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Vodafone is selling off the minority stakes it acquired in mobile phone operators around the world. This is part of the strategy of CEO Colao, to focus on growing businesses such as mobile data, and on focussing on offering a wider array of services in markets of Europe, India and Africa. Vodafone also owns 45% of Verizon Wireless, which has not paid dividends for 5 years as a result of debt.

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The work of Prof. C.K. Prahlad of the University of Michigan in advocating sale of products at low price points in emerging markets. Products would be designed and manufactured to meet the needs of consumers with smaller incomes in urban and rural areas of poorer countries. Considerable progress has been made in this field in India to improve access to products taken for granted in countries in N. America and Europe.

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India and China subsidize the cost of fuel to their people. In India kerosene is the urban poor's cooking fuel. It sell around Delhi at Rs 9 a litre compared to a market rate of about Rs. 25. Inida subsidizes kerosene and liqueefied petroleum gas directly and subsidizes diesel and gasoline indirectly by preventing the state oil companies from increasing prices, instead issuing bonds that help compensate the oil companies for their increased costs of crude. In October the Government announced it would issue bonds worth 235 billion rupees this fiscal year to compensate the oil companies for 43% of their losses, according to Lombard Street Research, a British firm. The fuel subsidies amount to a total of $17.5 billion or about 2% of GDP. The government which is a shaky coalition facing elections in the near fuure is unlikely to hurt election prospects by increasing oil prices, in addition to the facts that the country's poor depend on these subsidies to carry on their daily lives.

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There is only one way to interpret this. Putin and Russian influence have calmed down the Israel Iran war. DJT opening up discussions and talking to both Russia and China has created a sense in both countries that their vital interests are with the US, China on a trade agreement with the US, and Russia for a settlement of the Ukraine war on terms that it sees as fair. There is the issue of nuclear non-proliferation on which US, Russia, China, India, Germany and the EU, and the rest of the world are in agreement which meant action to end Iran's nuclear program. Putin met with Iranian Foreign Minister and looked for a way to end the war. Putin said: “This gives us a chance to…think together about how it would be possible to get out of this situation,” said Putin. From the point of view of a safer planet Biden's period of not talking to China during the balloon incident, and not talking to Russia with a single minded focus on Ukraine conflict, can be seen as not the way a responsible world power should act. DJT's emphasis to end the wars in the Middle East yet standing firm on Israel's right to exist and the non proliferation of nuclear weapons, and working to end the war on Ukraine by puting pressure on all countries, is proving to be an approach that gives all world powers a chance to reflect truly on their obligations to their peoples and the people of the world. To keep their and the world's sanity and composure while pursuing national aspirations. ...

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As president Jinping begins a second five year term his focus is on the small communities like Chashan, only a 6 hour drive from Beijing, that were neglected in the rush to industrialization. He has vowed to get rid of poverty in China by 2020. About 43 million people live in rural communities that have mostly older people and live on 95 cents a day. There is another challenge say experts which is the much larger popuation that lives in rural and urban areas- including urban migrants without property and residence rights- who live on less than $5.50 per day, $165 a month, according to the World Bank. This is about 1070 yuan per month, or in Indian rupees for a comparison with India- which was at a similar stage of development in 1990- of Rs 10,000 per month. About 40% of China's population or 560 million people are in this group. With a rapidly aging society as a result of the earlier one child policy, China faces the risk of not advancing from the level of a middle income country, in the way that South Korea and Japan have moved to levels similar to Western Europe and the U.S. As China's growth level slows and with an aging society this remains a major challenge. As this report shows there is great pressure on local officials to eliminate the poverty level of people living below $30 or about 200 yuan a month, as targets are set at local levels and corruption weakens the effort. There is concern at the lack of an effort to improve the living conditions of the 200 million rural migrants living in cities, who under China's "hukou" system are not considered residents and are not getting education and health benefits. ...

