LyrArc Article Gist
Huge tasks ahead for developing countries as they industrialize, especially true for India and also for China.

LyrArc Article Gist
Kevin Rudd of Australia is trying to promote an Asia centred foreign policy giving a greater role for India, China and Indonesia in world affairs.

LyrArc Article Gist
Xi Jinping visits a dairy farm in Ireland and kicks a ball at a Gaelic football game. A new view of the Chinese leader up close in contacts with people in Ireland. Ireland takes on the presidency of the EU in 2013.

LyrArc Article Gist
Acer President Gianfranco Lani says the company will ship between 10 million and 12 million netbooks in 2009, and 32 million to 35 million laptops including netbooks, which suggests that netbooks which sell for as low as $200 are almost half of its laptop/netbook sales. This shift and the pricing and sales pressures in the global economy resulted in a31% dropin profit, and operating margins dropping to 2.2% in the first quarter 2009, compared to 4th quarter 2008.

LyrArc Article Gist
Netbooks sales were half amillion in first quarter 2008, jumped to 4.4 million in 3rd quarter 2008, and are expected to double to 8.8 million in sales per quarter in 2009. Acer was the first to take advantage of this trend. It has moved to 3rd place in PC's after HP and Dell, and Apple is now in 4th place. A lot of new trends are changing the IT marketplace. These netbooks sell for $100 and may be the next big thing for developing countries, where a low cost computer would appeal to the millions of people in urban and rural areas.

LyrArc Article Gist
The US view of the response by India to a terrorist attack in Phalgam, Kashmir, Indian Union territory with strikes on terrorist camps. J.D. Vance US vice president says- “Our hope here is that India responds to this terrorist attack in a way that doesn’t lead to a broader regional conflict.” “And we hope, frankly, that Pakistan to the extent that they’re responsible, cooperates with India to make sure that the terrorists sometimes operating in their territory are hunted down and dealt with.” Vance was forced to cut short his visit to India after visiting Jaipur, Rajasthan in India when the terrorists with a history of aid from Pakistan killed 31 tourists in Phalgam, Kashmir. A long history of terrorist or militia trained in Pakistan has led to  terrorist incidents all over the world for the last three decades including the Kashmir and Afghanistan conflicts, the last having drawn Russia and the US into long wars which depleted their resources and led to loss of many lives. Yet much of the media remains oblivious of this in the US and Europe, and how it has led to the rise of China using this period of conflict under Bush and Obama since 2000, and the access to US, EU technologies and assistance. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Population experts including Liang Zhongtang a demographer at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, are not convinced the change in the one-child policy in 2013 will have come in time to reverse the trend in increase of elderly population relative to the younger population. Zhongtang says the whole policy should have been removed. According to UN projections China's labor force will lose 67 million workers from 2010 to 2030. During this period the elderly population is expected to increase from 110 million in 2010 to 210 million in 2030. Wang Feng, a demographer at Fudan University in Shanghai, is skeptical about how much difference the new policy will make. He says the figures by population experts showing a maximum of 2 million additional childbirths over the next 3 years, starting about 10 months from now won't make much difference, and these additions will not enter the labor force for another 20 years.

LyrArc Article Gist
The accompanying article from Pro Publica about Lighthizer's term at USTR shows the lack of results as China shifted production to Mexico and Vietnam - it shows it was going to be a long struggle, carried over into another 4 DJT years this time in 2025. That article showed tariffs are really not so much a weapon against other countries  as they are a way to signal to America's corporations to invest in supply chains in the US.  In Congressional hearings towards the end of his term at USTR in 2020 Lighthizer said -

“They have a system, and their system is challenging our system.”  Lighthizer told Senators that the U.S. struggle with China is “going to go on for years.”

LyrArc Article Gist
China's limited monetary and fiscal options in 2012, with the housing bubble limiting the option of increasing construction spending to spur growth, and inflation limiting monetary policy. The central bank's decision to reduce the reserve requirement by 0.5% is not expected to do much for economic growth, as there is enough money to lend. The problem is that there is not enough demand for loans in the current environment.

LyrArc Article Gist
Mike McNamara, CEO of Flextronics, on the increasing competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing and the return of manufacturing jobs to the U.S.