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This report in WSJ shows how European countries are maintaining salaries of employees who would otherwise be laid off. Governments have setup programs in France, Britain, Germany and other countries to provide employers with the money for 80-84% of salaries up to 2500 pounds ($3165) in Britain and 5330 euros a month in France. As a result 1 worker out of three in the private sector in France for subsidy applications for 6.9 million workers are already received. For the German program 2.4 million workers will get this benefit. About 1 million companies in Europe retain employees with this program of governments simply sending out the salaries with funds directly to households. This helps to keep out the stress for families, particularly families with children. It is as if the employees are not really laid off but asked to stay at home for manufacturing facilities and work from home in shorter hours where work can be done remotely.  Money is quickly deposited into the bank account of employees in these countries, though it is slower in Italy and Spain. It is as if the European approach is put the whole economy on pause for 2 months and restart it almost like before with only a small dent in employment once the coronavirus is pushed out with lockdowns and strict control actions. This will cap German unemployment at 5.9% compared with 5% last year, only a modest increase. The cost is not that much considering what it accomplishes. 10 billion euros is the cost in Germany where the state fund for this has 26 billion euros. 10 billion pounds in Britain. And 20 billion euros in France.  The U.S. adopts a similar approach also through its $349 billion program which provides loans to companies with less than 500 employees to meet payroll for 8 weeks and pay some overhead. Loans are forgiven based on job retention and employees on the payroll and only if the employees are retained. Another program is for companies larger than this. And a third program targets entire industries such as airlines, aerospace, and companies in other industries so that they do not have to layoff employees. U.S. unemployment insurance is modified to work along similar lines maintaining incomes of employees laid off because of the pandemic. Another program sends checks directly of $1200 to households with lower incomes to help them and to help people at poverty level or without jobs. The thrust of both the European and American efforts is the same, lose as few jobs as possible, keep people's incomes steady, and do this in a way that the economy can pick up quickly to the former level in as short a time as possible. Compared to Europe U.S. unemployment will be higher predicted at 9.8% with the expected rebound lowering the unemployment in 2021. ...

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Prime minister Manmohan Singh moves forward with moves to open up the retail sector to foreign investment and other steps to attract foreign investors. In a televised address he appeals to Indians to support his government's efforts to reduce the deficit by increasing diesel prices, placing caps on cooking gas subsidies, and open up the retail sector to foreign investment. Singh's coalition will survive with a parliamentary majority after the withdrawal of a party based in W. Bengal state led by Mamta Banerjee, by getting the support of a party based in Uttar Pradesh state led by Mulayam Singh Yadav. Singh tells Indians: "we are at a point where we can reverse the slowdown in our growth. We need a revival in investor confidence domestically and globally.'' Earlier efforts to open up the retail sector to foreign investment failed because of Banerjee. Singh also warned Indians of the problems Europe is facing and the need for strong action to prevent a similar situation happening in India. India's political picture has changed since the days of Nehru and Indira Gandhi as no single party has support in all parts of the country, and federal governments in New Delhi are based on coalitions led by Congress party or the BJP party. Singh is known for his market opening moves as finance minister in a Congress led government in the early 1990's. Political strains and corruption scandals have weakened Singh's government in 2011-2012 leading to the lack of clear policies on the deficit and foreign investment, a situation Singh seeks to firmly correct. ...

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Plans to introduce its Luma line to China by June 2012 in cooperation with China Telecom. It is betting on Chinese demand for smartphones to recover. Sales of CDMA phones- China Telecom uses CDMA technology- are expected to double to 60 million in 2012 from 30 million in 2011. China provided 17% of Noka sales in 2011, mostly basic or older phones. The challenge is now to get the Lumia line up and running fast. Nokia's timing is right as smartphones are just beginning a surge in China- IHS forecasts an increase from 65 million in 2011 to 120 million in 2012. Nokia's advertising and marketing and close work with China Telecom has also to kick in for it to maximize on this opportunity.

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Should inflation be set at 2% or 3-4%? This decision affects jobs and zero interest rates hurt what retirees earn on savings.  Krugman says Americans were better off during the period under presidents including Kennedy-LBJ, Reagan right up to 2008 when interest rates were between 5-8%, and inflation of 4% was considered to be acceptable. Consider that about 90% of American retirees have savings of less than $100,000, and 50% have no savings at all after two decades of near zero interest rates. Krugman points out that Fed 2% inflation targeting is a mistake because the research is wrong and inflation of 2% gets you to near zero interest rates a third of the time, not 5% of the time as US Fed research incorrectly shows. Financial crises such as 2009 from lack of regulation of financial institutions and laissez faire policy led to zero interest rates that hurt average Americans.

