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Uber built up about $30 billion in operating losses and burnt up huge amounts of capital with its access to capital from from financial markets in the US, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. 2023 is the first year for profits of $1.43 billon of which the larger part of it $1 billion is from equity investments. It went public in 2019. Lyft a competitor of Uber has not yet turned a profit. Contrary to the general impression these kinds of startups have burnt enormous amounts of capital, and diverted capital from essential needs such as education, healthcare services, and public transportation. Consider the case of lack of investment in the New York subway system that lags so far behind that in other cities such as Tokyo to make it incomprehensible. The New York Port Bus Terminal  needed to be replaced- the planning took 10 years and the new terminal building will not be completed till 2032. Essential investments that improve the lives of millions of people in our cities are neglected or delayed. The real crowding out of capital from essential public needs is a feature of the Reagan era economics that have created many of the problems we face today of underfunding where it really counts. The capital allocation system is distorted so that capital does not generate proper returns or benefit the largest part of the population. ...

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The former interim Speaker Rep. Patrick McHenry, Republican North Carolina, tells a University of Chicago student audience that one can hold off a majority Congressmen only for so long, that there could be a two third majority in the House favoring the Ukraine aid. That bill for $61 billion in Ukraine aid passed the US Senate 70-30 with 22 Republican Senators supporting it but is blocked for 2 weeks by Speaker Mike Johnson for a House vote. Former Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin tell a Washington Post event that House Speaker Mike Johnson has to make up his mind to be decisive and take action that get things done. Ryan served as vice presidential nominee and became Speaker in October 2015 eight years before Mike Johnson in a similar situation where his job depended on different factions. Mike Johnson's view is that he wants to be seen as listening to all members to kind of decentralizing things. Yet as more experienced members of Congress say the only way to get things done is for the Speaker to take action on his own accord and let the situation rest there having done his best. This situation is happening today in the House as about half of all Congressmen in the House of Representatives have not served in Congress before January 2019, says The Washington Post. ...

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This report in WSJ by Mike Colias about personal politics exaggerates the impact of political party Republican vs Democrat in the switch to electric cars as most of the resistance comes from the lack of charging facilities and not enough technological breakthrough in cost and efficiency to make the switch. And much of the political resistance by a third of the population comes more from the idea that it supports China sourced materials. This comes from misinformation and old data as Biden has imposed 100 percent duty tariff on imports of China made electric cars and 50% on solar panels just last week. Americans including Republicans are realizing that the only way to compete with China's subsidized push for key industries is for America to do the same. This gives the American manufacturers the time and the support from the US government to compete with EV's made in China supported by Chinese government large not so visible subsidies over long periods. WSJ reports recently showed how China's prime minister supported building Tesla plants in China to observe American manufacturing methods and technology, in the process advancing its own technologies in EV's at a faster pace. Making Tesla's role contradict the idea that politics not misinformation and technological lag is causing resistance to EV's both of which will fade over time. ...

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Guardian's David Smith has short memories as he compares response at Obama's stops and visits in 2012 and compares that to Biden's as he visits Detroit and Atlanta in May 2024. In 2012 in the last weeks of the election Mitt Romney was much closer than is remembered today. Obama was at risk of being a one term president and depended on a strong turnout from Latino voters. Mariachi bands were called out in states where Hispanic vote was critical in these closing weeks. This is also just after the pandemic once in a century event that has affected younger people more than other groups, and after the dislocation and misinformation, the suppression of real information about the massive investment in the economy by president Biden for the first time in 50 years. Obama then lacked the kind of bipartisan support from all groups including Republicans and suburban voters that Biden now has that were never part of the Obama coalition. As shown by Nate Cohn in NYT what Biden is after are the disengaged younger voters and new voters in 2024 that have no awareness of the president's efforts to improve standards of living of the American people, who president Biden is working hard at campaign stop after campaign stop to reach about 6 months before the election. ...

