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A bill requiring that women make up 30% of nonexecutive supervisory board members of 100 companies by 2016 is likely to pass in the German parliament in Dec. 2014. Women make up 22% of the supervisory board of 30 companies on the DAX. The new bill requires that companies have to leave the positions unfilled if they cannot find women. France requires 20% of nonexecutive director positions go to women, which goes up to 40% in 2017. Women make up 29.7% of the boards of the 40 companies in France's CAC 40 index, which is up from 12.3% in 2011. The European Union has set a goal of 40% women on boards by 2020.

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The U.S. and China sign Phase 1 of the trade agreement in a sign of reduction of trade tensions between the two countries. Difficult issues of state subsidies under China's state enterprise model of development, and technological competition were put off for the future. China made the deal possible by agreeing to double its purchases of agricultural products, and offering to purchase about $200 billion in American goods and services over the next two years. This gives relief to farmers, a key part of Mr.Trump's support base. This also helps achieve a key Trump and U.S. goal of cutting the U.S. trade deficit with China quickly, just as happened decades ago with Japan.  See the related article and link on how for the first time in decades China's trade surplus with the U.S. is now set on a path for permanent decline. It dropped significantly in 2019 by 12.5% even though China's imports from the U.S. dropped by 21%, based on Chinese customs data released for 2019. With China increasing these imports significantly and the U.S. holding on to tariffs of 25% on $250 billon of China's exports to the U.S. which are outside the Phase 1 agreement, the downward course is set for the next few years for correction of a dangerous trade imbalance. That imbalance was allowed to develop over successive Republican and Democratic administrations. China already has the European Union as its first leading trading partner and south east Asia as its second. China plans to not be so closely intertwined with the U.S. in trade, and yet preserve its state sponsored development model and drive to compete in technology. China's increased purchases from the U.S. of $200 billon are broken down in terms of farm products- $32 billion, manufactured goods- $80 billion, energy products- $50 billion, services $35 billion. In effect the U.S. gets its goal of cutting the unsustainable China trade surplus quickly and with certainty in 3-5 years. China uses the period to transition for less trade linkage with the U.S. yet preserving its state sponsored model of development and drive for technological advancement.   ...

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LNG prices have declined in 2024 to a fraction of what they were from $70 per mmBTU in 2022 with the Ukraine war to about $10 in Jan 2024. India's state owned Petronet signed a 7.5 million ton LNG deal for 20 years with Qatar at the reduced prices. For the world it is a good thing as India moves to natural gas from coal when about 60% of the increased pollution in 2013-2021 is coming from India by some estimates. This translates into climate change. The goal is to go from 6% for natural gas in energy mix in 2013 to 15% by 2030. Few people realize what this means outside India- that every additional dollar that was added to the nation's energy bill was a dollar not going to essential building of modern rail and transport infrastructure, into new colleges, into new health infrastructure hospitals, into logistics for manufacturing hubs, into digital and modernizing the economy. This during the pandemic has meant free rations of food for hundreds of millions in the rural areas which have been continued into 2024. It meant accessing at the lowest possible price, buying at the right time, and buying oil and gas from a wide range of suppliers. WSJ's Megha Mandavia looks at this effort.  ...

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South Africa feels a sense of relief as omicron cases follow a pattern of very steep upward increase, followed by a short period of a month, and then a very steep decrease. Cases in South Africa with a population of 60 million, about the size of Britain, dropped from 27,000 at the peak to about 15,000 on December 21, 2021. The area around Johannesburg was hardest hit. The median age is 27 years in South Africa, 40 in UK and 43 in Italy. With younger populations in India and parts of Asia South African population demographic is closer to India than it is to Europe where populations are much older. Scientists do not want to extrapolate from the South African experience with Omicron for this reason. Immunity from vaccination and prior infection could be contributory causes to the less severity of omicron say NCID scientists. "In South Africa this is the epidemiology. Omicron is behaving in a way that is less severe," says Dr. Cheryl Cohen, of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NCID). "Compellingly together our data really suggest a positive story of a reduced severity of omicron compared to other variants," he said at a conference with other scientists on Wednesday, Dec. 22.  ...

