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Joachim Gauck, the new president of Germany, is a pastor from East Germany who led the struggle against the Communist regime in the former German Democratic Republic from his hometown of Rostock. His father was a dissident who went to prison under the former communist GDR. After reunification he headed the agency in charge of handling the files of the former GDR spy agency, the Stasi. He did this so well and without rancor that it is now called the Gauck Authority. He was elected by an overwhelming vote of the German parliament and had the support of all major parties. Germany now has two East Germans running the country, one the daughter of a pastor, and the other a pastor. The moral authority that Germany needs as it faces the uncertain and difficult task of sorting out the finances of the eurozone, is something the country badly needs.

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The 2012 Camry, is very much like the 2011 Camry, other than the Entune multimedia system in the dashboard. The big difference is in the price. Toyota has dropped the price on the 2012 Camry- the 4 cylider XLE starts at 25,535, about $2000 lower than the 2011 price, the LE Hybrid with 41 mpg fuel economy, starts at $26,750, and the V6 XLE is about $30,000. It offers quieter ride and dependable quality, but it lacks the new technological advances such as turbocharged motors, direct fuel injection, stop-start systems, and lithium battteries on new hybrids, features on the new Ford Fusion models. Ford, GM, Hyundai and VW are all competing with newly designed models. With the fierce competition it is difficult not to see Toyota struggling with the same problems Ford faced when it failed to innovate with the old Ford Taurus model two decades earlier.

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This WSJ editorial says the free Indonesian elections and win by Widodo are worth celebrating. In the win by the Jakarta governor over Subianto, a military figure from the Suharto period, by 8.5 million votes in a country of 190 million, there is one big piece of good news in the midst of the failures elsewhere including neighboring Thailand. The Constitutional Court dismissed a challenge from Subianto, and the Yudhoyono government has shown a balanced approach to carefully respect the election results. This sets the stage for Indonesia to join the other democracies in the region, especially neighboring India, Australia and Japan, and also Pakistan, Bangladesh. The Indian region and Indonesia together represent the largest population in the world. The effort to tackle the common huge problems of inadequate infrastructure, using a elected democratic government process, will require all the energy, wise policy and ingenuity of the people themselves.

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Taiwan's president Ma Ying-jeou calls on Beijing to allow true democracy in Hong Kong. For the first time in the debate on Hong Kong and democracy Mr. Ma challenged the idea that democracy is not suited to China. He told the Taipei National Day audience "Now that the 1.3 billion people on the mainland have become moderately wealthy, they will ofcourse wish to enjoy greater democracy and rule of law. Such a desire has never been a monopoly of the West, but is the right of all humankind." Ma called on China to experiment using the pragmatic sense shown by Deng in adopting capitalism- "Thirty years ago, When Deng Xiaoping was pushing for reform and opening up in the mainland, he famously proposed letting some people get rich first. So why could'nt they do the same thing in Hong Kong, and let some people go democratic first."

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Palaiologos of the Kathimerini newspaper in Athens, Greece, says the early euphoria of support for Tsipras is fading, as the negotiations with the EU require Tsipras to go back on his election pledges and require difficult choices. He points to a poll from the University of Macedonia putting government support of its negotiating strategy in April 2015 at 45.5%, down from 72% in February 2015. He says the Syriza government has conveyed different and contradictory messages, wasting a lot of the goodwill in Europe for Greece's position, and by backtracking on agreements put Greece back into recession. Greece needs to take responsibility for how deep the crisis is compared to a country like Ireland or Portugal, because of dysfunctional public administration and political systems, says Palaiologos. The EU and Greece need to make a fresh start after all the false starts of the early part of 2015.

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Home prices rise by 10.9% in March 2013 over the same month prior year, according to the S&P/Case/Shiller index of home prices tracking 20 U.S. cities. Prices increased by 1.2% for the 1st quarter of 2013. Part of the increase is because of the extent of the downturn, other reasons include the Fed's loose monetary policy and low mortgage rates of around 3%. The Shiller index also includes foreclosed properties which enlarges the increase in home prices when the share of foreclosed property sales fall. A separate index by Lender Processing Services shows a 7.6% increase in home prices for March. Prices are up in all 20 cities of the Shiller index for the first time. In San Francisco prices are up by 22.2%, in Phoenix by 22.5%. In the midwest Detroit prices are up 25%, as the auto industry rebounds strongly from a decade of decline.

