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Is Ahmadinejad or Khamanei Iran's socalled supreme leader, the leader foreign leaders should be paying attention to in the final analysis? The openings in the Clinton administration under Khatami for a reconciliation of differences, Irans legitimate interests and aspirations in the shiite and Islamic world and how they can be reconciled with the American interests as in Iraq. How rhetoric of Ahmadinejad may have poisoned these possibilities and clouded the real nature of Iran as not a totalitarian state says Akbar Ganji but more of a Sultanate in the Islamic tradition with a heterogenity of views and interests under an Islamic banner and authority, as for instance liberalism, socialism and feminism all views that exist as currents in Iranian society and vie to replace the existing Islamic ideology or to supplement or modify it in a form of modernizing element. And in the final analysis its about the hope of democracy activists in Iran and activists for modernizing element, and moderating influences in Iran's heterogenous society and in its bazaars that emphasize commercial instincts and manner over ideology, which also have popular support as they did under Khatami, to come up with a government that is more likely to work with a range of countries from China and India in Asia to Europe and the United States. And its about how the US and Europe can work towards that outcome requiring less rhetoric and more patience, firmness, and perseverence. ...

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The Swedish government is seeing the 3 Baltic countries as part of its own economic region, and is treating them as part of the home region. It plans to do whatever it can to help them. The recapitalization effort for Swedish banks that made a large amount of loans to these countries, is similiar to the one that Sweden conducted for its banks in the 1990's, after a real estate bust. Swedish banks loans to the 3 Baltic countries amount to about 20% of Sweden's GDP. According to Danske Bank the loans could cost Sweden 2 to 6% of its GDP over several years. In 2009 the economies of the Baltic countries could contract 6 to 10%. Already Sweden has approved a rescue package of $173 billion, or 1.5 trillion kronor, to guarantee issues of Swedish bank debt, with some of it used to recapitalize banks with heavy losses. It contributed 1 billion euros to the 7.85 billion euro rescue package for Latvia made by the IMF, and traded $1.1 billion woth of Estonian kroons for Swedish kronor to help stabilize the Estonian currency. Swedbank and Nordea Bank are taking part in the recapitalization, while the SEB Bank of the Wallenberg family has so far managed on its own....

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The FDA sets a pathway for developing "biosimilar" drugs in the U.S. Biosimilar drugs are cheaper versions of higher cost biotech drugs. Europe has moved further ahead in this area.

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Overall consumer prices were up 4.4% higher in October 2010, than a year earlier, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. Most of the increase in prices was concentrated on food and energy. China is taking action to limit price increases. During previous rise in inflation in 2004 and 2005, the government has resorted to detailed price controls. China's cabinet of ministers, the State Council, has issued orders that local governments and other government entities provide temporary subsidies to help the needy cope with rising prices and to increase allowances for needy students. Chia fears social unrest if prices go much above 5%. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN warns that food prices have gone up by 10% in the poorer countries. According to economists, China is effectively printing its currency renminbi to buy $1 billon a day worth of dollars to keep the renminbi weak, so that its exporters retain an advantage in overseas markets. The central bank takes away some of this renminbi but not all from the system, by selling bonds to state owned banks and increasing the amount of reserves required at the central bank. To keep the renminbi from rising, China's central bank buys up the investment dollars that are coming into the country, as well as dollars coming into the country from the trade surplus....

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Service oriented tech companies or even software companies selling it as a service with monthly checks from customers like Saleforce, are doing much better than vendors of tech equicpment, hardware or software. WIth credit so tight, and banks unwilling to lend making capital investments is so very difficult whereas sending out amonthly check for a service, which is an operating expense, is considered quite doable. One startup selling networking gear even got a request for no-interest financing from a potential customer, which it finds itself in no position to undertake.

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Google expresses concern about new internet rules in India that consider Internet providers such as Google responsible for all objectionable content, if it is not removed at the government's request. Google says it is difficult for Google to check the huge amount of content that it sends through its pipelines.

