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China's energy investments in 2011 with a 21% stake in EDP Energias of Portugal, and Sinopec's investment in Spain's Repsol and Portugal's Galp.

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Annamaria Andriotis does enormous service to millions of borrowers for student loans by putting down in simple payments terms everybody can understand the approach to take for a university education. She points out the pitfalls in taking federal loans and following the advice of the student loan office. The federal student loans have an origination fee of about 4.2%, so even if you pay off the loan early you are stuck with the origination cost, which private lenders such as major banks do not normally charge. On a $100,000 loan this could be $4200 right off the beginning, reducing the loan to $95,800. Private lenders offer fixed rates also at attractive terms of about 4%-4.25%, with added reduction of 0.25 to 0.5% for loans with automatic payment. The lenders include Wells Fargo, Suns Trust. It is important to have good credit ratings. Scores of over 700 or 720 in credit ratings provide the most attractive rates, yet a good credit rating is also acceptable. FICO scores range from 350 to 850 for credit ratings. Added reduction of quarter to half percentage point for automatic payment. A loan for $100,000 taken with Federal PLUS loan and government guarantees could run 7.21% for fixed rate. Andriotis points out that compared to the $4586 payment on a $100,000 student fixed rate private loan at 4.25% for 10 years, a federal guaranteed PLUS loan at fixed rate of 7.21% for 10 years would cost $3541 more over the life of the loan. Mortgage loans for 30 year fixed rate jumbo loan is about 4.14%. In September 2014, the rates for jumbo mortgage loans offered by private banks are now converging at the 4.18% for conventional mortgage loans. For auto loans zero percent financing from auto company lenders such as Toyota Financial are a better option. Rates of 2% on auto loans may be available from private banks and credit unions. SunTrust Banks has an online lending division LightStream that is offering personal loans to borrowers having good credit ratings scores, with interest rates of as low as 1.99%. The borrowers with excellent scores can get the unsecured option at the best rate of 1.99%. Credit unions are offering lower auto loan rates of 2.64% and 2.74% compared to banks charging average of 4.79% and 4.9%, according to data from SNL Financial. Millions of borrowers with good credit ratings, especially for student loans, need to start early in checking out the rates and shopping for the best rate. A good credit rating of parents can enable a student to make a huge difference in payments for undergraduate or postgraduate education, and avoid the unnecessary burden of high interest rate loans in a low interest rate environment....

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SEC's whistleblower cash for tips program once paid out $279 million on an Ericsson case. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is an anti bribery law of the US that prohibits the payment of bribes to foreign officials to win or keep business. In this case the prosecutors from the Southern District of New York in Manhattan bring charges about wrongdoing by Ericcson in Djibouti, China, Vietnam, Kuwait and Indonesia from 2000 to 2016. Ericcson paid out $1.1 billion in a settlement with US authorites in 2019.

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China's C919 built by Comac is China's versionof the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 planes. China will need 6000 such jets by 2041 as passenger air travel doubles from today's levels. Air travel has recovered in China to prepandemic levels.Comac was formed out of the military as a company to make civilian aircraft with subsidies larger than estimated $70 billion. The first flight of the C919 took place from Beijing to Shanghai this week. It has a range of 3500 miles and seats 192 passengers. 

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Japan's Ministry of Defense will request 240 million pounds for upgrade of long range cruise missiles to acquire a range that would protect Japan's first line of defense in islands close to Taiwan. Japan's LDP is seeking to put in place a preemptive strategy to remove missiles on the ground in foreign missile bases instead of in the air. This requires range of 1000 kilometres towards China and North Korea. This is a strategy to also protect the Senkaku islands.

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Spain's weakness lies in the bursting of its housing bubble and in the debt of its savings banks, the cajas. The cajas will need to rollover 100 billion euros of debt in the next 2 years. Uncertainty is also increased because its not clear how much bad debt is in the cajas. The regional governments in Spain also hold large amounts of debt.

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Patent related profits for US publicly traded companies$9.3 billion in 1999 from $8.4 billion in 1997. Patent related litigation costs in the USA $16 billion in 1999 from $8 billion in 1997 (a 100 % increase in litigation costs in 2 years). What migt the figures be like in 2007? Note that two thirds of the profits went to chemical and pharmaceutical companies.

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Boeing's 787 Dreamliner program has gathered 710 airplane orders estimated at $100 billion. Boeing's backlog or airplane orders is at $224 billion. Boeing's errors in executing the program including poor management of suppliers. Hundreds of experts have been sent to suppliers to get the program back on track. See problems that Airbus had with the huge jet Airbus was building.

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Dallas Fed president, Richard Fisher, says the Fed cannot create jobs, and why he is opposed to the Bernanke quantitative easing policy.

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A World Food Program report says India is home to over a fourth of the hungry people in the world, about 230 million people. Purnima Menon of the Food Policy Research Institute in Washington D.C., says India ranks below two dozen sub-Saharan countries on a Global Hunger Index. It ranks Madhya Pradesh, a state in central India, as somewhere between Chad and Ethiopia. And serious hunger and malnutrion persists in states that have done better in economic growth, like Gujarat and Maharashtra. The number of children suffering from malnutrition in 2009 is in the range of 42.5% in India compared to about 7% in China, according to figures cited by Rieff.

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The Economist points out that China's total debt of government, corporate and households has grown by about 100% of GDP since 2008. The 2009 crisis led to rapid increase in debt. It is now about 250% of GDP, according to the Economist. Slower growth of below 7% risks reducing China's ability to service this debt. About half of this debt is owed by state owned companies and property developers. China can use its sovereign reserves to continue supporting bank and state owned companies. Investor's are pricing bank shares to reflect about 10% of this debt as bad debt even though government estimates are much lower. The reserves provided China time to fix the banking system since 2008, yet the debt keeps growing and China has failed to take strong action in the last 6 years. Complacency is a problem, and the incentives for local governments to continue prior practices that increase debt continue. As Krugman and other experts have pointed out at some point the rules of finance will apply to China as they have for other countries that faced a debt crisis- Japan in the late 1980's, South Korea and other Aisan countries in 1997, and the U.S. in 2008. Even without a crisis through deft managemen and use of reserves China risks zombifying the economy as old loans are backed up by new loans, with the further risk of misallocation of capital or poor use of capital. This lowers productivity of capital and hurts development. With poor statistics such as the figure of 1% of debt being bad debt cited here, the problems of complacency can be magnified, as there is less reason for a strong response....

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Speaking at the Economc Club of Indiana, U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Bernanke, says responsibility for fiscal policy lies fully on Congress and the administration. Monetary easing through QE I,II and III, which reduces the borrowing costs of the U.S. government by keeping interest rates low, cannot be seen as taking pressure off Congress and the administration, as critics claim. He countered criticism by saying: "Suppose notwithstanding our legal mandate, the Federal Reserve were to raise interest rates for the purpose of making it more expensive for the government to borrow. Such an action would substantially increase the deficit, not only because of higher interest rates, but also because the weaker recovery that would result from premature monetary tightening would further widen the gap between spening and revenues." Lawmakers would be no more inclined to come up with a program to reduce the deficit in this situation argues Bernanke. This statement of Bernake only reaffirms that low interest rates are an important goal here in the U.S.,- just as they are for France and other countries in Europe that are faced with tackling large debt and deficits- and are part of the overall solution for the government to manage its finances....