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The lack of economic opportunities for an increasingly urbanized African younger generation is a major challenge. The median age of 19 makes Africa the world's youngest continent. Megacities are growing up in places such as Lagos and Kinshasha as millions leave subsistence farming to go to cities. Unlike Asia and Latin American countries men and women are coming to shantytowns in cities at a time when Africa is much poorer for a similar level of urbanization that Asian and Latin American nations reached decades earlier. In 1993 this WSJ analysis and graphs show the Asian emerging economies and sub Saharan Africa had similar GDP per capita of $2415, by 2019 this was $4000 for Africa and $12,000 for Asian emerging economies. Latin America was at $10,000 in 1993 and in 2019 was at about $15,000. The gap widened considerably between Asia and African countries. Asian emerging economies increased GDP to 5 time from the same starting point as Africa in 1993, Africa doubled GDP over the period of 25 years to 2019. Latin America started from a much higher point and increased GDP by only 50% over 25 years. Asian economies that performed better over this period did better because of stable even entrenched governments such as in Singapore with Le Kuan Yew and in China with stable successive governments under CPC leadership of prime minister Deng. The difference in Asia was a commitment across all classes and groups to development, a sense of development as a way to make up for the years lost under colonialism of foreign powers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A sense of correcting historical injustice and wrongs. This is a missing ingredient in the processes unfolding in Latin America and Africa in the last 25 years. ...

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Brazil held the Olympics and the World Soccer Cup, building new stadiums and living off the boom in oil and metals prices under previous governments. Today not only is there a lack of funding for infrastructure, healthcare, education and transportation.   This is now leading to lack of investment in healthcare services in a shocking way. The first full blown epidemic of yellow fever is hitting Brazil's cities of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. Officials fear that it will spread in an area that has 23 million people if it hits the slums where A.aegyoti mosquitoes are to be found in swarms. Rio and Sao Paulo are trying to tackle it by vaccinating 23 million people. Yellow fever kills about 3-8% of people affected. The economic crisis with lack of funds, and the political crisis that has affected Brazil with corruption scandals has led to a delayed response, according to experts at UCLA infectious disease center.  The disease is traced to loggers and monkeys in the Amazon region which usually remains contained in that region. SInce 2016 the lack of a strong official response has led to the crisis where monkeys carry it a mile a day all the way south to the Rio and Sao Paulo region. A effective government response would have included the use of media to educate people on the need for vaccination for all except newborns and pregnant mothers. Instead social media Facebook and You Tube spread the idea that the vaccination was dangerous, anti vaccine persons who normally got no audience trashed the vaccine. So that today public health authorites have to deal with this problem. The vaccination is highly effective and invented in the 1930's, was not started till November 2016, even though the spread southward from the Amazon region started in 2016. In fact says Dr Marquez, an expert at the University of Pittsburgh, only one in 100,000 gets a reaction and one in a million dies. He says compared to this 6% of 30 million people in the region affected could lose their lives, or  2 million deaths. ...

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The ECB president Draghi announces an interest rate cut, lowering the interest rate in the eurozone to 0.15% from 0.25%. He also lowered the rate on overnight bank deposits at the ECB to a negative 0.10%, to encourage banks to lend at a time when credit is tight for businesses in the eurozone. The eurozone faces a risk of deflation with low growth in the eurozone economies. Popular discontent was reflected in eurozone elections in France, UK, Greece and Spain.

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Michael Gerson was a policy advisor to Geroge W. Bush when Bush announced the PEPFAR program to fight AIDS in Africa. Here he reflects on its lessons. He recalls visiting sub-Sharan Africa and finding only about half a million people being treated out of about 30 million afflicted with the disease. About 14 million orphans had already resulted from AIDS, life expectancy had declined by 20 years, and in whole villages only grand parents and grand children were to be seen, says Gerson. The support came from Rep. Hyde, Rep Barbara Lee, Senators Frist and Kerry- in 4 months after the announcement in a State of the Union address the law was signed. Bush said: "a work of mercy beyond all current international efforts to help the people of Africa. This comprehensive plan will prevent 7 milion new AIDS infections, treat at least 2 million people with life extending drugs and provide humane care for millions of people suffering from AIDS and for children orphaned by AIDS." By late 2005 PEPFAR and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria had treated 800,000 people, and by 2012 this had increased to 5 million....

