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Abigail Johnson, brings a different style of management to Fidelity Inc. compared to her father "Ned" Johnson. Both are quiet and like to stay out of the limelight, but Abigail is more methodical. Her father was known to take risks to build the company. Abigail is cautious and likely to study each situation very carefully before making a decision. She also requires input from managers at Fidelity who are not accustomed to this. "Ned" Johnson rarely asked for advice and made decisions on his own. Abigail believes actively managed funds will do well once the market performance improves. Critics say this trend is not temporary, as investors have shifted funds into passively managed equity funds at Vanguard, and into ETF's. Morningstar shows about 17% of all mutual funds are now passively traded funds compared to 10% in 2006, a shift of about $700 billion. On ETF's Abigail preferred to partner with Black Rock, because it had more experience in the field.

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Coal India, is a state run monopoly which is a huge stumbling block for India's economic development. India lags behind Brazil, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia in the percentage of the population having electricity. Production methods do not use modern technology similiar to mines in other countries, and the average age of the 333,000 employees is 45-50 years. An eight hour shift at some mines produces as much coal as a mine in the U.S. does in 5 minutes, because of the lack of modern technology. About 300 million Indians lack electricity. The Modi administration's focus is on improving efficiency, introducing competition, and bringing major technological changes to the coal industry. Piyush Goyal, India's Coal minister faces one of the biggest challenges in the Modi administration. His focus is on efficiency, and the Modi administration has set a target of 1 billion tons for 2020, a 15% increase in production each year for the next 5 years.

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Ellen Barry's interview with Yogi Nagendra in which Nagendra talks about meditation yoga and how it is practiced in India. Nagendra has known prime minister Modi since 1984 and has provided 4 yoga meetings to Mr. Modi and his ministers in Gujarat when he was Chief Minister of the state, till today as prime minister. This Yoga concentrates on meditation and tries to calm the mind as described in the Kena Upanishad (the classics of the Indian philosophy of Vedanta which form the basis of Yoga).

"The eye does not go there, nor speech, nor the mind. It is different from what is known, and what is unknown."

It is through constant and repeated practice that this meditation yoga can through concentration and yearning help one to reach a level of calmness that is a form of samadhi. Samadhi produces a level of calm and serenity mostly unknown to man.

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Joe Kaeser, CEO of Siemens AG, meets Russian president Putin in Moscow on March 26, 2014. He also had talks with Gazprom chief, Alexei Miller. Siemen's has invested 800 million dollars in Russia in the last 2 years. Siemens sales in Russia are 2.17 billion euros, 2.9% of the company's revenue. Germany's total trade with Russia is 56.3 billion euros for 2012. Eckhard Cordes, chairman of German industry group Ostausschuss, representing German companies with investments in Eastern Europe, met with Russian officials and Alexei Mordashov, CEO of Severstal metals group. He then briefed the German government on his talks. Chancellor Merkel says dialogue is also part of government policy: "Business contacts are still taking place and I am not interested in seeing the situation escalate, but rather am working towards a de-escalation." Exxon has major investments in Russia and deals with Russian oil companies and the Russian government for oil exploration. Exxon CEO Tillerson has taken a similiar approach....

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Pemex's new CEO, Emilio Lozoya, and his plans for improving the oil company's operations. He sees the opportunity to create efficiency and savings for Pemex as large because of the way the company has been run upto now. In this interview by Jose De Cordoba and Laurence Iliff, the new CEO cites as one example that only one airport in Mexico receives jet fuel by pipeline, the airport of Mexico City, the rest receive it by trucks. Lozoya is the son of a former energy minister. He is 38, has a Masters degree in economic development from Harvard and worked as an investment banker in New York. Lozoya says he will draw from the experience of other countries, including Brazil and Colombia which have sharply increased oil production after making their oil companies more competitive and transparent. In this interview he announced plans to setup a separate company to explore and produce shale gas and deep water oil in the U.S.

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Under Blackstone private equity ownership Hilton expanded overseas, acquired the international operations, and increased room capacity and revenues. It also almost doubled the debt load to about $13.5 billion in 2013 and hit a rough patch in timing because the 2007 buyout happened close to the 2008-2009 financial crisis. About $4 billion of the debt load has been reduced by negotiating with creditors during this period. Room capacity went up from 501,000 in 2006 to 665,000 in 2013, occupancy from 72.5% to 72.3%, average daily rate from $124 to $136, and revenue from $8.2 billion to $9.4 billion. Hilton adjusted earnings before interest, taxes and depreciation were up 25% from 2010 to nearly $2 billion in 2012, according to SEC filings. Hilton now plans an IPO for the first half of 2014 to raise $1.25 to $2 billion. About 80% of rooms under construction are outside the U.S. showing the opportunities overseas Blackstone has focussed on.

