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Binyamin Applebaum of the NYT Editorial Board says the gap from 1972 to 2021 of 21% of GDP in spending and 17% of GDP in taxes taken in is a serious problem because it creates $31 trillion in debt and over 475 billion in interest payments each year. And much of the spending is wildly popular 63% that goes to Social Security and Medicare, and vital spending on health care and education, social services that takes up 15%. The rest is defense and interest payments. The rest of the G7 spend about 50% more on average he says. This is why he says Republicans holding up raising the debt ceiling is not the issue that needs to be faced each year there are better more direct and sensible solutions that also address the need for the Renewal of America after years of underinvestment in everything from infrastructure to health and education. And capital markets that overcrowded essential government spending to finance massive capital misallocation by tech companies, the costs of which are only now being understood in America. ...

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Daniel Henninger says in the WSJ that the debt ceiling will be raised, and Republicans should not be pitting program against program. He says the narrative though should be framed around the trillions being spent by the Biden administration on climate change action, US manufacturing and technology in chips, with interest on debt at over $400 billion a year. Yet this does not take into account that for two decades there has been an overcrowding of US government initiated capital investment for essential needs by massive Tech industry misallocation of funds even as productivity of this capital invested by tech was dropping, with much wasted capital. Today because these essential needs in infrastructure and for manufacturing and technology were starved for so long of capital the productivity of capital in these areas is high and will have ripple effects to help rebuild America.

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This WSJ story shows how China started its steel industry from small beginnings when Chinese leader Deng visited a Nippon Steel plant in 1978. He made the decision to go big with Baosteel, with an investment of $6 billion, with the words- "if we do it lets do it big." This was 36 times the Chinese foreign exchange reserves at the time. From 4% of steel production, this went up and up, passing the U.S. in 1993, past Japan in 1996, and in 2018 producing three times the steel of U.S., Russia and China combined, producing 923 million metric tons of steel in 2018, or more than half of world production of steel. With steel China was able to build its automobile industry, shipbuilding, bridges, infrastructure, high speed rail network. This was done using global demand, subsidies from the government, cheap loans and tax breaks. Markets worldwide were affected by substantial excess production in China. From Baosteel the spread of the steel industry to all 23 Chinese provinces led to China accounting for 25% of world exports. By 2016 5 million workers mostly from the agrarian countryside were employed in the steel industry, helping China transform itself into an rapidly urbanizing and modern economy. It was a period when the rail network was tripled between 1975-2017, with shipping companies that ensured access to Australian coal and Brazilian iron ore. From 2011 to 2017 Chinese steel dropped global prices by 57% triggering closure of steel mills in EUrope and the U.S. About a third of trade complaints since 2001 by G20 countries against China are about steel. After entry into the WOrld Trade Organization Chinese steel exports rose to 8% of GDP from 2%. Subsidies, cheap energy, and shift of agrarian workers to cities. U.S. investigations around 2006 showed Chinese steelmakers subsidies covered 30% to 45% of the subsidized value of steel pipes exported overseas. China's steel prices were set 20-40% lower than the U.S. China responded to complaints saying it was trade protectionism. The WTO rules call for full disclosing of all subsidies. This was disclosed 5 years after joining WTO in 2001, and only for central subsidies. Local government subsidies were not disclosed till 2016- the U.S. says 15 years late. Still the Bush and Obama administrations failed to take action. In 2018 Mr. Trump seized on this as a campaign issue that resonated with American workers in manufacturing communities across the U.S. In 2018 November president Trump announced a 25% tariff on imports of Chinese steel. A six month probe by U.S. officials had already shown 40% of sales value came from subsidies for corrosion resistant steel from China. The U.S. Trade Commission imposed tariffs of its own from 39% to 241%, with the Trump tariffs of 25% coming as an additional tariff to tackle the trade surplus with China. Meanwhile in China the government is closing uncompetitive smaller steel mills and in 2016 it combined baosteel with Wuhan Steel to create a larger company, and consolidate remaining companies. Baosteel now provides the steel for CIMC to dominate the steel container business, and to make ship to shore cranes, and make the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.  It also goes to show what can be accomplished from small beginnings for countries in the developing world from Asia to Africa and Latin America, with government and industry focussed on development and growth.   ...

