try to perpetuate themselves in power, and new economic problems as they try to win favor with their own support base. Also through economic mismanagement worsened by economic changes such as oil prices or some other adverse development in the global economy. Internal divisions means the capacity of the country to respond is weakened. Brazil has shown the problems of corruption with new political groups and the weakening of government finances. Venezuela is the extreme example of how a lot can go wrong over time after the initial response to a new populist group is positive as it was in Venezuela in 1998, even with advantage of rich natural resources. Change that fragments a country and polarizes a country instead of pulling together the country's human talent around a program that all groups agree to support, is a signal of future problems. The rule of law is an essential component not just of democracy, but of economic development and progress of any country. These are the lessons of Venezuela for today. Economic crises in the eighties led to loss of public confidence in the two main political parties which alternated in power since the founding of democracy in 1958. In 1998 a military officer named Chavez won the election on the platform of returning power to the people and reducing corruption. Chavez reforms initially were popular. Popular protests in 2002 led to the military briefly taking power before returning power back to Chavez. This led to Chavez moving further towards consolidating power leading to a polarization of society. The oil company workers who went on strike were fired replaced by Chavez supporters and oil funds were diverted to popular programs. In the process Chavez isolated Venezuela from the world economy, leading to lack of foreign investment, and Venezuela falling behind other countries in Latin America, even though it had large oil resources. To retain control of the streets this report shows Chavez helped organize the colectivos or local supporters organized as vigilante groups, which has led to further polarization. Corruption in the military and with the colectivos has led to power being fragmented between different groups. The oil companies fund reserves were depleted by corruption depriving Venezuela of an essential cushion as oil prices dropped. Chavez died of health problems with Maduro winning the election in April 2013 by 50.6% of the vote. The parliamentary elections led to the opposition parties winning by a landslide in December 2015. The current problems with daily street protests stems from the economic crisis, with inflation as high as 700% and shortages of basic goods, the economy declining by over 10% in 2016. The uncontrolled printing of money has fueled rampant inflation.The efforts by president Maduro to nullify the powers of Congress in an effort to control the country and override Congress, has worsened the discontent with the government.   ...

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Japan has accomplished a remarkable transformation of its workforce and its economy even as the working age population is declining. For years Japan was seen as a stagnant economy with a rapidly aging population. In recent years Japan has shown how a change in policy can work. Since 2012 working age population declined by 4.7 million, yet the number of people working increased by 4.4 million. The proportion of the population in the workforce rose sharply since 2012. To do this Japan turned to three underutilized parts of its workforce and population- the elderly, women and new immigrants. Japan has pursued an active policy of reviving the economy by bringing women into the workforce and breaking taboos on new immigrants. In 2004 Japan raised retirement age from 60 to 65, and then made it mandatory for companies to raise or abolish the retirement age, or introduce a system for re-employing workers who retire. This has changed Japan a lot with Japanese men working well into their 60's and 70's. In the west coast city of Kanagawa which now has a bullet train to Tokyo, out migration was a big problem that added to a declining workforce. The head of Ohara, a family owned company that makes desserts tried a novel method of advertising to seniors in apartment blocks and starting attracting seniors to fill worker shortages. It found that seniors came to work on time, performed even tedious tasks, and brought a great deal of experience. Since then the regional government has started programs to get more retirees and women into the workforce. The special programs teach small companies to adapt to the needs of retiree workers who can work in shorter shifts of few hours and do less physical jobs. Women need predictable hours to pickup children from school and shorter work weeks, for which the regional government program helps companies adapt by sending in specialists to guide the companies. As a result female participation in the workforce, for very long a big handicap is no longer so. Female participation has jumped to 63%, higher even than that in the OECD where the average is 62 years.  Japanese women had a M curve that meant they worked most in their 20's. less in the 30's with children, and more in the 50's. First the government tried to correct this with extended parental leave, increased childcare, and rewarding companies with good work-life balance. Then in 2009 the effort accelerated with employers required to offer 6 hour days if a worker asked for this. Under prime minister Abe's "womenomics" effort child care was significantly expanded- by 2015 Tokyo went from 28 to 38 spots open for every 100 two year olds. Alongside these efforts the Abe government tried to get companies to rethink their assumptions about quantity of work and overtime as productive effort. One could work shorter hours and be productive, and the old notions were seen as resulting in lower productivity. As fathers with parental leave took on more responsibility the changes transformed the attitudes for women at work. Most remarkable is the quiet change in immigration policy. The government allowed foreign construction workers to address shortages for work on the 2020 Olympics. It introduced a 3-5 year visas program for nursing care workers. Two new categories of visas will add 340,000 additional blue collar workers over next 5 years. The total foreign born workers in Japan doubled from 2012 to 2017 to 1.3 million. ...

