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Doing business in Bihar, India's poorest state.

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An international arbitration panel gives Exxon $908 million for oil assets nationalized by Venezuela in 2007. This is much lower than the $7 billion claimed by Exxon. Exxon invested $750 million in its Cerro Negro oil operations in Venezuela. The operations had an estimated value of $2 billion and are located in the heavy crude oil region of Orinoco. Venezuelan oil company PdVSA showed net profit of $4 billion in the first half of 2011. Another case is pending for Conoco-Phillips.

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Being linked to the dollar emerging country economies see the effect on their economy of a reduction in interest rates by the Fed. This is clearly evident in the Gulf countries and Middle East where the link has produced a looser monetary policy in a booming economy and only increases inflation which is already high in many countries. China, India and Russia are seeing increasing inflation as their currrencies are linked to the dollar and though a revaluation of their currency can reduce price of imports and lower overall inflation this is not an easy thing to do because in the case of China it increases the price of goods it exports to the US at the very time the US is in a recession.

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The eurozone GDP shrank at an annualized 5.9% for 4th quarter 2008.

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The fact that Osama bin Laden was in Abbotabad, near the Pakistan military academy and military facilities, and was probably sheltered by the ISI, raises the issue of Pakistan sheltering the terrorists who planned the Mumbai attacks. This increases pressure on the Indian government to take up this issue and affects efforts to improve relations.

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How capital is flowing all over the middle east from oil rich countries to other countries in the middle east. See related article on GE infrastructure orders in the middle east WSJ July 25,2007, one of GE's fastest growing markets after China and India. What opportunities are available to other companies in other industries in the middle east? Private equity firms, including one run by a Pakistani and Carlyle Group, state companies in oil rich companies funding cross border investments, special econmic zones of Israel in Egypt and Jordan, dismantling of protectionis barriers, having executive of Unilever as Egyptian trade minister to overhaul public sector and regulations, increased foreign investment which brings with new knowhow and ideas (about $40 billion a year including Turkey).

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The Logan lower cost model produced by Renault's Romanian affiliate Automobile Dacia SA is setting a pattern that is being looked at as a model for the future throughout Renault. It is combining the advantages of Japanese manufacturing methods with their attention to detail and good practices evident at Nissan, Renault's partner company, with the cost conscious methods evident in operations in a Renault joint venture with Mahindra and Mahindra of India. Dacia Automobile was a Soviet era plant, and Renault has modernized it but keeps a more labor intensive attitude with good basics operation here, in contrast to the trend to automate everything and use robots extensively that became popular at other plants in Europe, U.S., and Japan. As Renault managers in France and its overseas operations look at both the expanding markets for lower cost cars and the profitability of the Dacia plant in Romania, it is becoming a model to be imitated. Other plants built earlier now look overautomated and costly for manufacturing cars in a cost conscious pricing sensitive competitive market that automakers face. Logan is contributing to Renault's bottom line, and may help it in reaching the 6% in operating margins that is a new goal for Renault for 2009. Dacia Automobile S.A. initally owned 55% by Renault is now 99% owned by Renault. It has sales of 2 billion euros ,in 2007 with revenue increase of 30% over 2006. The profit was 100 million euros in 2007. It employs 14,000 workers and Renault's investment has reached 1 billion euros upto this point. The plant turns out 60 cars per hour. Compare this with a similiar investment by VW in a Soviet era Skoda automobile plant in the Czech Republic, where VW started with an inital investment in part ownership and ended up in full ownership of Skoda with large investments in modernizing Skoda, and the success in selling Skoda cars known for their good quality. The Skoda is expected to sell at the million dollar sales level in 2010 and is the fastest growing brand in Europe. It ties with Honda in quality surveys. ...

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Amy Chua talks about elites, ethnic minorities, and native peoples and and the conflicts that democratization and free markets can create in these countries, in her book "World on Fire." Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia have ethnic Chinese minorities and large native populations, and in India there are the Marwaris of Rajasthan and the commerical class among Gujaratis, the Parsees, and similarly in China. And in Bolivia, a white minority that is 3% of the population, and other white minorities in countries with large native or tribal populations like Ecuador, Peru, Columbia, or Jewish people in Latin American countries. In Africa you have a white minority in South Africa. In all these developing countries democracy empowers the native peoples, and free markets empowers these commercial minded elites. There is conflict and tension between the two and the question is how is one to look at this. If one sees it the way one ethnic Chinese person, Prof. Amy Chua -who has written a book on this subject and whose parents lived in the Philippines under Japanese occupation- the promotion of free markets and democracy is an American export leading to a lot of conflict. From Amy's perspective, there is the difficult tension for the Chinese minorities in Indonesia, Malaysia and Philippines. But are these countries better without democracy and free markets? And take Malaysia, did democracy and free markets come with an American export after the Reagan era promotion of free markets and democracy? In Malaysia native Malay peoples were empowered by democracy when the British left in the 1950's, long before the Reagan era. And somehow Malaysia has benefitted economically, even as there is tension between Malaysia's Malays, who run the democratic government, and the Chinese minority, which helps run the business sector with a rising Malay business community. With good sense prevailing all the people benefit even as the tension exists. The same is true in other countries mentioned here. Countries like Bolivia have to be seen as a legacy of long Spanish colonization and requires one to look at it differently, taking into account history, culture and place. empowers the ...

