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The U.S. falls to 19th rank in the Social Progress Index. This Index is another measure of how well a country is doing in meeting the needs of its average citizen for education, health care, opportunities in life. Experts say GDP and GDP growth alone are a poor indicator of how well a country is doing. High levels of student debt, the aftermath of the mortgage crisis job losses and low interest rates that have slashed the average person's savings, lower access to education and health care with high costs, lower wages and job loss in manufacturing, are pushing the U.S. down the ladder in this ranking. It is also showing up in the domestic political unrest from poorer working class and lower middle class people. Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, Netherlands, do the best and are in the top ten in the rankings. 

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Sweden -USA men's ice hockey game won by US in overtime at the Milan Olympics 2026. US head for the game with Slovakia. Canada or Finland come next.

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Starter interrupt devices have been installed by U.S. auto loan lenders on about 2 million vehicles, and feeding the boom for making subprime loans by reducing the delinquency rate. Its a new virtual repo system unlike anything known before, described in this exceptional piece by Corkery and Silver-Greenberg, with implications that reach beyond borrowers to the safety of the U.S. financial system. It means the lenders have a false incentive to reach deeper into the pool of subprime borrowers with lower and lower credit ratings, with the securities marketed using these loans spread out over the entire financial system waiting for another implosion like the one in 2008. Consider that the subprime auto loans have reached 27% of total loans in 2013, and $145 billion of subprime auto loans were made in just the first quarter of 2014. At some point this could reach the 36% in 2006 before the implosion in subprime securities of 2008, destabilizing the U.S. and global financial system. Are the regulators again asleep at the job? ...

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The UN Refugee Agency says 7.6 million Syrians were displaced and refugees in their own country, 3.6 million Syrians are in other countries as refugees. Worldwide it says about 60 million are refugees. About half of the refugees are children. Of this about 14 million people were displaced in 2014, with 11 million of this displaced in their own country. Fighting in Iraq, Syria and Libya, appear to be the main cause of displacement in 2014. Never before in the agency's 50 year history are there so many displaced people in their own countries.

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Jacobs and Richtel of the NYT give this exceptional story of how Mexico changed between 1980 and 2016. Following the joining of NAFTA free trade zone the Mexican diet and food ecosystem began to more closely resemble the food diet system in the U.S. bringing with it severe health consequences. Soda and coke are now more entrenched in Mexico, as are fast food outlets. In 1980 only 7% of Mexicans were obese, compared to 20% in 2016, according to Institute for Health Metrics at the University of Washington. And diabetes kills 80,000 people a year, becoming the top killer according to the World Health Organization. A trade expert at Tufts University, Timothy Wise, says Mexico took on the worst aspects of a first world country like the U.S., with few protections. A similar problem is taking place in India and China as obesity grows, according to the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard, as low nutrient highly processed foods of large food companies with huge advertising budgets take a prominent place in diets. This is a growing problem for countries from Colombia to Ghana and Nigeria. ...

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Israeli strikes in response to a Iranian ballistic missile attack were expected. Yet the Israeli attack was done by informing the US and by Israel exercizing restraint that Biden had asked for, says this BBC report.

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The Carter Center finds that Democracy was thwarted in Venezuela when the Oppoostiion Candidate won by as much as 67% of the vote compared to 30% for Maduro and the Venezuelan regime. After over 300% inflation and 8 million refugees Venezuela's situation had deteriorated to the point that no government could win with such dire conditions for the economy.  Most essential goods and services difficult to find. This is the situation that the US faced as it asserted the Monroe Doctrine in the face of drug trafficking gangs in Mexico and Venezuela pushing drugs and migrants across the US borders. The drug and migration crisis in the US reached levels that led to the election of DJT in the US in 2025.

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An example of the kind of information spread even in BBC and American media about US inability to make the most advanced chips because TSMC founders have decades of experience. In fact TSMC founder Morris Chang acquired his experience in chips in the US. The decades of TSMC experience are merely since the late1990's. The US was the only country making these chips when China was mostly an agricultural economy in the 1990's. It is only because of hidden subsidies and bad economic theory, that US let the chip technology be outshored. As soon as the people of America make the decision, bad economic theory will be discarded, and US will support its own chip manufacturing under bipartisan support in Congress and the White House, with the full support and funding of the American government.  The US can get things done once it makes up it's mind as the whole Nation. Advanced chips will happen very quickly in the US with the process already under way and supported by the whole Nation. People forget that bigger than chips, bigger than technologies of today, the Industrial Revolution of the 20th century began under Frances Perkins and Franklin Roosevelt in New York during FDR's term as Governor as New York State. It was at that time that New York state  was setup as the model of industry and labor, with new institutions and industrial landscape engineered by FDR and Perkins. This was transferred to 50 states during the 1930-1950 period- this is the industrial structure and economic structure that brought the Second Industrial Revolution in the 20th century to the world. Taiwan did not exist till 1950's emerging from Japanese rule, China from Japanese occupation till 1945, not emerging till 1990. ...

