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After a severe financial crisis that could have snowballed into a Depression type situation and the credit rating agencies playing their critic-for-hire role in causing the crisis, there has been very little done to reform or correct the basic way in which credit ratings are made. Other than small patches to the system that failed the country badly by 2008, it has been left alone by Congress, the Obama administration, and regulatory agencies. The Attorney General of Ohio, Richard Cordray, says the "rating agencies total disregard for the life's work of ordinary Ohioans caused the collapse of our housing and credit markets and is at he heart of what's wrong with Wall Street today." Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut's Attorney General says he plans to join the suit against the credit rating agencies, Fitch, Standard and Poors and Moody's. Cordrays suit was filed Nov. 20, on behalf of Ohio's pension funds. It seeks billions of dollars in damages from these ratings agencies and accuses the agencies of negligence and fraud. About the failure of Congress to make even the basic change to the system of ratings, Joseph Grundfest, a professor of securities law at Stanford says ; "What you see in these bills are Botox shots, for a little while everyone is going to be frozen into a grin, and then the shots are going to wear off.'' A deputy dean at Yale Law School, Jonathan Macey, was a member of a bipartisan task force on credit ratings reform and met with lawmakers in Congress on this issue. He says its mortifying to see that this problem which is different from other complicated issues like water shortages around the world has been left unsolved, as it could be easily solved if there was even a basic degree of political will to do so. Congress looked at the option of creating an independent fee financed credit rating agency along the lines of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, established after the Enron, but did nothing with this idea. Rep. Kanjorski and Senator Reed have led the efforts to look at the credit ratings agencies in Congress and have basically decided this to leave the system very much the same as before the crisis, with the conflict of interest problem and incentives to improve profitability at the expense of the integrity of the ratings process still intact. Bills in Congress give more oversight powers to the S.E.C. and require companies to strengthen their compliance teams. In the period leading to the 2008 crisis the internal compliance teams did not get top management support at the credit rating agencies and there is skepticism about the effectiveness of compliance teams. S.E.C. regulatory efforts face push-back from the credit ratings agencies and the effectiveness of S.E.C. regulatory supervision is uncertain given the critical role that is given to credit ratings in bond and securties issuance....

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The terms of the bailout loan to GM and Chrysler prohibit a threat to strike or a strike by the UAW during the negotiations with GM that take place between now and Feb 17, 2009. These are the terms between the Treasury Department and GM. Smaller strikes at GM and a longer strike at American Axle and Manufacturing cost the supplier and GM billions of dollars in cash at a perilous time for GM, showing that steps by the union have not been in the interests of the union and its workers in the long run. GM and the union now have the government also as a part of the negotiations, and more pressures are inevitable to become competitive in wages, benefits and other costs with the Japanese manufacturers.

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Bittner describes the problems facing the Merkel government in handling the refugee crisis and the terrorism threats with the bombings in Paris and Brussels, including the need for better coordination of intelligence in the EU.

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In an interview with the Wall Street Journal Deutschland, Hans Werner Sinn, head of the Ifo Institute in Germany, says Greece's bondholders are overly exaggerating the effects on the eurozone of an exit by Greece. He sees it in the best interests of Greece to improve its competitiveness and return to growth by going back to the drachma. Just to get to the level of Turkey Greece would need to reduce prices by 31%, which is impossible to do within the eurozone without risking a complete breakdown in civil order. The best way to use the 130 billion euro second bailout package is to use it to recapitalize its banking system, says Sinn. Sinn says Portugal's faces the risk of a debt crisis following the crisis in Greece.

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The U.S. government sold its last remaining shares in auto company GM booking a loss of $10.5 billion- a recovery of $39 billion dollars of the $49.5 billon dollars given to GM. The Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich., points out that the cost of bailing out GM and Chrysler was about $13.7 billion. The benefits were 1.2 million jobs protected in 2009 during the depths of the financial crisis. It also preserved $39.4 billion in personal and social insurance tax collections in 2009 and 2010. The Treasury Department estimate of the cost is about $15 billon, including money invested in GM's former finance arm Ally Financial Inc. President Obama says the effort helped create 372,000 new jobs in five years. Treasury Secretary Lew summed it up by saying "it helped stabilize the auto industry and prevent another Great Depression." Other intangible but larger benefits in the long run were building up the companies anew with new pay structures the auto companies could support in a globalized economy, bringing in new management and discarding of old mindsets and culture, new relationships with unions and customers, committment to achieving fuel efficiency targets with new technologies in cooperation with the U.S. government guidelines, and renewed confidence of millions of employees in the U.S. auto sector. It is also the one area in which the Obama administration scores a clear win, and in which president Obama took the greatest interest as senator. That the public did not fully appreciate the significance of the step is more a reflecion of public frustration with how the companies were run by the old management, and a continual reminder of the importance of good management for the U.S. industry and economy....

