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Florida's House of Representatives passed a bill in March that reduces the number of weeks of unemployment benefits from the standard 26 weeks to 20 weeks. A similar law was passed in Michigan recently. Both states have unemployment rates exceeding 10%.

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Former U.S. president Bush says the U.S. has an important role as a beacon of freedom, human rights and democracy in the world. The U.S. should not shrink from the challenges in the name of a false and temporary stability, and flexibility should not mean ambiguity, difficulties should not mean shrugging away from America's role. Patience, creativity and active American leadership are needed. The Bush administration supported the struggles of people in central Europe and in other countries. This is from a speech Bush gave at the Bush Institute, Southern Methodist University in Dallas, a year into the Arab Spring. A speech that was giving voice to the aspirations of people in the Arab world.

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A formal lifting of economic sanctions takes place in Jan 2016 with the implementation of the nuclear deal with Iran, a landmark event.

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The top 1% of Americans owns more wealth than the 90% at the bottom, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The Economic Mobility Project points out that the U.S. provides less intergenerational mobility than most other industrialized countries. A key factor is less educational investments to give better educational opportunities to the less advantaged. Michael Spence, a nobel prize winning economist, says we have in America gone from one propertied man, one vote; to providing voting rights to all regardless of color or gender or property, and back to where it is now one vote for so many dollars. The financing of political campaigns has made good policy decisions for the financial sector based on merits and wise judgement impossible, as Congress and the White House are beholden to interests that finance political campaigns, says a former head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

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The WSJ Dollar Index tracks the U.S. dollar's performance against 16 other currencies. It surged by 12% in 2014 with a strengthening U.S. dollar. The rise in the dollar is likely to adversely affect the 15% of U.S. GNP that comes from exports and the $200 billion plus tourism industry in the U.S.