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Microsoft's Satya Nadella got his start at age 24 at Bing search engine. He is now 56 years. During this period he worked with both Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer who succeeded Gates at Microsoft. He is now remaking the Bing Search engine by using AI. This has happened since 2018 when he met Altman at the Sun Valley Tech conference in Idaho. He invested $1 billion in Altman's OpenAI, and has recently brought in Suleyman of Inflection who is a competitor of  Altman's OpenAI into Microsoft with the idea of setting up an internal AI business as well. To do this he has invested $10 billion in advanced AI chips that he has bought from chipmakers which have reduced the capital available for Microsoft's other businesses. This WSJ report by Dotan and Jin says Altman started his venture because he did not want to let AI to be led by Google silently developing its own version and doing leapfrog over competitors. A At this point in 2024 Google, Facebook and Amazon are building their own AI talent and making large investments in the chips that support AI. It is rapidly becoming an oligopoly of a few tech companies that makes deals among themselves for strategic advantage and protect themselves from public or government regulatory scrutiny. The controversy surrounding the firing and rehiring of Altman at OpenAI has brought new scrutiny from the FTC. The monopolistic behaviour of tech companies and their splitting the tech market among themselves as Google and Apple have done show the need for government action to prevent a repeat of this in AI. And to take action to break up existing monopolies in Search engines and in the Internet as Theodore Roosevelt did at the turn of the century for the oil business, breaking up Rockefeller's Standard Oil and Esso. Only when that happens can the true potential of the Internet be realized for Education, Health and other fields. Who can say that the iPad or iPhone or Google's Search engine has increased global literacy or American literacy? By freeing up these technologies- that belong to the people of America and the world- for education, health and other fields of human development mankind can advance once again. By regulating provide the ground rules for good use instead of the current danger of the Internet acting in ways to reduce public knowledge to levels that cannot sustain democratic process, and create stratified society where each group only sees what it has seen before and does not explore the world or knowledge in all its variety, all its ability to surprise us with new discoveries. ...

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What has to give in government oversight and reshaping the debt and costs at General Motors? The auto workers and retirees inspite of all the givebacks still pay only 5% of theirhealthcare costs vs an average of 30% for the rest of Americans with healthcare coverage. With a sharing that reflects the national average GM wouldn't have to shoulder the size of the health care obligations for union workers and retirees of the sum of $47 billion. And the debt holders of GM debt, the bondholders would take a cut of something approaching Senator Corker's proposal to trade debt for equity at a 70% discount. That would reduce the GM debt from $63 billion to less than half that.

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Boeing $50 billion new fighter jet program with profit guaranteed in the development stage. Boeing beat Lockheed to get the defense contract from the US government. In earlier defense contracts cost overruns led to Boeing losing money. Defense makes up a third of Boeing revenues. Boeing has reported six straight annual losses after problems with 737, a strike over wages, and safety problems on its planes, problems on the assembly line in quality control. The private equity type of management from finance executives has not worked well for Boeing as these executives lacked knowledge of what is happening on the manufacturing assembly lines. Boeing, a American icon for most of the twentieth century needs to get back to the basics of making good planes.

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Epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch of the Harvard School of Public Health says in Jan 2018 issue of Harvard Chan Institute of Public Health journal that an "accidental pandemic" could result from the lifting of the ban on a risky kind of research favored by some virologist professionals.  In "Three Questions, Three Answers" Lipsitch tells why. Most members of the broader scientific and medical community had serious questions and were fiercely against such research which had questionable value and great risk. At the beginning the interviewer Karen Feldscher writes:  "January 8, 2018- Last month the US government lifted a three year moratorium on funding risky research to genetically alter deadly viruses in ways that could make them even more lethal. Epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch of Harvard Chan School thinks the move could create an accidental pandemic." Lipsitch says rejecting the virologists who supported this dangerous research: "Others, like myself, worry that the human error could lead to the accidental release of a virus that has been enhanced in the lab so that it is more deadly and contagious than it already is." He cites an accident in 2014 at US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Lab where workers were exposed to anthrax that was improperly handled. "Another accident like that- if it involved a virus that was both newly created and highly contagious- has the potential to jeopardize millions of people."  Lipsitch points out that this kind of research has given us modest scientific knowledge, was not essential to tackling the virus epidemics, was only one type of many types of research, and a type of research whose aims could be achieved in other ways that were not deadly to humans. Lipsitch pointed this out in The Journal of Medical Ethics stating the ethical considerations at stake. The lifting of the ban led to research at labs that is seen as a possible scenario of what happened to cause an accidental pandemic. The people of the world, and not just in America but the people of the whole world, and the poorest countries with little resources- Asia, Africa, Latin America bearing the consequences of this decision that violated medical ethical considerations of setting up a potential accidental pandemic.   ...