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India Russia trade at 64 billion dollars is expected to grow. Cooperation agreements from any sectors were signed in New Delhi during Russian president Putin's visit to India with a large Russian delegation. India Russia cooperation will continue in the field of nuclear energy. US is working with Russia on a settlement of the Ukraine war.

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A wind farm out at sea to start in 3 years, small renovation projects across France and Germany, a couple of billion dollars from the French government for home renovations- this kind of approach is considered completely unrealistic say EU legislators. One Danish legislator asks what is more unrealistic? Setting serious targets for conversion to renewable energy or depending on Putin's gas and oil?  These EU legislators are calling for aggressive action now. The European Commission set a 9% goal for energy savings by 2030, this has now been moved up to 13%. EU legislators are calling for 23% in savings by 2030. And even this may not be enough to meet the goals for climate change to prevent the disaster from climate change with fires and floods and heat waves that hurt agriculture and food supplies. A savings target of 19% is about the gas that runs 40% of the cars and trucks on American roads in 2021 or 214 million metric tons of oil. The French government has set aside 3 billion euros for comprehensive renovations of homes to save energy with a target of 300,000 homes in 2022. This is completely inadequate as it will cost 23 billion euros say experts on the Paris city council. Renovations are only running at 60,000 a year. A big part of the conversion in Europe is converting from gas heating to electric heating. France is boosting subsidies for new electric heat pump installations.   ...

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This report in WSJ takes a detailed look at how the shift to digital payments, and digital badges for covid free designation on smartphones are affecting a part of the population of 60+ years that is notinternet or smartphone savy.  60+ years make up only 10% of the users of internet on age based graph, even though they are a large part of China's rapidly aging population, estimated to be closer to 20% of the population or about 250 million. Elderly people in China are having a hard time with scanning of health codes to access transport and other services. To tackle the covid pandemic China has health codes assigned to citizens which link user national ID and Covid status. These need to be scanned in for access to train and transport facilities and other services, color coded digital badges on smartphones that show one is covid free.  Most elderly cannot handle these smartphone tasks because they lack the skills of young people with smartphones or lack the digital payments having used cash all their life. Other problems are poor eyesight, health problems, but the most severe is a big skills handicap in downloading apps, in typing quickly, and in navigating the internet. The government is taking steps to provide relief for the elderly by prohibiting places of services from refusing to accept cash, and finding ways to make the health codes system work for seniors. ...

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American manufacturers are importing more of the parts that go into each product. According to Susan Houseman, a senior economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the imported portion for these parts is up to 25% from 17%. Even the Bureau of Economic Analysis figure of the share of GDP coming from manufacturing is overstated, says Houseman. That figure was 11.2% for 2009, but is closer to 10.5% if all the imported components are included instead of being counted as domestically made. This is down from 14.2% ten years ago, and about 30% in the 1950's. There is deep concern that the manufacturing decline has weakened America. Houseman says that one cannot separate manufacturing from innovation, and she asks if America can continue to be strong in R&D with a shrunken manufacturing base. James Jordan of the Interstate Maglev project, says Maglev- which uses special magnets to levitate and propel high-speed trains- was invented in the United States. Today equipment for that technology is manufactured and used in Japan, and innovation in high speed trains is taking place in Japan and Germany. The decline in manufacturing is shockingly large. From 1979 employment in manufacturing went down by 8.1 million to 11.6 million, with the largest drop occurring in the last ten years. With it America is losing something significant- all the knowhow and skills that go into making things. Today the airplane wings for several Boeing airliners are made in Japan and shipped here. In a not too distant past these wings would have been built here, and workers with the knowhow and skills for these critical components were part of Boeing's workforce....