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German economy contracts in second quarter 2024 by 0.1%. Growth is forecast at 0.3% for 2024 and 1.1% for 2025, according to country statistics office Destatis. The contrast could not be greater in Biden's management of the economy as US economic growth was much higher at about 2.8% in 2024. It shows the positive effects of Biden's effort to revive American manufacturing, and to support chips and science and American industry, and the investment of a trillion dollars from the Inflation Reduction Act in American infrastructure. Without these investments American recovery strong at this time would have hobbled along with much worse effects on jobs and inflation, and looming recession, under a Trump administration. Unusual factors such as the concentration of the supply chain in China have influenced US inflation, which Biden is correcting, and also bringing jobs at home. The economic management is excellent it  is the effects of the pandemic and broken supply chains, high mortgage rates and 20% price increases in apartment rentals that are making cost of living a problem for average Americans. Biden has taken cost of living action including canceling student debt and calling for limiting rent increases for apartment rentals to 5%. Harris has a program to support renters when housing takes up more than 30% of their income. ...

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About 30 rail routes in Germany will be renovated under a massive renovation program of Deutsche Bahn that begins July 15. Repeated delays and cancellations of an antiquated rail system is causing frustration for rail users in Germany. Deutsche Bahn's deficit is euros 2.4 billion and the debt euros 34 billion. It paid 133 million euros just for delays over 60 minutes to customers last year, up by 43%. Germany is not investing in the rail system as it should because of a culture that has spread since the 1990's that investment in public infrastructure and public services is not essential. The CDU party and the FDP have adopted this culture as their own, and the people have not voted this out as the FDP is part of the currrent coalition of the Socialists and the Greens under Scholz and FDP's Lindner controls the Finance Ministry. This is the challenge facing Europe and the US, dismantling a culture step by step that does not believe in investment in public services and infrastructure for far too long allowing it to fall apart when financial markets invest and waste capital in dubious projects. In the US inventing a new golf ball gets 100 million dollars in this dysfunction in financial markets in the EU and US, the list is endless which adds up to tens of billions of dollars.  ...

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Watch Macron take the world on a tour of Notre Dame cathedral. "Sublime," "much more welcoming,"  "more light," are words used to describe the renovation that makes the cathedral more beautiful than before. It was become more touristic before the pandemic, dark spaces inside and cluttered outside in the years before the pandemic. The restoration could not have come at a better time from my personal visits to Notre Dame over 25 years, with the organ music lifting one's spirits in the earlier years. It was restored in 5 years, considered an "insane" challenge. The cost 700 million euros. Donations in euros raised from 150 countries raised 846 million euros. 250 companies and hundreds of experts were involved in the renovation. The organ is restored and will be heard in all its joyful music.  The stained windows have regained color and wall reflect light, dark spaces have more light, brightening up the space inside the cathedral. Pipes system with water is installed that will be used to reduce the damage form a fire. Admission will remain free at the insistence of the diocese of Paris. 14-15 million will now be welcome inside the cathedral form all parts of the world.    ...

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About 105,000 airings of ads on immigration making up 42% of all Republican ads in battleground states are on the Immigration issue since Harris became candidate July 22, according to WSJ analysis. WSJ polling shows 59% of respondents favored the bipartisan Senate deal negotiated by Republican Senator Lankford with Biden which Trump rejected in February. This deal would have effectively closed the Border, added Border Patrol resources, and would have passed says Lankford in NYT if it came only 3 months earlier in December 2024 before Mr. Trump won the primaries. Mr. Trump rejected the deal preferring to run on it, leading to action by Biden to do this with executive orders and cut illegal entry. This means less advertising for discussing the Economy and less for Inflation, which is the top issue says WSJ polling, immigration coming in second.   WSJ cites the Congressional Budget Office on the number of legal migration in the Biden term as 4.5 million, and illegal entry at 4.5 million. Instead the Trump-Vance Republican campaign is using the figure over 4 times that for illegal migration of 20 million without saying why and makes less distinction between legal and illegal entry, says WSJ. And makes statements that economists say is not the case that this will solve the housing supply and cost crisis, and other cost of living pressures. ...

