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Without resources, the task of leveling up the north of England with the south of England after income gaps and inequalities, is anaemic and inadequate, says this editorial in the Guardian. It says the chancellor Rishi Sunak has no intention of spending the kind of money that is necessary so that the regions scarred by accelerated deindustrialization under Margaret Thatcher and hit by austerity under David Cameron can recover and get back on their feet. It cites an IIPR think tank study that shows spending from leveling up fund was 32 pounds per person in the north of England. In the austerity decade the drop in council spending for services was 413 pounds per person in the north of England. It is an example of so little coming so late.

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Baby Boomers from the FDR Truman era 1950-1965 were offset by the Generation X of the Reagan period 1965-1980. Each generation was making its political affiliation as Democrat or Republican based on its most impressionable years of life. Then come the Millenials till 1996 and Generation Z, who tired of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were wary of war, and had seen banking deregulation and laissez fairre lead to the financial crisis of 2008. The younger generations now enter as voters in 2024 and 2028 as Democrats. So big is the gap for Generation Z that it is the highest for all generations 20% Republican to 36% Democrats. This is from the General Social Survey by the University of Chicago every year since 1972.

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Election expert, Karl Rove, says following the win in the New York primary Trump has 845 delegates according to Associated Press, yet there are 950 delegates on the opposite side, putting the gap at 105 with the others. Trump has won 47% of the delegates upto this point, and needs to win 58% to get to the needed 1237 delegates for a majority. Rove, says Trump's threat to run as an Independent is an empty threat because of the filing date for running as an Independent for 12 states is well before the convention on July 18, 2016. By that date 12 states with 166 electoral votes will have already seen deadlines passed for registering as an Independent. The states include Illinois, Indiana, Florida, Texas. Michigan's date is during the convention. Registering as an Independent before the convention and some of the primaries would alienate his own voter base, says Rove. Another factor is that Trump would have to raise a significant number of signatures under the rules which is doable, but would create the impression of being in a spoiler role than a serious candidate....

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A detailed account of how the Treasury under Secretary Paulson and the Fed under Bernanke worked through the evening of Friday and through Saturday and Sunday, to come up with a plan -coordinated with the heads of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank- to support Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before both companies ran into serious difficulties. The stock of both companies had been on a serious downward decline in the past 4 trading sessions with Fannie Mae shares losing 45% of their value and Freddie Mac losing 47% of their value. Also rumors in the financial markets on Friday had affected their share prices. Secretary Paulson felt it necessary to send a clear signal to the markets by making an announcement at 6pm Sunday that Treasury would get congressional approval to increase significantly the credit line at Treasury for the 2 companies, and also get approval for Treasury to take equity stakes in the 2 companies. Meantime the Fed Governors met over the weekend and made the decision to open the Fed's discount window to lend to the 2 companies....

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The demand for ships went up so steeply that shipping rates hit the roof, and the prices of ships went up accordingly. Between the end of 2006 and July 2008 , shipyards received enough commissions, says the Economist, that this would double the world's fleet. Just as demand has collapsed and international trade has gone down, about 9000 ships are coming onstream. Now 11% of fleet capacity justs sits on the water, in the seas outside the harbors of Singapore, Hong Kong and other southeast Asian ports. A 150 tonne cape class ship that sold in 2003 for $18.5 million in the used market, when rates for charter were $15,000 a day, had risen by summer 2008, to $85 million with rates of $175,000 a day. These rates went up even more to $300,000 a day, which is 20 times what it was in 2003. And rates today are back down to $15,000 a day, where they were in 2003. This ship, cited by a broker, to give some idea of the extent of this boom and its collapse, was sold for scrap at $7 million. And South Korean shipyards are taking this into account, in their pricing and collection of payment, with 20% demanded upfront, 60% during construction, and 20% upon delivery. The backlog in shipyards is estimated by Clarkson Research, a maritime research firm, at $526 billion, even as banks are leery of lending and concerned about the value of the collateral in the event of default. Some smaller Korean shipyards are closing. Steve Mann, analyst at HSBC, says that half of the orders for delivery in 2010 will be delayed, so that there is work for 2011 and inventory or excess capacity does not pile up on the oceans. Even in this situation China, India and Vietnam continue to support the expansion of their own shipyards. This suggests additional losses for shipbuilders, shipping lines and the banks that lend to shipyards. All this also goes to show that the rush to industrialize, once it gets a firm footing- like it has in the Chinese model of increasing investment and local governments pushing infrastructure, industry and export factories with officials judged on GNP growth numbers- can exacerbate a boom-bust cycle. This is one industry, others include machinery manufacturers, commodity producers, and manufacturers of parts that go into finished products assembled in China for export. This means it would take the world economy down with it, if some external factor like the drop in export demand suddenly slows everything down. Machinery manufacturers in Germany, commodity producers in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Australia, and manufacturers of the high tech parts in Japan and Taiwan that are shipped to China for assembly, all go down in this boom-bust cycle, in a dramatic manner. ...

