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These are key provisions in the biggest climate change bill in history- Tax credits that last for over a decade for zero carbon plants- these tax credits go to companies that build new sources of emissions free electricity, for wind turbines, solar panels, battery storage, geo thermal plants. Tax credits also for new technologies that capture and bury carbon dioxide from natural gas plants and industrial facilities before it escapes into the atmosphere and heats the planet. This technology is rarely used because of high costs. Incentives for electric vehicles- It extends a tax credit of $7500 for new electric vehicles. It adds a $4000 tax credit for used electric vehicles. Tax credit goes only to people earning $150,000 a year (300,000 for joint filers) for new EV's and $75,000 (150,000 for joint filers) for used EV's. Help for people to lower energy costs - $9 billion in rebates for Americans installing energy efficient electrical appliances. And a decade of tax credits for Americans installing rooftop solar, heat pumps, water heaters and electric HVAC, or electric heating, air conditioning and ventilation technologies. Investments in Domestic Manufacturing- $60 billion for investments in clean energy manufacturing in the US. This includes $30 billion for production tax credits for solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and critical minerals processing. $10 billion in investment tax credits to build manufacturing facilities for electric cars and renewable energy technologies. This action is to halt the shifting of clean energy manufacturing overseas to China. $27 billion towards a green bank that would finance clean energy projects in disadvantaged communities. Cracking down on Methane- the bill places a fine on methane gas emissions from oil and gas wells and pipelines and other infrastructure. Fees of $900 per metric ton in 2024 and $1500 a metric ton in 2026 when it exceeds federally set limits.    ...

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UAL's stock has gone down 93% in the past year more than its other U.S. rivals and the entire company has an equity value of $433 million smaller than the retail price of two jumbo jets. It will take second quarter noncash charges of $2.7 billion to writedown to zero the value of its intangible assets or goodwill. United will pare its 460 plane fleet by 100 planes by 2009, cut capacity by 15% in the 4th quarter 2008, cut 20% of salaried jobs or 1500 jobs, and furlough 950 of its 6000 pilots.

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The New York Times editorial page on the day following the passage of the second bailout or rescue plan of $700 billion in the Senate after it was voted down in the House of Representatives. It points out that the bailout bill does little to prevent a wave of foreclosures which the NYT estimates at six million people expected to default in the rest of this year and 2009. It faults lenders unwillingness to reduce the loan balances amount. At a Congressional hearing for the Hope for Homeowners program in which the governmet wold insure upto $300 bilonin new affordable loans for troubled borrowers if the lenders voluntarily refinance delinquent mortgages by reducing loan balances to 90% of the homes' current market value, lending banks were lukewarm about taking these losses in exchange for bigger losses in foreclosures. These lenders include Wels Fargo, Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup. The FDIC's Sheila Barr has also advocated reducing loan balances in her proposal for tackling the housing crisis presented after the Bear Stearns crisis. She is taking this approach to banks that like IndyMac were taken over by FDIC. But the numbers are not large letters were sent to 28,000 delinquent borrowers of IndyMac recently to reduce loan balances. This is a serious problem and either Congress and Treasury are leaving this problem to the next administration taking office 3 months from now as there is no real consensus on this issue even today or they are missing the impact this has in dropping home price values even further in neigborhoods across the nation as foreclosures drive prices down even further compounding the problem. For the financial institutions it would appear that they are letting this drag out because their capital is at frighteningly low levels and taking losses at one time is harder than taking the foreclosure losses dragged out over 1-3 years and they are also looking for a way in which they can let the government bear the burden of losses as the crisis intensifies which can make sense from the point of view of each institution. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal on September 29, 2008, Sheila Barr told Congress this month that in recent years troubled loan portfolios have yielded about 32% of book value, compared with more than 87% for loans in which the borrower is current. These are strong statistics in favor of lenders taking an informed decision to lower loan balances voluntarily with some government help along the way but the fact that this is not happening leads one to think that something is falling between the cracks, initial lender reluctance to take losses through voluntary balance reduction at the time of Bear Stearns crisis given taxpayer reluctance and lack of government initiative to help lenders in doing this, sort of what Martin Feldstein suggested in a series of articles during the time before and after the Bear Steans crisis. And then as the credit crisis worsened with collapse of Lehman, WaMu, Freddie, Fannie and Wachovia in September 2008 fear gripping the markets and LIBOR interbank lending rate at close to 8%, banks gripped by the fear prevailing in the market, frozen practically about any steps other than preserving their hammered capital, and reluctant to take losses which would further impair their capital. Also in the WSJ Sept 8, on help for homeowners, Deutsche Bank estimates 40% of homeowners or about 20 million households will owe more than their home is worth by the time the housing market stabilizes. This will lead to some homeowners making the rational decision as Martin Feldstein argued to walk away from their homes, leading to more foreclosure losses for th banks. This article Rescue Includes Steps to Help Borrowers Keep Homes by Ruth Simon also has some information that confirms the NYT editorial. An analysis it says of 144 mortgage modifications by the Massachusetts Attorney General's office found that none reduced mortgage balances and onoly a handful reduced monthly payments. Even with interest rate reductions, the study showed borrrowers wound up paying more because of missed paymmets penalties and fees. Another study by Credit Suisse mentioned in the same article points out that the percentage of borrowers who were behind 6 months after loan modifications dropped to 17% when lenders reduced the loan balances and 13% when mortgage companies froze the interest rate of adjustable rate mortgages. A bigger problem is the effect on consumption, if 40% of homeowners end up owing more to the bank than their home is worth as Deutsche Bank estimates, combined with higher unemployment and higher parttime employment, by the time things stabilize. And this is the big looming problem for a new administration in January even if the bailout plan passes Congress this week after revisions and eases the crisis in the credit markets. ...

