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Pier Luigi Bersani from the northern Emilio Romagna region, head of the centre-left Democratic party, is the leading candidate for prime minister in Italy's 2013 elections. His party has 37.8% support in a recent poll. The Democratic party has an electoral alliance with the SEL Left, Ecology and Freedom party, which has 5.1% in the poll. Berlusconi's People of Freedom party has 18.2% support and the antiestablishment party of Beppe Grillo, the Five Star Movement has 20% support. Prime minister Mario Monti is being encouraged to run by business and centrist parties. Bersani said in an interview, he will continue Monti's policies if elected. He says he supports greater flexibility so that policies do not focus only on austerity, at the same time he will respect the committments Italy has gven to the EU and move forward with pro-competition actions.

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A $300 million retooling investment at Michigan Truck plant three years ago will make it possible for Ford to convert the plant to production of as many as 8 new models some from from Europe with a relatively small investment of $75 million. Michigan Truck Plant is in the midst of a 11 week shutdown because of unsold inventory of SUV's and trucks. Next spring Ford will move production of the Expedition and Lincoln Navigator to its Kentucky Truck Plant and then begin retooling the Michigan Truck Plant, with all of the plant's 1000 employees transferred next door to make Focus cars at the Wayne Assembly Plant where its adding a third shift in January. Truck and SUV plants in Kentucky and Mexico will probably undergo similiar makeovers at a cost of about $250 million each to rettol according to company estimates.

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News literacy programs that teach young people to read critically and help develop skills that encourage critical thinking. The focus is on school programs for middle and high school students. The News Literacy Project (NLP) has staff that includes 22 news organizations and 200 journalists who donate time to work with students. The Center for News Literacy (CNL) is a project at Stony Brook University, which sees news as "the oxygen of democracy." The projects teach young people how to find the truth behind the hype, propaganda, entertainment, and exaggeration in the daily news inside the the U.S. and from around the world. Pulitzer's words can be seen at the entrance to Columbia University's School of Journalism and on a U.S. postage stamp: "Our Republic and its press will rise and fall together." A sophisticated reader is critical for developing an insightful coverage of news and Pulitzer reminds us that the future of democracy and America depends on this.

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Prof. Brandon Garrett of the University of Virginia, School of Law, says the $2.6 billion settlement of Credit Suisse with the U.S. Justice Department does not provide accountability for the financial crisis. The settlement comes with an agreement to protect Credit Suisse from U.S. regulatory agencies such as the S.E.C. The Swiss bank will be allowed to conduct business as investment advisor, something not allowed if it is indicted for a criminal offense. And the focus of the investigation on secret Swiss bank accounts is unresolved, as the names of these account holders will continue to remain a secret for Swiss banks. Protess and Greenberg say if this was intended to burnish the image of the Justice Department and Attorney General Holder, after its lack of prosecution to hold individuals accountable following the 2008 financial crisis, it is not clear how long this will happen. A separate editorial by the WSJ raises the same questions.

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The changes at Sony Pictures outlined in an interview with CEO, Michael Lynton. Sony Pictures will look for savings of $350 million. Motion Pictures showed declining revenues and revenue from TV shows increased in 2013. Sony Pictures will expand its TV shows business. Part of the expansion will be through buying and starting up new television channels in the growing markets of India and Brazil. In this interview Lynton points to the risks in seeing franchises in big budget movies before they become franchises and before the first movie in the series is successful. Smaller budget movies such as "The Conjuring," "We're the Millers," have been profitable for Sony Pictures, so he sees the tendency to focus on franchises alone as risky. Sony pioneered in producing for cable but did not see this as being a large revenue generator five years earlier. What changed Lynton says, is the increase in subscription video-on-demand services and growth in Netflix reaching new buyers.

