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This editorial in the WSJ after the release of the EPA report on the safety of fracking to produce oil and gas, is critical of Governor Andrew Cuomo's ban on fracking in the state of New York. It says Rochester and Buffalo are two of the four poorest cities in the U.S. after Detroit and Cleveland, and points to the economic benefits generated by fracking for oil and gas in other states. Fracking is the practice of injecting water and chemicals deep into dense rock underground to push up oil and gas.

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Workers at the VW plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee voted 712 to 626 in Feb. 2014 to reject membership in the UAW union. This makes it more difficult for the union to make inroads in the Southern states. In an unusual step VW- cooperating with the IG Metalls union in Germany- let union organizers into the plant for over a week and cooperated with the UAW to setup the election. VW wanted to setup a works council, a committee of employees which gives management feedback for running of the plant, similiar to ones operating in Germany.

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Tumblr is a microblogging site with about 100 million users but very small revenue of about $13 million. Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr in a $1.1 billion all cash deal. Tumblr was started by David Karp in 2007, has 175 employees, and is based in New York. Tumblr made it easy for users to create blogs and post comments, photos and videos, and Tumblr users can follow other user's updates in the manner of Facebook users following their friends in social media. It has 108 million blogs and 117 million users worldwide, according to comScore Inc.

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The WSJ's Susan Carey interviews Alaska Airlines CEO, Brad Tilden, in June 2013. Tilden talks about the expansion to flights on the East Coast using Boeing's newer planes which do not need refueling on transcontinental flights. Alaska Airlines now flies to New York, Boston, Washington D.C , Chicago, Denver and Dallas. Alaska Airlines is strong on the West Coast and Pacific Northwest, with headquarters in Seattle. Connections with American and Delta are another asset. Management maintains good labor relations, and strives to be nimble with speedier decisionmaking than rivals.

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Legal experts say the complaint does not match the settlement by the Justice Department in the merger of American and US Airways. Whether the settlement increases competition after the merger and protects consumers also hinges on what the competition is- Delta and United, or Southwest, Jet Blue and other lowcost carriers. One view is that Southwest appeals to a different group of customers and is a different type of airline, and providing more competition from low cost carriers in New York and Washington DC does not affect the competition between the larger airlines.

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Voices of ordinary Pakistanis from Lahore and Karachi to New York city on the issues facing Pakistan and the elections of 2013. A sense that Pakistan is about to change and hope that efforts will be made by the new government to tackle the issues of security, electricity shortages, the economy and corruption, putting all children in schools, and creating a large middle class similar to Brazil, Mexico, Malaysia, Indonesia. About 40% of Pakistani children do not attend schools according to some estimates, in a country where two thirds of the population is young.

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Japan's new prime minister runs into difficulties in improving public finances by cutting some of the pork-barrel spending and making chages such as abolishing the gasoline tax to put more money in the hands of consumers. Cuts of wasteful spending came to less than a fourth of the target of $33 billion. The Finance Minister said that tax receipts for the year ending March 2010 would come in at $400 billion, about $100 billion less than estimated earlier, and this is less than the deficit for the current fiscal year of $590 billon.

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AIG is at 35 cents, Citigroup is at $1.02, GM is at $2, GE is at $6 a share, Bank of America is at $3.17 a share. The New York Stock Exchange has temporarily suspended its $1 minimum share price requirements to prevent a wave of delistings. There is a concern about another implosion like Lehman or AIG. GM's auditors said GM is not a viable or going concern. A GM bankruptcy with the support of the government is now something that GM management is considering and the government may take that route.

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Shen Wei arrived in New York from China in 1995 from Guangzhou, he is originally from Hunan province. He was on a scholarship from the Nikolai/Louis Dance Theater Lab. In 2007 he was awarded a fellowship by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. For years he went to every concert and art gallery he could find and opened his eyes to a new way of seeing the art world. Now he is back in China helping choreograph and setup the opening and closing ceremonies in Beijing for the Olympics.

