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Airports and airlines are trying to promote flying by offering coid testing to avoid quarantines imposed by state and federal governments. Airports are opening test centres offering the PCR test which takes 48 hours for results and rapid tests that take 15 minutes but are not as accurate. Some airlines are looking at designating certain flights as covid tested flights with all passengers either tested and negative or having been removed from the flight. Lufthansa has testing at airports in Frankfurt and Munich with the German government agreeing to it that people tested and negative did not have to quarantine for 14 days. Following this summer traffic jumped. The head of the resting task force at Lufthansa, Mr. Leffers, says testing is now becoming an integral part of the flying experience. Bermuda has some of the toughest testing rules with tests required on Day 1, Day 4, Day 7 and Day 14, resulting in low traffic over the summer. Yet with covid rates rising elsewhere Bermuda has become a safer destination resulting in a large increase in traffic this month. ...

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Alexis Tsipras, leader of Syriza, Greece's second largest party, is interviewed by WSJ's Bret Stephens. Tsipras describes the problems inside Greece. He describes the bribery in healthcare, tax evasion, burden of taxes on the middle class and honest citizens, a large and inefficient bureaucracy. In its current state Greece would build up debt and deficits all over again if the debts were forgiven tomorrow, says Tsipras. He is for Greece remaining in the eurozone. Tsipras understands the problems Germans have with putting money into Greece with the current state of economic management and lack of conscience of its elite, and why they see this as not fair. He suggests as a model for solving the Greece debt crisis, the London Conference of 1953 forgiving half of Germany's debts and putting the rest on a 30 year scheduled repayment. This would have to come with results in cutting bureaucracy, reducing corruption, and efficient tax collection for Greece democracy to work.

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Copies with slight changes to extend drug life with new brand names- Clarinex for Claritin, Nexium for Prilosec, Paliperidone for Risperdal being the latest in this new marketing strategy of drug companies to extend the life and sales of a successful drug. The drug companies try to market the copy drug as a significant improvement, which is what J&J is doing with Paliperidone. Experts are skeptical. Pricing of the generic versions of Risperdal or its copy will be much less expensive. Cost is a sensitive issue. About 15% of Risperdal's $1.35 billion sales were from Medicaid, generic substitutions offer potentially large savings. Meantime J&J did not do clinical tests between Risperdal and Paliperidone, the tests with 1600 patients compared Risperdal with a sugar pill. A psychiatry Professor at Duke and another professor at NYU are skeptical of J&J claims for Paliperidone. United Health shows savings of $150 million by using generics instead of Nexium, so managed care payors will tread carefully....

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Andrea Coombes provides views and assessment of the U.S. stock market in July 2014 of Joe Davis, chief economist at Vanguard Group, David Kelly, chief global strategist at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., and Russel Kinnel, director of manager research at Morningstar. Joe Davis cautions against timing of the stock market from any surge in volatility, as timing has proven to be difficult. Kinnel says many sectors have performed well in one year and not so well in other years. Utilities, energy and health care have been more consistent in returns providing gains of 17%, 16% and 11% in 2014 respectively, compared to gains of 18%, 23% and 48% in 2013 , according to Morningstar.

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Krugman points to some striking data in a U.S. Federal Reserve study, showing 47% of Americans do not have the money to meet an unexpected expense of $400 without selling something they own or borrowing. The is the 2nd year of this Federal Reserve study. It shows alarming information about the condition of retirement savings- about 30% of nonelderly Americans say they have no retirement savings or pension, and reported going without some kind of medical care because they could not handle the expense. About 25% say they or a family member experienced financial hardship this year.

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In a fast changing energy environment with upcoming COP26 summit in Glasgow and shift away from fossil fuels, Exxon is considering dropping a $30 billion LNG project in Mozambique and multibillion dollar project in Vietnam. Exxon has a remade Board with 3 new directors chosen by an activist investor and 2 other new directors. It takes years for such projects to generate energy supplies and years more to be profitable. Exxon Board members are also facing pressure from investors to restrain fossil fuel investment to limit carbon emissions and return more cash to shareholders.

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Mexico reports 1092 deaths from coronavirus. Mexico has 101,000 cases and 11,729 deaths, a death rate of over 10% of cases. Brazil passes 600,000 cases only 4 days after passing 500,000.

Germany is implementing a 130 billion euro package to revive the economy. Measures include temporarily reducing VAT from 19% to 16%, giving 300 euro payment for each child. Incentives to buy new cars, and relief for municipalities with high debt are also included. This is on top of 1.1 trillion euro rescue package in March. To fund this effort Germany approved new borrowing and disregarded the deficit rules.

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Emma Tucker, chief editor of WSJ, interviews Argentina's new president Milei. Milei plans to overhaul the economy, as inflation surges even after a large devaluation of the peso. He was recently elected with 58% support, yet faces opposition from unions and the Peronist party who calld a one national strike this week. Argentines are fed up with inflation and the repeated financial crises, more than any other of the G-20 nations. Milei is pursuing a path of rapidly reducing the state intervention in the economy to calm down rampant inflation. 

