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The election win of Sebastian Pinera in Chile marks a shift in Latin America away from left parties. Economic conditions improved initially with the left parties in Brazil, Chile and Argentina, following currency crises and debt problems. The commodities boom helped the left party governments finance social programs which increased their popularity. The middle class also benefited with increased consumer spending and a growing economy. All this changed as the commodities boom collapsed and state finances were stretched thin in Brazil and Argentina. Corruption scandals, and decline in economic growth exposed serious problems in delivery of services, infrastructure and other areas which had been neglected. Voters decided to turn to alternatives and parties from centre right with Macri in Argentina and Pinera in Chile as a consequence.   The striking fact is that instead of shifting to the right leaders of the centre right, Macri in Argentina and Pinera in Chile have decided it is best to keep some of the best initiatives and achievements of the previous governments that have created a broader middle class in Chile and Argentina. Pinera says he will preserve some of Bachelet's initiatives in bringing broader access to education and health care. In this sense Latin America has matured so that the sharp conflicts have been set aside to set a more conciliatory tone and work together. Compared to Chile and Argentina Brazil is different in that corruption scandals affect most parties and there is a general loss of confidence in Congress and politicians across the spectrum. Brazil is looking at a situation in which a whole generation of politicians would have to give way to a new generation for the public to gain a renewal of confidence- so deep is the loss of confidence.  ...

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The UNICEF Represetative in India describes the effort made by children to change attitudes and take action on issues related to sanitation and the Clean India campaign of the Modi government. It shows that a generational change in attitudes is underway as children take the lead for the first time.

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District court Judges are the first tier of the three tiered system of judiciary power. A series of US District Judge rulings stop the federal payments system, birthright citizenship, federal employees offered buyout plan, and other executive orders issued by DJT in first 72 hours in office. They were all designed to cut the federal bureuacracy in the US and gut agencies with overspending such as USAID $40 billion when rural America's needs are unmet, and tackle birthright citizenship which allows mothers to fly into the US and depart just to get citizenship for children. The White House plans to appeal these rulings to the next level the appellate courts in the US, all the way to the US Supreme Court. Some of the arguments against USAID $40 billion budget was that it funded bureaucrats pet projects, something that Senators such as Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky have fought against for 25 years. Coming after trillions of dollars in spending under the infrastructure Investment Act oversight over such spending is in the American tradition. No less than Harry Truman as Senator from Missouri made his mark by tracking down overspending and waste, during the Second World War. Another problem not discussed enough is that in today's world more can be done with good governance and leadership, avoiding unneeded wars, and investment from India, China, EU and US than can be done with $40 billion spread thinly over the whole world. Sri Lanka is just one example where its undoing is waging ethnic war, corruption, and India is leading its recovery in ways that USAID could never do. ...

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Revenue is stagnant but IBM is increasing earnings per share by increasing margins and profits in its services and software business. The software business alone generates 43% of the company's profits. Services business accounts for 57% of its revenue. IBM also continues to expand in emerging markets making it possible for IBM to reduce the effects of cyclical swings in the economy. IBM shares are up 25% in the year to March 2012.

