LyrArc Article Gist
The British government is considering effectively preventing two households from meeting indoors by limiting the number of people meeting indoors to 6 from the 30 now in place. Experts believe a second wave of infections is a distinct possibility if nothing is done especially with higher infections among younger people in Europe after reopening. People are seen as relaxing too much. Young people in Spain and other European countries are a big part of the problem today. In Germany the incidence of cases for 15-24 years is fifteen times the number of cases for 70-79 years in the first week of September, showing how completely reversed the situation has become with young people acting as spreaders of the pandemic. The incidence of new cases is 30 per 100,000 in Germany for 15-24 years compared to just 2 for the 70-79 years. In Berlin it is as high as 43 for 15-24 years and the Health Minister is concerned because in contrast to local groups these individuals can spread it throughout Berlin.  School reopenings in Europe and in America are a distinct danger so that colleges in the U.S are switching back to remote learning because of improper behaviour of young people including parties and gatherings. Tougher restrictions are seen as necessary to get people to pay attention to social distancing that was practiced earlier in April. This is true of Europe, America, and Asia. Even curfews are now being considered. ...

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This report in the WSJ says about Evergrande and China's housing boom that it was a risky race against time in which developers took in billions of dollars of borrowed money from buyers in cash to launch project after project in every Chinese province. The 25 year old company founded by 37 year old Hui Ka Yan in Guangzhou was setup in 1996. Its name stands for "constant" and "big" in Chinese and during the rapid expansion of the Chinese economy after 2000 it played a part in meeting dream of home ownership. It did this by taking in full cash payment for apartments that were delivered years later. It is the largest symbol of debt for housing developers in China $89 billion in outstanding debt and millions of unfinished properties, 42% of debt due in less than 1 year. Today Evergrande is collapsing, unable to pay creditors, and paying creditors in construction with unfinished properties, says this WSJ Report. Capital Economics estimates that Evergrande has presold 1.4 million apartments valued at $200 billion that are not yet finished. Typical is a woman in retail sales in Shenzen who invested 1.4 million yuan or about $217,000 in 2018 for one 400 square foot apartment in a high rise building.  The Chinese government is unlikely to stop Evergrande from collapsing. Its only interest is in protecting the people who paid in cash for unfinished apartments. ...

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The opening to Cuba in Dec. 2014 comes as a new generation of Cuban Americans have no memories of the embargo and Fidel Castro period. The increasing population of Puerto Ricans in the Orlando area also reduces the size of the Cuban American community as a proportion of the total Hispanic community in Florida.

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International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief, Yukiya Amano, answers questions in a closed door 90 minute meeting with the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The IAEA chief says he cannot disclose details of his investigation into Iran's earlier weapons activities, or the agency's agreement with Iran for the inspection of nuclear facilities. Senator Corker who heads the committee said most senators left the meeting with greater concerns about the inspection process. The IAEA chief cited as reasons for the secrecy, independence of the agency, and what he called "a legal obligation" to protect confidential information. Senator Barroso described the process as one in which an NFL player or athlete is asked to mail in his own urine sample. Of particular concern to senators is the Parchin site where testing ocurred in the early 2000's, which Amano has said Iran is trying to sanitize, and which is not part of this agreement. Iran has not agreed to IAEA requests to interview a Iranian scientist Mr. Fakhrizadeh or other top Iranian military officers and nuclear scientists as part of its probe into past Iranian nuclear activities, Yukiya Amano told the WSJ in an intervew. ...

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UBS presents the losses at the London trading desk as a result of a rogue trading scandal. Stewart points to the culture a the UBS's investment banking operation that is partly responsible. Investment bankers he has talked to at UBS say there is a culture at UBS that encourages individuals to work separately in isolation from others, to make their own deals for advancement, a sort of every person for himself. There is no emphasis on team effort and thinking of the bank first.

