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Cisco acquires Tandberg of Norway for $3 billion. Tandberg is amaker of video conferecing systems which are moving in the direction of telepresence.

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Ed Gorman of The Times talks to British skipper Ben Ainslee before the Prada sailing competition. Ainslee is a four time Olympic gold medalist who is working with a new design for the boat Britannia that has problems in light winds. Much technical work on the boat has been done and Ainslee with his team hopes to turn things around in adverse conditions. The team is pulling together from this low point and hope to use the days of the competition and rest days to pull through.

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The amazing story of Vivat publishing house that continued to publish books and even opened a new bookstore with bombing all around the city of Kharkiv. Many continued to work even from bomb shelters. The warehouse was moved to near Lviv. Since the war began Vivat has produced 60 books. The year before the war Vivat produced 2 million books. Today there is growing demand for books, for childrens books and books for younger people. People want to feel life is as close to normal and books are part of this.

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A Flash Eurobarometer poll before French elections in 2017 show 56% of Europeans in the EU saying the euro is a good thing, only 36% saying its not, those saying its good at 64% in Germany, and being 57% in Spain, and 53% in France. Walker of the WSJ says the euro has survived the crises of the last few years, with some but not all the steps taken to avoid a repeat of the problems, and public opinion still favoring the eurozone as it looks forward to economic growth in coming years. The middle class is not attracted to risking its savings in euro denominated assets, costs of the turmoil that might be caused by leaving the euro act as a signal for caution, and in Southern Europe countries remember the days before the euro with devaluations and high inflation. With gradual economic recovery it appears that the euro is still the best option there is. Surveys show three fourths of the French oppose leaving the euro, and experts say the euro is not to blame for France's slow economic recovery- more confidence and political stability with economic renewal are seen as the ways to get France going again. This may be why the national elections in France will likely bring a president who is pro-EU. ...

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This New Yorker has resilence in his roots in the Scottish Hebrides islands. No wonder he was able to take up the challenge of a US unable to extricate itself from  wars in the Middle East (Reagan, Bushes, Obama), and unfair trade with China, and an onslaught of unfavorable media attention. His name is DJT. According to the BBC in this story on Donald Trump's mother Mary Ann Mcleod, she was a regular churchgoer, well respected in the community, who visited her homeland in Scottish isle of Lewis, British Hebrides, frequently. Mary Ann McLeod is the youngest of 10 children of a Scottish family in the town of Tong in the Hebridean isle of Lewis in the North Sea, northwest of the Scotland mainland. Her father ran the local post office. The family was  relatively poor coming from Scottish people cleared of Highlanders during the Clearances and with fishing disasters in the family. Two hundred servicemen returning from the first world war to Tong lost their lives in a shipping disaster and the economy of the island was in poor shape. With no opportunities or future many immigrated to Canada. Mary Ann's sister Catherine immigrated to Canada and on a visit to Tong she took Mary back with her to New York in 1930. Mary worked as a nanny for a wealthy family in New York before meeting a socialite of German immigrants Fred Trump. Mary returned to Scotland in 1934 and by then she found a new life with Fred Trump whom she married. The couple lived in a wealthy area of Queens and Fred Trump ran a real estate business he had inherited with his mother. Donald Trump still has three cousins in Tong in the British Hebrides Scottish isles. His older sister Maryanne Trump Barry regularly visited Tong. Donald Trump visited Tong in 2008. Of this family a local who knows the cousins and the family John MacIver, a local councillor and friend of the cousins told BBC in 2017- "They are very nice, gentle people and I'm sure they don't want all the publicity that's around. I quite understand that they don't want to talk about it."   ...

