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China's exports were able to show year over year growth of 7.6% in the first quarter of 2012, a sharp decline from 20.3% in 2011. As a result IMF estimates of China's long term current account surplus which were about 7% of GDP in the World Economic Outlook in Sept. 2011 may now be lowered to about 5%. This would reduce the strength of arguments that the yen is undervalued. The IMF is now engaged in making estimates for current account balances till 2017. China's current account surplus peaked at 10.1% of GDP in 2007 and the IMF forecasts in 2008 were for this to remain at 10% for the long term. The situation is rapidly changing because the most recent estimates from China's State Administration for Foreign Exchange show the actual current account surplus for 2011 at 2.8% of GDP. Since the 2010 Group of 20 nations summit meeting when China was pressured to reduce its trade surplus and let the yuan appreciate, the yuan has appreciated by 8.3%.

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This WSJ editorial in September 2014 describes the Russian threat to the NATO alliance and the nations bordering Russia in Eastern Europe. This follows the Russian army's intervention in the Ukraine-Russia border regions in the end of August and early September 2014.

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Australia's minimum wage is set for 2015 at $16.87 Australian dollars per hour, or $13.55 U.S. dollars for people over the age of 20. This is 30% higher than the minimum wage of $10 in California, and almost double the federal minimum wage in the U.S. For years since the late 1990's it has been increased as Australia benefitted from a commodities boom. With the lower employment in the mining and other sectors in 2015, and a fading of the commodities boom, experts say the minimum wage needs to be restrained to reflect the changes in the economy. Unemployment at 4% in 2008, is now 6.1%. Unemployment for people 15-24 not attending school increased to 14.1% in Nov. 2014, declining to 13.1% in Dec. Workers under 21 are paid much less significantly lower on a sliding scale, an idea that could be borrowed in the U.S. as the minimum wage is raised higher to provide adequate income for workers with families to support. Experts point to high unemployment in the 1990's even when there was a low minimum wage. As a matter of fairness the wage setting body in Australia takes into account the median wage. It was 54% of the median wage in 2013, compared to 37% for the U.S., according to the OECD....

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Krugman points to some striking data in a U.S. Federal Reserve study, showing 47% of Americans do not have the money to meet an unexpected expense of $400 without selling something they own or borrowing. The is the 2nd year of this Federal Reserve study. It shows alarming information about the condition of retirement savings- about 30% of nonelderly Americans say they have no retirement savings or pension, and reported going without some kind of medical care because they could not handle the expense. About 25% say they or a family member experienced financial hardship this year.

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Friedman says Putin acted emotionally by letting impulsive reaction to the anti-Russian feelings in western Ukraine determine Russian policy following the collapse of the Yakunovych government. The months long Russian response in Crimea and eastern Ukraine may have secured Russian pride at a large cost. This includes the damage to the relationship with Germany, seting the EU on a path to look for other sources of energy to reduce dependence on Russian gas, a natural gas deal with China in which the price was kept "a secret" and may have provided China with a bargaining edge considering the timing of the negotiations. The most severe impact is in the loss of confidence within Russia, reminding the Putin administration that though the economy has grown in the Putin years it is still fragile and connected to the global economy. The capital outflows of the magnitude of $160 billion at a time of high inflation and sharply slowing growth actually put at risk the gains Putin and Russia made in the last decade, and risk the future agenda to improve the standard of living of the Russian people eyond the major cities. Putin's own assessment would eventually be closer to that of Alexei Kudrin. Kudrin, finance minister in Putin's previous term, correctly saw the dangers of impulsive policy concentrated in one figure, and the suppression of other voices including the opposition needed for Russia to be governed in a manner similiar to western Europe, to attain a similiar level of economic progress and standards of living. In today's global economy even the U.S., France, UK and states inside Germany need foreign investment for jobs, new ideas and technology, and the opinion expressed on media television and internet shapes investor sentiment to a larger degree than fully understood....

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The SEC requirement that companies disclose the ratio between median worker pay and the pay of senior executives. The SEC says it is putting out the rule as part of implementing Dodd-Frank legislation to control excessive executive pay. Companies will be allowed to survey a fraction of their workforce as appropriate for companies with global operations. Executive pay will include pension benefits and stock options under the new rule. A WSJ chart using information from the University of Southern California and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, shows the ratio between what CEO's on average make and rank and file workers make remained at about 30 times in the post war period till about 1970, a period of rapid growth in the U.S. economy. By 1980 this climbed to about 60 times and exceeded 100 times by 1990. The period of stratospheric growth for CEO pay and extreme widening of the gap then occurs between 1990 and 2000. By 2000 the dot com boom- telecom boom and the internet- creates a surge in executive pay reaching over 500 times. This drops to about 280 times in 2008 and picks up again to reach about 320 times in 2011. Many of the poor business practices, the excessive leveraging and risktaking in the financial industry, take place against this background of excessive pay for senior executives. Some of that risk was passed on to others through such methods as securitization in the period leading to the 2008 financial crisis, so that executives were compensated with higher pay for taking excessive risk that they personally or their companies did not assume. Dodd-Frank legislation following the 2008 financial crisis sought to correct this imbalance by having pay information disclosed. The excessive pay has also coincided with an increase in the frequency of boom-bust cycles in the economy. The busts prompted the needs for intervention by the U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve, to drop interest rates more than would otherwise have happened during this decade, culminating in the huge bond purchases and monetary easing by the Bernanke Fed. The SEC under Mary Jo White is mindful of these distortions in the economy as a result of misallocation of resources based on excessive executive pay, and the need to take action before the next crisis. ...