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Current responses to China's different posture in international relations obscure the huge investments made by US and European Union business in China that lead to about $1 trillion in exports from China to US and EU in 2021. This could not happen without the hyper investment in China by business in the US and EU that not only neglected manufacturing technologies in the home country but did this on a immense scale that would end up shipping almost the whole of the manufacturing supply chains to China from the US and EU. Done as a carefully planned shift of some manufacturing operations it could have benefitted both China and the US and EU. In what way was this hyper move in pace and scale damaging? China's water, air and land was contaminated at a rapid pace never before seen in history, seen as early as 2005. And the hyper shift by 2015 and in 2020 is now showing the severe effects of climate change with droughts, floods and fires all over the world. The German Environment Ministry today counts the cost at 90 times in the use of coal and fossil fuels over time. On the scale that this massive and fast shift was done of manufacturing to China even more so- a hugely imprudent response of US and EU business management and executives. Instead of tackling and confronting head on the challenging problems of quality control and cost in the 1990's through 2000 and beyond at home, management at Apple and other companies simply shifted all manufacturing to China. The other ill effect of the imprudent response of American business was in the massive and wholesale shift of supply chain to China by offshoring practically the entire manufacturing base. It was to lead to the massive losses that workers, families  and communities in the US and EU that countries could not cope with as it moved on an accelerated hyper level and pace. The result was to lead to intense criticism of China and a level of rancor that has poisoned the relations with China. Some of this counsel to China was given to leaders of the Communist party who had little knowledge of American capitalism operating within constraints of social democracy in 1990. Some of that counsel was self interested given by investment banks to Chinese officials- investment bankers that have now disappeared from view- who themselves lacked an understanding of the social constraints of American and European democracies. It is that rancor that is now leading to China and the US disconnecting the supply chains leading to questions one is certain within China about how this will affect unemployment in China in the years to come. The pandemic simply accelerated this realization on both sides of this untenable situation. Still a trillion dollars in exports are taking place even as the political situation is now totally adrift -as the situation in Taiwan in August 2022 shows- the political and trading relationships at opposite ends and seemingly at war with each other. ...

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The sense of conflict in China and US relations may not have developed in the shaping of Xi Jinping's thinking till the emergence of Mr. Trump. Jinping comes into the China shaped by Deng and Zemin after the collapse of the purely Communist experiment with modernization without access to western technologies and capital, and the experiment with American help. It is only after the realization that the Communist party had lost its sense of purpose in these years leading to the Bo Xilai episode, and the rhetoric of Mr. Trump against China, that the idea of first friction and then conflict emerged. The initial idea for Jinping before Trump was that this has worked for China- the experiment with the cooperation of the US in modernizing China. Trump's rhetoric and the Republican party's rhetoric about China stealing American jobs and technology after 2015 may have been targeted to win the election but it had an unintended effect after the tariffs of shaping Jinping's thinking about the future for China. Between the Bo Xi Lai episode in 2012 when it appeared he would be attempting to manipulate the Communist party's direction in unknown and unpredictable ways, Bo's trial in 2013 and the anticorruption campaign and the 2015 election campaign of Mr. Trump in the US, there must have been much soul searching in the party that shaped Jinping's thinking about the future for China after all the tumult of the 20th century starting with the Boxer rebellion in 1901. Stability is highly prized in China particularly for modernization. This perspective is important to grasp for world peace to be preserved with different coexisting perspectives about the world based on national as well as shared interests in issues such as climate change. US after its own disastrous experiment with capitalism that led to widening inequality of the kind not seen since Lincoln in the 1850's, the 2009 crisis, and the shift of jobs to China under a purely capitalist idea of how economies should function, had its own national interests in jobs, local manufacturing and Made in the USA. Once this process was underway after 2016 and grasped by president Biden after 2020, and supply chain reconstruction made the goal after covid, the US and China were on divergent economic and political paths.   That rethinking by Xi Jinping is not over as it may still be going on. The war in Ukraine may even convince Jinping and China's No. 2 leader Li Keqiang who studied the US constitution and American urbanization under mentors when he was in college, that Russia's prolongation of the war in Ukraine does not serve the interests of China. That risking relations with the European Union as Russia prolongs the war and finds itself in the complex problems of  a war it started, is not in China's interests in setting its own course for the future. ...

