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The European Space Agency lands the Phlae probe on a comet's surface in 2014 from the Rosetta orbiter. The Rosetta was launched in 2004 and is on a mission that is over 10 years. The Rosetta is about 316 million miles from earth.

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There are questions whether the Black Rock Germany "Dare Capitalism" (his book) model of CDU's Merz with a debt brake support limiting investments needed in the economy are right for Germany's future. Wash. Post says people close to him say he is direct and pragmatic but also arrogant and thin skinned. Friedrich Merz is 69 years, Konrad Adenauer was 73 years when he took office. 

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Investment plans don't always work out. Softbank has only $30 billion on hand and it is not clear where Masayoshi Son of Softbank Japan will get the rest of the $100 billion he says he will invest in the US, says this WSJ report. There is also a question if it will go into needed infrastructure and other investments that bring the most benefit to people in the US.

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Landler and Barry say in this report in the NYT that the situation of government paralysis in the U.S. parallels the one in the UK with no-deal Brexit around the corner. President Trump wants a border wall (steel or other kind) on the border with Mexico as a campaign pledge. In the UK Conservative party faction supporting Leave from the European Union, including supporters of Boris Johnson, seek Leave at all cost. Johnson called the shortage of Mars bars a small inconvenience, as the Theresa May government prepares to push its own Brexit deal through Britain's parliament. In a separate report the NYT tries to show that over 80% of the drugs come in through entry ports and the border crossings are largely families or unaccompanied children. For the first time -since the 1950's and the segregation struggles in the U.S. -populists battle the elites in the large cities, say Barry and Landler. The rural urban divide, is seen in both sides of the Atlantic, in Europe and the U.S. ...

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Bank of America's 40,000 layoffs planned under "Project New BAC" reduces positions mostly in the consumer business, which employs 160,000 people. Bank of America employed 288,000 workers as of June 30, 2011.

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Boston's John Hancock Tower is sold in a foreclosure auction held by an investor group for $660 million, at half the price paid by the private equity firm Broadway Partners in 2006.

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Chinese leaders including Xi Jinping have frowned on the accumulation of wealth and the IPO pay day, says this report in the WSJ. The largely unregulated company Alibaba in its role as a financial business, its complex ownership structure, and practices, have met with skepticism from China's financial regulators. They see the financial operations of Alibaba and its businesses as operating with little financial oversight and the state having to assume risks if something failed. The company's business model of payments app Alipay, mutual fund, voluminous data collection, operations as small loan provider to half a billion people, are seen by Chinese leaders and president Xi as posing unknown and unclear risks when not properly regulated. Commercial banks are subject to  tough regulations and capital requirements that Alibaba has avoided. State owned banks supply Alibaba with majority of the funding and take on most of the risk even though Alibaba makes profit from the transactions, is the perception of regulators. China's export model and manufacturing have enable it to create the banking capital on which such internet business models have thrived. In a world where supply chains are being redone, and following the pandemic, there are questions about how businesses that were created in the period before the pandemic should operate in a different environment. ...

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Research figures show corporate insiders are not buying into the rally in the U.S. stock market in Feb. 2012.

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Small business and farmers are driving a recovery in the Indian economy in the latter half of 2020 after the impact of the pandemic. Rural India with demand from farmers for cars and tractors is also helping build demand. Maruti Suzuki, India's largest auto manufacturer, had sales increase of 10% in rural India vs. 4% overall in the third quarter of 2020. Manufacturing and farm sector are leading the recovery. Transport and hotel, airlines are also seeing an increase in demand. From 2 million in June airline passengers have increased to 5 million in September compared to 12 million before the pandemic. The second generation reforms made by the Modi administration and the many initiatives are expected to boost the potential growth and scale of the Indian economy. Building a strong manufacturing sector and getting foreign investment in that sector is also a critical step to building the economy's growth potential. Working with Taiwanese investment and investment from the U.S. and the European Union is part of this effort. ...

