LyrArc Article Gist
Cost of living, of housing and healthcare, with the option of working remotely, is leading to more Americans leaving America for the first time since the 1930's than coming in. It is not just immigration policy discouraging immigration to the US. Middle class and younger Americans are seeing advantages in moving overseas if it costs much less for a better life and you can work remotely. In 2008 Gallup found 1 in 10 Americans wanted to leave, in 2026 1 in 5 want to leave for overseas locations.In 2025 more Americans left the US than came into the US. Estimates vary but one estimate is that in 2025 180,000 natural born Americans chose to leave the US. It is younger families, young people, from the southern US , from the midwest, all over the US, who are choosing to go to Europe or some other country to live and work. The State Department has no idea and does not keep track- it could be between 4 millon and 7 million Americans live overseas. Architects, engineers, professional people, are working out of small towns in teh French Pyrenees, or other parts of Europe.. Portugal - 365 increase inAmeicans in 2025. In a decade Americans living in Czech Republic, Nethelands, Spain, Germany has doubled. One couple profiled here moved to Portugal after preparing for 4 years. Portugal offers visas to stay if one can support himself, herself and family, which is the minimum wage or $27,000., which this couple could show as investment income. They could not find places to stay near good schools in LA because of the cost. Now in central Lisbon they can with $100,000 budget live a richer, fuller life, reduce hours of work, send kids to private school, no need for 2 cars as subways are nearby, and no need to put a ton of money aside every year for college. They have more time to themselves, more relaxed, and kids private school is close by. Today in the US setting aside a ton of money for college makes it difficult on $200,000 a year  in the managerial ranks as shown in reports in the WSJ. College can cost $100,000 a year for 4 years, 2 children $800,000, thats too much.  ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The growing middle class in Brazil, new aspirations and the demand for better public services in transportation, education and healthcare. Alexandre Peppe, a 29 year old from the outlying parts of Sao Paulo, is a new member of the middle class, being the first to go to college in his family and finding a job in the state government. He was one of the protesters on the streets of Sao Paulo. The growing middle class has new hopes and aspirations that see serious shortcomings in the corruption of political leaders, neglect of public services such as transportation and overspending on the soccer stadiums for the FIFA and World Cup championships. Economic growth is slowing to about 1% in Brazil for 2013, creating new constraints for public spending just as demand for infrastructure and services is growing for the now large middle class.

LyrArc Article Gist
UN programs to reduce food storage losses in Pakistan by using metal storage containers instead of jute bags and mud silos protect grain from insects, rats and water. This has cut losses in storage of grains by upto 70%.

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Failure to provide principal reductions to millions of U.S. homeowners under water and the prospect of further price declines in housing in 2012-2013. This would prevent a recovery in the U.S. economy.

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In the last 3 years foreign exchange reserves from Iraqi oil revenues have tripled to $22 billion, and there are an additional $8 billon in bank accounts in New York from unused funds from oil exports. Yet Americans are shouldering most of the burden for reconstruction of Iraq with $47 billion spent so far and both Senators Warner and Levin are raising questions about why Iraqi oil revenue cannot bear some of thses costs. These questions will grow louder as the US faces its own economic crisis from financial markets in turmoil. Meantime only 22% of Iraq's $6 billion capital budget for infrastructure expenditures has been spent so far. The infrastructure budget itself seems to be very small. After the war and years of decline under economic sanctions of the previous regime one would expect the needs to be huge, yet only $2 billion spent so far is very strange. Even the account here of bureaucratic bungling and loads of signatures required to prevent corruption, and the lack of a computerized banking system requiring the physical handling and moving of truckloads of cash seem strange considering the extraordinary amount of investment and huma effort the US has put into this war and reconstruction. Even this article fails to account for this bizarre situation of dire needs for infrastructure and for basic services of sewage, health and basic food supplies and housing going unmet while oil revenues and US funds go unused. Has this something to do with the militias, lack of security, insurgent fighting, and ethnic cleansing, and lack of agreement and decision power in the administration, that has created a bizarre situation in which nothing much happens. The oil revenues also complicate matters in that in any defacto partition and separate administrations of Sunni and Shiite areas and Kurdish areas the oil revenues need to be fairly divided so that it supports neigborly coexistence of the communities. This delays creation of separate administrations and accountability which could lead to dramatic improvement in services and rebuilding as accountability is missing today with every bureaucrat and politicain waiting to see what happens and what the future will look like....

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Half of the 109 economists and housing analysts polled in October 2010 by MacroMarkets LLC, expect home prices to bottom in 2011, and half don't expect home prices to bottom till 2012. Backing this up is growing inventory in many markets. The Wall Street Journal's latest quarterly survey of housing market conditions in 28 major metropolitan areas showed inventories of unsold homes were up in 19 markets at the end of 3rd quarter 2010, compared to the prior year. The largest increases were in California- in Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Diego. Only parts of Texas, and Washington D.C, and some other areas which have shown decent job growth are an exception. In the Realtor's Report, median home price fell 2.4% to $171,700 in September 2010 from a year earlier. This data does not include the suspension of foreclosures due to title defects, which will further dampen prospects of a recovery in housing. This will affect New Jersey, Florida and other "judicial" states, where the banks must complete foreclosures through court. At the current sales pace it would take 10.7 months to sell the 4.04 million home inventory of unsold homes, according to the recent NAR report. Six to eight months is considered normal. This does not reflect the "shadow" inventory of homes in some stage of foreclosure, which is estimated at around 4 million, creating a problem that even current low rates for a fixed rate mortgage of 4.21% cannot solve....

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The air quality around Chinese cities is worsening because of coal fired plants and increasing demand for energy, and because of exhaust from automobiles filling the highways. The air quality around Beijing violated the WHO standards more than 80% of the time during the fourth quarter 2008 period. China's Ministry of Environmental Protection says in a report that more than 25% of China's rivers, lakes and streams are too polluted to be used for drinking water. And acid rain is a problem in 200 of 440 cities it has monitored. Efforts to control the exhaust pollution from cars by putting driving restrictions in Beijing are not as effective. One report says that even after 20% of private cars are taken off the road each weekday, the 250,000 new cars that were added to Beijing's streets in the Jan-April 2010 period, have left things as bad as they were before.

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Pollution on China's Tai lake, near Shanghai. The lake pollution just as bad as before the cleanup effort. The sense that China's anti-pollution efforts have suffered after the 2008 financial crisis. Things have moved backwards as the focus on economic growth and jobs again assumed top priority at the expense of other goals. The costly cleanup effort China faces after three decades of such growth that ignored environmental damage. The personal cost of activists supporting social goals in today's China. It also points to the impact of runaway growth in developing countries, in the areas of pollution, corruption and the misallocation of resources. Misallocation of resources through crony capitalism and low productivity of capital led to the Asian financial crisis of 1997.

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The Center for Strategic Studies in Moscow was prescient in predicting problems of declining support for Mr. Putin before the December 2011 parliamentary elections. Work with 32 focus groups by the Center in May 2012 shows a continuing erosion of support for Putin as efforts to open the political system have faded. The discontent focusses on the delivery of basic services such as healthcare, education, law enforcement, infrastructure.

LyrArc Article Gist
Wages remain stagnant, labor participation rate declines, and U-6 at 11.8%, as unemployment rate declines to 5.9% in U.S. labor market.