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"It may be that this iron curtain is small, unimportant and justified, but it is a bad sign." Howard Buffett took a stand in the House of Representatives against the VOA broadcasts being used inside the US in 1947.  Warren Buffett is the son of Congressman Howard Buffett of Omaha, Nebraska, who was on the Board of Education of Omaha, started a small stock brokerage firm, and ran for US Congress in 1942, reelected twice and in 1950. He also ran Howard Taft's Republican presidential campaign in 1952. Looking at Buffett in the FDR-Truman years- one sees a young Buffett in contrast to Warren Buffet's silence on the 2008 financial crisis, raising serious issues- about the Truman doctrine in 1947 on the floor of Congress, was Acheson falling dominoes analogy a dangerous one?  It worked in Turkey-Greece with $400 million in aid in 1947 but was Acheson/Truman using a dangerous analogy of dominoes that would later hurt the US in French colonial Indochina wars, and in the reference to protecting oil resources in Middle east in Iran, Iraq and Saudi to lead to wars that exist to this day in 2024? Wars DJT and Biden have both opposed in contrast to Reagan, Bush, and Obama. There is a huge contrast between the father Howard Buffett, descendent of Huguenot ancestors from 1600 New York, and the finance professional Warren Buffett who went to Columbia University in 1951-52 as student of Prof. Graham with 70 years in finance during which financial crises destabilized the US with Buffett not taking a stand. One hedge fund manager say it is pure nepotism to pass on the company Berkshire to Warren's son Howie. But he is not surprised- who else would be sure to keep the company headquarters in Omaha, keep things simple invested in index funds and much of it in a few companies leaving the investing to managers chosen by Warren, with Howie's job to make sure his father's principles remain. Howie is Warren Buffett's 70 year old son, who Buffett 90 years is setting up as his successor as chairman who will not do investing leaving it to managers, yet be able to change CEO's. Howie worked for a few years at See Candy, a Berkshire owned company before becoming corporate VP at ADM food producer, followed by working on his own farm in Decatur, Illinois which he enjoyed doing. At ADM Howie left after an anti trust investigation began, in which the company was charged with $100 antitrust fines for price fixing says the WSJ. What is Berkshire Hathaway? It is a trillion dollars of investment funds invested in a few companies under name Berkshire Hathaway, using some of the basic ideas of Benjamin Graham, a pioneer in careful investing, adopted by Warren. Where has Buffett put his money? Berkshire top ten investments are- about $90 billion in Apple, $70 billion split between Bank of America and American Express, $30 billion in Coca Cola, and $30 billion split between 2 oil companies Chevron and Occidental. He has not invested in pharmaceuticals or in renewable energy- in just a piece of America.This has generated a compound interest of about 14% over 3-5 years and about 12% over 10 years. He holds 30% of his investments in cash or fixed, mostly cash at this time. And holds the remaining 70% in stocks. ...

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In the earlier history of Japan when Japan was still a poor agricultural country, these Japanese left for Brazil to work in the coffee plantations there. Because Japan's aging population meant foreign workers were helpful to ease shortages, especially for the hard and difficult jobs left for for foreigh workers, special work visas were issued to the descendents of these emigrants. Now an estimated 366,000 Brazilians and Peruvians live in Japan. Jiro Kawasaki, an LDP leader and lawmaker, has set up an emergency program of cash payments -$3000 for airfares and $2000 per recipient- to send these South Americans of Japanese descent home, on the condition that they sign papers never to return. Many of these people are agonizing over the decision especially the one that makes return impossible. The idea is to relieve pressure on labor markets as exports have dropped by 46% and unemployment is rising. However Japan has faced labor shortages in thepast, and these people have aJapanese heritage, which makes this policy in immigration averse Japan controversial. In Britain there have been protests as companies hired foreign workers when British workers were unemployed. It appears that this trend is happening even in immigration friendly countries....

