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Not much about industry, manufacturing, job creation, services. With 7% annual growth and neighboring India Pakistan under its current Prime Minister, a senior manager at Citibank at one time, must be writng its own story of economic growth struggling with all the problems facing India and on top of that facing the problems of religious extremism. The entrepreneurs here still represent efforts at retailing and other ventures after years of stagnant growth.

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India's industrial output declined 3.5% in March 2012, according to the statistics ministry, larger than the 1.5% expected.

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A plan appears to have been put in place by the U.S. and the European Union countries to strengthen the American position in negotiations with Iran underway in Istanbul. The impact on oil prices and on U.S. and E.U. growth as a consequence of higher oil prices, especially when the eurozone countries faced lowed growth, was one of the ways Iran hope to blunt the tightening of sanctions against Iran's nuclear program. It now appears from information released by the International Energy Agency that a plan was implemented by the Saudis in recent months to build up reserve supplies. At the same time a similiar effort was being implemented to increase production in Iraq and Libya so that it would add to reserves added by the Saudis. Daily output from OPEC countries increased by about 1.4 millon barrels in the Sept 2011- March 2012 period, as the confrontation with Iran took shape with increasing pressure using sanctions on Iranian oil, according to the IEA. Of this 1.4 million barrels a day increase, one third is from the Saudis and the rest from Iraq and Libya, according to IEA. In March 2012, OPEC oil production increased by 135,000 barrels a day to 31.4 million barrels, mostly from higher output in Iraq. The Saudis have filled up domestic oil inventories and placed an additional 10 million barrels of oil in storage close to markets in Europe and Japan. This suggests that this was part of a quietly implemented plan in cooperation with the U.S. and the EU countries to increase the effectiveness of sanctions and protect global oil supplies from disruptions; even as the U.S. pressured Japan, S. Korea, India and other countries to reduce purchases of Iranian oil. The economies of India, the EU and other countries were already beginning to feel the impact of higher oil prices in the 1st quarter of 2012....

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A detailed look and appraisal of the Tata's achievement and the vision and plans of Ratan Tata. See the Creation of Wealth a book about the Tata family and the epilogue written by Ratan Tata. And Conversations with Tata about Ratan's father Jamshedji Tata. Some of the achievements are the restructuring of Tata Steel, the acquisition of Corus, the Tata Motors Indica car and the first 1 lakh ruppee car the Nano a Ratna Tata vision coming true, the growth of Tata Consultancy in the software industry, the entry into retail, telecom, biotech, solar, and others, all meant to put Tata at the forefront of India's industrial development and to bring millions of Indians into the market economy. A lot of foresight is built into this, and now Tata believes in setting bigger goals following the example of China knowing that as India grows it will grow into Tata's larger projects. The Nano especially makes it possible to put a car in the reach of India's millions and by this way helping build a large auto manufacturing industry in India for the first time, and enlarging a number of other industries like steel. And Ratan Tata is not content with what tata achieved with the Nano, he wants Tata to reinvent the auto business. In the process of doing all this Tata has kept to its roots which is a strong social committment and a ethical foundation. Even the Jamshedpur Tata Steel restructuring was done by keeping the committments to education, health care etc for Jamshedpur. Tata is owned 66% by a charitable foundation and the ownership and management structure is designed such that even though the Tata family owns only 3% of the shares Ratan Tata manages the direction, goals and progress of the diverse companies which are independently run through management groups that oversee the companies. These management overseeing structures are the holding companies Tata Sons and Tata Industries staffs, and the Group Corporate Office headed by Ratan Tata and which has 9 senior executives who sit on the boards of the companies and act as mentors, nentoring managers and supporting corporate social responsibility values. ...