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Writing your own narrative when it comes to failures at work is suggested by experts. In the second of a series of Podcasts on How we Work the WSJ looks at failures at work and how they are processed in people's minds. Failures can be seen as experiences that teach, lessons that can be learned from failures so that one can do better next time. In this podcast WSJ gives an interview with Minh Lee, author of Pachinko. The first line of the book is "History has failed us. It doesn't matter." Asked to explain she says the way history is written it simply has winners and losers, but for ordinary people this does not matter as they go on with their lives and try to make the best of things. She also talks about recognition and how important it is. Minh says leaning into ones competence is an easy way to become impervious to failures. It is only when one goes out of one's competence does one experience what is called failure but is really an effort, one effort in a series of efforts, an effort that teaches one lessons that one can apply in the next effort which puts one in a position to gain better results. It is a process of continuous improvement in which one is readily trying new things. Now compare this with one leaning into one's competence and not experiencing what is called failure, yet at the same time not having tried anything new and exciting or feeling the thrill of adventure. Just to take Minh Lee's line one step further. Civilizations fail. How? When a people or society is losing its sense of adventure and severely censors and restricts trying new things you have the absence of a Renaissance. The Renaissance in Europe put it way ahead of Asia, with observation and experimenting above theory and textbooks, and set it up for the Industrial Revolution which started in England. By this time civilizations that never adventured on the seas, never adventured out of their little line of known competence, the civilizations on the Ganges in India and the Yangste in China failed and collapsed. So there are larger lessons to be learned and this also tells us that a lot more is at stake than one's own individual so called failures and so called successes at Work, and in the adventure of life. One ignores so called failure in first efforts because this is what the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution has taught us to keep trying new things till they work, and to patiently work through these efforts which may take some time, as all good work is arduous and filled with endeavours. In the oceanic adventures of Spain and Britain that discovered  America and Australia there were were difficult voyages that set the path open to those that followed. Captain Cook discovered Australia in his ship "Endeavour" in this way, opening the way to the settlement of a continent. He led the scientific mission for the British Navy on a voyage that lasted 3 years 1770 to 1773 when he returned to Dover from Botany Bay on the Australian mainland.   ...

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About 570,000 Asians live in the Washington D.C. area, making it the area with the largest concentration of Asian people in the East coast of the U.S.. Chinese in the District and Montgomery County, especially in Rockville and Potomac. Filipinos in Prince George and Charles counties. Indians in Loudoun and Fairfax counties. Koreans in Centreville. The 2010 census shows a 60% increase in the Asian population for the Washington D.C. area. Washington D.C. now compares with New York, Northern California, and Boston in the number of Asians living there. Indians are the fastest growing group among Asian-Americans. In Loudoun county, near the high tech corridor surrounding Dulles International airport, the Indian population has gone up from 400 in 1990, 2300 in 2000, up to 20,000 in the 2010 census. They also make up the biggest group of Asians in Virginia.

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Millions of people who are first time users for whom affordability is an issue in countries from Nigeria, Ivory Coast to India, Indonesia, are connecting to the internet. This time not with smartphones made by Samsung or cheaper Chinese smartphones made by Xiaomi or Huawei, but by using a new smart feature phone that cuts down the price such as the Jio phone by Reliance Jio in India. This costs only about $25 compared to $100 to about $300 for lower cost smartphones These phones provide basic features, some apps, messaging, internet access at low cost. About 3.4 billion people without the money to buy costlier smartphones are turning to this just like people did 20 years ago with lowcost Nokia basic phones until smartphones appeared. Monthly cost for mobile data access to internet is $2.50 a month for all the mobile data he needs or Rs. 1750. Batteries last for days in countries where electricity is unreliable. A fruit vendor in New Delhi makes $80 a month or  Rs 5600. A Jio phone fo him costs Rs 1400 compared to paying Rs 7000 or $100 for a Chinese smartphone. Reliance partnered with Hong Kong's KaiOS Technologies Inc. which makes the most widely used operating system powering smart feature phones. Jio sold 60 million Jio phones and 370 million such smart feature basic phones are forecast to be sold in 3 years by 2022. Reliance Jio is being imitated by others. Orange SA of France has launched an inexpensive smart feature phone bundled with inexpensive mobile data plans in Ivory Coast, Burkina Fso and Cameroon and plans to put this in other former French colonies in Africa and Arab countries. WizPhone plans to introduce a $7 phone in Indonesia. KaiOS is working with Brazilian manufacturers to roll out cheap phones there.  In advanced countries Nokia is offering revamped versions of its candy bar shaped phones with added web access to enthusiasts. These cost $100. A whole new group of people who could not afford a smart phone are now being connected after Jio's pioneering effort in India. ...

