LyrArc Article Gist
George Will on how a Ron Paul candidacy for U.S. president as an independent in 2012 could give the election to Obama. Will says Paul could win 5-7% of the vote as an independent candidate.

LyrArc Article Gist
U.S. Federal Reserve governor Daniel Tarullo tells the Council on Foreign Relations that so much remains to be done four years after the financial crisis. The law firm of Davis Polk says 67 percent of deadlines were missed for new rules required to be set in place by the Dodd-Frank legislation, including the Volcker Rule. Tarullo said: "It is sobering to recognize that more than four years after the failure of Bear Stearns began the acute phase of the financial crisis, so much remains to be done." Tarullo fears that crucial momentum may be lost because of the long delays stemming from resistance by the banks. Tarullo met with bank CEO's in April 2012. Banks have protested that Fed stress tests have not revealed the parameters for the testing. Tarullo's response given at a recent Fed conference in Chicago were that this would let banks game the exercize by running the Federal Reserve model and not improving risk management and capital planning, making this a mechanical compliance exercize. Banks have particularly opposed a requirement that limits the risk in business between two banks to 10% of their credit risk....

LyrArc Article Gist
The Standing Committe of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist party will have seven members including Li Keqiang, the new prime minister and Xi Jinping, the new president. Most of the other members are close allies of former president, Jiang Zemin, who began the now three decade old the modernization effort after Deng Xiaoping initiated economic reforms. This leaves a clear imprint on the Standing Committee of 86 year old Jiang Zemin. The incoming president Jinping is supported by Jiang Zemin, and this should make it less difficult for him to make economic changes say experts. Hu Jintao, the current president could not get his way in making appointments to the Standing Committee, except for selecting his protege Li Keqiang. Hu was able to select members for the 25 member Politburo who are likely to become members of the Standing Committee in 2017, when many of the current members in their mid 60's retire as required by party rules.

LyrArc Article Gist
Galston says Hillary Clinton is right to say as she did at Roosevelt Island in her opening campaign speech, that "growth and fairness go together, for lasting prosperity, you can't have one without the other." Economic growth was at 4% for 5 of 8 years of the Clinton presidency, but in the 15 years since the economy has managed 3% only twice in the George Bush presidency, and fallen below 2.5% in the last 5 years. The high growth rate following World War II was a result of the increase in the workforce and productivity. The workforce increased by 2% annually between 1950 and 2000. Since then as female participation peaked and the baby boomers reached retirement age the workforce has increased by 0.7%, and is slowing to 0.5% annual growth for the next decade. Growth in productivity of 1.9% between 1991 and 2007, slowed to 0.4% after 2010. Galston tells the next president to go all out to increase the labor force- adopt family friendly policies similiar to Europe so more women can work, get more immigrants into the labor force, more elderly should be encouraged to work given the better health, reduce the college dropout rate to reduce incarceration and bring more young people into the labor force, get more people who qualify for disability but could work part time into the labor force, and emphasize the importance of increasing the labor force participation rate a policy being followed by the Federal Reserve's Janet Yellen....

LyrArc Article Gist
Car size shrinks as the Focus, Spark, Aveo, Cruze small cars attract attention at the 2010 International Auto Show in Detroit. The big change is that these small cars are following the European small car in being refined and sophisticated, with a lot of features. This isn't the Chevette that Americans knew in the sixties and seventies, and the perception of what is the right size and comfort is changing completely as a new generation of buyers brought up in a world of pc's, i-phones, and globalized cultures is in the driver seat.

LyrArc Article Gist
Adam Nossiter of the NYT describes the coalition of right and left parties in France that have united against the National Front, called in France "the Republican Front." In the 2002 Marine Le Pen's father made it to the second round of the presidential election, but lost to centre right party leader Jacques Chirac who won 78% of the vote. Analysts say the Republican Front is coming up this time once more for daughter Marine Le Pen, as she goes into the second round of the election in 2017 fifteen years later with support in the north and northeast of the country and in the coastal south east around Marseille and Nice. Le Pen appeals to working class people with nationalist slogans. The Republican Party of former president Sarkozy represents the centre right, and it is combining with the centre left Socialist Party of president Hollande to call for the election of Emmanuel Macron and for support to Macron's En Marche movement. One expert predicts the National Front may leave the centrist views of Le Pen adviser Philippot, and return to hard right roots. Former president Sarkozy was mentioned on French television Fr24 as hoping to make a comeback by boosting the chances of the Republican Party in the June parliamentary elections, and creating a situation in which a future president works with a prime minister from the Republican Party. As the Macron En Marche movement is only one year old, it is not well prepared to contest the parliamentary elections, opening the door to the formation of new coalitions for government in France. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Connecting the National Health Service in UK (NHS) to Nature would take NHS to a new level by bringing mental health through nature walks to many people who need it during the pandemic. Damian Carrington of The Guardian looks at social prescribing where people are referred to nature projects, a trend that is growing in the UK and adding a highly valuable component of health to NHS. This is called Green Social Prescribing. 