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This article in the NYT explains why the loss of jobs particularly in the auto industry to Mexico, with the experience of NAFTA passed by president Bill Clinton, has caused widespread opposition to the TPP trade agreement proposed by president Obama. Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in 2016 oppose the TPP.

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Labor Department reports U.S. created 209,000 jobs in July 2014. The unemployment rate goes up slightly to 6.2%. Wages went up only by a penny and remain only 2% higher than a year ago. Retail was up by 27,000 jobs, manufacturing by 28,000 in July. Economists say the steep drop in the unemployment rate to 6.2% does not reflect the true conditions in the labor market, as the labor force participation rate is at 62.9%. One economist called this disturbing as some of the youngest workers are dropping out of the labor force. The Alliance for American Manufacuring pointed out that the U.S. manufacturing sector has recovered only about 30% of jobs lost during the recession following the 2009 financial crisis. It said the the lack of investment in infrastructure, high trade deficits and currency manipulation by China and Japan, remain obstacles for American manufacturing's resurgence.

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Benjamin Lawsky, a former federal prosecutor, is the new head of the New York State Department of Financial Regulation. He worked as an advisor to then Attorney General Cuomo in the New York Attorney General's office. He played a key role in the ongoing lawsuit against Bank of America Corp CEO Kenneth Lewis, and helped obtain $60 billion in repayments to investors for their cash frozen in auction-rate securities.

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Instead of killing the NAFTA trade agreement Trump and his advisors prefer renegotiating the treaty. Priorities for the Trump administration are reducing the U.S. deficit with Mexico of $61 billion. Trade with Mexico and Canada is worth $1.1 trillion and the complex supply chains works such that product components cross borders more than once to become finished products. Mexico promotes its auto and other industries as duty free access to the U.S. for foreign investment. Special tariffs would reduce the trade deficit with Mexico and firms that moved production to Mexico would pay additional taxes. A provision that allows Mexican and Canadian companies to challenge U.S. regulations would also be removed. Rep. Brad Sherman (Democrat) says he supports the renegotiation so that duties of 4% are imposed to reduce the deficit to $25 billion.

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At a time of great inequality and lack of fairness in wages after the pandemic in 2023-2024 when the United Auto Workers were struggling to negotiate a living wage the $55.8 billion pay package for Musk will stand out for its sheer recklessness. Tesla lacks a collective agreement with its workers in Europe and the US and its efforts to keep wages low were seen as an impediment for the UAW to negotiate its agreement to correct some of the flaws that hurt workers in earlier agreements. These agreements were made when the auto industry was recovering in the previous decade and tiered wages made as a concession meant new workers could earn less than the poverty level. Rarely in American history have such extremes of pay existed and diminish the idea of America as a nation of opportunity for all, as a beacon to the world.

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A leading consulting company reaches a legal settlement with 47 American states to pay $573 million for its role in the catastrophic opioid crisis. The opioid crisis led to the deaths of almost half a million Americans between 1999 and 2018, from overdoses of prescription pain killers and illegal opioids, according to the US CDC.

McKinsey worked with Purdue Pharma to boost sales of opioid painkiller Oxycontin, says this report in DW.com. 

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Otis Elevator is moving a plant based in Nogales, Mexico, back to the U.S. This plant was moved to Mexico in 1998 for cost reasons. Now Otis CEO, Didier Michaud-Daniel, says producing at a new South Carolina plant will cost less than Mexico. Logistics and freight costs are 17.3% less in the U.S. than Mexico, and an additional 20% in savings come from "efficiencies" gained by having all its white collar workers associated with elevator design and production. Most companies that manufacture in China and Mexico keep their design and engineering jobs in the the U.S. It is not clear to what extent American companies have considered all the costs of separating design and engineering from manufacturing, including the opportunities for close cooperation possible in one location that are lost when everything is so spread out. At Otis toolmakers in Dallas and engineers and designers located in Indiana and Arizona traveled to the Nogales, Mexico plant. This can be especially important when as in Otis's case the new plant in Florence, South Carolina, plans the launch of a new generation of elevator designs. In this case there is an added benefit by making it easier for customers to visit the plant and look at the product. The new plant will have more automation and use fewer workers on the factory floor. The new factory will employ 360 workers including white collar workers, the same as the Nogales, Mexico, plant with a lower number of factory floor workers. ...