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John T. Chambers has some very useful guidance on questions to ask and what to look for in hiring. Fairly simple but a lot of attention needed to get the right answers and make sure the hiring is done right. Here he talks to NYT's Adam Bryant. How did Chambers respond to dyslexia as a child? See it as a curve ball said a teacher,once you see it and observe that it comes a certain way, then you can handle it. He reads right to left. And he learned about near death experiences with Cisco in 2001. And he learnt from Jack Welch why they are very powerful and useful. He learnt from his parent, an obstetrician, that you are best being calm when there is an accident happening and people are not. People express emotions at such times and this says little about what's really going on, said his dad. Chambers admits his virtue and fault about being a command and control person, possibly from his early training at IBM. But he is open to changing when pushed, he says. He says his wife of 35 years keeps him from becoming too self-conscious. Questions he asks new people interviewed about joining the company. Tell me about your results. Tell me about your mistakes and failures. All of us have mistakes and failures, he says, so someone who says "I can't think of one, immediately loses credibility." The ability to be candid about mistakes made, and what they would do differently this time, helps make people learners and adapters as they go into different things. He says that he learns more from these two questions than from anything else. He also asks who are the best people you recruited and developed, and where are they today. He does this one gently , which is to figure out if they are oriented towards the customer or merely see the customer as someone who gets in the way. And then he looks for communications skills, and the key part of that is listening. He likes to see how they listen, how they interpret, and are they willing to challenge you. And then he looks for their knowledge in the industry segments, and the areas he is interested in. And that kind of covers the things he has looked for in the last 20 years. For today's world he looks especially for collaboration skills, teamwork skills, and their use of technology to share information, collaborate and work as a team. As its not immediately clear whether someone who says he is a team player is actually a team player, he checks with other people who know the person. Chambers grew up in a individualist world. So he is candid about this. He says that when he was trained it was about me and winning as an individual. The future, he adds, is about how do groups think and work together collaboratively. And how can one add discipline to that through practice and capability, and being able to use the necessary technologies. ...

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Andrew Rosenfeld, a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, and chief executive of an investment advisory firm, says the Public-Private Investment Program proposed by Secretary Geithner has serious flaws. It risks government money, and expects too little from private investors. The government will essentially finance the private investor's purchase of these toxic assets at an auction, with the private investors putting some money of their own, to buy these assets at prices emerging from the auction. It runs right smack into the problem that Secretary Paulson under President Bush faced when he suggested the auction plan as a way for these toxic assets to be sold off to buyers. It was never clear how shuch an auction would work, and whether it would work at all. Meantime the worsening credit crisis required direct injection of capital into banks. Now Secretary Paulson's abandoned effort has been essentially revived in the Geithner program, with the same problems but with the carrot of government taking up most of the risk with its financing. Rosenfeld argues that under this plan the government assumes all the risk of losses, and if private investors make too much money off of it it will create a public outcry and the risk of an AIG type situation. This might lead to lower bids and the money generated for the banks might end up being too small to make a difference. There is a better way he says, and this is for the government using existing authority to seize banks that look insolvent. Its fairer because the government will own the toxic asets, and the bank, and the proceeds for the sale of the bank, and these would be offsetting the cash that it would inject to recapitalize the bank. The way it would do it is to inject cash in the form of Treasury notes as equity in the bank, and at the same time remove the bank's toxic assets and place them in the basement of the Treasury building, while it waits to see what they turn out to be worth. Bank regulators would swap Treasury securties for the toxic assets "at par," which is at the amount of the original purchase price of assets removed. Within a short time, a month or a few months, the bank could be sold to private investors. This is sounder because it takes away the pricing problem which looks like its never going to be resolved, as banks and investors are never going to agree on toxic asset price. And the new bank could start clean and start lending flowing in the economy. If the bank turns out to be so badly managed and with so many bad bets that it cannnot be sold, its essentially insolvent and irrecoverable, so it should be liquidated. Nobel winner Krugman says some of the same things in his columns in the NYT. He has a sense of despair seeing the return of the failed Paulson solution of auctions with a new twist, even as the economy is flailing in the wind, with job loss numbers over 600,000 and jumping each month....

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Milbank describes Romney's problem as similiar to that of Al Gore- the feeling one gets that he is just not authentic. He tries to be a regular guy but he is not. He campaigns on his business experience, giving little attention to his record and experience as governor of Massachusetts.

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The Journal says Santorum needs to fit his economic point about helping manufacturing into a broader economic policy, and broaden his support base beyond the social conservative base. It says about Romney that he needs to find an authentic message that appeals to conservatives beyond catchphrases about repealing Obamacare. The problem it says is both candidates do not appeal to the whole Republican party. One candidate Romney lacks the fervor and firm convictions and the other Santorum has fervor and firm convictions about social issues, but can't do the same for economic issues and the other concerns of Republican voters.

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The revolving door at the U.S. financial markets regulator, the S.E.C., and lax enforcement, as S.E.C. officals take up jobs at law firms and financial institutions. Here Inspector General Kotz and Senator Grassley provide many examples of revolving door practices at the S.E.C., with officials taking up positions and bringing their expertise to private firms being regulated in the same fields and specialized areas.