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Rosa Ines Rivera, a cook at the cafeteria for the Y.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University, with 2 small children, describes the protests over the increase by Harvard administration of the premiums charged on health insurance that now take up over 10% of the income. She says she lives in public housing with her parents as she lost her apartment because she is behind on the rent, and now cannot afford to pay the increase in premiums. About 750 workers at Harvard are on strike on this issue. She says dining hall workers want the current pay of $31,193  a year increased to $35,000 to provide a living wage that helps them afford medical care, because of the high cost of living in Boston.  To get some idea of the plight of workers who provide the kind of nutritious meals that a lot of students depend on for healthy living- Rivera says she takes in about $450 a week after taxes, or about $1800, rent is $1150, which leaves $650 for herself and two children for all food, and expenses in Boston. The $4000 in premiums for health insurance would be about 330 per month, leaving her about $320 for food and living expenses with 2 children. Why the need to bring up children in poverty in America, for generation after generation, after putting in a full day of work? ...

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The severe impact of sanctions on availability of car parts in Russia is shown here in this Guardian report. Few industries are impacted by Russia's total isolation as the car industry says this report. Car sales in Russia have dropped by 84% according to the Association for European Business and car prices are up 50%. Import substitution is not working for the car industry say experts. The owner of a car repair firm in Moscow says speculation for car parts is rampant with parts cost up by 800% and original oil up 1000%. Reports show counterfeit or stolen parts flooding the market. The airline industry is also impacted by the severe shortage of aircraft parts. One Russian pilot says there are enough aircraft wheels and pads for one month maximum. A manager of Sukhoi Superjet says he gives the Russian airline industry one year if nothing changes. Safety concerns of pilots are being ignored says one pilot. Parts are being cannibalized from older planes for new ones to keep them running. With the nation's automobile and airline industries affected in this way the quality of living is affected in Russia only 3 months into this war. Having a large inflow of revenues from oil and gas for the 6-12 month period that it takes Europe to respond, and a large reserve fund of about $610 billion is not a real reflection of the strength of a country. In today's interconnected system of supply chain no degree of industrial strength would allow a nation to wage war through invasion with impunity without finding itself in severe difficulties for the quality of life in the country as the world community responds. The response is to prevent the wrong lessons being drawn by one nation using full scale war to occupy another nation and getting away with it.    ...

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Two years after it was launched the Jal Jeevan Mission to bring tap water to every household in India has made significant progress. Only 17% of all rural households had tap water in 2019, today even with covid disruptions 41% of rural households have tap water. 48 million more households have tap water connections added. The goal of Har Ghar Jal (Every home tap water) is now seen as achievable by 2024. Financing in 2021-2022 is increased from 115 billion rupees to 500 billion rupees, quadrupling the financial resources dedicated to providing water to all of India's people. The Swach Bharat Mission Director General, Akshay Rout, shows how this mission for water is moving as as quickly as the open defecation free ODF mission  under SBM. A household in ODF saved Rupees 50,000 a year from cleanliness and medical costs according to UNICEF. A WHO study shows 200,000 diaorrhea deaths prevented. JJM is decentralized, demand driven and community managed. Rout says that setting a deadline and aiming for saturation that leaves on one behind is a good way of tackling critical problems such as hygiene, sanitation and water. He says shoddy implementation or product can be prevented by robust monitoring and supervision systems. By 2019 India had made big achievement in hygiene and clean India campaign with ODF open defecation free achieved under this approach. ...