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As the UK's biggest banks are hit hard in the markets, RBS shares down 39%, HBOS down 42%, and Lloyd's down 13%, Barclays down 9%, on Tuesday October 7, 2008, Brown takes a bold step to recapitalize British banks. In recent years as the boom years progressed British banks handled global capital equal or greater than Britain's entire economic output for a year, and making London the global financial hub rivalling New York. Brown offered to buy stakes in British banks for as much as 50 billion pounds or $88 billion.

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In this interview with Varoufakis, the Greece finance minister in the negotiations with the European Union and the IMF in 2015, Suzy Hansen provides a detailed account of Varoufakis's view on the Greece bailouts and a sense of looming failure in the negotiations. Varoufakis says he was willing to make concessions by holding off on action on the minimum wage, but cannot make concessions on paying out pensions to the elderly. Varoufakis concedes he is not a good negotiator or a politician, and negotiating skills were critical for Greece to tap into the goodwill in the eurozone's southern region to win a package that would give the Greek economy a chance to grow. Additional handicaps may be his outlook which was shaped in his younger years by the "junta years" when Greece was ruled by a military dictatorship, and a family history relating to Greece's civil war between royalists and communists. In this interview he compares himself to Margaret Thatcher, who he says should not be held responsible for the state corporatism following the war, remarks that may show a finance minister out of touch with the present situation. There is no lack of criticism of the way some of the bailout actions took place to protect French and German banks in 2011 and 2012- in fact some of the strongest criticism, well formulated, was on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal. Yet Varoufakis had a special responsibility to build on the goodwill generated after years of austerity, and the efforts of the Samaras administration to work with the EU. On both counts he appears to have failed as he realizes that the 4 months of uncertainty ending in a total lack of communication between both sides, has cost Greece by worsening the economy. Posturing and personality, compounded by inexperience, may have distracted from the real work of serious negotiations. The IMF chief Christine Lagarde had emphasized at the outset the need for Greece to fix its tax system with high degree of tax evasion, an issue on which Syriza could have acted quickly. Some of the period before the elections was used to prepare the EU for negotiations with Syriza, and Syriza needed to be prepared on this issue. Yet no action was taken on a plan to tackle this issue- on the grounds, says Varoufakis, of lack of time. He only rationalizes this when he says it is only a short term cost for the long term future of young people. ...

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New GI Bill taking effect August 2009, has not received much attention but it will help bring more equity into the system and provide better opportunities for university education to those who serve in the armed forces and thus help increase mobility in the USA, with those previously unable to afford an education or restricted to small community colleges able to take advantage of the best opportunties they can work hard for and use their potential and abilities. It makes for a more educated and effective military as young people with high school diplomas are more likely to take advantage of military service for 3 years to get a good university education. So its quite probable that more people and better and more intelligent and able recruits would join the military service at the same time that some of the military recruits who have already served three years go to colleges to take advantage of the new GI Bill. It costs the military $5.7 billion in incentives and other recruitment costs to meet the demand for service personnel over the next 5 years, but this can now be used towards the cost of the GI Bill. Also there is some fairness and equity in the idea of the GI Bill, and something that would appeal to candidates like Obama who believes that the income gaps in the country and the educational gaps in the country between the affluent and the those struggling at the lower end of the class structure has widened considerably in the last two decades. See Obama's interview with the WSJ on June 17, 2008, during his visit to Flint, Michigan, for an economic theme speech. Previously the educational assistance went upto only $39,000 and could not be passed onto a spouse or child, something that candidate MCain added to the bill. It also includes a monthly stipend for living expenses in addition to the tution, so its fair and generous program for GI's, and may bring some of the benefits in bringing mobility between the classes and new infusion of energy through a more equitable system for young people who may otherwise be left out of opportunities for a better education and better job opportunities even after risking their lives for service. Getting in the brighter more motivated for education people who otherwise might not opt for the military who then pursue higher education will help the miltary improve quality of personnel and help bring more dynamism into society with their energy and enthusuasm and hard work and discipline....

