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Joe Nocera joins Simon Johnson and other experts in saying that Fed Governor Daniel Tarullo's suggestion to raise capital requirements of U.S. banks to 14% makes sense. He quotes Anat Admati, a fiance professor at Stanford Business School, who says the only way to get rid of bailouts is to raise capital requiremets to an adequate level. The Wall Street Journal editorial on June 16, 2011, also supports the higher Tarullo capital requirements. Why is it that European banks and the Basel III accords provide a 7% capital reserve requirement phased in over many years- to as far out as 2019- if this is the case? The European banks are in much worse shape than the U.S. banks especially with Irish, Greek and other debt on their books and Basel III is designed to accomodate this. The governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, is also advocating higher capital reserve requirements than Basel III, including the flexibility for countries like Britain and Sweden to set their own capital reserve requirements based on their own situation and the need to protect taxpayers. The U.S. stands to gain a lot from setting its own standards if France and Germany and other European countries decide to user lower standards through Basel III....

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Honda plans to move more of its manufacturing to the U.S. as the value of the yen drops below 80 to the dollar in 2011. Honda faces problems from parts shortages after floods in Thailand, and U.S. market share down 1.5 percentage points to 9% in 2011. Honda's profit declined by more than 50% for the third quarter of 2011. The yen trading at 77 to the dollar in Dec 2011 is making it impossible for Honda to make a profit from vehicles made in Japan and sold in the U.S. Honda plans to double the capacity of the Civic plant in Greensburg, Indiana, increase capacity at its other assembly plants. It will build a new plant in Celaya, Mexico, in 2014, to manufacture the Fit subcompact. This will raise North American production from 1.29 million vehicles to close to 2 million. About 200,000 to 300,000 of these vehicles will be exported to other international markets. Profits on small subcompacts are small, making manufacture of the Fit more economical in North America than in Japan. In 2011 Honda manufactured between 30-40% of vehicles in Japan, the new plans are to reduce this to 10-20% in the next 10 years, a major shift....

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The comparison by Goldsmith and Moyn has picked the wrong Roosevelt. Only Washington in the war of independence, Lincoln in the Civil War over slavery, and FDR Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the Great Depression and economic collapse, fall in that category and there is no one and nothing to compare with both the struggles they fought and the challenge to the survival of the US. On the next scale comes TR Teddy Roosevelt, and this is the Roosevelt to compare DJT with. TR was unconventional, TR spoke a different language and could be frank and outspoken. TR actions matched his words, as his days on the Indian frontier and with the Rough Riders. TR also had one term plus completing McKinley's term after his assasination. And TR like DJT did not like his successor and did everything to make the comeback denouncing the policies of his successor William Howard Taft in the 1912 election, which TR lost to Democrat Woodrow Wilson. All this is true for DJT in 2026. TR denounced the shift away from his "progressive policies" and the shift to corporate interests of Republican Taft. In this sense also DJT is similar as he denounced the shift to corporate interests of the Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama years. TR was no country club Republican and was willing to confront opponents in the politics to fight for the benefit of the working man, splitting the Republican party in the process. This is true of DJT. TR launched the rebuilding of the Navy, and announced he would reassert the Monroe Doctrine. DJT is doing the same and is reasserting the Monroe Doctrine. One could say that DJT feels the hidden TR in him and like Teddy Roosevelt is putting America in the place it once was. For TR the industrial revolution had distorted a country founded on the backs of settlers owning the land independent and rugged, as industry turned the country into corporate interests and workers in factories with few rights, and poor working conditions and wages. This TR even as a Republican fought to reverse. In DJT there is the Republican also of a different mould who fights to reverse the situation created by Bush/Clinton/Bush/ Obama over three decades since the 1990's when America has fallen to new lows when drug trafficking gangs in Mexico and Venezuela are able to run rampant over the western hemisphere, when elites in Canada and the US act impotent in the face of this, or living in their own world away from the streets and neighborhoods of America devastated by drug trafficking, towns and neighborhoods from Janesville to Flint economically deprived as elites shifted manufacturing overseas to China in complete indifference to the American worker and his family, and carried out wars in remote parts of the world such as hills of Afghanistan and deserts of Iraq no worker or farmer in America had even heard of or cared about since the American continent was settled in 1600. If there is a Woodrow Wilson around the corner who won in 1912, for the 2028 election, then it is someone who like Wilson will take policies to benefit the American worker and farmer and his family, and America as a Nation to a better place over the next decade. A passage from Teddy Roosevelt from his Autobiography about who TR was struggling against illustrates this point- "They favored Civil Service Reform; they favored copyright laws, and the removal of tariffs on works of art; they favored all the proper (and even more strongly the improper ) movements for international peace and arbitration; in short, they favored all good and many goody-goody, measures so long as they did not cut deep into social wrong or make demands on National and individual virility. They opposed, or were lukewarm, about efforts to build up the army and the navy, for they were not sensitive regarding National honor, and above all they opposed every non-milk-and-water effort, however sane to change our social and economic system in such a fashion as to substitute the ideal of justice towards all for the ideal of kindly charity from the favored few to the possibly grateful many." (Theodore Roosevelt, Autobiography, Chapter 5 title: Applied Idealism, 1913) ...

