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This opinion of the Editorial Board of WSJ says it is not clear why Taiwan has been excluded from the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework that includes most of South East Asia including Indonesia, and India, South Korea, Japan, Australia. The Biden administration plans to deepen economic ties with Taiwan. WSJ says this is a mistake and Taiwan should be included in the new Asian alliance led by the US. IPEF is a Asian alliance built around 4 pillars of digital economy, transparency and good governance, Asian security and rule of law, and rapid economic technological progress. Biden administration Commerce minister Raimondo says it will increase investment in the alliance countries for supply chain renewal and shift of investments away from China and into India, Vietnam. President Biden and Jake Sullivan see it as pulling in investment into the US for infrastructure and technology and into allies such as India who have the pool of manufacturing workers to compete with China in a new supply chain. Mr. Modi also sees it as he is focused on digital economy, good governance, and infrastructure with speed and scale at high levels to match rising aspirations for the economy in India. It is designed in a way that lets US, Japan South Korea and India to fill in the needs and strategies over the period to 2030 and 2040 so that US and Europe and the Free World in Asia and Latin America, Africa can preserve democratic values with matching technological and economic strength. ...

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The aggressive effort of the US central bank, the Federal Reserve, to increase interest rates to dampen inflation will have an effect on Asian currencies and trade. The Japanese yen lost 14% of its value and the Korean won 8%, Chinese yuan 5% since the beginning of 2022. This is a result of the widening gap between interest rates in the US and Japan where the interest rates have not been increased due to mild inflation.  Asian trade is done in US dollars and exports to the US are invoiced in dollars. Citigroup says about three quarters of trade in Asia-Pacific is invoiced in dollars. Weaker currencies would translate into higher effective prices for imported commodities - energy and food. This pushes up domestic inflation and hurts manufacturing.   Add to this a shift in the US demand from goods into services in 2022 and there is weaker external demand for the economies of Asia. This will exacerbate the slowdown in Asian economies. Many countries such as South Korea and Thailand have increased their external borrowing in dollars. Debt service ratio was 21% in South Korea and 14.5% in Thailand, according to Bank for International Settlements. Years of low rates allowed governments in Asia to borrow more without incurring high interest bills. Now that situation is changing quickly and will result in difficulties for South Korea and Thailand says this report in WSJ. In the last 10 years Asian economies excluding China increased debt to GDP ratios by 15 percentage points, according to Gavekal. The result might not be debt crises as in Sri Lanka but painful slowdowns in economy with combination of loss in external demand from the US and higher inflation, higher interest bills. ...

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Between 2007 and 2008 debit card volume doubled at Chase and almost doubled at Wells Fargo. For the first time Visa Inc reported that the total dollar volume of purchases made usingits branded debit cards surpassed credit card purchasesduring the last quarter of 2008 The $206 billion in US Visa debit card transactions were 50.4% of total transaction volumeup from 40% in 2003. And Visa's Stacey Pinkerd, head of the debit card business says "the reality is that the vast majority of consumers want to pay as they go."And the US governmentsaid last month that the personal savings rate rose to 5% in January 2009. Rvolving debt which mainly reflects credit card loans fell 9.7% to $956 billion in February according to the Federal Reserve.

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Workers are resorting to campers, garages and tents as there are few housing options in resorts like this one in Sun Valley Idaho in the US. It is also a reflection on living standards for Hispanic communities in the US in 2022 who provide workers for the hospitality and construction industries in the US.

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HTC Corp., Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer, says strong competition from Apple and Samsung hurt its position in the U.S. market which will be hard to recover. HTC was one of the first companies to market smartphones in the U.S. in 2010, gaining the top spot with 11.8% market share that year. HTC started as a contract manufacturer, shifting to making smartphones on its own brand name in 2006.

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Henrique de Castro, chief operaing officer, leaves Yahoo after only one year on the job following poor performance in generating advertising revenue in 2013. He was hired from Google by CEO Marissa Mayer. Yahoo's share of display ad revenue in the U.S. declined in 2013 to 5.8% from 6.8% in 2012. Google's increased to 39% and Facebook's share increased to 7% in the U.S.

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Pharmaceutical companies in the US will be required to provide rebates to buyers if they increase prices above the inflation rate. This is one of the provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 also called the Climate and Tax bill. Medicare recipients total out of pocket costs for drugs will be capped at $2000 under the Biden bill.