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How a small Kansas town of Grinnell in America finds a way to deal with the rural-urban divide and covid anxiety generated in the tumultuous years of 2020-2021, is the subject with pictures of this report in the WSJ. Grinnell is heartland America and its residents find a way to set Kansas and America in the right direction. One one side some resident worried they would end up like Minneapolis or Portland with protesters. An incident of drivers along Highway 70 emptying shelves of toilet paper in neighborhood stores is seen negatively by some  Grinnell residents and leads to forming an Emergency Preparedness Group to prevent outside agitators from creating problems. Others like the Enlightened Ladies Group try to calm things down. Gene Tilton, 84, and his son 63 years, whose family arrived in Kansas in 1880's did'nt see the need for forming some sort of vigilante group. He raises cattle and crops on a 10,000 acre farm. Michael Machen who practiced medicine in Gove County for 35 years also felt the same way and believed law enforcement could tackle the problem if there was one. Sheriff Mesch attended the Gove County emergency Preparedness Group public meeting by invitation in January 2021. This about the time when the Capitol in Washington DC was stormed by protesters and the country was divided after the election. At that time after 19 months of coronavirus deaths, racial unrest and political violence America was on edge, communities all over America were struggling with the idea that the immediate threat they faced was from other Americans not foreign adversaries. The sheriff told everyone at the Emergency Preparedness Group's public meeting where he stood- law enforcement could handle any threat and he didn't anticpate anything his deputies could not handle. He told the Emergency Preparedness Group that he appreciated their sentiment though, if he needed help he would ask, yet concluded that is the only way. From that rebuff by the sheriff the Group paused its activity and shifted its message to offering to help anyone deal with the deep cold spell in February, to cope with snow, tornadoes, fires, rattlesnake bites and similar hazards. They sponsored first aid classes, and a "Homesteader Gardening Class." Soon their idea was "we're here to help people, the last thing we want is for people to be uncomfortable." "Gove County" says Don Tilton, "has moved on." So must America today. ...

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Alice Rivlin's efforts to break the deadlock in the bipartisan Obama administration commission. The commission was setup to recommend ways to control the US budget deficit. This group is paralyzed by politics as Democrats have tried to safeguard Social Security, and the Republicans are dead set against tax increases. Rivlin is working through a shadow commission on the deficit headed by former Senator Pete Domenici. This shadow commission is supported by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank setup by former Republican and Democratic majority leaders. The idea is to get the process started through leaders of both parties, as happened in 1983, when Senators Monynihan and Dole initiated the process after a similiar deadlock. The agreement reached then led to a change in the Social Security law, which increased the cap on payroll taxes and raised the retirement age.

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People who worked with Romney in the Mormon church describe the experience of Romney who started as an "iron rodder" walking the straight path, and gradually learning of other people's experiences that led to learning and growth and showing a new openness. In contrast to his "47%" remark about people dependent on the government, here he is seen telling another church member Barlow, that what bothers him most and what he has thought a lot about is how to genuinely help the poor in his church. Over the years he learned to compromise with Mormon feminists who sought larger roles in the church and was able to make the progress from being less flexible to being open to other ideas and perceptions. In other situations he allowed unorthodox progressives in the Mormon church to play a part in the organization and teach. The outreach efforts Romney participated in actively included efforts in the inner city and working with immigrants from Haiti, some of whom were illegal immigrants. This is a detailed well researched account from talking to many people active in the church organization and in the church community by Jason Horowitz of the Washington Post. It is one of the rare glimpses of the life of Mitt Romney inside the church. Because of the public perception of Mormonism there is a distance kept with accounts of life in the church, and Romney has shown the same reticence to talk about the church. Seen as a church it is is like other churches, Catholic or Protestant, with the same challenges that face all churches- keeping up the size of the congregation, the poor, immigrants, church organization, raising contributions, getting people to donate hours of work to the church activity. It is one of the ironies of the 2012 presidential campaign that Romney as a member of a Mormon church in a predominantly Catholic and Protestant world has remained reticent about his experiences and how it shaped him. And also remained reticent -till the last months of the campaign with the demands for authenticity growing strident- about how the experiences as governor of the liberal state of Massachusetts had shaped him, this time as the number of Republican politicians in sharply liberal states were a distinct minority in the Republican party. To voters this meant not knowing who he was beyond Bain Capital, the perceptions of which doggedly pursued Romney till the reticence became unbearable in the final weeks of the campaign....

