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Stephen Friedman's positions at Goldman Sachs and the New York Federal Reserve.

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Antonia Romeo new UK Cabinet Secretary Feb 2026-  precocious yet "warm and forthright"  in civil service interactions active as Consul General and at Home Ministry. After Westminster school and Oxford University, and a stint working at Oliver Wyman in management consulting, she joined the civil service. Becoming permanent secretary at the Department for International Development and the MoJ, and spent time as consul general in New York. She spent time with immigration and boat migrant issues at the Home Ministry, and is now keenly aware of the issues facing Britain. That bit of precociousness is needed at this time to set out a plan of action and get results for Starmer and his team. Based on what Labour stands for building on the skills of everyone in Labour not just those who go by labels as centrists, left and right, false labels that ignore that common sense means something else entirely. Getting results means addressing tough issues for the economy, cost of living, housing, through honesty, resilience, hard work and dedication. ...

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Why no new infrastructure building plan is in place in the US for decades as China, now India build new infrastructure every day with a Master Plan. The Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed in March 2024 in the Baltimore, Maryland area. There was much hand wringing at the time and president Biden also stepped in with help. The Washington Post says 2 years later no plan is in place to build a new bridge. The cost keeps going up from $1 billion to $1.9 billion and up again to $5.2 billion, with the dates shifting 2028 to 2030. Maryland received $2.6 billion insurance payments for the damage to the bridge by a ship, yet the project is stalled in disagreements with different parties involved. Even in the streets of New York, the pedestrian pavements in Brooklyn and other places are so dilapidated but no one seems to care. Suggesting that New Yorkers are also numb to infrastructure being bad as it is, just as Mumbai residents were in the old days before infrastructure became a daily priority in India in recent years, following China's example. ...

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FIFA's $3 billion in revenue from ticket sales is 3 times what it was in Qatar, prices per game are double that in Qatar. What's going on? FIFIA is being accused of price gouging practices by the Attorney Generals of New Jersey and New York. Six games including the finals are to be played in the NY-NJ area. FIFA's Infantino says it will use $11 billion in soccer revenues (90% of tickets sold for the World Cup in the US/Mexico) for this nonprofit to do soccer projects around the world.  Fans are not happy with the way FIFA is extracting higher prices to put visiting the game beyond the reach of ordinary households. Shouldn't making  it possible to watch the game for ordinary income soccer fans also be part of FIFA's responsibility- instead of taking the opportunities for visiting soccer fields away from ordinary income people. 

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The New York Times effort to succeed in the internet world. The design of a flexible pay subscription model that would work, and still retain a large digital audience that supports advertising revenue, took several years. The Times expects about 300,000 paid subscribers. It gets about 30 million unique domestic visitors a month at this time.

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CSU faculty organized against OpenAI contract expiring June 2026 at a time when students/faculty worry about loss of critical thinking skills amid 40% unemployment of new graduates. This is the California State University System once a major national institution of education under Governor Edmund Brown Sr in the 1960's that powered the 60's middle class, now torn apart by mistakes in higher education. Imagine Teniente-Matson in an AI created form speaking in many languages not realizing that this has little to do with education, as shown here in the NYT- coming to San Jose State from Texas A&M San Antonio. Both Hispanic student dominated institutions of education that have first generation Hispanics entering college- the promise of this first generation finding opportunities in the US economy. It is already fading for new graduates with high unemployment of 40%. The AI Initiative pushed by Governor Newsom in the state has created confusion or chaos says the NYT. This is the biggest 4 year public higher educational system in the US with 22 campuses, with diversity in California about 50% Hispanic. This is what "great" looked like for America in the 1960's with Eisenhower and JFK. Today with such misplaced initiatives and lack of the same wisdom and dedication to knowledge from that in the 1950's and 60's it is a fraction of its former self. It was marketed at $16.9 million for 500,000 licenses by OpenAI as a way for these first generation Hispanic college students most working class people to move forward. But as every commencement speech and everyone from the president to business leaders can attest it is all about hard work, hard work, hard work, and focus on reading and math, on sound basic skills, with pen and paper not ipads and iphones and AI that this job will be done. AI can never teach someone to persevere, to overcome obstacles, to put in the hard work over and over again to accomplish great things or to develop the curiosity for knowledge, the sense of new discovery  for scientific knowledge and invention that has powered America and Europe for three centuries. ...

