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Drop in immigration reduces labor supply keeping the unemployment rate steady even as hiring cools off. Compared to the roughly 1 million in 2019 net migration was about 3 million in 2022 and 2 million in 2024. In 2025 this is now about a negative 250,000 or quarter of million negative migration. Out migration is expected at about 1 million. This means that about 35,000 non farm jobs created between May and July 2025 haven't increased the unemployment rate as fewer new workers join the workforce from illegal migrants. This has to have an effect for wages for the workers in construction and farm work as employers compete for a smaller number of existing workers though economists and the financial media rarely talk about this. This was needed following decades in which the labor supply increases from illegal migrants meant no pressures on employers to pay more than the minimum wage kept artificially low. This means that even well meaning Democrats who clamored for increasing minimum wage were doing exactly the opposite of what was needed for the existing worker base wages in construction, farm work, and household help, because of their sentiments or because of the immigrant wing in their party. Note that about a third of maids, a third of construction workers, and 25% of landscaping workers are not legal migrants. Agriculture Department estimates are for about 40% of farm workers to be without legal work authorization. ...

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Just like the situation in oil Chinese demand now puts pressure on coal prices. China was an exporter of coal, now since the first half of 2007 its an importer of coal even though it has large deposits of coal. Since then coal prices around the world have nearly doubled, and since the winter storms hit China in January 2008 Asian coal prices have gone up an additional 34%.

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Sergio Ermotti returns to UBS as CEO to tackle the messy takeover of Credit Suisse. Ermotti was given the task of reviving UBS after its problems during the 2009 financial crisis. A rogue trader cost the bank 2.3 billion dollars. He ran UBS for 9 years closing its investment banking business to concentrate on banking for wealthy investors. He is from Lugano, Switzerland, the Italian part of the country.

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A key figure in approval ratings is 46% with DJT getting 46% approval for the economy and on a range of issues including immigration. On tariffs the situation is steadily improving with new trade agreements with Japan, the EU, South Korea that were announced after or just when this WSJ poll was taken on July 20. Among Republicans 88% support the president and 66% strongly support him which says this report means more of them would turn out to vote. More significant is that the optimistic rating of the economy went up by 11 percentage points from April 2025 to 46% in July 2025. This is also the view of Fed chairman Powell. Each step of the way as DJT tariff actions result in tangible improvements in trade relations for the US and result in concrete real world trade agreements for a level playing field in world trade, the president's actions are seen in a different light. The first Trade Agreement with the UK, then with Japan and now quite possibly with the European Union. All this within 6 months of the president acting in February 2025. A major role played also by Bessent, Greer, Luttnick and others in the cabinet of ministers. This lifts perceptions of the president in the eyes of the American people in handling the economy, business and world trade, and protecting the interests of America's farmers, and rural communities. ...

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Alternatives to the Keystone Pipeline if the Obama administration's objections to the pipeline are not overcome.

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Peter Eavis discusses ways in which regulators are conducting ongoing supervision of large banks under the Dodd-Frank legislation- with stress tests, and the review of living wills of banks in 2016

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The Indonesian currency, the Rupiah, has declined by 13% in 2013- by Sept. 3. It reached a level of 11,050 rupiah for one dollar on Sept 3. Economic growth has declined to 6% for the second quarter of 2013. The depreciation of the rupiah is likely to increase inflation significantly and affect the consumer spending boom in Indonesia. Indonesia had a $2.3 billion trade deficit in July 2013 after a continuing surge in imports. This will affect car prices and prices of international brands popular in the country. Toyota set the rate at 9500 rupiah to the dollar and plans to increase prices now that the rate has passed 11,000 rupiah.

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Times of London View in 2025- Labour would be wise to follow Merz of Germany's approach to illegal migrants and Farage's proposals need a hearing even if with a pinch of salt. Labour says The Times of London would be wise to take the get-tough approach of Germany's Merz.