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A report released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) shows growing income inequality in 34 OECD countries. OECD Secretary General, Angel Gurria says: "The social contract is starting to unravel in many countries. This study dispels the assumptions that the benefits of economic growth will automatically trickle down to the disadvantaged and that the greater inequality fosters greater social mobility. Without a comprehensive strategy for inclusive growth, income inequality will continue to rise." Countries with the largest ratios between incomes at the top and the bottom, are the United States, Turkey and Israel, roughly 14 to 1. Germany, Denmark and Sweden have ratios of 6 to 1, with their ratios up from the 1980's. Gaps in Chile and Mexico are at 25 to 1. The study covers the period from 1980 to 2008. Overall inequality went up by 25% in the U.S. from 1980. In 2008 the top ten percent in the U.S. earned $114,000, 15 times than incomes for the bottom 10%. The top 1% of Americans saw incomes go up from 1980 to 2008, increasing from 8 percent to 18 percent. The richest 1% having $1.3 million in after tax income, and the lowest 20% making $17,700. The trends have accentuated an increase at the highest end- the top 1% and top 10% of the people- and a sharp decrease for the bottom 20%, which can be grasped from the $17,700 and the $1.3 million, both at extreme ends. The study attributes the rise in inequality to a growing gap in wages for highly skilled workers as technology advances, a surge in foreign direct investment and a looser regulatory regime that reduces employee protections leading to wage premiums for financial jobs and smaller incomes for workers at the bottom. Income groups and professions and sectors that had the greatest influence in government were able during this period to get the greatest protection for incomes, and able also to maximize their incomes. Incomes in the financial sector increased dramatically in the last decade, as a result of deregulation leading to higher risk and speculative activities in the financial sector, leading to the financial crisis of 2008-2009. Financial crises further depress incomes at the lower end. Similiar income inequality trends can be seen for India and China. China has a Ginni coefficient of 0.5 according to researchers at Beijing Normal University, up from 0.3 three decades ago- a Ginni Coefficient above 0.4 is considered destabilizing. Another factor that played a part in these countries is corruption and lobbying by special interests for favored treatment of sectors or groups. Austerity measures taken in Europe and in the U.S. are likely to widen income gaps by depressing the lower end income groups, creating social unrest, especially in the absence of efforts to stimulate growth....

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The WSJ responds to president Biden ramping up renewable energy plans and linking Republicans with Senator Rick Scott's plan for sunset provisions on federal legislation every 5 years that Biden says would include Medicare and Social Security. WSJ is critical of Biden's renewable energy plans and calls for increasing production of oil and gas to meet energy shortages and price increases. It is also against a wealth tax, Biden's $2 trillion Workers and Families Plan, and Biden's plan for Medicare to negotiate drug prices. WSJ says real disposable personal income increased $4205 under the Trump presidency 2017-2020, and has since declined by $374 with high inflation depressing purchasing power. The impact of climate change requiring brave choices and strong action is missing in the Republican plan as Republicans focus on attacking Democrats controlling the presidency and Congress on the issue of inflation. The issue of remaking supply chains are on both the Republican and Democratic agendas with president Trump giving more rhetoric against China's role in dominance of supply chains and Mr. Biden taking stronger action in Theodore Roosevelt's style of carrying a big stick and quiet posture in restoring America as a manufacturing powerhouse. The impact of climate change is short term rather than long term as seen by the heat wave in South Asia today, the fires in North America and Europe. Republicans are losing sight of the importance of making the shift on renewable energy quickly with some short term pain, as they push for oil and gas solutions and a less effective program for renewable energy. Mr. Biden is taking on bigger risks in the short term in the midterms and beyond but following a sound policy of aggressively pushing renewable energy. This can also be seen in the importance renewable energy is being given even in countries with a need for coal and natural gas such as India. Modi's plans in India are to buildup renewable energy capacity with aggressive targets for 2030. ...

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Bank of America's profitable mortgage business in 4th quarter 2012 with over $1 billion in revenue. Bank of America worked with its own customers to tighten oversight and turned down mortgage purchases from other banks. Lending to borrowers under the government HARP program was more profitable. As refinancings under the HARP program shrink from the 800,000 reached in the first ten months of 2012, the revenues and margins are likely to decline, say analysts.