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Modernizing India's construction industry may be one of the keys to keeping global growth from slowing down significantly. Here's why. If China slows down significantly after almost two decades of breakneck growth since the 1990's, as nothing like that goes on forever and China is facing significant environmental challenges, skilled workers and managerial talent constraints, and demands for fair treatment and compensation for workers, that stem from this uncontrolled and haphazard growth and export drive. This would leave India as a potentially large engine for world growth if properly managed, a role China has played alongside the USA for so long. India's infrastructure is one of the critical hurdles to achieving this potential. And neither India or the world can afford not to overhaul India's construction industry which is a roadblock to accomplishing what needs to be done in infrastructure. As described here more than 80% of the people in the construction industry are unskilled workers, usually working as day laborers or migrant workers in tiny crews. The other 20% - the carpenters, welders, painters, tile layers, pipe fitters, brick layers, and other skilled trade workers, are becoming harder to recruit and those unskilled workers that receive basic training by companies like Reliance are keen on looking for better opportunities in the Gulf region. The unskilled workers work at construction sites with little training are mainly workers coming from agricultural areas and villages for better wages and living conditions. One of the striking things about Indian construction sites is the use of few machines with most of the unskilled workers, men and women, carrying loads of bricks on their heads, digging holes with shovels and cutting steel bars with mallets and moving sand with spades. There is a huge opportunity for foreign and Indian manufacturers of construction equipment and rapidly increasing production within India of all types of construction equipment should be one of the first things to be tackled. Special incentives by the government and efforts should be made to bring new foreign and domestic investment and plants for construction equipment. Big construction firms that handle large projects, construction equipment manufacturers worldwide and domestic firms interested in investing, and firms involved in large construction projects throughout the country should be brought together in executing the plans for modernization of the construction industry. Training of unskilled workers chosen and recruited for aptitude, discipline and interest in learning new skills from villages as opposed to just working with "nakas" should be initiated in large numbers. A new vocational training system should be initiated borrowing from ideas of systems in countries that have excelled in this in Europe such as Germany so that workers can go straight from villages or urban areas to vocational schools for training in a craft or trade in the construction industry or in the manufacturing industry. And living conditions have to be improved for workers so that skilled workers see advantages in remaining in India rather than leave their families behind for work in the Gulf, and unskilled workers have the basic but good living conditions, access to clean water, basic but decent housing, and clean toilets and showers, and kitchen facilities. One thing is clear one cannot reach organized and well though out development goals on the back of such a haphazard and ineffective sytem of using the human and machine resources in the best possible manner, and free markets and capitalism may not be the best guide in this matter. China's example may not be a good guide in this matter either. There has to be a better way where treating people right and using the most intelligent use of resources brings better results than haphazard approach as with week by week recruiting through "nakas" and minimal use of machines, and recycling of agricultural labor through free markets in labor. The haphazard approach rejects the idea that the training, the discipline and the well thought out approach on recruiting training and best use of human resources without losing sight of costs can lead to superior and continually improving results. The continual improvement and better methods in the construction industry would free up the infrastructure bottleneck and hurdle to growth. Then it would be best to take an original path to development which would be true to the Indian character and spirit and emphasis on education and thoughtful way of doing things, which means that India should make an efficient use of its human and machine resources, and take advantage of all its human resources and intelligent approaches to develop industry and agriculture and avoid the waste in human resources. ...

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Modi's success in tackling problems of electricity development in Gujarat state and the model for India, as a new Modi administration is elected for India in 2014. Other areas that are the focus for development include high speed rail and transportation, other infrastructure development, creating new jobs in manufacturing. Modi made three trips to China in the last decade as a four term chief minister of Gujarat state (similiar to a governor of a U.S. state), and has adopted a China type focus on infrastructure development and manufacturing for the western state of Gujarat, which was part of the old Bombay state in British times. Mumbai, the new name for the old British settlement of Bombay on the west coast, is about 300 miles south of the major Gujarat city of Ahmedabad, at one time a major textile manufacturing center. Mumbai and commercial minded people from Gujarat occupy a role similiar to Shanghai in India's economic development. Under British times trading minded Gujaratis settled on the east and southern coast of Africa, in the Persian Gulf, with retail businesses. Of India's two largest companies the Reliance Group made its early start in textiles in Gujarat in the seventies, set up by a young emigrant who returned from the Persian Gulf. The Tata Group which owns Land Rover was set up by a Parsi immigrant community in Gujarat. Its founder Jamshedji Tata set up India's steel industry under the British at the turn of the century. The Parsis settled in Navsari, Gujarat, immigrating from Iran and other parts of the Persian Gulf centuries ago. When the media talks of Modi's origins as a tea seller's son, one has to take this in the context of the origins of people such as Reliance founder Ambani who was the son of a schoolteacher from a rural village in Gujarat. With about a 1000 mile coastline facing the Persian Gulf, Gujarat has been known to engage in the textile trade long before the arrival of the Portuguese and the British in the 1600's, and before the Muslim period from the 1300's. Many Gujaratis settled in Mumbai and are a key part of the commercial, financial center in the city. Just as Britain with its commercial centre of London evolved over centuries with commerce affecting attitudes towards democracy, free media and capitalism compared to more feudal France, Gujarat and Mumbai has evolved in a similiar manner compared to other states in the north of India. With all the media infomation and misinformation on Modi's mishandling of communal riots little has been said of the unique position of Gujarat and Gujaratis in the industrial development and modernization of India. Compared to other parts of India historically there is a greater degree of tolerance in Gujarat for other communities, similiar to Britain's compared to France and Spain, because of this commercial outward looking orientation for new ideas. ...

