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This report in the WSJ by Peterson and Hackman shows how the American Health Care Act proposed by Speaker Paul Ryan provides less financial support and allows premiums to go higher for seniors approaching retirement in the 50-64 year age group. Premiums are allowed to go up 5 times that of premiums of young people in the Ryan House  plan compared to 3 times in the Affordable Care Act. Subsidies in the form of tax incentives provide $2000 to younger people going up by age not income to $4000 in the Ryan House plan. By contrast someone 60 years old making $20,000 a year can get Affordable Care Act credit of $9874, and making $40,000 a credit of $6752, according to analysis by Kaiser Family Foundation. The Ryan plan makes health care costs lower for young people in an effort to bring more young people who use less services into the system to support its overall financial condition. Another feature of the Ryan Plan is that it allows only for CPI index +1% even if health care costs are rising faster. Deep cuts to Medicaid affect lower income seniors on Medicare. As a result the AARP organization representing seniors has come out in opposition to the Ryan bill. The GOP plan wants to reduce premium costs yet in the process it makes vulnerable seniors with lower incomes pay more, which is likely to hurt Republicans who won by winning a large part of the senior vote. ...

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DW.com sees "back paddling" in Trump's latest foreign policy speech, replacing bigotry against immigrants with the idea of a ban on Muslims entering the U.S. with "extreme vetting" of new immigrants, including an ideological screening test. Trump it says repeated his claim that he opposed the Iraq war from the beginning, which it says is false. Trump's statement that he would reduce the current nation building strategy pursued under president Bush, it says doesn't make sense because the current situation in the Middle East ( rise of ISIS and chaos in Syria) arises from American retrenchment reversing in the opposite direction the policies of president George W. Bush. It is also true that Bush started his presidency with no intention of nation building, it was only after 9/11 that he adopted this policy. The elder Bush, George W. Bush's father, is reported to have said that his son as president was ill served by bad advisors in the invasion of Iraq over weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Obama's retrenchment has also led to differences in policy, with Leon Panetta and Hillary Clinton believing the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction, as shown in LyrArc's coverage. The speech was read using a teleprompter to avoid the frequent gaffes in previous speeches. Clearly an effort to make immigration and terrorism issues to win voter support, after previous efforts resembling bigotry and intolerance. ...

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  Newly elected US president says he wants to end the Ukraine war and save lives- 300,000 dead, twice that number wounded. The Wall Street Journal conducts this important interview with Retired Brigadier General Kimmett on Ukraine. He says- the Ukrainian goal of restoring sovereignty over eastern Ukraine is unrealistic. Did European Union and American leaders making a principle of sovereignty of borders, and then applying it over the Donetsk Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine which share Russian culture and language, make an error.  About 4/5th of Ukraine is away from the battlefield frontlines and not involved in the war. Ukrainians in younger ages 18-29 are needed to rebuild Ukraine and same to rebuild Russia after the war with serious losses on all sides. Europe does not have the excess capacity, the industrial capacity and capabilities to supply arms and other materials to Ukraine. The newly elected US president says he wants to end the war and his goal is to save lives- about 300,000 dead and twice that number wounded. He also wants to save US strained resources with DJT saying every visit of Ukraine leader costs US $60 billion. Ukraine can hold intact its positions through 2025. But the point of prolonging the war is the issue when the goal of restoring sovereignty over eastern Ukraine and Crimea is unrealistic, and won't happen. ...

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Figures from Kiel Institute for World Economy show that European Union aid to Ukraine is nearly double that of the US- $187 billion for EU to $98 billion for US aid. The American Enterprise Institute conservative think tank also confirms EU aid is significantly higher. Trump said US was $250 billion to European Union $100 billion- completely the reverse of the facts. This is one aspect of the debate with Harris that was not fact checked to reach the 67 million watching immediately similar to the FBI correction on crime rates by David Muir.   "Look, we’re in for $250 billion or more because they don’t ask Europe, which is a much bigger beneficiary to getting this thing done than we are. They’re in for $150 billion less because Biden and you don’t have the courage to ask Europe like I did with NATO. They paid billions and billions, hundreds of billions of dollars when I said either you pay up or we’re not going to protect you anymore. So that may be one of the reasons they don’t like me as much as they like weak people. But you take a look at what’s happening. We’re in for $250 to $275 billion. They’re into $100 to $150. They should be forced to equalize.”   ...

