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Mohammed bin Salman, 31 years old, is made the successor to his father King Salman. Prince Nayef, 57, the crown prince is removed from this position. Nayef was Interior Minister. After the current king assumed office in Jan. 2015, he promoted his son to the position of defence minister, overseeing the state oil company and overseeing economic affairs. He put together a plan Saudi Vision 2030, and the kingdom has taken a larger role in international affairs under his leadership as the U.S. under the Obama administration moved away from the Saudi policies in Bahrain, Egypt, and Yemen. Under Salman the Saudi kingdom has moved to confront Iran in Syria and Yemen supporting opposite sides in the conflict, and with Saudi aircraft bombing targets in Yemen.  Recap- for more depth see groups and links and search. In international affairs the Saudis grew restive as the Obama administration failed to setup a no fly zone in Syria to protect its Sunni population. Following the chemical weapons attacks in Syria the lack of a U.S. response led to the Saudis turning down a Security Council seat.  Early confrontation occurred in Bahrain with a Shiite population and Sunni government. The Saudis then intervened to support Sissi in Egypt against the Muslim Brotherhood government as the liberals drifted away from the Brotherhood. With Iranian and Russian support for the Syrian government in Damascus against rebels, the Saudis began to use oil policy leading to an effort to let oil prices fall by loosening production limits, believing it would hurt their rivals even more. This hurt Iran, Russia and Saudis, each in a different way. Some of the roots of the Russian involvement in Syria are also related to this. Russia responded to the oil price drop by relying less on exports, and letting devaluations help the Russian economy become more self sufficient. Iran by working to get a deal with the Obama administration on nuclear development to get out of the sanctions regime that hurt Iran's economy. The Saudis cut some subsidies and Prince Salman led the effort for an initial public offering for Saudi state oil company Aramco. As time progressed the Arab Spring with protests in Tunisia, Egypt, and even before that in Iran for greater freedom, morphed into a sectarian struggle between Shiites and Sunnis. The roots of Islamic State are in the unrest in Mosul, Iraq's largest city, with the Shiite government of a pro-Shiite prime minister, leading to the fall of the city to the militants. He was replaced by the current prime minister Abadi to accomodate U.S. insistence on keeping out sectarian sentiment. This is why the problem is so intractable. Desire for freedom plays a role, but religion also plays a role, not only that but there are two versions of Islam in the region.  Remember Gandhi's admonition- "an eye for an eye that makes the whole world blind," as India struggled to set up a democracy in the South Asian region, after the British left.         ...

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Case-Shiller home price index shows 18.5 % drop year over year for December 2009, for single family homes in 20 major metropolitan areas. The Conference Board Index for consumer confidence dropped from 37.4 in January 2009 to 25 in February 2009. Of the 5000 households surveyed more 90% said they expected conditions would be the same or worse in the next 6 months. The Obama $275 billion plan for homeowners does not address the weakest cities in the market which are in places like Phoenix, Las Vegas, and much of Florida and Southern California, where prices have fallen 40% or more from their peak. This is because mortgages that are under water are not included, these are mortgages where more is owed on the house than the house is worth, and is ocurring faster in places where price declines are the steepest. One expert Martin Feldstein who is also on the Obama advisory panel has insisted since early 2008 that these homeowners under water have no rational incentive to continue making payments. What this does is to make consumers to postpone purchases like autos and hold back or cut back on all kinds of spending. In this global economy this means places like China's coastal regions which export to the US get hit hard and in turn exporters to china like Germany also get hit hard as what starts in the USA gets passed on theough the global economy from one region to another. Which also means US exports to Asian and other emerging market countries of tech goods and aircraft are in turn hit hard. As Republicans and Democrats follow their ideological leanings they cancel each other out in the debate, as Prof. Potter at Harvard an expert on economic strategy points out in a link, resulting in necessary actions not being taken and no clear direction. ...