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The experience of Pintung county in Taiwan with a coronvirus outbreak is shown in The Guardian. Home quarantining of a couple from Peru leads to an outbreak. Community cooperation, a speedy response from local health authorities, testing and quarantining help to limit and control the outbreak. When it started this county on the coast, one of the poorest in the country, had limited health resources and no one was vaccinated. Most of the control response was through testing and quarantine, with vaccination assistance from the Taiwan government. Local people say strict quarantine is essential as the source of infections was from a couple who visited Peru and were allowed to home isolate. Taiwan government is now enforcing quarantine at hotels for all persons returning from overseas. WHO Emergencies program head, Dr Michael Ryan, says it is important to act quickly. He says "Be fast, have no regrets. You must be the first mover. The virus will always get you if you don't move quickly."  This happened in this Taiwan county as the local health authorites setup a soft lockdown of the two affected villages within 3 days of detecting the first case of Delta variant. This was announced over loudspeaker and food plus daily necessities were delivered to each household. A command centre was setup to take and coordinate the action daily. Taiwan authorites have enforced repeat testing and extended testing. ...

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This report by Peter Baker shows President Trump only reluctantly agreed to certify the Iran Nuclear Agreement. He opposed it in discussions with the Secretary of State Tillerson. It took the combined effort of Tillerson Dunford of the combined chiefs of staff, Defense Secretary Mattis, and of National Security Adviser McMaster, to get Trump to agree to go ahead with the deal. President Trump wanted a new strategy to counter Iran in the Middle East. The Iranian foreign minister Zarif has not yet met with Tillerson of the U.S. Zarif says Iran may withdraw from the deal if there is significant nonperformance by the U.S. Trump advisers are wary about the influence on Europe as the EU is not interested in taking a new look at the Iran nuclear deal. The EU sees things differently- that the issues of Iranian influence in the war torn Middle East is a separate issue from the nuclear deal, and that in any case a nuclear constrained Iran is better than one with nuclear weapons. Another factor is that the Middle East is now a complicated place with relations crisscrossing in different and even conflicting directions. The U.S. played a part on the Iranian side in the retaking of Mosul in Iraq with U.S. bombing strikes against Islamic State. In Iraq the U.S. is supporting the Abadi government which is mainly Shiite in its structure and is supported by Iran. The Trump position is that president Obama gave away too much in negotiating the deal and was not against the negotiating process.   ...