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Friedman says Putin acted emotionally by letting impulsive reaction to the anti-Russian feelings in western Ukraine determine Russian policy following the collapse of the Yakunovych government. The months long Russian response in Crimea and eastern Ukraine may have secured Russian pride at a large cost. This includes the damage to the relationship with Germany, seting the EU on a path to look for other sources of energy to reduce dependence on Russian gas, a natural gas deal with China in which the price was kept "a secret" and may have provided China with a bargaining edge considering the timing of the negotiations. The most severe impact is in the loss of confidence within Russia, reminding the Putin administration that though the economy has grown in the Putin years it is still fragile and connected to the global economy. The capital outflows of the magnitude of $160 billion at a time of high inflation and sharply slowing growth actually put at risk the gains Putin and Russia made in the last decade, and risk the future agenda to improve the standard of living of the Russian people eyond the major cities. Putin's own assessment would eventually be closer to that of Alexei Kudrin. Kudrin, finance minister in Putin's previous term, correctly saw the dangers of impulsive policy concentrated in one figure, and the suppression of other voices including the opposition needed for Russia to be governed in a manner similiar to western Europe, to attain a similiar level of economic progress and standards of living. In today's global economy even the U.S., France, UK and states inside Germany need foreign investment for jobs, new ideas and technology, and the opinion expressed on media television and internet shapes investor sentiment to a larger degree than fully understood....

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The Blinken Wang Yi meeting at the G-2- in Indonesia is the first high level meeting between US and China since March when the Ukraine war started. In the press briefing after the meeting Blinken said "more than four months into this brutal invasion the PRC stands by Russia." He pointed to Beijing support of Russia at the United Nations, dissemination of Russian talking points through Chinese state media and joint military exercizes with Moscow. One aspect of the relations that is beyond the control or good intentions of the two countries top diplomats is the tit for tat response that began with the presidency of Donald Trump. Trump may have seen this as a way to talk to the voter base fed up with two decades of one sided trade with China with manufacturing shipped out to China and local communities of families and workers in regions across the US losing jobs and in decline. Much of this shift was done by US companies during the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations over two decades. The strident tone adopted by Trump was met by tit for tat responses in Chinese media till the pandemic when it assumed a new aspect of Chinese origins of the coronavirus. The result is that Sinophobia in the US is met by a response in Chinese media and in the thinking of the Chinese leadership under Jinping that now sees the relationship as having already shifted during the pandemic. The paradox in this is that the US in its effort to get other countries on its side is only beginning to make an effort of get America's own companies and large business investors on its side. Most American companies are still continuing trade and business with China as before.  The same situation exists with the shift of manufacturing from Japan and the European Union to China, with the loss of jobs and decline of local communities that depended on manufacturing. Japanese and European companies are acting in ways that are similar to American companies. Having managed the shift of manufacturing from European Union and Japan to China these companies have done little to change this business situation in 2022 carrying on as before. This is the paradox of the current situation that business both in the US and EU, and Japan is not on the side of their governments, even as their governments attitude to China, particularly now after the pandemic and the Ukraine war has shifted drastically. Alongside this is the popular opinion that has shifted gradually over the last 10 years in the US and EU, first in these very local communities that lost manufacturing to China, and then across broader sections of the public, and now across whole regions of America, Britain, the EU and Japan. This shift in popular opinion has little interest in the way business conducts business overseas or governments conduct diplomacy in nuanced statements. As a result neither the governments of the US, EU and Japan or the business of the US, EU and Japan are in control of this shifting situation that has its momentum and pace operating quite independently of governments and business. And public opinion across America, Europe, Japan, and also in India is moving in an entirely new direction.     ...