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President Richard Nixon was named by a grand jury in 1974 but was never charged with a crime says WSJ. By the time he left office Nixon's reputation had suffered severe damage. NYT reports that this is different with Mr. Trump who seeks the nomination of the Republican party in 2024, raising a whole new set of issues of what is and is not appropriate behaviour for the office of the president of the US or for that matter any high office in the United States of America. Ultimately new standards will be set and the past few years make be looked back on as an anomaly in the history of the US.

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Why are home covid test kits harder to find in the US compared to Europe and other places? Part of the reason is that the FDA was more stringent in approving home tests than in Europe. During the focus on vaccination in mid 2021 there was less demand for home tests so that Abbott and other makers of home tests actually cut back on production. European governments continued buying them in bulk to distribute them free as the tests were required to enter restaurants and public transport in Europe. With Omicron in December 2021 pharmacies in the US quickly ran out of tests and prices were high at $25 for test kits.

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The strong U.S. job gains of 243,000, according to the Labor Department for January 2012, is a result of unusual factors and is not likely to last. Warmer than usual winter has permitted more construction activity and construction payrolls increased in Dec. and Jan. Another factor is that businesses are making up for labor requirements after the pause during the middle of 2011 from the tsunami and earthquake in Japan, and the uncertainty created by the debt ceiling crisis. The eurozone crisis, and weakness in housing will continue to affect the economy and hiring. The average for jobs created in the last 12 months was 163,000 each month. This rate of growth in jobs will reduce the unemployment rate in 2012, with fluctuations as an improved job market will bring more discouraged workers back looking for work.

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Vehicle sales in the U.S. market went up by 18% in April 2011. There was a significant shift fuel efficient vehicles and small cars with gasoline running at over $4 per gallon. Sales are running at an annual rate of over 13 million vehicles for the February-April 2011 period. Helping sustain sales momentum is the aging of the U.S. vehicle fleet- average for vehicles in the U.S. is above 10 years according to G.M. vice president, Don Johnson. GM sales were up 27% in April 2011 over the prior year- with only a 2% increase for pickup trucks and a 50% increase in sales for passenger cars. There was strong demand for the Chevy Cruze compact and smaller fuel efficient sport utility vehicles. Ford had a 16% increase in sales, with strong demand for the new Fiesta, Focus small cars and the new lighter version of the Explorer SUV. Ford's Ken Czubay, head of sales and marketing, says dealers are selling the Focus right off the convoy truck, which gives some indication of the shift in consumer preferences. Chrysler vehicle sales increased 23%, with car sales up 41% in April over the prior year. Some indication of the shift can be seen in the incentives dollars- the largest rebates of $3200 were given for large trucks, according to Edmunds.com. At the same time overall dollars per vehicle for incentives dropped from $2600 in April 2010 to $2100 in April 2011. Toyota sales increased by only 1% because of shortages as a result of the earthquake, especially for the smaller cars like the Corollas and the Prius....

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It is shocking to see the virtual lack of cultural or other people to people contacts between the two largest regions in Asia, and most populous regions in the world, India and China. There appears to be a near total lack of understanding on both sides at the university and government level of the importance of setting up these contacts, so that misperceptions do not exist on either side and better relations can be built using such contacts. Rana Mitter, a expert on Modern China at Oxford University, says in an interview in the Times of India, that India and the 1962 conflict occupy less attention in the Chinese mind because other issues such as the relations with the U.S., ASEAN and Japan, take up more space. Mitter says India should emphasize its pluralism, democracy, and peaceful engagement in its external relations.  Mitter puts less emphasis on the 50 day standoff between India and China on the border at Doklam, Bhutan region, when he responds to a question about the risks of a conflict. He points to a bigger problem that affects relations between the two countries- the lack of exchanges that bring Chinese students, faculty, and government personnel to India, the difficulty of obtaining visas. This lack of cultural exchanges between the two countries is a major issue, considering also that trade and business exchanges are taking place and growing during this lack of cultural exchanges.  As a result it appears that business and economic relations guide the China-India relationship today, with people in China's key ministries and government, in universities and local government, lacking an understanding of India. Mitter makes this clear that cultural exchanges need to be established. Even a search for China- India dialogue brings up little information with a location in Beijing but none in India. It is mind boggling that the relations between the two most populous regions in the world are based on a huge lack of contacts and exchanges that would improve perceptions and understanding.  Britain's effort offers a model to follow as Tsinghua University in Beijing, as part of China's C9, has set up cultural exchanges with British universities in the ongoing cultural exchanges between Britain and China. ...