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As the ECB reduces its monthly purchases under its QE program to 60 billion euros from 80 billion euros starting in April 2017, the initial market reaction was that quantitative easing was going out. This says Barley is not the case, and markets are overreacting. The ECB is now ready to buy bonds yielding less than the deposit rate. The ECB promised to extend purchases to Dec. 2017 or further. Look deeper says Barley and ECB forecasts headline inflation at 1.7% in 2019, less than 2% target. So continued QE made sense but at a lower pace. In the end it is the flow that matters not the stock of purchases, says Barley.

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By April 22 2026 a measured and careful response from the US president as the US Naval blockade stays on and US exercises patient waiting. Iran fails to save its economy from disruptions, massive loss of jobs as supply chains fail, and inflation exceeds 50%, two million in job losses. The longer the war carries on and the naval blockade remains in place purely to hold on to enriched uranium for weapon systems and ballistic missiles, the larger the economic losses.

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Nearly 9-10 million Indians work in the Persian Gulf kingdoms. They are affected by the war with Iran. About 1 million have returned to India during the current war in 2026. About 2.2 million of the 9 million are from Kerala state in southern Indian coastline with cities such as Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram the capital. Of the $50 billion they send back as remittances to India Kerala gets the largest amount among the states in India. As aresult this is affecting the state economy. Many people in the Gulf are being laid off as the Gulf economies are hit by the war. Recovery will be strong in 2027 only in Saudi and UAE (Emirates), others Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman will take much longer to recover according to some forecasts.

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Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announces the details of the $280 billion (20 lakh crore) economic package and action being taken to help (MSME) small and medium size enterprises in India. About 3 lakh crore or about $40 billion will be for support of the MSME enterprises. The MSME sector in India cover millions of micro, small and medium size businesses that support the economy. By increasing the size of the market by 2000 crores rupees through avoiding foreign tenders the government wants to give more scope for growth and investment to this sector. Some imports from China and other countries could now be manufactured in India as part of the push to be local and self reliant, as well as provide room for robust growth in the future after the blow from coronavirus.

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Meticulous preparations in France for the Olympics. This report shows Macron at the Olympics Aquatics Centre built at cost of 188 million euros. The budget in 2012 Olympics in London overspent by 200%, France will do it for about 20% overspend, says the Sports Minister. Macron says "Everything is a cause for vigilance and attention, nothing is a cause for worry or paralysis, that is my and our state of mind." When the Olympics open on July 26 this year it will be on the river Seine, with hundreds of flotilla boats. It is a unique effort as even the housing complex was built so that after the Olympics are over the housing could be reused to serve residents of a poorer neglected suburb of Paris. The river Seine is being cleaned up for swimming

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Action taken by president Biden to protect pensions of 10.1 million workers. Biden talks to workers in Philly, about "the most significant investment of pension security for union workers and retirees in over 50 years." Biden signed the Butch Lewis Act protecting pensions of workers on March 20, 2021. A worker's spouse who fought this battle for pension rights over 10 years says Biden restored the dignity of workers, that he walked the walk and talked the talk.

"I would always the remember the speech of John F. Kennedy, when I was a young girl" on the dignity of workers. She was awarded the Citizen medal of Freedom by president Joe Biden for her efforts to protect worker pensions endangered by reckless actions on Wall Street.

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The WSJ cites polls in Italy Feb. 8, before the two week blackout prior to elections on Feb 24-25. The polls cited show the Centre left PD coalition of Luigi Bersani at 35% of the vote, the coalition of Silvio Berlusconi at 28%, the centrist Monti parties at around 10%, and the surging Five Star Movement of Beppe Grillo in a range around 20%. The Monti centrist parties are facing difficulty because of the austerity measures taken by Monti's government in 2012. The Economist cites higher figures for the Monti centrist parties at 14% and puts Grillo's party at about 15%, showing the variations in poll figures. WSJ cites figures showing undecided vote at about 20% of voters, about 5 million voters being undecided. Voter turnout is also a factor, with less than the 80% voter turnout of 2008 expected in the current vote. The regional vote which determines the composition of the Senate shows Grillo likely to lead in Sicily, and the vote divided evenly between the PD party and Berlusconi's coalition in Lombardy. The best outcome for the eurozone is one in which the PD party wins, but not with a majority large enough for it not to need the support of the Monti centrist party, which is supported by Italy's business community and favored by the EU and Germany. ...

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From Kansas to Southern Spain, pictures from The Guardian show the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the night skies looking out into The Milky Way in December 2020. At the time of the pandemic understanding how small our world is on this planet as light travels at 300,000 kilometres per second and it takes 2 seconds to reach earth from the moon, thousands of years for light to reach earth from distant stars of which scientists say there are 200 billion. A British scientist and astronomer says there are 200 billion in a new book "The History of the Universe in 21 Stars."