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The Economist offers this exceptional account of how education makes a big difference in how two cities one hours train ride from London view exit from the European Union. Both have younger than average populations, are growing rapidly, and mostly white collar populations. Cambridge has one in two persons who have gone to university study, Peterbrough is predominantly a city of school leavers, one has many people who have studied till age 21, the other Peterborough where many people left school at age 16. Cambridge it shows is strongly pro-EU, Peterborough is euro skeptic. YouGov confirms the correlation with education of EU support, with the better educated graduates supporting EU membership 62% to 38%, less educated till age 16 43% supporting EU membership and 57% opposing. It says skills for a globalizing compettitive economy and the lack of these skills are creating two types of population with less and less room between them, not good for democracy, and something that will take decades of work to correct....

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In a speech at the Conservative Party Fall conference British prime minister Theresa May positions her party as an advocate for the working class against establishment views. She was critical of smug views that the current situation was acceptable for working class families concerned about immigration and jobs. She also pointed out that the policies of central banks including the Bank of England hurt working class families and savers." She pointed out the development that has also happened in the U.S. economy and other European countries as the Federal Reserve and the ECB cut rates to near zero. "People with assets have got richer. People without them have suffered. People with mortgages have found their debts cheaper. People with savings have found themselves poorer." Her response she said would be to "put the government at the service of those who found themselves poorer as a result of monetary policy." This follows May's first speech at 10 Downing Street where she referred to "the burning injustice."  ...

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Bernie Sanders launches his 2020 presidential campaign at Brooklyn College by sharing his personal story of parents who were immigrants from Germany during the Nazi period. His father made a living selling paint to hardware stores and the family struggled in the early years.  He tells students he lived only a short distance away growing up "in a three and half room rent controlled apartment, and going to quality public schools." Mr. Sanders is the top choice in the early primaries including New Hampshire, competing with former vice president Mr. Biden. His campaign raised $10 million in just two weeks at the beginning of the campaign. He is campaigning for Medicare for All, $15 minimum wage, tution free public college. With Mr. Corbyn leading the Labor party in Britain in a new direction, Mr. Sanders is leading the Democratic Party in a new direction, both supporting the pro-working class traditional policies of their parties for most of the twentieth century. ...

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Joachim Gauck is the first of 11 presidents of the Federal Republic of Germany who is not from a political party. His work in the German citizens movement, as a pastor in the former East Germany, and his guidance in difficult times lends authenticity and a sense of restoring Germany's place in the world. He stood for values- engagement, a balanced wise approach, courage when freedom was under attack, candor. During the 10 years after reunification he headed the authority investigating former files of the Stasi, secret police network of East Germany. His role in recent years also remained relevant and his words worth listening to. Early on in the refugee crisis, when he visited a refugee camp at the Turkey-Syria border in June 2014, he cautioned for a wiser middle approach that took into account both the humanitarian crisis and what was politically possible, and the need for a wider European solution- "a honest, pragmatic, and sober debate." Germany would have been well served says DW.com if his words were taken into account. Gauck also told Germans to take a more active role in defense, and adopt a posture of confidence in foreign policy, which is happening today.   ...

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Krugman points to the need for action on revaluation of the yuan, and sees the vote in the House of Representatives sponsored by Sander Levin as a necessary step to get China to act. He sees China as dragging its feet on this issue for many years, and the need to keep the heat on US policy makers, who have acted very passively on this issue. He describes the US policymakers as being infuriatingly, incredibly passive in the light of the Chinese inaction and stalling on currency appreciation. China he says denies manipulating the exchange rate, even as $2.4 trillion foreign currency was purchased by China. Krugman says China is not letting what is a natural process to unfold that would help the world economy as a whole to recover. Its manipulation of the exchange rate, is in effect subsidizing its exports at the expense of other countries like the US. See the link to Roubini, who shows how this is bad for China. Roubini says China will see a growth collapse in 2-3 years, if it does not change direction and let the yuan appreciate. He says it is in effect a large transfer of income from Chinese households to Chinese state owned companies which is dangerous because of increasing misallocation of resources and real estate speculation. See David Barboza for information on the real estate speculation of these Chinese state owned companies. When all this information is added up, it shows China's serious need to act. This would make possible a transition to a new model of development that relies on domestic consumption, and bettter allocation of resources and investment. ...