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Hamburg is the key city in Germany's trade with China. About half of $200 billion in trade between Germany and China passes through the port of Hamburg. The South China Morning Post looks at the dilemma in Hamburg over relations with China in the post Merkel era. Merkel maintained strong and close ties with China signing an agreement with China her last year in office. This was when Mr. Trump was US president. Since then president Biden has changed US policy towards Europe. The South China Morning Post points out that The Greens and the FDP key partners of Scholz in a new coalition government, are critical of Merkel's policy towards China in its overall relationship with the US and the rest of the world. Scholz was mayor of Hamburg, and a partner in Merkel's coalition government in which he was vice chancellor. Scholz has talked very little on what the new German policy would be. China seeks to maintain its economic ties in the next few years with Germany while reducing its dependence on other countries under Xi Jinping's new vision for China that seeks to depend less on trade and real estate for its economy and growth. Yet the pace of change has accelerated during the pandemic with a new global supply chain emerging from the chaotic years of 2020-2021. US policy under president Biden is similar to policies under Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930's during the economic and political crises, and look to be setting a new path to the future for the rest of the world. ...

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This report in DW.com presents a situation where supply of oil runs out as demand way exceeds supply as shale oils in US are depleted, and no new reserves are found. A story in WSJ last week reports that the salty water from shale oil extraction is injected back into reservoirs at a rate that creates serious problems in the Permian Basian of the US including East Texas. The IEA forecast in 2026 shows about 97 million b/d of production and demand slightly exceeding this in both 2030 and 2050 which would suggest defossilization has not taken place. Yet the US pullout from defossilization under DJT is sure to be reversed by future governments in as short as 3 years, and the current DJT policy is simply a response to the cost of living concerns of the majority of Americans. The scenario that fossil fuels will be required forever is promoted by the oil companies and by OPEC+ including Russia. But this situation will reverse as the cost of living crisis and the low wages and incomes, loss of factory jobs, low savings, health care inflation, is tackled under the DJT administration and the US economy becomes stronger with lower inflation.  This scenario of  steady oil demand can be reversed if China and India and Europe push ahead with renewable energy and technological change as is happening today, and will not be seriously impacted when the US joins the battle with its renewable energy push in 2028. This is not just an optimistic scenario, it is a balanced one as private industry in the US will sense this and move ahead with development of new technologies for renewable energy so as not to fall behind and to pioneer on their own. That is the history of innovation in the US for the last 100 years and will not change. ...

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Ranil Wickremesinghe of Sri Lanka, both Finance Minister and Prime Minister during this economic crisis, says to The HIndu in this interview- "It's hectic, this is a new experience. I am working eight days a week." He says he will firm up the staff level agreement with the IMF by June. Then he says comes the debt restructuring plan that gives a clear indication of what Sri Lanka has to do. By July there will be also the interim Budget.  He said "I must say that Indian assistance has helped us get through these difficult times." He says in addition to the $3.5 billion he is hoping to get another $500 million assistance for fuel. On austerity path Sri Lanka faces he says we have agreed with the IMF that vulnerable groups will have to be supported. He said if we look at what are called tough conditions, even if the IMF were not there, we would have to do it. The advantage of going with the IMF, you get something or everything. If you were to do it on your own you get nothing. On austerity he said yes there has to be austerity but we want it to be for the short term, so that even if 2023 will be a difficult year, in 2024 we can start moving. On the Adani investment of $500 million and Mr. Modi, he says  that he emphatically welcomes it. We need it at this moment and it is a good sign that investors are coming in, said Wickremesinghe. Look he said if anyone else in India wants to invest another $500 million I am not objecting. He said Sri Lanka needs to use its potential for wind energy which is big. ...