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German perceptions of Mikhail Gorbachev are shown here in DW.com. He is revered in Germany because of Gorbachev's efforts to end Soviet rule in East German state called the GDR, leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Gorbachev supported German reunification but did not do this is in a way that ensured that ordinary Russians and citizens of the GDR could make the transition to democratic processes in a smooth way. He also failed to grasp that economic transition could be difficult and would require extensive aid and grants from the west, and that safeguards and protections for retired pensioners and vulnerable sections of society needed to be in place. The following is a reflection of the background in political government and economy of the events in Europe leading to the war in Ukraine.  As a result Gorbachev's instincts were right by first 1956 as a student, and then 1979 as government official about the need for democratic processes to realize the real potential of Russia, just as has happened in many countries that lacked these processes for change in government- Japan, Germany, South Korea, India, Brazil and many countries in Asia and Latin America. But not realizing that these countries made the transition with considerable American and British assistance. Even where there was no direct assistance indirectly the British setup the first limited Swaraj or free rule in India, with elections and elected assemblies in Indian states in the 1930's, following the pattern in Dominion states Australia and Canada. Mohandas Gandhi negotiated within these processes for rights of South African Indians and Colored people, gaining experience, including study of British law.  A son of poor farmers in the agricultural region of North Caucasus, in Stavropol, it is relevant today that his maternal grand parents were from Chernihiv in Ukraine. He came to power in 1980 after entering the Politburo that year. These were the waning years of Leonid Brezhnev, president of the Soviet Union who followed Nikita Khrushchev (1953- 1964). Khrushchev was from eastern Ukrainian region near Donetsk. Leonid Brezhnev was a protege of Krushchev since 1931, from Kamianske, Ukraine.   Gorbachev was influenced by Khrushchev's speech that denounced Stalin in 1956 in favor of a freer and more open society. Khrushchev, became first secretary of the Communist party in 1953 after the death of Stalin and set the pace of post war Soviet society from 1950 to 1964. He removed the fear of the dictatorship of the proleteriat working class, increasingly dictatorial under Lenin, and blatantly arbitrary under his successor to make Soviet Union a freer society.  Yet his tendency to make decisions on his own without consulting others, and the failure of agriculture in the Soviet Union including food shortages led to his replacement by his protege Brezhnev. Brezhnev's whole career was built under Krushchev in Ukraine, in the army in Ukraine, and as a political leader in the Soviet 18th Army that entered Prague in 1945 defeating the Nazis. Why is this relevant? Gorbachev was educated at Moscow State University when the Soviet Union was in the Sputnik era, and felt at the time that it could reach the 1950's standard of living in the US- very different from the earlier leaders. Yet he may have been too much of an optimist and not hands on in understanding the working of a modern economy as large as Russia and the interests of different groups of society that had to be be balanced and protected. His understanding of the US and of how the US and British economies had evolved was limited or nonexistent. The isolation of the Soviet period may have compounded this. The Russian state in the Soviet Union could not simply unwind the power of the state and its intervention and everything would come out right of its own accord.   Leonid Brezhnev, the Ukrainian Russian who succeeded Krushchev from 1964 to 1979 let the system of Soviet rule remain as it was, in the Great Stagnation, leading to lethargy, lack of innovation, and a weak economy with military expansion. Gorbachev tried to regenerate the system by opening it up, but failed to see that there was a risk that it could come apart quickly as it did in just 4 years after he became president in 1985. Only the centralized power of the state had kept the Russian state together from the Tsarist period through the Communist period. The risks of this Gorbachev failed to grasp. What if it happened too quickly without a safety net for the people who could not make the transition. What lawlessness and failure of the rule of law could happen. The US and Britain had evolved their democracies over centuries. Wars were fought in the US and Britain over rights and responsibilities of kings and parliaments. In the US Lincoln fought the civil war not just for emancipation but to ensure safeguards for free white men on the farms so that Labor did not get disabilities placed on them by Capital (entrenched forces of Capital of which the southern plantation economy was only one aspect.)  Japan and Germany were set up as democratic states through American power and constitutional frameworks with Marshall Plans or agreement to take in unlimited imports from Japan. This bad scenario happened in Russia because Gorbachev failed to set the conditions first and work patiently to achieve them including introducing limited  elections and parliamentary processes first in Russia.  Leaders such as Yeltsin who succeeded Gorbachev in 1989, winning the elections that followed, failed to provide a safety net for the vulnerable in the 1980's. Unemployment increased rapidly, life expectancy dropped in Russia, and the economy failed in the early years after 1980. A Marshall Plan like that offered to Germany could have helped but Gorbachev's failure may have been his failure to provide this transition by arranging for West Germany and the US to support a planned transition, a kind of Marshall Plan of Aid, and maintaining a gradual move to democracy as the country was given time to learn institutions of American and British parliamentary democracy. No such Marshall Plan was negotiated for a smooth transition over inevitable obstacles, no safeguards were put in place for illegal efforts to control the state by rogue elements and to seize assets of state companies, no efforts to first introduce limited elections and parliamentary processes for learning democratic process in Russia, and the people of Russia were left with a memory of the this period as a bad lawless period from 1989 to 2005.  Leading to the situation today under Putin of aspiring to the Soviet period as a kind of period that had offered Russia the world recognition it had lost. And this had happened even though the Russian economy had recovered and the standard of living had risen under Putin. Putin's career spanned the period as a Russian official in Dresden, Germany Democratic Republic or Soviet period East Germany to working in the St Petersburg City Council under Yeltsin. He personally witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the German Democratic Republic from Dresden and Gorbachev's refusal to build a transition period for the changes so that it would not be traumatic for the GDR. Even after reunification these traumas remain in some segments of the older population in East Germany that saw themselves as neglected and support extreme right wing parties in eastern German states by 2020- considering the Soviet period as one in which their lives were less neglected.  After three terms as president Putin with his own traumas from that period in Dresden, and with a mother lost in the period after the Nazi invasion of Russia, a father who survived the Battle of Stalingrad, saw the period of lawless behaviour in the collapse of the Soviet Union as the"greatest geopolitical disaster of the century."  Putin and people around him made missteps and miscalculations launching a war in Ukraine, leading to the situation today- jeopardizing hard won gains for the Russian economy. By 2022 Russian standards of living had risen and the economy was in the best shape it had been in the modern period since the Industrial Revolution. Yet largely exposed because of the dependence on oil and gas during a period of climate change and focus on building future economies free of fossil fuels.  Putin in his own peculiar logic may have seen this as the only opportunity in 2022 before deliinking from fossil fuel reduced the importance of the Russian fuel dependent economy to make some territorial readjusments in Ukraine with a quick war taking Kviv. That turned into a massive miscalculation with the emergence of nationalist fervor in western Ukraine spreading to the whole country of 40 million people. In the future to 2030 with phasing out of the fossil fuel economy, Russia without the connections to the US and European Union's technology and resources it had during Putin's three terms, and facing strict sanctions from US and EU, faces a difficult future. This has cautionary lessons for all countries- the US that read too much into the fall of the Berlin wall and indulged in a losing proposition with free markets that damaged its infrastructure and manufacturing with shifts to China, China understanding of how it to was dependent on the world economy for its future development, India that had to navigate a difficult period and what lessons to draw for building a bigger economy, the EU realizing the failure of its policies of depending on Russia for energy and China for manufacturing with fragile supply chains,  and Russia that there were twists and turns and the need for safeguards and experience building democratic processes before these processes would work for the economy, its people and for Russia as a nation. ...

