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A statement by German Finance Minister Schauble that Germany would be able to accept inflation of between 2 and 3% showed the new flexibility of the German position after the election of Hollande in France. Schauble said on April 10, 2012, Germany would find inflation "in the corridor between 2 and 3%" acceptable. The ECB's target is 2%. Earlier the Bundesbank in statements to the German parliament indicated that higher inflation rate in Germany was acceptable if the overall eurozone rate remained near target. This would give other eurozone countries an opportunity to improve competitiveness. Schauble also indicated willingness to accept higher wages in Germany because of years of wage concessions by workers in Germany. France's major parties, unions and industry are in agreement on a plan for reducing wages to avoid layoffs. This gives the normal process of adjustments in free markets a chance to function to restore competitiveness and balance. It also addresses the concerns of workers in Germany who would benefit after a decade of wage concessions, and improve consumption in Germany, as demand for Germany's exports adjusts to a slowdown in the global economy....

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In 1980 Jeb Bush 27, was looking for a place where he could make a fresh start away from the Bush name in Washington and Texas. His father was making a run for president that year. Miami with its bustling Cuban American community seemed a perfect place for Bush with his fluency in Spanish and his Mexican born wife Columba. The co-chairman of the Bush campaign in Florida was a Cuban American, Armando Codina. He set up Bush Realty, making Jeb Bush a partner with a 40% stake in the firm. In this period 1980-1992, Bush's gross income averaged 107,000 for the 6 years before the elder Bush was elected president to $1.6 million in 1990 half way during the elder Bush's term as president, according to a WSJ analysis of tax returns. This was also a period when Jeb Bush while engaging in business deals, was also running for office- first as Commerce secretary for 2 years in 1987, making a unsuccessful run for governor in 1994, and a successful run in 1998, 2002. He helped boost the Republican party in the Miami area, bringing together Republicans and the Cuban American exile community, during the anti-communist mood of the Reagan period. As Miami-Dade county Republican party chairman he helped boost voter rolls for the party, which had a 2 to 1 Democratic party advantage in earlier years. Stewart and Reinhard document the situations in which the Bush connections at the White House helped Jeb Bush in his real estate business....

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Issues raised by UN control of Icann and the internet.

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Discussion at the U.S. Fed Open Market Committee meeting in April 2014 revealed in the minutes shows concern about inflation levels being too low in 2014-2015, a factor in policy about raising interest rates. Other concerns are the weakness in the housing market.

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Hispanic immigrants make up a big part of the construction industry and a big part of industries like carpet making in Georgia. This has been hit hard and jobless rate for Hispanics is 6.9% according to the Labor Department up from 5.5% in April 2007. States with expandig Hispanic populations like Florida, California, Georgia and Nevada are hit hard by Hispanic job losses. Overall the jobless rate has gone up from 4.5% last year to 5% during th same periodand when one takes out the Hispanic component the jobless rate is down much less, which also tell us something about why the pace of the economic downturn is felt less among the whites and the rest of the population, because the construction industry got hit the worst and the Hispanics especially immigrants who dominate the construction industry are taking the brunt of it. The subprime story plays up here as well. From 1994 to 2006 the rate of Hispanic homeownership climbed to 50% frm 41% according to census data, at a rate more than double for the increase amon non-Hispanics. By 2006 47% of the loans issued for home purchases by Hispanics were subprime or loans with poor credit histories, double the rate for non-Hispanic whites, according to a paper by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, only exceeded by African Americans. In 2006 homeownership fell among Hispanics and one in 12 mortgages made to Latino households in 2005 and 2006 is likely to fail according to Catherine Singley, a policy fellow at the National Council of La Raza, an advocacy group in Washington. Georgia has one of the heavy concentration of new Latino immgrants, with a 70% increase in the state's Hispanic population between 2000 and 2007, according to census data. From one fifth of the construction work force in 2000 Hispanics made up one third by 2006 according to the Economic Policy Institute. Among foreign born Hispanics construction was responsible for 46% of the growth in employment from 2004 to 2006 according to Rakesh Kochhar, an econist at the Pew Hispanic Center, which tells us that the new Latino immigrants dominated the construction industry in places like Atlanta and in the rest of the country and are now getting hit the worst. Not only construction but industries that parallel the growth in construction like carpet making based in Dalton, Georgia, were dominated by Latino immigrants, so that as construction fell these towns and Latinos there are hit hardest. Investment manager El-Erian of Pimco points to employment as the key the critical thing to watch for the next 6 months and its useful to see that unemployment has increased by about half a percentage point to 5% from 4.5% April 2006 to April 2007 according to Labor Department data. As most of this unemployment has probably been taken up by the new Latino immigrants to the USA its probably not changed much excluding that component, which is possibly why the economy has not felt like it is in a recession when all around the signs of recession or what causes a recession are evident around us. Another way to say this is that there are built in hidden mechanisms of the American economy in its present form such as immigration, and possibly others that act as delay mechanisms that throw the recessionary impact back by anywhere from 6-18 months depending on how they operate and can blind one about the reality of oncoming storms. This was to be seen in 2005 for the economy with consumption spending and mortgage industry excesses, and which is why Pimco decided in 2005 at its spring meeting, that the big secular story was about the economic downturn. It actually took until 2007 for this to occur because of similiar things to what we are seeing now in terms of recessionary pain, then the new structured investment vehicles and other ingenious innovations in the mortgage industry may have extended the boom and delayed the economic downturn being felt till 2007. There is a lot of grief among Hispanic people. The numbers tell the story. For the 19 million Latino immigrants in the USA...