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Video presented by Gen. Dan Caine on how the Fordow site strike was done in real time. Dan Caine explains why the strikes were effective as Bombs Unit 57 were designed specifically for Fordow and the effort at Fordow is a project of the Threat Reduction Agency in the US War Department, doing this since 2009 when Fordow was being built.

Defense Secretary Hegseth points out that in the media's haste in reporting it had missed a key event at NATO meetings in The Hague, Netherlands. For the first time all EU nations had decided to shoulder their defense responsibilities for Europe. Germany and other nations will put 5% of the budget into defense of Europe.

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A government shutdown looms in the U.S. as talks over DACA and immigration collapse between Republicans and Democrats, following a derogatory comment about Haitian immigrants by the president. Earlier talks led to a proposal by Senators Durbin and Graham which offered legalization to Dreamers -children of people illegally entering the country- a 10-12 year path to citizenship, their parents offered 1-3 year renewable work permits, and $1.6 billion in funding for a wall or border fence on the Mexican border. President Trump rejected that proposal.

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President Trump's lawyer Cohen provides testimony to the U.S. Congress on activities on behalf of Mr. Trump. Cohen provided more details on the Russian involvement in the presidential election and Wikileaks leaks on the Democratic Party. He also described his role as a fixer for Mr. Trump, always defending, and arranging for Mr. Trump, something that he said "monopolized my life." Mr. Cohen and Mr. Stone were close to Mr. Trump during and before the campaign. Both are under investigation by Special Counsel Mueller.

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U.S. North Korea talks between president Trump and Kim Jong-Un collapse as North Korea insists on the complete lifting of sanctions offering only to close down one nuclear facility in exchange. The talks were held in Hanoi, Vietnam. Kim agreed to close down the Yongbyon nuclear complex, but the country has also 2 other facilities where uranium is enriched. Kim wanted to keep these other facilities and not offer the entire nuclear facilities.

The first summit in Singapore did not lead to any agreement.

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In this report November 29, 2019 Jeanna Smialek in the NYT raises the cautionary flag on the Randy Quarles  period as Fed's vice chair of supervision. The Fed and FDIC report issued April 29th 2023, puts the fault for the lax supervision of Silicon Valley Bank on the culture that sees the less regulation the better.  Smialek shows the meetings Randy Quarles had including with a former employer Davis Polk Wardwell- Republican Senators 29, Democratic Senators 17  Davis Polk  law firm 22,                     Daniel Tarullo his predecessor 0 Goldman Sachs 24, JP Morgan Chase 22                   Daniel Tarullo his predecessor had this to say about Quarles role at Fed- It is he said "A kind of low intensity deregulation, consisting of an accumulation of non-headline grabbing changes and an opaque relaxation of regulatory vigor." To which Quarles reply is- "The argument that it is a drip-by-drip erosion: the quantification of that, they can't really demonstrate any quantifiable reduction in the overall resilience of the industry." The Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank crisis could have damaged the US banking system, and the capacity of the US to make the huge needed investments in the country, without the strong action of the Biden administration. It showed the very erosion of banking supervision that Smialek pointed out in the NYT in 2019. The costs of a weakening of the banking system and the US capacity to invest in the country are borne by the American people, by workers and families in the US. Which is why the Biden administration acted quickly and decisively to limit the ripples from this crisis.       ...