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Rising wages and rising production costs for Chinese exports of low tech products like shoes, clothing, toys, clothing, furniture, means a lot of these factories will shut down and move to lower wage countries like Vietnam and India or elsewhere. Elimination of rebates on more than 2000 export items raises cost of manufacturing 14-17% according to Guangzhou based American Chamber of Commerce in South China. And the the tough new labor law enforcing worker rights would increase manufacturing costs by 40% according to the Textile Council of Hong Kong. Additional costs would be incurred to meet tougher environmental controls and anti pollution laws and stricter enforcement. As a result of this Adidas wants its suppliers like Taiwan based Apache Footwear with 18000 employees in Guangdong to move as fast as they can to India where it opened a second factory. This process will unfold over several years till India and Vietnam bercome the new sources of cheaper goods because of the large supply of manufacturing labor for lower value added products, as it will take years to build the logistics and infrastructure for these plants in these countries. But because wages will also rise in India and the laws in India are more likely to be enforced than they were in the atmosphere in China where the Communist led government may have turned a blind eye to enforcement and worker rights in the interests of growth, the export of deflation to the west in the way of cheap Chinese products may be a thing of the past. China is doing this as a planned move it appears. Why? On the surface it makes sense that the heavily polluting factories making lower value added products like shoes, clothing, toys, furniture, would not receive rebates from te state and to improve living conditions and promote consumption at home the government woud pass tough new laws to ensure employee benefits and collective bargaining rights, and employee job security. It also reduces trde tensions at a time when the US economy will be in poor shape and jobs lost become a political issue in the 2008 presidential campaign. But there may bigger pressing concern and urgency in these moves after so many years of this being discussed and this may be that China finally may be at a moment when it is confronted with a sober fact that the US consumer is heavily in debt and may not support China's export growth model much longer and with it China faces a really significant slowdown in its growth rate from 11% to maybe half that if China does not develop its own domestic markets for growth. The old foreign investment model may not work anymore. See the link to Ireland where growth is falling off quickly. Higher wages and longer term jobs with benefits would enable a large middle class to develop from this huge manufacturing worker base especially as China moves to more value added products where even higher wages would be paid. This in turn creates a domestic market over time that would insulate China to some extent from the winds that would be blowing from a US economy suffering from a deep recession that may last several years. This may be evident in the words of the Governor of Guangdong when he says that the government is not abandoning the exporters but that selling domestically is good for the country and good for the people. Something deeper is at work here and one would expect an about turn in policy where instead of workers not receiving back wages and lax enforcement that went on freely in the last decade we would see an effort to build the kind of middle class that would provide the market for Chinese goods that would sustain growth at a more modest but sustainable pace. Which means in the short term all those workers at factories that make toys, shoes, clothing and furniture in provinces like Guangdong would be jobless. Some of these factories may move to provinces in the interior like Sichuan and Hunan provinces which may pickup employment. A report by the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai written by Booz Allen says that a fifth of the companies surveyed are considering relocating outside China, and that over half of foreign manufacturers surveyed think that mainland China is losing its competitive advantage to places like Vietnam and India....