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Alan Blinder points out that the political partisanship that has emerged in 2010 has not served America well, as it has deprived the government of the fiscal policy tools, which would be more effective than the Fed's only mildly effective tool of buying $100 billion a month of medium and long term Treasury debt. The country he says is tied up in partisan knots that prevents the use of the fiscal policy tools, and leaves the Fed with the choice of doing something only nudging the rates on government and private securites a bit (by 30 basis points for Treasury debt and 15 basis points for private securities as an example, not enough for more than a mild impact on corporate spending). The fiscal policy tools are he says of a wide variety and pack a lot more power, and he cites three as examples: offering significant lasting tax breaks for job creation, large enough to produce results (larger and long term than the HIRE program), government hiring directly onto public payrolls and government paying local and state governments for hiring at the local levels, the government offering to compensate states for a cut in the sales tax for a year to stimulate consumer spending. Would'nt this raise the deficit though? Blinder points out that the deficit problem lies in the future. Right now there is so much slack in the economy, that public spending will not crowd out private spending. And with Treasury rates at an all time low, Treasury can finance the larger deficit in the short term. A depreciation of the dollar or inflation, he says, is not a worry, because now there is worry about deflation, and the USA needs a lower dollar to push exports up and rebalance its economy. This does not slight the deficit issue and the culture of poor budgeting among both parties, as Reagan Budget Director David Stockman pointed out in an op-ed piece, but accomodates the real dangers and opportunities of difficult policy choices. This is why he laments the advertising campaign and public relations campaign against the 2009 stimulus bill, and the expected paralysis of fiscal policy from the extremely partisan 2010 midterm elections, and public opinion consumed by fear of deficits. Leaving the Fed with the unenviable choice of using only mildly effective tools. Other experts and columnists mention the risks associated with the Fed's large scale purchase of securities, if this leads to another asset bubble and subsequent collapse, and another bailout needed for financial institutions. Peter Eavis in one column in the WSJ points to the lack of effectiveness of the first round of quantitative easing of $1.7 trillion. And Kelly Evans, in the WSJ, points to the risks of "bad" inflation, if another round of quantitative easing by the Fed leads to increases in the price of commodities such as oil and food (such inflation falling heaviest on lower income households).The US Financial Regulatory Reform bill has received low grades, and recent standards for reserve capital in worldwide banking reforms are stretched out over a long period, leaving fragility in the economic system, if something were to go wrong....

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Civil rights song of Rutha Mae Harris of Albany, Georgia. I'm going to vote like the spirit say vote I'm going to vote like the spirit say vote I'm going to vote like the spirit say vote And if the spirit say vote I'm going to vote Oh Lord, I'm going to vote when the spirit say vote. Says Miss Harris who participated in all the civil rights struggles since 1961 of Obama, "he's of a different time and place, but he knows whose shoulders he's standing on." At the time in 1961 fewer than 100 of Georgia's Dougherty County's 20,000 black residents were registered to vote. Literacy tests made a mockery of due process, one field worker remembers being asked by a registrar how many bubbles are there in a bar of soap. And bosses made it clear to black workers that registration might be incompatible with continued employment. Repeatedly civil rights workers draw connections between their work and the colorblindness of Obama's candidacy. Says 103 year old Daisy Newsome who was in the early civil rights struggles, "it ain't because he's black, because I've voted for the whites. I know he can't be no worse than what there's done been. I think he would be just as good a President as one of those whites ever made."...

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Holman Jenkins on what may be advisable steps like the Fed's efforts to print money and acquire every kind of private asset, but which have large "confidence costs", and the effects of the Madoff scandal that have another kind of confidence cost and is he says peculiarly demoralizing. He is skeptical about how well spent the $1 trillion stimulus will be, and there is a sense of bailout fatigue. He is also skeptical about policy which he says is always bad to a degree the way its made in ademocracy, but becomes an unvirtuous circle in the kind of situation where different interest groups start competing for where money should be spent. In the light of all this Jenkins sees a lost decade and asks the reader to get ready for that. The image of long lines from the 1930's that is the picture going with this article, with the caption "what the stimulus looks like", is not reassuring. It captures the mood of those who know that the strong steps ofthe new administration and the Fed are advisable, but simply not convinced that these steps will lead back to prosperity in the years ahead. In the American economy built as it is on innovation, energy, immigrants, and independent spirit, the churning of companies as new ones take the place of the old, and new technologies and their commercialization, the virtues of policy driven goals however worthy are set against the limits and inherent weakness of government bureaucracies, and the crowding out of private investment and initiative as the government steps in. Compared to previous periods like the FDR administration when business skeptical about the policy of the Democrats remained critical, there is a different situation today when bipartisan policy has been developed for years and a consensus was reached after the Reagan years that was followed through the Democratic Clinton administration, so that critiques of policy can be used to improve the way things are done to address the economic problems facing the country. ...