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One in six dollars generated by the U.S. economy goes to pay for health care, almost twice the average for rich countries. It hurts America in many ways; by being a burden on the taxpayer when it comes to Medicare and Medicaid paying for the poor and the elderly, on companies being one reason GM went bankrupt, it eats up federal and state budgets, rising costs make any form of future coverage for all unsustainable, and it robs other priorities such as infrastructure building and other national scale investments. The Economist says that if it had to design a system from scratch, it would go for a system based mostly around publicly funded health care. For the uninsured the solution of an employer mandate is now well accepted, so this is not an issue. What is an issue is how to make the new system affordable? Here the Economist says that whether in stages or in one move, the tax deductability of employer paid health insurance, which is costing the U.S. government $250 billion ayear, has to go. It is necessary to remove this deduction, and its something all interests involved will have to swallow, as other savings are smaller and will not be adequate. The deductability of insurance makes the true cost of insurance transparent, so it supports gold plated insurance. This does not make cost control the pressing priority it needs to be. So the deducatability of employer paid health insurance hurts both ways. The other necessary action is in the area of moving out of the current culture where most doctors work on a fee-for-service basis, where the more tests they prescribe or procedures they perform the greater their incomes. This acts as a perverse incentive, and has aruinous effect in mushrooming health care costs in America. Cutting back on unnecessary tests and procedures, and prescriptions , would save 10% to 30% of health costs says the Economist. And it says this has been proven with the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and Kaiser Permanente in California showing that cutting back doesn't hurt care and outcomes., so much so that cutting back would occur along with improved outcomes. But Americans with employer paid insurance just take things for granted as its not much out of pocket expense for them. THis creates the lack of a force for controlling costs even as employers are shouldering abigger and bigger burden, and the employee who thinks he is doing fine actually is seeing more of his salary dollars going to pay for his health insurance. In a way the consumers of health care are stuck with the perception that they are not somehow paying for these mushrooming costs and too manytests, procedures and prescriptions. This perception leads them a false sense of comfort with the system they are in, and a fear of something new fanned by the medical lobbies, that any change will impact users negatively. This makes the whole discussion on health care or the process of finding solutions to become an exericize in which terms like "rationing" and "choice" play a distorting role. ...

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Prime minister Manuel Valls pushes a highly unpopular labor law through parliament without a vote.  About 70% of people are shown opposed to it in recent polls, and it has led to months of street protests. It has also split the ruling Socialist Party ahead of elections in 2017. The law makes it easier to fire and hire workers in the interests of growth and job creation, but unions say it will not increase economic growth and withdraws worker protection.

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The U.S. FDIC voted on March 29, 2011, to propose new rules that will require banks to hold at least 5% of the credit risk on securities backed by mortgages. During the mortgage crisis banks were able to sell packages of risky mortgages to investors without having some stake in the loans, leading to speculative behaviours. This proposal was mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act and was voted unanimously at the FDIC. Because the proposal does not apply to securities carrying a government guarantee, which is 90% of the market today, this will not have an immediate impact. Some mortgages are excluded- under one proposal mortgages where a borrower puts a 20% down payment would be excluded, and borrowers would have to meet an income threshold, and be current on all loans. The proposal is a joint effort of the FDIC, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. The idea is to have securitization to occur in an environment where the issuers of securities backed by mortgages have some skin in the game. Securities experts commented favorably on the rule and the proposals. The presence of such a rule would clearly have changed the behaviour of mortgage securities issuers in the U.S. 2008 subprime financial crisis....

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France's Total oil company takes a 20% stake in renewables division of Adani for $2.5 billion.

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China's plan to limit smartphone use by children under 8 years to 40 minutes a day.

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Technology is reshaping the world of oil by 2018. The U.S. Permian Basin stretching from West Texas to New Mexico now produces more oil than the UAE and is likely to soon surpass Iran- production is at 3.1 million barrels a a day. There are as many rigs as in 2011 yet the production has tripled because of the use of high tech rigs that can move quickly to new locations over wide areas and with tech that can see hundreds of feet into the rock. By 2019 the U.S. will surpass Russia as the world's largest producer of oil. The drop in oil prices to about $40 a barrel in recent years is a result of Saudi efforts to block shale oil development by lowering prices. This has not worked. Initially some high cost producers exited the industry and the shale industry suffered. Over time the new technologies spurred by lower oil prices have led to the anticipated drop in cost. Shale oil can now be produced by core producers at $40 a barrel and still be profitable according to this WSJ report. All Middle Eastern countries cannot meet budget needs at $40 a barrel. In 2018 oil prices increased back up to $77 a barrel. In the next wave of declining prices the shale industry is better positioned than the OPEC countries.   ...

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Blackberry's new smartphones fail to compete with phones from Samsung, Apple and other competitors. Under CEO Chen Blackberry sales decline further with a net loss of $423 million in the fourth quarter of 2013. Revenue decline was 64% to $976 million for the 4th quarter 2013. The cash position declined to $2.7 billion from $3.2 billion the prior quarter. In a remarkable reversal older Blackberry phones outsold new Blackberry 10 smartphones launched in 2013. Older Blackberry 7 models sales were 2.3 million compared to 1.1 million for the newer Blackberry 10 models, a situation unheard of in the smartphone industry.