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Chancellor Merkel warned that Germany could ease restrictions "too quickly" endangering progress made. Germany has about 145,000 cases but only about 3% of cases as deaths. Europe has about 1 million cases with 10% of cases as deaths, with much higher rates of deaths in Spain and Italy.

As oil demand plummets oil price of WTI West Texas Intermediate benchmark drops to $11 by April 20. The oil deal to remove 9.7 million barrels a day has not boosted oil prices because of the steep sudden fall in demand.

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Ivan Rogers, UK ambassador to the European Union for three years till 2017 was sharply critical of the British government and forecast some of the Brexit problems. He has a book "9 Lessons in Brexit," which appeared in Feb. 2019. Here he is interviewed by Der Spiegel. He says he expected some of the problems but is still surprised that 4 weeks before the deadline the political class in Britain has not yet figured out what kind of Brexit they want. Here he points out that Cameron and Blair represented the centre in British politics. But that centre has now collapsed after the financial crisis and the period of austerity led to widening gaps between the different parts of British society. The public is now deeply alienated from both major parties. In both parties the populists on the left and the right have gained a bigger influence, as a result there are no centre right or centre left figures who command public influence. Rogers is a civil servant of high rank who has worked with several prime ministers including Blair and Cameron. His comments are worth listening to.  Was Theresa May the right person to tackle Brexit? Her problem says ROgers is that she started with a hardline position of reducing the number of people entering the UK from inside or outside the EU. Once you do this you cannot have free movement of goods, services and capital, so you have to leave the single market. And if Britain wanted a fully autonomous trade policy then it cannot stay in the customs union. Rogers thinks Theresa May never really understood what this meant- that it was going much further out of the European Union than Norway or Switzerland, or even Turkey. Now as she is trying to go back her right wing cries betrayal. Do British prime ministers understand the single market, the customs union, or how the EU really works? Rogers worked on European issues for a long time and he says after working very closely with British prime ministers that none of them had a deep understanding of how the European Union works. Plus they lack any emotional attachment to the EU, because of the mercantile relationship Britain has had with its neighbors. About the relationships in Europe between the Germans, the French, the British, what is it and what will it be like? Rogers says he has not seen a thinner relationship in his lifetime. He thinks the European political elites are not talking to each other anything like what was done 20 or 30 years ago. He says the Brits have to take a lot of the responsibility because the British political class lost interest in Europe. What could the Europeans have done? Rogers says the chaos continues because the British don't really know where they want to go. It opaque about the relationship on purpose. Have the Europeans thought about what kind of a continent they want to see after all this is over? This interview tells you more about the Brexit problem that many reports and opinions, bringing a thoughtful way of looking at the problem. ...

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Scotland joined with England and Wales to form Great Britain in 1707, at a time of increasing opportunities for Scottish people in the expanding British Empire. Britain's shipbuilding industry had a major base in Glasgow. During the Thatcher Conservative government Scotland suffered, and decades of globalization led to gradual deindustrialization for Scotland, the demise of the shipbuilding and other industries. The Labor Party under prime minister Blair pursued a "devolution of powers" policy, creating the first Scottish parliament following a referendum in 1999. Ironically this has changed the fortunes of the Scottish Nationalist Party led by Jack Salmond, a economist first elected to the British parliament in 1987. Salmond became head of the party in 1990 and led it to second place in 1999 elections, followed by a win in 2007 and 2011 elections. Salmond is seen as a vigorous campaigner, who can speak above others and not seen as a good listener. The party gained the confidence of Scottish voters by running a competent administration led by businessmen who were well aware of problems in local communities. Programs such as free prescriptions for medicines were popular with voters. The Labor Party stands to lose its voter base in Scotland (former Labor prime minister Gordon Brown is from Scotland), and the Conservative Party will also suffer a blow with a yes vote to independence. Polls show voters don't fully trust Salmond, but a majority 39% support an yes vote to 38% no vote, with 23% undecided. Britain just emerging from a deep recession would lose Scottish oil revenues of about 6 billion pounds, and the economy would suffer as business waited to see how things would turn out before making investments. Scotland now manages health, education and transport. Even without independence Scotland now stands to gain more powers and control, and control a higher percentage than the 60% of Scotland's budget that the Scottish government manages today. Scotland represents about 148 billion pounds or 9.2% of the UK GDP....