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Christina Passariello's exceptional report from Richard Toll in Senegal on Danone's 10 cent Dolima drinkable yogurt, which is a popular snack for Senegalese. This is part of an effort to reach customers in emerging markets such as Indonesia, Mexico and other countries who live on food budgets of 1-2 dollars a day. Sales of Dolima are growing by 10% each month. The first emerging market yogurt product was a 10 cent plastic 70 gram bottle introduced in Indonesia, which took off quickly with 10 million bottles sold in the first 3 months at the end of 2004. It is popular with low income Indonesians and especially with children. In 2006 Danone introduced a 7 cent yogurt product called Shakti Doi "gives strength" in Bangladesh, with sales initially planned for rural villages but later placed in urban stores. In 2008 the concept was taken to Sengal. To do this Danone's CEO, Franck Riboud, sent a senior product manager Isabelle Sultan who had worked on the Bangladesh project to Senegal. She came up with several new ideas to improve an existing product by improving the flavor and making it creamier, using the Senegalese flag colors of red, yellow and green on the package to help illiterate customers recognize the packaging, and priced it at the 50 CFA coin or 10 cents, a common coin used in Senegal. The name "dolima" means "give me more" in the local Wolof language. In 2009 42% of Danone's sales were from emerging markets, increasing from 6% 10 years earlier. Danone now reaches 700 million people and is aiming at reaching one billion customers by 2013. Other products include water at 15 cents in Mexico- where the alternative for many rural Mexicans is soft drinks that increase obesity. P&G is promoting hygiene for women in Mexico with its low price shampoos and feminine hygiene products and helping improve the quality of life for ordinary Mexicans. ...

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The print media in western countries is suffering decline in circulation and loss of revenues as more people read the news on the internet. In contrast India with 350 million people who have no access to newspapers, and in a country where newspapers are very reasonably priced and widely read in India's many languages. the print media industry is doing very well. The print media industry is expected to grow from 149 billion rupees ($3.6 billion) in 2007 to 281 billion rupees in 2012, a growth of 89% in 5 years, according to a report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers. With expanding literacy and newspaper reading a popular pastime throughout India, and the many newspapers available in languages like Hindi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Marathi, Bengali, in the north, to Telegu, Malayalam, Tamil, Karnataki in the south, the expanded availability also builds a public that is more informed about issues and the range of choices available to it, making for a vibrant free press and a vibrant democratic process. The low cost of newspapers means more of the revenues come from advertisers and some newspapers like the English language Times of India accept payment in the form of shares in a firm....

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Both Ranbaxy and Dr.Reddy's, two of India's largest pharmaceutical companies, are bidding for Betapharm, Germany's fourth largest generic drugs maker. Ranbaxy's bid at 500 million euros was 50 million euros higher than Dr. Reddy's. Betapharm based in Augsburg, Germany, has sales of 161 million euros, and a workforce of 350. For Dr. Reddy's this is a way to get a foothold in a branded generic market in a developed country, says Dr. Reddy. This will be the largest foreign acquisition for an Indian pharmaceutical company.

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Achieving a right balance between the needs for public health in developing countries- and the need for cost reduction in developed countries- with the need to keep innovation, is the challenge facing the Indian Supreme Court as it hears the Novartis case on its leukemia drug Gleevec. The efforts by Novartis and other western pharmaceutical companies to restrict the flow of low cost generic drugs from India. India stopped granting patents on drugs in 1970. It only resumed giving patents under a WTO agreement on patents. The Indian government denied the patent on Gleevec and the case is now coming up before the Supreme Court.

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Average wage gains for rural areas about 5% between 2001 and 2003, and a loss of 2.5% in wages for the poorest 10% of the people in China are shown in information from the World Bank. This will be of concern to Chinese government as it moves forward with current policy.

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Modifications proposed for Agnipath recruitment to the Indian armed services include full healthcare benefits and pension benefits for the scheme. The government has presented a fact vs. myth explanation to provide a clear understanding of the intent of the scheme to reflect a younger population and integrated India without the regimental bias towards caste and region present since British times. Job security is always a concern in India. The better technically trained and better financed Agniveer recruit would have more opportunities for education and training after 4 years and become an attractive asset for the private and public sector. A program of this kind was the GI Bill in the US that Franklin Roosevelt signed in 1944 and the Veteran Act of 2008 that continued educational benefits for free college. These programs have resulted in benefit of great value to the US economy and to the military veterans who used these benefits. In India's fast growth period after 2025 the Indian economy would be 50% larger and be easily able to take in these graduates from the armed services with technical training and advanced courses just as the US economy did decades ago. During the days following the pandemic there is a sense of pessimism in some sections and the government can enhance the package with added pension benefits and healthcare and still keep the financial aspects in good shape. ...