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Aizenman in this must-read describes the National Soda Summit and the presentation of one man Todd Putnam, a former executive from Coca-Cola that throws light on one of the truly important things that happened in the lives of Americans in the postwar period of development and growing prosperity. This is the development of marketing and advertising and its singular application in the case of Coca Cola to promoting sugary drinks. It is also related to what even business people describe as the single biggest problem in America. And it is happening at a time when the story is being repeated in developing countries such as China and India. Putnam describes the exhilaration, he and other Coca-Cola managers felt when the graphs at internal presentations showed Coke passing milk in consumption per capita in America. Several other facts stand out in Putnam's description of his experience- the ignorance on health issues among his marketing peers, the huge marketing prowess and dollars brought to bear once a goal such as increasing per capita consumption of sugary drinks was set- he was hired out of Purdue by P&G and worked at Disney before joining Coca-Cola- and the focus on the 12-24 demographic with 90% of all soft drink marketing targeted at this segment. What he regrets most is the focus on minorities who suffer some of the highest levels of obesity in America. No mention is made of the efforts underway in developing coutnries such as China and India which are seeing a surge in obesity rates and diseases such as diabetes. Coca-Cola says 41% of its sugary drinks are low calorie, but compared to milk, fruit juice and other healthier alternatives where does this rank? The cost to the nation's health care system alone would show that the performance of Coca-Cola's stock price over the postwar period came with a price tag that was never even thought about, when healthier alternatives as health drinks companies have found sell well when well marketed and formulated for different groups....

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Biden's last 100 days in office. His effort to make things better, a conviction that he would have won enough white working class voters to win the election. Turnout was way way higher when Biden ran in 2020. It dropped by about 10 million voters in 2024 compared to 2020. Many white working class voters of the 82 million who voted for Biden in 2020 simply simply did not turn up to vote while DJT clung on to the 75 million votes he had in 2016. Transgender, a sense that everything was changing too quickly culturally, the fentanyl crisis adding to migrant surge creating a backlash for Harris. Biden makes an effort to lock in the gains made in the last 4 years in a number of areas. A remarkable life and one that brings back the Democrats closer to their roots under FDR in 1932 and his uncle Teddy Roosevelt a Republican fighting for the working class since 1902, that FDR inherited. The nation under DJT simply inherits the role played by TR as Republican in 1902 fighting for the working class after two southerners Carter and Clinton let Democrat ties to working class wither and support for China entering WTO and taking over manufacturing leadership. Obama letting Silicon Valley distance Democrats from workers even further and dragging on wars that served no purpose for America. ...

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The recent appointment of fast food executive Andrew Puzder as Labor Secretary has caused great concern among union leaders. Puzder supports a $9 minimum wage compared to $15 supported by Democrats. Unions now represent 7% of the labor force, down from a high of 20% during Reagan's time when Reagan appointed a construction company executive as Labor Secretary and cut regulations.  Globalization has thinned the ranks of workers in unions. And the failure of Democratic administrations to stem the shift of factories overseas to China, Mexico and other places, as part of global supply chains focussed on cost, has weakened Democratic support among workers since the period of Bill Clinton. It eroded to the point where Obama won 65% of support among unions and Hillary Clinton won 56% in 2016. Interestingly the Republican Romney gained 33% versus 37% for Trump, showing voters were more inclined to move away from Democrats and only a smaller number willing to support Republicans, but the shift enough to give Republicans a win in 2016 for the presidency. The figures are from a Election Day survey of trade union AFL-CIO, and a larger proportion in midwestern states showed disaffection with policies from Clinton to Obama. In fact Obama spent years promoting another free trade agreement TPP that favored tech more than auto and older industries, just as Bill Clinton had promoted NAFTA, without giving thought to what this was doing to its worker base of support. A similar situation happened with Social Democrats in Germany as a SPD administration moved to the centre and handed Christian Democrats led by Merkel a win in parliamentary elections. As Democrats such as former Labor Secretary Reich, a professor at UC Berkeley who served under Bill Clinton, describe the problems of working class people their is less reflection on the impact of the changes from globalization and how Democrats handled or mishandled it, and more on the politics between the two parties.   ...