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Peter Hessler was a teacher in Sichuan province of China before living in Tibet and writing this article for The Atlantic.  It gives some insights into both the thinking of Chinese people and Tibetan people and the changes happening around them. Inevitably changes would have come to Tibet from outside or without China's takeover of Tibet in 1950, would have come in some other form, as it has in neighboring Nepal, Afghanistan, says Hessler, without some of the loss of some of the positive aspects of culture and of Buddhism.  Even in India feudal system of zamindars prevailed in villages into the late British period and the early Nehru period but has gradually disappeared over time, so that change has potential over time to happen, and comes inevitably.  Here he shows- the immigrants from Sichuan province, over 120 million people in the province, and part of a floating population of migrant workers in China, looking for jobs or economic opportunity, and some taking up life at the high Himalayan altitudes for 2-3 years or even 8 year terms. The belief Hessler says among Sichuan immigrants that high altitude was bad for the lungs over long periods and shortened life. The lack of women with a disproportionate number of men making the journey to start a new life in Tibet, the hardships, the enterprising nature of Sichuan immigrants in the shops and retail that Tibetans lacked the enterprising skills to do, the difficulties living with two cultures side by side, the lack of any incentive to learn the local language. The feelings of Tibetan people that they are somehow losing their culture and identity. The sense among immigrants that this is not their first choice of place but somehow would have to do till they go back and find someone to marry during brief trips back home to Sichuan. There is something timeless about this essay, as changes unfold, no one unambiguous trend, a more complex situation.  China's sense that the west has violated its sovereignty under the British and foreign powers in the nineteenth century. The feeling that somehow Tibet is part of this sense of China regaining what it had lost to the foreign powers. Without the realization that Tibet has served as a gift of nature, a given mountainous buffer that helped two Asian civilizations prosper in the Ganges and Yangtse river valleys, thousands of miles apart. And both having the similar experience with the British and foreign powers in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, and both recovering modernizing at the same pace.    The sense China has, says Hessler, that it is about China's sovereignty following a Qing dynasty entry into Lhasa in 1792, even though the Qing saw Tibet as a buffer state running its own affairs separating it from the British Empire on the other side of the Himalayas. Very little contact between China and Tibet for centuries simply because using yaks and mules it would take several months from northern China to Tibet crossing mountain ranges at 15,000 feet. The British saw this as a buffer state in the same way as happened also with the Mughals in the 15th to 18th century, and the Empires between the 11th and 15th century in India.  Because opium was shipped from Bengal under British colonial rule causing great poverty in India against the will of the Indian people, the same sense of violation of sovereignty existed in exactly the same way in the perception of foreign powers in India, so that the notion of violation of one's self respect being shared was serving no useful purpose in this context between China and India.     ...

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A cap on oil prices till the end of 2022 and beyond, indexing pension payments to inflation, and providing more income to self-employed, are some of the ways reelected president Macron plans to meet the cost of living crisis. A parliamentary majority is expected yet cohabitation with Mr. Melenchon as prime minister is a possibility says this FR24 support. Mr. Melenchon who narrowly missed beating Le Pen to become the second round candidate is positioning himself to lead France into the second term presidency of Mr. Macron. It was with the help of Melenchon supporters that Macron was able to win the presidency in the second round. Melenchon campaigned in the belief that the presidency had become too powerful and remote from the issues facing ordinary people. Melenchon as prime minister could bring someone familiar with the struggles of ordinary people in cost of living and to get good manufacturing jobs into the leadership ranks for the fight to Build Better in Europe. ...

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Katy Balls of The Spectator looks at the stop Rishi Sunak, stop Liz Truss, Stop Penny Mordaunt groups forming in the Tory Party. Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, is the candidate for groups not favoring Sunak including Boris Johnson supporters who see his withdrawal of support for Johnson leading to Johnson's resignation. Mordaunt does not support Liz Truss and is expected to shift to Sunak if Liz and Sunak are in the final two. Penny Mordaunt is seen as having a good chance against Sunak if Penny and Sunak are the final two, yet her inexperience could also be a problem. Sunak had questions about his own tax payment and is opposed to cutting taxes, making it harder to get support across the party. 

This Tory leadership election in which 200,000 party members vote for a leader is taking place too quickly and too often. Johnson was elected in 2019, only three years later he is out. Before Johnson, Cameron was out and Theresa May was elected in 2016.