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Pakistan has always suffered from tax collection that is some of the poorest in the world. This leaves little money for badly needed infrastructure and roads. At a time when countries such as Indonesia and India are rapidly building roads and infrastructure, Pakistan depends on projects and financing almost entirely from China.  This means dependence on foreign debt financing such as that of the $2 billion Orange Line, Pakistan's first Metro line in Lahore. This is one of the first projects one of $16 billion in projects started from a planned $62 billion under China's Belt and Road Initiative. The problem is that taking on so much debt leaves Pakistan dependent on Chinese financing, with increased debt payments leading to a debt crisis. External debt will double to over $100 billion from a little over $50 billion in 2013, according to the IMF, reaching 30% of GDP. External financing needs have doubled from 4% of GDP or about $10 billion in 2013-2015 period doubling to over $20 billion and 8% of GDP. A steep increase in debt in a space of only 3 years. Pakistan faces problems similar to that faced by other countries including Ceylon, Burma. Pakistan has fallen behind on debt payments for electricity projects, because of problems getting Pakistanis to pay electric bills. Other problems are that the projects use Chinese workers and Chinese contractors so that they do not generate jobs the way projects would normally generate domestic jobs and growth including pushing domestic firms up the experience and knowledge curve in construction and technology. The opaqueness of the deals lead to a lack of required transparency. The projects also lack the almost zero interest financing from Japan of projects such as the first bullet train in India on Mumbai-Ahmedabad corridor because of the lack of negotiating leverage and other problems.  By early fall 2018 Pakistan is expected to seek IMF financing, which would lead to conditions set by the IMF on how much it can borrow and spend under the Belt and Road Initiative, known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor or CPEC. This means effectively that the Wst will bail out a country after investments under the Belt and Road Initiative. ...

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The global impact of the credit and housing crisis as it extends from USA to the rest of the world. Heavy machinery makers such as Japan and Germany are doing better than consumer goods exporters like China, and Asian countries like Thailand and Malaysia. And countries that borrowed heavily like Hungary are being watched by lending institutions. Commodities producers like Australia and Russia and Brazil are continuing to do well. For Middle Eastern countries the bigger danger is overheating in their economies as inflation soars. But while the crisis spreads the forecasts have only been taken down a notch displaying the conservative wait and see instincts of forecasters so that China and India still continue to grown near double digits which is not likely to hold up as one goes into 2008 and 2009 and actually might slip considerably from the high growth rates of the past as a number of factors converge especially in the case of China but also for India.

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What does Business in the Republican party think of J.D. Vance?   WSJ says the book "Hillbelly Elegy" is about cultural dysfunction not globalization or economic dislocation. Vance's book is about growing up in Appalachian part of Ohio around 2000. Lyrarc Retrospect shown on this page has a Wash.Post report of Robert Kennedy's visit in 1968 to poverty stricken Appalachian rural America in eastern Kentucky.  Running through Pennsylvania and Ohio to Tennessee. Mostly rural, mountainous low income and lacking roads, highways, and lacking schools, medical clinics. JFK and LBJ as presidents in the 1960's setup the Appalachian Regional Commission to lift it out of poverty. It increased income growth modest 4% above neighboring counties. Bush and Obama wars left this region and rural regions across the US neglected till Biden pulled out of Afghanistan and made rural America a top priority with the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to invest in it. It is as tough to tackle as the poverty in a similar forested and hilly part of eastern India called Orissa and Chattisgarh, which is only now receiving the attention of prime minister Modi in his third term. WSJ says J.D. Vance called mere rhetoric as no answer to such intractable problems in his Yale days, calling mere reference to cultural issues and immigration as forms of cultural heroin that would do little to change the centuries old poverty of the region.  Of the 39 year old senator J.D. Vance migration to MAGA, WSJ says it reminds them of Obama with only 2 years experience in the Senate- Vance has only a little over a year- who with lack of experience contested for the presidency of the US only to find Republicans poking Obama for seeking the presidency with such insignificant experience. This led to one of the least effective presidencies for lack of bipartisan support similar to that of Bush, both distracted by wars neither had the wisdom to not enter in the first place or to end quickly.   ...