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Hangzhou, hard hit by closing export focussed factories, is trying a$100 million voucher program to increase spending. Since January, a fifth of the residents of this city have received $30 vouchers, and more vouchers are being issued. Taiwan just tried a voucher program with $102 going to each Taiwanese citizen. Taiwanese President Ma says 50,000 retailing jobs were saved and about two-thirds of one percent addded to GDP. The problem in China is the lack of a safety net and poor access to health care, that is making average Chinese to save over one fourth of incomes. Consumer spending is 35% of GDP. The government has focussed on exports, and used export generated revenues for huge infrastructure spending. With exports down by over 25% in January, the export model is fading away quickly. Japan and Taiwan have seen much higher drops in exports, and China should see even more deceleration in exports, with a lag of some months, as a lot of products made in China use parts made in countries like Japan and Taiwan. The China Development Research Foundation says one fourth of the population have no health insurance at all. Though by some estimates this number may be about two thirds of China's 1.3 billion people. Hundreds of millions of people have huge bills for treatment of serious illness that are not covered by even the most basic insurance. Public pensions cover less than one third of the workers. And an estimated 130 million migrant workers have no unemployment insurance. Even payments to the poor reach only a fraction of people eligible. The government has only tentatively moved to correct his. And outside economists say that something needs to be done in abig way to build this safety net. The government has announced a $123 billion 3 year initiative to deliver basic, universal health care and health insurance. This follows a 3 year drive to provide compulsory and free education to students through 9th grade. David Dollar, the World Banks's country director, described ameeting with Finance Ministry officials, and wrote in areport on the Bank website that the government had the resources to expand these programs quickly. Instead the government has taken a piecemeal approach when action on a large scale is needed. One of the problems may also be that to make universal health insurance, the current health system may need to be examined and rebuilt, so that economical cost effective treatments are encouraged and costs are managed effectively. This would make universal health care affordable by keeping costs manageable, in the same way that the Obama administration is trying to do in the USA. ...

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WSJ reporters McDowell, Otto and Murray's interview with Indonesia's president Joko Widodo in December 2014, focusses on Indonesia's need for foreign investment for badly needed infrastructure development. Widodo says Indonesia will compete with Vietnam, Malaysia and other countries to attract foreign investors and offer better terms to attract projects. Widodo plans to take up reform of state electricity company PLN, open a limited, national one-stop investment center, and tackle land acquisition for the Adaro power project in central Java to be built with Japanese investment, in coming months, always following a deadline. His goal is to streamline processing and approval of foreign investment projects so that the time is cut from about a year to a few weeks. Investors such as Samsung have preferred to invest in Vietnam, and other investors have preferred to invest in Malaysia, because of a deteriorating foreign investment climate under the previous administration. Indonesia remains dependent on coal and commodity exports to China. The goal says Widodo is to increase the growth rate from 5% to 7% by 2016. This includes revising the old structure of contracts with oil companies to encourage oil exploration investments by foreign oil companies, according to Economics Minister Sofyan Djalil. Indonesia's oil production has declined in the last decade and it is now a net importer, a situation similiar to that in Mexico....

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This view in the Economist shows that president Trump actually represented the instincts of the Republican party base by 2018- anti-immigrant, anti-elitist, and to the right on social issues. As a result it says it is no surprise that he has taken over the Republican party. As the elections for Congress get closer most candidates are trying to get Trump's support and many of the older senators and Congressman from the earlier period of the party are retiring. It cites polls showing Trump has support of 85% of the Republican party base. In 2018 Mr. Trump appointed new members of his cabinet who more closely represented his views on China, Iran, NATO, and business issues. Remaining party leaders such as Mr. Romney running for Senate seat from Utah are now seeking and getting Trump's endorsement. The Republican National Committee is also run by Trump supporters. On issues of foreign affairs Trump has combined alternate shifts between demands and pragmatism in relations with China, Iran, and other countries on trade, politics, coming up with a new way international relations are tackled. Part of the reason for their appeal is the nature of the intractable problems such as the imbalances in trade, nuclear weapons, and the idea that an alternative approach might work when other approaches have failed.  On social issues such as issues facing workers in globalization and free trade the parties to the left in the U.S. and countries in western Europe have failed to deliver, leading to the appeal of Mr. Trump, Brexiters, National Front in France.  The immigration issue has also worked against the socialist parties.  In Britain dissatisfaction with Theresa May and hard core Brexiters is growing, leading to Labor Party getting 40% of the vote in the recent election. Suggesting that the changes induced by the Brexiters and the Trump administration may lead to other changes in the future that may shift the focus back to basic issues and delivery on infrastructure, health and education which are fundamental for the future.   ...