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At one time Spotify's headquarters in World Trade Center 4 took up 16 floors of space. Today Spotify employees can work from distant locations. Spotify told employees they can work remotely, even in another state. Company after company is vacating space or reducing the amount of space it uses in the high rise buildings in New York City. New York may never look the same. The sight of thousands of employees entering he high rise office buildings to go to work spaces may now be a thing of the past.

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News from all over the world comes into the New York Times Foreign Desk. Decisions have to be made which stories to run, and which stories go on the front page. Computer screens in the newsroom show the latest reporting from reporters around the world.

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Keller says that Fox News has contributed to the corrosiveness that has affected public dialogue in the U.S. He admits that the prestigious urban newspapers like the Washington Post and the New York Times can be condescending and too open to consider points of view that do not have merit. Yet, he says, they are different from Fox News in that they are self-critical and take up different points of view outside their own, an openness that Fox News lacks. A little research shows another side of the Times- during its early years the Times with a scoop of its own helped put the boss of Tammany Hall, which dominated New York politics in the late twentieth century, in jail. The journalists of the Times, even though they have their own screwups, always must carry the added responsibility of living up to a long heritage.

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DW.com report by Mu Ciu shows a CATL(Contemporary Amperex Technology) plant in Arnstadt, Thuringia, in eastern Germany. It will not bridge Germany's technology gap. German and US consultants at the microeconomic level of the company and German and US economists at the macroeconomic level of the economy entirely fail to grasp the effectiveness of China's investment driven model. Of its joint partnering with European and American companies and China's single minded focus on technology access. This is why the DJT US administration has warned Europe that it is failing economically. China's macroeconomic and microeconomic model are run by the same authority by the state, and according to goals and plans (which in a socialist economy is weak at the microeconomic company level lacking the initiative and freedom of action). By combining its macreconomic framework run by the state with a micreconomic company level run by the state but on free market lines the Chinese investment driven model has dual advantages and operates at a speed that far surpasses the German and American model. It's society suffers as a consequence, but in few short decades 1990-2009/2020 this is all it could accomplish with a single focus on modernization for what was once a peasant agricultural economy. Where it lacks is in future technology access and as long as weak companies in the US and Germany partner with Chinese companies the technology access for Chinese companies give it the essential ingredient for its investment model to work, as American and European companies can waver in investment Chinese companies backed by the government will not waver in investment and have the clear advantage. DJT's approach is to give a big shock to the entire system of world trade now run by China, so that this is no longer going to work at the macroeconomic level and legislate huge investment incentives for one time depreciation and other moves to get American companies to invest. It wants Europe to do the same, including getting rid of the bureaucratic structures and regulations. German Chancellor Merz is getting the message and is acting quickly first with the trillion dollar investment plan, the meetings with Draghi and Meloni to get Italy and like minded nations on board, and internal efforts to get rid of regulations and bureaucratic structures, and building a new partnership with India to remove an error of Merkel/ Clinton+ Obama in excessive concentration and dependence on China. This requires a steady hand and steady governments, steady policy, and companies in America, Europe and India to work together for the long haul without wavering or delay, to rebuild the world economy along new lines and on a new path. ...

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New York La Guardia Airport is totally rebuilt with $8 billion renovation. The airport is half way through renovation, Terminal B is halfway finished. It should be completed by Spring 2022. One concourse looks out over Flushing Bay. 

New York La Guardia was for a long time probably the most hated airport in America. Now passengers getting off the plane at la Guardia even think they are at the wrong airport. The pandemic actually made construction easier with more space to work in. 

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The moves by the Obama administration and the national feeling and mood, its views as taken in poll of 998 adults by CBS News/New York Times. On taxing those above $250,000 income levels at higher rates- 74% of respondents support it. On populist sentiment - 71% say Obama cares more about ordinary Americans than for large corporations. On the vast expansion of spending and programs 48% prefer smaller government and fewer services and 41% favor bigger government and more services. On spending to stimulate the economy at the risk of higher deficits- 45% support this. On the budget proposal- 56% support it, but 79% of Democrats like the priorities, only 27% of Republicans like them On helping banks recover- 29% supported this in Feb, 47% support this now. In the freedom to use his own judgement at a time when Republicans have rejected almost everything he does- by three to one people say they trust Obama to make better decisions about the economy than Congressional Republicans. This includes one quarter of Republicans, which is significant in giving President Obama the room to use his judgement of what is best and take aggressive action where necessary. This aggressive action may be necessary if taking over some failed or insolvent banks is considered to be the best option, and President Obama's advisors like Mr Axelrod must be taking notes from this poll by CBS News/New York Times. On security, on safety- by tqo to one people say they trust Obama to keep the nation safe. ...