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Pearson appears to have managed the downturn well by reducing ads percentage of revenue at FT from 50% to 30%. One way was to increase the importance of subscription and content revenues by increasing subscription price to pound 1.80 from pound 1.50. Its education business which sells textbooks and educational instructional tools like online learning and assessment are holding up, and its Penguin book division is also doing well. Pearson's competitors McGraw Hill faces aturnaround problem at Standard and Poors, and Houghton Mifflin is struggling with high debt.

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It is only appropriate to bring up Aneurin Bevan in 2024 after the pandemic and as ordinary Britons seek to improve health and living standards, and their compatriots in the US also seek a better form of universal health coverage that works to provide better health  for less cost similar to Europe. In 1948 the National Health Services Act was passed into law with Aneurin Bevan having seen it through parliament as a member of the Labour party from Wales. The NHS was operational in July 1948. Clement Attlee summoned Bevan after winning in a landslide in 1948 and asked him to take the Housing and Health Ministry. Bevan was a coal miner's son who then used his skills in parliament to get passage of laws that created one of the most enduring  institutions of modern times. A docudrama by Prince about a visionary Welshman Aneurin Bevan as Health Minister who founded the NHS National Health Service of Britain. Michael Sheen plays Bevan.

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"Having a country invading their neighbor with impunity that is a dire message to the rest of the world, and we are not making the mistakes of the past." 

Macron speaks of Russian threats to other places, to Moldova and Romania. 

Macron shows a chart of Russian rearmament with increases from 1.2 million men in the army to 1.5 million  and 1200 military aircraft to 1500 aircraft.

'Peace cannot come at any price, by abandoning Ukraine, the collapse of Ukraine."

"We have seen this happen in the past. Who can forget the invasion began in 2014, there was a ceasefire that was agreed to in Minsk and that the same Russia did not keep the ceasefire."

"We cannot take them at their word. Ukraine has a right for peace and security. It is in our interest. And we are working with our European allies."

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While the Fed will continue to carefully monitor conditions and the changes resulting from DJT's actions in immigration and tariffs, and federal workforce cuts, Powell says "the economy is in a good place," though it remains to be seen what happens with spending and investment with these changes. On changes in rapid sequence in first 100 days of DJT second term Powell says- "The new administration is in the process of implementing significant policy changes in four distinct areas: trade, immigration, fiscal policy and regulation,” Powell says at a University of Chicago Booth School of Business economic forum in New York City. “Uncertainty around the changes and their likely effects remains high. “We are focused on separating the signal from the noise as the outlook evolves. We do not need to be in a hurry and are well positioned to wait for greater clarity.” ...

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Gerard Baker's column in The Times of London looks at the possibilities and the risks for the new DJT administration. This column look at the DJT pardon of violent activity offenders on Jan 6, and the use of the office of the president for financial gains through the issue of cultural meme crypto $Trump and $Melania. The challenge for the Nation says Baker is the precedent this sets. This also poses risks and Susie Wiles wisely keeps the narrative by controlling the Musk Risk Factor in the adjoining article from The Times of London.  The many sincere efforts for public service as shown in the Senate hearings for many of the nominees that received sometimes enthusiastic bipartisan support are put at risk by losing the narrative for cultural literacy and and building an economy that works for all the people under a new administration that will also continue policies for the infrastructure and manufacturing that were put forward in DJT 2016-2020 and pushed forward by Biden in 2020-2024. ...

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Rich Kramer, CEO of Goodyear since April 2010, says the tiremaker's turnaround strategy was to focus on selling higher technology tires directly to customers at premium prices. About 75% of tires now sold sell at $130 and up. As recently as 2007, 40% of Goodyear's tires were low-end tires selling at retail stores for $60 each. Goodyear has shifted focus from selling to automakers to selling to customers at retail stores. The prior strategy was focussed on covering operating costs and achieving sales volume. Goodyear now sees itself as a consumer products company, in addition to being an auto supplier. Sales were 89.7 million tires in the first half of 2011. A small increase in sales of 2% from the prior period resulted in a 25% increase in revenue to $11 billion, and income of $143 million. Another reason for improvement in sales and profits is better labor relations. This was achieved by investing in new technology and plants, and putting $1 billion into the union health care fund for retired workers. The union agreed to a two tier wage system with more flexible work rules. The new technology introduced by Goodyear includes tires that reduce rolling resistance for commercial trucks and passenger vehicles. Goodyear is working on new technology to increase fuel efficiency. A $1.5 million grant from the Department of Energy funds research for tires with a miniaturized air pump that maintains air pressure. Other research involves tread design that improves fuel efficiency. ...