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Wessel describes the changes in American manufacturing as it goes through some of the same changes that happened in Germany in the years after reunification. With high unemployment German manufacturing companies worked with unions and the government for wage restraint over the last decade, resulting in wages barely keeping up with inflation. The increase in productivity and wage restraint helped Germany become more competitive with factories in Asia and Eastern Europe. Wages are now increasing with larger wage increase negotiated by the unions in Germany, as skilled labor is becoming scarce. In the U.S. Labor Department figures show an increase in output per hour in American manufacturing of 13% in the last 5 years and 21% in the five years before that. Typical of the wage changes in manufacturing- American Axle & Manufacturing plant in Three Rivers, Michigan hires assembly workers at $10 per hour, with older "legacy workers" making $18 per hour. General Electric brought back manufacturing work from Mexico paying workers $13 per hour for new hires, compared to to $21- $23 in prior years. At GM, Ford and Chrysler workers make $16-$19 per hour in base pay compared to older workers with legacy rates of $29-$33. The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows earnings for production workers in manufacturing averaging $19.15 per hour in April, which is where they were in 2000 adjusted for inflation. The impact of this large increase in productivity with new machinery and production methods, and the wage reductions in manufacturing, is a return of offshored jobs. Wages increased in China and Mexico in the last decade. After a 35% decrease in the number of manufacturing jobs in the U.S. from 1998-2010, the number of jobs has increased by 4.3% to 11.9 million in April 2012, according to the Labor Department....

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This article in The Times says UK business has already moved to ESG, the idea that business is also about environment, social and governance, ahead of Thatcherite era cabinet ministers Rishi Sunak, Priti Patel, Liz Truss and Dominic Raab. This was evident during the Tory conference in Manchester.  Boris Johnson is moving in line with voters and ahead of his ministers who are aware of the changes in the conservatives appeal to voters. Johnson is not attached to any preconceived idea of what the Tories are about. His only concern is to be where voters are and think like the voters, this is where he is happy being. Voters in Britain today think business is more than being about profits. New polling by the Social Market Foundation shows changing attitudes in the Conservative party and its supporters. In 2016 48% of Conservative voters thought it was important to remove regulations and rules for business. In 2021 this has fallen to 27%. Today economic fairness is a big concern. Inequality was a concern for 15% of Tory voters, today it is 28%, higher than Tories concern about removing regulations. Business leaders have also moved on after the Brexit referendum and see the need for meeting a social purpose. Some business leaders think the Thatcherite thinking of some cabinet ministers is "decades out of date." ...

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Dr. Nancy Krieger of the Harvard School of Public Health says data on health risk -including which counties have high rates of health conditions such as obesity and other diseases- should inform targeted interventions and public messaging. This is important for administrators and health authorites in each county and state as they deal with a surge in coronavirus in parts of the U.S. which have so far been only slightly affected such as rural southern and western states. More recently places such as North Dakoa which the virus missed in the early stages are now seeing a jump in cases. This report shows counties in states such as Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, particularly susceptible because of high rates of obesity and other health conditions. In all almost half of the U.S. population has one of these health conditions- obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, lung disease and heart disease.  The high prevalence of obesity which worsens all other health conditions is a result of the lack of healthy food and nutrition, exercize and healthy living habits, that were neglected in the closing decades of the twentieth and early twenty first century. The shift to processed foods is only one of many bad practices that happened in these years. The lack of attention to healthy eating and nutrition, and outdoor exercize has marked this period and created conditions in which the virus could damage health. ...

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After a sudden surge in the beginning of May the coronavirus wave in India, its second wave, is decreasing. It is 186,000 new coronavirus cases on May 27, down from over 350,000 at the peak. In India's largest state Uttar Pradesh with a population of 210 million the coronavirus cases have dropped sharply to 4000 a day. New coronavirus cases in Delhi and Bombay are around 1000 a day. The Indian government has moved quickly to tackle this wave with decisive action to meet the sudden surge in May 2021. For the rest of 2021 and into 2022 the most important action by the Indian government has been to create a government sponsored effort of India's entire pharmaceutical company sector to reunite in production of over 2 billion vaccine doses by December 2021. After independence in 1947 one of the steps taken by India with great foresight was to create a strong pharmaceutical sector with fair and transparent pricing of basic drugs and vaccines. Something that does not exist in this manner and scale anywhere else in the world. Today this is giving India a tremendous asset in the fight against coronavirus. India is already the largest producer of vaccines in the world, the new effort will make give it a decisive advantage in meeting not only India's but the world's need for new vaccines. ...