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A back of the envelope kind of analysis by Robert Cyran shows that GM may not reach positive net present value even with all its efforts. The rescue package from the governmet required GM to come up with aplan to achieve positive net present value. Treasury wants GM to wipe out two thirds of its unsecured debt by swapping it for equity. Even if this succeeded it would leave GM with $12 billion of unsecured debt and $6 billion in secured debt. With the government money of $13.4 billion the debt goes up to $31.4 billion. GM has to pay $10 billion in cash into the independent fund for UAW members benefits. And net unfinanced health care liabilities for non UAW workers is $8 billion. Prof. Roth at the University of Chicago estimates GM's pension plan may be underfinanced by $23 billion after the market downturn. Cyran uses a conservative number of $10 billion Adding it to the rest gives $60 billion in liabilities. With analyst estimates of $135 billion in sales in 2008 and about 3% margin this implies $4 billion in operating earnings. This seen as a steady ten year income stream would make GM's car business worth $28 billion. These ballpark estimates by Cyran show that GM will have a tough time proving to the government that it can achieve positive net present value and that it should not be drastically reorganized under bankruptcy, which would be redefining the business from the ground up, and discarding old models and behaviours completely by bringing in new managers with no preconceived notions about the business. Actually Cyran's $4 billion in operating earnings based on a 3% margin and $135 billion in sales may be optimistic considering that its based on 2008 performance. 2009 and 2010 performance will likely turn out to be worse than 2008 as both unemployment and consumption spending deteriorate. ...

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Faced with low eurozone inflation of annualized 0.7% in October 2013, and low growth, the ECB lowers interest rates in the eurozone by 0.25%. The risk from deflationary pressures is high in Oct 2013. Weakening the euro from $1.38 in Oct. 2013 to $1.34 following the rate cut helps increase inflation through higher price for imports and helps boost exports. This brings rates close to zero and the ECB having to resort to quantitative easing in future efforts.

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The World Bank's Jim Yong Kim leads an effort to bring infrastructure development to war torn regions, including $1 billion in investment in the war torn Democratic Republic of the Congo. This would help build hydroelectric power plants, roads and agricultural infrastructure, especially along the border with Uganda and Rwanda. This is where Kim sees the World Bank making the greatest difference. Kim is unique because he brings a background in anthropology and medicine, compared to the background in politics and finance of previous World Bank presidents. He increased committments to sub-Saharan Africa to about $14 billion in the current fiscal year ending June 2013, from $12.2 billion in 2012. This is his first year at the World Bank.

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Extreme positions on business related issues taken by politicians in the Republican party. An effort to influence the Republican party's platform through the ouster of moderate Republicans like Jim Bennett of Utah. The impact on the US Congressional elections in 2010. Positions such as the abolition of the Federal Reserve, prohibiting stimulus funding, sealing the borders and doctrinaire positions on the role of government. Education reform, immigration reform, investment in infrastructure building all will be out in this type of platform adopted by some candidates. A Senate candidate from Alaska suggests Social Security is unconstitutional. By appealing to popular discontent with the Obama administration, and anger with the bank bailouts, what is called the Tea party movement has taken shape. It is built around politicians Sarah Palin of Alaska, Jim DeMint, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and other candidates such as Haley in South Carolina who are using it to tap into discontent. It has the support of Fox News, and Dick Armey former Congressman from Texas who heads FreedomWorks, and libertarian billionaire David Koch. Built around seductive principles of small government, the movement has no clear program considering the diverse positions of the different politicians and different extreme positions adopted, including a general hostility to large corporations without differentiating a BP or a Goldman Sachs from a GE. GE's operation of MSNBC puts it in the same category as a Goldman Sachs. The lack of a clear position by the US Chamber of Commerce, because of its opposition to the Obama administration. The movement carries with it risks, as the Republican party's control of the House of Representatives is not ensured. Ideology of a vague kind has become a substitute for good credentials and experience, in the fast-forward effort by activists such as Dick Armey to capture popular discontent. Says Dick Armey, "We live by the creed 'hard work beats Daddy's money,' " raising serious questions about how a statement like this would help the jobless or the economy. ...