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Sony CEO, Howard Stringer, faced some bad luck in the last two years- surge in the Japanese yen, the tsunami and earthquake in Japan, floods in Thailand closing factories, hackers penetrating its online gaming network, and the European debt crisis. The result is fourth year of losses since he became CEO in 2005. His experience was as a journalist and television producer, and he helped turn around Sony's music and movie businesses. Nobuyuki Idei did something unusual when he chose Stringer to do the same for the electronics business at Sony- bringing a Welshman from Britain to run a major Japanese company and someone with no experience in the manufacturing side which is Sony's strength. Stringer made cuts that helped reduce costs, cutting about 26,000 jobs. He also picked younger managers for the executive team and was sensitive to cultural differences. Efforts to turnaround the television business did not work- with the television business running seven straight years of losses because of intense price competition. He also made efforts to change the culture at Sony so that different divisions and groups talked to each other. Kazuo Hirai, who ran the Playstation business, now assumes the CEO role with the benefit of the groundwork laid by Stringer. He faces a number of challenges including how to move away from the television business and how to come up with new products that excite buyers....

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Rolf Wetzer, a German metal working factory manager reflects feelings widespread in Germany. He says, we work hard and save our money, and he can't see why Germans have to throw money at countries that cannot do the same. There is considerable negative feeling about the bailout of Greece, because it is seen as brought about by the excessive spending, public corruption, and irresponsible accounting that went on in Greece. There is less negative feeling about the bailout of Ireland, as the Irish are seen as an industrious people, and the crisis was brought upon Ireland by Irish banks. Because of the negative feeling it will be much harder for Angela Merkel to go back to the German parliament for more funds, especially as her popularity has suffered. The existing fund will be stretched by the possible bailout of Portugal and Spain. Germany remains committed to the euro, but there is considerable anger about the bailouts. Germany has benefitted from the euro-zone through its exports, which jumped 31% in the last decade. Germany has a $105 billion trade surplus with the rest of Europe. At the same time there is fear that public opinion may turn against the euro. Thomas Mayer, chief economist at Deutsche Bank, says you can already feel it. Frank Schaeffer, a legislator for the Free Democrats, says that whether Germany needs the same currency as its neighbors is something he has doubts about....

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Eric Holder Jr, the Attorney General of USA, told the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commisssion that the F.B.I. was investigating more than 2800 mortgage fraud cases. Of these 2800 cases, 1842 are classified as major cases, involving losses of more than $1 million. In addition federal charges are pending against 826 defendents. Lanny Breuer, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department's criminal division stated that the fraud cases included loan origination schemes, property flipping, foreclosure rescue schemes and loan modifications. Those accused of wrongdoing include real estate brokers, appraisers and bank insiders and "plain old fraudsters who gravitated to mortgage fraud." Sheila Bair in her opening remarks to the Financial Inquiry Commission, led by California state Treasurer Angelides, stated that it was necessary to find a way to breakup large banks without using the option of government support. Bair pointed out that the basic assumptions about financial supervision, credit availability and market discipline that were considered acceptable in the regulatory reform scheme for decades are now appearing seriously flawed. A whole reassessment was needed to change the existing mechanisms and methods. And she emphasized the serious distortions and imbalances in our national policies which moved away from savings to consumption, away from investment in our industrial base and public infrastructure toward housing, and away from real sectors of the economy towards the financial sector. Ms. Schapiro who heads the S.E.C. called for a stable , adequate funding to support the commission's work....

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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration failed to take action when asked by drivers to investigate incidents of unintended acceleration. It also failed to take up action with the company's quality staff in Japan- who were in charge of things related to quality- after what appeared to be years of inaction and stalling by Toyota. Where it did investigate, the agency did nothing about the complaints when Toyota failed to provide the necessary information. Internal agency documents show that since 2003 the agency opened inquiries into possible Toyota problems, and six times closed them without action of any sort. With agency managers joining Toyota after their work at the agency, there appears to have been a cozy relationship with Toyota. Add to that the lack of a steady hand at the agency- with about 6 changes in directors since 2005- and the current administrator David Strickland only confirmed in December 2009. Throughout its 6 investigations NHTSA regulators were told they have to talk not with Toyota USA but Toyota people in Japan who made the decisions and had the answers, yet no effort was made to break the logjam and get Toyota Japanese managers to provide answers. At one point State Farm Insurance brought the incidents of accidents and near accidents to the attention of NHTSA, something that happened a decade before this in the Ford Explorer roll over accidents. On both occasions NHTSA was slow to act....