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IHS Global Insight estimates that output in the US for the auto industry for 2009 will be 9.5 million vehicles, with capacity of 16.9 milllion vehicles this amounts to 56% capacity utilization number which is very low. Center for Automotive Research estimates that the sales began moving ahead of trend in 1996 and really accelerated after 1998. The easy financing fueled the boom. Now the 16-17 million sales years that were considered normal are seen as inflated and way above the trend. All this suggests that there is a lot of restructuring ahead for the auto industry.

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This story by Emmarie Huetteman describes the effort of three Republican women in the U.S. Senate who had the courage to listen to the different voices in their home state and use their informed judgement in deciding how to vote on a Republican healthcare bill or Affordable Care Act repeal effort. Especially when they heard that it would hurt people in their state, the elderly, low income and other vulnerable people without offering alternatives. Even when this meant resisting pressure from fellow Republicans. The senators are Capito of West Virginia, Collins of Maine, and Murkowski of Alaska. This is particularly significant at a time when too much polarization has led to paralysis in coming up with informed discussion and good solutions to problems. It is also significant that senators from the midwestern states such as Iowa- Mr Grassley, and Kansas- Mr. Moran, also joined the effort to listen first to people back home in their districts before making up their mind. 

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Adam Nagourney who has covered Governor Jerry Brown of California, describes the Bernie Sanders supporters and the California delegation with many Bernie supporters feeling the loss of their candidate. Jerry Brown says he expects "a convergence around the core issues of this campaign," as the effort to rally people behind Clinton continues.

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Bill Clinton, says about his foundation, in talking to voters in Detroit- " all we have done is save lives. If creating jobs and saving lives is bad, I guess you can zing me with it." He told another crowd in Durham, N.C, that he was tickled by Trump's comment that the Clinton Foundation was a "criminal enterprise." The criticism of the foundation hurts Mr. Clinton because of the lifesaving work it has done for AIDS, malaria and saving lives. The Clinton Foundation made the error of taking donations from overseas in the zeal for donations, which gave some critics an opportunity to smear the foundation. Another error was not to strictly separate the work of Bill Clinton from Hillary's work at the State Department. Even though in its activities it has been exceptional in its work. In poor countries like Haiti it has helped people overcome poverty. On one achievement alone the Foundation's work is exceptional- bringing HIV/AIDS medication at affordable prices to 11.5 million people in 70 countries. It has also worked to reduce obesity among American school children, and improved lives through its health initiative, including lives of farmers in African countries. George W. Bush did exceptional work in Africa for AIDS/HIV. Clinton's activities continue an American tradition of helping people in Africa's poorest regions.  In this case the funds raised aggressively by Bill Clinton during speeches, were used to save lives or improve lives. This has been lost in the criticism of the Clinton foundation, as if the good work done by George W. Bush for AIDS in Africa can ever be fairly diminished in the slightest way by criticism of the Bush family. ...

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Jerry Muller, professor of history at the Catholic University of America, offers some useful insights into the nature of inequality in advanced capitalist societies and other parts of the world, and a clear eyed way to tackle the problem of inequality. Tackling the problem should be done in a way that preserves the economic protections for the middle class and the poor which are needed for capitalism to work- unemployment insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Earned Income Credit, and the Affordable Care Act. Much of this system is already in place in advanced capitalist societies. Incremental gains in this area will be much smaller and it is important to recognize the need for strengthening the economic engine that supports these benefits, says Muller. Economic dynamism has to be preserved and nurtured with human capital deployed in the best possible way, and competitiveness of countries increased. Each country and society has to find its own way of achieving this. The family matters, and matters a lot in taking advantage of educational opportunity, says Muller. The culture of different ethnic, immigrant groups, also matter. These differences were present in earlier periods in the nineteenth and twentieth century and are likely to remain. Strengthening the pool of human capital and deploying it is essential to progress. In an earlier book "Adam Smith In His Time and Ours- Designing a Decent Society," Muller emphasized the importance Smith placed on the civic duty of citizens to promote the welfare of the whole society, and the importance of education, family and moral character, with no substitute for the "general prevalence of wisdom and virtue." ...

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Th cost of cancer drugs Avastin and Erbitux and the need for putting life savings at risk for a few months of treatment create tension among families, doctors and treatment providers. A course of Avastin could run $56,000 and take 90 days for reimbursement by meicare or pricate insurance, and a 20% co-pay comes to $11,200.