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A 15% minimum corporate tax on large, profitable corporations is part of the global minimum corporate tax proposed by US central bank chairwoman Janet Yellen, and the tax proposed by US president Biden. The tax would not apply to companies making $100 million as earlier proposed. The threshold has been raised to $2 billion and affects the companies that have avoided taxes the most. This report says there are 45 such companies in the US.  A US Treasury report on the tax says "the 15% minimum tax is a targeted approach to ensure that the most aggressive tax avoiders are forced to pay meaningful tax liabilities." The Biden agenda on corporate taxes would raise more than $2 trillion over 15 years to pay for essential infrastructure renovation to replace decaying infrastructure in the US. This means roads, bridges, airports, ports, transit systems, electricity grid, broadband systems, school systems, health systems, would all be targets for investment for the first time in 50 years in a concerted drive. The tax drive would partly reverse the Republican Congress's 2017 reduction in corporate tax rate to 21% from 35%, boosting it to 28%. European Union countries such as Britain are also following similar policies after decades in which a race to the bottom led to the lack of funds to finance essential infrastructure rebuilding. As a result China which was a nation of bicycles back in the 1980's now has some of the newest infrastructure, while the US and the EU countries have what might be considered crumbling infrastructure badly in need for renovation. As the shift in mood to a competitive world not only in technologies but in infrastructure and ease of living happens there is more and more awareness of what has been lost in the last 40 years.  ...

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Tells the story of Cherry, a state owned company that is China's largest independent car maker. It started about 1995 with just an idea in the head of Zhan Xialai an assistant to the mayor of Wuhu, and some other local government officials, in a poor eastern province Anhui who saw this is a way to boost incomes and growth in the province. Zhan brought in Zhoua manager in a cityowned building supply company. They brought in Yin an Anhui native who worked at a VW joint venture. In 1996 Zhou went to England to buy engine assembly equipment discarded by a Ford plant there and in March 1997 started building its first factory. It hired a Taiwanese company to help design its first model the Fengyun or Wind Cloud which it cobbled together using parts from component makers that supplied the China operations of VW and GM. It was not till Dec 1999 that the first cars came off this makeshift assembly line. And then it ran into bureaucratic obstacles as the company did not have a government license to be in the auto business . To solve this it became a part of the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation a large state owned company that had partnerships with VW and GM. Then it wasn't till 2001 that this Fengyun made it to market with 28000 being sold that year. Cherry then began work on a 4 door hatchback minicar that was called the QQ when it went on sale 2 years later in 2003 and looked like the Chevy Spark, a GM model. GM sued Cherry in Chinese court in 2004 saying Cherry had copied its design for the Spark and the lawsuit was settled in 2005. The settlement was described by Cherry as "very friendly." GM may have secured other concessions for manufacture and assembly in China because the QQ was then manufactured with local partners at a plant in southwestern China. It is Cherry's No. 1 model and far outsells the Chevy Spark. About this time in 2003 a big shift was ocurring in China as the car market was being pushed up by continuing development of infrastructure and road expansion, new ventures from Europe and the US expanding car sales in China. Government planners and executives began thinking about how China could develop its own potential in this growing and about to explode market. They decided they had to move upscale and buy the best technologies from Europe and the United Staes and recruit Chinese engineers working in the automotive industries in these regions. This led to a new phase of massive new investments. One of the goals after Cherry's brush with GM over copying its designs, was to acquire and then develop the technology so that it would be Cherry's own technology. In 2003 Cherry hired Xu Min an engineer at Delphi who was an Anhui native and was a specialist in combustion and fuel injection. They turned to an engineering consulting firm in Austria that specializes in internal combustion engines, and this firm AVL List GmbH agreed to train Cherry engineers to design and build the sophisticated engines. The culture that has grown up around this company in Wuhu, Anhui province, is also what drives the company. It exhorts employees in posters hanging on factory walls, "Know plain living and hard struggle." And in some areas of the plant JD Powers charts showing where Cherry lags behind its western counterparts in quality control surveys are shown on bulletin boards. Zhou, Zhan and Yin are known around Anhui and in the rest of China as "the Eight Guardians", a reference to eight defendors of the faith in Buddhist legend. ...

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Prof. Scott Kennedy of the Research center for Chinese Politics and Business, voices concerns of experts who think that the $585 billion stimulus and the doubling of lending this year, increase in exports by a third last month, all point to an economy that is expanding too quickly. Kennedy says that no one defies economic laws, that eventually endless growth can get get you in trouble. The concern is whether the overexpansion of credit and the size of the stimulus may have led to overreaction in stimulus spending. People's Daily newspaper of China said that China's leaders are moving much faster than leaders of developed nations. But the flip side of this is that in the rush to increase spending there may be a lot of wasteful spending resulting in many bad loans a few years from now.