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PM of Sweden Ulf Kristersson on the Joint Statement of the Nordic nations with India. Joint Statement: 3rd India-Nordic Summit, Oslo, 19 May 2026 Published 19 May 2026 1.  Today in Oslo, the Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi, the Acting Prime Minister of Denmark, Ms. Mette Frederiksen, the Prime Minister of Norway, Mr. Jonas Gahr Støre, the Prime Minister of Finland, Mr. Petteri Orpo, the Prime Minister of Iceland Ms. Kristrún Mjöll Frostadóttir, and the Prime Minister of Sweden, Mr. Ulf Kristersson, held the 3rd India-Nordic Summit hosted by the Norwegian Prime Minister. This Summit builds upon the previous two Summits held in Copenhagen in 2022 and Stockholm in 2018. 2. The Prime Ministers noted that they are meeting at a time of global geopolitical flux and rapid economic and technological transformation and agreed on the need to deepen the partnership between India and the Nordics for mutual benefit based upon shared interests and values and to cooperate in addressing global challenges. In this context, they decided to elevate the India-Nordic relationship to a trusted Green Technology and Innovation Strategic Partnership. 3.  As leaders of vibrant democracies and large open market economies, they underscored their shared interest in fostering a robust and resilient global order based on international law that promotes peace, stability, inclusive economic growth and sustainable development.  4. They reaffirmed their commitment to upholding international law, shared values and obligations including democracy, freedom, human rights, gender equality, rule of law, respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity and international peace and security in accordance with international law, including the United Nations Charter. 5.  The Leaders discussed international peace and security including the conflicts in Europe and the West Asia/Middle East. 6. They discussed opportunities for collaboration in trade and investment, blue economy, circular economy, digital infrastructure, digitalisation and artificial intelligence, climate action and energy security, fighting pollution, water, research and education, talent mobility, healthcare, space & geospatial sectors and defence. UN, multilateralism and international cooperation 7.   The leaders reiterated the importance of an effective multilateral system, with the United Nations at its core. They confirmed their commitment to work towards reforming the UN, including the UN Security Council, to make it more representative, inclusive, transparent, efficient, accountable, effective and reflective of the contemporary geopolitical realities. The Nordic Prime Ministers reiterated the support of the Nordic countries for permanent membership for India in a reformed and expanded UN Security Council. The Nordic leaders welcomed India’s application to the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG), and emphasized the importance of the international multilateral export control regimes in upholding non-proliferation and international peace and security. Trade, investment and economic cooperation 8.  The leaders emphasised the importance of a continued central role for the World Trade Organization in the multilateral trading system and global trade governance. They underscored the importance of a fair, open, transparent, equitable, non-discriminatory, inclusive and rules-based multilateral trading system, with WTO at its core. 9.   They acknowledged the significant economic exchanges in the form of trade and investments between India and the Nordic countries in promoting sustainable economic growth, prosperity, circular economy, bioeconomy, sustainable development and supply chain resilience. 10. To facilitate trade and investments and contribute to the objective of sustainable development, they particularly welcomed the entry into force of the India-EFTA Trade and Economic Partnership agreement and the conclusion of the India-EU Free Trade Agreement. The leaders also welcomed the active business exchanges in the margins of the Summit and highlighted the need of continued business exchanges to identify opportunities. The leaders stressed that in addition to the economic benefits by enhancing market access and removing trade barriers, the India-EU FTA and India-EFTA TEPA could support economic security and resilience through diversifying critical value chains and opening new markets. They welcomed the shared objectives under TEPA that EFTA states shall aim for investment of USD 100 billion leading to creation of one million direct jobs in India. 11.   The leaders further emphasized the need of undertaking initiatives to improve connectivity between the Nordic and the Indo-Pacific regions, including in line with the continued development of the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor. ...

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Spending a minimum of 250,000 euros on a house in Greece gets an investor a five year renewable visa. Chinese investors seeking a European base are buying or constructing homes in Athens, and the islands of Santorini and Corfu. This is reviving the residential building market in Greece after years of bailouts by the European Central Bank. Chinese middle class investors see the presence of Chinese companies such as Cosco which owns part of the port of Piraeus as a sign it is safe to invest in Greece. Property prices dropped 40% in 2010. In 2018 prices went up by 2% and building permits by 10%, according to the Bank of Greece. Real estate investment was up 20% in 2018 with Chinese investment companies buying into whole apartment blocks in Athens to draw investors.