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PM Narendra Modi is nominated in the historic old parliament building in New Delhi for a new five year term in office by the parties in the National Democratic Alliance on June 7, 2024. The importance of the event is because of the 294 seats of 543 in parliament of the NDA parties and the nomination based on achieving the vision of a developed country similar to the US, EU, Japan and China, by 2030. With the modernization complete by 2047, the 100th anniversary of Gandhi's struggle that won Hind Swaraj (Indian freedom), the title of a book put out by Gandhiji in 1909 as he negotiated a settlement with the British Empire for South African Indians and Black people. Leaders of every party in NDA cited this as the reason and the goal in their nomination speeches.

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U.S. toughens sanctions on Iran saying it would impose sanctions on all countries if they did not cut oil imports to zero by Nov. 4. Earlier expectation was that the U.S. would give waivers to countries that had made substantial progress to cut oil imports. In the past 20% cut in imports earned waivers in the Obama administration. U.S. is asking other Middle Eastern producers to increase production to meet demand. Banks refusal to finance trades is causing Indian Oil and Italy's Saras to cut oil imports from Iran.

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The US needs good manufacturing jobs for the jobs and income that it brings into communities, and also because of the tax revenues from the companies making products in America that provide the basis for local governments to provide good public services in healthcare, education, and transportation. To say comparitive advantage that helped first Japanese and now Chinese manufacturers is real and how society gains is to deny some basic facts that are self evident from observation that contradict textbook ideas in economics. Comparitive Advantage is a textbook economics concept that says countries are proficient in what they make best and should specialize in that product. But it is a static concept that exists only in textbooks. If Japan in 1960, China in 1980 and India in 2000 were each presented with this idea they would have turned down the idea of making steel and remained makers of lower end products such as footwear and textiles. If Japan in 1980, China in 2000, and India in 2020 were each presented with this idea they would have turned down the idea of making semiconductors and remained makers of lower end products such as steel. A senior vice president of US Steel in the late 1960's even told this writer a graduate student at Northwestern in Chicago- as the US can make steel better than India or China let us keep making it for you. He and much of the business faculty at Northwestern also could not understand in 1970 why Airbus was being setup to compete with Boeing who by the concept of comparitive advantage should have had the whole market to itself for commercial aircraft . By this kind of thinking Airbus would not exist today because it did not have the lowest cost or the manufacturing technologies Boeing had through its vast manufacturing operation. America would be still the only one making aircraft in 2023 if textbook concepts ruled the day. By indirect methods such as hidden preferential arrangements, provision of inputs such as land, capital and labor, tax relief, the costs can be represented in a way that shows it is cheaper to manufacture overseas. The lack of a level playing field is what president Biden is correcting by doing what first Japan, then South Korea, then China and now India are doing since the 1960's. By 1974 in four years after its founding in 1970 Airbus came up with its first model the A-300 using advanced technologies. America will regain its leadership in the cost and manufacturing of many products through Biden policy and the efforts of American companies by 2030, and do this in a transformative way that will benefit the world as a whole.  It is an enormous error to say the US does not need good manufacturing jobs, that local governments do not need the tax revenues from manufacturing plants to build services for communities where manufacturing workers live, and the US does not need the manufacturing experience curve that leads to reduced costs. It is this loss of the manufacturing experience curve that is the most vital aspect for understanding the need for the US government to compete effectively with the governments of Asian countries to keep manufacturing healthy and strong at home. Economics experts ignorant of how important this science and engineering principle is fail to grasp this. Related to this is the idea of a virtuous cycle in manufacturing- whoever braves the hard years of moving up the learning and experience curve gets rewarded because once that country has mastered that skill it gets better an better as the technology advances- making it harder and harder to prevent a new monopoly in manufacturing by the country (Japan, China or Taiwan) that had the highest costs and the least advantage ten or 20 years earlier but just persevered through it all with the government's help to gain cost competitiveness. This part does not make it into the economics textbooks which are mostly theory and much of it outdated by the time they are written. Observation is the best teacher and guide as it is in science, to guide policy and action. Obsessive attachment to theory that ignores observation becomes the enemy of progress. Comparitive advantage is one concept that needs to be retired even from the textbooks. Overseas manufacturing then is a piece of the overall picture that fits into what is good for the US. Macroeconomic principles determine microeconomic outcomes as opposed to microeconomic principles with companies out on their own being forced to compete without a level playing field, or handing out technology for special status in a recipient country as some do putting the US at a macroeconomic disadvantage. This is also healthy for the recipient country overseas, as recrimination with loss of manufacturing jobs in the US inevitably leads to the kind of recrimination that does not serve either country well as in the case of China today, and worse still can lead to conflict, even war. After the egregious situation of loss of manufacturing communities across the US leading to destabilizing the social fabric, it is hard to see such thinking prevail about the US not needing manufacturing as a vital part of its social fabric and industrial strength. China, it can be said, would have developed, and developed well over the past two decades without overconcentration of US and EU manufacturing in China. Without aggravating the problems of climate change and contamination of air, land and water, and destabilizing the social fabric in the US hurting workers and communities across the US, if macroeconomic policy was made to manage this process in the US government without it being left entirely to individual companies to decide. Instead China faces today a difficult situation through events such as destabilizing the social fabric in the US (the Trump tariffs), advanced economies in G-7 resistance to sharing of technologies, the damage to its environment from microeconomic locally determined policy at individual companies, and the global effects of climate change from climate unsustainable levels of growth since 2000.  ...