There is significant support for the idea of Nature walks adding to wellbeing. A 2019 study cited here shows weekly 2 hour dose of nature improved health and wellbeing.

LyrArc Article Gist
Charts of foot traffic in retail stores show traffic is back up in home improvement stores but lags in electronics and apparel. Apparel is well below levels below the pandemic with stores closing. E commerce sales in September were up by 45% compared to same period 2019, with this making up 16% of all U.S. retail sales.Weekly foot traffic in the U.S. is down 14% in September compared to one year ago.

Clothing stores have the lowest employment rate with a decline of 29% as of July, and this is where stores have closed the most with job losses permanent.

 

LyrArc Article Gist
Fortunately even here there is room for optimism as male life expectancy declined by only 0.2 years from 79.2 years to 79.0 years the level in 2014. Considering the scale and intensity of this pandemic this is a sign or resilience of the UK with the work of NHS at the forefront. Female life expectancy has remained unchanged in 2020 at 82.9 years, about three years more than men.

With more consciousness about the risks of obesity, importance of nutrition and exercise habits information given wide attention, there may be some positive signs from this period that will lead to a healthier population.

LyrArc Article Gist
Huawei and Xiaomi have grown quickly to take about 30% of the world's smartphone market. Xiaomi uses American technology in its smartphones. Chinese court granted an anti-suit injunction to Xiaomi against InterDigital a Delaware based American company, when it sued Xiaomi for patent infringement. The anti-suit injunctions issued by the Chinese court block foreign companies from taking legal action for patent infringement anywhere in the world. Three such rulings have been given protecting Huawei, Xiaomi and BBK Electronics. The fourth protects Samsung in its dispute with Sweden's Ericsson AB. Xiaomi has sold millions of phones using InterDigital patents since 2013.

LyrArc Article Gist
A new study using ECB data by the German Institute of Economic Research shows rising inequality in Germany. The 45 richest households in Germany own wealth equal to the bottom half of the population- each group owning 214 billion euros in assets in 2014. The wealthiest 5 percent of the people in Germany own 51.1% of the country's wealth. ECB numbers are underestimating the inequality by showing that 5 percent control 31.5% of the wealth in Germany. The Institute's analysis shows Germany is worse than Spain and France when the wealthiest household's wealth is taken into account. 

LyrArc Article Gist
Fidel Castro dies at the age of 90 in 2016. He was a polarizing influence in Latin America. Many of the guerilla movements in Latin America originated with support from Castro's Cuba. This led to the right wing dictatorships such as Pinochet's Chile and Videla's Argentina, with dictators consolidating their rule saying they were acting in response to these guerilla movements. In Venezuela this led to the rise of  a movement that has polarized the country and led to mismanagement of the economy, even with rich natural resources unable to tackle inflation and development goals.

LyrArc Article Gist
Financial Planner Carl Richards, warns investors about relying too much on market predictions. He cites the law of small samples as one way things go wrong. Another is investment managers with good track records in one decade doing badly in the next decade- David Miller in the 70's and Bill Miller of the Legg Mason Value Fund are others. To show how ridiculous market predictions based on computer models can get he gives the example of a researcher who found that over a 13 year period butter production in Bangladesh 'explained' 75% of the fluctuations in the annual returns of the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index. Adding in U.S. cheese production and the total population of sheep in Bangladesh and the U.S., this researcher was able to forecast past U.S. stock returns with 99% accuracy.

LyrArc Article Gist
Years of low prices for soybeans and corn with competition from Russia and Brazil, combined with tariff war with China roiling agricultural markets, are leading to the highest bankruptcies in a decade for farmers in the U.S. in 2019. Dairy farmers are hit too with low milk prices.