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James Areddy explains why the Jinping administration in China was so keen on promoting gains in the equity markets. It was seen as a way to ease the debt overhang from the 2008 Stimulus of $586 billion. The Stimulus was put together in November 2008 to pay for infrastructure, construction and social spending, at a level that was 3 times the stimulus proposed in the European Union. Critics say that the initial signs of a crisis that might affect the government are magnified in China's authoritarian political structure, with one example being the size of this stimulus. With this kind of hasty spending a common problem is that not enough good projects can be found. One example of wasted spending is the $930 million spent to build the Shanghai West rail station from a older structure that had fallen into disuse. With three other stations serving Shanghai this station gets little traffic. The Jinping administration promoted the stock market as a way for companies to issue equity and reduce debt, and make less reliance on bank loans. The result was to push the Shanghai Composite Index up by 150% for the one year gain by June 12, 2015. The government also made it possible for individual investors to borrow money to invest in the market. About $354 billion of margin lending to finance stock purchases is estimated by Goldman Sachs, which now poses problems with a one third decline in stocks after June 12, 2015, leading to losses for individual investors. The loss of the boost from the stock market is likely to hurt GNP growth by 1% percentage point, according to Capital Economics. As China's real growth according to experts is closer to 4%, because of statistical errors and overestimates, according to experts, this could pose a serious problem for the economy. Countries dependent on commodity exports to China such as Australia, Chile and Brazil are likely to feel the effects of a decline in demand for iron ore, copper and other metals....

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Questions raised about the government's committment to serious health care reform. New leaders of China who took power in 2002 and 2003 with concern for the poor, did not put discuss reform till 2006 and during this crisis there isn't the urgency that is needed. Recent documents, says the Economist, that were circulated secretly within the bureaucracy for 3 weeks before being made public, provide no clear target about how much people would be reimbursed for medical treatment. The other concern is that the central government provides only 40% of the 850 billion yuan allocated for additional spending on health care in the years 2009-2011. This is about $125 billion. Burt local governments may not be keen on spending on health care as officials are still judged by how much they can boost employment and GDP growth. Over three years the central government's annual share of the additional spending on health care of 850 billion yuan is 111 billion yuan, according to Caijing, a business magazine.But the 2009 budget on health care is 118 billion yuan, so its not clear that things add up. The central government's additional spending in each of the 3 years is only $16 billion. How this can provide help to the 200 million uninsured, the insured who still pay a large amount for health care, and pay for essential pharmaceuticals on a list prepared by the government, and pay a portion of the expensive diagnostic tests that hospitals like to make money from, is not clear. The whole system will have to be overhauled so that hospitals do not have the incentive to prescribe these expensive tests and pills that cost more. The government says it will be 2020 when 90% of Chinese are covered by agovernment financed health insurance system- 11 years away. This only means that domestic consumption may remain depressed for a decade or so. With export markets collapsing, this leaves China dependent on infrastructure spending for growth for a long time, and lower growth rates with higher unemployment. ...

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Decades of investment in infrastructure and manufacturing have given China a strong grip on manufacturing. China's economy depends on exports with sluggish domestic demand. One economist in Hong Kong says Vietnam is the key, if tariffs are placed on Vietnam it will be tough he says, because Chinese goods enter the US from third countries.

In 2025 China's world trade is imbalanced to an extraordinarily large degree, hurting thriving manufacturing communities around the world, and depends on a concentration of port logistics, manufacturing and lack of fair trade practices, that allow $3.5 trillion in exports while taking in only $2.5 trillion in imports. By 2008 America was waking up to this, DJT actually flagged it a decade later, Biden realized this, in the second term what appears like a whirlwind 100 days is really action on many fronts that is coming one to two decades late. 