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Javier Fernandez describes the experiences that led to Bill De Blasio's decision to run for Mayor in 2013- his education in New York at NYU and Columbia, the family's background in liberal politics, involvement in Latin American politics, helping Bill Clinton's campaign organizing in New York and running Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign in 2000, a run for City Council in 2009. Blasio was close to his Italian mother after the parents divorced, and he made it a point to develop a close family life after he married a co-worker at City Council in New York. The family life and his passion for fairness in the economic issues facing New York City, played a part in giving a sense of authenticity to his effort to convince voters to break from the past- to move in a progressive direction that creates better opportunities for all New Yorkers.

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Business Week's Michael Lewis has some serious questions and a message for investment bank Goldman. His questions- ACA was incompetent which is why it was chosen as CDO (collaterized debt obligation) manager. ACA was chosen by Goldman precisely because it did not know what it was doing and lost $900 million in the process. So too IKB, the dull witted German bank which lost $150 million. Goldman did not lose $100 million on the Abacus deal because Goldman was shorting the subprime market by March 2007 the time of the Abacus deal. Knowing this requires transparency of all dealings of Goldman's proprietary trading desk to understand real losses. Fab Tourre, the 27 year old Frenchman, is just a kid in this game. The real name behind this is Jonathan Egol. Who is this guy who clearly knew the subprime market was doomed in 2006 in remarks he made at the time.

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The number of people working lesss than 35 hours per week is approaching 7 million according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Many of these families are seeing furloughs of afew days amonth, pay cuts and shorter working hours. All this means buying at the discount store, like this family which keeps careful track of account balances while shopping, and keeping a meticulous track of purchases tossed into the shopping cart with a calculator so as not to go over the budget. This may be the reason companies like P&G have introduced affordable lower end brands, so as not to permanently lose these customers to store brands. See the link to P&G's discount brand strategy, which couples with its developing super premium brands at the same time, yet barely eking out a 1-2 % revenue gain in 2009 and 2010 by its estimates.

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More details about Akio Toyoda and his father Shoichiro Toyoda. Yoshi Inaba is expected to be akey advisor and Shoichiro will be advising his son, as the idea is to mentor him for the new position while the elder Shoichiro still is in good health. Akio is hands on, and likes to drop in without any publicity, anonymously, to look into how things are going and see for himself. He did this at an Ann Arbor dealership last summer, and has dropped in on Jim Lentz, a senior executive in the Americanoperations in the same way. He is unpretentious and can mix with younger exectutives and talks directly in English. He is expected to be more involved in the global operations of Toyota, to travel widely and introduce diversity into Toyota's executive ranks, which have remained Japan centric all these years for a company that is so global.

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The 2002 decision for HSBC, a British bank, to buy Household International, which was into subprime lending in the USA, has turned out to be a disaster. Now it will close the 800 offices of Beneficial and Household Financial. HSBC's losses from Household are a big reason for the need to raise $18 billion in new capital. In getting into this business of subprime lending HSBC also sullied its high credit rating and its reputation. In doing so it also added its reputation to make it look like the subprime business was a good one and got it going in a big way. With the securitization process older standards of safety disappeared, as so called financial engineering and its engineers made it believable that inherent risk of a borrower's weak ability to pay could just be reduced or eliminated by packaging it differently and spreading it all around.

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Panoramic windshields on the Jeep Liberty, the Lincoln MKX and the Ford Edge, Cadillac SRX crossover and 2008 CTS, and on the Opel Astra GTC in Europe, are a new selling point for vehicles. This option can run from $1200 on the Jeep and $1400 on the Ford Edge. For some reason the Opel Astra when brought to the US as the Astra will not have panoramic windshield, one wonders if this is not a mistake by GM when it can use all the buzz and excitement that these kinds of features can bring to get Americans into dealer showrooms. Would Americans pay for these features on a lower priced car. There appears to be a noticeable shift towards buying smaller but more expensive and loaded with features cars among the car buying middle to upper classes which use this as an additional third or fourth car.