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Alan Meltzer is a respected voice on US Federal Reserve policies since the time Paul Volcker was Fed chairman He says the Bernanke Fed is making some serious policy mistakes. The first is concentrating on near term events, such as business response to Obama administration policies, over which it has little influence, while neglecting the long term consequences of its policies. The second is its effort to tackle unemployment by interpreting its mandate as a dual mandate of tackling both unemployment and inflation. By tackling one at a time, he says, the Fed is likely to fail totally. The US is unlikely to not feel the inflation that is going on around the world. By ignoring the changes in money supply growth the Fed is making another mistake. His advice is for the Fed to increase interest rates it controls to 1%, to signal that it is aware of inflation risks. Second, the Fed should annonce a specific, detailed plan explaining how it will reduce $900 billon of the $1 trillion banks continue to hold in excess of the legally required reserves. Third, the Fed should end QE II, the most recent round of treasury bond purchases. Meltzer says if the Fed waited for two more months in Nov 2010, it would have found that a double dip recession was not about to occcur and it could have held off from pursuing QE II. Meltzer emphasizes that slow growth and unemployment is not a monetary problem, because of the ample liquidity already in the financial system. Uncertainty about government policy and the future direction has been clarified by the election which will help put the economy back on track. Philadelphia Fed chairman expresses similiar views in other articles and an interview with O'Grady of WSJ....

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Kazuo Hirai becomes the new CEO of Sony, succeeding Howard Stringer. Hirai faces some tough decisions at Sony, as the company's position as a pioneer in electronics has been eroded by Apple, and sales of product hardware have been eroded by Samsung Electronics. Hirai says his strategic goal is to get the 168,000 employees of Sony to place getting the user experience right first before anything else. And that simply being a great producer of hardware products isn't enough for Sony. Hirai's experience is in turning around the Playstation videogaming business. To this he brought an unconventional style. He was educated in the U.S. and Canada as the son of an expatriate Japanese banker, and in Japan he went to the American School where he founded its Audiovisual Club. His first job at CBS/Sony Inc. in Japan was as a translator for bands such as the Beastie Boys and Journey during the visits of these bands to Japan.

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Senators approved the U.S. Republican tax bill 51 to 49 votes on December 1, 2017. The 500 page bill was approved with arewritten version containing more changes made at the last minute to get it passed in the early morning hours. It was passed along party lines with all Democrats opposing. The last minute changes were made to get Collins of Maine and Johnson of Wisconsin on board. A concession was made on DACA young undocumented immigrants for Flake of Arizona. In this way its passage was ensured after failure to repeal Obama health legislation. The Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation report says the bill would increase the deficit by $1 trillion over a decade. Corker of Tennessee opposed the bill for this reason, but failed to convince other senators who believe the bill will generate robust growth and the deficit report is too pessimistic. The tax cut bill helps 70% of middle class families and may not help others because of removal of deductions such as the one for state and local income taxes. Business gets a permanent tax rate of 20 percent instead of 35 percent which is made permanent. Owners of small business not set up as corporations also get a tax break for small business. To offset the cost of the changes the Alternative Minimum Tax for corporations is retained and a tax on corporations with assets held overseas was increased. ...

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As Germany looks back at the mistakes of the past in failing to get immigrants to integrate and letting ethnic communities form that failed both in terms of jobs and language/culture skills needed to become full citizens, it is now taking a fresh approach to the task of integrating about 1 million new immigrants. For the first time the government is putting this approach into legislation that is sure to pass, offering new incentives, requiring immigrants to look for work and to take jobs in smaller towns and communities. It offers new opportunities and at the same time takes away benefits if this is not done. Chancellor Merkel calls this "a milestone," and said about this legislation- " We are a country that makes a good offer to those who come to us, to those who are fleeing war, persecution, terrorism. But we are also saying very clearly- because we have learned from the past  when we did not provide these integration opportunities- that we're also expecting people to accept this offer." The lessons were learned after large immigration from Turkey in the 1960's and 1970's with ethnic communities being formed that never integrated with the rest of German society. The new law requires refugees to stay in municipalities where they are first assigned when arriving in Germany unless they have a job offer elsewhere. The government plans to subsidize creation of 100,000 new jobs across Germany, in work such as maintaining public parks, helping elderly, an alternative says Labor Minister Andrea Nahles "to doing nothing." The law also makes it easier for private employers to hire people in towns across Germany. The new German approach is for a two way handshake, and to take a pioneering approach. ...

