LyrArc Article Gist
A shift in priorities away from focussing on high growth to lower sustainable growth was announced by China's premier Wen Jiabao at the National People's Congress, China's parliament, in March 2012. This shift will reduce investment in infrastructure, power generation and exports, which will affect the level of imports of commodities from commodity producing nations in the Middle East, Australia, Canada and Brazil. It should increase imports of software, computers, entertainment, tourism and high tech goods from the U.S. and Europe. Chinese leaders have said they would make this kind of shift for some years now but growth has consistently increased more than the target rate, and domestic consumption as a percentage of the economy has actually decreased in the last decade. Now 9-10% growth rates may be a thing of the past and the target of 7.5% set this year may be actually closer to the real figure. The Chinese leaders have belatedly realized the need to make these changes now because slowing markets in Europe -which is seeing declining growth and high unemployment- and in the U.S., make the issue impossible to avoid. Wen told the Congress: "Accelerating the transformation of the pattern of economc development... is both a long term task and our most pressing task at present... Domestically it has become more urgent but also more difficult... to alleviate the problem of unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable development." This is his way of saying that its unavoidable and better to start in earnest now, and at the same time recognizing the resistance to change from the stateowned companies and the other interests who have benefitted from surging growth, and now occupy a central role in the power structure. An opinion article in the People's Daily, China's official newspaper, said: "imperfect reforms are to be preferred to a crisis caused by no reforms." The World Bank's president Zoellick is respected by the Chinese leaders. He also urged them to make changes now. The recent report of the DRC, China's planning research arm, and the World Bank, also laid out the new direction away from a focus on infrastructure to domestic consumption. The fear is sudden deceleration in the absence of policy action. The impact of this will be negative for commodities over time, leading to slower growth in Australia, Brazil, and Canada. It should boost imports from Europe and the U.S. of high tech, consumer, pharmaceutical goods over time....

LyrArc Article Gist
Rate of diabetes is rapidly going up in India. In addition scientists have shown that Indians are more prone to diabetes if they are obese to the same extent as someone from Canada or the U.S. This is called thin-fat diabetes- a higher impaired glucose intolerance- and comes from centuries of body changes following famine in parts of the country from failure of monsoon rains. The obesity rate is going up dramatically and with it diabetes is up significantly.  From 6.4% obese or overweight in 1990, by 2017 18.8% are obese or overweight, according to Health Metrics and Evaluation Institute of the University of Washington. The International Diabetes Federation now predicts 123 million with diabetes in India by 2040. By 2017 diabetes rates went up from 1990- from 5.5% to 7.7% or 63 million people. The major problem in South Asian countries and in China is the growing use of packaged and processed foods, fast food and carbonated drinks. Efforts to prevent the sale of junk foods is a battle being fought between private citizens and the large processed foods companies such as Coca Cola, Pepsi and Nestle. This is the subject of this article with Mr. Verma taking the case to the Delhi High Court facing large opposition. Mr. Verma left his job as a marketing executive as he took care of his sick child. He filed a case in the Delhi High Court in 2010, and faces the opposition of the India Food Processors Association- so far there is little progress.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
A riverside project on the banks of the Sabarmati in Ahmedabad gives the city of 10 million a new look. The project is similar to ones on the Thames in London and Seine in Paris bringing new park space and areas for of public space for a rapidly growing city. Guardian Cities is looking at 15 new cities with population growing to exceed 10 million by 2035- from Tehran, Iran, to Luanda, Mozambique, Hyderabad, India, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Surat, India, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Chengdu, China, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The way this was done was to develop a self financing model. This was the work of architect Bimal Patel who proposed selling 14% of riverfront land of 200 hectares to recover costs. The Sabarmati Riverfront Development Corporation spent 161 million dollars to build new housing for 11,000 displaced families who worked in squatter type housing on the riverbanks as domestic workers, clothes washers. The riverbed had become for decades a dumping ground for city waste. The goals were to provide access for public to the river front and clean up the water with water treatment plants. Bimal Patel calls the project one of three generations as  will take another three years for new water treatment plants. The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation bears the cost of about $220 million. The famous Sabarmati Ashram of Mahatma Gandhi lies along this riverfront and it gives this sacred space in India's history, the home of Mahatma Gandhi for many years in the struggle for independence, a healthier, brightened space along the river. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Haruhiko Kuroda, 68 years old, a senior finance ministry expert who ran the ministry's currency policy as vice finance minister for 4 years in the early 2000's, is prime minister Abe's nominee for central bank chief. He lectured at Hitoshibashi University for two years before becoming the head of the Asian Development Bank. His book "Success and Failure in Fiscal and Monetary Policy," is critical of the Bank of Japan for mistakes in being first too accomodative in monetary policy to set up the 1987 crash, and then tightening too quickly leading to the deflation and recessions of the last two decades. By choosing an expert with a long experience in the field of monetary policy and a vigorous advocate of getting things right to shake off the deflationary trends, Abe is sending a strong signal to financial markets. Kuroda says he is looking at a shorter time frame to achieve a 2% target for inflation- about two years. In essence Kuroda is taking a page from the policy book of a small group of MIT trained economists, Bernanke at the U.S. Federal Reserve, Draghi at the European Central Bank, and Mervyn King at the Bank of England to boost domestic economies in the context of increasing global growth. The yen weakened to 94.77 to the dollar on Feb 25, 2013, after the announcement. Abe's nominee for one of two deputy governor appointments is Kikuo Iwata, a 70 year old economist who was also critical of Bank of Japan monetary policy since the 1990's. The Abe administration has also carefully communicated this message. Speaking at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington D.C. Abe said Japan's goal was to increase exports, but at the same time it will increase imports which should benefit the U.S., China, India and other countries. He described a recovery in Middle America from the Dakotas to the Carolinas and sees something like this happening also in Japan. Even the appeals to nationalist sentiment are also coupled with the message to China and S. Korea of not climbing up the escalation ladder and seeking good relations to promote mutually beneficial development. Abe's focus is on building the U.S.- Japan relationship....