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How a new financing mechannism with a private-public partnership is helping India sole severe infrastructure problems when government deficits make public financing inadequate to meet India's needs. Note that the IPO for GMR Infrastructure which has the contract to develop Delhi's airport was fully subscribed on the first day it opened, July 31, 2006. GMR hoped to raise $170-200 million through that issue. Private investment comes from loans from India's public sector banks which are flush with cheap money. Crisil , a rating agency, is quoted as stating that lending by banks to infrastructure projects has grown from 2% to 15.5% in 7 years to 2005. Financing through the corporate bond market for infrastructure projects is something that has not been tackled so far.

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Senator Mitch McConnell, the U.S. Senate Majority leader, and Speaker Ryan, achieved a win in the U.S. Congress which is expected to set a new trend of bipartisan cooperation, as the House passed the bill in Dec. 2015 for $1.1 trillion spending with a vote of 316 to 113, and the Senate with vote of 65 to 33. The persuasion on the Republican side was based on giving Speaker Ryan a strong hand in negotiations with the White House in 2016. Ryan secured a lifting of the oil export ban for the Republican side in return for flexibility in spending. Ryan deftly sent the issue of Puerto Rico having access to bankruptcy laws to the committe chairmen to come up with a plan in March to get the needed votes. Democrats had pushed for aid to Puerto Rico. Also included in the bill that passed is giving more voice to emerging market countries China and India in the running of the IMF.

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Robert Putnam a 79 year old Professor of Public Policy at Harvard answers the question what is happening now- when everything seems to be stalling and solutions offered by parties of centre, right and left are all failing to deliver for improving lives of poor white people, black people, middle class white people. Failing to deliver on health care for all, on access to medicines, access to infrastructure, on access to public services. He sees this as a result of the over focus on "I' and on the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few people in the financial world or in Silicon Valley without concern for the needs of the country or the people.  Putnam compares this to the period of the 1870's onwards in America. when for several decades the emphasis was on selfish pursuit of money and wealth with everyone focussed on individual gain. It was only after this period brought America as a nation and the people of America into hard times people was the whole culture of "I" and overfocus on individual gain questioned and repudiated. The period of "we" began with Theodore Roosevelt breaking up the monopolies and Franklin Roosevelt fighting for a New Deal for American workers and the people of the United States. Putnam sees this happening again and America at a crucial juncture of repudiating the existing culture and values in the same way as it did in the past. The change in culture in America is part of a wider trend that includes all English speaking countries Britain, Canada, Australia and India. In all these countries the shift is towards rebuilding the culture that brings opportunities and hope to the working class and middle class, to rural areas, through a new vision for infrastructure, public services, healthcare and education. Putnam brings long experience studying the development of America starting with the book "Bowling Alone" published in 2000 which described the trend to rampant and unrestricted individualism in public and business life. In 2015 Putnam's "Our Kids" covered the issue of declining upward mobility and  failing to give opportunity for young people to make improvement in their social and economic aspects of their lives. The three books have extensive research and look at a lot of data making them academic of nature but they also serve a useful purpose. Any intuitive grasp of the situation also leads one to think in the same direction that the past carries lessons for the future, that there is a better way out, and that this situation cannot go on for much longer without damaging the nation and the people, not just America, but other English speaking nations Britain, Canada, Australia and India that share the same problems of lack of development, lack of infrastructure and services, and neglect of the common man, of everyman.   ...