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Walter Mead describes the roots of the refugee crisis in 2015, as millions of refugees flee Syria, Iraq, and other countries in the Middle East, lying in the failure of governments throughout the Middle East to accomodate modernity, women's rights and technological progress into the old Islamic thinking. He says he sees this in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Tunisia, and other countries in the Middle East. The Arab Spring which aroused so much hope for the people of the region has floudered in the failure of both the Islamic leaders, the military elite, and civil society to come up with a consensus rooted in what a modern Islamic society that accomodates modernity, women's rights, the participation of people in their government, technological progress should look like. The Western nations of Europe and the U.S. also underwent soul searching to come up with a modern Christian society through its own struggles, which the Islamic societies have failed to do; and as a result floundered and broken up by sectarian, religious and military conflicts. Mead takes the long view, yet falls short when it comes to how European leaders and societies face individual challenges to bring their own Christian faith and ideals into the real world, in the way chancellor Merkel has responded in Germany. Europeans have had their own period of conflicts and civil wars, the refugee crisis and refugees in chancellor Merkel's words who "have gone through the hell of a civil war" are very real, and how each European responds defines who he is and how far Europe has come from its own dark days....

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Janet Napolitano, president of the University of California, says the Obama plan for ratings of colleges in the U.S. will not add much value because much of the information is already available. More important she says is to tackle the bad actors in education leading to high student debt. She says she will cut costs by a couple of hundred million dollars in the next few years, and will keep pushing on costs as there is a natural tendency to revert back. With less state support the UC system is admitting a larger number of students from out of state who pay higher tution.

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The market for copper experienced a global oversupply in the last 4 years with a sharp decline in prices. The Sierra Gorda mine in Chile and the Constancia mine in Peru will add more supply of copper. Prices of iron ore dropped 50% in 2014, and copper 14%. The CEO of Glencore PLC, Ivan Glasenberg, says the problem is a huge misallocation of capital, as companies in the mining business continued to invest heavily with supplies outstripping demand.

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Premier Wen announces new Chinese policy at state of the union address to improve the energy efficiency reduce pollution and increase worker incomes and boost education and health safety net expenditures. This is a slow to arrive but significant change in policy and will likely accelerate as the Chinese economy makes gains in this area. Wen wants to see more investment in agriculture and less in heavy industry. He is making primary school education fees in urban areas earlier rural school fees were ended and central government spending would be increased by 45% to make up for lost revenue to schools. He also wants to see more consumption spending so that living standards improve and for the first time since 2000 consumption contributed more to growth tan investment. With the new investment the government will only run a small deficit of 0.6% of GDP.

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Former Defense Secretary in the second term of the Obama administration, Chuck Hagel, says U.S. president Obama hurt his credibility when he failed to act on his own comments of a "red line" being crossed following the chemical attacks in Syria by the Assad government. Hagel was critical in an article in Foreign Policy magazine of the way the national security advisor, Susan E. Rice, ran discussions on foreign policy issues, with too many meetings and discussion followed up with deferring difficult decisions.

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Ilan Berman, vice president of the Foreign Policy Council in Washington D.C., cites former finance minister Alexei Kudrin about capital flight from Russia reaching as high as $160 billion in 2014. This is a result of Russian policies in Ukraine that are creating a high degree of uncertainty and investor fears about the Russian economy. The result Kudrin says would be a stagnating economy. This follows the emerging market crisis in the beginning of 2014, which hit Turkey, Argentina, and Brazil. Kudrin is respected for his efforts to strengthen Russia's finances in Putin's first term in office, and left the administration over disagreement with prime minister Medvedev on damage to finances from higher defense spending. This suggests Putin and Medvedev in their first terms as president conducted more prudent policies for the economy than they are doing in Putin's second term. A certain recklessness seems to have crept in as many respected advisors from that period have left over differences in policy, including how protests and the opposition's views should be handled. This includes Medvedev's early efforts after elections for dialogue with the opposition parties which were set aside by Putin. The danger with having a Bolivarist class of tycoons as in Venezuela and some developing countries, instead of wiser heads around him for Putin, is that he will lose the advice and counsel he so badly needs to conduct policies without letting emotions getting the better of a sound judgement. A large foreign exchange reserve is a buffer for Russia, but this needs to be used to diversify the economy away from dependence on oil and commodities by investing in technology industries to create jobs in other fields, and not wasted in higher defense spending and fighting investor sentiment for the value of the ruble. It also shows that there is an inherent value in having a "loyal opposition" and "shadow cabinet," and these institutions were not invented over centuries of practice in government without a reason, in that they actually help the governing administration pursue prudent policy without arbitrary actions. The irony is that the very fears of 1998 repeating itself with the "chaos" of western style democracy and politics and manipulation by oligarchs- a Putin complaint- is reversing the gains made by Russia since then, with another set of tycoons and vested interests in place. Russians, like the Germans can learn to make democracy work without a centuries long history of democratic traditions, elections and free media. Czarist traditions can be overcome just as the Prussian traditions were overcome, and Russians can come up with their own Wily Brandts and Gaucks, leaving behind the old history of suppressing contrary opinions. For this to happen Russians including Mr. Putin need to leave their own fears behind, and trust the Russian people for the right instincts and values and maturity of judgement, just as the Germans have done and succeeded. ...