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German economy contracts in second quarter 2024 by 0.1%. Growth is forecast at 0.3% for 2024 and 1.1% for 2025, according to country statistics office Destatis. The contrast could not be greater in Biden's management of the economy as US economic growth was much higher at about 2.8% in 2024. It shows the positive effects of Biden's effort to revive American manufacturing, and to support chips and science and American industry, and the investment of a trillion dollars from the Inflation Reduction Act in American infrastructure. Without these investments American recovery strong at this time would have hobbled along with much worse effects on jobs and inflation, and looming recession, under a Trump administration. Unusual factors such as the concentration of the supply chain in China have influenced US inflation, which Biden is correcting, and also bringing jobs at home. The economic management is excellent it  is the effects of the pandemic and broken supply chains, high mortgage rates and 20% price increases in apartment rentals that are making cost of living a problem for average Americans. Biden has taken cost of living action including canceling student debt and calling for limiting rent increases for apartment rentals to 5%. Harris has a program to support renters when housing takes up more than 30% of their income. ...

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The Democratic Party's progressive wing and Mr. Biden support the effort by president Trump for $2000 checks to go to American families as direct payment instead of the paltry $600 approved by McConnell in the Senate and Pelosi in the House. The delay in providing relief has hurt Americans working in retail and restaurants, hotels, and travel, tourism, sectors hard hit by the pandemic lockdowns. To make up for the delay and because the pandemic after the second wave looks to be not just for 2020 but for at least the first half of 2021 $2000 is essential for American  families to support themselves. Food insecurity unknown to Americans for most of the twentieth century has returned in ways that are unimaginable. The same is true for southern Europe as pictures of Barcelona in DW,com show. It is high time both the European Commission and the U.S. Congress get their act together. Partisan press is one thing, and debate is the oxygen of society in a democracy, and making ends meet on a day to day basis is another thing.  Working from home remotely one half of society the professionals may not see the other half, yet they are there as the pictures from Barcelona of people collecting metal and other scrap  on streets for sale to buy food in the El Raval neighborhood show, and the pictures of Americans in long lines at food banks show.  ...

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Polls before the election show the SPD Social Demcorats, Greens and the Die Linke combined have a small majority of votes in German elections. Die Linke is the left party from the days of the party that ruled the GDR German Democratic Republic or East Germany under communist rule. In Berlin, Bremen, and the east German state of Thuringia the Social Democrats SPD, Greens and De Linke have formed coalition governments. With the emergence of right wing AfD in East Germany, the De Linke has emerged as an alternative to the established parties and the AfD in eastern Germany. Federal governments are difficult to form with the De Linke because of historical opposition to NATO. This may change as two younger leaders are now leading the party and in other policies there is similarity between the democratic socialist views of De Linke, SPD and the environmental policies of the Greens. FDP policy has generally not favored policies that favor working class, infrastructure investment, childcare and other issues important to voters in this election. This leaves the De Linke as a more likely alternative for a Greens SPD coalition partner if it can change to be flexible about its views on NATO. Today policies of president Biden in the US are also friendly to workers and families. This makes such a coalition possible if the socialist parties of the De Linke change to get things done instead of staying on the fringes of government. ...