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New home sales in the USA rise 4.7% in February 2009 from the previous month, reversing the steady decline in new home sales from August of last year. This puts them at a 337,000 annual rate and this is sharply down from this time last year when sales were in the 500,000-600,000 range. A lot of the activity in housing sales is in foreclosure sales especially in California. Foreclosure sales in California in February 2009 were 58% of total existing home sales compared to 33% in February 2008 according to MDA DataQuick of San Diego, cited in Bloomberg News. The drop in the median home price for a existing single family detached home was sharp from $418,000 in February 2008 to $247,000 in February 2009, a drop of 41%. As aresult sales of existing family homes in California went up by 83% in February from the previous year as reported by the California Association of Realtors, shrinking inventories to about a 6 month supply if the current sales pace holds from the 15 month supply existing in 2008. The government's $8000 tax credit for purchases of homes, the falling prices and lower mortgage rates, are helping to lower inventories of new homes. The number for the US has fallen to 330,000 new homes, as inventories are dropping and new construction is slowing. The housing picture depends also on the number of jobs that are lost during the rest of 2009 and into 2010. And this will play abig part in determining whether housing recovers. The current job losses of 600,000 a month are grounds for caution....

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The Wall Street Journal in a recent editorial called the European Union's June 2011 plan for Greece "the French Deception," because it favored French and German banks but made Greece's debt burden even less manageable. The Economist views the European Union actions with disdain and says they are sure to fail. It is skeptical whether the spending cuts will work because Greece's politicians are not likely to address the problems of poor tax and other payments collection, and is too interconnected with favored groups and lobbies to be able to take the needed actions. And spending cuts will fall hard on ordinary Greeks. Even with job cuts the sense is that it will fall not on full time civil servants with permanent contracts but people with temporary contracts. The Economist cites the example of items such as the overgenerous markup allowed for pharmacists that adds another 1.5 billion euros to the budget which will remain untouched as an example of many such items where the cuts will not fall because of strong lobbies and favored interests. The privatization scheme is deemed unrealistic because it expects to raise 51 billion euros in a crash sale of assets, which only makes it more likely that assets could fall into the hands of cronies with the right connections. The current efforts only make ordinary Greeks worse off with spending cuts and new taxes. The negative impact on economic growth of the austerity cuts creates the prospect for a deeper recession, political turmoil, and a debt default....

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Claire Cain Miller points to the high cost of child care in the U.S. and the benefits to society from providing affordable child care. It has a high impact on women's employment and incomes, and ability to pursue opportunities in education and career. The effect on children especially for low income families is enormous. Average cost for child care in the U.S. is by one estimate $16,514. The higher the quality of care in early years the better the outcomes are for children in education, careers, income, and later in life.

