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The Congressional Budget Office analysis of the Republican healthcare plan advocated by Mr. McConnell, Senate Majority leader, is that it would add 22 million uninsured if implemented. That plan ran into opposition from Republican Senators Collins, Capito, Murkowski, Paul, and Moran, and lacked enough support in the Senate. All Democrats opposed it and with the thin majority Republicans were divided. By taking away some benefits given under the existing Affordable Care Act the plan hurt the elderly and low income people, making some Republicans listen to their constituents in home districts and not the Republican leadership. The NYT profiled two in particular who astonishingly in a sign of today's strange politics were the only ones publicly holding townhall type meetings to hear the views of people in their voting districts- Susan Collins of Maine and Jerry Moran of Kansas. Both senators were listening to rural communities and Moran stated his opposition with the words- "I am a product of rural Kansas." With it the nation takes a breather and the message goes out that it is best to listen first and then to seek middle ground, not do what both parties Democrats and Republicans did in 2009 and 2017- rush serious legislation through without support across party lines and without serious discussion.   ...

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Deutsche Bank posted a fourth quarter 2012 loss of 2.2 billion euros. It set aside 1 billion euros to cover the cost of legal settlements including an investigation of LIBOR rate manipulation. Deutsche Bank says it has raised its Tier 1 capital ratio to 8 percent from less than 6% a year earlier. Analysts are uncertain whether this is from changes the way the bank calculates risk and whether the bank has seriously reduced its high leverage.

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This editorial in the Hindu- after encouraging news from Moody's and the World Bank on India's economic future- says that the Modi government should not be distracted by the upcoming elections as it focusses on the task ahead. After a gap of 14 years Moody's raises India's credit rating one notch. Moody's cites steps taken by the Modi government as creating a better environment for future growth- the implementation of GST goods and service tax, efforts to clear some of the bad loans in the banking system so that capital can be freed up for infrastructure investment, and reducing bureaucratic hurdles for clearance of projects. Moody's cites the high public debt burden as a constraint for growth. General government debt is at 68% of GDP in 2016, higher than the 44% median for economies in this range. On the plus side the better targeting of welfare measures to help the poor including steps in the banking field, bringing more businesses into the formal sector to improve tax revenues, and the large pool of private savings, are cited by Moody's. Critical is timely implementation in the future. As the discussion in the media on bullet trains and other new infrastructure shows, there is not enough momentum for stretch goals as China has done over the last 2 decades.   ...

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Krugman points to financial deregulation, cross border financial flows, private debt in dollars and depreciating currencies, and the U.S. Federal Reserve's low interest rate policies, as the main culprits for bubbles and the emerging market crises in the 1990's and 2013.

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President Obama's 15 member Independent Payment Advisory Board, which is given the task of reducing Medicare costs and holding them to GDP growth and half a percentage point after 2018, under the Obama deficit reduction plan.

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The problems in Chase bank's Investment Office unit were first reported in the WSJ April 5, 2012. Large positions were taken by Mr Michael Iksil, a trader in the London office that ruffled credit markets. Iksil reports to Achilles Macris, head of the European operations of the Investment Office unit, and Macris reports to Ms. Drew. At the time CEO Dimon and other executives reviewed trading positions and made no changes in strategies. After April 13 earnings call losses increased to $200 million a day, and review teams assigned to look into this found errors in the way the hedges were conducted. In early May Chief Risk Officer John Hogan and Europe head Daniel Pinto monitored the situation. The hedges were designed to reduce risk in the eurozone financial crisis, but the complex transactions based on relationships between a number of derivative indexes for investment grade and junk grade corporate bonds in U.S. and Europe worked in ways that led to large losses, and were so complicated that they were poorly understood....

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The new government of prime minister Enrico Letta takes office in Italy in April 2013 following the reelection of president Giorgio Napolitano. Letta is 46 years old and represents a new generation in Italian politics. He is a former Christian Democrat and member of the European parliament. Letta studied at the University of Pisa, and did graduate work in international affairs. In the 1990's he was president of the European Young Christian Democrats. He was associated with Beniamino Andreatta, a Christian Democrat economist and founder of research group Arel. Letta was his chief of staff when he became foreign minister in 1993. In 1998 Letta was minister for European Affairs, and the following year Industry minister. In 2009 Letta became deputy secretary of the Democratic party. The firm European connections, a good sense of how Italians feel about the economic changes, a connection with young people, and his grasp of the needs of business and labor in improving Italian competitiveness, make him an excellent choice after the inconclusive parliamentary elections in Italy. ...

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The SuperCommittee in the U.S. Congress for deficit reduction reaches an impasse a week before the Thanksgiving deadline on the issue of tax increases and the extension of the Bush tax cuts. The Bush tax cuts automatically expire in December 2012, an option that Democrats are willing to live with, but is one the Republicans find it harder to accept.

