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Small business loans as a percentage of all business loans held by U.S. banks has dropped to 24% in 2014 from 35% in 2007 before the financial crisis of 2008-2009, according to the FDIC. Even as business loans to larger corporate customers is recovering small business lending has failed to recover. This reduces the prospects for recovery in the job market.

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Bernstein Global Research looked into how long it takes to regain losses if one remained fully invested in the market with a diversified portfolio. For the 12 month period starting July 1, 1931, with 67% decline the research showed it took 39 months to be made whole and recover the losses. For the 12 month period starting March 1, 2008, with a 43% decline the research shows it took 22 months to be made whole and recover the losses.

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Shiller says that his CAPE ratio for the U.S. stands at above 25 in 2014, from 23 in 2013, above the 20th century average of 15.21. He looks at possible reasons for the CAPE remaining above 20 for long period of about 20 years, except when it dropped to 13 following the 2008 financial crisis. CAPE is similiar to the price earnings ratio except it uses the average of the last 10 years earnings. Reasons he gives are low interest rates, high bond prices, Fed policy, and the lack of alternative investments in a low interest rate environment that puts more money into the stock market in the U.S.

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David Blanchett, head of retirement research at Morningstar Investment Management, William Reichenstein, Powers Professor at Baylor University, Guyton at Cornerstone Wealth Advisors in Minneapolis, and Hebeler, former head of Boeing Aerospace (who does dissemination of free sound financial planning at www.analyzenow.com), provide a better understanding of the issues involved in making good retirement planning decisions and the thinking needed to avoid errors.

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Khedery describes the complete collapse in Sunni- Shiite relations under the Maliki regime and the Iranian influence in Iraqi politics in stark terms. It will take a near miracle, tolerance for religious faiths and opinion, and an exceptional leader, to turn things around and put the decades of misrule of Hussein and Maliki behind. Without that there can be no Iraq. Khedery goes into the misrule in a manner that American political and military leaders only talk about in a sparing manner so as not to make the entire Middle East policy look disastrous.

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This article by General James Jones is the second from the highest ranks of the Obama administration, saying the entire Middle East policy of U.S. president Obama was flawed and could lead to dangerous consequences. Gen. Jones, former National Security Advisor to Obama 2009-2010, says the situation today is worse than in 1991 when the U.S. launched Operation Provide Comfort to protect Kurdish refugees in Northern Iraq from Saddam Hussein, with an engagement of about 5 years and 25,000 Allied troops. Jones says the crisis in Iraq and Syria is of an order several times worse than 1991 and at any time since the 2003 invasion, as it involves the setup of a terrorist ISIS state in the heart of the Middle East. What went wrong? Jones says all the warnings from other Middle East nations about Maliki's corrupt policy and sectarianism used to stay in power turned to be true. Even Maliki's own advisors and colleagues say in a separate report by Matt Bradley that Maliki battled not for the Iraqi state but only to preserve his own power. Jones calls the U.S. president's decision not to act in Syria when the "red line" of use of chemical weapons was crossed, the failure to maintain a limited military training presence in Iraq after 2011, and not insisting that Mr. Maliki arm the Kurds, as having gravely aggravated the problem in 2014. Jones calls for arming the Kurds directly with sufficient weaponry for defending their region and providing immediate expanded aid to the Abadi government, appointment of a special envoy to ensure direct and immediate communications with Baghdad and with Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite leaders. He calls also for close air support of Iraqi and Kurdish operations, and an aggressive diplomatic effort to unify the Middle Eastern nations to remove ISIS from the region. Jones says this is the right thing to do in the name of all the Iraqi people yearning for peace, for the U.S. service personnel who made sacrifices in Iraq for 23 years, and for U.S. national security....

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As Mr. Maliki resigns from the premiership in Iraq, a former aide says of his eight years as prime minister that Maliki never battled to preserve the state, only to preserve his own premiership. And other colleagues says he thrived on demonizing the Sunnis and the regular crises under his leadership. The new prime minister Mr. Abadi is also from the same Shiite Dawa party that Maliki belonged to, and it is not clear how is leadership will turn out. The final push for Maliki's ouster came from Ayatollah Sistani of Iran. The U.S. and western allies also pushed for a new leader. The use of sectarian Shiite militias by Maliki to fight the Sunni insurgents from ISIS in 2014 further aggravated Iraq's religious divide.

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Apple is investing $700 million in a new material called sapphire that will replace glass to provide better breakage protection for the iPhone. The first sapphire screens will be coming off a manufacturing plant in Mesa, Arizona, that Apple runs with GT Advanced Technologies. Apple is using sapphire, a harder and more corrosion resistant material that is costly to produce, for the cover on the fingerprint reader and iphone camera lens. About 11% of iPhone owner screens have cracked or broken screens, according to warranty provider SquareTrade. Compared to Gorilla Glass costing $3 per screen, the sapphire screen would cost $16. Apple paid $113 million for a 1.4 million square foot Mesa facility from a solar panel producer and leased it to GT, a manufacturer of furnaces to produce sapphire. Apple is paying GT $578 million to install furnaces at the factory and run the plant.