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Steve Bannon, president Trump's former strategist in the first 6 months of his presidency and during the election campaign makes a rupture with Trump after astonishing revelations in a new book. Michael Wolff in his new book, "FIre and Fury: Inside the Trump White House," attributes statements to Mr. Bannon that say the president's son Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, and Paul Manafort, the campaign chairman at the time, had acted in a "treasonous" way by meeting with Russians during a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower. According to Mr. Wolff's account in the book Bannon also predicted that the special counsel Mueller investigation would eventually focus on money laundering. This account of the Wolff book is from the New York Times, which released excerpts from the book after the Guardian first put out this story. It quotes from an email from an unnamed White House aide, describing the Trump operations in the White House as the worst possible- that the president refused to read much, not even one page memos, getting up often because he is bored through meetings. And using words that reflected it says Mr. Gary Cohn's view that much of the operation was "stupid," "dumb," or even idiotic. Wolff is a columnist and author not particularly known for meticulous reporting says the New York Times.    ...

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U.S. added 245,000 jobs in November. Unemployment rate drops from 6.9% to 6.7% as some Americans give up looking for work. The concern now is not the rate of job creation which is healthy but the drop outs from the workforce.  Concern arises from the long drawn out effects of the 2009 financial crisis and its effects which were seen over a decade. This report in NYT says the share of prime age Americans who were employed returned to the January 2008 level in 2019. And then the pandemic hits putting everything back again. This time if the lesson is learned about the long term damage to working families it is that this be tackled as a priority for the central bank, the U.S. Federal Reserve, an the Treasury, and Council of Economic Advisors, under the leadership of president Biden. Fortunately both Yellen and the new proposed head of the Council are students of labor markets and have stated this is one of the lessons they have learned and will act on. As this report says the opiate crisis, the risks of addiction increased, and there were links to the long period people were without jobs. The longer a person is without a job the more likely he will become permanently unemployed. The hope now is that the vaccination effort could bring people back to work quickly as business and life resumes in 2021, with workers being hired back. The share of prime age Americans working in November is 76.5% compared to 80.5% in February, which means this has to go up by about 4 percentage points. The people who are not in the labor force today but still want a job are 2.2 million. It is this that needs to be the focus of the new administration, central bank, and Congress. ...

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Issues of inequality and lack of upward mobility came up in the last presidential election. A Federal Reserve Survey for 2018 shows the financial fragility facing many Americans. One quarter of working individuals say they do not have any retirement savings. About 17% of households say they cannot pay all their monthly bills. About 40% of Americans say they do not have enough cash to cover an unexpected $400 expense, and would have to rely on credit cards balances or loans from family to make the payment. This survey by the Federal Reserve is done each year since 2013, after the financial crisis hit in 2009 it became more important. Still Americans are showing unusual resilience and upbeat spirit. About 75% say they were doing Ok or living comfortably up from 63% in 2013. And two out of three described lovcal economic conditions as "good" or "excellent."  This shows that the financial vulnerability resulting in the loss of jobs in the U.S. both from jobs lost in manufacturing going overseas,  jobs lost through automation or industrial decline in some sectors, and the hit from job loss during the financial crisis and its aftermath years of 2009-2014 is still leaving a lot of families financially vulnerable. Low interest rates and stagnant wages also meant savings growth for ordinary Americans was less than it should be in a healthy economy without booms and busts. This is also the environment in which the U.S. is tackling challenges to its technological leadership in 5G following a decline in sectors such as autos and electronics, with job losses to Japan and South Korea. New trade agreements are focussed on correcting the imbalance, first with Mexico, South Korea, and now with China. Focus is also on fair wages and labour overseas to raise American wages in key sectors. The damage done by a low interest rate to savings of ordinary Americans outside the stock markets is also being seen as a downside in the boom bust cycle, that includes loss of jobs for vulnerable American families. The rise of the tech sectors has diluted the traditional protections of working class Americans with the shifts and realignment of the major parties. ...

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Why Rachel Reeves type of strict financial rules will hurt Labour. DJT in the US relaxed the borrowing limit to $5 trillion, and has designed his One Big Beautiful Act to have parts of it to boost the economy and investment. Reform UK gains on both sides with Reeves efforts to cut benefits losing Labor voters and it's struggles on migration hurting it on the other side with conservtaive voters who voted Labour. With the Conservatives in disarray, Labour has to keep its focus on improving the lives of Britons.  Today it does not matter whether you are Social Democrat or Christian Democrat or Socialist, what matters is to have common sense policies that help te vast majority of people even in unconventional ways by breaking the rules or fixed ideas about what can be done. DJT and Merz are on the Christian Democrat side, Denmark's PM Mette Frederiksen is Social Democrat, what matters is to have a culture and policies that help the people and stands up for ordinary people in the Nation. ...