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Paul Krugman in NYT explains the failure of Silicon Valley Bank. He says the bank invested its money in safe Treasury bonds which fell in value with Fed's policy of sharp increase in interest rates to fight inflation. It presented itself as the bank for people in Silicon valley and succeeded more than it imagined possible leading to these investors putting their money at SVB bank. However Krugman points out SVB bank did not put this money from deposits into startups, it put these deposits in safe US Treasury assets. It is Venture Capital that put its money in the startups at Silicon Valley, then panicked and set in motion a bank run that led to $42 billion withdrawals on one day Thursday March 9. These SVB assets have value says Krugman. Over time the government says Krugman will get much of its money back from these Treasury assets of SVB.  Then why the government rescue by president Biden? A bank run of this type undermines confidence in other regional banks affecting the US banking system in a way that is totally unnecessary when the banking system as a whole is safe. In fact the Fed vice chairwoman Lael Brainard understood and made clear these risks says Krugman, and she now heads Biden's national Economic Council.   ...

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Adam Taylor explains what Brexit is about. What should be added is that Brexit is a child of the time in 2015-2016 when Angela Merkel was ill prepared to tackle the sudden wave of migrants from North Africa from wars and population growth outstripping what little progress was made, making decisions to let in close to a million migrants. Migrants are now being returned back to their home countries and the issue has faded. The austerity policies in the EU with Greece, Spain and Portugal as bad poster childs for the EU are also largely over, with economic recovery in Europe.  As a result confidence is growing in the future of the European Union. What pessimists including Mr. Trump saw as a breakup of the European Union is no longer the case. Britain's long negotiations and divisions for Brexit are now reinforcing an opposite conclusion- that it is beneficial to stay in the European Union. Fully 68% in a Eurobarometer Survey of 27 EU countries by the European Commission in March 2019 think so, only 17% think it is not beneficial. In Britain also a majority now support membership in the EU. The European Union and Britain have a lot to learn from this experience and the divisions generated, which is likely to be part of the acquired experience of a new generation of leaders.  ...

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This report in WSJ by Mike Colias about personal politics exaggerates the impact of political party Republican vs Democrat in the switch to electric cars as most of the resistance comes from the lack of charging facilities and not enough technological breakthrough in cost and efficiency to make the switch. And much of the political resistance by a third of the population comes more from the idea that it supports China sourced materials. This comes from misinformation and old data as Biden has imposed 100 percent duty tariff on imports of China made electric cars and 50% on solar panels just last week. Americans including Republicans are realizing that the only way to compete with China's subsidized push for key industries is for America to do the same. This gives the American manufacturers the time and the support from the US government to compete with EV's made in China supported by Chinese government large not so visible subsidies over long periods. WSJ reports recently showed how China's prime minister supported building Tesla plants in China to observe American manufacturing methods and technology, in the process advancing its own technologies in EV's at a faster pace. Making Tesla's role contradict the idea that politics not misinformation and technological lag is causing resistance to EV's both of which will fade over time. ...

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As Macron struggles to present EU's case in Washington DC the problems in Germany loom large.The debt brake Merkel to stop debt based infrastructure investment is what ails Germany and the EU. It has had two pernicious effects. It created the AfD's surge by lowering economic growth and investment in public needs - housing, transport, public services. It worsened the SPD and CDU performance by not investing in security, with no policies to return crime committing refugees to their home countries. A combination of aid and other assistance, diplomacy, would have secured the cooperation of countries to take them back. A strong display of action on removing refugees committing any offenses would have lessened the number of terrorism incidents and reduced a surge in the AfD performance with loss of confidence in chancellor Scholz.  CDU's Merz says he wants to remove the constitutional brake from the German constitution. The SPD under a new leader would want the same as it seeks to invest in the economy. Scholz lacked the foresight not to enter into a coalition with the Free Democrats in 2021 who flatly opposed public spending to meet pressing infrastructure needs lowering growth.  Both CDU of Merkel and SPD of Scholz lacked the foresight and the courage to invest and not settle for less for Germany. ...

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Biden's last 100 days in office. His effort to make things better, a conviction that he would have won enough white working class voters to win the election. Turnout was way way higher when Biden ran in 2020. It dropped by about 10 million voters in 2024 compared to 2020. Many white working class voters of the 82 million who voted for Biden in 2020 simply simply did not turn up to vote while DJT clung on to the 75 million votes he had in 2016. Transgender, a sense that everything was changing too quickly culturally, the fentanyl crisis adding to migrant surge creating a backlash for Harris. Biden makes an effort to lock in the gains made in the last 4 years in a number of areas. A remarkable life and one that brings back the Democrats closer to their roots under FDR in 1932 and his uncle Teddy Roosevelt a Republican fighting for the working class since 1902, that FDR inherited. The nation under DJT simply inherits the role played by TR as Republican in 1902 fighting for the working class after two southerners Carter and Clinton let Democrat ties to working class wither and support for China entering WTO and taking over manufacturing leadership. Obama letting Silicon Valley distance Democrats from workers even further and dragging on wars that served no purpose for America. ...