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The WSJ provides a fact check of Trump statements on crime, debt, and taxes. Trump says he is looking at a new plan for taxes not the $10 trillion in tax cuts over 10 years reducing tax collection by 22%, but something about a third of the size. No details are available on the plan. WSJ disputes Trump's statement that the U.S. is "one of the highest taxed nations in the world." WSJ points out that the U.S. in 2014 for federal, state and local government taxes collected 26% of gross domestic product in taxes, compared to average of 34% for about 30 countries, according to OECD. Debt to GDP ratio is about 75% that is high, but because of low interest rates the budget deficit is less than 3% of GDP, which is close to the long run average. For this reason economists say the government should invest in infrastructure and R&D that supports long run economic growth. On crime the record is mixed with increase in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City, but decreases in Washington D.C. and Baltimore. Police shootings were 67 in 2016 compared to 62 in July 2015, and the high being 280 officers in 1974 when Nixon was President. Crime was an issue in the 1968 Republican National Convention during the Vietnam era protests, police shootings and terror incidents attracted attention in July 2016, yet the situation today is very different from the war protests of the Vietnam era. On terrorism fact checks by the NYT and in Lyrarc shows Clinton at State Department and Panetta at Defense Department taking hawkish stands only to hit a barrier from President Obama for taking action needed in Syria, Iraq and Libya. Panetta's new book calls for robust action where needed. A Clinton administration would take action with allies in the Middle East. Even Hollande and Obama who pulled the U.S. and France out of following up in the French-British Sarkozy-Cameron led intervention in Libya, have changed policy, with Obama calling it his biggest mistake. France under Hollande with the U.S. is now actively engaged in the Middle East, having changed policy. It is highly unlikely that a Trump led policy which alienates most allies in the Middle East- Iran, Iraq and Saudis- is likely to work better than a determined Clinton-Panetta led effort which has support of the local countries on the ground actually currently on both sides because of complexities of Middle Eastern politics.  On trade a new administration will still have to work with China, India, the European Union, and other countries, as global trade supply chains are not likely to evolve overnight. Lessons will have been learned by Clinton about the need to bring back jobs and ensure the strength of U.S. manufacturing. Economic and jobs growth will require prudence in strengthening U.S. manufacturing coupled with global cooperation, which a Trump administration that alienates trading partners without the possibility of making any serious immediate gains in jobs, is highly unlikely to do better.      ...

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For the first time since 1998, Russia, which has relied on large foreign exchange reserves from oil exports, has issued new sovereign debt. Russia issued $2 billion in five year bonds at 3.625% at a risk premium of 1.25% over U.S. Treasurys. And $3.5 billion in 10 year bonds at 5% with a risk premium of 1.35% over comparable Treasurys. In 2010 Russia expects a deficit of 6.8% of GDP.

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This commentary in the WSJ says it is essential that the U.S. get back manufacturing of all technological goods back to the U.S. or its allies. The dangers of depending on China or other countries not clearly allied with the U.S. is quite clear especially after the pandemic. The U.S. and European supply chains need to be completely remade, restructured, to avoid dependence on China or countries that are not allies. This is what supply chain renewal is about. Yet initiatives alone with hundreds of billions of dollars price tag re not the answer to the problem. What is needed are specific targeted actions such government direct assistance to key sectors to ensure U.S. technological advantages in worldwide competition. Giving a hole range of incentives and direct financial support to industries making everything from electronic and computer components to high tech parts that go to defense and civilian production.   The U.S educational component in this puzzle is university students in all high tech courses which should be kept for U.S. citizens or from key allied nations at American universities. The manufacturing base would mean securing incentives and aid to manufacturing industries, component by component, part by part, to secure American leadership and distinct advantage.  Job losses have to be reversed and industries relocated back to the U.S. And only in cases where it is advantageous to manufacture overseas to relocate in allied countries India, Japan or South Korea. U.S. labor has to be brought into the picture as a key participant in the national interest and given an important role. R& D efforts have to be developed component by component, technological part by part, and technology by technology, so that a systematic plan can be followed to secure American leadership for the rest of this century, is what experts including this one say is required today. ...

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Madras High Court decides that it has no jurisdiction over whether Indian patent law violates WTO guidelines on intellectual property. Novartis had asked the Madras High Court to clarify this point. Indian patent law (2005 patent legislation) states that a drug qualifies for a patent only if it is a new invention or a significant improvement, not a new version of a drug from before 1995. The court upheld this. Novartis's modified version of Gleevec, a leukemia drug, was denied a patent by a Indian court. Was it right in doing so? The Madras High Court affirmed this decision, and it will not be appealed to the Supreme Court.