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A new report on American driving habits by Samantha Gross and Aaron Brady of Cambridge Energy Associates shows that finally the gasoline price increases are beginning to bite the consumer and American drivers are changing their habits. After increasing from about2.5 trillion miles of total vehicle miles travelled by Americans in 1998 to about 3.0 trillion miles in 2007 the last 6 months are showing a downward trend for the first time. In the late 1970's and early 1980's something similar happened with a deep recession, rising gasoline prices and improved fuel efficiency standards, during this period gasoline consumption declined by 12 % accordingt o CEA. What is different now? For one thing the environmental issues are a big factor now and they take a new meaning as developing countries like India China Brazil and Rusia as well as other countries with much larger numbers of people than the US and Europe are now part of the car buying and electricity using peoples of the world. Its impossible both for the environment and for resource supplies to meet the needs of billions of new people joining the global economy and western ways of living without doing something radically different. And he problem is immediate as China becomes the second largest car buying country and India is not far behind with an explosion in Nano sales expected in the next few years, and the huge demands on electricity in these countries meaning burning huge amounts of coal to generate this electricity and create global environmental problems. All this makes the 70's and early eighties period remotely relevant. We are looking at something hugely different and 21st century defining now as its clear fuel has to be conserved and resources shared between the western world and the developing world, and technology moved forward quickly to meet the needs of a new world of Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas all bundled into one both by the global ecoomy and the way business operates and by the needs of people everywhere. And the media and public perceptions may be just catching up to these changes which are already taking place on the lands and under the feet of millions of people around the world. Some clues to what might have happened. Americans spent 4.5% of their after tax income on transportation fuels in 1981 according to Global Insight, a forecasting firm, and this went down to 1.9% in 1998, and is back up to 4% now in 2008. In California and more affluent areas of the country where the incomes are higher and gasoline prices are higher over 4% is spent on transportation fuels, whereas in areas of Alabama and Mississippi in the poorest areas where gasoline is less expensive this is over 16% according to the New York Times interactive graphic. During this period 1998 to 2008 demand increased for gasoline, in terms of the number of miles driven went up by 25% from 2.5 trillion miles driven to 3.0 trillion miles driven, and the sales of large pickup trucks and SUV's soared to make them the largest number of vehicles sold each year. At 1.9% of after tax income nationally, transportation fuels were cheap and consumers reacted rationally by splurging on gasoline in the USA. As a sobering note to all this sign of improvement in conservation of fuel the miles driven are still at about 3.0 trillion miles the high reached last year 2007. It will take a lag of a couple of years before a changing fleet to smaller vehicles and more fuel efficient vehicles and better driving habits and conserving fuel habits to make itself felt in transportation fuel usage across the USA and this requires prices at least at these levels to make the change seen as necessary to meet global needs and global environment....

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This report in the Hindusthan Times on president Trump's 25% steel tariff on steel imports focuses on the trade deficit with China of $375 billion in 2017. It shows the trade deficit for the month of February 2018 citing data from China as growing rapidly in 2018 over the prior year by 45%, even as imports went up only by 6.3%. In looking at coverage in the U.S. on this topic many of the reports in the Washington Post and the New York Times were critical of the tariff without mentioning the size of the trade surplus of China. Hardly any reports mentioned the growth by 45% in the February 2018 trade surplus of China with the U.S. over the prior year.  This report cites a tweet by president Trump that China was asked to come up with a plan to reduce its trade surplus by $1 billion in 2018, only 0.27% of the trade surplus, which looks strange as this would do little to change the trading relationship except that it puts pressure on China to change the direction of the surplus that is growing because of the strengthening dollar and the growth in the U.S.  This suggests that even with the 25% steel tariff America's basic problem of the imbalance in trading relationship with China will continue.  The headlines critical of Trump for starting a trade war therefore look strange in this context and show how little this subject is understood or debated with facts. Even today textbook economics principles are cited after two decades of hollowing out of industry in the midwestern U.S. and in Ontario, Canada. This led to public sentiment shift electing a liberal Justin Trudeau in Canada, and an outsider real estate businessman Donald Trump in the U.S.  For Democrats in the U.S. the support of marginal additional gains in trade with president Obama's push for another free trade agreement in the TPP may have cost them theiir working class base and the election.   ...