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Pope Francis spoke against the effort by the European Union bureaucracy to limit the use of "Happy Christmas" and called it a form of "ideological colonization." He told reporters "many, many dictatorships" had tried this and all had failed on a trip back from Greece and Cyprus. The European Union bureaucracy then withdrew the 32 page guide on use of sensitive language.  Francis said European Union was "necessary" but warned against the EU bureaucracy trying to iron out the differences of culture and religion around the EU bloc countries. "This could end up dividing the countries and causing it to fail. The EU must respect each country as it is structured and not make them uniform." One of the main influences for the European identity, of western civilization, is Christianity. Less known is that King Alfred in his reign 871-899 AD, in one of the most stirring periods of British history, relied on Christianity as a civilizing influence on tribes of the Nordic countries that were invading Britain. The same process of bringing a civilizing influence on heathen tribes happened in mainland Europe. And a similar process took place in India with Vedanta and Buddhism as it spread to China, Japan, Sri Lanka and the rest of Asia. Civilization meant education, learning, wisdom, and came at this time through the ideas of the Bible or the Upanishads, or the Buddhist ideas.  Alfred struggles with how that wisdom once lost, may be retrieved by being written in the English language from Latin. He writes during this period of tumult and invasions- Learning had declined so thoroughly in England, that there were very few people on this side of the Humber who could understand their divine services in English. There were so few of them that I cannot recall a single one south of the Thames when I succeeded to the kingdom. Thanks be to God Almighty that we have any supply of teachers at all! Therefore I beseech you to do as I believe you are willing to do, as often as you can, free yourself from worldly affairs so that you can apply that wisdom that God gave you where ever you can. Remember what punishments befell us in this world when we ourselves did not cherish learning nor transmit it to other men. We were Christians in name only and very few of us possessed Christian virtues." What a contrast from the time of Alfred when Christian thought was identified with learning and wisdom, and the loss of learning and wisdom felt so deeply in this way. In the 12th century Dogen brought Buddhist thought and learning from China to Japan, before that Bodhidharma from India to China in the sixth century AD, and Buddhist thought evolved out of the Upanishads in the 6th century BC, in the same spirit of reflection.   ...