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The narcotics revenue source is only one of three sources, says Defense Sec Gates. The other two are funds generated locally from the Pashtun minority in Pakistan, and funds generated from outside sources like people in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. A 2006 World Bank report says the hawala system- an informal money transfer system using a network of money brokers with little oversight- "carries out the majority of the country's cash payments and transfers." Of the local sources, its only now that the Pakistan government is making a serious effort to freeze these bank accounts traced to the Taliban. The CIA says it has identified the charities and organizations that send money, but it is not clear if these sources have been suspended. The implications of this is that the war could be sustained by the Taliban even if the opium crop was destroyed, or smuggling routes and labs were destroyed. Gates points out that the very same external funding channels for sending money by wealthy Muslims that the US supported in the 1980's to help Muslim militants expel the Russians may still be open today. His comment that "it would't surprise me if some of those channels were still open today," suggests that even the Defense Dept does not know how these channels operate because of their extreme secrecy. In a way this shows how the war and the people that the US supported have come back to hurt the US, just as the people on the Pakistani side find that the people they supported in the Afghan and tribal areas and the Taliban organization they created is now coming back to hurt Pakistan. What makes it deeply disconcerting is that as Gates points out, there is so little time before the patience of the American public wears out with rising casualties. And on the Pakistani side there is so little time also because the war is spreading to Pakistani cities. See the link to The Taliban's war on the ill trained Pakistani police forces across the country in the WSJ May 28, 2009. ...

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WSJ shows how the daughter of David Rockefeller Neva Goodwin and her daughter Kaiser have led the fight against Exxon for not making the change to renewable energy from fossil fuels in time to avert climate change disasters now common worldwide. One of the major problems of the last 50 years since the Reagan administration in 1980 involve oil wealth in the Middle East used to finance wars and US involvement in these wars in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Libya, Yemen. It haunts us to this day with conflict in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf. This has its origins with John D. Rockefeller  who started the oil company Standard Oil in the 1870's in Cleveland, Ohio, now called Exxon in the US and Esso overseas. A bigger problem has emerged in recent years that remained unnoticed till about 2006 when David Rockefeller, the grandson of John D. Rockefeller, met with the head of Exxon for lunch to ask why Exxon was not doing more to invest in green energy and increase awareness of the damage to the environment by fossil fuels. This was the beginning of the dawning realization of the signs of climate change so prevalent 20 years later today in wildfires, drought, extreme heat and fast floods worldwide.   Today's Exxon is a descendent of the companies John D. Rockefeller (Library of Congress site) created by the 1880's to refine oil which he turned into a monopoly by deals with railroad companies to reduce cost of product. In 1888 he created the Anglo American Oil Company later called Esso which is a phonetic rendition of S and O in Standard Oil, which in 1972 was changed to Exxon. Many of the crises of this century have their origins in the activities of Esso and British oil companies in Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia and the wars that wasted trillions of dollars in American resources through the administrations of Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Obama have their origins in the activities of oil companies, and the governments of these countries using oil financed wealth for wars that involved the US. Huge mistakes that combined with neglect of manufacturing the lifeblood of any economy have led to the gradual decline of the US, being reversed for the first time with the decisive and complete shift made by president Biden so that investments of trillions of dollars can be made to revive the strength of the US economy and the wellbeing of its people. ...

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A steady decline in the price of Brent crude from $115 to $92 in the period from June to October 2014. Slow or no economic growth in Europe, and declining growth in China was the main reason. A cut in oil price by Saudi Arabia in September with lack of coordination in OPEC to control supplies when prices are declining, and increasing supplies from the U.S., provided additional basis for price declines. This price decline comes as large energy companies invested heavily in mega-projects to bring more oil supplies when prices were up to $128 by mid-2012. Consulting company EY estimate is that there are 163 such mega projects worth $1.1 trillion underway, most behind schedule and over budget. The projects were based on oil prices being over $100. Oil field development costs are increasing rapidly. Douglas Westwood, a consulting firm, estimate is that productivity of upstream capital spending has fallen by a factor of 5 since 2000, declining by 5% a year, as oilfield equipment and services demand exceeds supply. Greater technological sophistication also adds to cost such as Shell's Nobel Bully platform for deep sea drilling. See link- Noble Bully. Oil majors are now cutting spending, and some planned big projects are on hold. About $300 billion in assets may be up for sale. Shell plans to cut spending by 20% in 2014, Exxon and Chevron 5-6%. Shale oil projects in America need about $57 to be profitable with an internal rate of return of 10%, by one estimate. Yet this is an average and does not reflect differing producer costs. This estimate does not reflect the high cost producers, some of whom need closer to $110....