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The deterioration in the Irish banking crisis. An additional 13 billion euros will be needed by Irish banks to pay bad real estate debt, after this round of stress tests in March 2011, according to Ireland's Central Bank. This is on top of the 85 billion euros rescue package after collapse of the banks, and the 10 billion euros given by the EU and the IMF. Some estimates say the cost of the banking bust could reach $140 billion for a country with GDP of $241 billion. Ireland's interest payments on debt are estimated to rise to 13% of government revenues by 2012. Serious calls are being made for bondholders to share in the losses as the crisi escalates. Daniel Gros, Director of the Center of European Policy Studies, says policymakers in Europe saw the experience of Lehman Brothers and do not want to see a repeat of that experience at any cost. The weak banks in Germany and other lender countries are too politically connected in his view to be allowed to fail. German banks hold $62 billion in Irish Greek and Portuguese debt and French banks hold $26 billion. Hypo Real Estate, taken over by the German government, holds $14.5 billion of this debt. Bank assets in Europe are a larger share of the national economies in Europe than in the U.S. making the situation more intractable- In Britain over 3.5 times the economy, Ireland 2.5 times, in Netherlands 4.4 times, in France 3.25 times, in Spain 2 times and in Germany 1.5 times GDP, compared to 60% of GDP in the U.S. After the Irish government decided to guarantee the debt of its banks two years ago, Irish taxpayers are stuck with the entire cost of bad debt at the Irish banks....

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Increasingly complex political coalitions are away centrist parties of the establishment have maintained power in Europe. Traditional political parties on the right allied with business and working class parties allied with organized labour are replaced by a fragmented landscape with parties emerging at the far right and far left. This is also a result of the deep recession following the global financial crisis of 2009, changes in international trade and globalization that have increased inequality, and the migration crisis in Europe.  In Germany and Netherlands centrist parties have formed coalitions to remain in power. In France and Italy mainstream socialist parties suffered defeat, in France to a newly formed party by Mr. Macron, and in Italy to a party started by a comedian Beppe Grillo called the Five Star Movement which allied with the Northern League party at the far right. In Spain's general election in 2019 the Socialists showed a new trend of going back to their roots as working class parties. By addressing minimum wage and other issues relating to equality the Socialist party in Spain increased its share of the vote by 6% to 29% in 2019 elections. Previously in the last 2 decades the Socialist parties had moved away from their focus on equality towards economic efficiency. The tradeoff between equality and economic efficiency moved away from equality in Europe and the U.S. during the last 3 decades,leaving Socialist parties exposed to losing some of their working class base to new parties formed to address today's issues of fairness and social justice.   ...