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The Chinese government and the central bank are relaxing restrictions on new loans to help small business and agriculture. Coastal exporters and textile manufacturers are suffering from higher costs and weaker global demand. Originally the central bank had told lenders to stay at the same loans level for 2008 as the level for 2007 which was $527 billion in new local currency loans. Now after a meeting of the Communist party's governing Politburo last week President Hu expressed a new policy of balancing "the prioroties of steady and relatively fast economic growth on the one hand, and at the same time control the excessively fast growth in prices on the other", in a briefing to reporters. Now the central bank will allow a 5% increase in the quota for new local currency loans, with directions to banks to lend more to small business and agriculture.

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Rick Rieder of Black Rock and David Kelly of  JP Morgan Chase and others sense that the US is entering a phase they call "the satellite economic phase in which there are no crash landings and takeoffs but steady orbiting in space. Less boom and bust and more steady growth for years is the new economy Biden is creating with huge investments in infrastructure and manufacturing and worker skills training that upgrade the workforce. Investments in health and education are part of this. This makes the US economy more resilient with government working both as a partner and agencies of the government that regulate and provide the rules for fairness and level playing field acting to prevent the booms and busts of the past such as the 2009 financial crisis and other crises. With China, EU, India, Japan+South Korea and the US, all 5 of the largest economies aligned to maintain steady growth for their people the prospect of war acting to reduce growth potential will also be managed in a setting that is needed following the pandemic. This will make both the Middle East and the Eastern European recurring crises to be toned down and a shift made to growth in these regions from the war ravaged periods of reckless behaviour of nation actors. This is a view now emerging among key people in the US economy such as Rieder Black Rock and Kelly JP Morgan. Both says the ways of understanding this and the terminology "soft landing" or "cylical, midcycle" are now outdated and no longer apply. Says Reider-“But one point to keep in mind is that satellites don’t land and maybe that is a better analogy for a modern advanced economy” like the United States.  ...

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The Vice Chairman of the NITI Aayog, which replaced the Planning Commission, says his work in the government led to significant progress with the Indian economy reaching nearly 8% growth.

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Natural Gas is set at a target of 15% by 2030 of India's energy mix from 6% in 2024. India is learning from China's experience where LNG is used to fuel heavy and medium commercial vehicles. As new LNG terminals to gas pipelines infrastructure takes time to be built the use of SSNLG or Small Scale Natural Liquified Gas projects is being adopted to speed up shift to natural gas which costs less and is less damaging for climate change.

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Everything is moving in the wrong direction in terms of sustaining growth according to Nicholas Lardy of the Peterson Institute of International Economics. China's exports dependent economy will see a serious downturn as export markets in the USA and Europe dry up in 2009 as the deep recession takes shape. This could lead to growth rates going down to 6-7%.Other areas that propelled Chinese growth areinfrastructure investment and housing construction. Worried about rising housing prices the government last year out in place measures to dampen housing purchases, with tighter restrictions on second mortgages by banks and tighter lending for first mortgages. With house prices flat or falling now in Chinese cities many buyers are holding off for a better price in the future. Slower growth in housing will mean less demand for migrant labor and less demand for imports of cement and steel from other countries. China's lower imports of machinery, machine tools and heavy equipment for industry and infrastructure building will affect especially the German and Japanese economies. Germany has become the world's largest exporting nation in part by selling industrial equipment to China, its second most important market for machinery. In the first 7 months of 2008 these exports were still expanding at 20%. But these exports are likley now expanding at a rate of 10% and may slip to single digit growth in 2009, according to Olaf Wortmann, an economist with the VDMA engineering association. A good example of what is happening is the German manufacturers of textile machinery which derive 95% of their sales from overseas and mostly from China. These orders were down 42% in the first 7 months of 2008. With declining consumer demand in the US demand from China's exporting factories is declining. These figures and the accelerating slowdown in the US consumer markets suggest there will be a serious downturn in Chinese exports of textiles and other goods. The impact on German growth rates which are going below 2% in 2008 is to lead to 0% or declining growth in 2009. A similiar situation is ocurring for imports of heavy equipment from Japan. Orders of Japanese machine tools by China declined by 25% in September according to the Japan Machine Tool Builder's Association and Komatsu's shares have declined by 70% since their June peak. Part of the Chinese impact on global growth is mitigated by the fact that at market exchange rates China's economy is still only 6% of the world economy at market exchange rates and 10% at purchasing power parity. Chinese domestic consumer demand is $1.2 trillion for 2007 compared to the USA's $9.7 trillion, which also suggests how heavily China was dependent on the American consumer and how the missing American consumer will be hard to replace and the growth rates of 10-12% may be a thing of the past, with 6-7% being more realistic. ...

