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Entous, Malas and Abushakra of the WSJ give a detailed account of the series of smaller chemical attacks that ended with this large attack in the suburbs of Damascus in August 2013, the actions of key participants, and the responses of the global community.

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Irwin says about the revised Basel III rules in Jan. 2013- one hopes that Mervyn King of the Bank of England and Basel regulators are doing the right thing, striking the right balance between pushing for higher capital requirements and adjusting this to take into account the stalling economies of Europe and the U.S. Banks were given till 2019 to meet capital requirements. More assets are now eligible to meet capital requirements (including lower rated corporate bonds) under revised Basel III rules. The large legal settlements and speculative losses of large banks in Europe and the U.S. in 2012 put more pressure on banks with the risk of reduced lending.

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In an effort to calm unsettled global financial markets ECB president Mario Draghi said in a speech on July 26, 2012: "Within our mandate, the ECB is willing to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro and, believe me, it will be enough." Yields on Spain's government bonds reached 7.5% as investors shunned Spanish bonds fearing the need for a government bailout.

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

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The ECB's annual report for 2012 and the role the ECB under Mario Draghi played in the eurozone crisis in 2011-2012. The gains made in eurozone financial architecture, especially the agreement for the ECB as financial supervisor for European banks. The ECB sees itself as the supervisor for all European banks- the French position in the discussions in Brussels. The agreement of Dec. 12, 2012 only says banks with assets over 30 billion euros, or 20% of GDP of countries, or operations in two or more countries will come under supervision by the ECB.

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Members of the U.S. Congress lead a lousy life with life split between the capital and their home state location, most are weekend dads or moms. This makes them less likely to grasp the issues of work-life balance and the issues of parenting faced by average working families or couples with both parents working, says this essay in Politico magazine. This is true also of understanding issues facing women and mothers. Hard to believe but this report points out that Congress in the U.S. does not have a family friendly leave policy and no restroom for women till 2011 on the floor of the House. Similar issues face women in Japan and other countries for women in parliament. Former Speaker Ryan says he is tired of being a "weekend Dad." Senator Biden, former vice president says of his commute from Delaware to Washington D.C., he realized that "a child has a thought he wants to share and 12-18 hours later its gone, gone, gone." ...

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How is it that GM would predict sales close to 16 million when no one else sees that happening. Is it just optimistic, even in the face of last years forecast which also stumbled badly with no improvement in the second half as expected. Instead GM closes the year 2007 with sales down 6% over 2006. And much worse numbers for Ford which saw 12% decline, and Chrysler a 3% decline. Chrysler continues to sell to rental fleets. Toyota's and Honda's sales grew by 3.1 and 2.8% respectively. But this year 2008 Toyota doesn't expect to do well with only a 1% increase. Nissan and Hyundai are in the same straits as the Big Three American makers in inventory of cars and sell to rental car fleets. In terms of inventory per point of market share Nissan has excess production capacity and more cars as inventory, about 39,000 per point of Nissan's market share similar to the Big Three. Toyota and Honda have 28,000 per point of their market share.

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An internal IMF document that estimates Europe's banks are short of capital by $273 billion. IMF managing director, Christine Lagarde, tries to downplay the report by saying this is not from a stress test that the IMF conducts. In August, Lagarde, called for an "urgent recapitalization" of European banks. As France's finance minister, Lagarde, steadfastly insisted French banks were well capitalized. France worked hard to prevent requirements for significant capital reserves under the Basel III rules. The higher capital requirements were supported by the U.S.. Simon Johnson said in his blog, that as long as European banks had inadequate capital to act as a buffer against losses, European countries had no safe route for restructuring their debts.

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MaC Group, a risk advisor to Spanish banks, says Spanish banks hold about 30 billion pounds of distressed real estate and unsellable land. Prices are down 28% from the peak in 2007, according to a report by the IESE Business School, and are expected to fall a further 15-20 percent in the next 2-3 years by some experts. Much of the bank owned land is far from city centers and there is no demand for this. One Madrid based consultant R.R. de Acuna Asociados, says 43% of bank owned land is poorly located and there may be no demand for unfinished residential units for decades. The new government of Mariano Rajoy plans to take action to cleanup the banking system. Louis de Guindos, director of PricewaterhouseCoopers and IE Business School Center of Finance is expected to become the new finance minister. Guindos says strict rules need to be implemented, with some banks able to handle this and others that won't. MaC Group's Cantos, a managing partner, says the gap is huge between prices offered by banks and what investors will pay- as much as 70%. Prime assets can be sold for 30% discount but the land, residential and commercial real estate will require discounts of 70%. Banks have made provisions for losses of 30%, and are now facing the prospect of another 40% in losses. As a result many of the medium and small sized banks which operate only inside Spain may have to be shut down or consolidated by the government of Mariano Rajoy. Only the larger banks like Banco Santander, Banco Bilbao, La Caxia, and Bankia are likely to surivive....