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Because of the proliferation of information and content on the internet, it is the services that help users navigate the content that do well not the content producers. This is one of the big reasons for the continuing failure of AOL and Yahoo. U.S. onine advertising went up to $31.3 billion in 2011 from 2010, according to eMarketer. Yahoo's share of U.S. online advertising will decline to 11% in 2011 from 16.1% in 2009. And AOL's dropped to 2.7% from 4.4%, according to eMarketer. The average cost to reach one thousand views on Yahoo in July 1998 was $25 per thousand, it is $6.50 in July 2011, and was $7.65 in July 2010, according to SQUAD Webcosts. Rob Norman, CEO of WPP PLC's GroupM North America, says he is really skeptical about the value Yahoo brings. He sees it as mostly commoditized inventory, and little that has a unique value to users. Analysts say that over time this problem of falling ad rates with commoditizing of content and proliferation of inventories could be faced Facebook by also....

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EU Competition Commissioner, Margarethe Vestager, on a trip to the U.S. to meet FTC and Justice Department officials, says the situation in Europe is different from that in the U.S. In Europe Google has a dominant position with over 90% market share, much more than in the U.S. where Yahoo and Microsoft are competitors in general Internet search. She said about Google following the filing of formal antitrust charges by the EU against the company- "is a successful company because they have good products. But the compliments, they stop when you get the suspicion that there may be an abuse of this very strong and dominant position." In earlier statements Vestager has said that the dominant position in all its ramifications poses "societal challenges." Complaints to the EU Commission originated with Microsoft and smaller companies affected by Google. News Corp, publisher of the WSJ, has joined a group of companies in filing new formal complaints in April 2015 with the EU Commission about Google practices. Google now has 10 weeks to respond to the charges. In the U.S. the FTC also had concerns, with FTC staffers favoring filing formal charges. In the end the FTC decided to rely on Google making voluntary changes to three practices taken up by the FTC- including complaints about "scraping" of content from rival websites, and its restrictions on the ability of advertisers to use competing platforms. Vestager sees the need to get the process moving, as it has dragged on for about 5 years, saying "it is important for us to be more speedy in getting the question out, to be able for Google, for competitors, but most of all for consumers to see our concern." The EU Commission charges about Google favoring its own comaprison shopping service are a way for Vestager to establish a broader precedent, as it looks into other ways Google's uses its dominant position to favor its own products and services....

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The Democratic Party's progressive wing and Mr. Biden support the effort by president Trump for $2000 checks to go to American families as direct payment instead of the paltry $600 approved by McConnell in the Senate and Pelosi in the House. The delay in providing relief has hurt Americans working in retail and restaurants, hotels, and travel, tourism, sectors hard hit by the pandemic lockdowns. To make up for the delay and because the pandemic after the second wave looks to be not just for 2020 but for at least the first half of 2021 $2000 is essential for American  families to support themselves. Food insecurity unknown to Americans for most of the twentieth century has returned in ways that are unimaginable. The same is true for southern Europe as pictures of Barcelona in DW,com show. It is high time both the European Commission and the U.S. Congress get their act together. Partisan press is one thing, and debate is the oxygen of society in a democracy, and making ends meet on a day to day basis is another thing.  Working from home remotely one half of society the professionals may not see the other half, yet they are there as the pictures from Barcelona of people collecting metal and other scrap  on streets for sale to buy food in the El Raval neighborhood show, and the pictures of Americans in long lines at food banks show.  ...

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ICBC's strong performance is largely because of the leadership of Jiang Jiangqing. Jinagqing was reluctant to engage in the large scale lending encouraged by the government during the 2008-2009 financial crisis. For this reason he is not popular with the leadership in the government and the Communist party. This could change considering the large number of loans from that period which are expected to go sour in coming years. The U.S., Spain, U.K. and other countries suffered from the effects of bad loans in the banking system and experts say China is not likely to be an exception. Especially considering the excessive lending during that period and slowing growth in China. When this happens Jianqing's banking skills and conservative approach is likely to gain increasing respect within China. Jiangqing has expressed the view that the last thing China needed was to go back to the situation in 2000 when China's banking system was weighed down with bad debt. One has only to look at the change in Spain where once respected senior IMF officials like Rodrigo Rato are now looked at very differently. Jianging's push for expansion overseas- so that ICBC does not end up being a regional bank- is not viewed favorably by the government, which looks for a domestic focus. ...