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Should Arthur Levinson and some of the team he has assembled at Genentech leave it will be a big loss for Roche, as it was his team that helped bring a series of new drugs to the market such as Avastin, Herceptin, and Rituxan to bring Genentech sales from $1 billion in 1999 to $9 billion in 2007. As drug companies buy biotechs in large numbers, with $70 billion in deals this year almost twice the toal for 2007, the question remains whether the drug companies have succeeded in retaining talent as consolidation yields cost savings but does not improve drug discovery. Drug companies are struggling with this, and a couple of models have emerged for keeping minds engaged in scientific discovery satisfied that they have the freedom to operate as they always have and work with the teams they have assembled, similiar to the work style and in the similiar culture as before. Almost like walking into the offices they use as if its like before. J&J has come up with a hub and spoke model to acquire companies and then leave them alone- preserving their management teams, unique cultures and brands. Centocor was bought in 1999 by J&J and 10 of the top executives stayed on and developed Remicade, a drug for inflammatory disease that has sales of $3.3 billion. Glaxo has developed a new structure under new CEO Andrew Witty, which breaks up the primary research labs into "discovery performance units" or DPUs, which also include new biotech startups. In April Glaxo acquired Sitris, a Cambridge, Massachusetts startup. The company had come up with a new science for tackling heart disease, diabetes and other diseases associated with aging. Harvard trained scientist and CEO, Christoph Westphal, went with Glaxo turning down other companies because the independence of the DPU appealed to him. Each DPU has a 3 year budget and this also appealed to Westphal. He could walk into the labs, says Westphal as if nothing had changed. Is Roche making a mistake in acquiring Genentech when it could have left it alone. Are the consolidation savings worth it if some of the discovery team at Genentech leaves and there is the feeling that the culture will change, and if Levinson feels that he was not consulted about Roche's move. These are questions that remain even when Roche's CEO, Severin, says he does not want to change things at Genentech because Roche's actions will speak louder than its words. ...

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On Canada's Justin Trudeau- looking back at his 10 years 2015-2025 mostly inherited the work of his father. He tackled Covid, improved childcare, tackled the renegotiation of trade with Republicans in the US, but lacked the major achievement of the 1970's of Pierre Trudeau setting up Canada as an independent state. The Washington Post looks at the political career of Justin Trudeau. He is the son of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, a politician from Quebec, who was prime minister from 1968 to 1984 except for one year in 1979-1980. During that period Pierre Trudeau a lawyer practicing labour law in Montreal and educated at the University of Montreal had three significant accomplishments. Canada Act of 1982 passed into law by Queen Elizabeth and the British Parliament, set up Canada as a sovereign state. Prior to this only the British Parliament could amend the Canadian Constitution under the Dominion Act of 1867 under Queen Victoria. As a Quebeker Pierre Trudeau succeeded highly respected Lester Pearson as head of the Liberal Party, and held off the Party Quebecois's effort for separatism in the early 1980's. By 1981 the Canadian Supreme Court 9-0 rejected the Party Quebecois bills that conflicted with the Charter of Rights set up under the Canada Act which protected minorities in Quebec having education in English.   ...

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When it comes to the wars in the Middle East Biden showed courage in "doing the right thing," even if it would cost him. Biden pulled America from wars in the Middle East that DJT had laid the ground work for by setting up that goal and taking action. Obama by contrast lacked the courage, and would not take any risks to his reelection effort. Biden in one term proved to be a transformative president in ways that Obama never even comes close, by building on the wave of support for rebuilding infrastructure that DJT had created in his first term. In ways that were unpredictable but real it could be said that DJT anticipated Biden and Biden anticipated DJT's efforts to get America out of wars that were never really in America's interest and started under the Reagan and Bush administrations continued through the Obama years. In the same way DJT anticipated Biden on rebuilding infrastructure and Biden anticipated DJT in action on the US Border and shutting down fentanyl flows from Mexico and China by getting Republican Senator Lankford to write up the legislation on the Border. This is also why president Biden can welcome DJT at the White House on the day of the Inauguration Jan 20 knowing both worked for the best interests of the Nation, and in the end listened to each other. ...