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Both the Tories in Britain and the Democrats in the US were caught by surprise by the sudden surge after the pandemic of illegal migrations flows in 2023-2024 which dropped to all time lows in 2019-2021 with the covid lockdowns. Tories with factional infighting and Democrats falsely believing they were virtuous humane could not take effective decisive immediate action costing them the defeats in 2024. The size of the illegal migration problem to the UK was underestimated in 2023. Tory rhetoric alone failed to convince the British public. In the US Biden not confronting it head on also failed to reassure the American people as the US Border also meant destructive Mexico/China fentanyl flows. Even today the action proposed falls short and new US bipartisan legislation is needed to make it the law of the land, closing three decades of stealth in immigration policies. ONS now estimates that it missed 166,000 people. The real figure for the year ending June 2023 for net migration was 906,000 not 748,000 as previously estimated. In the year ending June 2024 this figure for net migration was 728,000. Labour party under Keir Starmer made setting up the new structures for tackling alarming rise in migration the top priority in 2024. That lesson was not learned in the US and the issue not confronted head on to win public confidence- the Biden support for Republican Senator Lankford's legislation on illegal migrants and the border came late in 2023 and the issue was left to fester for 2 years eroding public confidence. In the US the issue of illegal fentanyl flows at the US Border and from China makes the Border and China relations issues that required effective and immediate action overriding everything else. In the end Tories confusion and internal factions, other controversies, led to lack of vigilance and lack of effective action as net migration deceptively hit lows of 254,000, 111,000, and 254,000 in the pandemic years 2019, 2020, and 2021, only to surge tremendously to 634,000 and 906,00 in the years 2022 and 2023.  Labour's Starmer took action to make it No. 1 priority in the platform going into the 2024 election winning public confidence. A similar surge in migration happened in the US after a deceptive slowdown in the pandemic, compunded by Venezuela and central American states collapsing. ...

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The EU Commission's first Vice President, Frans Timmerman, says it is ready to act against Poland under Article 7 of the Lisbon Treaty that protects the rule of law and independence of the judiciary. This would strip Poland of its EU voting rights. Poland's new law lets the government appoint judges letting it control the judiciary.   Timmerman said the Polish laws are "a systematic threat to the rule of law."

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IKEA's plans announced in June 2012 for opening 25 stores in India with an investment of $1.9 billion. IKEA says it will meet the requirement that 30% of its products be sourced from small scale local industries, as it plans to increase its purchases in India from $450 million currently to $1 billion in a few years. It said the government should be flexible in its defining of small-enterprises. For India the entry of large scale retailers will help modernize its supplier base in a number of areas. India's current account deficit has increased to 4% of GDP making it important to send a strong positive signal to foreign investors.

LyrArc Article Gist
Sales of automobiles in China in July 2012 declined 12.6% from the prior month according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. There are two parts of China's automobile sector, the foreign brands of GM, Toyota, VW, Ford and others, and the Chinese brands. There are 48 Chinese domestic carmakers for 30% of China's automobile market, with sales of 87,500 per brand on average, according to J.D. Powers. Many of these carmakers will not survive even with subsidies from local governments. China's car buyers prefer foreign brands because of the better quality and reliability. Foreign carmakers face an oversupply of cars as GM, Honda, Ford, VW have continued to add capacity. Total automobile manufacturing capacity is about 28.5 million cars and commercial vehicles. This is 9 million more than the expected sales in 2012, according to J.D. Powers. The most recent company adding large capacity is Ford Motor Company, which was relatively late in the Chinese market, and decided to boost capacity from 450,000 in 2011 to 1.2 million in 2015, to make it the largest manufacturing location outside of its home base of Michigan. This creates the prospect of foreign carmakers having to offer larger incentives and discounts to manage inventory and operating with higher levels of unused capacity, reducing profits in future years. Most of the plans to increase capacity were made when China's GDP growth was over 10%, it is now slowing to 7.5%....

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Orhan Pamuk, internationally known Turkish writer, gives a photographic story about walking around in Istanbul seeing the natural yellow light along the streets and shops in different neighborhoods. This is before the shift to bright white light from new light bulbs changes the look of the streets. Orhan Pamuk has a humility in his writing, touching so many readers. So much like America's Walt Whitman, to whom we owe the name Lyrarc, formed from the first three letters of two constellations Whitman saw in the night sky over the St Lawrence river in northern Quebec in 1880. Pamuk describes the changes in these neighborhoods, in places that he walked through in the 1980's, 1990's and today. For the first time walking through difficult poorer neighborhoods made possible by a body guard assigned by the government. He sees the social transformation of the European parts of Istanbul in winter walks that started in 2016. Gives us this photograph of a Syrian immigrant woman looking for help on a street in Istanbul. Istanbul remolded by Syrian and other Arab immigrants, by nationalist sentiment. He writes so much like Whitman about Brooklyn and New York,  that beguiling feeling that he got from the nightscape in Istanbul during his brisk walks in the city, that curious energy to which he felt closer during these walks. Much like Whitman writes in Crossing Brooklyn Ferry (1891) about the hundreds and hundreds of people crossing by ferry boat being more curious to him and being more in his meditations than they would ever suppose. Orhan Pamuk is a real human ambassador for Turkey in today's chaotic, confusing Middle East. He was the 2006 Nobel Prize Winner for Literature.  ...