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U.S. Federal Reserve officials are likely to take a wait and see approach based on incoming data following a likely rate increase in December 2018. Jerome Powell, Fed chairman and other members are likely to want to see how the economy is holding up from moves already taken. Under this evolving data dependent approach the Fed will step back from the predictable path of quarterly rate increases of the last 2 years.

Inflation has softened in the last quarter of 2018 with falling oil prices, reducing the Fed's sense of urgency. The dents in the stock market have not changed the situation of low unemployment and strong growth.

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Spain's Socialist Party emerged as the largest party in parliament with 123 seats in the Spain's 2019 general election. The Socialists increased their share of the vote from 23% in the 2016 elections to 29%. With the help of the centre left Podemos Party led by Pablo Iglesias it has 165 seats in the 350 member parliament, 11 short of a majority. Its leader Pedro Sanchez who called the snap election after a no confidence vote in 2018 brought the Socialist Party to power, said after the win that he would work to reduce inequality, promote co-existence and women's rights. Spain's Popular Party (Partido Popular) which has alternately governed Spain with the Socialist Party since the shift from the Franco era, and which governed Spain till March 2018, won just 66 seats down from 137 in the last parliament.  It lost support to the far right nationalist Vox Party which opposes secessionist sentiment in Catalonia. Vox won 10% of the vote and won 24 seats in parliament. The right parties in Spain are now fragmented with the Ciudadanois party a centre right party winning 57 seats.  A coalition with Ciudadanos is unlikely, and the Socialist party with its ally Podemos party looks for support from other parties. It will try to stay away from secessionist parties from Catalonia because of the general sentiment in Spain opposing the separation of Catalonia from Spain. Turnout was 76% up by 9% from the last election. The Secesionist ERC party in Catalonia has 15 seats.  The right wing parties Popular Party, Ciudadanos and Vox Party fought the campaign saying the Socialist Party supported Catalan separatism. ...

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On the first day of the new vaccine policy on June 21, 2021, India has vaccinated 6.9 million people. India has now vaccinated 287 million people out of a population of 1.2 billion. This is a race against time as new variants caused the second wave of coronavirus in April and May of 2021 with cases peaking at over 300,000 a day.  The shortcoming of the old vaccine policy are being corrected. The entire vaccine supply process and the vaccination drive is now being handled by the federal government. Earlier during the second wave vaccine supply and the vaccination drives were under an arrangement with no clear overall responsibility. States shared responsibility with the federal government and target vaccination goals were missed, vaccine supplies were inadequate.  A similar arrangement in Germany failed and Germany's vaccination supplies were inadequate and vaccination drive stalled. This caused immense frustration in Germany in April-May 2021. Germany's troubled history before World War II led to a reliance on decentralized actions, and state governments imposed different rules in a relatively small country compared to India. This was corrected with the federal government taking on the entire responsibility for the vaccine supply and vaccination drive leading to good results today in vaccines. With India's huge population and political process of different state governments, some lacking experience in administration for a complex process, and others failing to coordinate well with the federal government, the lack of overall responsibility at the federal government posed serious risks of missing targets for vaccines and letting the coronavirus wreck the economy and public confidence. Complex negotiations with other governments in Europe and the US for vaccine manufacture in India could only be handled at the federal level. The resources and planning at the federal level were already in place in India for infrastructure and other projects, experience and setting targets in that area at the federal level could now be transferred to this task in vaccines. Somewhere in the range of 8 million vaccines a day need to be reached and sustained from August to December 2021 for India to reach the goal of vaccinated all 1.2 billion people ahead of any further attack from a third or fourth wave, say experts. This is not a choice for the federal government, it is simply something India has got to accomplish to be a healthy nation that can grow with neighbors in Europe, the US, Australia and Japan and build confidence in its Asia-Pacific region. The entire Asia-Pacific region has a lot resting on how well India achieve this goal and moves on to the next phase of assisting its neighbors in the region.  ...

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The French under Macron commit to build a new aircraft carrier to come into service in 2038. This will be nuclear powered like the Charles De Gaulle, France's current aircraft carrier. U.S. carriers are also nuclear powered to reduce port stops for fuel. 