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What is behind Pew Research Report finding showing an unacceptable concentration of wealth that endangers democracy. Higher income groups making $244,000 a year in 2024 gained 19 percentage points of the total US Household Income moving from 29% in 1970 to 48% in 2024. About 50% of the nation's income going to 20% of its people and most of that to 2%-5% of the people of the US. The gains meant loss of 17 of these percentage points for middle income households making $106,000 a year that went from 62% in 1970 to 43% in 2024. Another 2 percentage points was suffered by vulnerable Lower Income groups making $35,000 a year who owned 10% of US wealth in 1970 went down to 8%.  The problems of divisiveness in the Nation come from three distinct areas. First money for state financed education for all being put into wars in the Middle East from Reagan through Obama and Trump and some wasted through capital misallocation to low priority investment by faulty capital market allocation. Second the high cost of pharmaceuticals and healthcare putting a heavy burden on low income and middle income households making $35,000 or 106,000 a year. Third the neglect of manufacturing that cutoff the opportunities for middle and lower income households and their one chance to move up the ladder. And the parallel shift of resources to technology and financial sectors that created opportunities for a smaller group of immigrant and higher middle income households with these skills.  These are the sources of America's distress and each problem is being attacked at its source by president Biden- exit from Afghanistan, canceling student loans that are egregious and prevent the investment in education America needs, large sustained investment in manufacturing and new supply chains, antitrust action on tech monopolistic behaviour, redrawing the shape of America's pharmaceutical sector to provide access to medicine to all parts of the population.    ...

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The funny German ad for the Jazz is playful and funny. Its a redesigned Honda Fit minicar sold in Europe as the Jazz. Acura's TSX is essentially a European Honda Accord. Saturn is offering a version of the European Opel Astra compact. Ford is bringing the Fiesta here from Europe as the new Verve compact car and it unveiled a prototype of a New York City taxi built on a van Ford sells in Europe. VW is planning to bring more European cars here and build a factory in the US. And Mercedes is brining models here equiped with its new Blue Tec diesel engines. And Daimler is bringing its tiny Sart Fortwo car to the US with a website that has taken 30,000 orders already. The market is going global for cost reasons. And its a market looking more and more like the European market where the local carmakers and the foreign carmakers are all jostling for a share of the pie with a fractured market and each car maker having a small share of the market. Ford, GM and Chrysler compete with Toyota, Honda, Renault-Nissan, VW, BMW and Mercedes all with a small share of the overall market and all these companies now operating as global companies with operations all over the world and building models now for a worldwide market. Ford is clearly following this trend and Mullaly wants to see good European modelsbrought quickly into the US and costs for developing models shared across a worldwide market. Smaller size also works to bring European and Asian models adapted to the US because the US market is moving towards fuel efficient smaller cars. So there is a convergence from a number of angles, for it to make sense to build a good car and sell it in as many places as possible, and the old region based logic does not make sense any more....

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Key takeaways from XI's speech to the 20th Party Congress of the CCP, China's Communist Party, are shown in the Guardian. Xi presented a vision of continuity. Goals that were seen as significant were self-reliance in science and technologies and building China's capacity for innovation by building up its capabilities in science education. This was stated as the main driver of future growth. It does not favor decoupling with the US even though the US sees it in its own interest and that of its working class to bring home manufacturing and rebuild supply chains for American self reliance - the pandemic showed the weakness of free markets approaches that ignored this. A promise to step up regulation on income distribution and wealth accumulation, to cut down the growing inequality gap that developed in the last two decades of hypergrowth.  To focus on the quality of economic growth after lessons learned on climate change. To double down on the zero covid policy. He lauded the "all out war on the virus." To continue the battle against "corruption on a scale unprecedented in our history." "Corruption is the biggest cancer that harms the vitality and affects the combat effectiveness of the party, and anti-corruption is the most thorough self-revolution. As long as there is the soil and conditions for corruption, the fight against corruption will not stop for one moment." ...