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In this audio BBC Witness History talks with Shuji Nakamura, the inventor of the LED lightbulb in 1992.  Nakamura shows the resilience and stubborn persistence against the odds that has given the world an extraordinary invention. The LED bulb does great things for climate change action because for example Califonria uses 35% of its electricity for lighting. The LED bulb cuts this in half and this means many coal fired power plants are not needed. In India, Indonesia and China this means lighting for about 3 billion people, with lighting for children studying in remote parts of India and China, and in Africa and Latin America. Nakamura took an unconventional route. He did his PhD in Japan not by going to school which is allowed in Japan, but by writing a paper on White LED development. He made a single minded focus on this goal. Nakamura says it made him angry that no one wanted to try new ideas and he persisted for years of research. At the time GaN research was done by less than one percent of researchers. Nakamura decided to try the path less trodden and by 1992 developed a blue light emitting LED bulb. Add phospor particles and blue becomes bright white LED. ...

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President Macron of France puts forward the basic building blocks for an agreement to reduce tensions with Iran. In a speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations he says that there should be negotiations between Iran, its regional neighbors, the U.S. , European countries and China. The Obama period nuclear deal of 2015 failed because of a lack of a comprehensive settlement and including Iran's neighbors in the region. Macron pointed out that the U.S. approach under president Trump of "maximum pressure" with tighter economic sanctions has produced a response from Iran of maximum pressure on its neighbors, including the attack on Saudi oil facilities with drones that took out half of the Saudi oil supplies. Macron put forward five issues for negpotiations to focus on: certaity that Iran never acquires nuclear weapons, solution to the Yemen civil war, a regional security plan that addresses other conflicts, ensuring security of maritime navigation especially in Straits of Hormuz, lifting of economic sanctions. He pointed out that "today we have a risk of serious conflict based on miscalculation and disproportionate responses." Mr. Trump even alluded to this when he told reporters after the dismissal of John Bolton as National Security Adviser, saying Bolton made Trump look like a voice of moderation. A lot depends on who are the advisers and whether moderation is exercised on all sides.  Macron, Merkel and Britain's prime minister Johnson met with Rouhani on the sidelines of the UN meetings to encourage dialogue. Countries likely to be severely affected by oil shutoff through the Straits of Hormuz are Japan, South Korea, India and China, and are quietly pushing for an easing of tensions.  ...

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Aizenman in this must-read describes the National Soda Summit and the presentation of one man Todd Putnam, a former executive from Coca-Cola that throws light on one of the truly important things that happened in the lives of Americans in the postwar period of development and growing prosperity. This is the development of marketing and advertising and its singular application in the case of Coca Cola to promoting sugary drinks. It is also related to what even business people describe as the single biggest problem in America. And it is happening at a time when the story is being repeated in developing countries such as China and India. Putnam describes the exhilaration, he and other Coca-Cola managers felt when the graphs at internal presentations showed Coke passing milk in consumption per capita in America. Several other facts stand out in Putnam's description of his experience- the ignorance on health issues among his marketing peers, the huge marketing prowess and dollars brought to bear once a goal such as increasing per capita consumption of sugary drinks was set- he was hired out of Purdue by P&G and worked at Disney before joining Coca-Cola- and the focus on the 12-24 demographic with 90% of all soft drink marketing targeted at this segment. What he regrets most is the focus on minorities who suffer some of the highest levels of obesity in America. No mention is made of the efforts underway in developing coutnries such as China and India which are seeing a surge in obesity rates and diseases such as diabetes. Coca-Cola says 41% of its sugary drinks are low calorie, but compared to milk, fruit juice and other healthier alternatives where does this rank? The cost to the nation's health care system alone would show that the performance of Coca-Cola's stock price over the postwar period came with a price tag that was never even thought about, when healthier alternatives as health drinks companies have found sell well when well marketed and formulated for different groups....