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With 9.5 million barrels a day cut for U.S. G20 and OPEC+ negotiated by president Trump many Texas oil wells will be shut in. Even with these cuts price is sensitive after dropping to $22 by April 12, 2020. The cuts averted a complete collapse in oil prices when markets opened on April 13. By April 12 oil demand worldwide had fallen by 30 million barrels a day. That is how grave the situation was. By doing so the U.S. protected its oil industry. There was complete lack of leadership from Russia, Saudis, Mexico and other countries until president Trump intervened with strong action. Trump threatened tariffs on imported oil to protect the U.S. oil industry if other nations did not come to terms, including calls from U.S. senators telling prince Abdulaziz the Saudi oil minister the U.S. Saudi relationship could not be salvaged if the Saudis did not come to an agreement. Once again president Trump's tariff moves worked, this time to save the world oil industry and oil producing economies such as Russia from severe hardship. ...

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India is building roads and facilities to match China's in the border between Ladakh and China particularly in the finger area. This is resulting in increased clashes between Indian and Chinese patrols. India's view of the territory on its side does not coincide with China's. India has seen borders such as the McMahon Line set during the British period as the border, China has a different perception since its takeover of Tibet of what constitutes Tibetan territory.  As a result any true border line depends on the strength of bases of each side on the high altitude border at over 4000 or 5000 meters. China had built infrastructure in the region much earlier and India is merely catching up to keep the current line of control as the border. The Indian perception is that China sees as a way to change the status quo building bases and capabilities in the region, making it necessary for India to match these capabilities by roads and bases of its own.   ...

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The secret say Dr. McGeverly an astonishing 104 years, as do others is to find things to do that make life meaningful and important and "our hearts sing." A daughter of missionary parents spent her childhood in India and is shown in an old photo carried in a basket. She studied medicine and had a holistic medicine practice in Arizona. She lives in a small home next to her daughter and is shown with her grandchildren. This last month we profiled Sandra Day O'Connor who created iCivics to spread civics knowledge in America for children after retiring from the Supreme Court at age 75. Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter were also profiled in Lyrarc.com for their resilience. In Virtues of Aging Carter says it is the action that is beneficial to others that is also beneficial to oneself that is the secret to aging right. This is also the concept we see common to the holy Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Buddhist texts that define right living in this way.

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Krugman points out that in American history even presidents who did not read much and were not very qualified were able to perform well in office because of very qualified people in the cabinet positions. Reagan was not a avid reader yet he had Shultz at State and James Baker at Treasury. Mnuchin is not anywhere near being qualified as James Baker. Tillerson may be qualified as a CEO of a large energy company, but lacks the experience of Shultz. During the last years of his presidency Reagan may have felt the effects of early Alzheimers. Checks and balances also helped to make the system work under presidents so that they did not overreach their powers.  Krugman is skeptical of the way checks and balances would work under president Trump and sees some second rate appointments in the administration. He points to the departure of Mike Flynn and the controversies surrounding the Russian meddling as very different from the situations faced by other presidents with weak qualifications.     ...

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The team of 5 engineers decided they would produce the first Vande Bharat train in 18 months- Project 18. The Indian Express talks to the team of original engineers who were on Project 18.  They are all part of Chennai Integral Coach Factory, setup with Swiss collaboration in 1955. By 2019 the first train was operational at speeds of 180 km per hour, semi-high speed and setting the transition to high speed trains developed entirely within India. Sudanshu Mani, General Manager of ICF, headed this effort and set the target of 18 months. He says China used to import all its trains and one day just decided to make its own- he asked himself the same question, why don't we make our own? Mani was in Berlin for 3 years on an earlier collaboration for train technology in the 1980's. By the 1990's this technology was 20 years old he says. That's how long it took to get anything done in those days, by the time it got started the technology would be obsolete. By 2018 just 2 years before retirement Sudanshu set up the Project 18 team convinced that this was the only way to get it done- to beat the odds. Devi Prasad Dash heads electrical engineering. Srinivas heads mechanical engineering. Pradhan is Chief Design Engineer. They did everything from scratch. There are 5000 others who worked on the project. Dash says it was like T20 cricket, just that they decided to do it in 18 overs. Ever wonder why the train is all white and with blue stripe? Subranshu who was chief mechanical engineer at the time says they tried other colors. Manish Pradhan says they decided on white after one thought that Indian trains are never white because we had that belief that anything white would get dirty faster. That is when we decided to make it all white and it will not look dirty, he says. Sudanshu Mani says he would close his eyes and he would see always the old Indian trains that one would see from the 1960's from Ahmedabad to Rameswaram, and onto Colombo after the ferry. At that time Colombo had Canadian coaches and locomotives under a Canadian aid plan from Talaimannar to Colombo which were like American trains, looked miles into the future.The same thing must have happened to Chinese engineers because Chinese premier Chou-en-lai visited the ICF in Chennai in the 1950's and wrote that Chinese engineers could learn about the new Swiss technologies from ICF Chennai. That is when the Swiss were building their own trains with European technology of that time. China and India, and Japan had no idea about the high speed trains that were in the future. This is how technology advances. This is how people build better lives and how the aspirations and hopes of younger generations become a reality. Somewhere in the dim light of the past there is a Chinese engineer with the undaunted courage, concentration and determination to "Just Do It," and before that a Japanese engineer, and before that a Swiss engineer designing a train for the Swiss Alps, a Canadian or American engineer designing newer trains for the Prairies all the way to British Columbia and California. All dreaming Big and executing Well, with the resources of each country there to aid them each step of the way. ...