LyrArc Article Gist
Air pollution concerns are leading China's National Development Reform Commission to set a higher goal for cleaner energy. The NDRC plans a 52 gigawatt increase in installed capacity for green energy in 2013, an increase from 36 gigawatts in 2012. This includes 10 gigawatts for solar energy. Clean energy will take up 57% of additions to installed capacity in 2013, compared to 35% in 2010, according to Tian Miao, an energy anayst at NSBO.

LyrArc Article Gist
Toutiao and the growing mobile segment for news aggregated from thousands of sources for tech, politics, and other local news. Toutiao and Tencent QQ are taking advantage of the growing need for news in China. Toutiao's algorithm targets new internet users in rural areas and small towns who are looking for news and do not need the use of global news sites as is done by Google and Apple. The deep learning of computers is used to study user habits such as learning about the main soccer teams, watching funny videos,as habits of users. Beijing Bytedance Technology has come up with the new site. The highest growth rate is now for news on mobile, growth is 73% year over year far surpassing travel and mobile video, according to QuestMobile.

China restricts use of Google and Facebook News and other sites and favors local content and news sites to give international news, and news about China.

LyrArc Article Gist
Following Brexit on January 31, 2020, Britain's government led by Boris Johnson prepares to negotiate new trade deals with the U.S. and other countries. The freedom to negotiate these trade deals was a key part of the plan of Brexit supporters and Mr. Johnson. The Times, Britain's leading newspaper, looks at the prospects of trade deals with each country- the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Japan. Facing re-election Mr. Trump is seen as favorably inclined to work out a trade deal that he can show during the campaign. Trade discussions have taken place between the UK and Australia, Japan. Mr. Morrison in Australia and Mr. Shinzo Abe want to see strong trading ties and investment with Britain. Japan or Australia could be the first countries that work out a trade deal with Britain as discussions are at an advanced stage.  Britain has a small deficit with Japan in trade. It has a small dollar surplus in trade with the Australia and New Zealand. With the U.S Britain has a large surplus, it exports 121 billion pounds and imports 76 billion pounds. The prospects of trade deals are enhanced by the similarity in outlook of the governments of the U.S., Australia, and Japan, which share views on jobs expansion, economic growth and are centre right in economic philosophy. They also share a strong connection with working class voters under Johnson,Trump and Morrison. Mr. Trump is seen as a strong deal maker so that any deal would involve some concessions from Britain that increase U.S exports, including farm exports. Difficult issues with the U.S. are -pharmaceutical drug imports that could increase Britain's NHS cost for drugs, the digital services tax from Britain on U.S.  companies such as Google and the Trump retaliatory threat to impose tariffs beyond the current 2.5% on car imports of $11 billion from Britain. On agricultural imports Britain's natural foods preference conflicts with imports of genetically modified (GMO) foods from the U.S. Experts say this could lead to a partial or Phase 1 deal that does not need approval from the U.S. Congress, similar to the Phase 1 trade deal with China which sidestepped the thorny issues on trade. This is something both sides can show their support base as a win. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Western nations including Europe, Canada, Japan and South Korea, are members of the International Enerrgy Agency, which has 1.5 billion barrels in reserve. The IEA will release oil from its reserves to support president Biden's plan to release 180 million barrels over the next 6 months. OPEC that includes Russia plans to increase production by only about 432,000 barrels a day.  During the Trump administration Saudi Arabia and Russia were at odds on production levels leading to Russia increasing production to higher levels than OPEC would allow. This led to a temporary collapse of oil prices to levels as low as $30. To help the US oil fracking industry which could not operate at these low prices president Trump brought the two sides together into what is now OPEC+. The Biden administration has ties with both Iran and Saudis, and aims to revive the Iran nuclear deal, withdrew support for Saudi air strikes on Yemeni Iran backed Huthi rebels. In this geopolitical situation Saudis are reluctant to respond to US calls to increase production as they have done in the past. With climate change and the COP26 agenda in Glasgow there is a plan to shift away from fossil fuels such as coal and oil that are supplied by OPEC and Australia. This means that a shift away from Russian or Saudi oil is also a shift towards renewable energy such as wind and solar which is needed to combat climate change. The Ukraine war and efforts to wean Europe away from Russia sourced energy will accelerate the changes needed to tackle climate change, even though the US fracking industry will step in to increase production at oil prices at $100+ in 2022. After 2023-2024 the push for conservation and renewable energy from today's crisis and Glasgow COP26 commitments, sharp slowdown in China and renewable focused India is likely to bring down oil prices to reasonable levels for a transition period to renewable energy. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Biden's very conservative choices for his cabinet which one British reader of The Times calls UK One Nation type choices. Many of the cabinet members could easily have served under a Republican administration before Trump or a Democratic administration in the tradition of Harry Truman in the 1950's. No members of the cabinet belong to the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party.  A look at the Truman administration after 1950 shows John Wesley Snyder, who headed a bank in St Louis and worked for the Reconstruction Finance Corporation under Franklin Roosevelt performing a key role for integrating 8 million GI soldiers into the economy, and implementing the Marshall Plan. A similar job awaits another banking official Janet Yellen in Biden's cabinet to keep people employed during the pandemic. Xavier Becerra, currently attorney general of California, and formerly Congressman for 24 years, who endorsed "medicare for all" is the new Health Secretary. He grew up in a one room apartment with his Mexican parents. Secretary of State goes to Anthony Blinken, Dean Acheson was in this role under Truman as the Cold War surged with the Berlin crisis and the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe. Today the challenges from Russia and China are taking the shape of a revival of tensions. George Marshall who led American forces in the war, was secretary of defense. This position is given to a soldier Gen. Lloyd Austin who led forces in the wars in the Middle East. This has the potential to deliver better results after the years when America veered off course under the administrations of Reagan, Clinton, Bush and Obama, following the Truman, Eisenhower administrations that setup the recovery after World War II. Today after the banking crisis of 2009, disastrous healthcare and infrastructure neglect in the U.S., followed by the pandemic, a recovery like the one after World War II is needed.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Much of the information Friedman says comes from Ruchir Sharma could be seen through simple observation. By the time it is written about so much has already happened. For example Tech firms crowding out innovative new firms starting from scratch is happening since 2000, from the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations. By the time the concept makes it into the economics textbooks many years later it is obsolete. In economics textbooks of the eighties crowding out referred to governments crowding out private firms in the competition for capital. Concepts of comparitive advantage in economics textbooks were similarly obsolete when Japanese and Chinese competition in the last three decades brought into play a very different model of competition of subsidized private and state run companies focussed on dominating key industries that never made it into textbook economics and theories of experts. Comparitive advantage theory in textbooks were too simplistic not able to account for real life situations in which a determined national competitor could move up the ladder every few years in sophistication and technology to compete in products at many levels. The old textbooks simply said Portugal would make wine because it had some advantages and America with its advantages in steel production would make steel. This kind of theory put many people to sleep as other nations took over American markets- first steel, then electronics, then telecom, and then renewable energy. To protect American workers Robert Lighthizer and other American negotiators of trade with China, Japan, South Korea, used their own head and observation of what was happening. This was a better guide to the best response to protect American workers. Doing what makes sense, doing what works for final delivery point to the intended beneficiary, the American worker, or European worker, or Indian worker, provides a better way to get things done.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Bob Dylan is the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature since Toni Morrison in 1992.  This is the first time it is awarded to a musician. The award was given for "new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition." Born as Albert Zimmerman in Minnesota in 1941, Dylan took the name of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas for his musical career. In announcing the prize Sara Danius of the Nobel Prize Academy said Dylan wrote "poetry for the eyes," citing his album "Blonde on Blonde." Best known are his songs "Blowin' in the Wind" ans "The Times They Are A-Changin," songs that in the sixties reflected the mood of America towards civil rights for black people and against the war in Vietnam. This article by DW.com is exceptional in the way it gives an account of past Nobel Prize winners in literature and what they brought to readers in the way of resurrecting humanity in their own way and from their own experiences in different cultures and periods- 2015 Svetlana Calling of Belarus  and Herta Muller of German-Romanian background on the situation in their countries in the Soviet period, Clezio in 2008 of French Mauritius background on the cultures beneath "the reigning civilization or indigenous cultures of Africa and Latin America, and Orhan Pamuk on his native city in Turkey and the clash of cultures modern and old, in 2010, Vargas Llosa on cultures of Latin America of power and individual resistance, and 2012 Yan Moye of telling stories of today's China through folk tales. The common theme is the struggle between the individual trying to find hope, humanity, in the midst of political and cultural forces that he finds himself caught up in. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Seen in a larger context, the Biden tax pledge seen from the southern and midwestern and less well off states is not about taxes, it is about federal revenues that build the infrastructure and services in these states that increase the standard of living. This happened in the 1930's and 1940's under FDR and Truman, in the 1950's under Eisenhower, in the 1960's under Kennedy/LBJ. And is happening again under Biden today. Lets not forget that president John F. Kennedy says in his speeches that these regions in America in the 1860's under Lincoln were in development close to what prevailed in the 1960's in India, Ceylon, Chile, Turkey or China. The Biden pledge not to increase taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 is significant because it grasps the situation in America where extraordinary gains in wealth since 1980 have gone only some of it to the top 1-2% in midwestern states and southern states, and most of it to the top 3-5% in coastal states population in the east and west, New York and California, where the finance and tech industry are based. In Michigan and Wisconsin only 2% of households make more than $400,000, in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona and Florida 3%. WSJ shows a map of the US showing this for individual states. The core southern states have 2% of households with incomes over $400,000- including Arkansas, Tennessee, South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, Oklahoma, with Mississippi less than 1%. It is only segregation in the late 1960's and culture issues such as abortion that have turned them from Democratic states to Republican states as they were the largest beneficiaries of taxes diverted into investment in these places since FDR/Truman and John Kennedy/LBJ. It was JFK who came up with the phrase "a rising tide lifts all boats" when he opened federally funded projects in Arkansas. Seen objectively the large investments made under Lincoln, FDR/Truman, Kennedy/LBJ from tax revenues are what changed this region from conditions that prevailed in less developed countries that John Kennedy points out in his speeches, true for the midwest, parts of the west, and the southern states alike.  President Kennedy said on Feb. 25, 1963 to the American Bankers Association Symposium on Economic Growth: "Today, many Americans tend to think of developing underdeveloped countries in terms only of faraway nations. But in 1863, even measured by 1963 dollars, our own per capita income--and this should be a source of encouragement to many who are laboring with the problem of underdevelopment in far-off countries--our own per capita income was less than $1 a day, approximately the same as Chile's. Nearly 60 percent of our labor force was engaged in agriculture, the same percentage as is today engaged in the Philippines. An estimated 20 percent of our population was illiterate, the same percentage of the population of Ceylon. Only one-fifth of our 34 million people lived in towns or cities of over 5,000 in population, as is roughly true now of Turkey. In 1863, this Nation had fewer railroad tracks laid than India has today, and its children had a shorter life expectancy than a child born this year in Thailand or Zanzibar."   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
With the introduction of the iPhone 4S, Apple announced the iPhone 3GS will be offered free, and the iPhone 4 for $99. This puts Apple iPhones priced to compete with smartphones in the middle and lower price ranges in the market. The free iPhone is a model first introduced in 2009. As the expansion of the smartphone market is now ocurring at the low and mid price ranges, companies making smartphones using Google's Android software and Blackberry's RIM are targeting this market. In the U.S., as of the end of July 2011, 82 million Americans owned smartphones, increasing 10% from the prior quarter, according to comScore. 42% of U.S. smartphone users use Android phones, only 27% use Apple phones, as of the end of July 2011, because of the price difference. In India Apple iPhones have barely made a dent because of large price differences. Rapid growth expected in emerging markets will also make this low end of the smartphone market attractive for Apple.

LyrArc Article Gist
Liu He, the author of the 2013 DRC report on recommended changes to China's banking and financial system, is now the director of the Communist party's top financial policy committee and senior advisor to president Jinping. Changes he is pushing for relate to increasing focus on credit risk for China's banks, promoting competiion between banks, a mechanism for letting banks fail, and a deposit insurance program to protect the public against failing banks. To open up the sector dominated by state owned banks, opening private banks would be encouraged. Local governments would be allowed to issue bonds in an effort to reduce their dependence on land sales and opaque off-market borrowing. The urgency of this agenda comes from the realization in top Chinese policy circles and the Jinping-Keqiang administration of the risks to the banking sysem from the lack of attention to credit risks in bank lending.