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Britain's Office of National Statistics said that GDP declined by 0.2% in the first quarter of 2012 from the prior quarter. GDP declined by 0.3% in the fourth quarter of 2011. This means Britain is officially in a recession, with two consecutive quarters of negative growth. The ONS said GDP was 4.3% below its precrisis peak in the first quarter of 2008. The UK registered growth of a mere 0.4% since the coalition government of David Cameron took over in May 2010. This presents problems for prime minister Cameron in tackling the UK deficit. It also shows how difficult it will be for EU countries to address their deficits without economic growth. This has come into increasing focus with recent events in the Netherlands with the collapse of the government and upcoming elections on the issue of austerity cuts, and in France with the presidential elections and the swing to parties questioning austerity measures without economic growth.

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The reduced availability of child care services, longer time it takes to get steady jobs in a slow growth economy, and the "safety trap" of becoming used to a freer lifestyle, areincreasing the average age at which Italian women have their first child. It has moved up from about 30 to 31.4 in 2012. As more women pursue higher education and get university degrees the trend is to focus on jobs and lifestyle. As grandparents get older and the lack of enough preschool centers this makes child care harder, in a nation where 68% of children under 10 are still cared for by grandparents. At present only half of Italian mothers work, according to the OECD, compared to 74% in France. This worsens the demographics with currently 150 people over 65 years for the 100 under 14 years, and the figures increasing with fewer young people to support retirees, according to Istat.

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CEO Jeffrey Boyd of Priceline.com hands the CEO role to Darren Huston, a former Microsoft executive. Boyd will continue as chairman. During a remarkable leadership for the company following the dotcom bust Boyd made important acquisitions, including Booking.com. The smaller online travel companies with a focus on hotels in Europe and Asia helped Priceline.com grow rapidly by taking smaller commissions. Priceline shares increased by 65% in 2013 to reach $1000. Revenue for the third quarter of 2013 increased 33% to $2.27 billion with increase in Asian bookings, and overall profit increased to $866 million from $596 million in the year ago quarter. Boyd's strategy in 14 years at Priceline.com was to keep the different websites acquired under separate management to keep brand loyalty and customer perceptions. Websites such as Agoda.com, Booking.com, Kayak, and Rentalcars thrived under independent leadership at each website. Huston headed the international brands and Booking.com from Amsterdam, where he will continue to be located....

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James Galbraith's ideas on the bailout in the Washington Post. He would remove the cap of $100,000 on FDIC insurance and put $500 billion into the FDIC and more resources for the FBI and hire the auditors and investigators needed to clean up the mess. Next he would use $200 billion to buy the preferred shares in the banks that need the money. He would let the investmet banks and hedge funds to themselves. And he woul provide federal funds to stte and local governments in a Nixon administration type of revenue sharing scheme so that local governments do not cut essential services and investments in education and so on. And he would focus on energy and climate change issues for the next 10-20 years as national goals. His point that even with freeing up the illiquid assets two things dont change one the borrowing still will be weak as the economy slows, and the recession and slowing economic conditions will not change.

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This Times report looks at the management style of Jeff Bezos who started Amazon as a online store selling books and the extraordinary growth of the company. Bezos is stepping down from the day to day role of CEO to focus on new growth opportunities. His role as CEO will be taken by the head of the cloud computing business, Andy Jassy. He joined in 1997. Amazon was started in 1994.  Amazon's growth comes from carefully focussing on specific growth fields, first retail, then cloud computing, and changing the way business is run with innovative ways of conducting business. One click and Prime in retail, Kindle e reader in books, and massive investments in logistics, warehousing, cloud computing to run its business efficiently. During the pandemic criticism of low wages for warehouse workers was met with an increase in wages to $15 an hour.  Management style discourages meetings. Most meetings are held in the morning, and after 10 am. The person presenting is asked to hand out a six page memo which is read in silence before the meeting. The idea is that writing it out helps make the ideas clear. Decisions are made in this way. Employees are asked to think in innovative ways to run the business. Thrift is practiced as part of the Bezos way. Bezos is relatively young, only 57 years. Bezos was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1964 when his mother was in high school. His mother married a Cuban immigrant, Miguel Bezos 4 years later and the boy took the name Bezos. He spent much time at his grandparents ranch in South Texas working on the farm, and went to school at Princeton University, graduating in 1987. In 1993 he married Mackenzie Tuttle, a novelist, then started an online bookstore called Amazon from Seattle. Before this he worked at a telecom company and at a hedge fund, which helped him finance his new online bookstore. Bezos turned Amazon into a retail store selling a wide variety of merchandise, an built up a strong warehousing and delivery network. ...