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Blackberry employees reached a peak of over 17,000 in 2011 as the company continued to hire through 2009-2011. It was about 8000 in 2008 the first year of the financial crisis and recession and doubled in 3 years. The employee count is at 12,700 in 2013. The company was hit hard by the introduction of smartphones by Samsung and Apple. Blackberry now plans huge cuts of about 40% by the end of 2013. This shows how quickly the winds can change in the tech business field where disruptions for existing technology are the norm. A niche in the corporate business field was not sufficient to keep Blackberry from shrinking rapidly as businesses shifted to the new smartphone technology from rivals. Failure to anticipate new technologies can lead to irreversible losses. Blackberry shows the way down can be just as fast as the way up and a lost year or a wrong decision can be the difference between success and irreversible failure.

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The SEC filed the Goldman civil suit the same day that its Inspector General released a report on the gross failure of the SEC for a decade to catch the Ponzi scheme of Allen Stanford. As a result of the lawsuit against Goldman that report never got the front page coverage it deserved leaving most people unaware of some crucial facts about SEC behaviour. The IG report shows how the enforcement chief of the SEC Fort Worth office quashed his staff's efforts to investigate- and following this how he goes into private practice landing Stanford as a client. The Goldman Abacus case has a whole cast of characters, the SEC, the Ratings agencies, and even the supposed victims German bank IKB. IKB sold commercial paper IOU's to investors in mid 2007 that were worthless to investors by the end of that year. IKB's CEO Stefan Ornstein went on trial in Germany for lying about IKB's financial condition before its collapse.

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Tesco's decision to exit the U.S. market in Dec. 2012. Tesco's U.S. plan was made after research showing buyers would favor smaller stores than large supermarkets, and more fresh products. Tesco made its entry in the U.S. market in 2007 in Nevada, California and Arizona in areas with new housing projects. When the mortgage crisis hit in 2008, foreclosures and the recession affected these areas where new stores were opened. Some of the ideas were lost in the implementation. The format that worked in Britain failed to takeoff in the U.S. Many stores were located in area where people were used to driving longer distances and could find a larger store with more selection a few minutes away. American buyers preferred to shop for name brands with more selections, Tesco carried more house brands. Experts say Tesco failed to establish a clear proposition to buyers. Tesco faces a loss of 1 billion pounds on the U.S. venture.

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Kim Kyung-jae, aide to former president Kim Dae Jung, and reconciliation with the daughter of military backed president Park Chung Hee who ruled in the 1970's and suppressed dissent. Presidential candidate, Ms. Park Geun-hye, is reaching out to dissenters who suffered during her father's military regime. Much of the industrialized part of S. Korea is in the southeastern provinces, and Ms. Park's father pushed development in this region. There is a development gap with the southwestern provinces where much of the dissent to the military regime took place. The gap is still being healed many years later. Ms. Park's conservative party hopes to get 20% of the vote from the southwestern provinces with her efforts at reconciliation, up from the current conservative party president Lee Myung-bak who won 9% of the vote there. Moon Jae-in, the liberal candidate for president, is from the city of Busan in the southeastern provinces and hopes to increase his vote in the southeast to 40%.

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Mankiw is asked by astudent, why the banks lost 100% of their money if they invested in housing through mortgage securities investments, and housing prices went down only 20%. His answer was the crazy amount of leveraging the banks took on to make higher profits. He points to other changes in teaching Econ 101. The role of financial institutions, the effects of leveraging, the limits of monetary policy when interest rates are already at zero, and the challenge of forecasting. He says economists can't take the blame for missing the crisis completely. In saying this he is saying that economists have only to use what is taught in the classroom, and not use their thinking skills developed through the course of experience in the real world and their intelligence, curiosity and skepticism, all part of an educated mind. It requires some of these skills to tell a bubble when you see one.

