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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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South Korea's crowded hospital environment and Asian culture of being in continual close proximity for caretakers lets the MERS virus spread. The government's failure to alert hospitals of known cases means doctors are totally unaware of the MERS outbreak until many patients with MERS were transferred to larger hospitals in Seoul. The result inhaled droplets of MERS virus and rapid spread. The government feared there would be panic in the neighborhoods and acted too late. The known cases of MERS virus reached 95 cases, and 2500 people are being monitored. All this happened in a few days- The first infected patient was at an hopital in Asan, south of Seoul on May 12-14, 2015. He was sent to a larger hospital St Mary's in Pyeongtaek, near Seoul, with no one knowing he had been to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. From there he was transferred to Samsung Medical Center in Seoul, and he was diagnosed for MERS virus on May 20. By this time 37 people at MERS were infected, and one of them admitted to Samsung hospital in Seoul infected a large number of people there. President Park Geun-hye's Gallup Korea approval rating dropped six percentage points to 34%, and the government moved to make an "all-out response."...

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For National Governance Day the Library of Congress has recordings of the poetry and talks given by Atal Bihari Vajpayee in an audio page. These recordings were made by Vajpayee himself at his prime minister's residence in Delhi in 2001 and are in his own voice. As poet, philosopher, foreign minister, Leader of the Opposition and prime minister in India, Atal Bihari Vajpayee embodied the vision of the generation that started with Mohandas Gandhi in the 1920's through Govind Vallabh Pant and Lal Bahadur Shastri in the Hindi speaking heartland. A vision that is the basis of the sab ka vikas, sab ka viswas, sab ka prayas development drive of today based on good governance.  Ao phira se diya jalaem- come let us light the candle again, the sun dims, come let us light the candle again-  is one of the classics from Vajpayee as India looks to 2025 and ahead for National Governance Years. Jita jagata rashtrapurusha is a poem on national unity, more spirited than even the national anthem itself. ...

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Bill Keller of the NYT points out that getting Syria right means getting over the obsession over what went wrong in Iraq and looking objectively at the situation in Syria. He points to the failure of president Obama in grasping what the Assad regime has done to Syria, the refugees in Jordan, the use of artillery and air raids on civilian population, and inviting the support by fundmentalist Islamic countries such as Saudi Arabia in the absence of U.S. and European support, making delay after delay by president Obama leading to a paralysis in response. Leaving the question for the future which was a worse U.S. response- the hasty action in Iraq or the paralysis in Syria?

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India's Russian oil imports Indian OMC's (oil marketing companies) say Russian discount for oil was about $8.50 per barrel in FY24, and dropped to $3-5 in 2025 with at present in August 2025 it being $1. CLSA/Citic Securities research report uses an average of $4 per barrel to get the $2.5 billion gain for India per year in 2025. Note that Russian oil is of inferior quality and the CIF landing cost used by Indian companies is much higher because of long supply routes insurance costs compared to Saudi oil. India could shift to buying from Saudis and UAE in 2026, and reports suggest India is already making this shift as Jamnagar and other refineries in India shift to non Russian sources. India's gains from Russian oil imports estimated at $2.5 billion lower than the $10-25 billion figures says a CLSA/Citic Securities research report. In 2025 Indian oil imports are at present 36% or 1.8 million barrels a day from Russia of 5.4 mbd total oil imports. Saudis provide 14%, Iraq 20%, UAE 9%, USA 4%. One alternative for India would be to shift much of it's oil imports to the Saudis, UAE and US to shift to the situation before the Ukraine war and Russian discounts for it's large population.   ...

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German automobile companies have made some bad bets on China sales. Sales in China have collapsed for Porsche as Chinese are buying local Chinese products and local Chinese autos are competitive. NYT reports on Porsche and the bad bet on China sales, then as tariffs hit serious problems.

Oliver Blume Porsche CEO says-

"Our market in China has literally collapsed. U.S. import tariffs are weighing on our business.”

“We already faced massive headwinds last year — now we are experiencing a violent storm."

Audi, Mercedes and BMW have been caught in a storm by making most of their US sold cars in Germany. The warnings from the first DJT term were ignores as they were by Apple in the US which continued to make in China. These companies are now facing problems of acting within a short time to take action to build in America to avoid tariffs.

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Mercedes Benz is pushing sales of its newly designed small cars as part of a strategy to attract younger buyers. A retooled, sleek version of the B Class compact is part of this strategy. The average age of U.S. Mercedes buyers is 53 years, compared to 49 years for Audi and BMW. Smaller cars are also part of the strategy to meet the new fuel economy standards in the U.S. and Europe. Mercedes is investing $1.9 billion in a new Hungarian plant and expanded German capacity to build smaller cars and SUV's. Sales of the smaller size A and B class Mercedes cars increased slightly by 1.4% to 222,400 in 2010. This compares with increase in overall sales volume up by 12% to 1.26 million cars in 2010.