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ECB president, Mario Draghi, is interviewed at his office in Frankfurt by the Wall Street Journal's Blackstone, Karnitschnig, and Thomson. Draghi quotes economist Rudi Dornbusch, who told him in the old days that the Europeans were rich enough to afford paying for it if everybody didn't work. Draghi, was head of the Bank of Italy, before becoming president of the ECB. He is acutely aware of the problems faced by Italy and other countries like Spain which have let labor markets become rigid, with extensive job protections and generous benefits for the unemployed. The result is that employers are reluctant to hire and young people face high unemployment rates- as high as 50% in Spain. For this reason Draghi sees the old social model in Europe as obsolete and already out. Draghi's sees austerity measures and spending cuts with the structural changes underway in Spain, Italy and other countries as the only way to generate economic renewal. On the Long Term Financing Operation launched by the ECB in Dec. 2011, Draghi says there was agreement within the ECB and the decision was unanimous. He makes it one of his objectives to achieve as much consensus as he can, to do what is right for Europe and to do it together with his colleagues in the ECB and the EU. That financing operation, and the binding deficit controls achieved at a recent summit of European leaders, he sees as all part of the pathway to fiscal union. ...

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Much of what is written here about Xi Jinping pursuing Chinese socialist vision was known since he became president in 2013 when China's Communist party was losing its appeal, and efforts were made to seize power within the communist party by a leader in the western province of Chongqing. Bo Xi Lai attempted to take advantage of the situation with appeals to the working class and without any genuine commitment beyond a power grab. It was well known that Xi Jinping is a son of one of the veterans of the Communist party under Mao, Xi Zhongxun, unlike leaders who followed premier Deng Xiaoping such as Jiang Zemin. Zemin was a relatively unknown figure who was in university during the crucial period of 1947-49 when Mao came to power in mainland China. It would not be correct to say that little was known about Xi's own ideas about socialism as the long term answer to China's problems. Xi also came in as president at a time when the Communist party was losing its appeal to working class people after three administrations that followed premier Den Xiaoping. These three administrations followed a form of state capitalism that allowed companies to pollute the environment, compete without any regulations, and allowed to operate without any controls as long as they pursued growth aggressively and expanded the economy.There was an effort by Communist party regional leader in western Chinese province of Chongqing, Bo Xi Lai, to use this as an opportunity to grab power in China. During his first year as president Xi had to resolve this issue by having a court trial after revelations of corruption and misuse of power by Bo Xi Lai.  Xi's father Zhongxun's role in the revolutionary movement offers clues to Xi's own convictions and faith in the party. Zhongxun was a communist soldier who set up the revolutionary base areas in Shanxi-Gansu northwest border region of China that provided a refuge for Mao's army following the Long March. Other clues come from Zhongxun's role as head of propaganda during the period after 1944 and in 1952. Xi's family background particularly on his mother's side shows a fervent commitment to Chinese socialist vision during the chaotic years when the Japanese invaded China and Chiang Kai-Shek's nationalist forces failed to defend China's sovereignty. One reason Xi has been less understood is that little attention is paid to Xi's mother, Qi Xin who was highly educated and fervently believed in Chinese socialism and nationalist spirit during the Japanese invasion in 1938. In fact Qi Xin had to leave middle school after the Japanese took over Beijing. She joined the Counter Japanese Political and Military University to continue education and in 1941 attended the Central Party school. She met Xi's father Zhongxun in 1944. In 1953 she enrolled in the Marx School of Communism, and it was her position at the school that offered her husband added protection during the Cultural Revolution that affected Deng Xiaoping and others. With such a history in the 1930's, 1940's, and 1950's it is likely that Xi was profoundly influenced by his father's role in the revolutionary movement, and his mother's faith in socialism with national spirit as the way to protect against the foreign invasions. It would now appear that by the time Xi joined the Politburo in 2003 there was no question about the future course China would take given the role of his parents, and the events of 1938 the fall of Beijing, his mother having to flee, and the events that followed. Xi showed resilience during the period of the Great Proletarian Revolution when he was sent to the villages at a time when he would be studying in school and college. He was sent to an agricultural commune in largely rural Shanxi province where he worked as a manual laborer alongside other people and developed a relationship with the local farmers. Unlike other leaders during that period which could even be said about premier Deng Xiaoping in 1989, Xi took a different lesson from this experience largely because his father and mother were committed to the socialist vision for the long run. His father was still not fully rehabilitated by premier Chou en-lai when Xi was allowed to enter Beijing's Tsinghua University in 1975. He studied chemical engineering at Tsinghua graduating in 1979. Upon graduation he worked as a assistant for 3 years to a vice premier who was minister of defense. He then left Beijing for Hebei province to work as a deputy secretary of the provincial CCP. He was made Mayor of Xiamen, then governor of Fujian province in 1999 where he tackled environmental conservation before moving to Zheziang province. His father passed away in 2002 and it would appear that he was carefully trained in different provinces instead of staying in Beijing, for a position of