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France's Thomas Piketty concentrated on inequality and arrives at no solutions or relief, just a historical summary that is also intuitively seen. The pandemic, climate change's impact on agriculture and livable planet, the Ukraine war have raised three questions right before our eyes that are broader and cover more and deeper ground.  The pandemic showed that the dependence on manufacturing in remote locations was a serious error. Climate change showed that agriculture the ability to feed the world itself was affected by this dependence on remote location manufacturing.  Much of this manufacturing was shipped out to China, Europe and the US lost their manufacturing base and with the communities spread out  across the US and EU lost factories and work. Manufacturing was not just shipped out to China, the process was concentrated in a short span of time leading to destruction of the environment on an unprecedented scale in China and the world  by burning lots of coal and fossil fuels. The Russian invasion of Ukraine showed the failure of this arrangement  and exposed its cracks  for Europe, US, and the free world in Asia and Latin America. The shipping out of manufacturing in this way not only destroyed communities and jobs in manufacturing in the US and the EU, but also led to such a broad accumulation of  dollar reserves in Russia and China, that enabled the invasion of neighboring countries in Europe without serious consequences to their economies, the invasion of Ukraine and the threatened takeover of Taiwan. By tackling these issues and building a supply chain concentrated more at home and in the free world better manufacturing jobs will be created in Europe and the US and in the nations of the free world that mitigate and reduce all the effects of inequality that Piketty and others talk about. The newer factories built in advanced nations of the EU and the US and set up in the free world in Asia and other countries, will be built with climate change in mind and make the shift away from coal and fossil fuels, and for conservation plus efficiency in use of energy at every step in the newly built supply chain. The results will be good for all countries in the world including the US, EU, China and India, as climate change can be aggressively tackled in this way with the latest technology and trillions of dollar of capital investments for the benefit of all. ...

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During 2022 the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank issued 6 warning citations to Silicon Valley Bank, saying that its bank practices did not allow for enough cash in the event of crisis. By July 2022 in a full supervisory review it was rated deficient for governance and controls. At a meeting with senior leaders of the bank the possible exposure to interest rate losses related to Fed increasing rates was also discussed says this report in NYT. The Fed regulators stated that the bank was using wrong models showing that SVB bank would do better as interest rates increased. Questions are being asked about why things that were in plain sight were overlooked by the regulators- 97% of deposits were uninsured by the federal government. In the event of a crisis depositors might try to get their deposits out causing a run on the bank which is what actually happened with $42 billion attempted withdrawals in one day. Michael Barr is the vice chair for Fed supervision. A investigation report is expected by May 1. March 29 the House Financial Services Committee will hold ahearing in Congress. Peter Conti-Brown, an expert on financial regulation at the University of Pennsylvania calls it failure of banking supervision, and says it will become clear from the investigation whether the supervisors failed in their work. One of the problems is that the CEO of SVB bank, Gregory Becker, was on the Board of the San Francisco Fed. NYT says the optics of this is bad. Bernie Sanders, Senator from Vermont, calls it absurd that he was appointed to the Fed board of the institution that was regulating SVB bank. Another problem is that Randall Quarles, vice chair of Fed supervision 2017-2021 carried out a 2018 regulatory roll back law of president Trump in an expansive way says NYT. This law exempted banks with less than $250 billion in assets from strict banking supervision that larger banks were expected to go through. Fed chairman Powell is criticized for not  flagging these steps as potentially dangerous for the banking system in the way this was done by vice chair Lael Brainard. Brainard is now head of Biden's National Economic Council. She never favored the Trump law and had grasped early the risks of such deregulation. Sanders will bring a new law to prevent bank CEO's from sitting on Fed boards, and Senator Elizabeth Warren has called for an independent review that does not include Powell.     ...