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Self reflection by the boomers, born between 1946 and 1964 numbering some 78 million people, who gave commencement speeches this year from Ken Burns, documentary maker, at Boston College, to Democratic Senator Bennet of Colorado at Colorado College, on the mistakes of this generation. Senator Bennet used three figures to make his point about the failure, from 2000 the annual median family income declined in the US by $300, health care costs went up by 80%, and the cost of higher education went up by 60%. By contrast to this the so-called Millenials, born between 1982 and 2001, just want to see what works and get on with it, says Stefanie Sanford, an education expert. One graduate from the University of Kentucky, Julie Meador, a marketing major, is earning $7.50 an hour as part-time sales associate at Gap. Her view is that what she most thinks of is finding a good job, and not thinking of saving the world just yet.

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The worst flaw in the health care bill says the Economist is that "fee for service" and doctors billing for each test done continues as before.The whole idea of medical services based on medical necessity and value for money has been left out of the billsin Congress. Alan Meltzer also pointed this out in his discussion of the deficits and debt over the next decade; that the 25% reduction in medical expenditures does not look anywhere closer to reality, worsening the deficits. This is also the view expressed in the discussion of health care reform in the November 2, 2009, issue of Business Week. Never mind said BW that the doctors and hospitals account for one third of medical expenditures and there is waste in Medicare spending. Congress said BW has made no changes in the "fee-for-service" system of medical care that has inflated medical costs, by paying doctors for the volume of services delivered and not the quality of services delivered.

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Reserve bank of India's Governor Dr. V.Y. Reddy, who was a strong regulaor and did not allow mortgage securitizations, derivatives, and increased the reserves banks had to hold in case things went wrong. He had strict rules for bank lending in the real estate industry even as a real estate bubble developed in India, all of which is keeping India's banking system in good shape as it faces the global credit crisis. Criticized at the time by bank executives for his strict no nonsense rules, he is now regarded highly by Bank CEO's in India. One of this no nonsense rules was that banks had to hold on to loans they made on their books as banks all over the world have always done in the past, because it made good sense as banks were likely to police themselves for loans they were responsible for. Vague and possibly dangerous experimentation in the name of productive change was frowned upon and the tried and tested rules were followed.

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The Obama Stimulus Plan of January 2009 was passed in the House by avote largely on party lines of 244-188. The Democrats have a 255 to 178 advantage in the House. Before the vote Mr Obama met with business leaders at the White House including Sam Palmisano of IBM and Cote of Honeywell. Cote said these are not times for timidity, thank god you are not a timid man. And later told Bloomberg News, that the need was urgent to move ahead and not wait any longer to get it passed and into action, because the situation was deteriorating with more layoffs announced this week by a number of companies. For his part President Obama said quoting Justice Brandeis that the best disinfectant is sunlight. To ensure transparency and effectuve use of the money the information on the spending will be posted on the internet for the public to see and monitor.

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Coorodination, forbearance and multilateralism are three ways to keep economic nationalism from disrupting a global trading system that has benefitted all countries. Even the small moves to help home countries like the the move for US steel in the American stimulus projects, and the demonstrations supporting "British jobs for British workers", and other steps that quietly find their way into individual countries efforts to protect their home industries and jobs, can over time build up into something that would exaggerate the size and extent of this economic downturn. Forbearance and leadership from the US government on this issue and by leading developed countries is vital. So is the effort to develop a coordinated effort through close consultation and joint monitoring of progress. And equally important is multilateralism which works to help emerging countries hit hardest, and help prevent millions from sinking back into poverty, thereby destroying the hope and aspirations that had propelled the global progress in improving living standards....

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A look at Ford Motor a year after Mulally came in as CEO an assessment of progress. Mullaly is trying to model Ford on the consistent effort after goals such as quality and full lineup of passenger cars and crossovers and fuel efficiency. Busiess plans are amorphous and flexible and reviewed at Thurday meetings every week. He has promoted two executives up to senior positions Kuzak on the product development and full lineup side and Cischke on the fuel efficiency and sustainability side who also helped fill him in on details. He is not concerned with sales decline and says its in the plan. Passenge cars make up about half the sales and pickups the rest. It will be 2009 for consistent profitable operations. And it will be 2011 for a fulllineup of cars which will be done leveraging global resources. On another note Mullaly answers or forwards every email he receives promptly and applauds good performance with notes he sends out.