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It makes for good political rhetoric, but in reality the flow of money goes both ways. A lot of investments are made by American companies overseas. This time the flow of oil money because of high oil prices, from the USA and Europe to the Middle East is being recycled back to the USA in the form of investments in the US through small equity stakes in companies and more so through purchases of capital equipment and services to build Saudi infrastructure projects. The $500 billion investment plan over several years in Saudi Arabia is to build everything from new cities, aluminium plants, electricity generation plants and chemicals and plastics plants. The fears and rhetoric are overblown, as the USA also invests overseas with holdings according to the Treasury department of $6 trillion of foreign stock and debt. The acceleration of foreign investment in the US is to be seen in the numbers, as the dollar gets weaker, and its more advantageous for Canadians and Euuropeans to invest here. Last year $414 billion of foreign investors money went into buying stakes in American companies and building factories and purchasing stock, according to Thomson Financial. Thats up 90% from 2006 and represented one fourth of all announced deals. This year in just 2 weeks foreign investors poured $22.6 billion in just the first 2 weeks of January, and that represents one half of all deals. Shows how quickly the picture is changing. One way of looking at it is that Americans buy a lot of foreign goods and the money Americans use to pay for a lot of imports is now being returned to the USA in the form of foreign investments. Note that foreign investment is desirable because it brings new ideas and technology and new management methods to the host country from other countries. These foreign investors in many cases are able to make these investments overseas because they are good at what they do, having them in the host country benefits the host country and shakes up competition in the particular industry in the host country that is receiving the investment. This is why economies once relatively unfavorable to foreign investors like Japan and S. Korea are now passionately seeking foreign investment to make their economies thrive through the exchange and inflow of new ideas and ways of doing things. The same can be and is true for the USA. The other aspect is that most of the investment is still from countries like Canada, Germany, Japan, S. Korea which are big free trade partners of the USA. Manufacturing investment is heavily skewed to European and Japanese companies. Foreign multinational investment (Sony, Toyota etc) grew to $43.3 billion in 2007 from $39.2 billion in 2006 according to OCO Monitor, and will accelerate significantly as companies like VW and other German companies find it cheaper to build in the USA and shift more manufacturing here. To get an idea why the rhetoric is overblown Canada spent the most in buying American companies, $65 billion in 2007, according to Thomson Financial. Russia spent $572 million and India $3.3 billion. How will this improve the chances of the USA making it out of this recession? Five million American work for foreign companies in the USA. Of these one third are manufacturing jobs. These jobs pay about 30% more than jobs in American owned companies. Figures from Treasury Department. There will be more of these jobs as companies like VW build plants here. Roubini Economics estimates that an infusion of about $300-400 billion is needed for the USA to overcome the effects of the current mortgage and credit crisis. $414 billion was invested in the USA by foreign investors according to Thomson Financial in 2007, going up from something like $200 billion in 2006. If this pace continues becasue of some of the same underlying reasons as the weaker dollar, stronger economies overseas, then $200 billion additional investments this year would add that much to a stimulus package of $150 billion by one estimate, to provide a boost of somewhere around $350 billion. In the range of the needed boost. Companies like IBM and GE which have significant investments in India and China and investments in software or infrastructure industries that are growing rapidly or Caterpillar with growth in construction overseas, may keep growing through this downturn. This recession may hit selectively and differently, not be a complete hit to the USA economy, and could prevent it from going beyond 2009 with recovery in 2010. ...