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Kehlil President of OPEC says there will be no meeting before the scheduled meeting in September, and that the markets are well supplied. He says theree are no indications that there is shortage of supplies. Saudi increase in production of 300,000 brrels is only a small token he says.

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Army General Martin Dempsey is expected to become the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the U.S.. He brings a low key intellectual approach to the job, and was recently appointed chief of staff of the Army. He has worked in key roles in training and transformation of the military, led a combat division in Iraq and supervised the training of Iraqi security forces. Between 2001-2003 he managed the Saudi Arabian National Guard Modernization Program, an internal defence force guarding the Saudi royal family and the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. After the McChrystal appointment and resignation, and the effort by military leaders to get approval of troop buildups by making statements and speeches to affect public opinion, advisors in the Obama administration were looking for someone who would work well in an environment of de-escalation of existing conflicts and lower defense spending.

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Ageing rulers Mubarak in Egypt at 82 years, and King Abdullah in Saudi Arabia at 86 years. The tightly controlled regimes in these countries and the lack of opportunites for expression of alternative voices, makes change especially difficult. These leaders and their regimes will fade away as new leadership emerges.

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WSJ shows how the daughter of David Rockefeller Neva Goodwin and her daughter Kaiser have led the fight against Exxon for not making the change to renewable energy from fossil fuels in time to avert climate change disasters now common worldwide. One of the major problems of the last 50 years since the Reagan administration in 1980 involve oil wealth in the Middle East used to finance wars and US involvement in these wars in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Libya, Yemen. It haunts us to this day with conflict in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf. This has its origins with John D. Rockefeller  who started the oil company Standard Oil in the 1870's in Cleveland, Ohio, now called Exxon in the US and Esso overseas. A bigger problem has emerged in recent years that remained unnoticed till about 2006 when David Rockefeller, the grandson of John D. Rockefeller, met with the head of Exxon for lunch to ask why Exxon was not doing more to invest in green energy and increase awareness of the damage to the environment by fossil fuels. This was the beginning of the dawning realization of the signs of climate change so prevalent 20 years later today in wildfires, drought, extreme heat and fast floods worldwide.   Today's Exxon is a descendent of the companies John D. Rockefeller (Library of Congress site) created by the 1880's to refine oil which he turned into a monopoly by deals with railroad companies to reduce cost of product. In 1888 he created the Anglo American Oil Company later called Esso which is a phonetic rendition of S and O in Standard Oil, which in 1972 was changed to Exxon. Many of the crises of this century have their origins in the activities of Esso and British oil companies in Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia and the wars that wasted trillions of dollars in American resources through the administrations of Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Obama have their origins in the activities of oil companies, and the governments of these countries using oil financed wealth for wars that involved the US. Huge mistakes that combined with neglect of manufacturing the lifeblood of any economy have led to the gradual decline of the US, being reversed for the first time with the decisive and complete shift made by president Biden so that investments of trillions of dollars can be made to revive the strength of the US economy and the wellbeing of its people. ...

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Forecasts show global oil output exceeding demand by 630,000 barrels a day for the fourth quarter of 2012. This is partly the result of extra oil supplies coming in from Saudi Arabia to counter the situation with Iran at the same time as oil demand is slowing with the economic slowdown in the U.S., Europe and China. Prices of crude declined to $85.73 a barrel on the Nymex, and $107.85 for Brent crude on the ICE Futures Exchange on Oct. 24, 2012. Goldman Sachs cut the 2013 price forecast for Brent crude to $110 a barrel from $130. Earlier the QE III monetary easing by the U.S. Federal Reserve had rallied oil prices because of a weakening of the dollar.