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One of the problems facing the Republican People's Party, the CHP, is how to connect with religious voters. CHP is the party that is most closely associated with modern Turkey's founder, Kemal Ataturk. CHP was the main party in Turkey till the recent dominance of the AKP Party in elections. AKP drew support from the more religious and rural population in the parts of Turkey outside cities such as Ankara and Istanbul. CHP rarely identified itself with street protest and remained aloof from ordinary people making it hard for it to contest elections against the AKP - winning Ankara and Istanbul but losing the elections in the last decade. The AKP also allied itself with Turkey's Ottoman heritage and appealed to nationalist sentiment against a conservative aloof CHP leading to a split in Turkey between the secular urban and the religious minded more rural people. CHP also did not work with minorities such as the Kurds to build a broader coalition. This is changing with the march from Ankara to Istanbul led by CHP leader Kilicdaroglu. The march came after the justice system appeared to be allied with president Erdogan, and a 25 year sentence was given to one of Kilicdaroglu's deputies. Erdogan now appoints the judges in the judiciary and the crackdown on the opposition since the failed coup of 2016, has led to a sense that Turkey is now run as a one party state. An estimated 1.5 million Turks participated in the rally in Istanbul, according to DW, showing that the opposition is forming to the arbitrary rule since the emergency powers assumed by the president. For the last decade Erdogan and the AKP Party formed the government. What changed since 2016 is the new constitution that gives new powers to the president and the arbitrary rule since the crackdown on the opposition that intensified after 2014, and which has increased since the failed coup in 2016.  ...

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This WSJ story shows how China started its steel industry from small beginnings when Chinese leader Deng visited a Nippon Steel plant in 1978. He made the decision to go big with Baosteel, with an investment of $6 billion, with the words- "if we do it lets do it big." This was 36 times the Chinese foreign exchange reserves at the time. From 4% of steel production, this went up and up, passing the U.S. in 1993, past Japan in 1996, and in 2018 producing three times the steel of U.S., Russia and China combined, producing 923 million metric tons of steel in 2018, or more than half of world production of steel. With steel China was able to build its automobile industry, shipbuilding, bridges, infrastructure, high speed rail network. This was done using global demand, subsidies from the government, cheap loans and tax breaks. Markets worldwide were affected by substantial excess production in China. From Baosteel the spread of the steel industry to all 23 Chinese provinces led to China accounting for 25% of world exports. By 2016 5 million workers mostly from the agrarian countryside were employed in the steel industry, helping China transform itself into an rapidly urbanizing and modern economy. It was a period when the rail network was tripled between 1975-2017, with shipping companies that ensured access to Australian coal and Brazilian iron ore. From 2011 to 2017 Chinese steel dropped global prices by 57% triggering closure of steel mills in EUrope and the U.S. About a third of trade complaints since 2001 by G20 countries against China are about steel. After entry into the WOrld Trade Organization Chinese steel exports rose to 8% of GDP from 2%. Subsidies, cheap energy, and shift of agrarian workers to cities. U.S. investigations around 2006 showed Chinese steelmakers subsidies covered 30% to 45% of the subsidized value of steel pipes exported overseas. China's steel prices were set 20-40% lower than the U.S. China responded to complaints saying it was trade protectionism. The WTO rules call for full disclosing of all subsidies. This was disclosed 5 years after joining WTO in 2001, and only for central subsidies. Local government subsidies were not disclosed till 2016- the U.S. says 15 years late. Still the Bush and Obama administrations failed to take action. In 2018 Mr. Trump seized on this as a campaign issue that resonated with American workers in manufacturing communities across the U.S. In 2018 November president Trump announced a 25% tariff on imports of Chinese steel. A six month probe by U.S. officials had already shown 40% of sales value came from subsidies for corrosion resistant steel from China. The U.S. Trade Commission imposed tariffs of its own from 39% to 241%, with the Trump tariffs of 25% coming as an additional tariff to tackle the trade surplus with China. Meanwhile in China the government is closing uncompetitive smaller steel mills and in 2016 it combined baosteel with Wuhan Steel to create a larger company, and consolidate remaining companies. Baosteel now provides the steel for CIMC to dominate the steel container business, and to make ship to shore cranes, and make the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.  It also goes to show what can be accomplished from small beginnings for countries in the developing world from Asia to Africa and Latin America, with government and industry focussed on development and growth.   ...