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Larry Schwartz, the American diplomat in Cairo who deplored the anti-Islamic video on the Prophet Muhammad in Sept. 2012

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About 8% of Americans are multiracial, and 10% of 1 year olds are multiracial, a Pew research report released in 2015 shows.

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Tata will start making the Nano small car in the 4th quarter of 2008 at a plant it is constructing in the eastern state of West Bengal. Tata faces the same difficulties other car makers are facing around the world as fuel prices adversely affect car sales, and the unprecedented and enormous increases in the prices of raw material costs like steel, tires, and so on with the impact of tighter money supply with higher interest rates creates a different environment for Indian automakers. Tata's margins will be under pressure from these changes in the operating environment. Tata will look for ways to reduce costs and introduce several new models in 2008 in the commercial and passenger car markets. Tata completed acquisition of Land Rover and Jaguar for $2.3 billion in June. To fund the acquisition Tat Motors is raising 72 billion rupees ($1.7 billion) through three separate rights issues, and an additional $500 million to $600 million through an international offering of securities. This acquisition says Ratan Tata CEO of Tata Motors , will add global scale, profits and visibility to Tata Motors, enabling Tata Motors to take its place in the global auto industry as a credible international automobile company....

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Adam Bryant talk to four women business managers about the need for women to express themselves and have their voice heard.

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Saudi Arabia needs current oil price of $60 a barrel to move up to $80 a barrel to balance its national budget. To do this OPEC needs to coordinate its oil production cuts with a group of 10 countries led by Russia that includes Mexico. These countries include countries in the former Soviet Union.  In December cuts of 1.2 million barrels a day were coordinated between the 2 groups to push up oil prices. Now the OPEC cartel plans regular meetings with the Russian led group to push up oil prices. Under a draft document an alliance between the 2 groups would last 3 years and include regular meetings. Earlier Prince Salman led Saudi government proposed replacing OPEC with a new group combining Russia and Saudi Arabia and the other countries in OPEC, yet giving most of the decision making power to Russia and Saudis. This was rejected by Russia and was received poorly by Iraq, Iran  Nigeria, Angola, Algeria. The Iraqis reminded Saudis that OPEC was started in Baghdad. ...

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Shows how the whole landsape of Iraq is changing in a kind of ethnic cleansing like that in the former Yugoslavia, and in Bosnia. And before that in India and Pakistan as British Empire in South Asia changed with ethnic cleansing in 1947. See the War of the World by Niall Ferguson and his talk at the National Press Club organized by the World Affairs Council shown on CSPAN on Dec31, 2006. Some of his E's refer to Ethnic factors, Eastern ascendency and the E for Empire referring to the descent of the western empires( European and the benevolen kind of American power if not empire). The numbers involved in the ethnic cleansing are huge, the UN report figure is 420,000. This approaches the kind of scale that make it part of redrawing of the map in a large part of the Middle East.

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This article in the NYT explains why the loss of jobs particularly in the auto industry to Mexico, with the experience of NAFTA passed by president Bill Clinton, has caused widespread opposition to the TPP trade agreement proposed by president Obama. Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in 2016 oppose the TPP.

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The U.S. Federal Reserve announced on Dec. 13, 2016, that it would increase its benchmark short term interest rate by 0.25 percentage point, to between 0.50% and 0.75%. The increase will also be reflected in business and household borrowing costs. The Fed also announced its intention to make 0.75% percentage point increase in 2017, possibly in 3 quarter percentage point moves. The Fed's forecast is for the fed-funds rate to reach 2.1% at the end of 2018, and 2.9% at the end of 2019. The Fed's policy is based on a sense of strong labor market with unemployment falling, and says it is based on discussion at a 2 day meeting, and "in view of realized and expected labor-market conditions and inflation." This reflects a view that there is now not that much slack in the labor market, that further improvements could trigger higher inflation. Fed forecasts for inflation are for it to increase from 1.5% in 2016 to 1.9% in 2017 and to the target of 2% in 2018. The unemployment rate of 4.6% in 2016 is forecast to go to 4.5% in 2017 and remain at that level till 2019. Economic growth is forecast at a median annual rate of 1.9% in 2016, 2.1% in 2017, only a slight improvement from last forecast in Sept. 2016. Support for chairwoman Yellen's policy decision was unanimous. See the link on views of NYT's Binyamin Applebaum and Neil Irwin on how Fed rate policy and economic growth under the Trump administration is likely to play out, and Ian Talley's report on impact on exports with a stronger dollar in WSJ. These views also are in line with the Fed's forecasts and policy decision as they reflect the concerns of the Fed about inflation, and also reflect the Fed's view that growth will be close to 2% in 2017-2019, and not the 3-4% stated by Trump and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin. Fed rate policies to keep inflation at about 2% tend to counter stimulus spending by the Trump administration and effect of tax cuts. The size of the stimulus and the tax cuts are also likely to be much smaller than stated because of Republican concerns about the deficit in the U.S. Congress, according to these views. The stronger dollar also has the paradoxical effect of making trade gains more difficult while increasing trade friction in tougher bargaining supported by Trump, making the higher growth targets harder to reach.   ...