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About $78 billion in equities and ETF's bought in the US in the first quarter of 2023 excluding retirement accounts. Individuals have been buying at 5 times the rate between 2017-2019 says this report in WSJ. This is one of the reasons the S&P 500 is up 7.7% this year. Individual investments into money market funds remain at high levels, and there is less speculative investing. Saving for retirement remains a priority for investors. 401 (K) retirement accounts investments have held steady at 14% of income on average, including employer and employee contributions, according to Fidelity Investments. Younger investors shown in WSJ takes a conservative approach not taking a short term approach and maxxing out 401 (K) contributions, looking to the long run. 

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Solar energy production continues to grow in the US South in states like Georgia, Tennessee, Florida and Texas. In Georgia and Tennessee pine trees were planted in large numbers to replace crops with lumber when crop prices were low. With low prices for logs University of Georgia research shows 10X income even for a few acres for landowners in the South when they shift from pine trees to solar panels.

Timber Company Rayonier's CEO says for an acre of timberland income is $80 compared to $800 or $1200  for solar farms. When solar companies buy timberland they pay 5 times timberland value. Weyerhaeuser alone has 130,000 acres with 70 options to build solar farms. US needs 250,000 acres a year for solar farms to generate needed solar energy.

When land is near a wildlife preserve and bear territory it should rightly be preserved from solar farms which is happening in this case cited by WSJ in Tennessee. 

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Germany is going through a second year of slight economic contraction. The newly elected government of chancellor Merz has setup a $1 trillion fund to invest in infrastructure and defense. This will increase the debt to GDP ratio from 62% much lower than other advanced economies to 75%, and could give the German economy a rebound with $500 billion for fixing aging infrastructure. Germany's unemployment rate stands at 6.3% in March 2025. The economy weathered a energy crisis with the cutoff of energy supplies from Russia during the term of chancellor Scholz. Infrastructure, child care, was neglected under Merkel and previous administrations as it was in the US under Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations. The 2009 financial crisis, the eurozone debt crisis and the pandemic, Ukraine crisis from 2009 to 2024 have provided headwinds for action to renew Germany till now. A $1 trillion new fund and removal of the constitutional brake under the newly elected parliamentary majority of the CSU/CDU, the SPD and the Greens is the first step with $500 billion earmarked for fixing aging infrastructure, digitization of the economy, and other investment. The unemployment situation is deteriorating in the auto industry which was poorly managed and is now being hit with US tariffs of 25% on imported cars made by BMW, Mercedes and VW. ...

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The 30 by 30 target agreed to by countries at COP15 in Montreal, the Montreal Kunming conference, commits to protecting and restoring 30% of the Earth's surface by 2030. China was an active participant and made the decision to put this target into the final document. Biodiversity is an essential and important part of the plan for climate change action. COP15 Montreal complements the work done at COP26 in Egypt. Countries will report on their progress to 30 by 30 targets every year. Also part of biodiversity targets is the reform of $500 billion in environmentally damaging subsidies.

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The Southern Nevada Water Authority has cut water consumption coming from the Colorado River by 25% over 2 decades even as population has grown by 50%. It has done this by fining people for excessive use and paying landowners to remove turf grass. One television ad shows a person being scolded for excessive water use and the line "Vegas is enforcing water waste big time."  As a result of water conservation, water pricing, and replacing turf grass, the seven states fed by the Colorado River and the reservoir Lake Mead have seen much improvement in water usage. Lake Mead hit by a drought in the years 2000-2015 is now risen by 25 feet to 1096 feet in 2020 making it 44% full, the highest level in 6 years. The water conservation efforts in Southern California have yielded results. Metropolitan Water District of Southern California gave out $350 million in rebates for replacing turf grass. Irvine Ranch Water District cut drinking water use by 20% with higher pricing for inefficient use beyond a set limit. Building codes are amended preventing turf grass in front of homes. Lawns and golf courses replaced turf grass, with some golf courses using desert landscapes. In this area of 10 million people 200 million square feet of turf grass was taken out. ...