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Bill Keller describes the diversity of news sources available today from the BBC and Guardian websites to Al Jazeera and websites of other foreign news organizations. Radio stations are another source. Yet this diversity exists with one troubling factor- the decline in foreign news bureaus and experienced journalists covering events in distant locations. As a result many of the important foreign events are now covered by free lance journalists who take many risks and are still underpaid. Without experienced journalists it becomes more difficult to sort out the good information from the bad or poorly researched, and the average reader facing a glut of information or misinformation is faced with the prospect of being as uninformed as before or worse misinformed. Keller gives the example of NYT's journalist C. J. Chivers who carefully researched information from a UN report- compass bearings for two chemical rockets- to show that the chemical weapons attack in Syria originated with the Assad military forces in Damascus. This was after much of the media went with the stories spread by different sources that there were doubts about who was responsible. Unusual and cause for concern is that many governments around the world may have found the ambiguity useful by taking off some of the moral pressure for action, of having to intervene so soon after the Bush invasion of Iraq....

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Did Putin overreact as he did in Georgia. On the issue of Russian speaking people in neighboring eastern European countries Putin has strong emotional reaction, as evident in the 2008 Georgian conflict. In Ukraine the issue assumes significance because of the effect of western sanctions, adverse foreign investor sentiment and the tendency of rich Russians, similiar to Argentines, to shift assets abroad. Capital flight was $75 billion in the first 6 months of 2014. Add to this adverse effect on foreign investor sentiment on an already slowing Russian economy, and growth will be seriously affected. Car sales are expected to decline by 12% in 2014, according to a trade group. The rhetoric has been toned down on Russian television. And Russian analysts now say relations with the West must be maintained. Polls by state run polling company WCIOM show 66% of the Russian public oppose Russian forces entering Ukrainian territory.

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Former Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, has called for fresh thinking in U.S. foreign policy and foreign engagements after the wars in Iran and Afghanistan cost the U.S. about one trillion dollars. He says the U.S. should avoid single issue engagement, get the participation of other countries, and increase common ground on a host of issues which concern most of the major nations in the world. This is why we have a G-20 and not a G-8, says Hagel. This policy also helps the U.S. by having other countries in Europe, Asia and the Middle East take up some of the responsibilities that would otherwise fall disproportionately on the U.S., and lets the U.S. devote attention to strengthening the domestic economy which underpins strength in world affairs. On Iran he sees continuing talks as the better approach to coming up with a solution, for which he has come under criticism from some Republicans.

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A study by Prof. Peter Petri of Brandeis University, shows the Trans Pacific Trade Agreement boosting economic output in the U.S. by about 0.4% by 2025 or $77 billion. Winners are biologic drugs which get long term patent protection, tech firms and software engineering services. Losers are the Detroit auto industry with higher auto parts imports, light manufacturing, and some heavy manufacturing sectors. Prof. Douglas Irwin of Dartmouth College and other experts say it is not clear how U.S. consumers and businesses will benefit. The import duties as a percentage of total imports are now at about 1.4%. Experts say about 4/5ths of the benefits of TPP for the U.S. are from opening up trade in services and new rules for investment and commerce. TPP includes Pacific countries Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Mexico, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, and Japan. Issues are environmental rules, worker protection and standards, agricultural imports in sensitive countries such as Canada and Japan, affordable drugs in poor countries....

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Amar Bhide touches on the unpredictable consequences of devaluations while commenting on the supposed benefit of a country having its own currency vs a currency such as the euro. The euro takes away the advatantage of devaluing the national currency as a way to regain competitiveness. Bhide points out that devaluations hurt the elderly on fixed incomes and low wage workers. Protections have to be put in place for the sections of the population that are badly affected. Large union negotiated wage increases can also reduce the benefits of devaluation in terms of regaining competitiveness.