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The WSJ provides a fact check of Trump statements on crime, debt, and taxes. Trump says he is looking at a new plan for taxes not the $10 trillion in tax cuts over 10 years reducing tax collection by 22%, but something about a third of the size. No details are available on the plan. WSJ disputes Trump's statement that the U.S. is "one of the highest taxed nations in the world." WSJ points out that the U.S. in 2014 for federal, state and local government taxes collected 26% of gross domestic product in taxes, compared to average of 34% for about 30 countries, according to OECD. Debt to GDP ratio is about 75% that is high, but because of low interest rates the budget deficit is less than 3% of GDP, which is close to the long run average. For this reason economists say the government should invest in infrastructure and R&D that supports long run economic growth. On crime the record is mixed with increase in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City, but decreases in Washington D.C. and Baltimore. Police shootings were 67 in 2016 compared to 62 in July 2015, and the high being 280 officers in 1974 when Nixon was President. Crime was an issue in the 1968 Republican National Convention during the Vietnam era protests, police shootings and terror incidents attracted attention in July 2016, yet the situation today is very different from the war protests of the Vietnam era. On terrorism fact checks by the NYT and in Lyrarc shows Clinton at State Department and Panetta at Defense Department taking hawkish stands only to hit a barrier from President Obama for taking action needed in Syria, Iraq and Libya. Panetta's new book calls for robust action where needed. A Clinton administration would take action with allies in the Middle East. Even Hollande and Obama who pulled the U.S. and France out of following up in the French-British Sarkozy-Cameron led intervention in Libya, have changed policy, with Obama calling it his biggest mistake. France under Hollande with the U.S. is now actively engaged in the Middle East, having changed policy. It is highly unlikely that a Trump led policy which alienates most allies in the Middle East- Iran, Iraq and Saudis- is likely to work better than a determined Clinton-Panetta led effort which has support of the local countries on the ground actually currently on both sides because of complexities of Middle Eastern politics.  On trade a new administration will still have to work with China, India, the European Union, and other countries, as global trade supply chains are not likely to evolve overnight. Lessons will have been learned by Clinton about the need to bring back jobs and ensure the strength of U.S. manufacturing. Economic and jobs growth will require prudence in strengthening U.S. manufacturing coupled with global cooperation, which a Trump administration that alienates trading partners without the possibility of making any serious immediate gains in jobs, is highly unlikely to do better.      ...

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Lenovo shows a profit of $129 million for this fiscal year compared to a net loss of $226 million in the prior year. Revenues in the 1st quarter of 2010 went up to $4.32 billon from $2.77 billon with proft at $13 million. Margins are still under pressure because of growth in the lower priced PC market segment. Gross margins fell to 10.4% this year. To diversify Lenovo has introduced the Le Phone with China Unicom (Hong Kong) and sees sales of its mobile phones exceeding Apple's iPhone sales. It has also developed a prototype of a tablet PC in January 2010. PC shipments in China of $2 billon account for 45% of 3rd quarter revenues- up 67% in China's fast growing PC market. And Lenovo's plan is to expand sales in India, Russia and Turkey, from the current 5% in the fourth quarter ending March 31, 2010, to double digits.

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Krugman on taxes, Simpson Bowles and "low rates." He describes the U.S. under Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican president and war hero. A period which he describes in which unions had bargaining power, a third of workers were union members, and in contrast to to the 1920 business executives lived modestly and paid higher taxes. And yet the U.S. registered high rates of growth. There are several aspects to this period in contrast to the present that also need to be kept in mind. The post war booming economy after two decades of slow growth and war. Much of the present infrastructure in the U.S. was built during this period including the interstate highway system started under Eisenhower. The workers of developing countries of China, India and other parts of the world were not a part of the global labor force till the 1990's, with technology and transportation making global manufacturing a reality. The major factor in lowering wages and creating lower levels of unionized workers in the automobile as in other industries is the competition from lower wage labor in China and other Asian countries, and the presence of non unionized plants in the U.S. The choices made by economic decisionmakers of both parties in the last two decades, say experts including Fed chairman Bernanke, created a huge inflow of capital from Asia that led to housing and other bubbles, creating economic crises such as the one in 2008 and aggravating economic inequality. ...