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With the Biden Infrastructure Act and other infrastructure, science and chips spending of $4 trillion the US needs to act to have oversight on waste and overspending in 2025. We just want to show that it is in the American tradition of democratic government, that an obscure Senator from Missouri initiated such an effort called the Truman Committee when he addressed the Senate on Feb 10, 1941. The US Senate describes this Special committee to Investigate the National Defense Program. As the US prepared to enter World War II in Feb. 1941 an obscure Senator from Missouri rose up in the Senate to call for oversight over the $10.1 billion Roosevelt had got approval from the US Congress to spend on war efforts. The oversight was to fight overspending, waste and fraud in spending the huge amounts dedicated to the war effort. The result was the Truman Committee in the US Senate with as chairman of the committee Harry Truman 1941-1944, James Mead 1944-46, Harley Kilgore 1946-47, Ralph Brewster a Republican from Maine in 1947-48. These were the years when the US spent on the war effort- $330 billion in 1945 dollars, $4 trillion in 2024 dollars $212 in US government borrowings, $136 billion in war bonds With the Biden Infrastructure Act and other infrastructure, science and chips spending of $4 trillion the US needs to act to have oversight on waste and overspending in 2025. ...

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Lane Florsheim's interview with Melinda Gates.  Melinda Gates is reinventing herself at age 60 years. Born in the 1960's  and as part of the Gates foundation she now faces both the opportunity and the challenges ahead of her new effort with The Pivotal foundation, which replaces the effort she made at Gates, the launch of a new book to share her experiences with panic attacks and coming to terms with her own inner voice that said start over.  Here she describes her life in Seattle that starts with a cup of coffee at 6.30, and a chance for reflection in the early mornig hours. She goes out for a walk by 7.00 with three trusted friends she has gone out for walks for 20 years. Melinda describes her new life with her love of kayaking and her chance to do this without being recognized in Seattle. Her three children and her grandchildren live in the East coast. She likes poetry and instead of the frequent travel abroad in her first life, in this second life she can devote time to her passion for making life easier and better for women. She describes meeting women in Louisiana and other states and seeking solutions for better women's health and mental health. She has an objective view of the times, and faith in American democracy, and her new role in the discussions as her own self as a woman. ...

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Issues about how many more jobs are supported by Apple beyond the 47,000 employees in the U.S. Estimates of job creation in China and overseas through supplier networks for iPads, iPhones and other products are as high as 700,000. Apple says it has "created or supported" 514,000 jobs in the U.S. Experts say it is hard to say how many jobs are supported. Of the jobs Apple counted in this number, the consulting group doing the estimate included 257,000 jobs at companies such as Corning that makes the glass for the iPhone, UPS, and a Samsung plant in Texas. The number was generated using a formula of the federal government's Bureau of Economic Analysis and how much money Apple spent on goods and services in the U.S. An additional 210,000 jobs were generated by companies making apps for Apple devices. The consulting company estimated that 45% of the 466,000 app related jobs in the U.S. -using the estimate of such jobs from TechNet- were for Apple apps. Apple released these figures on its website as criticism from the industry and outside mounts about whether Apple is doing enough for jobs in the U.S. Intel's Andy Grove is one of the industry executives who has pointed out that there is much scaling up at home that U.S. companies need to do....

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In the latest Conference Board report on consumer sentiment only 4.8% of consumers said they would buy a car in the next 6 months the lowest reading in years. Bonds of American Axle are offering a yield of nearly 13% or about 9% above Treasury yields.

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The rapidly changing demographics as the U.S. becomes more of a multicultural society. For the first time minority babies formed a majority in 2011 with 50.4% of new babies, according to the Census Bureau. The median age of the non-Hispanic White population is 42 compared to 28 for Hispanics. Hispanics are right at the child bearing age. This also raises the issue of how the U.S. will educate the minority population. Today 13% of Hispanics have college degrees, 18% of Blacks and 31% of Whites. High school graduation rates in places like New York City for Hispanics are lagging far behind other groups. The economic downturn after the 2008 financial crisis has worsened the educational prospects for Hispanics and other minorities. The education of minority children is essential to improve the competitiveness of the U.S. in a global economy, as the educational levels in emerging markets accelerates with more opportunities.