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A milder than usual winter can reduce consumption by a large enough amount to affect oil prices significantly. The IEA estimates that last years mild winter cut oil consumption by as much as 900,000 barrels a day globally. Something like this could erase expected deficits andpush oil prices lower as they currently reflect lower inventories as winter approaches. UBS expects lower prices whereas Goldman Sachs believes there is lower risk of slowdown in the global economy, that is India, China and Europe will continue to grow even as US growth moderates, and Goldman's estimates shows even higher prices approaching $90 a barrel.

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Amazon is tackling the Indian market by addressing the need of rural shoppers in all parts of India- home to nearly 800 million people. Here WSJ shows how this works with a customer in Dhowachal, in the northeastern state of Assam, who had no access to stores except by travelling for hours to the nearest town.  The customer is a teacher who received an Amazon delivery of pairs of jeans, socks, curtains, glasses and other items. Rural shoppers in India spent about $400 billion in 2017. Barclays estimates Amazon had $7 billion in gross merchandise sales volume in India in 2017, about 2% of what it does worldwide. More than 80% of customers in 2018 are from outside India's largest cities.  To do this Amazon has changed its app to work on cheaper smartphones and patchy cellular networks, added hundreds of thousands of Indian language descriptions of products and videos. It has also opened physical Amazon stores to teach people how to order online. Tens of thousands of distributors were added to deliver packages and take cash or digital payment. Amazon is spending $5 billion in India to set up a logistics network and warehouses, including staff and content development for Amazon Prime. In doing this Amazon has learned from China where Alibaba and other online retailers have grown seven fold by reaching rural areas. Amazon could not compete with Alibaba in China. In India Amazon has no strong local competitors like Alibaba. It is learning how to operate in India. The app offer tips on how to order, no email is needed, only a phone number, machine learning translates all descriptions into Hindi. Icons work well. A digital wallet lets customers without bank accounts or cards to pay or get money back. Amazon is investing aggressively using an advertising campaign and discounts to pass Flipkart which WalMart bought for $16 billion in 2018. Amazon is trying new ideas in India's situation where small stores often closet sized sell a limited number of products often going through multiple middlemen resulting in high prices. Amazon is now enlisting these small stores as package depots in its own unique distribution network. The small store gets an 8-10% commission on sales for helping guide shoppers make a purchase. In Amazon's unique "I Have Space" program 20,000 mom and pop stores in remote areas of India offer to take packages and deliver in neighborhoods for a commission. They get a uniform, a bag and a week of training. Many of these store owners know the addresses in their neighborhood having lived there a long time. The entire effort shows Amazon has adapted its delivery effort, logistics and payment systems to Indian conditions in a well planned way. Compare this to the failed effort by Apple in India, with high management turnover and lack of understanding of Indian conditions and pricing, and no real plan to tackle the Indian market.     ...

