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Britain's prime minister spent 3 nights in intensive care for coronavirus. He said the "development of a vaccine is the most urgent shared endeavor of our lifetimes." He will confirm Britain's pledge of 388 million pounds for vaccine research, tests and treatments, part of 744 million pounds to the the global effort against coronavirus. "The more we pull together and share our research the faster our scientists will succeed."

An online pledging conference will take place on Monday as part of the vaccine fundraising drive of the European Union and other countries. The initiative from the EU and president of the EU Ursula von der Leyen, is to raise 7.5 billion euros for vaccine research and development of a vaccine for coronavirus. It has the support of Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Norway, Japan, Canada, and other countries. The month long investment drive will go on till the Global Vaccine Summit on June 4.

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Obesity is a problem today of global dimensions. In the U.S. this problem has reached a new high and increased U.S. risks in the face of the coronavirus. This author and her nutrition organization say the U.S. dietary guidelines put out by a government agency have failed over decades to do what they were supposed to do - guide people in the right direction to make good food choices. People at this time of the coronavirus need to make their own choices, independent of these guidelines that have failed. Intuitive choices for healthy eating by increasing vegetables and fruits in the diet, increasing use of healthy herbs such as turmeric, basil and ginger, eating carbohydrates and fat in a sensible way, increasing ancient whole grains in the diet, reducing meat in the diet in favor of plant based foods such as lentils and a large variety of whole grains. 

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Pulitzer prize winning journalist reporting on the Middle East and Saudi Arabia, Karen Elliott House, describes the changes in Saudi society and politics against the backdrop of the changes in the Middle East. Her exceptional reporting and insights provide a look into the Middle East at a time when young people make up the largest demographic and are looking for jobs and economic opportunity, with political structures lagging far behind in meeting the growing aspirations. The larger backdrop of the region extends into South Asia, with large Muslim populations unable to make the right choices for freedom and economic progress because of internal divisions, widespread illiteracy and lack of education of the rural population, and poor leadership. The lag affects western society in different ways, including the threat of terrorism, sporadic involvement in the region's conflicts, and a sense of not being able to do the right thing by its own ideals.

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President Trump announced that he is declaring a national emergency to bypass Congress and pursue building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. This comes as the president accepted $1.4 billion, a fourth of the $5.7 billion he had asked for from Congress. Mr. Trump hopes to add additional funding by declaring a national emergency as the U.S. Congress turned down his request for a longer wall. Congress only included funding for a 55 mile long fence along the Rio Grande River at the border with Mexico. To keep a campaign pledge to build that wall Mr. Trump acted with the support of Republicans including Senator Graham. Trump said he expected that "we'll be sued, and they will sue us in the ninth circuit, and then we will end up in the Supreme Court and hopefully we will get a fair shake." Under Trump's declared national emergency about $3.6 billion would be taken from the Pentagon's military construction fund and $2.5 billion from the Pentagon's drug interdiction programme. This will be challenged in the courts. Trump is under pressure from his support base to show that accepting the Congress offer of $1.4 billion and a 55 mile fence was equal to surrender. ...

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With interest rates at 22% and inflation of over 20% Turkey's foreign investment and consumer driven economy continues to struggle. In Istanbul's markets fruit vendors say buyers buy half the quantity they normally used to buy. Prices are high with the loss of value of the Turkish currency the lira, that lost about 40% of its value in the space of about 1 year. Turkish president Erdogan has in the past increased support with the economic boom in Turkey, which is now fading. High interest rates need to be brought down for the economy to recover. Erdogan fires the central bank chief for not cutting interest rates. In the past foreign investors continued investments in Turkey, yet today the confidence of foreign investors is declining, affecting the value of the Lira currency. High interest rates are a central bank policy response to keep the value of the Lira from declining further, but at a cost for ordinary Turkish people who pay high prices, reducing the standard of living. High interest rates to attract foreign capital to support the Lira also reduce investment and employment with the higher cost of borrowing.  The high prices because imports cost more with a weak Lira mean less can be purchased reducing what can be purchased with existing incomes. ...

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Voter awareness and discomfort about the $1.6 trillion deficit this year, does not translate into wanting to see spending cuts in Medicare, Social Security and popular programs. It is the view of public opinion that is determining political leaders inaction on these issues, which are at the heart of controlling spending and the deficits. It is no surprise then that the Obama budget showed no action on these issues. Both parties are careful not to talk about cuts to popular programs without broad public support. The Pew Research Center survey shows 12% of Americans want to cut spending on Medicare or on Social Security, only 6% want to reduce spending on veterans benefits. Politicians can do the math from these numbers. They may be sending loud signals to Democrats and Republican politicians that voters will punish those who cut these popular programs. Polling done by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News produced similiar numbers.