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An argument for the market economy is that it enables social mobility, so that persons willing to work hard and use talents can do better than their parents and move up in income level.  Yet this is proving to be wrong as there is less social mobility in developed countries, and even less so in developing economies. In the U.S. it would take 5 generations or 100 years, says this OECD report, for someone in the bottom 10% of earners to secure an average income. Even in a country like Denmark it will now take 2 generations or 40 years. In Colombia it would take 11 generations, almost as long as the country has been separate from Spain. Globally, says OECD, the social mobility was better before 1975. OECD's Gabriela Ramos, the chief of staff, says families and communities have been trapped since the 1980's at the bottom rung of the social ladder. In the U.S. 42% of men with low earning fathers end up in the same income level, much higher than the OECD's 31%. At the other end 48% in high income groups see descendents in the same group, similar in the U.S. and Germany. This the OECD says is bad for economic growth in the long run. This "broken elevator" is causing a backlash against the market economy and democracy, disturbing the social cohesion in society. The answer says the OECD, is to provide federal funds to make up for gaps in education so that access to higher education is provided to people on a broad level to include all parts of society. ...

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Michael Shear says president Biden is listening to his head about the US Border with Mexico- that he would close the US Border if the bipartisan bill is passed in the US Congress, the same day that he signs it to become law. The new bill agreed to in negotiations between Senator Graham and other Republican Senators and the White House ends current parole and asylum policy  that have led to chaos at the border. Shear who has covered presidents for 30 years shows that president Biden held the view that he was elected to provide a human face to the crisis at the border from international migration and close private prisons and poor treatment of children. He listened to both sides of his party during 2021 and 2022 after becoming increasingly aware that something was wrong and by Jan 2023 was convinced that tough action was needed at the border to deport Haitians and other people from central America smuggled northward with 13 flights a day to Haiti to deport illegal migrants.  He made his first major immigration speech at that time. The problem was that there was a major upheaval in Venezuela adding to the tide of illegal migrants as Venezuela sent millions to all countries in Latin America and north to the US, an international crisis playing out in Colombia and other neighbors for the last 10 years. When Lopez Obrador of Mexico closed his own migrant deportations Biden sent Blinken to Mexico with Homeland Security minister Mayorkas, and after discussions Obrador resumed the deportations. Trains going north in Mexico had conductors who were bribed to slow down to take on migrants. This was stopped and all trains going north were stopped at Eagle Pass in December 2023. Republican governors Abbott of Texas and DeSantis of Florida have sent busloads or flights of these migrants to New York and other cities in the US showing that the entire system of migrant handling was breaking down even as president Biden was convinced by his own advisers including Jake Sullivan that the border required tough action. The president increased planned legal migration to lower illegal migration from Nicaragua and rest of Latin America. By January 2024 Biden was convinced the only solution was closing the US Border immediately after the bipartisan solution. Lindsay Graham senior Republican Senator agreed with Biden with one problem- the Republicans in US House of Representatives did not think it right to work with president Biden to settle the problem.  ...

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The Swiss National Bank made the decision on September 6, 2011, to set 1.20 Swiss Francs to the Euro as the support level for the Swiss Franc. The Swiss National Bank will buy euros in "unlimited quantities" whenever the Swiss Franc falls below the 1.20 francs level. The purpose of the move is to protect exporters and the tourism industry, which are a critical part of the Swiss economy.

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Penney's sales fell by 20% in its fiscal first quarter for 2012. Penney is going through a transformation from a promotional retailer to one that focuses on everyday value and presentation, under Ron Johnson, former Apple executive for retail stores. As part of the restructuring Penney will reduce staff by 15% at its Plano, Texas headquarters. Penney showed a loss of $163 million for the quarter, including restructuring costs.

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The Labor Dept. consumer price index was up 0.1% in Jan 2014 over the prior month. Compared to prior year it was up 1.6%. Part of this is the cold weather with natural gas prices up 3.6% and electricity prices up 1.8% in Jan. 2014. The Commerce Dept. Personal Consumption Expenditures Index (PCE) which better reflects rising health care costs was up 1.1% in Dec. 2013 over the prior year.

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The chairman of the high level group on Financial Supervision for the EU says central banks neglected their roles as guardians of financial stability. He is proposing asystemic-risks council with central bankers from all over Europe as members , and with the clear intent of overseeing financial stability. Jacques Larsiere's plan is part of the overhaul of the regulatory framework for the EU. It has been endorsed by the European Commission.