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Samuelson says the bill in the U.S. Senate is symbolic because it allows companies to cite the undervalued renminbi as an illegal subsidy and have the Commerce Department impose duties on Chinese products. This would have to be done on a case by case basis, making it largely ineffective in dealing with the large trade deficit with China. He also cites the differences among economists that show a range between 1 million and 2.8 million jobs lost. The 2.8 million jobs estimate is from the Economic Policy Institute for the period 2001-2010. The 1 million is an estimate for 1990-2007, which estimates a loss of quarter of all manufacturing jobs. By WTO rules subsidies that are not targeted at specific industries or firms are allowed, according to lawyers. Which means China could appeal to the WTO, and impose retaliatory duties. In the meantime the trade deficit with China, with imports of $364 billion in 2010, and $86 billion in exports, would remain largely unaffected. This is the reason some Senators, including Republican Orrin Hatch (Utah), see this move as political posturing by President Obama and the Democrats, because the administration has no new proposals to address the trade deficit and the gradual erosion of America's manufacturing base. Samuelson cites Arvind Subramanium of the Peterson Institute, and his book "Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China's Economic Dominance." Subramanium says what is at stake is not a temporary imbalance in world trade a happened with Japan in the 1980's, but a gradual shift to a system of trade in which China has preferential access to raw materials (oil, grain, minerals), subsidizes exports in new industries as it moves upscale from shoes and textiles to automobiles, aircraft and alternative energy, and changes the very nature of the global trading system as it becomes the dominant trading nation in the world. By Subramanium's estimate China's share of global trade increased from 1.6% to 9.8% in the 2 decades from 1990 to 2010. In two more decades he estimates China could increase this to 15% of global trade, significantly larger than the U.S. In a response to Congressmen, businessmen and policymakers wary of starting a trade war, Samuelson says there already is a trade war as a "fixed" system of trade undermines America's manufacturing and industrial base. The only difference being that today only one side is fighting that war, and America is slow to grasp the implications or its policymakers are clueless how to respond....

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Boeing $50 billion new fighter jet program with profit guaranteed in the development stage. Boeing beat Lockheed to get the defense contract from the US government. In earlier defense contracts cost overruns led to Boeing losing money. Defense makes up a third of Boeing revenues. Boeing has reported six straight annual losses after problems with 737, a strike over wages, and safety problems on its planes, problems on the assembly line in quality control. The private equity type of management from finance executives has not worked well for Boeing as these executives lacked knowledge of what is happening on the manufacturing assembly lines. Boeing, a American icon for most of the twentieth century needs to get back to the basics of making good planes.

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The US president has invoked emergency powers that relate to national security based on the fight against fentanyl -with 490,000 American lives lost over 12 years, 5 times that in the Vietnam and Korean Wars combined. And based on enormous trade imbalances that relate to national security with China having $1 trillion trade surplus 12 times the next highest trade surplus of $81 billion of Japan in 2007.

Note that appellate courts upheld the Nixon 10% trade tariffs based on invoking emergency powers also based on trade imbalances that time in the 1980's with Japan. The SCOTUS would be overreaching its judicial power to strike down the president on his main platform in the election, says one expert.

 

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By 6-3 vote Supreme Court of US says the Transgender medical treatment Tennessee ban is constitutional. The Cass Commission in the UK review for the NHS UK looked into transgender medical treatments and has emphasized the risks to children and adults. It points to the "shaky foundations" for transgender medical treatments and suggests a more holistic approach. Much of the US had gone in a different an untested direction under previous administrations ignoring the important points in the UK NHS Cass Commission's findings in its Report in April 2024. It also played an important part in the defeat of politicians in 2024 with a lax attitude to important health and safety concerns of American parents.