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Investors compare Goldman Sachs which has retained its trading commodities business with Morgan Stanley which has shifted focus to wealth management and other less risky business. Morgan Stanley's share price has increased more than Goldman Sachs since the 2008 financial crisis, showing the different approaches taken by financial institutions that were battered during the financial crisis of 2008. Morgan Stanley had a change in management after the crisis, Goldman is still being run by CEO Blankfein, showing a key difference between the two banks. Morgan Stanley was battered during the crisis as its share price plunged on rumors in a way and extent that Goldman was not. Goldman was relatively better managed and avoided the frequent egregious errors made by other banks such as Deutsche Bank, UBS, Citigroup, taking fewer risks, leading upto the financial crisis of 2008, though it faced increased public scrutiny in the Abacus case for mortgage securities. It also helped with regulators that Goldman has a tradition of public service with executives working in government- Treasury Secretary Rubin worked in fixed income trading at Goldman, Treasury Secretary Paulson was former CEO at Goldman with strong China connections, and Gary Gensler at the CFTC. Now Goldman gets a larger share of its revenue from trading than competitors and was affected by the sharp commodities price swings in the 4th quarter of 2014. Revenue from fixed income, currencies and commodities trading declined by 29% in 2014 to $1.22 billion. Since the low reached in share price during the 2008 financial crisis, Goldman is up 267%, Morgan Stanley is up 291%. Even as tighter regulation is squeezing returns and banks are required to set aside more capital as buffer for riskier assets, Goldman continues to maintain its focus on commmodities business and trading. Mr. Blankfein and another senior executive Cohen, both got their start in commodities trading which generated about 8.2% of revenues in 2006 when Blankfein became the new CEO. Blankfein and president Gary Cohn worked at J.Aron & Co., a coffee importer, when it was acquired in 1981 and the location moved to Goldman's former headquarters in New York. The commodities business took off with China's surge in demand for metals and other commodities. Goldman's traders buy and sell aluminium, crude oil, natural gas, soyabeans, sugar, and derivatives. Goldman's revenue of $34.53 billion in 2014 has declined from $45.17 billion in 2009, and Goldman has reduced its balance sheet by a quarter. Net income increased in 2014 by 5% to $8.1 billion. But other than these changes Goldman unlike Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, Barclays, has not let its commodities trading business shrink. Goldman's commodities division is headed by Gregory Agran and co-chief Guy Saidenberg in London. Goldman says CEO Blankfein, "remains unabashedly an investment bank," and is waiting for economic conditions to improve....

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Krugman points to some striking facts about China in 2011. Consumer spending in China is only 35% of GDP and has declined over the years. There are no signs of rebalancing the economy away from exports by increasing consumer spending. China's dependence on exports for trade surpluses is greater than ever. Beyond this there is another disturbing fact. With weak consumer spending and heavy investment spending at about half of GDP, Kugman raises the question where is all that increase in spending going? Real estate investment takes up about half of the increase in investment spending, as the share of GDP of real estate investment almost doubles compared to figures for 2000. Much of the rest of the increase Krugman attributes to firms selling to the construction industry. The speculative fever, the corruption at the local level, the shadow banking system which is not protected and unsupervised, the poor quality of statistics, suggest a bubble phenomena that may not be under control of policy makers, and risks damaging China economy and the world economy in 2012-2013. After all China's economic and financial planners and banks are no better than America's or Japan's, where asset bubbles burst causing serious damage....

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India, Brazil and South Africa as members of BRIC's means that the US position has support within BRIC's with nuances such as words on multipolarity of institutions. India has allowed trade to be done in rupees with Russia as trade is heavily imbalanced with Russia- India exports $4.1 billion to Russia and imports oil and gas worth $61 billion. Russia gets Rupees for the oil and invests it in the Indian equity markets and bonds.