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How the global supplier system, while it spreads some of the financial risk, also creates a number of problems Boeing has to resolve. The advanced nature of the plane using composite materials instead of aluminium, and many other new aspects, all make it necessary for careful attention to details and coordination of different partners roles. Things like training of workers who do the work at new plants put up by suppliers like Vought Aircraft of Dallas and Alenia Aeronautica of Italy, in this case in Charleston, S.C., were inadequate. This had the effect of compounding problems Boeing already has in shortage of aluminium and titanium fasteners to assemble the different parts. Based on this report the unveiling of the Dreamliner on July 8, before 15,000 invited guests, was probably a bad idea, as much of the plane under the shiny covers was a mess. idea

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China's assembly work accounts for just $3.70 of the Apple I Pod's value, The display module costs$20 made by Toshiba-Matsushita and of the $224 wholesale price $80 consisted of Apple's gross profit. This is from a study by 3 economists of the University of California at Berkeley and Irvine, Linden Dedrick and Kraemer. Out of electronic and IT exports of $300 billion China's value added was about 15% or $45 billion according to Leo Branstetter of Carnegie Mellon University. Foreign firms account for the largest share of exports and all of the top ten are overseas firms. In India mostly the IT business is a services business and it has not made the breakthrough to create original software products that are marketed worldwide.. In this sense there are a lot of missing pieces in both countries efforts and a lot remains to be done.

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Iraq is only spending one percent of its $80 billion in oil revenues generated each year on repairing roads, bridges and other infrastructure. The reason for this and the extreme nature of the situation is because Iraq has shortage of trained staff, extremely weak procurement and budgeting systems with computerization and electronic currency movements and financial check clearing house as one sees in modern states in Europe or in Asia are nonexistent here and stacks of cash have to be moved around to finance projects. The violence and sectarian strife complicate the situation further with little agreement on wehere the money should be spent. On the positive side all these revenues mean money will be available for reconstruction on a big scale once the politicians and political groups among the Sunnis and the Shiites and the Kurds can get together and this should help to restore normal life in the country.

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Views of Paulson, Summers, Rubin, Murray in a discussion about the long term finances , the stimulus, tax cuts, Lehman's collapse, at the CEO Council in November organized by WSJ. Summers put it this way "we are going to need some impetus to the economy for two to three years." Summers points to demand based stimulus as key and only middle class tax cuts helpful for demand based rebounding the economy. But with all the needs, to help financial institutions, health care coverage for 50 million uninsured, education, energy, he does not see tax cuts as the biggest priority. Summers also sees the net cost of aid to financial institutions as the right number, as investments in the finance sector should be seen as assets even if one has overpaid for a house one is living in, as compared to spending on a vacation which is money thats gone.

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Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi says it is logical because of the situation in Iraq, Iran and Nigeria, for consuming countries to build up stocks. This will not have a depressing effect on oil prices, and it will help keep prices stable. Economic growth is not affected by $60 a barrel oil as long as it does not go higher, says Naimi.

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The iPhone X at $1000 is it worth it? This review says you don't really need it. Its not more powerful than the iPhone 8 that can be purchased without a wait. It says Apple took out the home button and made some design changes but otherwise its not much different in what it offers. You don't buy a fancy banana split and pay a lot extra, the same reason you might want to stay away from the $1000 iPhone X. 

Which iPhone offers all you really need for a value price. Fowler says it is the iPhone 7. iPhone 7 is water resistant, better battery performance and low light camera performance. So if you want to get some extra features that are not essential pay $800 for an iPhone 8, but the iPhone 7 at $550 offers real value.

And one last word- Apple care is not recommended as the new iPhones are water resistant.