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Signs of a serious bubble in house prices in Canada. Home prices in February 2011 rose 8.8% from the year before, to 365,000 Canadian dollars. This is more than double the average home price of C$158,145 in 1999, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association. A comparison with the U.S. shows home prices going up 58% between 1999 and 2006, according to the National Association of Realtors, and falling 18% after the subprime mortgage crisis. By contrast home prices in Canada went down in 2008-2009 during the global financial crisis but are now back up and surpassed the previous high. This suggests the Canadian real estate market is facing a serious bubble comparable to or exceeding the bubble in the U.S. Trends that have supported the market such as Chinese buyers in Vancouver and Toronto, depend largely on the strength of the high economic growth in China and overseas buyers. Other weaknesses- the Canadian Association of Accredited Mortgage Professionals pointed out in a study in January that of the 400,000 first time home buyers during 2010, about 50,000 would have high-debt service ratios if interest rates, now at between 2-4%, were to rise to 5%. The Canada economst at Capital Economics, David Madani, says he expects a correction of 25% in the next 3 years, as this boom unwinds. He points out that house prices are now 5.5 times disposable income per worker, compared to an historical average of 3.5....

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Friedrich Drumpf left Germany at the age of 16, coming to the U.S. in 1885. He came back to Germany to find a wife after running restaurants in California during the time of the Gold Rush. When he tried to return to hsi home town because of his wife was homesick he was expelled a s a draft dodger for missing military service. Kallstadt is a wine producing region. Drumpf was tenacious and keen on getting ahead, a trait that marked his son Fred Trump who built state financed housing in the FDR period in New York, and his on Donald Trump who went into luxury housing. Biographer Gwenda Blair says all members of the family were good at finding loopholes, saving money, and shared the family culture of knowing who the audience is that they are targeting. This is why says Bair that Trump is at ease in being a onetime Democrat, now Republican, sometime liberal and sometimes conservative, and can appeal to people in different ways that would be impossible for most politicians, even people on opposite sides for different reasons. Gwenda Blair is author of two books on the Trump family. "Trumps- Three Generations That Built an Empire," and "Donald Trump: Master Apprentice."     ...

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The Cajas, local savings banks, are a symbol of the excesses and lack of financial controls of the bubble years in Spain. The local savings banks were run by authoritarian leaders who remained in office for many years, and were influential in the political system. The Cajas expanded into real estate during the real estate bubble, and many of the cajas had to be merged by the federal government under new management after the bursting of the bubble. Minder describes the culture at Cajas banks in Galicia, the region in the northwest of Spain that is the home region of prime minister Mariano Rajoy. Julio Fernandez Gayoso, or known as Don Julio in the old baronial manner, was one such bank executive who ran the the larges cajas bank in Galicia as his own fiefdom till he was 80, and only quit when forced to resign in an investigation.

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China chooses periodic blockades or air-sea coordinated exercizes around Taiwan's 12 mile waters as a strategy to respond to US Indo-Pacific strategy of keeping lanes of sea traffic and navigation on oceans open to all nations. This is seen as less risky than an outright invasion. Military exercises in August 2022 are seen as preparing for such a strategy.  The US is the destination for $541 billion and Europe $521 billion in products Made in China in 2021, which make China the manufacturing powerhouse in the world. Without the export of $1 trillion in Chinese products thousands of factories and millions of Chinese workers would remain idle. It is unbelievable that China is risking so much with its Taiwan policy with no idea of what the consequences would be years from now. It took China three decades after the gradual opening by 1990 and a willingness on the part of American and European governments and business to give up much of their own manufacturing leading to loss of jobs in communities across both America and Europe and much pain from this loss, for China to get to $1 trillion in exports. This situation may never come back as the supply chains shift and jobs return home and to countries that are becoming competitive in infrastructure and capabilities in Asia. Such competition between nations is not unknown as it was with Imperial Japan in the Pacific just 100 years back. The US maintains its position as keeping navigation on the oceans of the world open and rule of law, and it is on these foundations that China was able to get the strong manufacturing and exporting position it has now that no nation has enjoyed in history to this extent. Only the British come close in the nineteenth century. So much of China's progress in the twentieth century was a result of cooperation and support from America, from the first university Tsinghua in Beiijing, to the war against imperialist forces of Japan, to the rebuilding of China's manufacturing and technological competitiveness with American business cooperation. ...