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India's Ministry of External Affairs says both sides have agreed to de-escalate in the border dispute involving Bhutan, India and China. This happened after discussions between Indian and Chinese diplomats. "Expeditious disengagement of border personnel at the face-off site at Doklam has been agreed to and is on-going," according to the Ministry of External Affairs statement. The dispute began when China began work on a motorable road in the Doklam plateau which provides entry into India's northern plains.

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As the USA and Europe move into a deep and prolonged recession China loses some of its biggest export markets and faces a significant slowing down of its economy. China's leaders are pondering how to respond to the crisis which will affect China, and meet the challenges of lower living standards of a neglected rural countryside and farmers compared to the urban coastal areas. This is still where some 800 million of the Chinese people live by official count, so something needs to be done to improve prospects and help generate higher incomes and opportunities for people in the farming countryside. Making land use rights of farmers able to be bought or sold for the first time would generate additional income for farmers, and help consolidate farmland into larger plots, which can use technology and improvements for better yields to keep China self sufficient in agricultural production. Keeping the situation the way it has remained for the last two decades, where local party officials and local leaders controlled the land and where farmers rights were ignored leading to suppression of farmer's protests for illegal land seizures and corruption, may have made it easier for plants to be setup across China and attracted foreign investors. But it has not been good for China's farmers. Chinese party officials at the local level who realized the advantages to them by controlling land and making it easier to set up manufacturing plants with foreign investors may have steered state policy in this direction from the early days after Deng's opening to capitalism and trade. Now with a success in the urban coastal areas and in building infrastructure Chinese leaders in the central government must be faced with a difficult issue of how to move on from here with the loss of China's export markets for its heavily export dependent economy. The need to generate a domestic consumer driven economy must not be lost on the Chinese leadership in Beijing. Something that will keep China's economy moving in the new situation. This is the context in which land use rights may be extended from 30 to 70 years and able to be bought and sold to improve farm incomes and generate internal momentum in the rural areas where most of China's people live. It also offers a contrast to the situation India faces where even the Nano plant of Tata Motors had to be moved from W. Bengal state to Gujarat state over farmers rights to land which in that case was also used as an issue for political agitation. The move by China accelerated industrialization and setting up manufacturing plants as land was taken over by local officials for use with foreign investors but also ended up neglecting the countryside, and created too big a dependence on exports....

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Some of the most vulnerable populations in the world during coronavirus are in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the surrounding regions, in Mexico, Argentina and Brazil, and in African countries. This report looks at the increase in poverty in Pakistan and increasing food insecurity with food prices increasing. Government priorities are a concern says this report. Malnutrition is increasing with estimates ranging and some as high as 40% of children. A PTI official of the government is cited here as saying that it could be as high as 50% of children suffering from malnutrition. One of the problems for food insecurity in the Indian region going back to the famines during the British rule in Bengal and the famines in Bihar during Congress rule after independence is that supplies are lacking of foodgrains or that the incomes have fallen so drastically that people could not afford to buy food. Governments stepped in after independence to provide foodgrains at subsidized prices. These programs need to be pushed to the forefront and and international assistance needs to be sought. Planning minister Asad Umar points out in this report in DW.com that millions of Pakistanis are falling below the poverty line increasing food insecurity at a critical time. He gives estimate that one out of four Pakistanis have had their diets reduced. There is every reason to support efforts for cross border supply of foodgrains between India and Pakistan as humanitarian approach in the coronavirus crisis even as differences exist over border regions- as such differences exist all over the world over borders but humanitarian approach has benefitted the entire region during the Bihar famines after independence with aid from the U.S. Johnson administration. At that time in 1966-67 the seriousness of the situation in Bihar was only gradually and reluctantly accepted by the institutions, officials and governments around the world, says Cambridge University Press looking back on that crisis. And it is to the great credit of the Johnson administration that it launched the subsequent efforts for the Green Revolution and foodgrain production involving Norman Borlaug and the Indian government. Something of this type needs to be launched again across the region.   ...