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One negative effect of the trade war with the U.S. is an increased emphasis on energy security and increased use of coal in China. After China committed to goals for climate change coal use declined in 2014, after reaching a high in 2013. The attack on Saudi oil facilities showed risk in its reliance on Saudi oil. China's import dependency for oil reached an all time high of 72% in 2018, according to BP 2019 Statistical Review. Gradually the commitment to climate change and lower use of coal has changed since 2016 with the withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris Climate Change Agreement. Initially after the U.S. withdrawal under president Trump China made bold commitment to lead the fight against climate change but has since wavered. In an October 2019 speech Premier Li Kequiang called for the development of the coal industry to ensure energy security.  As China's economy slowed in 2019 in the face of U.S. tariffs and a trade war with the U.S. efforts are being made to increase infrastructure investment which has driven coal use higher. China's steel output reached a record of 750 million metric tons in 2019. The amount of coal fired capacity under construction in China now exceeds the rest of the world combined, much of it from plants permitted before 2017, according to Global Energy Monitor. China is also expected to become the world's largest importer of natural gas by 2020. Even the Russian gas fields from Siberia supply only a fifth of China's energy demands in 2020.  China has made large strides in renewable energy helping it meet its Paris Agreement targets. Renewable energy is about 10% of China's energy mix, but its use showed growth of 29% in 2018, making up half of the world's growth. China's use of coal in the energy mix has dropped to 58% in 2018 from 72% in 2008, according to BP 2019 Statistical Review, as a result of renewable energy investments. At the Madrid Climate Conference China renewed its commitment to the Paris Climate Change Agreement. Now it is a balancing act keeping in mind energy security and economic growth along with the need for clear skies and better air quality. ...

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The lack of U.S. leadership and slow response by the Obama administration to the rapidly developing situation in the region risks spillover effects from Syria to affect the entire Middle East. Russia's stakes are minimal in the region because it is simply trying to retain some of its old influence in the region, yet it is having an outsized influence in the region through its early military assistance to the Assad regime. The stakes are much higher for the U.S. because of the decade spent and resources invested in Iraq, higher for Iraq with its need for civil harmony between Shiite and Sunni communities, for Turkey with its large Kurdish minority and flow of refugees from the border with Syria, for Saudi Arabia as a defender of Sunni interests. Without active U.S. leadership the situation is allowed to drift and young people of the Free Syrian Army are basically taking on the bulk of the role of resolving the situation. France's Sarkozy and Britain's Cameron offered this kind of leadership in Libya as Libya's young people struggled to resolve the situation there. ...

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Coronavirus will add $2.5 billion to the cost of the Tokyo Olympics mostly for rebooking facilities, and paying additional wages for staff, as well as virus testing and cost for preventing spread of the virus. As is typical of these games going back to the disaster in spending at the Montreal Olympics that took the city years to recover, costs can double or more than double earlier estimates. Someone has to bear the extra costs and the national government will take on $1 billion of these extra costs.  The official budget estimate was $12.6 billion. An estimate from Japan Board of Audit in 2019 came up with figure of $20 billion. The pandemic would bring this closer to $22.5 billion or close to double. This cost to the Japanese taxpayer is leading one third of people to sour on the games saying they should be canceled in mid-Nov. TV Ashai poll, with one third saying delay it, only one third for it to go ahead. Except for $5.6 billion from a privately organized committee its all coming from the City of Tokyo with some help from the Japanese government. When it comes to financing it the IOC is not taking part. ...

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A copy of the letter Mr. Trump sent to Mr. Erdogan of Turkey telling him " don't be a tough guy... don't be a fool," to invade the Kurdish zone in Syria. He says history will judge him, that he should "not let the world down." 

Turkey sent forces into the Kurdish zone even after the letter from Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump said that it was a bad idea getting involved in the Middle East that trillions of dollars had been wasted. He made exceptions for keeping the Straits of Hormuz open and flow of oil from a commercial standpoint in providing assistance to Saudi Arabia and Aramco, something the U.S. has done since FDR administration.

It also says Mr. Trump has worked hard to help Turkey. And admonishes Erdogan saying "I don't want to be responsible for destroying the Turkish economy- and I will."

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Tesco has a loss in market share in the UK going from 31.6% in 2007 to 28.9% in June 2014, according to Kantar Worldpanel. Profit margins of 6% a few years ago have dropped to an expected 4% in 2014, according to Bernstein. Tesco is losing out to more competitive discount retailers such as Aldi and Lindl. For larger spending shoppers Tesco does not have the same appeal as rival chain Waitrose. CEO Philip Clarke, who took over in 2011, resigned in July 2014. Dave Lewis, executive at Unilever, will replace Clarke. Tesco's share price has dropped by 30% since March 2011, when Mr. Clarke became CEO. Lewis is expected to come up with a new strategy. Tesco does not have the cost structure to compete with the discount retailers such as Aldi, which should lead to a different approach. The current approach of only making Tesco marginally better to compete with established discounters is not working.