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Xi Jinping, president of China says at the Davos Forum that world leaders should "join hands and rise to the challenge" from protectionism coming from the new U.S. administration. He called on world leaders to support the Paris climate accords- "to stick to it instead of walking away from it."

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As exports and manufacturing decline, China is continuing to maintain high rates of fixed asset investment with the focus now away from factory construction to infastructure like roads, bridges and rails. The National BUreau of Statistics reported that urban fixed asset investment expanded 26.5% in Jan-Feb 2009, compared to 26.1% growth rate for 2008. Fixed asset investment was 42% of GDP in 2008, according to JP Morgan strategist Jing Ulrich. Now it could go up higher to 45%. China's growth has been off-balance say experts, now it is becoming even more so. As long as factory construction as fixed asset investment a lot of new jobs were being created in the manufacturing sector, now these jobs are not being created. China's small and mid sized companies that generated about half of the 4.42 trillion GDP, like GenTech of Mr Yu profiled in the other linked article in WSJ, and which created 90% of the new jobs, are now contracting. With smaller private consumption, and the efforts to improve the safety net and provide universal medical care inadequate and coming late, domestic demand will not help balance the economy and boost manufacturing. Private consumption is only 35% of GDP in China, a much lower percentage than India. The comparable figures for the US are 71%, UK 64%, Australia, Canada, France, Germany and Japan 57%. The balance is now heavily skewed towards government spending. Investment spending from HongKong and Taiwan, the home bases of industrialists with made for export industries inceased investment by 1% in Jan-Feb of 2009 from the year earlier, compared to 17% growth in all of 2008. And foriegn funded companies have comparable figures of 2% for Jan-Feb 2009 compared to 15% growth in all of 2008. Real estate investment growth also fell to 1% for Jan-Feb 2009 compared to 21% for all of 2008. In short the other pillars of growth in housing, and investments from Hong Kong, Taiwan and the West are declining. ...

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Amazon expands during the pandemic when retail on line delivery has helped people reduce trips to the grocery or retail stores. Amazon hired 427,000 people to expand its workforce to 1.2 million people by November 2020, 9 months into the pandemic. Almost doubling the employee workforce. These workers are mostly at warehouses, with some software engineers and hardware specialists. This includes hiring in India and Italy and is worldwide hiring. This does not include 100,000 temporary workers for the holidays, and 500,000 delivery drivers working for contractors.  Only hiring of 230,000 people by Walmart about 2 decades a ago in one year comes close. Walmart hired 180,000 people during the pandemic. Walmart has 2.2 million employees. With the expansion underway Amazon looks to become the largest private employer in the world in 2 years, say experts.  Amazon pay is $15 an hour after an increase of $2 recently. Its coronavirus safety practices have been upgraded after early criticism in April and May. Recent expansion in Italy and in India are also part of worldwide expansion after Walmart has pulled back from its worldwide expansion. This also shows how quickly major aspects of life are changing during the pandemic as some companies in online business are becoming more prominent than others. Target and Walmart have also increased in size. Best Buy has changed its focus with its conversion into a company that leads with personal service in online plus store hybrid retail and a focus on seniors and older people for healthcare service and product delivery. Companies are changing the way they run or getting a new life in remaking their business. This is also a time when other aspects of business such as social media are becoming evident. Subtle aspects such as reports of higher rates of mental depression through use of social media platforms. There is also the awareness that information technology companies in Silicon Valley generate most of their money in advertising and this advertising of $100 billion is only a small fraction of the $12 trillion U.S. economy. Should Silicon Valley based in California decide priorities on where capital allocation should go through the part it plays in moving startups based less on America's priorities than other considerations. Healthcare, education, cities, and infrastructure have not received funding they need and capital allocation by financial markets has failed the American people, as it has failed in Europe and other parts of the world for similar reasons. This has hit hard communities and people across the U.S. and Europe and also in Latin America, Africa and Asia, with the loss of manufacturing to China and other countries from the U.S. India and Europe. ...