French and U.S. ships use American suppliers for some of the flight systems on carriers so that French aircraft and American aircraft can operate off of each others ships. For France it preserves "strategic autonomy" a policy France has pursued since Mr. De Gaulle. It also means tighter U.S. French cooperation with France being America's key ally in Europe. France has plans to increase defense spending by 4.5% and spends over 2% of GDP on defense like the U.S. 

India, Britain, China and Russia are the only other countries with aircraft carriers.

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Ekrem Imamoglu, three time elected Mayor of Istanbul follows a career similar to that of Erdogan who became Mayor of Istanbul and was then elected prime minister in 2003, as the administration of the CHP party failed to manage the economy. A period of economic growth followed with increasing foreign investment and Erdogan was reelected till 2013 when he decided to run for president following the term limits for prime minister. At that time his rule had become increasingly authoritarian. He was elected with smaller majorities with no effective opposition leader ,and the Middle East in turmoil with ISIS and Syria's civil war. Erdogan fought a tough election against a civil servant candidate from CHP turning out the nationalist  and conservative vote.in 2020. By this time the economy was having high inflation and his popularity was down, and he won barely with 52% of the vote. By 2019 Ekrem Imamoglu, 47 years, emerged as a more effective opposition leader, winning election for Mayor of Istanbul. He won again in 2024 and is now emerging as an alternative to run the country. Erdogan is 71 years and the world around Turkey has changed with DJT in the US, and Russia- Ukraine peace talks, trade tariffs worldwide, and the investment climate completely different, inflation increasing to 39 percent, and no easy solutions to economic problems. Some of the conservative and small business vote is no longer assured for Erdogan as the economy and Turkey's situation in Europe has changed. ...

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Efforts by the new petroleum resources minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke, to increase Nigeria's oil quota, and pass a bill in Parliament to increase taxes on foreign oil companies to take a bigger share of profits in joint ventures. She is undertaking a government effort to allocate 10% of oil revenues to the Niger delta.

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Central Texas flash floods survivors in July 2025 tell their stories.

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The U.S. Census Bureau shows incomes of American households, the median household income, surged in 2015 by 5.2%. This increased by $2800 to $56,500. This is the largest increase since 1967. It shows that steadily improving employment and hiring is leading to improvement in incomes for the middle and working class. Ris in minimum wage has also helped . The largest increase was for the lowest 20% of the income tiers. Full time working women did better than men, with increase annually of 2.7% for women, and 1.5% for men. Nocitizen incomes increased 10.5% to $45,100, native born households went up 4.4% to $57,200. The number of people without health insurance also declined from 33 million or 10.4% of the population to  29 million people or 9.1%. Another way the changes are helping lower income households is the decline of the official poverty rate to 13.5% in 2015 by 1.2 percentage points from 14.8% in 2014. Through a series of small incremental steps the path is being set for a recovery of household incomes for the middle class and working class. A bright spot is that the improvement has affected all age groups, household types, regions and ethnic groups, though among full time workers women did better than men. In this recession older white men have had more difficulties getting back into the workforce. This is reflected in the political scene in 2015-2016 for the election season. ...

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The risks of a new arms race are growing as the 1987 Missile Treaty between Russia and U.S. signed by Reagan and Gorbachev is now in danger of collapse. The U.S. announced a withdrawal over 6 months if Russian violations are not corrected.

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Lost in media reporting the net US exports increase of 5% as US asserted it's position as a leading exporter in 2025 has boosted second quarter US GDP growth to 3%. 

In tariff negotiations  and the agreements with European Union and Japan US has asserted it's position as a leading exporting nation, a position it held since the 1920's that was neglected through the ineptitude of previous presidents.

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Making friends with Trees-  these are ways to Emotional Wellbeing. One Brooklyn neighorhood Boerum Hill has a play area park called Sixteen Sycamores right in the middle of a busy urban setting showing how trees are a treasured part of our urban landscapes.