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A report of the Transportation Department shows that over the past 8 months Americans have reduced their driving by more than 40 billion miles. Higer gasoline prices led to Americans driving less. In April 2008 Americans drove 1.8% less miles than the year earlier April, and in May this increased to 3.7% fewer miles than a year earlier. And this trend is not going to change or go back as as happened previously. So its a permanent feature of the new landscape according to experts. Everythng the kinds of cars people drive (smaller and fuel efficient), where people live (closer to work, and in closer proximity), the way they drive (less and use bicycles and small Smart vehicles also), and the way they use alternative transport ( frequent use of mass transit and better quality of mass transit with new investment), all tis is about to change permanently. The way the USA funds road and bridge repair and maintenance and new road and bridge construction is through gasoline taxes at the federal level (18.4 cents a gallon) and state taxes. With reduced driving there is less money available to fund these road projects. But this happens at a bad time because existing road and bridge infrastructure is crumbling. About 25% of the country's bridges are in bad shape or obsolete or structurally deficient and one in seven miles of roads are in bad shape according to the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission, and most people can see this when they drive around intheir cities. And big increases in the cost of asphalt and other construction materials are only compounding the problem. The Commission says it will cost $225 billion a year to tackle national transportation infrastructure needs. Worse still only 40% of this is getting funded. So a huge gap in funding looms and Congress is being pushed to come up with funding solutions as states struggle to deal with the problem....

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Zalmay Khalizad, a former diplomat to Iraq, reports from Iraq after discussions with prominent Iraqis, describes the state of U.S. relations with Iraq under the Abadi government. He says the Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq prime minister Abadi, and Iraqi public opinion, now favor improved relations with the U.S. following the sectarianism promoted by prime minister Maliki and Iran's expanded role in Iraq. Other reports show Iraqi opinion in transition as the U.S. withdrawal promoted by Maliki has led to 2 million refugees, and huge dislocation of people with the expansion of Islamic State from Syria into Iraq. The change in opinion is also towards promoting better relations with Sunni countries. People in the region do not see a bright future with an increase in religious tensions that only lead to more destructive behaviours and increase in refugees. Towards the end of the Bush administration there was some hope that Iraq would see a bright future, only to see this reversed under Maliki's sectarian policies. U.S. public opinion has shifted away from any involvement following the failure of the people in the region to resolve differences and live peacefully. The cost of the wars with little gained as a result of the failure of the people in the region to work together in the common interest is a part of the public debate in the U.S. presidential election of 2016. Sectarianism in the region is the root cause of the growth of the Islamic State and the expansion of the war in Syria, and this has not only worsened the situation for the people in the region, delayed economic development given large oil resources, and left the region worse off than before. It has also led to the refugee flow into Europe worsening the situation in the European Union, adding to tensions in European societies such as France, Germany, Denmark and Sweden, following terrorist attacks and political parties promoting fear of immigrants. What started as a U.S. response to terrorism originating in this region in New York, followed by the war in Iraq, has led to more convulsions in this region, a huge number of refugees, whole country populations displaced, and requires a fresh rethinking about what people in the region can do to live and work together and promote the peaceful participation of people in their own development and growth, before Western societies consider further involvement. The statement about lost to Iran in the title also suggests framing of statements in the old way that are the root of the problem. When the dust settles years from now Iranians, Iraqis, Saudis, Yemeni, Turkish, Pakistani, Indian and other Muslim societies may want to look back at this period as reflecting the dangers of getting caught up in the geopolitics of world powers, letting religious sentiment override calmer thinking, and reflect on the brighter aspects of the common Islamic heritage in Iran, Turkey, India, expressed humanly as it is always is in different ways and forms. They can also take hope and confidence in the fact that European societies have struck the same rocks and emerged calmer, wiser, and better than before....