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This editorial in the WSJ describes the prolific effort to collect donations for the Clinton Foundation that it says promotes crony politics and lobbying. It says that this happened after some of the ethical questions raised during Clinton's two terms as president. This has been a particular problem for Hillary Clinton during the primaries, something she could do without as she has a 40 year record of public service and exceptional work in support of children in the U.S.. And specific programs for infrastructure and other areas to strengthen the U.S. in which much needs to be done in the future. 

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Arvind Panagriya, Prof. of Economics at Columbia University, points out the key initiatives of the Modi government in its first four years which will show results in future years for development of the country.  He mentions the Swachh Bharat Mission and cites results that show rural households with toilets are now 84% up from 38%.  By 2019 the whole country will be defecation zone free on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi. The Dhan Jan Yojana DJY accounts opened for rural households are up to 316 million. Aadhar cards for identification are up from 650 million to 1.2 billion. The Aadhar and DJY work together to enable direct transfer of benefits to poor households, eliminating the leaks in benefits transfer and ghost accounts of the period since independence in 1947. Not mentioned by Panagriya is the Health Insurance scheme for lower income households that enable families to survive a sudden medical expense that could put them in dire straits.  These efforts work in a way to change India from the ground up from its villages and rural areas as envisioned by Mahatma Gandhi in the struggle for independence. The land acquisition law amendments were put on hold till farmers concerns could be better accomodated, an area of concern for industrial development cited in an editorial in the Hindu newspaper. Fiscal consolidation and inflation targeting have resulted in an average inflation rate of 4.3% for the 4 years of the Modi government. Inflation was over 9% in the last 2 years of the previous Congress UPA government with GDP growth dropping to 5.9% for the last two years. Average GDP growth for four years for the Modi government is 7.3%, even after the changes to implement GST taxation for one national tax eliminating state barriers in interstate commerce and demonetization to fight corruption and black money. Rate of GDP growth should be higher after the gains from the initiatives and the new GST integration of the country are felt, with increase in investment and FDI, after infrastructure improvements and land acquisition arrangements are made. Transportation infrastructure modernization initiative pushes ahead with the first bullet train in the pilot project for Ahmedabad- Mumbai set to start in 2022. This is a $17 billion project financed for $13 billion by the Japanese government at 0.1% loan for 50 years, moratorium on repayments for 20 years, using E5 Shinkansen series technology. Implementation of this project on a sound financial basis should lead to transformation of the Indian rail network, raising the level of technology implementation across the entire Indian rail system. Such an achievement would rival the first introduction of railways into India in the nineteenth century under the British. A new bankruptcy law is intended to free up capital for investment by putting behind the large number of non performing loans in the Indian banking system. Changes made by the central bank RBI are designed to speed up this process so that loss making enterprises are absorbed, consolidated or shut down, a legacy from the earlier period.     ...

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The stark differences in the policy positions of the two major parties in the U.S. seen emerging in the television debates. Trump vocal on immigration calling for large deportations. Sanders and Clinton vocal on the struggles of the middle class and white working class.

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German chancellor, Angela Merkel, appeals to members of the Christian Democratic Party to support the European project at a party convention in Leipzig on November 14, 2011. "We live in times of epic change. Our political compass has not changed. But the context is constantly changing," said Merkel. The 2 day convention used the motto: "For Europe. For Germany." Her message was that it will take years of hard work to fix the crisis and yet this has created an opportunity to put the European project on a sounder footing. Finance Minister Schauble put it succintly as he supported Merkel's appeal: "We now need to build the political union in Europe we never managed to build in the 90's." This comes as changes are taking place in Europe with new unity governments being formed in Greece by Mario Monti, a former EU commissioner, and in Greece by Papdemos, another EU official. And it comes as a head of Italy's central bank, Mario Draghi, who had pushed for stricter controls on spending by the Italian government, is now the head of the European Central Bank. Merkel also hit on the theme of a stricter financial union, and the need for courage to change the treaty underlying the European monetary union to allow strong, automatic sanctions for violations of the treaty. She also emphasized that the government had ruled out issuance of eurobonds that makes the EU as a whole responsible for the debt of individual countries. On that point she said: "Everywhere we look we find behaviour that cannot go on for long. Everywhere people are living as if there is no tomorrow."...

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According to the General Accountability Office inquiry, 28 drug products had price increases over 100% in 2000, in 2008 71 drug products had such large increases. Medicines like Adderall for attention deficit disorder, Inderal for chest pain, Sumycin for infections were in the list of 416 brand name drug products where makers or distributors raised prices at least once by 100% or more for period 2000-2008. As large pharmaceutical companies sold their marginally profitable drug products or small selling products to smaller companies, these smaller companies would immediately increase prices to recover the money they paid to the large pharmaceutical companies. 26 of the brand name products saw prices raised 10 fold. A third of the drugs with large price increases treat depression and disorders of the central nervous system.