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Dreams of democracy in Hong Kong fade and Martin Lee, a founder of the city's pro-democracy party is becoming marginalized. This report describes Lee's fleeing to Hong Kong as a child after 1949. He became a UK trained barristers and head of the bar association, Queen's Counsel, and only adopted his current role of democracy advocate after 1980 when the handover of the city back to China was discussed. During the British period Lee did not protest and the city was ruled in an authoritarian manner by the British governor. Only a handful of seats were opened for direct election in 1991 for the legislative council, so that the British never really experimented with democratic institutions in Hong Kong. In other British dominions in India and Ceylon elections for state legislatures started in the 1920's and 1930's in response to demands from Gandhi and the Congress party in India. In South Africa and Canada, Australia, these elections were held much earlier. No such effort happened in Hong Kong, and Hong Kong's elite mostly concentrated on business and expanding economy. When handover took place authority was simply transferred from one authoritarian system to another says this report in WSJ. ...

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With 7 caps for Germany and winning the Bundesliga title for Bayern in 2005, Tobias Rau retired in 2009 after injuries. His next career- teaching sports and biology at the peter August Gasemschule in northwest Germany.

Gheerbrant of The Times of London talks to soccer players who decide to take the road not taken and branch out into different things. 

Rau says as a child he was lucky to have good teachers, and school was a part of life he really loved. With a wife and two small children he likes living in a small town. Werther the home town he came back to to teach at a Gasemschule.( a comprehensive with real mix of abilities and qualifications). He likes that he gets to spend quality time with his children, and does not have to deal with the high of adrenaline of competitive sports which can tax the body and system. He was 27 when he retired, quite young so that helps, as he could get back to university easily at that age. 

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Germany's export oriented economy and its export oriented companies are struggling in 2021 with broken supply chains and high energy prices. This report in the WSJ looks at how Germany needs to rebuild its economy in a different way. German industrial output was 9% below its 2015 level in August, compared to 2% for the eurozone as a whole, according to EU's statistics agency. Italy's growth was 5% over the same period. There is a redirection underway to bring more production back home after years of outsourcing and outshoring. Other changes taking place are the policies being put in place for net zero emissions by 2050, and the targets for 2030 that would make this possible. This also changes prospects for Germany's large auto industry. By 2030 30-50% of all cars will have to be electric cars. About 30% of Germany's industrial output and exports are tied to overseas demand, 4 times that in the US. From 2003 when competitive overhauls took place under chancellors including Mr. Schroeder, German industrial growth was sustained by demand from China. Now with China looking to internal demand following global tensions on trade, sales of some companies are looking flat instead of sustained year over year growth. What will happen now? Here is what the likely new chancellor from the Social Democrats has to say about the overhaul of the German economy and industry- "It will be the biggest industrial modernization project that Germany has carried out probably for over 100 years, and it will really help our economy." The SDP and Greens that together share the same ideas for rebuilding Germany around infrastructure and climate change and upward mobility, badly neglected in the Merkel years, plan big investments. Big investments are to be made in climate protection, high speed internet, education, research and infrastructure. Germany's net investment rate has been around 0.5% of economic output since 2000, compared to 1% for Italy and 1.5% for the US, according to the World Bank. This WSJ report even says net public investment has fallen below zero as existing assets depreciate. To achieve this transition Germany has identified several problems. One is the delays in investment projects that cost German companies 55 billion euros a year, about half the money invested in research and development, according to Germany's statistics agency. Germany was thought to be an industrial powerhouse but the quality of work in projects and delays so apparent in the Berlin Brandenburg airport infrastructure project clearly shows a decline over the past two decades. This will need to be fixed. Other problems are in getting more workers as Germany faces a shortage of workers for factories to 2030.     ...