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Saudi Arabia which was seeing GDP growth of 4% a year is slowing and should see GDP growth at 2% in 2009. Overall Saudis are in much better shape than their cousins in the United Arab Emirates like Dubai and Abu Dhabi. THis is because the Saudi banking system followed conservative practices and parked its $500 billion in foreign assets in US and European government bonds. Saudis can use these funds to increase infrastructure, education and healthcare spending by an estimated 10% this year to about $150 billion. At the samt time the Saudis will have to pull back from the $600 billion of megaprojects that were planned and will have to put more government money in projects that do go ahead. There is likely to be a hold on the projects to build a number of new cities in remote parts of the country. Some like the King Abdullah Economic City planned for the Red Sea coast may get the go ahead.

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Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi says it is logical because of the situation in Iraq, Iran and Nigeria, for consuming countries to build up stocks. This will not have a depressing effect on oil prices, and it will help keep prices stable. Economic growth is not affected by $60 a barrel oil as long as it does not go higher, says Naimi.

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Stress test performed by the consulting firms of Oliver Wyman and Roland Berger used data as of Dec 31, 2011, and a scenario of a 6.5% decline in GDP and a 26.4% fall in housing prices by 2014. An international panel of experts from the Bank of Spain, the Spanish government, the ECB, the IMF, the European Banking Authority and the EC was formed to oversee the consultancies report. A separate more detailed audit of 14 individual banks will be made by Deloitte Touche, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Ernst & Young, and KPMG International with results by the end of July. The four banks that need capital injections are Bankia, CatalunyaCaixa, NovaCaixaGalicia and Banco de Valencia. The consultancies estimate was for 51-62 billion euros needed according to Oliver Wyman, and 51.8 billion euros needed according to Roland Berger, for recapitalization of Spanish banks by 2014. The issue now is about any remaining questions about additional losses, and whether rescue funds from the EU fund the EFSF should go directly to the banks as favored by the IMF and the government of Spain. This is because of the stress on yields of Spain's 10 year bonds with rescue money going to the Spanish government at the insistence of German chancellor Merkel....

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Helene Cooper and Worth point to the vacillating response to the Arab Spring and movement for democracy and freedom in the Middle East of the Obama administration and President Obama. The dangerous overtones of this lack of U.S. leadership in the region as the U.S. completes a withdrawal from Iraq without an agreement for a residual presence, sees diplomacy reaching an impasse with Iran's development of nuclear weapons, and the Syrian civil war drawing in Turkey with its long border with Syria, and drawing in Saudi Arabia as a defendor of Sunnis in Syria. The stakes for Russia in Syria were minimal compared to that of people in the Middle East and the U.S., yet it had an outsized influence with its early military assistance to the Assad regime and the lack of U.S. leadership to resolve the situation in Syria in favor of the democracy movement.

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The benchmark price of U.S. crude oil dropped to $31.41 a barrel on January 11, 2016, as oil prices continued to drop sharply following a slowdown in China, appreciation in the U.S. dollar and no cuts in production from Saudi Arabia. Analysts expect a crisis for energy producers that is deeper than ones in 1986, and five plunges in oil price all the way back to 1970. With the oil prices at $30 and expected to drop below $30, the companies that took on a lot of debt have no choice but to keep up production. In the process many may find themselves in bankruptcy. Private equity with capital of $100 billion is likely to come in at this point to buy cheap assets without the debt, say analysts. U.S. banks energy portfolios are small, with Wells Fargo energy exposure only 2% for oil and gas loans in the third quarter of 2015, or about $17 billion. Loans that are rated "sub-standard. doubtful or loss," are projected at 15% of loans to energy producers, about $34.2 billion, in a biannaual review by banking regulators. The unusual aspect of this energy price slump is that production is not declining with falling prices- oil production in the U.S. was estimated by the government at 9.2 million barrels a day in Jan 2016- 1% higher than at the beginning of 2015 when prices were over $40 a barrel....

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Egypt plans to tackle the financial crisis after the pandemic and the war in Ukraine by increasing natural gas exports by one third. It has the LNG terminals to do this which are underutilized. The LNG could be exported to Asia or Europe at ten times the price buyers in Egypt pay for it. The way this additional natural gas is to be exported is to impose 15% cut in use of natural gas in Egypt similar to what the European Union has done with its 15% mandated reduction. This will then be diverted to LNG terminals. The max temperature for air conditioning is 25 degrees under the new plan and lights are dimmed or shut off after 11 pm in streets, shops and malls.  The war in Ukraine has doubled the price of wheat and other basic food necessities imported from Ukraine and Russia. This put a heavy burden on state finances in Egypt with subsidies on bread and other food for 70 million people out of 102 million people. Investment needs are also affected. Saudi Arabia has stepped in with help as no IMF program has been set. A 14% devaluation of the currency took place in 2022 and another devaluation of the currency is expected. ...