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Patrick Barta's exceptional reporing on Manek Chowk, a busy industrial and commercial centre of Ahmedabad. Manek Chowk, the public market in Ahmedabad, India, where street vendors find jobs in the informal economy. The informal economy provides most of the jobs in countries like India and Brazil. They could be street vendors, rickshaw drivers, workers doing textile stitching work and being paid by the piece, and so on. Ahmedabad has 55,000 richshaw drivers, 70,000 street vendors, 70,000 construction workers, and 45,000 rovish trash collectors and recyclers. Most of the city's once prominent textile mills have vanished or are rotting. If Ahmedabad makes it through this difficult period with job losses in India, its because of a thriving local informal economy. It may not provide what a regular job provides, but it helps people feed their families and they are happy to make it through the tough times. And even in the better times the jobs just do not exist in the proportion necessary in countries like India and Brazil. Consider this. Between 2000 and 2005, the number of formal jobs in India stayed flat at about 35 million, while informal jobs grew 17% to 423 million, according to the Indian government. These are the most recent years for which information is available. Economists say the creation of formal jobs may have picked up after 2005, but not by much. The situation is like this all over much of Africa, Asia and Latin America. And as companies layoff formal workers in favor of cheaper employees part-time and without benefits, the importance of the informal economy grows. In Ahmedabad the rights of these people are protected in the case of women by the Self Employed Women's Association of India, which numbers 1 million people across India....

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Most people are not aware that EU had 10% tariff on US car imports into the European Union over many decades. US tariff was only 2.5%. The US tariff of 15% on EU car imports into the US in 2025 comes after EU recalcitrance for decades in lowering its tariffs on US car imports.  German carmakers have prepared for the higher tariff and EU car stocks were up as this is a lower tariff than the initial tariff of 25%. German car makers export luxury cars with higher margins which offers some offset as well as increasing efficiency in car making so that only a small part of this will be passed on to the US car buyer. An offset to the US car buyer is in the One Big Beautiful Act of 2025 which lets car buyers deduct the interest costs of leasing a car. The result is that US car industry will have the advantage it has long been deprived of and American car buyers will not be affected in the way the media has presented, or not at all. Over time German car industry will also do well with its access to the growing American market. Germany will lower its tariff on US car imports to 2.5% from 10% which makes it profitable for BMW and Mercedes to make SUV's in the US to export to Germany and EU, making this a win-win for US and EU. ...

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A 850 megawatt solar project, the largest in the US outside of Las Vegas runs into opposition from environmentalists concerned about the effect on views and on tortoises other endangered species. The planned project on top of Mormon Mesa would put over 1 million solar panels 10 to 20 feet tall in the Nevada desert. Across the US 800 utility scale solar projects are under contract for generation of 70,000 megawatts of electricity, enough for 11 million homes, for more than Texas. Over half of this solar capacity is going into the southwestern US, with its sunshine and open land. For the first time the ardent advocates of renewable energy such as the Sierra Club are now opposing such projects. Solar made up one tenth of one percent of US energy in 2010, in 2020 it made up 4.5%. It is growing very rapidly because costs are going way down. Even before government subsidies solar is now below the cost of natural gas. Projects near Martha's Vineyard on the Massachusetts coast took 12 years to get sate and federal approval for wind energy. These battles are similar to ones being fought in Europe. The US is better positioned for solar because of vast desert spaces in the American southwest. President Joe Biden plans to use this advantage of solar and wind to get to 100% renewable energy by 2035. ...

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There is overwhelming evidence of atrend to lower cost value oriented purchansing habits, and emphasis on essential purchases, that companies should pay attention to. Out of 46 economists surveyed by WSJ 43 agree that a fundamental change is underway, that will last for years, into the next decade and beyond, in the way consumers in the USA save and spend. And a couple of fundamental facts which won't just go away, are shaping things this way. American households doubled their outstanding debt between 2000 and 2007, to $13.8 trillion. In 2008 total debt went down for the first time since World War II. $13 trillion in wealth has been lost since the recession began. And this number will grow as the economy goes deeper into this downturn. The confidence in the capitalist system has been shaken. People want to get debt free. AlixPartners, found in asurvey, that Americans plan to save 14% of total earnings once this downturn ends. Two thirds of those surveyed say they plan to buy less in the future, and more than halfplan to buy less expensive things. There is a fundamental mood change from those who have been interviewed like Mr Bailey here in Boise, Idaho, a small business owner stuck with a lot of debt and no income. His goal: to get rid of debt and concentrate on making just enough money to enjoy myself and my family, and not trying to get rich anymore. So he goes out and sells his SUV to eliminate a $800 monthly payment and replaces it with a used minivan paid for in cash, he sells off a vacation home he built, sells another home to renters, cuts his staff to a handful. Many like Mr Bailey remember how their parents lived and heard the stories passed down from parents who lived through frugal times in the 40's and 50's, when America was still largely rural and peopled by families with modest incomes especially in most of the south and west. Its this change and shift in attitude and mindset from wanting to be rich to just wanting to be happy for themselves and their families, valuing the really important things, not piling up material acquisitions that the latest advertising is getting them to buy, in taking pride like their fathers and mothers before them in thrifty behaviours and saving, that may lead to a very different economy than seen before. Something like this is happening in Germany and Japan where consumers tend to save. ...