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GST is to India what land sales were for China in its phase of rapid development and accelerated growth. It consolidated capital that could be then invested at the national and state levels on infrastructure, logistics for exports growth, creating a virtuous cycle of capital growth that could finance ever widening scale of development projects from metros, subways, rail, roads, bridges, airports, ports, logistics, tech related improvements. This was done in 2017 through a midnight session of parliament that passed the legislation needed. Years of endless discussion were turned into one session of implementing a single major tax system for India, transparent, digitized with new IT  Infosys playing a key role, and providing the pool of capital that has financed 5 years of development to take India past Britain as the fifth largest economy. Its pace of growth over 11% and accelerating with Maharashtra's GST growing at 24% in 2022-2023 over the prior year suggest that this will play a critical role in giving India a large pool of capital for growth. To be supplemented with foreign investment to make New India as a modernized nation. With an economy that will be exceeded only by the US and should catch up to China over the next 10 years. ...

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Thomas Piketty is France's and Europe's best trained economist today with highly popular books, one on Capital, and one on Capital and Ideology. Piketty was trained at the London School of Economics, where Greens leader Annalena Baerbock of Germany was also a student, and today he is professor at LSE. His research has shown that for economic growth to happen after the pandemic European societies need to take the lead and build fairer societies where everyone has a decent living and a fair share of the pool of resources in each country. Piketty is respected by leaders that range from Biden and Scholz in US and Germany to president Xi in China. Biden's Families and Workers plan and Scholz's plan for dignity of workers and working class, and the Common Prosperity campaign of president Xi for greater investments in education, healthcare and housing are all inspired by Piketty and by the socially conscious background of these leaders. Prime minister Modi's plans for Jal Jeevan, cooking gas, to ease the burden on hundreds of millions of Indian women, for farmers with small land holdings in agriculture to improve output and use less chemicals, and for investments in infrastructure projects, housing, are also coming from similar concerns for growth and fairness. ...

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The cooperation of Paris residents and visitors was key to the security achieved during the Paris Olympics. The stadiums were full, 743,000 people attended venues on July 30, and millions of people lined the streets for the men's and women's cycling road races. "The Games took place amid a great atmosphere, and the police were very well received by both Parisians and tourists, who cooperated well with them," says Axel Ronde of the CFTC police services union. Clarisse Agbegnenou, bronze winner in the women’s 63kg judo category was a member of the police force. 75,000 police, private security and soldiers were used for smoothly carrying out the Olympic games with the Olympics integrated into the city of Paris for opening and closing ceremonies in a way not seen before. It was also intended to revitalize neighborhoods of Paris that had fallen into decline. In this sense the designers aspired for something different and can draw satisfaction that they made the effort and it may leave a lasting value in revitalization of Paris. Yet considering the lack of adequate investment most cities in Europe and the US were getting over three decades of laissez faire economic theory of Reagan/Friedman there is a lot that remains to be done with new investment scale and spirit. ...

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Three events September 29 Sunday to October 5 Saturday described as "week from hell" for the Biden White House in this report. President Biden can feel a huge sigh of relief for having overcome in each event. The hurricane Helene devastating a swath of western North Carolina, parts of rural Georgia, and western Florida. The president was working round the clock for relief efforts and visiting the flooded regions. Then there was the large missile strike by Iran over Israel following its bombing of Lebanon. This was averted using US missile defense. And in the middle of all this there was the International Longshoreman's Union 45,000 members announcing a strike that  closed all ports on the East Coast from Maine to Texas. President Biden supported the dockworkers efforts to have shipping ports owners in Asia and Europe to share huge profits with dockworkers.  All the time the hard work at the White House and agencies for relief efforts paid off. Republican governors in North Carolina and Georgia praised the relief efforts. And Zient, Buttigieg, Transportation Secretary Brainard at NEC, were on the phone with port owners overseas at 5.30 am Thursday to setup a stopgap agreement till Jan 15 for settlement. The process and hard work paid off.   ...