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WSJ's Andrew Restuccia and Michelle Hackman look at another deportation of about 1 million people of Mexican descent in 1954 under the Eisenhower administration. It looks at the human toll. Many of the people were brought in to tackle the shortage of men to do farm work and harvest crops during the war period 1941-1945.   The alternative proposed by Biden and senior Republican senators McConnell and Lankford and supported by most senior Republicans is the tough immigration legislation drafted by Lankford that president Harris has pledged to sign. In 1954 the US economy was a small fraction of what it is today and struggling from the aftermath of the world war and the Korean War. The US economy would suffer shortages of manpower in construction and farm work that would reduce economic growth by about 1%, from the effects of a 1954 type plan and from the distraction for American focus on chips, science, and manufacturing that is needed to compete in a new world of India, China in addition to Japanese EU competition. States such as Kansas in the midwest feel this shortage, and in the Carolinas in the south, Red states and blue face shortages. Kansas is actively seeking new legal immigrants and welcoming them as shown in the WSJ. This is a different country than 1954 and this must be recognized or we will fall behind China, Japan and India. Cultural literacy is world knowledge and was proposed before by the Exxon Foundation and E. D. Hirsch in 1988. This needs to be revived so that children like Harris who know enough about American history, language and culture to be productive American citizens- as they learn in school and through interaction with fellow citizens in the neighborhood and libraries- can become the norm. There is no reason this cannot be done effectively with the resources committed to this from the federal and state governments in tens of billions of dollars, including to the library system, community colleges, community civic education centers, and to literacy and world knowledge sites such as Lyrarc.com, Wikipedia and Britannica.com. ...

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President Obama proposes changes in taxes to fund programs to aid students such as free 2 years of community college, aid for student loans, and financial help for middle class families. Senate Majority Leader McConnell says the proposals to raise income taxes for high income Americans with $320 billion in new revenues over 10 years, reduced prospects for changes in the tax system. He said the Obama proposals were designed " to excite the base but not designed to pass." Obama says "the shadow of crisis has passed," and calls for "middle class economics," and improving incomes for anyone making the effort. The call comes as inequality widened during the long recession and some of the Obama administration's policies such as on homeowner foreclosure, and lack of focus on unemployment during the first term, may have actually worsened inequality. The call also comes late in the second term in Jan 2015- with presidential elections in 2016- after the Republicans gain control of both Houses of Congress, which is why Republicans dismiss this as mere political talking points for the base....

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Toyota ended its relationship with Tesla to focus on fuel cell technologies. Panasonic is taking up electric car batteries project in stages to limit risk. As Tesla focusses on a car for the mass market at $35,000, both the upside and the downside are evident, as shown in this report by Pulliam, Ramsey and Mullins of the WSJ. The reporters say the arrrangement of interconnected companies Solar City, Tesla, and SPace X through Musk's holdings and his personal loans to companies in difficulty such as Solar City- using his Tesla shares as collateral- is a risky business. This follows the way Valeant shares lost 14% in one day, as market perception changed. Venture capital companies such as Jurvetson with which Tesla has connections, and relatives, round up the ownership of these companies in a tightly knit arrangement with Musk as the key shareholder in an unconventional arrangement, says WSJ.

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To get the agreement of the 27 countries engaged in the talks to set new banking rules, the new Basel III banking rules are being phased in over a protracted period. Some changes go into effect in 2013, but others will be put into effect by 2019. The focus on the new rules is how much capital, or "common equity" banks will be required to hold as a cushion to absorb losses in a crisis like that of 2008. Large banks will be required to hold 7% of their assets in common equity. By 2015, banks will have to begin building a 2.5% buffer of capital, which must be in place fully by 2019. No action was taken on issues such as requirements for banks to have access to ample liquidity, what systemically important banks should hold in capital, and establishing a counter cyclical capital buffer.