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Even though E-Bay executive Meg Whitman has outspent Jerry Brown by $130 million, much of it her own money, she trails Brown by 8 percentage points in an Oct 20 survey by nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. That survey showed Brown leading 44% to 36%. She had a hard line stance on illegal immigration in her ads for the primaries, which changed later in the campaign to attract Latino voters. Her campaign crafted by consultants focussed on three themes- cut government spending, create jobs, and fix education. Brown is a former Governor of the state and current attorney general. Experts attribute the lagging Whitman campaign to voters leery of 2 kinds of politicians- the first is the career politician and the second is longtime corporate executives. In other polls Senator Barbara Boxer is leading Ms Fiorina, former HP executive, 43% to 38%. Because of last minute surges in the polls, a lead of 8 points or more is considered necessary for the governor's campaign, for a candidate to win. Another factor is that Governor Schwarznegger came in with no political experience, and was beset by the state's fiscal troubles, with his poll ratings now at 28%....

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Problems in the power sector that limit India's economic growth. Power plants being built are short of coal and other fuel supplies. Coal supply has not kept up with increase in power plant capacity- coal production increased by a mere 1% in 2011 and power plant capacity increased 11%. The gap between demand and supply for power increased from 7.7% in 2010 to 10.2% in 2011. Coal India which has 80% of production has not invested enough in new mining equipment and technology to rapidly increase production. This combined with higher energy costs for imports and weak infrastructure continues to act as a constraint to economic growth.

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A former bond salesman at Goldman Sachs, who became managing director at Lehman Brothers and at Credit Suisse Boston, writes a book- The Investment Answer. He has only a few months to live after getting brain cancer, and decides he is going to make the best use of this time by writing this book. He points to the futility of active money management. And he is one of the few top money managers to take back a lot of what he learned during his career. At one time he says he did believe in the idea that our word was our bond, and good ethics was good business, but that was before this was transformed by liar loans.

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The Guardian provides this first account of what happened in the Galwan Valley border between India and China at the Line of Actual Control. It is described as the worst fighting in 60 years. On the high steep ridge lines above the rapidly moving Galwan River a patrol of Indian soldiers encountered Chinese troops in a steep section of a high mountainous region. They believed the PLA Chinese Army had withdrawn from the ridge in line with a June 6 disengagement agreement. The Indian government says that what happened afterwards was pre-meditated ambush by the PLA forces. In the fighting that ensued the Indian commanding officer was pushed from the narrow ridge falling to the gorge below. Reinforcements from the Indian side were called from a post 2 miles away and about 600 men were fighting in near total darkness in high mountain ridge with stones iron rods for upto 6 hours. Following a decades long tradition to avoid escalation of hostilities because of nuclear weapons of both countries the two sides have not used other weapons. Most deaths on both sides were from soldiers falling or being knocked from mountain ridges. The main problem in the conflict is the Line of Actual Control exists but since China's takeover of Tibet in 1950 there is no agreement that has set the official border. The British Simla agreement in 1912 set the border with Tibet in an agreement between Tibet and the British Empire in India, when Tibet was an independent country. China claims that historically going back to Ming and Qing dynasty Tibet was part of its region. For most of its history Tibet was an autonomous region with closer contacts with India because it is close to Nepal and Nepal is very near the Indian Bihar state border.  A new rail link from Raxaul, Bihar in India to Kathmandu is only 137 kilometres, and from Kathmandu to the Tibet border is only 205 kilometres. Fast rail or road links would put Tibet within a few hours by rail or road to Tibet from India. For the entire period the US exists as a nation about 250 years and from the first landing of the colonists on American shores about 1607 Tibet was a mountainous region that was so remote that few people even knew about the country's existence. Beijing and Shanghai are four thousand kilometres away, India much closer to Tibet through Kathmandu, Nepal and India sharing a common culture, and no one thought much about the mountainous borders at 15000- 20,000 feet in the western Himalayas, till China's takeover of Tibet in 1950. India had no clear idea what this meant in 1950- no clear border except for what was agreed between the Tibetan independent government  and the British in 1912 which was set under the British Empire- resulting in a fluid border. And China had no clear idea that this would put in a place it would not want to be thousands of miles from the Yangtse valley region home to most of China's population, in a remote mountain region at heights of 15,000 -20,000 feet, with little to gain. Throughout history since 1000 and earlier Tibet remained a region that acted as a buffer between China's western provinces and India, the high mountains at 15,000- 20,000 feet making it inaccessible. Which is why the Ganges plains and the Yangtse river valley plains contact was made more through the oceans than by land, and the areas developing distinctly different language and cultures. All this changed after 1954 when the Qinghai Tibet highway was built, the closest city on the Chinese side is Xining. Xining to Tibet is a distance of about 2000 kilometres at an average height of 4500 metres or about 14,000 feet.  ...