Greece had a record 33 million tourists in 2018. A 320 billion euros bailout ended in 2018. 

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Inflation is receding as an issue in the 2024 elections as the CPI index dropped below 3% in July as reported by the Labor Department. It was 2.9% lowest since 2021. Greg Ip says when Trump is saying bacon costs 5 times more now he needs to find another supermarket. That is the joke as Trump is really getting ripped off. Ip says bacon prices are up 18% since 2020 when Biden took office. Trump says at rallies grocery prices are up 70%, Ip says fact correction -up 21% since January 2021 not 70%. Trump says gas prices are $5.00 a gallon. Fact correction- gas prices are $3.75 a gallon and falling, says Ip. Trump wildly exaggerates. Trump says he will cut energy and electricity prices by 50% in 12-18 months. His answer "Drill Baby Drill." Experts cited by Greg Ip say even if new offshore and onshore leases are given, increase in supply is marginal and years away. Gas prices are determined by the world price determined by OPEC and Russia, says Ip.  Trump will increase inflation says this report because of tariffs he plans of 60% on imports from China and 10% from other places. That would increase inflation by 1.4 to 1.7% say analysts. Greg Ip of WSJ offers more clues. Inflation linked bonds see inflation dropping to 2.2% in 2025 instead of 2.6% predicted earlier. Jerome Powell at the US central bank the Fed and president Biden hav done their job well and are not letting up, continue to work on it diligently every day. ...

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With so much coverage of other aspects of China,  to really understand China and Xi Jinping one has to understand the rural urban situation in China. Xi's long experience as a teenager in the cultural revolution of Mao was in rural areas, the 8 years he spent there till the age of 22, as this report by James Areddy with help of Yijun, Cheng and Qi aptly shows. It traces the shift and mass migration to cities starting with Deng's modernization drive in 1979. This shift of labor to city and town factories as the U.S. and Europe shifted factories and production to China is the story of our times. How it has both helped and hurt China and how it has become the dominant issue of our times, and a lesson for India in the middle of its own modernization and shift of labor to cities. It has helped China modernize with the shift during 1979 to 2016 and run into a road block with president Trump leading a movement in the U.S. of people most hurt by the outsourcing of factories and production to China. It was not meant to be this way. Yet the shift also led to ripping up the fabric of communities and towns with loss of factories across America over three decades. Because China is a large country the impact was huge decade after decade, leading to a backlash against lost jobs in the U.S. and in Europe.  Xi Jinping has romantic view of rural China as he spent 7 years in Shanxi province rural areas during the cultural revolution under Mao. During this period he toiled as part of farm labor alongside villagers which allowed him to get to know villagers and farmers in the countryside well, and formed his view of the world around him. As it is described in a description of the man in Chinese sources- "He arrived at the village as a slightly lost teenager and left as a 22 year old man determined to do something for the people."  China's system separated migrants from city dwellers not  giving same rights to better education, to schools and housing, and official documents separating the two, city dwellers and migrant populations from rural areas. As a result as China modernized and population shifted -shown here in excellent graphic charts over four decades- in 1979 from about 80% in rural areas and 20% in urban the shift goes to 50-50 by 2001. Today it is 40-60 with 60% in rural areas but a population of 40% suffering from severe inequalities and  low incomes. So that GDP per capita of $10,000 for China is deceiving. The real incomes in average disposable income is about $4300 in urban and $1700 in rural area, according to National Bureau of Statistics. High school education is hard enough to get in rural areas, medical care is very basic and the $1700 would hardly get a room in low income housing in a large town in China, says premier Li Keqiang. Keqiang did his masters thesis on urbanization and has studied this shift from his college days. Just as in Gandhi's India, Mao's China is the story of the villages, with 128,000 villages for 600 million people in Mr. Xi Jinping's anti-poverty drive. Hong Kong other issues have to be understood in the context of these concerns of China's leadership today- the sense that strong central leadership alone can keep the country together and bring a decent life to the people in the villages and in the countryside outside the cities.  Modernization of cities still set in the context of China's vast rural population and essential to its full uplift and progress. Xi has allocated $80 billion each year to bring roads, schools, medical facilities, and other amenities including electricity and modern heating. The idea now is to shift people back to the villages, find opportunities for jobs and livelihoods in farming, tourism with guesthouse facilities, and other occupations in the villages. The villages are being turned into attractive places to live one by one in this party drive and providing new enthusiasm and support for the party's efforts. India can learn from this experience in China. The western nations of the U.S. and Europe can no longer and will no longer undertake the wholesale shift of factories with loss of jobs to China or India to offer the prospect of bringing these countries to the kind of urbanization and overall prosperity of small nations like Japan and South Korea, which are a tiny fraction of the population of China and India+ Pakistan + Bangladesh. As a result China is changing strategy now with a return to some aspects of the informal economy in Chengdu with street peddlers and tiny retail, and return of migrants back to better built and improved villages in the countryside. A better life than in cities is possible this view says for people from these rural areas, if the rural areas are given modern facilities and construction and resources are allocated, job creation locally tackled. The villages can offer better air quality, better quality of life where villagers who earlier migrated to cities with ownership of land, when they are modernized with better roads and have better facilities for education, housing and healthcare, better amenities. The new approach is to strike a good balance for urbanization, by modernizing and investing in villages and small towns, so that cities can cope and overall life can be better than with mass migration and wholesale urbanization. It is also a balance that works well for the U.S. and Europe which can redirect manufacturing to their home regions as part of a better distributed and balanced supply chain than the one that was unwittingly built over the last three decades.    ...

