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Example of a aluminium company in Quingtongxia which disconnected from the national electricity grid and connected to the local electricity grid with the consent of the regional government to bypass the increase in electricity prices mandated by the central government in Beijing designed to discoutrage electricity consumption by energy intensive industries. As a result of this type of activity China has seen only a 2 % decrease in electricity consumption in the first half of 2007 by official estimates. To meet the goal of a 20% reduction in energy consumption per unit of output by 2010 China would have to see reductions in the range of 4% per year. This example of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region is an interesting one. Ningxia is in the western region of China and unlike the coastal regions which were the early beneficiaries of China's manufacturing boom years, this part of the country lagged behind. Its near Inner mongolia and far to the north west of the country near Gansu province. its one of the samllest o the provinces and autonomous regions, having a population in 1949 of about only 1 million, its since grown with migration and indutrial development but is still lagging behind. It has plentiful coal and so it is felt here that this is a natural resource asset that would help it grow in energy intensive industries like aluminium and help it close the gap with the coastal proivinces. The industrial development came to Ningxia only in the last 10 years so that its local economy and regional government officials feel they would be left out if they aren't allowed to catch up. So to them it all makes sense. Several other factors play a part. The rapid economic growth means more opportunities for relatives and friends of regional government officials. This is happening across China in coastal provinces and in the provinces of the interior. How can senior government officials in the coastal and large cities in the east point a finger at hese offendors when they are all beneficiaries of the same system and are using it to their benefit. And then there is the factor that rapid economic growth is considered the main objective if it slows down and there is social unrest from unemployment or other worker or farmer unrest then all government officials and communist party officials lose out if the communist party loses control. And the fear of chaotic years following social unrest create a common interest in pursuing rapid economic growth at all costs. So its a roller coaster that while the leaders in Beijing and Shanghai and the big eastern cities are aware of the risks and costs to the environment and other costs they are not able to control regional and local policies and actions....

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How the failure to maintain government spending (in the face of higher deficits) hurt Portugal with economic growth at 1.3% in 2006 as the rest of Europe surged ahead at 3%, especially Spain.

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Carmen Reinhart formerly at the Federal Reserve, says after a severe banking crisis it takes about 4 years to see a return to normal growth. With the current crisis having other facets like the overextended consumer intertwined with banking crisis, it is likely that it would take this long. He cautions business not to be overoptimistic.

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A lack of rules for children growing up has affected an entire generation in U.S. and Europe and other countries. Sociologists say rules are essential for children to grow up and develop the skills for living and the lack of boundaries and rules has taken away this essential component for this younger generation today. Sociologists call this "infantilizing." It has also led to  people living in their own space and not carrying on the conversations essential for young people to develop into responsible persons.  Experts say this process of responding to the rules and learning are essential developmental process to go from childhood to adolescence and adolescence to becoming developed adults. This has been compromised over the last 25 years so that the socialization process that enables transmission of values from parents to children has not been taking place. An unwillingness to have moral based judgements and tell children what is good or right has added to the weakening of this process by which children learn and develop into mature responsible adults. ...

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R.J. Barrett, Lieutenant junior grade Navy Reserve, his poem on New Year's Day 1975 on board the USS Coral Sea, Subic Bay- chosen from The National Archives by Captain Sam Tangredi.  "Our shipmates all have gone ashore, At twelve o’clock we heard the roar. So far away and yet so near;  Moored starboard side to Alava Pier. Lines 1 and 9 are strung out tight  The head and stern wires are set just right. The standard moor doubled is what you’ll see, As you walk along checking good ’ole 43. The commander of 7th Fleet’s carrier striking forces embarked aboard, Rear ADM D.C. Davis is the gentleman’s name. Down in the hole the snipes are doing fine Only IC boiler is in on the line. Five fire pumps are lit off and readyD.C. reports secure; water pressure steady. Shore cables fore and aft from the pier do reach In the harbor with us there’s quite a crowd A fleet to make any commodore proud The DESRONs and amphibs are represented well. Some of their names I’ll try to tell.Rathburne, Reasoner, Whipple, and Cook  Are all settled in and have grabbed a nook Knox and Stoddert are nestled in too, But that’s not all; these are just a few. Also in sight from the Coral Sea Are Dubuque, Vancouver, and the Tripoli. Peoria and Thomaston are also around. Some pretty fine vessels pound for pound. Taking one last look around the bay, There’s the Camden, Haleakala, and San Jose. Long Beach and Enterprise, make a special mark  Who could miss their shape, even in the dark? The Gurnard, Reclaimer, and the Grayback Are all included, though good rhymes they lack. And because soon I’ll be retiring aft. I’ll just say “and various other yard and district craft." With all this done, though before the watch’s conclusion I must record my New Year’s resolution. If any lesson over the past year has been learned, This single one, into my mind has been burned. As I stood here thinking of things to say, Twisting verse in every which way, I vowed to myself, if ever I did, That I’ll never volunteer for the New Year’s mid Sam J. Tangredi from the US Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island pulls out these poems from the National Archives which shows ship's logs and poems written on Navy warships in a regulated formula in standardized form. The entries are in strict official form about condition at sea, speed, mooring lines if in port. In the first entry on January 1 tne US Navy makes an exception as it is in poetic form. In 2020 the Naval History and Heritage Command revived the poetry contest. ...