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CNN reporter Cassie Spodak provides this exceptional report into the minds of New Hampshire Democratic voters who gave Bernie Sanders a 22 percent lead in the New Hampshire Democratic primary over Hillary Clinton. In October 2016 Hillary Clinton has the support of Bernie Sanders against Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential election. She described it as "100 percent support" in television debate. Sanders has appeared with Clinton twice, and campaigned 4 times in New Hampshire, and continually across the country. Younger New Hampshire voters still long for Sanders as their favored candidate. Older voters and some who have been motivated by Sanders to run for local office see the shaping of the Democratic Party platform as a victory for Sanders. Key planks of Sanders, taxes on the wealthy and higher incomes to pay for student tuition, infrastructure, and helping working class families, are now key parts of the Democratic platform. These voters see this as a pragmatic step and are enthusiastic in their support for Hillary Clinton. Overall Clinton now has 87 percent of Democratic voter support in New Hampshire according to a WMUR/UNH poll in mid October 2016, and she is doing well with millenials and independents nationally, a critical bloc of voters for Clinton to show nationwide support. One member of the steering committee for Sanders in New Hampshire named Dudley Dudley, reflects the opinion that has shifted the party to emerge united during and even more so in the final months of the presidential campaign of 2016- she tells the CNN reporter Spodak that she supports Hillary because "of the way she has grown, and stretched," and the way Clinton and Sanders are now campaigning together and working together. Both Clinton and Sanders deserve credit for their extraordinary ability to grow during their campaigns and during the party's way to shape the way forward. ...

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After OPEC says in a joint decision that it will stick to strictly followin quotas set earlier this year which would mean a modest drop in production, Saudi officials spread the word that they will continue to pump out as much oil as the world needs. So what is the end result? The Saudis are saying they went along yet they will continue to pump oil like before. Part of the reason is the Saudi belief in their own argument that with high prices the world economy would be further affected resuklting in a possible collapse of demand and of prices something it seeks to avoid and is in everybody's interest. This makes sense if one looks at the deep financial crisis facing the US and which has ripples around the world, most recently in financial mmarkets the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie and the possible collapse or sale of Lehman Brothers. And as U.S. elections are up in a few weeks the Saudis do not want to anything that can be interpreted one way or the other, and also a wait and see attitude because a lot of information about the US and world economy is not yet in....

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President Trump outlines a plan for Afghanistan that increases the U.S. troop presence from about 8500 with an addition of 4000 more troops and advisors, in addition to a counter terrorism force. To war weary public in the U.S. he says: "I share your frustration over a foreign policy that has spent too much time, energy, money- and most importantly, lives- trying to rebuild countries in our own image instead of pursuing our security interests above all other considerations." About his criticism of the war when president Obama was in office as a huge costly waste of resources Trump said: My original instinct was to pull out, and historically I like to follow my instincts... I heard that decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk at the Oval Office." After resisting the advice of his own advisers Trump decided to fire Bannon who had supported use of American private security contractors for the war in Afghanistan, and used parts of the media to question national security advisor McMaster's views on this. Gen. Mattis, completed a strategy review that showed the mistake of creating a vacuum would repeat the situation of Iraq where president Obama withdrew forces in 2011, leading to a sequence of negative events- with Russia, Iran and Islamic State moving into the vacuum, making American intervention in the war necessary, increase in terrorist incidents worldwide, and a flood of refugees into Europe. Ironically clearing the path for an outsider's bid for the White House, with Brexit in which refugee fears and uncontrolled immigration played a part, and the news of terrorism and the war in Syria-Iraq creating a sense of insecurity. A key difference in the Trump approach with Obama's approach is that "conditions on the ground, not arbitrary timetables will guide our actions from now on," in line with Trump's criticism of Obama's approach. The military in the U.S. has long maintained that the best approach would have been to insist on U.S. presence in negotiations with the Iraqi government under the sectarian prime minister Nouri Maliki. Gen. Mattis was head of Central Command under the Obama administration and must have pushed the view of the military to president Obama to no avail. Failure to do so led to the growth of Shiite militias and the alienation of Sunnis in Mosul, leading to the fall of Mosul to Islamic State thus creating the current crisis. Gen. Mattis and Lt. Gen McMaster are intimately aware of the problem and must have convinced Trump that this is what really happened, that a repeat would waste the sacrifices of American soldiers in the twin wars. Trump gave this as his reason when he said in his televised speech to the nation- essentially a criticism of Bush that he expanded the conflict too quickly, and Obama exiting too quickly to create a void. Trump call his policy "principled realism."  The roots of the crisis are in the India-Pakistan conflict. Like the conflict in South East Asia the conflict in South Asia extending from Iran to India and Pakistan, may take a generation to overcome. A rapprochement between India and Pakistan, beginning with trade and economic relations, is not only in America's interest, it also provides the basis for a realistic American withdrawal. ...