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

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The strange story of an aging ship in extremely bad shape from a Black sea port in Georgia with a 2750 ton shipment of ammonium nitrate with a crew on unpaid wages making its way to port Beira in Mozambique in 2013. It is leased by a Russian owner living in Cyprus who would make $1 million for transporting the shipment to Fabrica de Explosivos de Mozambique. It makes an unscheduled stop in Beirut after problems with seamen on the crew to pickup some heavy machinery which might help pay the ship's crews wages. The machinery does not fit and in any case the ship is in such bad condition and cannot handle any machinery.  The port authorites are interested only in the docking fees which the indebted Russian owner does not pay and abandons his leased ship. The port of Beirut impounds the ship for unpaid docking fees which turns out to be the reason the ship remains in Beirut harbor. The ship fails shipping standards and takes in water, it remains in Beirut harbor till 2014 when the ship sinks. Before that the Beirut authorites for some strange reason unload the ammonium nitrate and leave it in Hangar 12 warehouse where it remained till it exploded yesterday. The authorites never gave much thought to the ammonium nitrate and its dangers till after unloading it. After unloading no one accepted responsibility. The Russian who had leased the ship was living in Cyprus and took no responsibility. The government of Lebanon also did not know what to do with it.  Repeated attempts by the port authorites asking the government to take some action for disposal fails to lead to any action. There is now a sense that Lebanon is a failing state because of the nature of this incident.   ...

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The opposition of parties from the far-right in the Netherlands and France, and other parts of Europe, to austerity measures imposed by the EU under the leadership of Germany's Angela Merkel. Geert Wilders, leads this far right opposition in the Netherlands and Marie Le Pen in France. The far right parties are gaining influence with high unemployment and economic recession in Europe, making spending cuts painful for pensioners, and the middle class.

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Donald Trump fires his campaign manager Corey Lewandoski in June 2016, as GOP advisors prepare for the presidential election. This report in the NYT says family members felt Lewandoski lacked the experience needed for a presidential campaign, was slow to hire new staff, and was at odds with Trump's GOP advisor Paul Manafort. He was also seen as having poor rapport with the press and media covering the Trump campaign. The Trump campaign also lacked fund raising capabilities under Lewandoski, which is now being tackled with fund raising by Trump, and the better image necessary to attract donors.

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A Feb. 2011 NBC/Wall Street Journal shows only a small number of Americans think cuts to Medicare are necessary to "significantly reduce" the deficit. Only 18% favored cuts, 54% opposed cuts to Medicare to reduce the deficit. Only 22% said cuts to Social Security were needed, 49% said they were not needed. Tea party supporters by a 2 to 1 margin said significant cuts to Medicare were "unacceptable." What measures should be taken to put the entitlement programs on a sound financial basis? On this point over half of the people polled said they favor increasing the retirement age to 69 years by 2075, up from 66 now. A larger number said they support reducing Social Security and Medicare payments to wealthier Americans. Experts say these two measures could eliminate 60% of the underfunding of Social Security. On the issue of collective bargaining rights of public workers, this poll shows 62% of the people polled oppose effforts to weaken collective bargaining. This is similiar to the CBS/New York Times poll results of Feb 24, 2011 on this issue. See the group for this. This poll show a big yellow caution light for Republicans zealously advocating cuts to entitlements. Both polls show lack of public support for reducing the collective bargaining rights of public workers....

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In a closely watched election Mr. Wilders of the far Right in Netherlands gains 20 seats, far behind centre right People's Party for Freedom and Democracy of prime minister Rutte who won 33 seats. The Dutch Green party which is strongly pro- Europe went from 4 seats to 14 seats, the Christian Democratic Appeal party gained 19 seats and the pro-European Democrats 66 party also gained 19 seats. In the 150 member parliament Rutte needs 76 seats to form a new coalition government, and he is likely to ally with these other parties to form a new government that supports strongly the European Union. This editorial in the NYT says the people of the Netherlands turned out in large numbers to support pro-European Union parties. Next the focus is on France and Marie Le Pen's challenge from the far Right. Cyber threats from Russia are seen as a way to discredit otherwise strong candidates, and the French government is taking this seriously. Chancellor Merkel said she "was very happy that a high turnout led to a very pro-European result," and president Hollande said this was "a clear victory against extremism."  ...

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The Roseta orbiter launched in 2004 lands on a comet 2 miles in diameter after travelling 500 million miles by 2014.

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The Supreme Court ruling on EPA mercury regulations gives smaller plants with coal fired plants more leeway in installing scrubbers. Large companies have already committed to installing scrubbers for coal fired plants. Regulations are only one reason for the shift to natural gas from coal. Lower prices of natural gas and increasing supplies are a major reason. The U.S. will reduce dependence on coal for energy from 39% to 36% in 2015, with natural gas increasing from 27% to 31%, and renewable solar wind energy making up about 13%, according to EIA.