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An assessment of the Financial Regulatory Reform that is emerging in House and Senate Bills. Yes reforms will be passed but will they prevent another crisis and are they tackling the root causes of the financial crisis. The assessment here is that they fail on both accounts. According to Christopher Whalen of the Institutional Risk Analyst it tackles the symptoms more than it responds to the causes of the crisis. He sees the response in the areas of derivatives trading, credit ratings agencies, consumer proteciton agency, as inadequate to meet a future crisis.

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U.S. president Trump's statement calling for a list of goods for tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods leaves China without a clear response and facing new risks. The U.S. exports about $150 billion in goods to China so that China would have to impose penalties to respond at the same level. Placing restrictions on American firms on access to China's market, and imposing other penalties would have the effect of reinforcing the perception of unfair practices targeting American business and lead to hardening of U.S. response.  The U.S. sees itself as being in a better position with the U.S. economy experiencing a growth trend. China with large local government and bank debt faces a difficult situation. President Jinping's policy of reducing the risks of bad debt in the banking system involved sacrificing some growth to stabilize the system. China's GDP growth in 2017 was 6.9%, the target at 6.5%. Future targets and actual growth now look to be much lower.The trade war with the U.S. has the effect of dampening growth leading to calls for the central bank to loosen its monetary stance. In response to Trump's announcement the People's Bank of China pumped $31 billion into the nation's banks. China is studying Japan's response in the 1980's and 1990's when the U.S. took strong action against Japan's growing trade surplus. Japan responded by appreciating its currency and using stimulus to cushion the effect of lower exports on the economy. The stimulus led to the housing bubble and over time a period of low growth and stagnant economy. The large China stimulus in 2008-2009 has compounded the problems in the banking system. Not deleveraging and controlling financial risks in China's banking system because of the trade war would bring a new set of risks. ...

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Conflict of interest and the role money has played in creating a collusion of diverse interests which were supposed to be kept separate, if the system was to work properly. The way these collusions of interest worked to create crises that range from the financial crisis to the BP Gulf Oil Spill.

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The 1976 Montreal Olympics initial estimate was $120 million Canadian dollars. It ended up costing $1.6 billion Cdn Dollars after huge cost overruns, long strikes and finishing the work at the last minute using overtime. The roof of the stadium has suffered from poor construction and had expensive repair costs since then. The corruption scandals from the cost overruns and mismanagement of funds, led to investigations. A new Parti Quebecois government was elected in November 1976 following the games on a clean government platform. Mayor Drapeau who had claimed there would be no deficit in the games turned out to be completely wrong. The federal government of Canada distanced itself from the games taking no financial responsibility. In the end it took 3 decades to pay off the debt. And the legacy of the games is that while the city of Toronto, Ontario, could invest in new infrastructure for the city, Montreal found itself financially stretched for decades. The corruption also increased support for the separatist Parti Quebecois, with referendums in 1980 and 1995 to create an independent French speaking country of Quebec. For the referendum in 1995 the separatist PQ party came less than 1% short of winning.  ...

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Andrew Roth describes a situation in Russia where president Putin is more popular than the ruling party. The United Russia Party was shown having support of 45% in pre election polls. The election campaign used Putin posters and the slogan "the party of the president," to increase voter support.  Some voters see Putin working really hard to improve the economic situation. Samuel Greene, director of the Russia Institute at King's College, London, says that even after efforts to increase support United Russia Party has failed to generate voter enthusiasm. Voter turnout was low especially in Moscow and St Petersburg. The election result is seen by experts as a way to give Putin support to tackle the economic problems facing the country, and ensure stability. About 343 members of the parliament out of total 450 are from the United Russia Party. The budget shortfall of 3% is being met by the government  by using state funds, and one of the sovereign funds is likely to be exhausted in 2017. One of the options is to cut back on social entitlements, increase the pension age. Prime minister Medvedev has already said state pensions cannot be indexed because "we don't have the money right now." ...

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Are there costs or are there savings from the Obama health care bill? Does it affect jobs and how? The Congressional Budget Office says the health care law will save $230 billion in ten years based on a whole set of calculations and assumptions. Commonsense and basic math leads others to question how spending $930 billion on insuring 32 million Americans could end up with significant savings. The different view argues that the Budget Office erred in making some calculations, by counting $70 billion in premiums from long term care because they would be used to pay benefits later, omitted $115 billion in spending to adminster the law, and omitted $208 billion needed to prevent scheduled reductions in Medicare payments to doctors. The money needed on the Stimulus, on two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the uncertain prospects of the US economy in the longer term till debt and other issues are resolved, injects the critical element of difficult choices and priorities. If state and local budgets are severely strained in 2011-2012 would that require federal help and will there be other needs that will have to be met by the federal government that are critical such as another unexpected downturn, or a resolution of unresolved bad debt at the large US banks There is also a sense that the health care law does not do enough to reduce the cost of health care that will be needed over the next decade so that other priorities are not neglected. Both parties are not up to the task in this respect for running the country's finances withot using the numbers to tell different stories....