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U.S. commercial oil inventories cover about 164 days of net imports by Jan. 2015. Excluding net imports from Canada and Mexico this reaches 279 days of net imports from other countries. When strategic oil reserves are included this goes up to 450 days, which will put pressure on oil prices in 2015 as the price of oil drops below $50. The surge in oil production in the U.S. by 1.2 million barrels a day contributed to this buildup.

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Jeanne Whalen on the Two Speed Economy in the US September 2025- diverging paths of low and high income Americans. With the new administration in 2025 priorities shift to immigration and what to do about 14 million illegal migrants from Latin America and other places, war on fentanyl and drug trafficking gangs with hundreds of thousands of lives lost to fentanyl and drugs in the US, crime and safety which includes the unprecedented illegal movement of drug trafficking in the Nation, and to a bold posture on using US advantages of its huge market to get European Union, Japan, South Korea, and China to level the playing field on trade bring jobs home.The Biden administration had already conceded to DJT's approach in its one term presidency by shifting on uncontrolled illegal migration but not fast enough, by not removing DJT's tariffs, and failing to take an aggressive posture on fentanyl and drug trafficking. Of the DJT plan US has tariff based revenues of 10--15% for all countries imports into US can that it redirect to groups to soften any effects of tariffs. DJT administration oil transition policy of stretching out the transition to give middle class and lower classes cost of living relief was also accepted by the Biden administration and is now the policy of Democrat run California state government.  The US economy was slowing in 2024 under the Biden administration. What has changed in 2025 is that the US stock markets are responding to steps taken by the DJT Republican administration to lower the cost of doing business by softening regulations, and giving US business the upper hand in different industries, and rebuilding the manufacturing sector with calls for EU and Japan/South Korea to invest more in the US as a quid pro quo for market access. This has led to increase in the value of market portfolios of the income earners above 250,000, or 10% of American households. As this happens the process of trade renegotiation has introduced some uncertainty in 2025 and businesses are looking for more clarity before increasing investment and slowing job hiring which hurts younger people entering the job market and lower income Americans. Were things better under Biden? Government Covid assistance and payouts in the early years 2020-2021 helped lower income workers, as this faded and the cost of living autos, housing increased sharply under Biden in 2022-2024 the situation deteriorated. The situation today is similar to the situation in 2024 with the difference in 2025 that inflation is coming down just as government help is receding. And added factor is the DJT administration plan to tackle head on the increasing cost of Medicaid to about $1 trillion by adding new requirements and reducing subsidies. The federal workforce had a disproportionate share of black workers and the policy changes to reduce the federal workforce have increased black unemployment from 6.1% under Biden in August 2024 to 7.5 % a year later. Hispanics have seen slight improvement in unemployment to 5.3% in 2025, and the middle class incomes also have held up and are holding steady. Meantime Bloomberg points out that one third of people in the top 10% are living paycheck by paycheck because of high cost of housing, university education for children, and inflation.     ...

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The issue of virtue signaling has come up at the BBC as it goes through a period of change under new rules. Rule Britannia! and "Land of Hope and Glory" are now reinstated in television programming. Prime minister Boris Johnson says "it is crazy for us to go around trying to censor it." Saying that "people love our history and our traditions with all its imperfections. It is absolutely absurd."

Land of Hope and Glory is written by Edward Elgar, has the lines -

"By freedom gained, by truth maintained/ Thine Empire shall be strong."

Earlier decisions have come under strong criticism in Britain.

There is a sense that countries are better off recalling and affirming their history and traditions during the pandemic, so that people can have faith and hope for the future.