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Germany is trying not to choose sides in the trade and security disputes between China and the U.S. Yet it owes a lot to the U.S. from the days of the Marshall Plan and U.S. taking on the role of defending Germany after the Berlin Wall. China was then a partner with the Soviet Union in the Cold War.  Today China is Germany's top market for its car industry. Yet the U.S. export market is much larger than China at $119 billion with China's at $96 billion. In Germany 28% of jobs are linked to exports, and in manufacturing this goes up to 56%, according to Germany Ministry of Economic Affairs. Germany supplied much of the factory  equipment from its engineering companies and the infrastructure that powered up the China transformation. A transformation now underway in India.  There are signs of a shift as engineering companies in Germany grew faster in the U.S. than China, increasing by 6-10% a year. India remains a key growth market for Germany over the next 10-15 years as growth in China slows and India accelerates with its younger demographics and investment in infrastructure. Much of the infrastructure in China is built and it is approaching the saturation Japan reached in the 1990's with additional investments adding little in the way of productivity. Longer term Germany has more potential for growth in countries in South and South East Asia  that will need to make huge investments in infrastructure and technology for manufacturing to meet the aspirations of the people there. Other issues related to freedom going back to the Berlin Wall and the rebuilding of Germany after World War II will emerge. German companies are running out of patience says this report in the WSJ with the bureaucratic obstacles, forced technology transfers, subsidies by state model to extinguish competition, and protectionist approach to home markets, even as state funded companies in China put other companies in Europe, Asia and the U.S. at a disadvantage. Germany will need to transition to a shift in its global relations, a process that is only now taking place. Just as with austerity policies in which it has now made the shift from going with the northern European countries (Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Finland) to the Southern European (France, Italy, Spain) in favor of common solidarity even at the short term cost of common debt, Germany now is facing the shift for solidarity with the U.S. for its support of Germany from the period of the Berlin Wall in the 1950's, for the U.S. and European solidarity in the face of the post-coronavirus world. The U.S. showing its generosity and openness to Germany and war torn Europe even as it took on the added responsibilities for creating a new alliance with Europe.   ...

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The NYT editorial says the negative feedback loop of foreclosures begetting falling house prices, which beget more foreclosures, and further weaken banks, is well under way. One way to have broken this, was to enable good types of loan modifications, which reduce the principal for homeowners and reduce payments significantly. Sheila Bair at FDIC says 32% of prior payments is about the right amount. The bad types of loan modifications that lead to no reduction in principal, and put homeowners back in redefault because of large payments that homeowners "under water" or a lost job cannot afford, have so far been the dominant kind of loan modification. At present 14 million homeowners are "under water," in that their homes are worth less than what is owed on the mortgage. One of the crucial measures which would have enabled this, has not been pushed by the Obama administration through Congress. This was to pass an amendment that allowed bankruptcy judges to modify troubled mortgages. Banks which have taken billions of dollars in loans from the federal government were allowed to lobby aggressively to kill this amendment, and the Obama administration did little to push this amendment in Congress. 12 Senate Democrats joined 39 Senate Republicans to block a vote on the amendment. Says the NYT editorial "when the time came to stand up to the banking lobbies and cajole yes votes from reluctant senators-the White House did'nt. When the measure failed there wasn't even a statement of regret." This could turn out to be a major mistake, because as the NYT points out voluntary loan modifications have shown poor results. The administration's plan to provide incentives for loan modification is untried and tested, and may not produce significant results. With 14 million homeowners under water, and spiralling foreclosures, the situation may get out of control and seriously damage the economy. After the moratorium in home foreclosures ended there is expected to be a big surge in foreclosures, with estimates of 290,000 to 341,000 foreclosures in March, 2009. If this is allowed to continue it will undo all the good work in other areas, the stimulus spending, rebuilding the auto industry and other steps. It will also be more difficult to reverse as valuable time passes and the cost of the crisis escalates. A consensus among many experts was that stronger action in connection with the banks was required, and Martin Feldstein has warned about the danger posed by foreclosures since early 2008, see links....