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Title 42, a Trump administration rule made it possible to send back migrants from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvaor and Mexico now accounts for only 40% of immigrants, the rest are from other countries such as Nicaragua with which the US has no relations for sending people back. People from countries such as Russia, India are also crossing the border in this way. The US Supreme Court recently ruled that Title 42 cannot be terminated till it has looked at in more detail. The result is that people from many countries have crossed the the US border with Mexico in large numbers in 2022.

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After winning a giant Pentagon cloud computing contract of $10 billion over the next decade Microsoft is mounting a challenge to Amazon's dominance in cloud computing. Amazon has 48% of the business renting out cloud infrastructure in 2018, according to Gartner. Microsoft has 15.5% and is gaining each year. Amazon took the lead by starting early by 2010. Microsoft and Google Alphabet were slow to start. Microsoft has an edge in its long history of working with business. These companies expand the business by building data centers called server farms around the world. Capital One Financial lost about 100 million in stolen customer records in 2018 with storage in Amazon's cloud infrastructure, safety being another issue in this business.

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Efforts to prevent the arbitrary abuses of the judicial system by local authorites in China.

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Scott Kupor, head of Office of Personnel Management for federal workforce, says only 7% of federal workforce is under 30 years- he plans to bring younger people into the government. In 2025 383,000 people were laid off and 123,000 hired. Now the government agencies are recruiting new people based on the new priorities of who should be hired, including bringing in younger people who are underrepresented in the federal workforce and can bring new energy and knowledge to the federal agencies. Kupor wants to rebrand the government as launchpad for college graduates and early career professionals,  and bring in people in health care, program management and technology roles, says The Washington Post.

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The Maduro government and its predecessors caused the largest refugee crisis in the history of Latin America. The opposition leader won the last election in 2024 and the results were not respected by the Maduro regime. About 8 million people, a third of the country were turned into refugees, and inflation reached over 300% making life difficult in a nation with abundant oil resources. Millions of Venezuelans crossed the Mexican border into the US during the Biden administration, aggravating the migration crisis, and leading to the defeat of the Democrats and a plan under the Republicans to tackle migration. This included the return of Venezuelans in the US and in other parts of Latin America including Peru, Chile, to their home country. Much of Venezuela's infrastructure and public services has "rotted" and the cost of living makes life extremely difficult for all Venezuelans. Venezuela is an example of what happens under utopian socialist schemes, and how military and inept governance can ruin a country blessed with natural resoures.     ...

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The US Labor Department will now require not just 401(k) administrators but also advisers for retirement plans called IRA's to follow the higher fiduciary standards of the 1974 ERISA law that aims to protect American retirees. When workers leave a company or retire they rollover their money into IRA's. This retiree money will now be protected with a high fiduciary standard as it should have been all along. In 2020 alone the IRS estimate is that $620 billion was rolled over to to such IRA's.

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American corporations lost faith in the American worker with a series of missteps by labor in the US by 1999 which were also failures of top management and engineering for quality on the assembly line and wages to compete with low cost outshoring. In losing this faith in the American worker America's corporations lost faith in their own country, in their own people- the people of America. Larry Summers was mentored by Treasury Secretary Rubin from Goldman Sachs. Deputy Treasury Secretary under Rubin, president Clinton. Following Rubin in 1999 as Treasury Secretary. Several key events happened that damaged America and the working people of the Nation -and each time Rubin and Summers are seen as giving wrong advice. The first deregulation of financial markets setup by Clinton-Rubin-Summers in 1999 led to financial crisis of 2009. The second setting up China's entry into the World Trade Organization without safeguards that caused China to use unfair practices to destroy much of America's manufacturing base. The 2009 financial crisis-  The support for repealing the Glass Steagall Act in 1999 and for deregulation of financial markets by Rubin and by Summers led to deregulation that caused the financial crisis of 2009 with overleveraging of US banks and faulty mortgages. This was the first blow to the social and economic fabric of America, to America's workers and families. The second body blow came from decisions made by president Clinton with advice of Larry Summers as Deputy Treasury Secretary and Treasury Secretary in 1999.  Advice that Clinton regrets  and sees as wrong and which have shaken American workers faith in the traditional Republican and Democratic parties of Bush, and of Clinton-Obama 1992-2016, a 20 year period which saw almost the entire industrial base of the US shipped to China  by American corporations working with China. American corporations lost faith in the American worker with a series of missteps by labor in the US by 1999 which were also failures of top management and engineering for quality on the assembly line and wages to compete with low cost outshoring. In losing this faith in the American worker America's corporations lost faith in their own country, in their own people- the people of America.     ...