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Turner Adair, head of Britain's Financial Regulatory Authority thinks that banks have assumed an outsize role in the British and world economy, and are coopting their regulators. He sees the need to check many of the excesses. Why not use profits to build up reserves rather than give out huge bonuses and paychecks, he asks. He sees the need to challenge the accepted thinking on Wall Street and in the City of London, where the ideology of efficient markets became embedded, as it did also in the regulatory community. He came in the week Lehman Brothers collapsed as chairman of the FSA. And he wants to shake up the existing thinking. In March, the Turner Review. a 126 page report was published. A lot of attention was paid to his suggesting atax on financial transactions, called the Tobin tax, but its designed more to get people thinking and questionning the existing way of running banking as Turner said in an interview, "we have begun to accept this idea of liquidity as the new God." Can British or American society and the financial industry in both countries work to the benefit of both? Nobel prize winning economists and other experts have advised ashift to productive investments that grow the economy using technology, science and brainpower and new ideas, as opposed to the investment in mortgages and other speculative investments. As the regulators -including former and current heads of the SEC, and other regulatory bodies in the US, Cox, Schapiro and others- once held on to the same theory of uninhibited operation of free markets as best for generating increased wealth for society as the banking community, they tended to get co-opted in letting bad practices flourish. Went to sleep on the job as it were. See the links in Intelilinks. Adair Turner's admonitions are designed to get people thinking. He says, "banks need to be willing, like the regulator, to recognize that there are some profitable activities so unlikely to have a social benefit, direct or indirect, that they should voluntarily walk away from them." Investments in science, technology and new products, as in the 60's that generated a revolution in living standards, than the mortgages and consumer lending of the last decade, is what he may be saying, as do these Nobel prize winning economists....

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David Kirkpatrick, former Cairo bureau chief of the New York Times, gives an account of how the Obama  administration was split in its support of Egypt's beginnings in democracy. Chuck Hagel at Defense, and John Kerry at State Department, sent signals to the military that were different from that of some other members of the Obama administration. General Mattis at Central Command blamed president Morsi's failure on his " imperious leadership." General Flynn headed the Defense Intelligence Agency at the time of president Morsi's ouster by the military. Both Mattis and Flynn later joined the Trump administration with Mattis at Defense.  This report says president Obama accepted the military takeover. President Obama aroused hopes for democracy at Cairo University soon after he became president but he was not able to develop a coherent policy and support within his administration for what would be a difficult transition to democracy in countries that for decades have been ruled by the military. President Trump merely continued the policy followed during the last 2 years of the Obama administration.      ...

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Peggy Noonan reflects on the deep changes taking place in America. Behind the changes is a strong feeling in the middle and working class that it has been ignored by the establishment in both parties. She points to Citizens United and says it is bad for the Republican Party, encouraging large donors and hedge fund billionaires, making the party less accountable to ordinary people. The Clinton's fundraising also raises similar questions. Trade policies depressing wages have worked against the working class, yet espoused by politicians of both parties. The young supporting Sanders, she says have seen little to show capitalism is working for them. Institutions such as Congress, the presidency, the political class, the Supreme Court, the media, are all in an uncertain position, as voters lose faith in the ability of these institutions to work for them. Yet she points out that it is important that the U.S. voters choose wisely- keeping in mind the importance of electing someone who can demonstrate goodness and a sound mind- not obscuring the questions about Trump. Uncouth language, uncouth behaviours reflect sense and sensibilities, it matters a lot, Peggy Noonan tells the Republican Party and America....

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The effort by a community bank, Talmer Bank, to fill in for the lack of mortgage lending for certain neighborhoods in Detroit with abandoned or ransacked homes. Talmer Bank provides $25,000 loans so that these homes can be repaired and restored. Another agency helping in this work of renewal of these neighborhoods is the Detroit Land Bank Authority which auctions abandoned homes with bids starting at $1000. That agency was started in 2007 and is now making fresh efforts under Mayor Mike Duggan. This agency had in 2015 about 22,351 residential structures and 54,660 vacant lots in its inventory, one fifth of the land in the city. Between 1900-1950 Detroit's population grew to 1.85 million. Then by 2010 as the auto industry hit a downturn and residents departed from a declining city the population declined to 700,000. Other approaches taken by DLBA are to fix up abandoned homes and sell these properties sometimes at a loss, and to demolish homes that cannot be restored to raise property values in the neighborhood. Even here with scarce resources the DLBA has to pick and choose which neighborhoods have the best chance of recovery to invest resources....