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This editorial in the Economist magazine says Mr. Obama's final State of the Union address showed the frailty of change in the Obama years, with much of it in danger of being removed based on which way the 2016 election goes. A similiar opinion is expressed in Deutsche Welle DW.com's editorial opinion, which stated that one of the tragedies of the two terms of the Obama presidency is that change probably will come with a successor in the office, even though this was what Obama campaigned on in 2008. This is true especially for the middle class and working class, which continued to suffer in the Obama years, leading to widening inequality of opportunity and social disparities. Candidates from both parties now offer solutions based on growth and revision of the tax system on the right, and some version of free health care and college on the left, to increase access to economic opportunity.

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This is one of the strongest worded statements on Syria made on the editorial pages of the Washington Post, as editorial page editor Fred Hiatt talks about the situation in Syria created by the policies of president Obama and his closest advisors. He calls the failure of these policies Obama's achievement, failing to find any other word to describe the years of deliberate inaction and appearing to act in crisis when simply stalling, during 2011-2015, that reversed all the gains and opportunity presented by the Arab Spring. Instead it has put that part of the world back into a dark period similiar to 17th century Europe with the religious and sectarian conflicts that lasted for the better part of that century, compounding the serious errors under Republican administrations since Reagan, with new errors by taking the opposite extreme in policies- without giving a place for thoughtful courageous policies and making difficult choices.

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HDFC Bank CEO, Aditya Puri, has succeeded with conservative practices in lending. It is now India's second biggest lender by market value, after the government owned State Bank of India. HDFC's lending to consumers has doubled since 2008 under Puri. He believes in prudent lending and keeps an autographed copy of Michael Lewis's The Big Short in his office. This has enabled Puri to avoid the losses experienced by other banks such ICICI, and with India's growing economy HDFC has profit increases of over 30% for the last decade. HDFC is adding 2 million customers a year, says Puri. The bad loan ratio is estimated to be 0.2% in the third quarter of 2011, one tenth of that at State Bank of India. India's largest mortgage lender, Housing Development Finance Corporation, is the largest shareholder with 23%. Puri says he will focus on growth in India, and will continue to avoid taking the kind of risks that would make depositor's lose sleep at night.

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With a 6% decline in sales in Europe expected for 2012, the problems at GM's Opel operations are expected to worsen. GM's sales in Europe declined by 2% in 2011. Critics say GM has not give enough attention to Opel's operations. Giving it only an afterthought after being overwhelmed by problems in the U.S. operations, and mostly using the design expertise of its engineering center in Russelheim, near Frankfurt. The Buick Regal is based on the Opel Insignia and the work of Opel engineers. Ferdinand Duddenhoffer, professor at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, says GM has neglected Opel and is not making good use of the manufacturing capacity at Opel. The problem, he says is production management and being able to shift quickly to different models based on demand, and using Opel as part of a global factory network. The repeated restructurings at Opel for 15 years have left this problem unresolved. In his view GM is still in the Middle Ages in this respect.

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A multi-billion dollar auction of new bandwidth for phone operators in India was rigged to favor certain companies, according to a report by the auditor -general of India. The report says the auction was conducted by the Communcations ministry in a way "that lacked transparency and fairness." The report focusses on a few of the operators including Reliance Communications. The result is a loss of 1.76 trillion rupees or $39 billion, according to auditors. The cellphone industry in India is seeing rapid growth- 18 million new users were added in October 2010, with the total reaching 671 million. By comparison China has 830 million users. Of 122 licenses granted in the 2008 auction, 85 went to companies that "suppressed facts, disclosed incomplete information and submitted fictitious documents," according to the auditor's report. and in at least one instance, the Ministry's department of Telecommunications "miserably failed to do the due diligence in the examination of the applications," the report said....

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Simon Nixon looks at the different scenarios for Greece as it faces snap elections on Jan. 25, 2015. He makes the point that unlike the situation in 2012 Greece's debt after considerable adjustment with creditors now looks sustainable. The nominal debt to GDP ratio remains high at over 170%, yet says Nixon, the long term average interest cost is about 2.3%. He even cites hedge fund Japonica Partners analysis showing Greece's debts valued on a discounted cash flow basis under international public accounting standards at a debt to GDP ratio of about 18%. Alexis Tsipras's left coalition if elected is likely to moderate its demands and continue with EU programs for Greece to restore confidence in financial markets and lower the interest rates on debt- including removal of special tax treatment exemptions and pension reforms. Support for EU membership remains high in Greece and Tsipras is likely to change his program to adapt just as Samaras and New Democracy Party did when it was elected....