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Lufthansa's CEO announced in the early days following the crash that pilot Lubitz was "100 percent" fit to fly. Kulish and Clark point to the denial at Lufthansa and some other airlines about the need for airlines to have a clear understanding about the psychological condition of pilots. This exceptional report with contributions by a team of NYT reporters tells the story of Lubitz and the airline industry's lack of effective screening. The lack of systematic screening of pilots for psychological issues was raised by the UN's Civil Aviation Organization in 2012, and by the European Commission's Aviation Safety Agency focussing on strict data protection rules with Germany in November 2014. A culture of privacy in Germany following the experience of pervasive intrusions into privacy by the Nazis and the Soviet backed GDR government in East Germany, and strict data protection rules, create a special situation in Germany of being reluctant to pass on information or delve into personal records. The head of Lufthansa's department of aviation psychology, says he would not have accepted the pilot Lubitz if he had known about his medical problems of depression before or during the training period....

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Britain's banks still owe the government 100 billion pounds ($158 billion) from the bailouts that followed the 2008 financial crisis. The incentivizing of risk by pay structures and bonuses was seen as a big part of the problem. LIBOR manipulation abuses by banks are still on regulators minds. The Financial Conduct Authority and the Bank of England's Prudential Regulation Authority, have set new rules to correct the problem. Earlier EU rules limited bonuses to 100% of salary. The new FCA rules require a 3 year period for traders and risk managers have to wait 5 years for performance awards in full. Top executives have a ten year wait to be certain claw back provisions do not go into effect. Andrey Bailey at the PRA says the rule is designed so "that people in positions of responsibility are rewarded for behaviour which fosters a culture of effective risk management and thus promotes the safety and soundness of individual institutions. "

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Raul Castro of Cuba indicted by the US Justice Department May 20, 2026 for Cuban Americans killed when civilian flights helping Cuban refugees in the waters near Cuba were shot on orders from Raul Castro, as minister of defense. Only towards the end of this news report by Perry Stein and Karen De Young of the Washington Post is it clear that this indictment is on Cuba Independence Day March 20, which in 1902 marks the setup of the Republic of Cuba, at the end of the US military takeover of Cuba from the Spanish during the Spanish American War. Cuba under Castro does not use this day but the day of the Communist takeover in 1959 of January 1, and celebrates as Day of the Revolution, July 26, the day when the attack on the Moncada military barracks started the Revolution against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. Only the Obama administration similar to its failures in addressing the Iran nuclear weapons crisis refused to recognize 1902 date as the Cuban Independence Day, all other administrations before did. Under the Monroe Doctrine of 1824 the US clearly considered Latin America as its neighborhood and would not accept any foreign power in its neighborhood, making the Platt amendment attached to the Cuban 1902 Constitution permitting US intervention simply an addition. That the Monroe Doctrine was proven right in 2 ways is not mentioned by the Washington Post or by the elite media. What it did was to prevent European colonial powers from intervening and restoring colonial type rule to Spanish colonies in Latin America. It was welcomed by the British as it had no such designs, objected to by the Spanish Dutch and the French who had such designs for their colonial Empires. It was resented by Cubans naturally but Cubans did not consider that US is the only power who even when it pushed the Spaniards out of Cuba and Philippines in the Spanish American War of 1900 after centuries of Spanish occupation, the only power who prepared Cuba for Independence within 4 years in 1898. Which European colonial power could do this? The other reason for the Monroe Doctrine is in the Platt Amendment attached to the Cuban Constitution which committed the Cuban government to implement and maintain programs the US introduced to control yellow fever and infectious diseases. In 1934 FDR removed the Platt Amendment under a "Good Neighbor Policy. It is the relaxation of the Monroe Doctrine by future American adminstrations that has brought so much suffering and pain to North America, for the US and Mexico with illegal immigration and drugs, corrupting governance in Mexico and creating social political strife in the US, more deaths from drugs than the Vietnam, Korean and WWI combined. Today's Cuba's economy and the Venezuelan economy that copied Cuba's example has completely collapsed, one fourth of the people left the country taking with them the vitally important skills, and leading to economic hardships for the people. This would not have happened if the Monroe Doctrine implemented under the Good Neighbor ideas of FDR and the Alliance for Progress of JFK was kept in place. This shows that Cuba's Independence happened when the Americans supported Cuban rebels fighting for independence in 1898 just as the Indian Independence was won in 1947 from the British under Labour's PM Clement Attlee in 1945 taking action. Four years of American rule in Cuba to prepare it for independence as a transition is far better than 4 centuries of Spanish rule, and 2 years of British rule as a transition 1945-1947 under Attlee (who replaced Churchill in 1945 and setup the NHS) is better than 2 centuries of British colonial rule. In this sense America is with the Cuban people, just as the average British public and working class is with the Indian people.   ...