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Europe has something that is just as bad as subprime mortgages that have troubled the US, its the bad debt of European banks to Eastern European emerging market countries. This plus the high indebtedness of companies in Western Europe is creating serious problems for the economies of western Europe. In addition to the property bubble in Ireland, the UK and Spain, Germany is facing falling demand for its exports as a result of the steep descent of the global economy, especially China. As a result of all this the EU is facing a problem of the magnitude of that faced by the US, if not worse. In much of Europe especially in Germany and the Eastern European countries what generates growth and jobs is exports. Three quarters of the cars made in Germany are exported, and many of the parts used in BMW's and VW's come from plants in the eastern european countries, some form Slovakia, Poland and from plants elsewhere in Eastern Europe. With the collapse of some Eastern European economies and serious problems in others these markets are shrinking. The same thing is happening to exports from Eastern European countries where factories there manufacturing goods for Western Europe are closing. And banks in the western European economies like UniCredit Group of Italy, Germany's Commerzbank, and Belgium's KBC Group have large loans outstanding in the eastern European countries to companies and consumers. And some of these countries have run up huge current account deficits. Bulgaria the deficit is 20% of GDP. Increasing the risk and hitting consumers in the east is that banks issued low rate mortgages and other laons in euros and swiss francs. With the Hungarian forint, Romanian leu, and other weaker currencies seeing big drops, the cost of repaying these loans has jumped. Instead of consumers being overstretched from overspending as in the USA, or facing foreclosures, these consumers are facing huge loan repayment problems from borrowing in other currencies. Morgan Stanley says more than half of the private debt in Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria is in foreign currency. And customers in Eastern European countries owe foreign banks loans equal to one third of their combined GDP, according to the Bank of Internatonal Settlements. A lot of these loans could end up turning into bad debt if the economies of Eastern Europe deteriorate further as consumers there pull back, factories close and job losses mount, and currency values drop even more. This would create huge problems for Western European banks and restrict lending in Western Europe as these banks make fewer loans creating more problems for Western European economies, in the same manner as ricotcheting effects have done in the USA....

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Huawei launches its smartphone model the Ascend P6 at the historic performing arts location Roundhouse in London. Huawei is using the same marketing tactics used by Apple and copied by Samsung to get customer attention. Huawei, the second largest supplier of telecom equipmen after Ericsson of Sweden, is not known for its consumer products. This is the first time it is adopting high profile marketing strategies to upset the duopoly of Apple and Samsung in the smartphone market. Other competitors are LG, ZTE, Sony and Lenovo, each trying to take market share from Apple and Samsung. Apple lost over 5 points of market share in smartphones in 2012 and Samsung gained close to 4 points by coming up with a low priced range of smartphones. Apple now has 17.3%, Samsung 32.7%, LG 4.8%, Huawei 4.6%, ZTE 4.2%, for 1st quarter 2013. Samsung now faces competition in the lower priced segments from Huawei, Lenovo, ZTE and HTC, companies in China with products for this segment.

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Rohan Bopanna  of India is 45 years old, and yet fit enough to win the Australian  doubles tennis championships in 2024. WSJ's Jason Gay looks at an extraordinary athlete. By 2022 Aussie Ebden, 36 years oid, was looking for a partner and the two found each other. One has this terrific serve and Ebden the mobility in returns on court. For Bopanna Ebden added the extra composure when he would become anxious. The year before Bopanna struggled to find his game with injuries, at one point considering that his time was up.The amazing part is that Iyengar yoga helped calm Bopanna's anxieties down when his knee cartilages had fully worn out and he had to take injections. Holding positions for long periods in a correct alignment in this yoga practice called Iyengar Yoga from a yoga master in Karnataka has delivered results. Bopanna felt relaxed and calm, his pain gone, and internally feeling so great, showing the strength that can be gained from the proper practice of yoga. ...

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OECD survey on India points to changing labor market regulation that limit the flexibility of firms to reduce labor if they do not need it, or if its not productive, or if other changes are planned. In a growing economy this should not be a fear that large numbers will be unemployed because a growing economy will create new jobs. And an economy like India's will grow far into the future. So the presence of the Communist Party in the coalition government of Manmohan Singh does act as a kind of of limiting factor as their view is shortsighted and does not see the larger picture. The other areas the OECD points to are government intervention in the economy and infrastructure. Infrastructure problems are huge but efforts are underway and gathering momentum because everybody agrees that his is a major major problem and will require lots and lots of investment in the future.

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Renault's low cost entry cars which were originally designed with emerging markets in mind, are now popular in France and other countries in Europe. Renault gets 30% of its market share, up from 15% in 2006, from low cost cars like the Logan, which cost conscious buyers buy for around $10,000, instead of buying a used car. This has helped Renault at a time when other segments are not doing so well, and when Peugeot had to arrrange a 1 billion euro emergency capital increase. The profit margin on these low cost cars is 6%, compared to 2-3% profit margin on other Renault models. Renault manufactures the cars under the Renault label or the Dacia lavel depending on where they are sold, and uses a factory in Romania. Renault's model is to set the margin first and then ask suppliers such as LG and others to try to come up with a low cost design that meets its margin requirement. This eliminates features that add cost and may be dispensed with for the customer in mind. It requires a fresh approach. Cutting edge is replaced by working with parts designed for older models that cost less. Renault also used the experience gained in the Romanian factory where some of the tasks are done manually instead of using robots, and waste is reduced. The process has taken time because the Dacia Romanian factory was acquired under a previous CEO Louis Schweitzer in the late 1990's, and the first Dacia Logan was made in the Romanian factory at Pitesti, near Bucharest, in 2004. The reliability of the Dacia made cars is well established, say experts. On the sales side the Logan is sold on a no discount basis with fixed price. Dealers are told no discounts are permitted. Total sales of these cars reached 814,000 in 2011 and are expected to cross 1 million in 2012. This is similiar to the achievement of Toyota with its low cost multipurpose vehicles for emerging markets, which is expected to cross 1 million in 2012. The difference is that Renault has achieved this with European buyers in a bold strategy. Tata Motors which pioneered the effort to build low cost small cars with its $2000 vehicle is planning its own entry in Europe, the Pixel as a low cost city-car in European markets in 2015. And Renault is moving further down in cost than the Logan, as its next step, with such a car manufactured in India by Nissan-Renault and regional partners....