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U.S. Treasury Secretary Geithner says Republicans are working to thwart the Dodd-Frank legislation- by slowing down and diluting the impact of rules required to be written under Dodd-Frank, crimping the resources of regulatory agencies, and blocking the nominations of heads of regulatory agencies such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration failed to take action when asked by drivers to investigate incidents of unintended acceleration. It also failed to take up action with the company's quality staff in Japan- who were in charge of things related to quality- after what appeared to be years of inaction and stalling by Toyota. Where it did investigate, the agency did nothing about the complaints when Toyota failed to provide the necessary information. Internal agency documents show that since 2003 the agency opened inquiries into possible Toyota problems, and six times closed them without action of any sort. With agency managers joining Toyota after their work at the agency, there appears to have been a cozy relationship with Toyota. Add to that the lack of a steady hand at the agency- with about 6 changes in directors since 2005- and the current administrator David Strickland only confirmed in December 2009. Throughout its 6 investigations NHTSA regulators were told they have to talk not with Toyota USA but Toyota people in Japan who made the decisions and had the answers, yet no effort was made to break the logjam and get Toyota Japanese managers to provide answers. At one point State Farm Insurance brought the incidents of accidents and near accidents to the attention of NHTSA, something that happened a decade before this in the Ford Explorer roll over accidents. On both occasions NHTSA was slow to act....

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WSJ's Chief Editor Emma Tucker comments on its choices in writing Style in its pages. It is appropriate we comment here on our own choices in Lyrarc.com. We respect the old forms such as Cornell English Professor William Strunk's Elements of Style for its basic emphasis on simplicity. We take from the new to always keep in mind how it sounds as is suggested by Ben Yagoda in Sound on the Page. In actual practice it goes back to our mix of reading influences and the style in each- from Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Conrad, Whitman, Lincoln. We strive for the simplicity and directness of a Walt Whitman or a Abraham Lincoln, while developing a directness of our own drawing from these influences. Inside this are all the other influences- Gandhi's amazing candour adding to directness. There is also in the background individually for this writer the energy of Prof. Kuruvila who helped transform some of the writings in English just described into living spoken words with ideas that held one's imagination.   ...

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Barry Eichengreen of the University of California, Berkeley, looks at problems in the British economy reflected in the sharp decline of the pound of over 10% which he says will get even worse. The problem is weak productivity growth. Eichengreen looks back in time to similar crises for the British currency the pound. In 1931 it was unemployment at 21% that made the pound weak. In 1949 the high war debt made it difficult to finance British imports. In 1967 under Harold Wilson the drop in productivity was a problem. In 1992 the cumulative loss of productivity and uncompetitive exports with British output per hour about 15% below Germany led to a sharp decline in the pound. The current crisis reflects falling productivity from a lack of investment in infrastructure, deterioration in educational levels, the lack of trained and educated people to fill positions. Frictions and inefficiencies as a result of Brexit compound the difficulties.  The brief look at the last 100 years for th British pound gives a better understanding of the outlook for the British pound, which will only get worse, says Eichengreen. ...

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Vietnam has an excellent record in the coronavirus epidemic with zero deaths and 324 cases. No locally originated cases are seen. The country has an astounding 792 tests per confirmed case compared to 144 for Taiwan and 57 for South Korea. Vietnam acted quickly to close its borders, quarantine foreign travelers in camps, close schools, and imposed an early lockdown.  This gives Vietnam an opportunity to restart its economy and maintain its growth. With the reallocation of supply chains away from China underway, Vietnam sets an ambitious growth rate of 5% for 2020, down only slightly from 7% for 2019.  The coronavirus also had some positive effects including the digital transformation that is taking place-  the rate of online transactions in public services increased from 12% to 24% during the 2 month lockdown. The discipline showed in Vietnam for tackling the crisis contrasts with other countries in Europe and America. This report says some small businesses and export industries in clothing and shoes are affected, yet even a 3% growth rate in 2020 makes Vietnam a winner, as the future in 2021 looks good. ...