national leadership. Xi got his break in 2007 when the upper leadership of Shanghai city was tainted in a wide ranging pension fund scheme. He was made party secretary for Shanghai. This was the position Jiang Zemin had held before he succeeded premier Deng Xiaoping. In only a few months in October 2007 Xi was made one of the 8 Politburo members, ready to succeed Hu Jintao as president. Xi's perception of being sent to the villages and making it to university education was that it was part of the long run socialist struggle, with pain that his father had also endured as simply a phase in which things would be right in the end. Xi's mother comes across as a resilient figure and one who had herself gone through the struggles of the 1930's and aided her husband on one occasion. Some of this resilience could have been passed on to the son. Xi's wife is a zealous participant in Chinese dance and music performances that created enthusiasm for the Chinese socialist revolution from the 1930's period. In his conversations  with colleagues in the party, in culture and temperament, Xi has been forthright about this background and his style of work.  Xi is unlike premier Deng and the presidents who succeeded him such as Hu Jintao mentored by a former mayor of Shanghai Jiang Zemin who came to power in 1989. Xi is more in line with the leaders around Mao like his father in his outlook and thinking, with a cautious temperament that comes from years going through ups and downs of political struggles. He is once said to have responded with dismay about being in a top position in the government knowing how precarious this had been for his father. The education at Tsinghua, his engineering background, and his easy familiarity with farmers in the provinces, mean that he understands China and its history well enough to have the confidence to shape Chinese policies in a way that none of his predecessors had except Mao, premier Chou-en-lai, Liu Shao Chi and a few veterans from that time in the 1930's. That Xi waited patiently for so long to gradually assert his ideas about socialist vision for China may be the surprising part of his behaviour till 2021.  It may be that he wanted to make the changes only after he could persuade party leaders and colleagues of his vision and long run goals. And because the Chinese economy had grown so large that it would take time to steer the ship in a different direction for the long term. In most of the negotiations with president Trump he cautiously let trade negotiators handle the situation, all the time learning about how to tackle problems of China's relationship with US and Europe. US president Biden also has a vision that is veering towards a socialist perspective in terms of bringing gains of progress to workers and families. So does Mr. Trump, Mr. Boris Johnson in UK, and Social Democrat's Scholz in Germany. It is both economic and political as Mr. Xi is quoted as saying in this WSJ report. The necessities of such action are both economic, social and politically driven as capitalism has veered way off course.  In this report it is mentioned that Soho China 40% stake was taken by a large capital markets firm in New York in the hope of large gains, as Soho China developer was a tycoon who wanted to leave China. Seeing it as not favorable to his company following events in Hong Kong. This behaviour of capital markets groups in New York and tech companies in Silicon Valley, driven by profits and not aware of the social and economic problems of working class American families is a problem in the US and in Europe. It is also what has driven so many large tech companies to expand manufacturing operations in China, that hurt US manufacturing capabilities and American workers jobs- an issue raised by president Trump and taken up by president Biden. Biden has already moved to make Intel Corporation change its plans and invest in American manufacturing technologies in a quietly implemented U turn. US president Biden is left with the unenviable job of solving this huge problem during the pandemic. He has also committed to a somewhat socialistic vision with a $3.5 trillion plan for workers and families, as has vice chancellor Scholz in Germany with his own version of programs, after the failures of unregulated forms of capitalism. Scholz goes so far as to say his mission is to show that there is really no such thing as a self-made man, that it is help from society, his fellow citizens, and government, that makes it possible for him to do his work. In a sense the world is shifting away from Reagan forms of capitalism without regulation after seeing disastrous results during the pandemic. Not just China. Some form of government guidance and regulations are now seen as essential in China, the US, UK, Germany and India for a better society and a better, healthier life, and for opportunity for all in each country.   ...

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Michelle Obama and the "Let Girls Learn" Initiative in 2015 for the 62 million girls not in school.

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Hard hitting article by an expert in the field of manufacturing and the automobile industry. Problems facing GM and Ford in his view- Note the following: 1) The engineering system with chief engineer in charge of product, concurrent and simultaneous engineering. Better development system for new products at Toyota. 2) How to work with suppliers by leaving room for suppliers to make a profit while attacking every kind of waste jointly. 3) Hardest hitting point on the culture. GM and Ford have cultures that turn competent people into Dilberts. And noting that if ordinary people -Dilberts even- are put in a great business process they become great team players. 4) Customer Service at Lexus. Customers cheerfully pay more because they love the treatment. 5) Labor relations- Union and management know what does not make sense yet no accomodation has been reached, because their conversation has broken down. Womack's comments leave a lot to think about and reflects a feeling that seems to run outside of the midwest- that if GM and Ford can't get a grip on their problems and fix them other companies like Toyota can replace them. A sense that Toyota as a global company is as much of an American company as GM or Ford. ...