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In a visit to Washington DC Mr. Trump talks about an all tariff revenue system that would replace the income tax. He says he would take the corporate tax down from 21% to 20%. He meets with the CEO's in the Business Round Table including Dimon of JP Morgan Chase and of Bank of America.

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Sri Lankan High Commissioner Milinda Moragoda, is interviewed in Indian Express in Idea Exchange, with Shubhajit Roy, moderating the questions. Moragoda explains what happened over the last three decades and how Sri Lanka got to this point. About politicians he says Sri Lanka has too many politicians, and the violence of the JVP in the south and LTTE in the north and northeast set the country back by decades. Leaders from J Jayawardene, Kumaratunga to the Rajapaksas all failed to understand the spiral downwards of the economy, says Moragoda. Debt increased and 80% of the government revenues goes to pay pensions and government employees, leaving only 20% for debt service and little for investment in the economy. He says there are 1.5 million government employees and 500,000 pensioners, for a country of 22 million people. Of the population of 22 million about one million Tamils left the country during the civil war, and another 1 million people are in West Asia. Moragoda says most of the borrowing came after 2009 as the civil war ended with $12.5 billion borrowed or 40% of the total debt. About 80% of government revenues goes to pay pensions and government employees and another 70% goes to pay interest on debt, but he does not elaborate or explain this. What one can say from the experience of other countries in debt spiral is that at some point the interest accumulates to create a vicious cycle of interest on the cumulative total which includes interest from earlier years. Argentina is a recent example. And he makes no effort to say how he sees Sri Lanka is finding a path out this situation with a $2.9 billion IMF loan on debt of $51 billion.  Of the $12.5 billion borrowed since 2009 Moragoda says "that's  40% of our debt." Yet the total debt on which Sri Lanka defaulted is shown at $51 billion. $12.5 billion is 25% of the $51 billion. He does not provide any details about the financing terms on which Sri Lanka borrowed. It is clear that the interest rates were high over 6% in many cases which can be very burdensome for poor countries dependent on commodity exports. Countries such as Greece with debt crises had very large numbers of pensioners and government employees in Europe during the eurozone crisis, but nowhere does it show that it took up 80% of the government revenues in Greece. The number of government employees range from 1 to 1.2 to 1.5 million according to different figures for Sri Lanka. Even in Greece the number of public sector workers in government were 616,000 by some estimates during the severe eurozone debt crisis years around 2015. They are now estimated at about 369,000 in 2020.  Without a clear idea of these figures and transparency it is hard for any economy to be managed in a prudent way. See the related report "Fallacies of Sri Lankan Debt Patterns," a report by the Observer Research Foundation, on this same page today which say that Sri Lanka borrowed at exorbitant interest rates for a poor country.  Moragoda has worked for administrations in different portfolios including in economic affairs. He says Sri Lanka's economy is too small to get attention and investment it needs from India, and that the Adani investment shows that this can still be made to happen. India remains Sri Lanka's key partner as it grapples with this crisis. ...