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The WSJ Editorial Board speaking for the business community traditional Republican groups finally takes up the election on issues of policy difference between Trump run Republican party and Harris run Democratic Party which it should have from Day One. The former president says something that has never happened in the last hundred years- policy will be decided after the election depending on what he decides to do. Cost of Living action is No 1 on voter priorities. "Drill, Baby Drill," is the whole Republican party platform for cost of living action. What is the Harris Democrats policy plan for cost of living action? WSJ says it is spending blowouts that caused inflation, the Green New Deal, entitlement expansions and student loan forgiveness.The real reason for the increase in cost of living comes from the overconcentration of supply chain by American business in China, on which every president Bush, Obama, Trump, did little or nothing. The lack of an effective vaccination program and ineffective vaccines in China by 2021 and 2022 led to the loss of the supplies from China leading to shortages for automobiles parts and other supplies and surge in prices in 2021-2023. Powell and the US central bank correctly raised rates but cautiously and waited for this to correct, president Biden brought manufacturing home through huge investments called the "spending blowout" that brought down the inflation from 9% to 3%. Some of that "spending blowout" went to chips and science to correct the errors of American Business and Reagan-Friedman theory of the Republican party that created this problem with a culture of utter  indifference to the ultimate costs of who makes what and where. The Inflation Reduction Act also tackled higher health and other costs paid by American workers and families, and invested in public services and in repairing the dilapidated crumbling American infrastructure. Are Republicans saying let the roads, bridges, airports, built in the 1940-1960's heyday of American industrialization as China and India's is now, let them crumble? What do the educated minds of the WSJ Board say about coal in China and India and their effects on their massive use multiple times that of US and EU in history, is it not damaging to the environment and why the Chinese realized the health in North China with coal winter use was worse than in South China cut their coal use. Are they saying lets burn fossil fuels and ignore, and if investment has to be made in solar who is going to do it? Is it Ok for Republicans thet we just import from China all our solar panels indefinitely into the future. "Green New Deal" is just a perjorative term, policy has to be made thoughtfully and without prejudice or bias of any sort for the best that we can do for the American people, ignoring so called "right" or "left." Doing what is right, what makes sense, is a lot harder.     ...

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Many of the 255 Comments on this article in the NYT say it is misleading or grossly misleading title. Michael Crowley of NYT quotes Wertheim for his conclusion that there seems to be a sense that the world is out of control, there is chaos under president Biden. This is subtly presented and clearly wrong. Wertheim is the author of a book that questions America's exceptionalism, and says "isolationism" was somehow concocted by policy makers such as Eisenhower and Dulles, both Republicans for a postwar world built on American supremacy. What Crowley and Wertheim do is put their very idea of asking questions about policy which is a part of the discussion into misrepresenting through misinformation about what happened. Biden has acted with courage to close wars no other president not Reagan/ Rumsfeld who started the conflict with Iran by arming Iraq's unprovoked war on Iran, not Bush who initiated the war in Afghanistan, not Obama and Trump who did not close the war in the mountains around Kabul that is a "graveyard for Empires" - the Maratha Empire in India in the 1700's that opened the door to British rule in India, not the British Empire wisely staying out of it, the Soviet Union beginning its decline there, and the US mired in it similar to the Soviets. Crowley/Wertheim are only making things worse- Netanyahu was emboldened by the former president and made a major security failure. Putin miscalculated in Ukraine, Biden simply acted in the way any wise American president would -strengthened NATO with Finland and Sweden, providing reasons for Russian restraint yet without escalating the conflict. To say this is chaos is to misinform and misrepresent, and favor the very Supremacy that former president Trump proposes as policy based on US power. By contrast Biden' approach is peace through strength from building close relations between partners in Europe and Asia, not provocation or supremacy. Wertheim is only one voice in a larger discussion not the authority he is presented as. For Wertheim to say "isolationism" was a bogey and point to 1950 as the point when it was created is simply wrong. It existed in some form from the early days of the Republic. Washington was an advocate of not involving the fledgling Republic in foreign entanglements of France even though it was an ally. It is not that response to isolationism is the cause of America embracing the role of leading the Free World as it is now. It is simply the situation leaders faced. Truman faced it when Soviets planned insurgencies in Turkey and Greece which would not exist as democracies today without Truman. And across Eastern Europe Hungary 1956 Ike acted cautiously. Czechoslovakia 1968 LBJ Johnson acted cautiously already in the wrong war with Vietnamese nationalism.  ...