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The corporate share buybacks announced by U.S. companies in the last 3 months now exceed $200 billion, more than double than in 2017, according to a WSJ analysis. This includes Cisco, Wells Fargo, AbbVie, Amgen, Alphabet (Google). The surge in corporate buybacks started in December after the tax cut of the Trump administration cut U.S. taxes by $1.5 trillion over a decade, cutting the corporate tax rate for large companies from 35% to 21%. The tax cut also included a one time tax for repatriation of $2 trillion held by U.S. companies overseas. This WSJ analysis says there are questions whether the tax cut is working, whether it will encourage new investment, lead to companies increasing wages, or whether this will largely result in corporations returning money to investors with larger dividends and corporate buybacks. Morgan Stanley's analysis of earnings transcripts of companies in the S&P 500 show 44% of the companies say they will use some portion of the tax gains to make capital investments and increase wages, with 28% going in the opposite direction and using them to return money to shareholders. Experts caution that corporate buybacks do not always lead to the company's stock outperforming the stock market. The future of companies depends more on the capital investments and in human capital. There is a sense that workers wages have stagnated since the mortgage financial crisis in 2008, with the economic crisis, globalization and outsourcing, reduced alternatives for workers, geographic pressures in relocation, all pushing wages down.  This is being closely watched with articles on stagnation in wage growth this week in the NYT and WSJ, and earlier in the Economist magazine. Reports on the Trump administration tax cuts passed by a Republican Congress suggested a large tilt towards benefitting the highest income households. Problem with higher stock prices reaching the broader middle class are recognized in that one third of stocks are owned by overseas investors, and 84% of the remaining stocks are owned by the wealthiest 10%. Republicans have turned to bonuses typically of $1000 per person given by companies yet this amounts now to about a few billion dollars over an estimated 4 million Americans, says this WSJ analysis. This is not enough to justify a huge tax cut and raise the deficit by over a trillion over 10 years on the assumption that it would lead to higher wages or capital investment when about $200 billion goes to boosting stock prices. This comes at a time when the American middle class is not broadly invested in the stock market after the exit following the battering stock prices took during the 2008 financial crisis. ...

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Peugeot plans to shut down its plant at Aulnay-sous-Bois near Paris in 2014. About 3000 jobs will be lost at the plant. In all Peugeot plans to cut 8500 jobs, about 8% of its workforce in France. Peugeot says the pace of losses is unsustainable, with Peugeot losing 200 million euros in cash each month, putting the entire enterprise in peril. This also raises more questions about France's competitiveness as 400,000 manufacturing jobs were lost in the last ten years according to government data. Peugeot is seeing declining sales because of slowing sales in southern Europe, a critical market for Peugeot. Overall capacity utilization for Peugeot dropped from 86% in 2011 to an average of 76% in the second half of 2012, with sharper declines in the small car segment on which the company has focussed. The Aulnay plant produced 300,000 cars 2007, by 2011 this came down to 135,000 cars. Peugeots strategy of making smaller economy style cars with higher French labor costs presents a challenge say analysts, and its slower move into Asian markets has not given it the advantage enjoyed by German manufacturer VW. In addition to the 3000 jobs lost at Aulnay, Peugeot plans to cut 1400 jobs at its Brittany plant in Rennes, and 3600 corporate jobs. To assure unions the company will build a new car at the Rennes plant in 2016, and could move 1500 jobs from Aulnay to another plant near Paris....

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India and the race in Himalayas road buildup on both sides with China and India responding to each other's efforts on ground that is 11,000 to 14,000 feet high. In the latest buildup India in 2026-2028 is building the Zojila Tunnel in Ladakh to cut travel to 20 minutes across mountainous terrain for supplies to frontier outposts in some of the most forbidding terrain on earth. Much of this region of Ladakh and Kashmir is tens of thousands of miles from Shanghai and Beijing, Tibet is far far from China proper, yet the experience of the Sino-Japanese war in the 1930's and the attempted colonization of China by Japan is alive in the minds of the PRC's leaders, see Tibet as a buffer region. Who see India not as as the land of Gandhi and the Buddha Land that has remained that way since the year 1000, see instead a legacy regime of the British Empire of the 1800's that attempted partial colonization of China.

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Pokhara airport Nepal cost about $200 million but it does not get international flights from India which make it unsustainable. On the 10th anniversary of China's Belt and Road which has invested $1 trillion in development projects in poor countries of Asia and Africa, NYT's Wakabayashi, Sharma and Fu look at the China project that built a new international airport at Pokhara. CMAC initially submitted a bid for $305 million about twice what it would otherwise cost says this report, which was lowered to $216 million. Nepal signed a 20 year agreement with China. Only Chinese firms would be used in construction. A quarter of the loans at no interest. The rest a loan at 2% interest with repayment starting in 2026 from the Export Import Bank of China. 