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Speaker Ryan of the U.S. Congress gives his perspective on the heated debate of the U.S. Republican and Democratic primaries for the 2016 presidential election. He says the American people should "not accept ugliness as the norm," and "demand better from ourselves and one another." He calls for honoring the legacy of America's great leaders even in the hustle and bustle of political debate, debating ideas for a better future, not trading insults which has all too often taken place in the Republican primaries of 2016.

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The share price performance as measured by price/earnings multiple of Total, BP, Eni and other European oil companies lag behind Exxon, Chevron and other American oil companies by as much as 26%, because of the effects of the eurozone crisis. Yet the annual return on average capital is about the same 12% for these companies for 2002-2011 accoding to data from Deutsche Bank, with the exception of BP's oil spill disaster results. And Total has a large exploration portfolio in many countries.

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Losses at Kabul Bank approaching $900 million in January 2011. According to the New York Times report investigators and Afghan businessmen believe that much of the money has gone into the pockets of a small group of privileged and politically connected Afghans, who prevented earlier inquiry into the bank's dealings. This threatens Afghanistan's nascent banking system. The bank is also used to pay Afghan security forces, which puts the American military in the position of having to look for new banks to process the $1.5 billion payroll.

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Except for a couple of investment banks at the top which are also taking on high levels of trading risk, the test of the pyramid of American banks is shaky says the Economist. The banks at the bottom, the smaller banks are in deep deep trouble, with CreditSights estimating that upto 1100 of 8200 of these smaller banks needing help from the FDIC to wind down. And the other banks like Citigroupa and BofA with some state ownership in amessy situation with bad loans.

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Friedman points to Congressional Research Service numbers showing that of the D.of D. workforce contractors accounted for 48% in Iraq and 57% in Afghanistan. Allison Stanger of Middlebury College who wrote the book "One Nation under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy," says tasks of diplomacy, development, defense and even intelligence are all outsourced. And State and USAID are also heavily outsourcing. In 2008 roughly 80% of State Department budget went out in the form of contracts and grants.

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Amy Chua talks about elites, ethnic minorities, and native peoples and and the conflicts that democratization and free markets can create in these countries, in her book "World on Fire." Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia have ethnic Chinese minorities and large native populations, and in India there are the Marwaris of Rajasthan and the commerical class among Gujaratis, the Parsees, and similarly in China. And in Bolivia, a white minority that is 3% of the population, and other white minorities in countries with large native or tribal populations like Ecuador, Peru, Columbia, or Jewish people in Latin American countries. In Africa you have a white minority in South Africa. In all these developing countries democracy empowers the native peoples, and free markets empowers these commercial minded elites. There is conflict and tension between the two and the question is how is one to look at this. If one sees it the way one ethnic Chinese person, Prof. Amy Chua -who has written a book on this subject and whose parents lived in the Philippines under Japanese occupation- the promotion of free markets and democracy is an American export leading to a lot of conflict. From Amy's perspective, there is the difficult tension for the Chinese minorities in Indonesia, Malaysia and Philippines. But are these countries better without democracy and free markets? And take Malaysia, did democracy and free markets come with an American export after the Reagan era promotion of free markets and democracy? In Malaysia native Malay peoples were empowered by democracy when the British left in the 1950's, long before the Reagan era. And somehow Malaysia has benefitted economically, even as there is tension between Malaysia's Malays, who run the democratic government, and the Chinese minority, which helps run the business sector with a rising Malay business community. With good sense prevailing all the people benefit even as the tension exists. The same is true in other countries mentioned here. Countries like Bolivia have to be seen as a legacy of long Spanish colonization and requires one to look at it differently, taking into account history, culture and place. empowers the ...