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Station from Christopher Beanland published in the UK shows unique rail stations from all over the world. They tell a lot about the place, modernistic art in Shibuya, Tokyo, curvy modernistic in white purple in Chengdu Metro, China, to the classical European facade in Helsinki and Prague, and mix in St Pancras of the industrial age, glitzy orange in Los Angeles Union station, and reviving the 1930's Soviet era in Ivanov northeast of Moscow.  This includes rail stations of Helsinki, Prague for architectural significance from the period after 1900. St Pancras in London which was saved from demolition and was restored mixing the modern with the historical setting. As it says in the Times the upper levels are quiet and pianos are playing at the lower levels with a gateway to Belgium and France. The Ivanova station 150 miles northeast of Moscow is restored to 1930's style along with hammer and sickle murals and design of that period with wooden benches rehabilitated. The glitzy Union station in Los Angeles is all orange looking ceilings that have a flower sculpted design. Next there is Shibuya station in Tokyo with huge mural modernistic paintings. ...

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Excellent article on GM and how it lost of market share in the coastal regions of the eastern, western and southern United States. Uses Miami as an example, and traces the large demographic changes there that GM failed to keep up with in its marketing. Describes the failures of corporate strategy in centralization of marketing and advertising, and the effects of the silos in decisionmaking at GM offices in the Detroit Rennaissance Center. Hawkins describes the four Renn Center towers as resembling massive steel grain silos. Just getting to an office in another tower requires taking an elevator to the ground floor , making it along a long walkway to another tower elevator. GM once ran a snow ad in Florida, and market share in South Florida is only 13.8%. The first ads to Hispanics were in 1995 and used the Alamo as a backdrop even though Mexicans make up only a small part of the Hispanic population there. The situation is repeated in other coastal cities of the U.S. - centralization of advertising and marketing, a sense at Detroit head offices that they knew what to do and did not have to ask people in the regional offices, a failure to delegate decisionmaking to regional offices and to people more attuned to the customer preferences for that demographic. A former Avon employee who marketed Avon products to Hispanics in South Florida is the new GM marketing executive in Florida. A regional sales manager for GM's southeast region says the organization is becoming flatter and for the first time he can talk directly with head offices in Detroit. ...

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This piece by Kanter in the NYT gives an account of Jean Claude Juncker's background as a political leader in Luxembourg. His father worked in the steel industry and was active in the trade union movement at a time when farming and steel making supported the economy of Luxembourg. In two decades under Juncker Luxembourg was transformed into a banking and insurance center with one of the largest per capita incomes in Europe. As a Brussels insider Juncker, according to British public opinion, is an odd choice to head the EU when it is trying to make its administration more democratic and less distant from the average person in the EU. Britain's prime minister Cameron says Juncker "was never on any ballot." The reason for Juncker's candidacy is that he is supported by the centre right parties in Europe, which also lost support in the recent elections. The Socialist and left parties fared worse in the election, but both centre right and left parties lost votes to third parties and nationalist parties such as the Marie Le Pen's nationalist party in France and the Independent party in Britain. Even chancellor Merkel of Germany initially hesitated to support Juncker, but confirmed him as her choice when German public opinion showed it favored the selection based on the largest party in the European parliament making the choice. This puts Britain and Cameron at odds with Germany, with the Swedes and the Dutch calming their doubts about Juncker and going with Germany. Little is mentioned in the media about the other candidate, an SPD leader from Germany representing the socialist and Left parties. ...

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Economist's analysis of the American stock market as it stands in January 2007. World awash in liquidity. Could this change? Corporate profits at an high, could this change? What will the housing market weakness do in 2007 and 2008? Are there any complex financial instruments that might falter in 2007? Will risky assets always outperform and volatility remain low or will things change? Questions posed here. Note from 2007 November 27. The housing market took a downturn by mid year. The credit markets felt a severe jolt in the third quarter of 2007 and a credit crunch ensued. And the new financial instrument or delivery vehicle subprime mortgages packaged into securities and sold by premier institutions like Citigroup as AAA safe investments around the world, including it so happens to 3 Arctic towns in Norway by brokerage firm there. Using a network of financial affiliates to do this in a off balancesheet fashion, all blew up by November 2007. The adjustable rate mortgages were set to adjust by mid year 2008 and lead to an acceleration of foreclosures in 2008 which had already climbed up in 2007. Things can get sour quickly and financial markets felt this especially because no oone knew how much of these risky securities other parties in the markets were holding resulting in a general level of mistrust. Leading to a choking up of the financial institutions in USA and Europe and central bank intervention in both places, successful for the time being in stemming the problem. Another part of this crisis is the global effect of the subprime mortgage losses so that financial institutions around the world were affected. ...