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"The whites are here to stay," a line in a paper prepared by Kissinger set the policies of the Nixon administration supporting Apartheid in Africa. NYT in this report on Kissinger points to his involvement of the US in the Angolan civil war on the side of South Africa as he did not understand the popularity of liberation movements. Kissinger was steeped in the Austrian and German politics of his original home country Germany from the Napoleonic period to 1914 covering Metternich in Austria-Hungary and Bismarck in Germany. He also failed to grasp the popularity of liberation movements in Indochina. As a result of these policies many many hundreds of thousands of lives were lost, which cannot be said of Secretaries of State before him. Jefferson, Madison and Adams, and Seward for Abraham Lincoln, Elihu Root for Teddy Roosevelt, Cordell Hull for FDR, George Marshall and Dean Acheson for Harry Truman, John Foster Dulles for Eisenhower, George Shultz for Reagan. Kissinger served only for 3 years and the lives lost are incredibly large. We think of Geroge Marshall and the Marshall Plan that rebuilt post war Europe, Seward's role with Lincoln in the Civil War, and Cordell Hull's fight for freedom of Asian countries including India under Gandhi.  And we can see why there are such strong opinions for Kissinger almost seeing Kissinger as a Napoleonic figure where power faced the hundreds of thousands of lives lost with complete indifference. There is the opening to China yet this happened simply because as a coincidence of events in China in 1970 after the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution led to Lin Piao incident and China seeking a connection to the US more than Kissinger's own policy or plans. David Sanger's account of his conversation with Kissinger simply says he just "shut up and took notes."  ...

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French youth are an important part of the protests in France in extending the retirement age from 62 to 64 years. A neuropsychologist at a Paris hospital says "are there any social benefits they haven't rolled back," in this report in FR24. Youth feel that the reform asking workers to work longer in the current situation in France is basically unfair at a time when workers are facing a cost of living crisis and are just coming out of a once in a century pandemic. And with the stress on schools, hospitals and older people, the shrinking savings of workers and families as pandemic period benefits are being phased out. In the US and Germany there is support for working families during the cost of living crisis, much less so in France, and even less in Britain. France is facing protests and possible strikes, Britain has strikes across health, transport and education. 

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Fearing retaliation by Chinese regulators, US executives are silent on trade issues. As a result the issue of wind energy subsidies to Chinese manufacturers was brought up not by GE, a manufacturer of wind turbines, but by the United Steelworkers Union in the US. The US filed a WTO complaint in this matter based on the US Steelworkers petition. GE has stayed silent in this matter in deference to Chinese regulators. Only Solar World, a German company, has stepped forward to strongly endorse the investigation. Solar World has manufacturing sites in Oregon and China, but no plants in China.

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For years Peter Bernstein has watched the US markets, from the postwar recession of 1958 till today. He is now 89 years old. He sees 2 culprits one is oversecuritization and the second is years of overborrowing by financial institutions and consumers alike. He rules out a V shaped business cycle. he sees an L shaped business cycle or a a flat U. It would be a flat U because it will take a long time for the memory to recover from the excesses of recent years and the consequences. He remembers the early years after World War II, it took a very long time to get the depression out of business and banking decisions. And he says one of the things that helped people take risks was the feeling that the central bank had got things right and knew what it was doing but he says the Fed too now is going to feel what it should do now is less clear. So the feeling going forward will be to be very careful. He thinks this will take a long time to clear up, much longer than people think. Not 2009, he is sure they are wrong, there has to be a respite along the way is how he puts it. He says until credit is going up instead of down you can't have growth. And he thinks housing has to be a part of this. And then there is the uncertainty. What if, what if China goes into a recession? His point that " nothing can go in one direction forever." And China has been growing like this for twenty years since the 1990's. It just does'nt go on forever. and there has to be a respite. Again here him speak: first he goes to housing, he says somehow housing has to flatten out. Then he shifts to say "we have to underpin the consumer" and with that he shifts to saying this is why its different, and to saying this is why its like nothing we have had before. And then he turns to investment, saying its investment that made the V at the bottom of the cycle but he doesn't see the consumer in the USA coming up with a positive till he has worked out the excesses of overspending. Exports or consumer overseas? He thinks they maybe too infected by us to do it. Though Asian growth will help....