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North Korea launched a missile that landed within 125 miles of Japan's northwest coast. The Japanese Defense Ministry stated the additional time to reach the Japanese shoreline was 20-30 seconds. North Korea said it did this to protest the U.S. and South Korea setting up a THAAD, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System, about 200 miles southeast of Seoul to intercept North Korean missiles. Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe reshuffled his cabinet and appointed Tomomi Inada, a conservative who supports revision of the Japanese constitution to improve Japanese capabilities for defense. She is the second woman to take up the defense ministry position after the newly elected Tokyo governor, Yuriko Koike.

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On Tuesday January 20, 2009, inauguration day, Bank of America loses 29% of its value, JP Morgan 21%, Citigroup 20%, State Street 56%, and the Dow average drops below 8000 with a drop of 332 points or 4%.

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Porter cites a report by Kai Daniel Schmid and Ulrike Stein of the Macroeconomic Policy Institute in Dusseldorf. The report shows the top 10% of Germans having 26% of the country's income before taxes and transfers in 1991. This increased to 31% by 2010. For the same period of about 20 years the bottom half of the population took in 17% in 2010 dropping by 5% from 22%. The growing income inequality in Germany is comparable to what has happened in the U.S. over this period.

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Average US bills for electricity have gone up by over 10% in about 15 states with some rate hikes over 20%, reports the Washington Post. In New Jersey 21%, Virginai 15%. Higher prices in Utah where renewable energy projects cancellation have drawn criticism from Republican governor Spencer Cox. Higher rates also in Indiana, Ohio and Louisiana. Data centers put up by tech companies are taking up huge amounts of energy pushing up rates. Voters believe these tech companies are not paying their "fair share." There is also no clear idea on whether clean energy is pushing up prices of electricity or whether the cancellation of clean energy projects including the ones that make sense  are pushing up electricity prices, with voters going both ways in their perceptions. With a rapidly shrinking gap between India+ Japan and China, the US can finally put to rest the burdens of conflict such as the 1930's Japanese invasion of China, the war after pearl Harbor in the Pacific, the Korean conflict, and the Vietnam conflict in which America and its people shouldered huge burdens. ...

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The Biden administration has announced a 100 day review of strategic vulnerabilities in America's supply chain. President Biden has said he supports funding of incentives for production in the US, to become independent of China and Taiwan. From 1990 onwards chip production in the US went from 37% to about 12% today. It will now go back up. Biden's National Security Adviser noted in an article in Foreign Policy that advancing industrial policy like Japan and France once considered out of tune is now essential, "something close to obvious."  At one point in the post war period America's most advanced jet engines were made in West Berlin, surrounded by the army of Russia and its ally the GDR. There is new realization that dependence on Taiwan which makes 22% of semiconductors worldwide and 50% of advanced designs cannot go on the way it is exposing a critical vulnerability for American industry. A 40% tax credit for the cost of new semiconductor fabrication plants and other incentives are now supported in the Biden administration. The whole idea is to turn this around quickly where US no longer depends on uncertain supplies from overseas. Four critical areas of strategic vulnerability will be reviewed- pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, batteries, and strategic materials. ...

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Evidence of the multicultural society that the U.S. is becoming is shown in Census Bureau information showing that 50.4% of children under the age of 1 year were Hispanic, black, Asian American or other minority groups. This is up from 49.5% in April 2010 census information. A striking change is that the white population is growing older and the Hispanic population is much younger as a whole. Today minorities are about 37% of the population in the U.S., with the District of Columbia, California, Hawaii, New Mexico and Texas, having minority population in the majority. The median age for white non-Hispanic people is 42 compared to 28 for Hispanics, and early 30's for Asians and Blacks. The baby boom of minority children is also because the number of white women in their 20's and 30's has declined over time as the White non-Hispanic population has aged. Another change that is being seen is that immigration from Mexico has declined to the point where some Hispanics are going back to Mexico. William Frey, a demographer from the Brookings Institution says immmigrants will continue coming from other parts of the world when the economy recovers. The timing for immigration say demographers is good because without the immigrants the U.S. would have an aging society like that in Japan....

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GM shares hit a new low of $1.52 on February 20, 2009. On February 20, 2008, one year ago, GM shares were at $25.54 a share. This is the lowest level in 70 years. President Obama's task force onthe auto industry met on February 20 for the first time.