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Wang Lequan, who is the party leader for Xinjiang, is aprotege of Chinese President Hu . He was pulled into the party from Hu's days in the Chinese Communist Youth League. He is from Shadong province China's industrial and petroleum capital. Because of his familiarity with the oil industry Wang may have beeen transferred to Xinjiang province. He arrived in Xinjiang just as the Soviet Union was dissolving, and the central Asian administrative regions that were formed inside the Soviet Union were becoming independent countries. China's army had occupied Xinjiang in 1949 under Mao. Millions of Chinese were leaving the Xinjiang area and the thinking was that the Uighur Muslims of Xinjiang would also form their own country. What happened was that Wang reestablished the Chinese presence in Xinjiang province. He opened the Xinjiang region's oil and gas fields to drilling, laid pipelines east to China and west to Kazakhstan. A Production and Construction Corps was formed so that Chinese soldiers leaving the army service could find work, and this was later listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. With growing industry and government jobs, many Chinese were attracted back to Xinjiang. In the 1990's 2 million Chinese went back to Xinjiang. At the same time his policies may have had the effect of making the local Uighur people feel that their culture and language weere being threatened and they needed to fight for its survival. Wang acting with dictatorial powers tightly constrained Uighur culture and religion. He substituted Mandarin for Uighur in primary schools, saying minority languages were "out of step with the 21st century," and banned or restricted Islamic practices among government workers, including the wearing of beards and head scarves and religious practice like fasting and praying while at work. He has been Communist party leader in Xinjiang for 15 years, which is unusually long, such jobs usually only lasting 10 years. SInce 9/11 Wang has fought hard to limit the influence of separatism, and the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, an Uighur group, and he has swept up thousands of Uighurs accused of terrorism or religious extremism. He worked to have the East Tukestan group listed as Al Quaeda allies by the Bush administration in 2002. He is closely allied to President Hu who supported Wang, giving him a seat on the Politburo. Wang's protege in Xinjiang has been placed in charge in Tibet. There is a sense with Wang and Hu, that a failure now in Xinjiang and in Tibet to control unrest would lead others in the Chinese leadership who think differently on theses issues to bring a different leadership to succeed them. The difficulty here is that the Han who now comprise 40% of the population in Xinjiang, and are heavily involved in the oil and gas industry, have brough a modernizing influence to Xinjiang but may not be received by the Uighurs as apositive influence. First any government that is in power for as long as 15-20 years tends to lose support over time. This happened with the Congress in Kashmir. Too powerful or corrupt, and lose touch with the young people. But compared to India the democratic ways of that country have helped it recognize the need for respecting the language, religion and culture of the people of each region. The British did the same, so it was something that went back to British times. With the monopoly of power of the Communist party, lack of precedent and amodel to follow that respected different culture and languages, the intolerance of Uighur and Tibetan language, religion and culture, creates a different situation in China. Elections were held in Kashmir recently and an effort is being made for reconciliation with different groups, the media is open and different voices are heard. No such prospect remains for Tibet and Xinjiang. ...