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Oil supplies are not expected to go up with Mexicio and Russia's aging fields crimping production, non opec production barely budging with 1% increase this year according to IEA. Indonesia production down by half from its peak. Countries in the middle east like Iran are consuming more and have less available for export. And the Saudis plan to build huge chemical aluminium and other plants as well as cities in the desert, and increase electricity production. This will take up some of the oil production and make less available for export. Militant strikes have shut down over 25% of production of Nigeria's 2.5 million barrels a day of production repeatedly in the last few years. And Saudi Arabia has according to CERA only 2 million barrels a day of spare capacity or 2.3% that it can add, all of the safety cushion in one country according to Daniel Yergin. Yergin sees prices up to $150 barrel based on the supply constraints. The demand side is showing declining consumption in the USA but not by enough to compensate for growing consumption in China by 5% this year, and the increase in consumption in India, Russia, Brazil and other developing countries including Middle East. The reason for continuing consumption increases in the rest of the world is that price impact has been less severe in Europe because of the strong euro and oil priced in US dollars, and in China because Petrochina is required to put price caps so gasoline price increases are not that harsh. And India also cushions the price impact to some extent to protect consumers. And autos are just taking off in large numbers in China, Russia, India, Brazil and other countries. The drop in consumption in the USA has to be large enough to have an impact. And the shift to fuel efficient targets in the new fuel efficiency regulations in the USA are too modest and over a number of years to have any impact in the short term or in the next 1-3 years. In February US oil demand dropped to 19.7 million barrels a day, down 1 million barrels a day from the US average for 2007, but this insufficient conservation to impact price. Even though new cars are shifting to higher fuel efficient small cars the impact on the total fleet is gradual as cars on the road purchased in the last 5-10 years are still on the road. Even as the consumption falls in the US the offset is occurring in the other countries like China, Russia and India. Some of this is due to the euro and some to speculation but the supply constraints are real and demand momentum is still there in China, Middle east, Russia and India to keep offsetting savings elsewhere and keeping supplies tight. The euro increased in value by 2% while oil prices increased by 10% since the 1st week of April so there is more than the weakening dollar and some speculation to this surge, which may be why the normally cautious Yergin says the price rise to $150 is realistic and says, its not just that the genie is out of the bottle, a hundred genies are out of the bottle. That is to say for the immediate future of demand momentum and supply sluggishness which could run 6-24 months, to the Olympics and maybe a year or so from then. This ties in with the thinking behind the Goldman's estimate and CERA's estimate. ...

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The Congress party leads with 100 seats in Rajasthan and 114 seats in Madhya Pradesh in the State Assembly elections.

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Thomas Friedman sees the WikiLeaks information showing America paying the Pakistan army and intelligence services to be two-faced, to both fight with the Americans and at the same time support the insurgents fighting the Americans. He sees America being made the sucker in this game. And without the resources to change the region and transform it, America needs a better approach that does not waste its resources and energies.

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The Jihad anti-Indian groups and the Pakistan Taliban in 2009, as they disrupt life in the Punjab province.

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Tata's new water filtration device called "Swach," for pure, sells for 999 rupees ($22.50), and is expected to sell 1 million units a year. The head of Tata Chemical's water-purifier business, Sabeel Nandy, says the demand in India is huge, about 250 million households. The goal is to put a purifier in these households to save them from water-borne diseases. The device has similiar potential in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.

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HTC's declining market share in Brazil and its decision to concentrate on the mid to high priced market segments in India and China. It is pulling out of the Brazilian market where the low priced phone segment is growing. HTC has about 7.2% of the global smartphone sales and is experiencing slower sales in 2012. HTC was a Taiwanese contract maker till recently when it launched its own line of Android smartphones.

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Coal is expected to take up 36% of global net electricity generation by 2040, only slightly down from 36% in 2015, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. This is the prospect for the future as India increases use of coal and China continues its use of coal. This make clean coal power plants an important part of the solution combined with increasing use of solar, wind, and where safe nuclear energy.

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Second hald profits will get hammered by inflation and the economy will be getting much worse with housing deteriorating and the credit crunch only getting worse. Exports the one bright spot also is on the decline as manufacturing output in the EU and Japan declined in the second quarter and growth in emerging markets including India is cooling. So the contribution of 1 to 1.5 percentage points from overseas trade is declining.