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The Fed cuts rates by three quarters of a percentage point to 2.25%, but cautions about inflation expectations. The increasing inflation and the fears of a steep fall in the value of the dollar, and the knowledge that liquidity is hardly the root of the problem considering that opaqueness of mortgage securities and not knowing who owns the bad ones is the source of the confusion in markets, will limit what the Fed can do from now on. The focus should be shifting to reduce the loan burden on homeowners at risk of foreclosures so that they can make payments on smaller principal for longer periods with better terms with Government backing the softer terms and the Bush administration is gradually coming around to the view that its announced voluntary loan improvements are not enough to meet this crisis which is just beginning to heat up.

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The struggle of France's newspaper "Le Monde" to survive after losses for the last seven years to 2008. Daily circulation has declined 9% from 2003 to 354,000 in 2008. Compared to Germany and the U.S., newspapers draw a smaller number of readers, with 181 per 1000 people subscribing to newspapers in France, 371 in Germany, 274 in the U.S. Strategies pursued are to sell stakes to Lagardere, and Spanish media group Prisa. Le Monde was started in 1954 with directions from Charles de Gaulle to be the "conscience of France." As a result its sharehoders are mainly its journalists holding a 60.4% stake. Prisa and Largardere each hold a 18% stake. Losses in 2007 were 15 million euros. Strategies are to focus on news and world events and reduce sports coverage, and integrate the newspaper with the website, Lemonde.fr., which has 4.5 million unique vistors per month, according to Mediametrie.

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This New York Times editorial says a smaller Wall Street and growing jobs in other fields will be good for New York as well as good for the country. It says New York politicians should focus on finding new ways for New York to broaden its tax base and get new businesses and new opportunites in fields such as media, advertising, entertainment, health care and tourism. Especially welcome are initiatives such as the science and tech campus of Cornell University promoted by Mayor Bloomberg. Tighter financial rules and higher capital requirements are good for the country and for New York the editorial emphasizes, because they help control reckless banking practices that destroy capital and opportunities for growth elsewhere in the economy. It points to Kevin Rose's Nov. 21, 2011 account in the Times showing a healthy culture shift in New York and the country with the status jobs being seen not at Goldman Sachs but at Google, Apple and Facebook. Rose's account shows that in the last 3 years the number of Wall Street employees of ages 20-34 declined by 25%....

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Based on this Washington Post sample of reader views on the presidential Debate, 4 of 5 readers in the sample are critical of the way the Post, NYT, WSJ are acting against the elected and popular transformative president of the US. What do Washington Post readers think of the way media magnates running Post, NYT, WSJ are trying to run the country in the face of a elected president who remains popular for the action he has taken on cost of living, climate change, manufacturing jobs, factories and supply chains, and is investing trillions of dollar in renewing America's manufacturing, Chips and science, and Infrastructure? Their campaigns are there for all to see against the president, even as the British election shows Keir Starmer of Labour saying "from 20 points behind to 20 points ahead," achieving a landslide even with only 2% increase in votes since 2019. Starmer too was written off just twelve months ago. The first letter is from Little Rock stating the Post, NYT, WSJ position. The second is from Linda Barnes of Ashland, New Hampshire, who faults the Post for not having the headline about "Disastrous debate performance by Trump who failed to answer most questions and lied relentlessly." Lauri Costello of Las Cruces, New Mexico, says every American would have benefitted from an in depth analysis of the debate rather than a focus on how each debater looked and spoke. Diana Hasuly of Ashburn, Virginia, says the debate was an opportunity to see two men's perspectives about the future of America, and the Post had done a great disservice to America, as have the NYT, WSJ and the Media in general, by not spelling what each man was offering America for the future. To take just three Climate change, manufacturing investment and jobs, infrastructure spending, Biden is getting so much done and has the plan for 2030, the former president has none, simply none and did not talk about this. Mark Parkhurst of Silver Spring, Maryland, says of the June 28 front page in the Post that the Post uses "falshoods" not "lies" when a lie needs to be called a lie from the former president. And says to be fair the Media needs to point out the actual achievements of president Biden not dwell on MAGA rhetoric. Is the Post or the Media in general overreaching, is it listening? What would Washington, Lincoln or FDR say?   ...