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The astounding fact in this French FR24 report on the Paris Climate Change Agreement and country carbon emissions show that China's emissions accelerated to rise 3 fold in 2015 to about 12 billion tons of carbon emissions from about 4 billion in 2000. US remains at about 6 billion. India is at about 3 billon tons of carbon emissions, about where China was in 2000 when it had about 4 billion tons of carbon emissions. This is shown in the graph on carbon emissions from FR24. The US, European Union graph curves on tons of carbon emissions since 2000 are all flat or declining, India rising slowly from a small base, China's curve is rising straight up from a large enough base at an unbelievable and dangerous rate. What has happened and is it getting worse? China's economy expanded too quickly as globalization was accelerated by banks, and business in the US and Europe, and by the Chinese governments at the local level and the state level. This had negative consequences for US, Europe and China. The too fast growth in China at rates of 10-15% based solely on False GDP indicators that did not take into account damage to the environment and workers was that it hurt manufacturing and working class in US and Europe and contaminated the environment. This was not like growth of Japan in 1960-1980, a smaller country in the way it affected the US and European working classes. Hyper Growth at 10-15% of a large country with 1 billion people compressed over a short period, is cited by Greg Ip in the WSJ as the cause of the negative impact on America.  It hurt China through pollution of rivers and land at an accelerated pace. It hurt China as trade with US and Europe became unsustainable with the loss of manufacturing in the US and Europe leading to a trade war. From these graphs of emissions it now appears that the 3 fold rise in carbon emissions from about 4 billion tons in 2000 to about 12 billion tons in 2015 is the result of unregulated business activity of all those who preferred to push hyper growth in China purely for reasons of profit such as investment banks and corporations in US, Europe, and state or local companies in China.  This has also aggravated inequality in US, Europe and China, and hurt rural populations. Xi Jinping is attempting to correct this in China, Biden is trying to correct this in the US, and Scholz will now attempt to correct this in Germany and the European Union. It is also to be noted that China in 2000-2015 did not have the benefit of the newer technologies that India now has access to, which is why India says it is able to reduce carbon emissions per each unit of GDP by 35% from 2005 levels by 2030. It is this efficiency in producing units of GDP with newer and newer technologies that China lacked in its period of hyper growth 2000-2015 that now looks to have hurt China- with overflow of highly polluting steel mills and other factories which it would prudently and wisely have cut back on. Looking back at this period one sees the wholesale transfer of highly polluting plants in Germany being sold and put up in China, a poor developing country in 2000. Was this a good decision for Germany or for China? In this way the banks and large corporations in the US and Europe who use economic indicators that are limited such as dollar profits, without overall indicators that include negative effect damage to the environment that requires huge investments to correct, problems of trade wars leading to political conflicts, are acting like a person walking blindly in one direction.  With some foresight China and all its trading partners would have done better with slower but more careful Chinese growth of 7-8% that would have better met societal goals in US, Europe and China, avoiding high carbon emissions segments of industries from Day 1. Jinping is doing this in China, and Biden is doing this in the US- cutting out highly polluting factories and segments of industries- but in a climate of mutual distrust, which could have benefitted the world when conducted in a climate of cooperation and trust. The pandemic made the situation even more difficult. Power shortages in factories and blackouts in Chinese cities have led to a reversal of policies on use of coal in China months before the COP26 Glasgow conference and G-20 summit leaving a huge gap. Without the presence of Xi Jinping at COP26 in Glasgow and with Chinese participation uncertain significant progress on climate change is elusive. Estimates by US Renewable Energy Agency is that it would cost $131 trillion to pay for limiting emissions to global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius. Some major share of this cost can be attributed to the increase from about 4 billion tons in 2000 of carbon emissions in China to about 12 billion tons in 2015, increase by 3 times. One can clearly see from this sudden jump in carbon emissions in China that policies of hyper growth with unregulated polluting industries adding to GDP growth figures was bad policy for China, bad policy for US, and Europe, even if it offered temporary profits for individual companies. India has the advantage of learning from this experience and charting its own wiser course as a partner with US, Europe and Japan and by Modi's vigorous efforts in renewable energy. The lesson- look at all indicators of progress, including climate and society, not just economic indicators in profit or dollar terms, take the tough decisions early in regulating polluting companies and industry segments, and bring full and active public participation with transparent access to data on climate damaging activity in real time because climate and the environment we live in free of polluting substances belongs to all the people, belongs to all life on the planet from trees to animals and birds, not companies that can choose to ignore it. ...

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Hingh unemployment in important states including Florida, Pennsylvania, Colorado (8%). Unemployment has improved in Ohio (7%), Virginia and Iowa (6%).

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This report in the NYT says US officials now say Russia was not involved in the attack on the Nordstream pipelines in the Baltic Sea. The pipeline was connecting Russian oil and gas undersea to Germany and generated revenue for Russia, cost $12 billion each to build for Nordstream 1 and 2, so that it would have no reason to sabotage its own pipeline, say US officials. Cost of repairing the pipeline would be over $500 million.  Nordstream I and 2 stretch across the Baltic sea from Russia to Lubmin, Germany for 760 miles under the sea. Nordstream 1 completed in 2011 cost $12 billion to make, with a similar amount for Nordstream 2 completed over American objections in 2021 by the Merkel government in Germany. American officials are still reviewing the intelligence to understand how it happened. Just as happened for the spy balloons over the US initial reports and speculation have turned out to be misleading. It shows the importance of getting all the facts right, more than ever.   ...

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New EU guidelines require cutting gas consumption by 15% over the next 8 months, and set priorities for which industrial sectors are required to cut back. The EU plan also includes switching from natural gas to nuclear or coal.  EU's Russian gas supplies in June are already less than 30% of what was received on average for the last 5 years. The new guidelines should ensure that Europe gets through the winter with adequate gas supplies in a complete cutoff of gas from Russia. The guidelines for 15% reduction in usage become mandatory in an emergency, and if the new guidelines are slow in being adopted they will also become binding. The safety, security and stability of society will be considered in allocating gas to sectors in the economy and to households. Industrial sectors such as glass and aluminiums would suffer damage to equipment with shutdowns, and chemical industries affecting the operations downstream through shutdowns, new factors that will have to be considered. ...