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Germany's DW.com says in this report- "However, economists have pointed out that the US benefits from having large trade imbalances with the rest of the world, as the dollar is used in most trade, and offers major tailwind effects to the US economy." Which economists one must ask? Most of these economists had turned their back on the working people in factories in America, on their wages turned into a downward spiral, on their jobs, their factories lost for three decades. Today the American people have a sense of the true cost of this colossal failure to protect American workers and small towns across America depending on manufacturing. The pandemic exposed the risks of supply chain shocks and inflation by overly concentrating manufacturing in China.  The US has 1 trillion in trade deficits each year and it is completing the destruction of manufacturing in the US. Half of this is with China as China exports through Vietnam and Mexico, third countries, in addition to 295 billion dollars of trade imbalance the US has with China. China, Mexico, Canada and Vietnam are the largest offenders. No country can long endure with such a loss of its manufacturing base. The US Navy itself is in danger without the manufacturing to compete with China that has taken up over 50% of shipbuilding, and soon will not be able to protect the free world if these types of economists and self serving German or other foreign interests drive a false narrative. Without the US Navy in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans no one is safe, not Germany, not the EU, not India or the rest of the world. ...

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In a strategic move to fill a gap in its competition with Tesco and Sainsbury in Britain, Wal-mart has decided to pay 778 million pounds for Denmark's Netto chain's 193 stores in Britain. Tesco has ben expanding with new store formats and has built a sizable presence with smaller stores. Customers in Britain like the advantages of shopping in smaller stores, with older customers or customers in small households preferring to buy often and as needed rather than make a long drive to a distant location for bulk purchases. Wal-mart in Britain was seeing its share of the grocery market at 17% slipping in relation to Tesco's 30% share. Efforts to open its smaller stores of 8000 square feet have run into tight zoning regulations and it has only 25 such stores so far. The Netto acquisition helps fills this gap. It still will not have the same quality of locations that Tesco and Marks & Spencer have, which are better centrally located, and in busy residential areas. It still is a much needed move into convenience retailig for the Asda business of Wal-mart....

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Vernon Jordan points out the problems with media and new tech and the loss of quality journalism. He says this has damaged the political process in the U.S. and Europe by spreading rumor as facts, and not providing reliable information, with news and entertainment not being separated. The failure to educate people he says, risks in Jefferson's words the "perversion of power into tyranny."

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Online shift hit Macy's hard. It is now closing 150 stores by 2026. Macy will concentrate its resources on its remaining 350 locations including the Bloomingdale stores and BlueMercury stores. Salez stagnant at $23 billion profits down by 91% to $101 million. Workforce cuts of 3.5% planned and no plans to sell the company to venture capitalists.

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US increases royalties for exploration in the Gulf of Mexico.

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This analysis in the South China Morning Post shows that some of the nuclear options China has in a trade war with the U.S. are not as effective as they appear. Selling off China's huge Treasury holdings would lead to a situation where there are no buyers on the other side. It says private sector bond buyers would run a mile, and the lack of buyers, actions by the U.S. government freezing these assets could render them effectively worthless. The bond yields would jump but only for a short period as the Federal Reserve would step in to buy bonds, and yields would stabilize with the actions of central banks of U.S., Europe and Japan. A dent in the dollar would only make Chinese goods more costly in the U.S. exactly what U.S. tariffs are trying to achieve. A 10% devaluation of the yuan would have the effect of creating expectation of further devaluation, and lead to capital outflows from China on a large scale. A small devaluation in 2015 led to a large outflow. This would lead to a significant loss in foreign exchange reserves for China.  In this way China's deterrent would be less effective than it appears. ...

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The new Dutch Health system that went into effect on Jan1, 2006, and is based on Stanford university prof Eindhoven's idea of "managed competition." What the Dutch experience holds for the USA as states like massachusetts look at mandatory universal health coverage on a private basis and for the US as a whole as the present system appears to be coming to a close.

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Walter Mead of WSJ offers this view- expect more action from DJT in 2026 not less, than 2025. The president took the US Supreme Court's decision in stride, noting that it lets him do the same thing on tariffs- charge tariffs on countries doing unfair trade with the US- with other tools in trade legislation, just not IIEP rules. On the practical side every country wants to keep its trade agreement with the US said the president- Britain, Japan, South Korea, Germany, China, India. China and India have increased exports in 2025 even with tariffs rules that allow some exemptions. Large trading nations do not want the uncertainty that comes with renegotiating agreements arrived at with much difficulty with the US. This is not mentioned much in the media such as WSJ and NYT which instead  focus on the tariff revenue already collected of $130 billion and its use or refunding. What is relevant is that the purpose of splitting powers beteen the executive branch and the Supreme Court and Congress is preceded to a great extent by the public's ideas about what is fair, of rights of the US to fair trade, and preventing the deindustrialization of US and Europe. Which is why the Supreme Court has tried to tread warily on issue of illegal migrants by millions entering the country, and is trying to tread warily on issue of rebuilding American industry and infrastructure using tariffs to reduce concentration in China and act to restore a fair trading system for the US and the world. ...

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US relations with UK 2026 and visit of King Charles to White House April 27-April 30 2026- "he is fantastic" says the US president. DJT says about US-UK relations and the impact-

"Absolutely. He's fantastic. He's a fantastic man. Absolutely the answer is yes."

"I know him well, I've known him for years. He's a brave man, and he's a great man. They would absolutely be a positive."