LyrArc Article Gist
Dudley Althaus looks at Mexico's 2018 election from a working class suburb of Mexico City called Valle de Chalco. Once a squatter settlement outside Mexico City this area was courted by the ruling PRI Institutional Revolutionary party for 3 decades with a social investing program building sewers, water and power lines. Today this area like others in the state of Mexico have turned to a new party Morena led by Manuel Lopez Obrador, to find a way out of the corruption, violence and failure of the rule of law under the PRI. Obrador left the socialist PRD party to form Morena in 2014 after running for president on the PRD ticket twice. The thirst for change is widespread inside Mexico giving Obrador a higher vote margin in state of Mexico than the 53% he won overall in Mexico. The PRI won just 16% of the vote. The old politics of piggy bank and patronage of the PRI is now discredited in Mexico.  The reason the old politics does not work anymore is the change in places like this from a shanty town of tin shacks to a bustling city of 400,000. This place has a technical school, a state university branch, rows of well kept cinder  block homes along with malls and wealthier homes. With basic necessities being met Mexican workers are turning to larger issues of national identity and how the next chapter can be written in the social contract. Obrador's nationalist message and criticism of the globalized economy struck workers and middle class as the right direction for Mexico. This came just as president Trump brought new views on immigration and NAFTA on the other side of the border challenging Mexico to find its own direction and independent position in the world economy, even building new links to other countries in Europe and Asia. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Samuelson looks at patterns of investing in stocks in the U.S. since 1982. He cites S&P's Howard Silverblatt that the P/E for the S&P 500 averaged 16.9 since 1935 and the current P/E for the U.S. is at 17.6.

LyrArc Article Gist
This leader in The Economist magazine says a hard Brexit of the sort announced by Theresa May at a Conservative Party conference is clearly bad for Britain. It also point out that half of British people voted to remain. It is not clear that voters have voted for a hard Brexit, a soft Brexit, or voter alienation with elites and effects of years of austerity since the financial crisis have helped tilt the vote to Brexit. It points out that the rhetoric may be damaging Britain's chance of negotiating a Brexit that limits damage to GDP, which the Treasury estimates to be nearly twice the loss in GDP if a member of a single market as compared to leaving it. British government leaders may be overestimating the willingness of leaders of France, Germany and other countries to make concessions. By talking up to their party base politicians such as May may be putting German and French leaders to also toughen their positions on free movement as an integral principle of the European Union, and consequently of membership in a single market. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Governor Jindal's efforts to change the educational system in Louisiana to give better opportunities for students at failing schools, increasing education spending, basing teacher incentives on quality of education delivered, and removing the "first-in-first-out" method for letting go teachers.

LyrArc Article Gist
RBS says it had a 2011 net loss of about 2 billion pounds. The UK government has 83% ownership in RBS. RBS paid out about 1 billion pounds in bonuses for 2011. This was after strong criticism of bonus practices in the media. RBS shares are at 28 pence, significantly below the 50.2 pence per share paid by the UK government during the recent financial crisis.

LyrArc Article Gist
As Japanese prime minister Noda prepares to restart the Oi nuclear plant in June 2012, former prime minister Naoto Kan, who was premier during the Fukushima nuclear disaster, answers questions in a parliamentary inquiry. He says he realized how dangerous nuclear power can be when it got to the point where the evalcuation of Tokyo was being considered, Japan was then on "the verge of national collapse." His fears were that a number of meltdowns could together " release into the air and sea many times, no, many dozens of times, many hundreds of times the radiation released by Chernobyl." The Japanese public has focussed on the parliamentary hearings because the previous inquiry is thought to have been perfunctory, and not really examined in depth all the issues the Fukushima disaster had raised, and the general feeling is that a proper public dialogue had not taken place. In contrast in Germany the issues had been discussed openly, and the Angela Merkel government which had been receptive to nuclear power reversed its stand on nuclear power. Germany is phasing out dependence on nuclear energy. Kan pointed out that the "nuclear village," the network of nuclear power companies, bureaucrats, and researchers, had hijacked national nuclear policy and was putting Japan back on the same path. He went so far as to compare it with the situation facing Gorbachev in Russia after Chernobyl: "Gorbachev said in his memoirs that the Chernobyl accident exposed the sickness of the Soviet system. The Fukushima accident did the same for Japan." In his assessment of what happened Kan said: "It is impossible to ensure safety sufficiently to prevent the risk of a national collapse. Experiencing the accident convinced me that the best way to make nuclear plants safe is not to rely on them, but rather to get rid of them."...

LyrArc Article Gist
Each year the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore convenes to bring together Asian prime ministers, defense ministers, experts and journalists to discuss issues relating to Asia such as tensions on the Korean peninsula, terrorism, nuclear proliferation. In previous years the keynote address was given by prime ministers of Japan, Singapore, Australia, Thailand. The 2018 keynote was given by prime minister Narendra Modi of India. U.S. Defense minister James Mattis in his address described the free and open approach of the U.S. in its Indo-Pacific strategy contrasting it with China's policies. In Modi's address the key pieces of the Indian approach were outlined- a free open and inclusive space "from the shores of Africa to the shores of America," that includes the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Modi called Indo-Pacific not a strategy or a exclusive club, but a principle of freedom on the world's oceans based on rules and norms, respect for international law including for overflight and navigation.    ...