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Coal is expected to take up 36% of global net electricity generation by 2040, only slightly down from 36% in 2015, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. This is the prospect for the future as India increases use of coal and China continues its use of coal. This make clean coal power plants an important part of the solution combined with increasing use of solar, wind, and where safe nuclear energy.

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The lack of enough monsoon rains in acountry that depends for 60% of water in agriculture from rain-fed water and only 40% on irrigation is profound. The impact is uneven- in the south rain shortfall was 7%, in the northwest 36%, in the central part 19%. India has 52 million tons of wheat and rice - enough for one year. The monsoon impacts 600 million people depending on agriculture in rural areas.

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The median net worth of Hispanic and Black families has been severely affected by the recession. Because minorities hold a much larger part of their assets in household equity the foreclosure crisis and the recession have had a devastaing impact on both minority groups. The median net worth of Hispanic families dropped by two thirds and black families by half after the 2008 recession from the 2005 figures, and was around $6000 for 2009 for both groups, according to data from the Pew Research Center. The Pew report shows median net worth of a white family is 20 times that of a black family, and 18 times that of a Hispanic family, with the gap between these minorities and whites twice as large in 2009 compared to the period before the recession in 2005. This was even true for Asian American families, whose median net worth dropped by half from 2005 to 2009, to $78,000. The figure for whites dropped much less from $135,000 to $113,000 during the same period. Another significant finding is that within each group the share of the wealthiest 10% of the people increased between 2005 and 2009, for all households this went up from 49% to 56%, for Hispanics from 56% to 72%, for Blacks from 59% to 67%....

LyrArc Article Gist
China's BYD started in electric batteries and expanded into electric cars. It has emerged as the dominant electric car company in the world as China now has half of the electric cars on the road in the world. 35% of exports of electric cars are from China. Keith Bradsher of NYT reports from Shenzen that its first car was made in 2007 of poor quality, similar to Toyota in the 1930's as it tried car manufacturing for the first time. It has surpassed Tesla in making electric cars. In each of the last 2 years it has increased electric car sales by one million to reach electric car sales on 3 million. EV sales in China were up in 2023 to 9.49 million cars giving BYD the largest share of 31%., by comparison US electric car sales were 1.2 million. New assembly lines are being built in Brazil, Hungary and Thailand. And new lines are planned for Mexico and Indonesia. This kind of growth was seen only by General Motors in 1946 after the end of the war. It also shows the progress China is making. In solar panels something like the addition of 900 million solar panels meeting the entire increase in electricity demand for each year, so that emissions targets can be met earlier than planned to tackle climate change.  The same changes are happening in electric cars. China now has 40% of electric cars or gasoline/electric plug in cars going up to 50%. For export China is building large carrier ships, the first that will take 5000 cars for export to the Netherlands. The lowest priced electric car model the Seagull was priced at $11,000. BYD's lowering of manufacturing costs have given it the ability to price the cars to attract new car buyers.  Wang Chuanfu who studied at Central Southern University in Changsha known for its battery research, was an engineer who started the company in the 1990's to make batteris for Motorola. Between 2003-2006 he experimented with making cars in the hope of making electric cars. Stalled efforts in 2009 and 2011 were met with arenewed effort in 2016 trying a new approach to cut costs by developing a battery where supplies of lithium or cobalt would not be a constraint. He developed a new battery using iron and phospate to replace lithium cobalt batteries. A big break came in 2020 with the Blade battery that increased range to the level of cobalt lithium batteries at a much smaller cost. BYD hired German Audi designers for new model design. This time BYD was in the right position to build a car company matching all others with costs lower by about 35% than VW for some models. This comes from- lower costs to make in China, making its own parts inside the company for 75% of parts compared to VW only about 35%, and by the savings from its battery research.  BYD has shown ability to shift with market needs and opportunities. In 2022 assisted driving was facing hurdles, BYD had second thoughts about the new technology, by 2023 as it was increasing in use BYD committed $14 billion in autonomous driving technology. Driving range is a problem for people in urban areas going back to their villages in China. BYD has an advantage here compared to Tesla- it makes hybrid plug ins that account for half its sales. Toyota has also had emphasis on hybrid plug ins where it missed the opportunity was that it moved very slowly on all electric cars not realizing how fast things were moving outside it's world. This is the situation America also faces in 2024 and beyond who can deliver on the infrastructure capabilities, new research ,and tap American potential to compete in this new world where one innovation will follow another. ...