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German chancellor Merkel and France's president Hollande meet in Notre-Dame de Reims cathderal for a service that commemorates the 50th anniversary of a mass held at Reims cathedral. That Mass was held at Reims in May 1962 with the hope for a lasting reconciliation between Germany and France in a region affected by recurring wars, and was attended by Konrad Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle. The service in July 2012 brings together two leaders after tense discussions at eurozone summit meetings on the future of the eurozone and austerity measures. It is also a reminder of the deeper ties that bring the two countries together after a century of conflict, and the resilience in the face of difficulties shown by a previous generation of leaders in building these ties. It needs to be remembered that it was German chancellor Kohl, Angela Merkel's mentor, one of the postwar leaders who promoted European unity during the period of German reunificaton, who speeded up the agenda for the creating the eurozone and euro currency without the necessary underpinnings of deposit insurance and a eurozone financial regulator with powers to examine the books of European banks and exercize financial supervision. ...

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In the closing days of the Harris vs Trump election campaign in October 2024, Trump attends a rally in Madison Square Garden in New York city. Harris visits a Baptist church in Philadelphia, and talks to young black men at a barber shop, visits a Puerto Rican restaurant in Philly. The visit to the Puerto Rican restaurant comes as a comedian at the Trump Madison Square Garden rally makes racist remarks about Latinos, Blacks and Jews, and calls Puerto Rico an "island of garbage." About 579,000 Latinos and Puerto Ricans make up the voting public in Pennsylvania. Latino stars put up video clips of the comments on Latinos on social media expressing their disapproval.

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The problems of a building a new landfill and temporarily using an old one in Tripoli, Libya. Residents around the old landfill refuse to it being used any longer because it breeds disease and a contaminated environment. Meanwhile a million tons of garbage is piling up on city streets. The new government has promised to build a new one but desperately needs to use the old one till the new one is setup. Libyans say the problem of administration is acute in Libya, because unlike in Egypt there is no effective civil service, and the country was simply run on the decisions of one man and not much moving without that. The whole structure of administration is going to have to be built from scratch.

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Sources cited in The Times say that in seeking the resignation of chancellor Javid British prime minister Boris Johnson wanted to avoid early on the situation that existed between prime minister Cameron and Chancellor Osborne of differences in policy. There were differences between Mr. Johnson and Mr. Javid on balancing the budget and the appointment of the Governor of the Bank of England. Mr. Johnson and adviser Cummings wanted looser fiscal rules to achieve the levelling-up agenda, infrastructure spending, than Mr. Javid.  A decision on HS2 was to come from the prime minister alone not the chancellor. At one point 10 Downing Street communicated directly with the chief secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Sonak, who is now the new chancellor. Mr. Sonak 39, was only recently a junior minister.  Critical for Mr. Boris Johnson and advisor Mr. Cummings is the agenda of infrastructure and leveling up the country. It became apparent that finance would be critical for policy and investments to achieve this. It was then decided to set policy at No. 10 Downing Street and be sure that this was carried out by the chancellor and all ministers as the new way of operating. Mr. Johnson sees an opportunity to make changes for the long term through a long period in office and wanted a tight knit team right from the beginning.   ...

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Amol Sharma and Paul Beckett of the WSJ interview Finance Minister Chidambaram about the Indian government's decisions to open up the insurance, retail and airline sectors to foreign investment, and bring the deficit down to close to 5.3% in 2013. Faced with slowing growth and the risk of credit ratings agencies lowering India's credit ratings the government of prime minister Manmohan Singh has decided to take some decisive steps, including a shift in coalition partners to maintain parliamentary support for these steps. When asked about what influenced the government's resolve to take these decisions, Chidambaram says credit ratings was one factor, another was the difficulty Indian companies were having raising capital inside the Indian market and overseas. In addition he says growth could not be sustained at earlier levels without new capital, and new foreign investment was needed for sustained growth. The Kelkar committee report provided a sense of urgency to the government by providing an independent view and showing the worst case scenario if the government maintained the status quo. Chidambaram says subsidies will now be transferred in the form of cash directly to beneficiaries and reduce costs by cutting leakage in the system.The government will use the list of LPG cooking gas households to transfer the subsidy for 6 gas cylinders directly to beneficiary accounts. The plan is to do the same for the Rural Employment Guarantee Program and subsidized foodgrains to cut the leakage that stems from duplication and falsification. The Indian government's ongoing program to use information technology to have computerized records of the the entire population and linking to the financial system, incuding a large rural population, now makes it possible to take these steps. On the Kelkar committee's recommendation to increase prices of basic commodities cooking gas, kerosene and food to reduce government subsidies, Chidambaram says this is ambitious and the government has to consider the political context even though it agrees that this has to be done over time....