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Residents of Detroit- almost all residents- in the three county metropolitan area see their economy in ruins, according to aWashington Post-Kaiser Foundation-Harvard University poll of Detroiters. At the same time 63% of Detroiters feel optimistic that things will change for the better. Detroit's dependence on the auto industry has led to a marked precipitous decline with the highest unemployment in the country. Michigan has 14.7% unemployment and Detroit has 16.7%, the highest in the country. Seven of ten residents see a revitalization of the auto industry needed to rejuvenate Detroit, and three fourths of residents polled say this is likely to happen, even though the state government is looking to diversify the economy. A senior economist at the Upjohn Institute, an independent research group in Kalamazoo, Michigan, says creating a new diversified economy which includes biotech, medical, green energy in addition to electric cars and other fields in auto, will take years. One, two or even five years won't be enough to replace all the jobs lost in the auto industry, it may take adecade or longer. Some workers will be retrained in new areas, others will move and some will take lower wages at new jobs. Because of the area divided along racial lines with the black city neighborhoods and the white suburbs, the pain while distributed throughout the region, is seeing a marked deterioration in the life in the city. Governor Granholm says the state governmet has spent $400 million to help enroll 100,000 people in retraiing programs to become nurses, medical technicians, truck drivers and welders. Granholm says her office has helped create 163,000 jobs in 2009....

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Trade in services is not enough. Services won't build ships for the US Navy. Services don't provide jobs for factory workers. Trade in services won't rebuild the US manufacturing base. It won't rebuild the middle class. Trade in services won't make pharmaceuticals Made in America that are available always, including in times of war, pandemics and disruptions. Bottom line as DJT pointed out in a Cabinet meeting on April 10 is that the US could no longer be a world power without its industrial base, it's manufacturing base. Americans companies doing the outshoring are really the targets of the Tariffs because they are at the heart of the mechanisms causing the destruction of the industrial and manufacturing base of America, vital for it's security and for it's leadership of the free world and western civilization. It started with Apple in 1998 and I witnessed this as a consultant seeing the production line at the Apple Colorado Springs plant in 1997 with rework and defective product before Steve Jobs returned to Apple. By 1998 Apple started shipping it's entire production base to China. DJT told the Cabinet meeting on April 10, 2025, all previous presidents had to tell companies firing all their workers and outshoring their machines was- "there will be a tariff of 50 or 100% on your products imported into the US."  And these companies would never have fired all their workers and sent their factories to China or some other country. Economists and experts who have turned their backs on American workers see the $1 trillion deficit countries have with China and the loss of their industrial and manufcturing base with one excuse or another. Trade in Services in which the USA has an advantage does not do much for American workers, or for the 5 million manufacturing jobs lost and tens of thousands of factories that have been outshored.  National Security and Jobs, the Middle Class, factory communities across all 51 states are all at stake. ...

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The ANC wins 62.2% of the vote in South Africa's 2014 general election.

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How Gazprom and Shell are changing their partnership to develop Sakhalin II: 1. The vanguard in Russian oil projects is Sakhalin II. In 2005 Shell announced the price tag would double to $20 billion. With forbidding terrain and climate and spread over a vast region in Russia's Far East, this is a really big challenge. Who owns what part of this project- Shell has 55% of the partnership in Sakhalin Energy Investment Company, a stake it picked up from Marathon which exited in 2000. Mitsui and Mitsubishi are other partners. Note the arrangement in the original contract which was signed in 1994. Under the 1994 production sharing contract with Shell Russia does not make much money till Sakhalin Energy recovers its costs. Upto that time Sakhalin Energy would pay 6% royalty on revenues. Following this Sakhalin Energy would get 90% of the profits until the project earned a 17.5% return. Taxes are 32%. Because of this arrangement the cost overruns at Sakhalin present a serious problem for the Russian government, as the returns for Russia depend on Sakhalin Energy first recovering the costs. In 2005 Shell agreed to swap 25% of its controlling stake in Sakhalin Energy with Gazprom for 50% of a field in western Siberia. 2. Shell is adapting its strategy in the changing oil picture. Comments by Malcolm Brinded, Shell's executive director for Exploration and Production indicate strategy in the changing global oil picture. Shell sees the importance of engaging with a Russian partner for the long run to make long-term gains with a first-mover advantage. For Shell the real returns would come from other players using Shell's expensive LNG plants and terminals. ...