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The Indian federal elections started on April 19 and will take place in phases for 960 million voters the largest of any country in the world in mountains in Ladakh to desert around Jaisalmer to the seas around Vizag and Kotchikode. It will take about 6 weeks to complete by June 1 and final results to be announced June 4. The voting is done using portable electronic boxes. It is still one of the great wonders of the world that its crazy no one talks about it and is a demonstration that India has taken the best of its own democratic traditions dating back to the time of the Buddha 563-483 BC. "It may come as a surprise to many to know that in the assemblies of Buddhists in India two thousand and more years ago are to be found the rudiments of our own parliamentary practice of today." This is Rab Butler, who was born in Attock, India and the leading parliamentarian of Britain who set up the post war education system of the United Kingdom, the longest serving minister in Britain from 1941, Home Secretary under Churchill to Foreign Secretary during Suez Crisiz in 1956, under Macmillan as Home Secretary in 1964, the best parliamentarian Britain had to offer in the 20th century. Butler served under Viceroy of India in 1910, and worked hard as India Secretary to pass the India Act of 1935 that gave India its first parliamentary style assemblies and elections. His idea even in the 1920's was for India to gain Dominion dominion status similar to Canada and Australia with a democracy, and was opposed by Churchill. Churchill knew his own weakness and supported Rab Butler as the younger Conservative who would revive the Conservative Party- his 1977 book The Conservatives. Cooperation with Hugh Hugh Gaitskill of Labour Party right into the 1970's made Britain a stronger country, which is how the Education Act 1944 was passed to make free education to all children to age 16.  Much of it broken since 1980 in 50 years of failed Conservative policy leading to the chaos of the Conservatives today, and an effort to spread that chaos to the US. ...

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A study by Prof. Joseph Gyourko, of the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, shows that the FHA risks having $50 billion in losses over the next couple of years. Analysts say the largest banks could face billions of dollars in losses if the FHA were to push defaulted mortgages back into the hands of the banks that originated these mortgages. If home prices continue their decline, a restructuring at FHA and a taxpayer bailout will be inevitable.

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The IMF commmittment to troubled European economies is large, at $320 billion, 40% of its theoretical financing capacity, and exceeds its role in the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Concern that the IMF is now helping politicians protect the eurozone. And fears that the lack of the option of devaluing currency leaves too much of the burden on cutting spending in the midst of a recession. Deficit reduction in the current situation will take years to happen.

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Feldstein emphasizes the need to help homeowners with a plan he suggested back in June.. And suggests spending by the government to build infrastructure, other spending initiatives to stimulate demand, and rebuilding military capacity. Spending he suggests should be large enough to make an impact, as the loss of household wealth from falling home and stock prices could result in a loss in aggregate spending of $300 billion or more. He points to the need for urgent action.

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The head of the CDU party who would become chancellor after Merkel, makes an emotional plea to the British people to change their mind and remain in the European Union. In an affectionate letter to The Times of London many leading figures from politics, industry and the arts in Germany made a plea that Britain remain in the EU "from the bottom of their hearts." A look at dozens of letters in response to this article in The Times shows that many Britons feel that Britain would have voted to remain if Germany and Merkel had given prime minister Cameron a better response during negotiations in 2016. Even chancellor Merkel warned Germans not to take an indifferent or complacent attitude to Britain's staying in the EU. The letter makes amends by saying there is an indissoluble bond between Britain and Germany because of the help given by Britain to rebuild Germany after the war. "Without your great nation this nation would not be what it is today, defined by freedom and prosperity," the letter says. It says "should Britain wish to leave the EU it will always have friends in Germany and Europe. But Britons should equally know that know choice is irreversible. Our door will always remain open: Europe is home."  Katarina Barley, Germany's Justice Minister whose father is British, says she supports a second referendum on Brexit. The letter is signed by Andrea Nahles, head of the Social Democrats, Annalena Baerbock head of the Greens party. Also signing it are the heads of Daimler, Airbus and the German Federation of Industry. Annegret Karrenbauer, head of the CDU says it is looking for constructive proposals from Britain, now that the deal put forward in the British parliament was defeated by a large margin. "We will not block the path to Britain remaining in the EU." The letter is significant in that it changes the whole tone of German leaders across the spectrum towards Britain- as critical to the idea of Europe, and the dawning in German minds that Europe would never be Europe without Britain, would never be Europe simply with France and Germany and the other nations. ...