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The mood in the UK is becoming less receptive to foreigners as job losses mount and the economy declines. For a long period under Labor administrations openness to foreign investment served Britain well. From 2004 to 2007 foreign investment accounted for 7.4% of UK's GDP compared with 1.4% in the USA and 1.6% in Germany. Immigration tripled under Labor governments. Now the mood is shifting as job losses mount. Unemployment which was 4.7% in 2005, was 6.3% in the 4th quarter of 2008. Estimates by IHS Global Insight, a forecasting firm, shows that unemployment could reach 10.5% by early 2011. Government figures indicate that the number of British workers in the country went down by 234,000 to 27 million in the last quarter of 2008. The number of foreign workers went up by 175,000 to 2.4 million. About 104,000 jobs were lost in the 4th quarter of 2008. During the period from 1995 to today manufacturing accounts for a smaller portion of the British economy, going from 21% to 14%. In this new climate French owner Total SA faced strikes at it Immingham oil refinery for not hiring British workers for an expansion at the refinery. It offered to set aside 102 of 200 temporary construction jobs for British workers. And public anger is evident about things that earlier would have aroused passing interest. One example was for a plan to sell part of the British postal service with the Dutch or the Danish as buyers. Another an award by the government to the Japanese of acontract to build and operate a fleet of high speed trains. And immigration is emerging as the third biggest ocncern of in the country, according to a survey by Ipsos MORI, after the economy and crime, the fourth being unemployment. Actually immigration and unemployment are strongly related, and both are related to the economy, all issues related to the steep downturn, especially to the collapse of the financial industry in London....

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A documentary that will be shown on HBO in fall 2016 was screened at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2015. It shows the disagreements between Holbrooke, who negotiated the Bosnia accords that ended the war there, and president Obama.

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David Barboza of NYT describes the hidden subsidies China gives to Foxconn for its plant in Zhengzhou, in a poor region of China. The factory there makes about half a million iPhones a day. These subsidies include incentive packages, infrastructure building, local government help of about $1.5 billion. As a result Apple has high margins. For a 32 gigabyte iPhone 7 that costs $400 to make, the retail price is about $649 in the U.S.  The hidden subsidies is why Apple can maintain dominance as profits are reinvested. And the result is that with only 12% of the smartphone market Apple can take in 90% of the profit, according to Strategy Analytics. Barboza looks back at Apple before co-founder Steve Jobs left in 1985 as focussing on manufacturing at plants in Colorado and California. By 2001 with iPod sales soaring the move to China under Cook, who previously worked for Compaq, was underway. With the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, the move to China for manufacturing accelerated. The reason: only China offered the kind of subsidies, the speed of approval and building of infrastructure facilities, the local government support, the hundreds of thousands of workers, and the best tooling engineers, to produce in huge volumes with speed, and maintaining quality levels. Earlier plants including one in Colorado Springs that this Lyrarc editor was invited to visit just prior to Jobs rejoining Apple had many quality problems, so much so that Apple had a large part of the manufactured personal computers set aside for rework. The quality levels were dismal, defects were unbelievably high. This is the Apple manufacturing process and plant that Jobs must have seen when he returned, and which he hired Cook to fix. Not only were costs higher in the U.S., (subsidies in China came later) when Jobs looked at the manufacturing quality and the inability to get the quality he needed from American workers and engineers at that time in the 1990's, only then did he turn to China- and the more he saw what was possible to accomplish there he sensed an unusual opportunity to finally put the ghosts of memories from competition with Microsoft at rest, and to surpass everything that had been done in Silicon Valley. The result one of the most ingenious and large manufacturing networks in the world, huge profits for an American company, except for one thing- it would not do much for American workers. ...

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Carlos Ghosn of Nissan Renault is under criticism for trying to manage two companies at the same time and fills positions for head of North American operations, and the CFO position at Nissan. Still there is skepticism that Ghosn may be trying to do too much himself. Is Ghosn underestimating the intense competition inthe American market as the Detroit manufacturers gear up and Toyota, Honda and the Koreans and Germans also push ahead. The international market and the market in Chiona and India also is very competitive. In Europe Renault is losing market share already and Toyota and Fiat are increasing market share. Renault's sales are down 9% for the first half and its model lineup is aging.just as Fiat is coming up with new models.

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A report by the World Bank is cited showing that in many industries the gap between the leaders in that industry and the companies trailing it is so wide that its as much as 5 times the value added per worker. Based on this the World bank estimates that India can increase its national output rapidly simply using existing knowhow of the best firms in the industry fort those firms that are trailing. This sounds fine on paper but in practice a lot goes into best practice with leadership being hard to replicate easily, and the technology of the leading firms may not be available to the other firms. However its possible for the other companies to increase their productivity if the efffort and determination was present.