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About 7 million people or 10.3% of people living in France in 2021 were immigrants, says national statistics agency INSEE. Compare that with 6.5% in 1968. About one third have acquired French citizenship. What this has done to French society is to shift sentiment away from protecting workers and families struggling with a cost of living crisis by splitting the vote of traditional parties supporting working class families. Shifting some of it to the far right anti-immigration parties that have emerged since 2010. This has added to the fracturing of society that happened from neglect of manufacturing communities across France as more manufacturing was concentrated overseas in  China. Neglect of rural areas and smaller towns, the emergence of tech hubs disconnected from the larger community across France has added to this. This is true of other European countries and a similar situation happened in the US. Denmark's prime minister is very candid about this, saying immigration of this type hurts the working class families in Denmark. Mette Frederiksen of the Social Democrats is the first to have clearly stated this problem and is providing a new way of protecting Danish workers and families from these social and technological changes in society from which they have no protection. President Biden in the US has also grasped clearly the dimensions and magnitude of the problems facing workers and families in the US. The problem is not limited to worker loss of income security, it affects the whole society and the public as a whole in other ways. Opportunistic politicians using anti-immigration appeals without a true commitment to democratic principles and ideas have tendencies that threaten democracy itself. This is the real danger of concentrating manufacturing in one country such as happened with China. And of neglecting rural areas and small towns. For this reason Frederiksen in Denmark, Biden in the US, and other leaders in Europe are looking for ways to send aid and industry promoting assistance to poor countries but restricting illegal immigration. This requires handling cultural issues which have further hit society with care- "with malice towards none, with charity for all," so that the focus can be kept on the real issues affecting workers and families of the cost of living crisis and a better life, better education, health care and public services for all, to improve the quality of living. It requires a new state of mindfulness from leaders in North America and Europe, as well as from allied countries of Asia, Latin America and Africa.  ...

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In a aspirational country where even US president John Kennedy's grandparent's father Patrick Joseph arrived from Ireland during the potato famine in the 1850's and aspired to reaching the level of the more educated Americans over 2 generations, whose grandson JFK's father worked as a manager in the Quincy shipyards in Massachusetts, this extraordinary concentration of support for Republicans among less educated is astonishing, perplexing, and at odds with what America is. Super Tuesday results analysis of 1000 counties in 14 states in 2024 show Republican Trump getting 83% of the vote in counties with a higher share of voters without a college education. Where voters are a higher share of the college population this drops to 61%. A sharp drop in support is seen in counties with a higher percentage of voters who have college a rapid fall as one has college education.  A strange phenomena can be seen in graphs shown in WSJ of voters by counties and income, education. A large cluster of voters in incomes below 70,000 and without a college education then falling off like off a cliff. In Iowa, New Hampshire primaries it was seen as being mostly rural voters, more isolated and in less proximity to other people. The question remains how well this category of under $70,000 without a college degree reflects the country as a whole in 2024, how has the country changed since 2012, 2016 and 2020. It is easily said there is a polarized country yet this ignores the unusual nature of this support where it is concentrated so heavily in one group in this way with cutoff of $70,000 falling precipitiously in support for Trump for incomes above that. At above $70,000 support quickly drops to 80% and falls steeply with every $1000 increase in income after that. In a country like the US this means almost the entire educated population in the US and the entire population above the $70,000 per year level excluding itself from support, so sharp is the fall off from moderate income and education levels, and so heavily clustered is the support almost like a ball up in that corner of the graph with just a few specks on the rest of the graph. This is most unusual for the US and may not be reflective of the whole population of the US in 2024. This is also unprecedented in US history since 1776, may not compare to 2016, and for the Republican party even more unusual. Two questions also come up what happened to all the country club, more educated voters who voted Republican and made the party what it was an upper class business supported party, and what happened to all the factory workers, teachers, nurses and others in America who make about $70,000 or $80,000 and who are generally Democratic. These people will be part of the electorate for the whole country in 2024. ...