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Inflation on an annual basis hit 27% in June. The central bank widened the band it alloed the dong to rise or fall against the dollar each day from 1% to 2% and announced a devaluation of 2% in June 2008. At this time the dollar buys 19000 dong on the black market compared to the official rate of 16600 dong, and the official rate is climbing up to the higher unofficial rate. A large part of the inflation is caused by a flood of foreign investment and bank loans to state owned companies, and the spending by state owned companies. The state owned companies like the Vietnam Shipbuilding Industry Group are controllinng their spending. Some of the inflationary influx is investment from foreign manufacturers trying to escape rising costs in China, showing the risks if this and other factors are not carefully managed. Recently Greenspan advised Vietnamese premier Nguyen Dung to mop up the liquidity surge and restrict spending by state owned firms.

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Friedman draws attention to a very important thing that a perceptive eye like his has grasped, there is too much rhetoric on the democratic and Obama side about focussing on Afghanistan without knowledge of whats going on in the field and all the risks in haphazard involvement and expansion of the war, reminiscent of the small war that was going on in south east Asia when Kennedy assumed office. Another young and inexperienced President who needed to show that he could be tough and just as the cold war was taking shape with the Berlin airlift and other events in Europe. The early years of the Kennedy administration led to an haphazard expansion of the war without fully understanding the situation in the ground. Scweich and Rory's account and the cable by the British ambassador in Kabul and other links show that the war there has to be very carefully handled by the most capable people knowledgeable about what is happening in the ground.

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James Galbraith's ideas on the bailout in the Washington Post. He would remove the cap of $100,000 on FDIC insurance and put $500 billion into the FDIC and more resources for the FBI and hire the auditors and investigators needed to clean up the mess. Next he would use $200 billion to buy the preferred shares in the banks that need the money. He would let the investmet banks and hedge funds to themselves. And he woul provide federal funds to stte and local governments in a Nixon administration type of revenue sharing scheme so that local governments do not cut essential services and investments in education and so on. And he would focus on energy and climate change issues for the next 10-20 years as national goals. His point that even with freeing up the illiquid assets two things dont change one the borrowing still will be weak as the economy slows, and the recession and slowing economic conditions will not change.

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GM will hasten plant closings as its cash situation deteriorates and it finds itself without access to credit, as the credit markets remain frozen in the global financial crisis that hit in late September. GM will hasten closing of Moraine, Ohio plant, Grand Rapids Stamping Plant to close December 2009, and Janesville, Wisconsin plant to close December 23, 2008. All 3 plants make parts for large and midsize pickup trucks. Accelerated plant closigs save money. The Janesville plant assembles GMC Yukon, Chevrolet Tahoe, and Chevrolet Suburban, all large SUV's. whos sales have fallen badly and precipitiously. And more than 40% of the parts produced at Grand Rapids went into large SUV's. Othe plant closings GM announced earlierinclude ending production of a truck lie in Toluca, Mexico, and ending production at an assembly plant in Oshawa, Ontario. All are part of the shift to cars, smaller cars, and crossover vehicles to respond to changing consumer preferences after gas prices went above $4 a gallon. ...

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African Americans from Chicago, Harvard Law School and other places in Obama's background, some of whom came into government with the Clinton administration are likely to assume leadership positions.John Rogers of Ariel Capital Management, Valerie Jarrett, are from Chicago. Some of them are at law firms like Jeh Johnson who is a fellow partner of Theodore Sorensen speechwriter for President Kennedy. These are a new group of younger African Americans different from the earlier generation of Andy Young and Vernon Johnson. Eric Holder was deputy attorney general under Clinton, now his name is mentioned for Attorney General. Ties in Chicago include ties to Martin Nesbitt, a close friend, who is chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority and a real estate developer. Harvard Law School admits 30 to 40 black students each year, and it has 1400 black law school alumni, more blacck law school graduates than any other school except Howard University. And its a source for fundraising and other contacts....

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IMV architecture for rugged vehicles and the Hilux brand of vehicles for emerging markets, are two favorable factors that Toyota hopes will generate half a million more sales than the old Hilux line. Toyota has spent $1.4 billion on building plants in India, Indonesia, Argentina and S. Africa and other countries to develop the new vehicles with new chassis, engines and other parts made in developing countries. These plants say chief engineer Hoskawa help reduce costs by 20-25% for the Hilux line of rugged vehicles with new chassis. But a port strike in India which makes the manual transmitssions, and a problem at the plant in Indonesia which makes gasoline engines- which are then shipped to plants for assembly in South Africa and Argentina- could cause problems. To cushion against such events Toyota keeps 2 weeks supply of engines and other parts in Thailand.