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Companies with good credit ratings are paying higher interest rates and others are finding it harder to borrow as investors flock to safe Treaury bills and government debt. And in 2009 about $700 billion in debt has to be refinanced. Southwest Airlines needed $400 million partly to cover losses from betting that fuel costs would remain high. It is the only domestic airline with an investment grade rating. It had to pay interest of 10.5%, twice the rate it paid in 2004 to raise $350 million. It is doing the borrowing now because its CFO says it does not know what the credit markets will be like 6 months or a year from now. Corporations borrowed $172.7 billion in the 4th quarter, down from $179.1 billion in the last 3 months of 2007, with businesses trying to borrow ahead of further deterioration in credit markets and overcrowding as the government steps up its borrowing to meet the needs of the $825 billion stimulus spending. Businesses that cannot get the access to the credit as refinancing comes due or find the high interest rates (sometimes approaching 20%) onerous, may not survive. ...

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One of the Russia's goals was to form a rival economic bloc of former soviet republics. Instead the Ukraine invasion has led to disastrous results for the economies of this region which are interconnected. Research from the World Bank shows the Russian economy declining by 11% and with further economic impact upto 25%, Ukraine's economy by 45%, former soviet republics like Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyz Republic, by 30% because of loss of remittances and the fallout from the economic effects on Russia. Belarus would see its economy shrink by 30%, Moldova by 30%, according to the World Bank. 

The miscalculations of all sides from leadership in Russia to that of Merkel in Germany, and the invasion itself, is putting severe economic losses on this part of Europe. Many of these economies will have to take loans from the IMF and the World Bank to remain solvent. 

 

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The Des Moines Register Selzer polling track record for 2004-2024 is shown here for Iowa.  Over 20 years Des Moines Register and Selzer are shown to have a close understanding of this state in the heartland of America.

Over 20 years only in 2004 Bush vs Kerry when it polled for Kerry 5 points ahead and the result Bush up by less than 0.7 percentage point. In that one Bush worked hard into the last hours with support of evangelicals. In all over 20 years Des Moines Register got it close to the final result.

Between 1984 to 2004- Reagan was the last Republican to win in Iowa.

Popular three time Governor Tom Vilsack was Secretary of Agriculture under president Biden and the most respected member of his cabinet. Vilsack was given full support and funding by Biden for renewal of Rural and Agricultural America.

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The U.S. government partially shutdown on December 22, 2018, after members of Congress failed to reach a deal on funding a border wall with Mexico that president Trump has supported. Mr. Trump is seeking $5 billion for constructing the border wall which he sees as needed for securing the border. Two bills in Congress provide $1.3 billion and $1.6 billion in spending. The shutdown comes at a time of Christmas holidays with Democrats and Republicans continuing negotiations for a deal. A House Bill provides $5.7 billion for the wall, but faces a hurdle in the Senate where 60 votes are required and Republicans have a slim 51-49 majority. The border wall with Mexico is part of Mr. Trump's core campaign pledge. Mr. Trump sought to blame Democrats for the shutdown.

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Peters and Wessel provide profiles of middle aged American men in 2014- as tech workers out of jobs as technology shifts and worker skills fall behind, younger men with masters degrees in fields such as public administration where it is hard to find jobs and workers lack retraining, and other men who lost jobs from globalization or the 2009 economic crisis. About one in 6 working age American men 25-54 are without jobs- about 10.4 million. Of this group two thirds are not looking for work either because they cannot find decent paying jobs or are too discouraged looking for work, and are not counted in the unemployment rate calculated by the Labor Department. About three quarters of the working age men not working have only a high school education compared to 55% with jobs. Wages for highschool dropouts have declined by 25% since the 1970's, and 15% for those without a college degree but having a high school diploma- some of these men are going back to school, others lacking retraining are too discouraged to look for work and depending on a spouse or government benefits. It is these people U.S. Fed chairpersons Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen have in mind as they shape Fed policies since 2009 to not leave them behind....

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Following a $3.1 billion bid a European consortium led by construction firm Sacyr of Spain, 5 years of work and cost overruns over 50%, an agreement is reached with Panama for resumption of work on the Panama Canal expansion.