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Exxon to invest $600 million in producing liquird transportation fuels from algae- organisms in water called oilgae. Its a research effort that will take 5-10 years to bring results with large scale commercial production. The project will be conducted in partnership with Synthetic Genomics, abiotechnology companyfounded by genomics pioneer Craig Venter. Algae generated energy is apromising technology which yields 2000 gallons of fuel per acre of production each year compared with 650 gallons for palm trees, and 450 gallons for sugarcanes which Brazil uses for producing energy. Corn which has become controversial in recent years yields 250 gallons per acre with energy, and water supplies required to grow corn, and the impact on food supplies. Exxon is also showing support for the work of Dr. Venter, ascientist who is known for decoding the hman genome in the 1990's. In recent years he has done research in searching for micro-organisms that can be turned into fuel. Algal biofuel called oilgae by environmentalists is made from algae that have molecular structures that are similiar to petroleum products like gasoline, and is compatible with the existing transportation structure....

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As the American banks were better capitalized before the global financial crisis than the European banks, and they were recapitalized with taxpayer money during the crisis, the Europeans and the French in particular feel that they have alot of catching up to do. Geithner at U.S. Treasury is pushing for higher capital requirements for the banks, with agreement by the end of 2010 and implementation by 2012. The way these new rules work the Europeans feel would put their banks at a disadvantage, because their banks would have to raise more capital and constrain their ability to provide credit to their local economies. Capital requirements for banks were part of the previous arrangement called Basel II, which covered USA and European banks. Basel II capital requirements rules measured capital compared to assets weighted on the basis of how much risk they carried, but this relied on credit rating firms which were discredited in the crisis. On the subject of bonuses the large banks are trying to influence the discussions. As a result the Financial Stability Board, an international advisory committee of financial regulators is going to make its own recommendations....

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The election of Sebastian Pinera only confirms a new emphasis in Latin America towards a social cohesion agenda. In Mexico with Calderon, in Columbia with Uribe, in Brazil with Luiz Inacio Da Silva, in Chile with Pinera promising to work closely with the Concertacion and carry on social programs introduced by that coalition which reduced poverty, the trend is the same. It is to put behind Latin America the struggles between the military, the universities, business, unions and other parts of society and forge a common consensus for coupling social programs for the less well off with business friendly policies to improve the economy. Its even a process that is taking place in Spain which has a great deal of influence on Latin America, as Spain combines social support programs with business friendly policies. And the Concertacion President in Chile, Michelle Bachelet, leaves with personal popularity ratings of about 75% showing that these policies are popular with Chileans, as they are in places like Brazil and Mexico. The fatigue with 20 year old Concertacion rule shows with a change in administration but overall policy direction will in large measure continue....

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Kraft is looking at its staple pantry products in a different light to give them new life. Kraft products like Bull's Eye barbecue sauce, Chips Ahoy, Oscar Mayer, Miracle Whip and Philadelphia Cream Cheese are all getting new marketing campaigns. This is similiar to what is happening across the food industry, as companies like Campbell, ConAgra, General Mills, Heinz, Hershey, Hormel, Kellogg and Smucker, all of which have staple pantry products, are trying to give new life to old staples. Kraft marketing executives say the idea is to work not just on the rational side as they have done in the past by emphasizing price. For Macaroni and Cheese, Kraft would say to cost conscious consumers in this recession, it costs about 1 dollar a box. One headline even described this as a small price for a big cheese eating grin. Now the advertsing budget has been increased by 30% to $50 million, and the focus has shifted to bringing out the emotional attachment to this product of young and old alike. Now the thing is to add fun aspects to the lives of parents and children who have used it in the past. ...