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Time Inc. publishes about 80 print magazines, including Time, People, and Sports Illustrated. CEO Joe Ripp says Time Inc. was slow to respond to the digital transformation of media, and revenue is declining for several years. In 2014 Time Inc. ad revenue from digital ads was only 17%. Unlike Meredith Corp. and other companies which have television stations, or cable-television systems which can support its business, Time has little in the way of support, and could be broken up if the transformation into digital fails. Ripp was Chief Financial Officer of first Time Warner in 1999, and then of AOL Inc. at the time of the merger with Time Warner Inc. One of Ripp's recent risky moves not followed by other media companies is merging the media content side with the advertising side in native advertising. Time Inc. has 7000 employees as of Dec. 31, 2014, 800 fewer than the prior year.

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It took Panasonic 6 years to get its Wuxi factory near Shanghai, China, to near net zero carbon dioxide emissions. It was tough say company executives. Panasonic has a job on its hands. It would take 37 such efforts to neutralize the 2.2 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions of the company's operations. When suppliers are included this is only 2% of the 110 million metric tons associated with Panasonic. To get an idea of how much this is- it is the same as  half of Spain's annual emissions, and five times that of Apple Inc. Zeroing out emissions would take till 2030, or beyond, depending on how much pressure there is from customers, investors and government. It is this pressure from all sources that is making the 100 largest corporate emitters to take notice and take action on climate change. Solar panels are only part of the action, every part of company operations has to be examined and changes made including energy saving so that less energy is needed in the first place.  For companies taking such action this report by WSJ on Panasonic Wuxi is a lesson on how it is done, step by step. ...

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Applied Materials, a maker of machines that make computer chips, will invest $4 billion over 7 years in a new research center in Sunnyvale, California. Part of this investment comes from federal subsidies in president Biden's CHIPS Act to increase American semiconductor production inside the US. The investment will create jobs for 2000 engineers. The idea is to build an ecosystem for research and experimentation in Silicon Valley close to other research centers and universities so that the cost of production can be brought down with the access to latest technologies in usable form.

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Finland makes the decision to join NATO on May 12, 2022. NATO's land. border will increase from 1215 kilometres or 745 miles to 2600 kilometres. Sweden is expected to join NATO in a paradigm shift as it has been neutral for 200 years. Once Finland joins Sweden would be alone in the Baltic if it did not join NATO. Both Finland and Sweden have integrated their defenses and built up defenses at a time when other European states had not invested in the military. NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg has welcomed FInland and Sweden joining NATO.

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Images of 5 galaxies in the constellation Pegasus will be shown by president Biden at a White House event today July 11. The pictures are from the $10 billion James Webb telescope now 1 million miles from earth and looking back at distant galaxies from the beginning of time. The Pegasus constellation is a mind boggling distance away- 290 million light- years away.

NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency have together developed the Webb telescope, that is 100 times more powerful than the Hubble telescope that was there before.

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U.S. stocks were trading at 22.7 times the total earnings of the companies in the index in March 2013, averaged over the past 10 years and adjusted for inflation, according to data developed by Yale University economist Robert Shiller. This is closer to the average of 19.5 times adjusted earnings seen in the last 50 years. In 2000 the level reached 44 times adjusted earnings. Using operating earnings according to data developed by Howard Silverblatt of S&P Dow Jones Indices, the S&P 500 is 15.9 times operating earnings in March 2013. This compares to 28.4 times in 2000 and a long term average of 18.8 times. The European markets are about 25% cheaper says Zweig, with European shares for Ireland, Italy, France and the UK trading at less than 15 times the average of their long term adusted earnings after inflation. By comparison Japan is at 19 times long term adjusted earnings.

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Meticulous preparations in France for the Olympics. This report shows Macron at the Olympics Aquatics Centre built at cost of 188 million euros. The budget in 2012 Olympics in London overspent by 200%, France will do it for about 20% overspend, says the Sports Minister. Macron says "Everything is a cause for vigilance and attention, nothing is a cause for worry or paralysis, that is my and our state of mind." When the Olympics open on July 26 this year it will be on the river Seine, with hundreds of flotilla boats. It is a unique effort as even the housing complex was built so that after the Olympics are over the housing could be reused to serve residents of a poorer neglected suburb of Paris. The river Seine is being cleaned up for swimming