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David Brooks of the NYT comments on the Hillary Clinton interview by Goldberg in the Atlantic magazine, where she criticized U.S. president Obama for a weak foreign policy and failure to act in Syria. Brooks says Obama's failure to act in the robust manner Clinton is advocating only leads Obama into situations where he is forced to act later as the situation deteriorates with more serious consequences for the U.S. By not acting in a timely manner the U.S. may be forced into greater involvement later, which makes Obama's "don't do stupid stuff" less of a sound idea than it appears. As Clinton points out not leading to better decisions in the same manner as the Bush-Cheney jingoistic policy making.

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This Journal editorial says both Hollande and Sarkozy fail to address the issue of competitiveness in the French economy. Much of the election campaign in April 2012 has focussed on taxes on higher incomes and too little on measures that would improve competitiveness. Some of the action taken in recent years such as raising the retirement age to 62 from 60 are being opposed by Hollande, which gives the electon a fairy tale quality says the Journal.

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The new J.D. Powers Quality Survey put out in Feb 2013 showed the Lexus, Toyota, Mercedes, Buick, Chevrolet, Lincoln and Dodge Ram brands performing at the top level in number of problems reported by owners of 3 year old vehicles. Land Rover, Jeep and VW brands did poorly. Most of the Chrysler Dodge cars performed poorly. The redesign of vehicles initiated by Fiat Chrysler CEO Marchionne does not show up in this study. The redesigned Jeep and other vehicles will show in next years study. The study also showed buyers of economy vehicles were likely to switch easily when buying another car. New models are showing fewer problems and are more dependable compared to previous years, with the average number of problems declining from 170 per 100 vehicles in 2009, to 132 in 2011, and 126 in 2012.

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Fred Hiatt of The Washington Post describes U.S. president Obama's mishandling of Syria during his second term as president leading to the situation today.

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Manufacturing in the US is adding jobs for the first time since 1997, according to government data. Job growth in 2010 was 1.2%, or 136,000 jobs. IHS Global Insight expects total manufacturing jobs in the US to increase in 2011 to 12 million. Manufacturing will be a modest contributor to job growth according to economists. Economists projections show a gain of 2.5% or 330,000 manufacturing jobs in 2011. Moody's Analytics estimates job growth of 2% a year through 2015. Government incentives, need to replace aging equipment and rehiring in the automobile industry will help manufacturing. At the same time manufacturers are cautious about hiring and increases in automation reduce the need for workers compared to earlier periods. Overall the loss of about 6 million manufacturing jobs since 1997 will not be made up. Yet the improvement is a positive sign as the US faces high unemployment and companies make investment in new factories overseas to meet growth in emerging markets.

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A health care practitioner says the real problem is the high cost of medical care in the U.S. when compared to other countries. She points out that the Obama bill in 2008 did not take effective steps to bring down the cost of health care before enacting legislation to cover the uninsured, leading to higher premiums for the middle class. The link between healthcare and profits is seen as the main problem. 

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Figures from the European Commission and the ECB show that the ECB's balance sheet reached 32% of eurozone GDP in March 2012. Comparable figures for the U.S. Federal Reserve for March 2012 are 19%, Bank of England 21% and the Bank of Japan 30%. The ECB's balance sheet in March 2012 is at 3.023 trillion euros. ECB president Mario Draghi says this is high but "it will be managed very well."

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Inflation in the eurozone is running at 0.7%, well below the target of 2%. In a opening speech for a 2 day conference organized by the ECB in May 2014, ECB president Draghi said the increase in the value of the euro since 2011 has made commodities like oil cost less in euros, contributing to lower inflation. A key concern referred to in Draghi's speech is the data from Spain and Portugal about the difficulty for business to get loans in Spain and Portugal. About 25% of Spanish businesses and 33% of Portgual's businesses have difficulty getting loans. Even profitable companies have difficulty getting loans. One way the ECB could tackle this is to make cheap loans available to eurozone banks conditional on the money being lent to businesses and not invested in government bonds, as has happened during prior ECB efforts to capitalize banks.