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Make no mistake president Biden is saying it is America's, and India's turn to reinvent the semiconductor industry with government capital support, and with the zeal and inventive capabilities of the US and India. This interview by Ben Cohen gives a glimpse of how Morris Chang now 92 years sees the founding of Taiwan Semiconductor in 1985 in retrospect in 2024. He talks about his early life in the US as an immigrant from China after 1949 and his work at Texas Instruments learning about the semiconductor industry. In the 1980's Japan was the rising industrial nation in semiconductors. By 1985 Intel which dominated memory chips faced challenges in quality and cost and cheap capital from Japanese capital markets encouraging exports. By 1988 Japan took over the market. What Morris Chang is not telling is that Chang already had the Japanese example in 1985. If Japan could do it on all three fronts quality, cheap capital with government assistance, and ten year effort Chang and Taiwan could do this and accomplished this which it has done. ...

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All the extreme rhetoric on how Project 2025 is going to be adopted under a DJT administration has led to unease that there will be deterioration in the government and society.  Yet it simply may not work that way.   A second objective look at Project 2025 and how it's value to Republicans will be carefully evaluated piece by piece by DJT is needed. Keeping in mind 2026 House and Senate elections, winning broad support for the traditional Republican conservative line of thinking, and maintaining the support of all Republicans in the business, government, media and other sectors.  1. Replacing federal employees with party loyalists. This happens at the top of every agency of the government for every government in the US and Europe after an election for the last century. At today's unemployment level of 4 percent, adult males actually 3.9% and adult females 3.6%, and considering the higher salaries paid in the private sector, the tenuous nature of joining as a party loyalist as the national mood can shift at any time and things change again in 2027; where was the federal government going to find employees to be replaced at mid and lower levels? There is also the situation seen in 1928 when a Republican Hoover victory made Democrat NY Governor Al Smith compel a reluctant Franklin Roosevelt, who was just recovering from polio, to run for NY Governor. By 1931 over 3 years Franklin Roosevelt and Columbia University's Frances Perkins tested programs to stabilize employment in the US, introduce unemployment insurance as a new concept, and a 40 hour week also new, in the entire northeastern + midwestern states, all governors working together. By 1931 in just 3 years Franklin Roosevelt was on the clear path to sweeping victory in 1932 with a tested program to stabilize employment. 2.  The No. 1 goal is to restore the traditional family. It is clear in 2024 that the vast majority of Americans, whites, women as well as men, of all age groups, whites as well as Latinos and Asians, blacks, see that things like transgender "have somehow gone too far." 3. Cultural Literacy is needed for any nation to long survive. This is not even on any platform. Yet knowledge about America's history of settlement of the continent -correcting for treatment of American Indians, blacks, Chinese, Japanese without pointless race controversies- is being rapidly lost, and with it an understanding of America's civic institutions and Constitution, its founders and presidents, and evolution of the nation over the 20th century with the Industrial Revolution. The very terminology that has defined public knowledge about these United States is fast disappearing. It is a cause for unease in the minds of people in rural and urban, conservative and other parts of the political spectrum alike of what will happen to America as this is lost. 4. On immigration  a consensus was reached by president Biden that migrant flow was mishandled and the Lankford legislation offered by Republican leaders accepted by both parties to stop the flow. During his first term president Eisenhower conducted a program of returning illegal migrants to their home countries, Germany is doing this now and the UK's Labor party has made it No. 1 priority to stop migrant smuggling. 5. An effort to increase oil and gas production. This will help bring down the cost of living by reducing energy costs in the US and also helping Europe to do the same. Biden had already accepted the idea of the temporary need to do this to ease cost of living burden on the people of this Nation. The economic cost of wind and solar, are ultimate drivers for expanding renewable energy as major form of climate change action. In the first term of DJT 2016-2020 the lower cost of natural gas made it economical to switch from oil to gas. In the Biden term 2020-2024 all the effort to increase EV's on the road ran into the problem of lack of charging stations. It is possible that spread of charging stations could reverse this in the second term of DJT. It is the private sector and also the local governments that play a big part, climate change action will continue, and new R&D breakthroughs will happen to jump start it again.    ...

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The top 20% of Americans own 87% of the stocks powering most of the spending in 2025. Upward trends in the stock market in the US with resilient markets overcoming the Liberation Day tariffs announcement, are powering the spending by higher income professionals and business people. WSJ looks at the people owning stocks ages 36 years to 77 years, and their spending on cars, furniture, home renovation and travel. The situation is not so good for middle class Americans living from paycheck to paycheck, students and young people.