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"We will never abandon the American worker and her community wherever it is located," says president Biden's head of the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA). He tells the Economic Policy Institute that many economists had questioned the policies that hurt American workers even as early as 1996. He joined EPI in 1992 and says he has followed the trade debate since then and heard the warnings as China entered the WTO in 2001 after years of negotiations in the last year of the Clinton administration.  Common sense questions were asked- Why asked Thea Lee now at the Labor Department is it good to have protection of intellectual property rights but not labor rights under NAFTA. On TPP and FTA's or free trade agreements in general he who writes the rules gets to benefit from them. Free trade having far less to do with free trade as generalized is the first thing he noticed when coming to Washington. Certain business groups captured the task of writing the rules in TPP  to benefit them.   ...

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Make no mistake president Biden is saying it is America's, and India's turn to reinvent the semiconductor industry with government capital support, and with the zeal and inventive capabilities of the US and India. This interview by Ben Cohen gives a glimpse of how Morris Chang now 92 years sees the founding of Taiwan Semiconductor in 1985 in retrospect in 2024. He talks about his early life in the US as an immigrant from China after 1949 and his work at Texas Instruments learning about the semiconductor industry. In the 1980's Japan was the rising industrial nation in semiconductors. By 1985 Intel which dominated memory chips faced challenges in quality and cost and cheap capital from Japanese capital markets encouraging exports. By 1988 Japan took over the market. What Morris Chang is not telling is that Chang already had the Japanese example in 1985. If Japan could do it on all three fronts quality, cheap capital with government assistance, and ten year effort Chang and Taiwan could do this and accomplished this which it has done. ...

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Claire Moses reports for the NYT from Woudenberg, Netherlands, her home country. The 1.6 million cows on Dutch dairy farms are a leading producer of nitrogen emissions in the country. EU and Netherlands laws limiting these emissions would require a much smaller population of cows. To meet the cuts in emissions Dutch dairy farmers will have to significantly reduce their farming operations and number of cows in each farm. Netherlands is a major dairy farming nation with 8.2 billion euros of dairy exports including Edam and Gouda cheeses and 13.8 billion kilos of milk.  Dutch farmers have launched nitrogen protests for 2 years saying their livelihood is threatened. In a nation of 17 million people about 40% supports the farmers, but this support is declining with increasing impact of droughts and fires, impact on agriculture and transportation on rivers, takes its toll on Europe and the rest of the world. Netherlands has set aside $25 billion to aid farmers making the transition to a smaller nitrogen footprint. It also requires the Dutch to shift their diet to fewer animal proteins, to grain and other non animal proteins. ...

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Bread and bakeries have a special place in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and most of Europe. DW.com looks at one bakery in the city of Bonn, Kugel's Bakery with 13 employees and the concept slogan "Where there's only bread" (Da wo's nur Brot gibt) written on each and every white packaging bag. There are 10,000 bakeries in Germany many of them small family run bakeries that specialize in bread. Click on original article to see this report. Max Kugel takes over his parent's bakery, but first visits Vancouver, San Francisco and London, to learn new concepts and invests in new special equipment with a $200,000 loan. The new equipment lets him switch from one type of bread to another easily and keeps his costs down. He does not depend on Ukraine grain imports as he uses local organic grain grown in Germany. With 10,000 bakeries total sales in Germany are $15 billion for bread, and Germans take in 123 pounds of bread and baked goods in a year per person. ...

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The market for oil field equipment is tight with 90% utilization, making it harder for larger oil producers to drill more oil wells for shale oil in the US. Large US shale oil producers reduced production when oil prices plunged and did not come back leaving smaller oil producers to increase production as prices went back up in 2021. Oil prices are now expected to reach $100 per barrel for the first time since 2014.  Saudis and Russia are not expected to increase production say experts. The possible Russian invasion of Ukraine and shortage of energy supplies is also a factor. Oil demand in the US and Europe has rebounded with milder covid-19 from Omicron variant and fewer lockdowns. Automobile use is also up in the US with November showing 12% increase in miles driven over the prior year, according to the Federal Highway Administration. Low inventories and resilient demand, and low spare capacity will keep prices surging to $100 from today's price of Brent crude oil at $89 in January 2022.   ...

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Cable television's decline as seen from the experience of CNN. This report in the WSJ says not only is cable television declining in viewers, CNN is falling behind MSNBC and Fox which are also declining. The 24 hour cable news network format is seeing rapid shift to streaming services that generate little profit. Monthly prime time viewers for CNN cable television is down to 568,000 compared to one estimate of 166 million for its website and app streaming services. The result is a search by Warner Discovery, new owner of CNN, for a way to reverse the slide in people watching by showing both sides instead of skewing to one side, which is also not working. 68 million Americans subscribe to cable television packages including CNN down from 72 million in 2022 for which CNN gets $1.25 per subscriber. Advertising produces most of the revenue- $600 million in 2022 down from 900 million in 2020. Smaller audiences and poorer ratings with so many choices for viewers from CBS, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, Fox, etc mean less advertising revenues.   ...