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China passes the U.S. in OPEC oil imports, with daily average imports of 3.7 million barrels compared to 3.5 million barrels for the U.S., according to Wood Mackenzie.

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Roger Cohen interviews Glenn Greenwald, a journalist for Britain's Guardian newspaper, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Greenwald made disclosures of NSA spying on Brazil's president Dilma Rousseff. He now has the backing for a online publication from eBay founder, Pierre Omidyar, for the venture with financing of $250 million. Greenwald helped make Snowden's information on NSA spying public by writing about it in the Guardian from his base in Brazil. Cohen says old style mainstream journalism has been affected by the 9/11 events, and brings up David Halberstam's words at Columbia University in 2005- about not letting the powerful intimidate independent journalists. In 2013 the government of Britain asked the Guardian to turn over documents related to NSA spying, which the Guardian resisted, leading to a protest by Germany that this violated respect for freedom of the press.

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Richard Cohen, Washington Post reporter, on the "no fly zone" option in Syria and how it could have prevented the loss of 300,000 lives, prevented millions of refugees, and moving politics in Europe in a direction that reverses the gains made in the post war period towards a more tolerant society.

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The rarely mentioned origins of the U.S. Medicare reform proposal of Rep. Paul Ryan and Rep. Ron Wyden, which includes work done at the Hoover Institution and liberal think tanks, in a debate subject to distortions on all sides.

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The US needs 100,000 jobs a month just to keep up with population growth. And 7.2 million jobs have been lost since December 2007. Where will the new jobs come from to replace lost jobs in retail, banking auto and other job losing sectors and when, and will some jobs never come back. Global Insight forecast show 8.1% unemployment in 2013, suggesting that jobs needed for population growth and some jobs from the pool of job losses will not be recovered for some years.

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Obama's comments during a visit to Greece about the challenges facing multiracial and multicultural societies such as the U.S. and the people left behind through globalization. He says "we are going to have to guard against a rise in a crude sort of nationalism or ethnic identity or tribalism that is built around an "us" and a "them."  Obama also referred to a global elite "that seems to live by a different set of rules, such as being able to avoid taxes," which he said "fuels a feeling that globalization only benefits those at the top," and leads to a push back from people who feel they are losing control over their future." The problem for workers is that fewer and fewer workers are needed in todays advanced automated factories and manufacturing moves across borders leading to anxiety. The president may have realized the extent of the damage only in the closing days of the campaign in 2016, because of his support for trade agreements without talking in this manner about the lives of workers.  ...

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Egypt's presidential candidate Mohammed Morsi, leads in the first round of presidential elections over Amr Moussa. He has no ties with the Mubarak regime and comes from the Muslim Brotherhood. Morsi is an engineer trained in Egypt and the U.S. Morsi graduated with bachelors and masters degree in engineering from Cairo University, and a PhD. from the University of Southern California in 1982. From 1982 to 1985, he was a professor at California State University at Northridge, California. In 1985 he returned to teach at a university in Egypt. He was elected to parliament as an independent candidate as the Mubark regime banned the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2011 he was elected head of the Freedom and Justice Party and made its candidate for president. Because of the severe economic problems facing Egypt- a demographic explosion of young people with few job opportunities, enough foreign reserves to finance a limited period of food and essential imports and dependent on the IMF for financing, neglected infrastructure development during decades of misrule under Mubarak- a candidate with an advanced engineering background trained in the U.S. could bring the right set of skills to the job of rebuilding Egypt. ...

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The Muslim Brotherhood is thrust into a critical role as economic policymaker after winning the parliamentary elections in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood's foreign policy advisor, Essam El-Haddad, says it gave the IMF its tentative approval for a $3.2 billion loan to Egypt. Haddad says it was a very, very short time for the learning process to occur about the economic issues facing Egypt and the IMF. Foreign investment peaked in 2007 at $13.7 billion. It is now a small fraction of this and tourism earnings have declined to a third of what they were before. The Brotherhood cites the example of Turkey where the Islamist Justice and Development Party formed the government in 2002. At the time Turkish inflation was at 55%, the currency Turkish Lira had lost 51% of its value and GDP fell by 5.7%. Turkey has seen high economic growth in the last decade.