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Amy Hood growing up in a small town in Kentucky, then a move to Nashvile, Duke and HBS. She joined Microsoft in 2002 on its investor relations team. She moved into management the same time as Nadella who is CEO. Before the pandemic Microsoft's capital expenditures and investments cost about $16 billion. It is now 4 times that at $64 billion. It is Amy Hood's job as Chief Finanacial Officer to see that all that money is well spent for products with demand. AI services bring in about $10 billion annually.  Yet this may just be deflecting by Wall Street of the real question about the funding needs that are being neglected in education, health care and child care, when huge amounts of capital are being diverted by capital markets in ways reminiscent of the warnings of Franklin Roosevelt at the Democratic Convention of 1932. Warnings that the whole capital markets system was not working right, was only defunding the vital needs of the American people. ...

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The 8000 government jobs that are likely to be lost in Longbenton, England, at "the Ministry," work done for the revenue and customs part of the tax agency of the UK. Premier Cameron plans to eliminate 192 independent government agencies. The north-east of England has long been a part of the UK with lower per capita incomes, and the region more dependent on government jobs.

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Krugman points out that the loss of 490,000 public sector jobs in Britain, as laid out in British Finance Minister Osborne's plan, is equivalent to the loss of 3 million jobs in the U.S.. He does not see the private sector being able to create the jobs to make up for this loss. He cites Osborne's speech to Parliament, in which he said that "Britain was on the brink of bankruptcy," as a shift in rhetoric of the Cameron government from hope to concern that jobs in the private sector would not materialize.

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Britain faces many risks as a series of spending cuts are implemented in 2011. Inflation was at 4.4% in February, 2011, above the BOE target of 2%. This increases pressure on the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee to increase rates from 0.5%. BOE is widely expected to keep this rate on hold because the inflation pressures are seen as temporary. The Institute of Fiscal Studies estimate is that real household incomes have fallen by 1.6% in 2008-2011. Borrowing by the government was higher in February at 11.8 billion pounds, reducing the deficit reduction in 2011. Slower growth will cut tax receipts and reduce deficit reduction in future years.

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Trofimov of the WSJ gives exceptional insights into Iraq in 2017 under prime minister Abadi. Iraq he points out survives as a democracy under Abadi with free elections unlike most of the Middle East. Even pro-Iranian militia leaders who fought U.S. troops are willing to concede that after many mistakes by the U.S. in the region there is hope and the U.S. action led eventually to this positive outcome.  Under prime minister Haidar Abadi Iraq has an opposition with TV channels opposed to the Abadi government freely operating. Abadi is a British educated engineer and says here that he believes in a multi ethnic democracy for Iraq. He was chosen to replace the openly sectarian government of Nouri Makliki which led to the loss of parts of Iraq to Islamic State. With that part of the conflict coming to a close and Iraq regaining most of what was Iraq before the conflict Mr. Abadi's stature has risen. Abadi says he will bring all pro-Shiite militias under government control. The lessons of the last couple of years, the failures of sectarianism under Maliki leading to the rise of Islamic State are not lost on the Abadi government. It is taking steps to maintain friendly relations with Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and present a multi ethnic image. Abadi and Maliki both are from the Shiite Daiwa party. During the recent dispute with the Kurdish government of Mr. Barzani, the legitimacy of a democratic government played a role in winning over Kurdish politicians so that control of the oil rich province of Kirkuk was reclaimed by the central government. Mr. Barzani was seen as overstaying his term by 2 years. This has further increased the credibility of the Abadi government. Particularly as it lets a free press and freedom of expression operate in Iraq through the media and respects this. Abadi says: "We suffered a lot under a dictatorship. We should never allow dictatorship to come back." New elections are to be held in Iraq with Mr. Maliki representing other parts of the Daiwa party, elections in Kurdistan region with politicians opposed to Mr. Barzani taking part, and in other parts of Iraq. Iraq's democracy is still struggling, but there is hope if the lessons of recent years of sectarianism are not lost for the leaders and peoples of Iraq's different ethnic regions. Just as Iranian election gave a new term to the moderates under prime minister Rouhani there is a sense that the elections will do the same in Iraq. Rouhani won 57% of the vote with 23 million votes to 38% for the other candidate Mr. Raisi who won 15 million votes. Except for the eastern part of the country Mr. Rouhani prevailed in all the provinces of Iran.  ...