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Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, a senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, leads the EuroFuture Project. Here he offers his ideas of the dilemmas facing German leaders in agreeing to letting the European Central Bank take a larger role of supporting the bonds of Italy, Portugal and Spain. He says Germans are seeing a contradiction between European demands for German leadership and not wanting to be led by Germany or perceiving Germany as a hegemon. Brockhoff says Germans have never in the postwar period wanted to or learned to exercize continental leadership. He recounts the postwar period when Germans were content with the deutsche mark, and limited their expression of national pride to the deutsche mark. Giving up the deutsche mark was part of the deal for reunification of the two Germanys, a surrender of economic sovereignty for the sake of a larger integration into Europe. He says that even though the arguments are framed in terms of orthodox economics, economic nationalists who never really wanted to give up the deutsche mark are the core of the opposition to the common issue of eurozone bonds. The German position is to go back to the framework of principles for economic and monetary union and tighten the rules for spending and taxes, something that is good in the long run, but does not work in the short run with shrinking economies from austerity programs and nervous markets. The Merkel government's resolution of this crisis is to set new fiscal rules for the eurozone, and either move in the direction of letting the ECB play a larger role, or support such a move. What is not clear is whether the government will survive the next election taking on this leadership role in Europe, or a revolt in the Christian Democratic party....

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Varghese George of The Hindu provides this analysis of the elctions in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhatisgarh.  He points out that primeminister Modi's own popularity may have prevented a worse result. There are questions about how much Hindutva politics will play a part in 2019 elections and the role Yogi Adityanath plays after campaigning in this election. There is alo a question of how the opposition can unite if the Congress party becomes an alternative to the BJP, and the lack of any particular leader in the non-Congress opposition. How will the campaign take shape in the 2019 election in which a national election without the local incumbency politics and local issues makes a national focus emerge between competing visions for the future- that of the Congress and the BJP. And how these visions are articulated and not lost in the clamour and din of political wrangling particularly in the case of the BJP's focus on development that pushed it forward in the last election. ...

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Different visions of primary education, one from the Cambridge Primary Review, and the other from Sir Jim Rose, for children in the UK. Sir Jim Rose thinks there is a lot of overcrowding of subjects in primary education or curriculum overload, and wants to go back to a core curriculum, computer skills, a foreign language, and replace the 12 subjects taught with 6 crosscutting areas of learning. Cambridge Review doesn't see overcrowding as the problem but the lack of good quality teaching of subjects outside the narrow diet of numeracy and literacy. They don't like the dumbing down to core subjects and want to see a broad, rich and balanced curriculum. The Government is following Sir Jim Roses's report as it has been commissioned by the government and is written by one government report writer. By contrast the Cambridge Primary review is independently conceived and has been years in its preparation and draws on international experience and many experts. They are both very different in their perspectives. This is too important an issue, the educational upbringing of a whole new generation of children, to be left to a kind of random selection without discussion of the different views and their merits. ...

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The failures in Argentina's management of the economy recurring decade after decade for the last 50 years and with an historical trend, relate to the breakdown in the political process in the country, the failure of society to come to grips with the problems as one community with common interests when fighting inflation as we see in most nations including in the US, Europe and modernizing nations of Asia. As well as countries such as Brazil that have overcome their issues with inflation since the 1970's. The lack of industrialization in Argentina and Chile leaves the countries vulnerable to commodity exports. A bad harvest year can ruin the economy as no rainy day fund exists as was done in Russia after economic crises. Borrowing from the IMF leads to a cycle of repeat crises followed by IMF borrowings, austerity budgets such as Milei's when budgets can be corruption free, disciplined and efficient to begin with for a startand kept that way by the whole of society acting together under responsible political leaders. Asian nations learned from Europe and drafted their economic path, Latin America which is largely populated by emigrants from Europe has failed to do this. The differences are stark. Much of Asia experienced war and strife since the 1930's and the suffering created a dire need for good leadership and programs for modernization and infrastructure by all of society pulling together. In Latin America the failures of political parties across the spectrum has led to drugs entering the economic framework, leading to failed states in other ways, and large parts of Latin America are now affected by this problem. The results are that this affects the people of Europe and the US with illegal flows, a problem unprecedented in the history of the US since 1787.  ...