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The European Recovery Fund package finally gets settled after long negotiations over the weekend. It is settled by lowering the nonrepayable direct aid to countries hardest hit by the pandemic of 500 billion euros the initial target to 390 billion euros. The change was made to meet Dutch demands that are based on right wing parties in Netherlands critical of the deal and upcoming elections in the country. Mr. Rutte of the Netherlands held on to the end. He has been in power for about ten years by following the Dutch mood carefully. This time both Merkel and Macron, both France and Germany supported the 500 billion euro plan for nonrepayable aid to countries particularly in southern Europe that took the brunt of the pandemic- Spain, Italy and Greece. The EU's executive branch will now for first time issue debt on a large scale to fund this nonrepayable aid and additional loans of 360 billion euros. There is also a multiyear EU budget of 1 trillion euros for 2021 to 2027 designed to meet the goals of European recovery. The way the EU is setup a lone holdout or a small country like the Netherlands with the help of two other small countries Denmark and Sweden could hold up the agreement against the interests of the larger nations Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal. Poland and Hungary also strongly supported the 500 billion euro target for nonrepayable aid. The combined population of these countries is about 314 million compared to just 17 million for Netherlands, 10 million for Sweden, and 6 million for Denmark. In addition Merkel has recovered her footing in Germany after the pandemic and most right wing parties in Europe have lost ground during the pandemic. That Mr. Rutte could push this far in the face of the need to show solidarity at a time like this shows weakness in the fabric and structure of the EU, and its rules and organizing charter. Normally a blocking minority would need 4 countries and 35% of the population to block EU proposals supported by the majority. This could be used if the blocking is seen as not in the common interest. In recent years most decision are made with unanimity, but this is one in which solidarity needed to be shown without the long negotiations taking some of the spirit and vigour behind the earlier plan. ...

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Barclays rights issue in 2013 to meet UK regulatory demands. The planned rights issue will raise about 5 billion pounds and will bring the bank's ratio of equity to risk weighted assets to around 9.5%. The Prudential Regulation Authority, a branch of the Bank of England responsible for supervision of British banks, is requiring British banks to hold equity amounting to 3% of total assets. Barclay's leverage ratio is at 2.5%, according to the PRA.

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The US House of Representatives voted 328 to 93 to pass abill that says any bonuses to employees of firms receiving government help would be taxed at 90% of the payments above $125,000, through aspecial tax. The purpose is to prevent abuses like the one at AIG where bonuses of $469 million were going out to AIG employees, when AIG was a financial disaster sucking up $!70 billion in government funds already.

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At this rate China and India will through the time young people are being encouraged to pursue reading and education- and through strictly regulated social media and videogames in China and TikTok banned in India- move in the direction of developed nations and the US with 150 million users of TikTok be moving in the other direction where Brazil 126 million users and Indonesia 99 million users are. This report in MIT Technology Review says in 2022 the children and teenagers in America spent 103 minutes on TikTok. Tiktok and Facebook split the social media market with about 5 billion minutes each. If users are on both this could give an average of 206 minutes or over 3 hours a day. Consider that there is a Chinese version Douyin. In China its version of TikToK is strictly regulated for a long time now and nowhere poses the kind of threat to education, reading and building a better educated population in China than in the US. Is that a conspiracy. No, says MIT Technology Review, it is because how quickly and forcefully the Chinese governments regulates digital platforms.  It a clear failure of the US Congress and the federal government that has led to this situation where this may be the first generation of young people that are less prepared for civic responsibilities and are from the amount of time dedicated to social media spending less time on reading to to be knowledgeable, and reading in general for education.  In China action is swift. Take for example video games and addiction. In 2021 the rule was put in that children under 18 could only play video games between 8.00 pm and 9.00 pm on weekends and holidays. They are blocked from using outside of these hours. China is looking for new measures that require creators to obtain a license, and for ways for the government to regulate the social media algorithms themselves.  ...

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A WSJ/NBC poll in April 2017 shows about three quarters of Americans disapprove of Congress's job performance, up 12 percentage points since Feb, and one fifth approve- down nine percentage points. Congress has had a low rating in the 20% point range since 2011. Speaker Ryan is viewed negatively by 40%, compared to 22% having a positive view.