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The Pakistan army and its anti India mindset is at the root of the problem Pakistan faces. The army has factions that support the Taliban. Its intelligence agency, the ISI, helped create the Taliban as a way to get strategic depth (as they called it) in Afghanistan, for it sees as a necessary perpetual conflict with India. And the failure in Pakistan, the crisis of Pakistan, lies in the failure of elected politicians, the failure of the army, to provide responsible government and peaceful relations with India and with Afghanistan. By pursuing a Hindu-Muslim conflict agenda, and a anti-foreigner agenda for Afghanistan, Pakistan has ended up undermining its own government, institutions, and sovereignty over tribal areas and the North West Frontier Province. The US by getting involved in the Hindu-Muslim conflict agenda, and the anti-foreigner agenda during the Cold War, by supplying weapons and aid for this to successive Pakistani military governments, now finds itself as the foreigner in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Pakistan army's anti-foreigner agenda, now that the Americans are the foreigners, is not something that even the army or the civilian governments can control. The only thing the army knows, and its raison-de-etre, is the protection of the state of Pakistan and an antiIndian, Hindu-Muslim conflict agenda. After 60 years of doing this since its founding the Pakistan army knows no other way. Failure to do what it is doing would remove it from its critical role as the most important institution in Pakistan, and relegate its officers and the army to a smaller role, with smaller committments of resources, a smaller army, and the loss of its privileged role in Pakistani society. This is the answer to Holbrooke's question to Pakistani businessmen, and civilian leaders, in Lahore recently, what is the crisis of Pakistan? And these businessmen and civilian leaders also touched on the army's role. For America as it sees the need to build a new economic partnership with Asia that would help revive economic growth, there is the need for deep soul searching. The Pakistan military sucks up resources that are so badly needed elsewhere, for the kind of construction the Obama administration sees for America, of roads, bridges, schools, new energy infrastructure. How can what is good and planned for America not be whats good for South Asia, for India, Pakistan, SriLanka and the entire region? The resources that are sucked up by the Pakistan military and its actions to foster aconflict atmosphere merely adds to the way resources are sucked for the military in India, when they are badly needed for development, economic growth, and the same kind of infrastructure building and education that the Obama administration plans for the US. Without correcting this flaw in its policies in South Asia the Obama administration cannot create a partnership with Asian countries that could play a critical role in America's own economic growth....

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U.S. investor preference for value stocks over fast growing companies with high valuations and P/E ratios in April 2014.

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BJP led by prime minister Narendra Modi wins a huge majority of 325 seats out of 405 in India's largest state Uttar Pradesh for the state assembly elections. The national opposition party Congress wins only 7 seats in what was once the main source of Congress support during the period of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. This will enable the BJP to push forward with the modernization program for infrastructure and roads, and other development. Opposition in the upper house Rajya Sabha and lack of support from states will not be a major hurdle in development now that BJP has won in states such as Orissa, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, and Uttarkhand in recent state elections after its win in the 2014 national parliamentary election. This also gives credibility to the government's other efforts such as demonetisation to fight corruption in real estate and other areas. India's GDP is a fraction of China's and it is smaller than that of countries such as Indonesia, because of the poor administration and lack of development in India's 2 largest states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in the northern Hindi speaking region. To double the GDP from its current level will require doubling the GDP of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Bihar's state government is run by a former BJP leader, who has also pushed for improving standards of living and economic growth.  ...

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40 people out of 172 in a database surveyed by Dr. Edwards director of WHO drug monitoring center, had Goehring's desease. What does this mean and should it be made public? These are some of the dilemmas facing medicine and drug companies as more and more databases and their resultant statistics become available to researchers. It also poses a new kind of risk for drug companies as they face increased scrutiny.

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Trade unions at Ford Motor Company plant near St Petersburg, Russia. Inflation is running at 11% in Russia and workers at the Ford plant are on strike and asking for a 35% raise. Ford pays workers about $800 a month.The Ford Union is independent of other unions and is a grasssroots effort. A one day walkout led to a pay increase of 14-20% in Feb 2007 and more holidays.

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Christopher Wood points to deflationary trends in Europe and the USA. Bank for International Settlements (BIS) data shows European bank exposure to government debt in Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain at $2.8 trillion at the end of 2009, and a rise in the London interbank offered rate (LIBOR), as further signs of negative trends. The property bubble in China and strong action to tighten and use antispeculation measures have already led to transaction volumes in residential real estate falling rapidly. If Beijing reconsiders further appreciation of the yuan, a trade debate with the U.S. may intensify. All this points to increasing risk of a double dip recession.

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Republicans are hopelessly divided over choice of Speaker with Steve Scalise chosen by secret ballot but a few hardliners 7-8 members intractably opposed to McCarthy, and now Scalise. 

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A detailed account of the developments that unfolded for Bankia bank during and after the initial public offering of its shares, after it was put together from seven failing cajas savings banks with bad real estate loans made during the housing bubble. The procrastination and small steps taken to paper over the problems by the Spanish government and regulators during the last year of the Zapatero administration and into the first year of the Rajoy administration.