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Reilly points out that removing the government and "putting private capital back at the center of a healthier" housing-finance system, as recommended in a policy paper from the Treasury Department, is only possible if the government gives up the idea of a 30 year mortgage. Thirty year loans as currently structured are not attractive to investors without a government guarantee. The revival of securities markets for mortgages not backed by the government is not possible with the 30 year mortgage. There are benefits from the government getting out of the mortgage markets. A significant benefit is that there would be less incentive to invest in housing, so that more capital is available to other productive areas of the economy leading to higher economic growth. In fact the diversion of economic resources from more productive uses to housing was a major problem in the last decade.

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The US is requesting talks with China at the World Trade Organization with the objective of ending hundreds of millions of dollars of subsidies China gives to increase wind energy production. The wind power grants are being targeted because Chinese producers are required to use domestic parts to be eligible for the grant, which range from $6.7 million to $22.5 million. In the last 5 years foreign companies' share of the Chinese market has dropped from 79% to 13%, according to Goldman Sachs, with China's efforts to promote Chinese manufacturers. The renewable energy market in China is expected to reach $100 billion by 2020. And wind energy is the fastest growing sector. The effort comes after the US Steelworkers union alleged that China was using import substitution subsidies in violation of WTO rules, in a 5800 page petition. Steelworkers union president, Leo Gerard, says this doesn't address most of the billions of dollars of clean-tech subsidies and other support provided by the Chinese government. Gerard says the goal is not litigation but to put an end to these practices that are trade distorting, and act as a barrier to US exports to China....

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Leslie Gelb says US should focus on its strengths, on the areas that it can build on to come up with something of enduring value and not focus all one's energies on situations and troublespots that siphon off a lot of American energies. This is a good idea and should be something that policymakers at State and the National Security Council and advisers to the President could keep in mind. There is alot to be said about the Truman example of the Marshall Plan in building western Europe after the war. At the same time its not as clear cutthat troublespots and the difficult work can be avoided. Was the Berlin airlift a troublespot? And Truman had little time to respond to the invasion of South Korea from the north, acrisis he would have chosen to avoid, if he had the choice. Instead he was drawn into along drawn out war on the Korean peninsula. Still the idea that you want to save your energies and not dissipate them in conflicts which can't clearly be won is a useful one. The Korean war was fought on conventional terms so the US could point to success years later in South Korea. But for conflicts fought in the jungles of Vietnam or in the remote mountainous terrain of Afghanistan, limited objectives and willingness to consider history, customs, and local tribal cultures is very constructive. ...

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Mitt Romney describes his experiences with different companies he worked with at Bain Capital and how he would use that experience in his job as President. One approach he emphasizes is proactive problem solving and tackling problems early.

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An average of major opinion polls compiled by Real Clear Politics website shows 50.5% of Americans opposed to the Obama U.S. health care law.

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ZTE of Shenzen, China has 3% global market share and has a new model the F230 which can show streaming video at broadband internet speeds. ZTE will double its cellphone sales to 60 million this year. In the mobile phone business things can change very quickly. The market for mobile phones can change very quickly, is defined by a younger demographic that loves to try new things, and where new technologies and capabilities get incorporated very quickly and in new combinations, navigation, video, broadband, different market segments from the lower end to the upper end especially in developing countries of Brazil, India and China, and the constant competitive churn that brings in new technologies and new companies like ZTE into the market. Upper management at Nokia realizes this as Motorola twice came up with hit models the Star-Tac and the Razr in 1996 and 2005, and each time falling behind after the one time hit. Motorola is even looking at exiting this market. New competitors are in the field with Apple's I-phone in 2007 and with Google and Microsoft developing new software for this market. It requires not just a product hit but a management team and a structure for manufacturing and distribution that is strong and resilient enough to respond to the changing market and to anticipate market trends that are just taking shape and to have the cultural mindset in management at upper and middle levels to deal with huge fast growing markets like India and China, and also Brazil, Russia and other developing countries in Asia and Latin America and Africa where the nature of the demand is different and varies among the different regions also. Nokia has come closest to putting this capability together. It has market share of 40% in this global market with sles in India of 8 million phones a month. There is room for competiton as competitors like Samsung sell about 200 million cellphones a month and are growing at 25% a year. Nokia is also taking a new approach to stay ahead. Its buying smaller companies and developing in-house technology to build its own mobile services business named Ovi. It acquired a number of software companies, acquiring Navteq for $8.1 billion for software on satellite location services. It has its own web portal and and lets wireless providers like Vodafone and Verizon offer their subscribers the option of using portals of Vodafone, Verizon or Nokia's....