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It can be a bit overwhelming, time for a pause, to close the Borders in Europe and in US, to do it together as a Nation. Republican Senator Lankford and senior members of Congress   negotiated the legislation to restrict immigration and close the southern border. It would be signed into law in January 2024 by Biden says Lankford in NYT after 30 years of inaction. The negotiated bill came up 2 months later in March by which time it was stopped by Trump Republicans as an issue for the election. Harris promise is to sign it into law, close the Border. Meanwhile in Springfield Ohio, population of 80,000 in 1960 declined to 59,000 in 2020 dropping 25% over the 60 year period with the decline of the Rust belt towns in the midwestern region of the US. A program that protects people from gang related violence in home country legally allowed 15,000 Haitian immigrants to settle in the city, people who now drive Amazon delivery vehicles and work in nursing occupations and in restaurants, in towns that have severe staff shortages. WIth the influx of refugees from Venezuela at the southern border, this has created anti-immigration sentiment in some parts of America, even as some of the refugees work to fill shortages in traditionally Republican states such as Kansas, as shown in the WSJ, that have decline in population and face severe staff shortages for bus drivers, restaurant workers, and hospital workers. Streams of refugees in earlier eras the Irish, followed by the Germans, followed by Blacks from the South, all followed this path, yet it was also a bit overwhelming, and at these times the nation took a pause. Europe is taking a pause- across Denmark, Sweden, France, the UK- and in the US there is sentiment on all sides for a long pause, to regroup, to reflect and focus on the national goals of binging up the middle class, the lower income classes, and the nation as a whole after the distortions from tech and economic theory induced distortions hurt the working people and families, and hurt rural areas. ...

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How the French health care system works. France comes in first and the USA 37th in aWHO health care ranking. THe difference in deaths from respiratory disease is half that in the USA, and lower rates of death from heart disease and diabetes. IT has more hospital beds and doctors per capita than the USA. 65% of French people are satisfied with their health system compared to 40% in the USA, and yet France spends 10.7% of GDP on health care and the USA spends 16% for poorer results. THe French system is more generous to its seniors. Unlike Medicare there are no deductibles, just modest co-payments that are often dismissed for chronically ill. And diabetes and critical surgeries are covered 100%. French also buy supplemental insurance like Medigap for extra expenses like dental and eyglasses. Cancer patients are treated free of charge. Avastin treatments costing $48,000 a year are provided at no charge. France's PMI or Protection Maternelle et Infantile, is rated highly. It is anetwork of thousands of healthcare facilities, that ensure that every mother and child in the country receives basic preventive care. Mothers even receive afinancial incentive for attending their pre and post natal visits. France makes this care affordable by reibursing doctors at a much lower rate. The average yearly net income for doctors is around $55,000, about athird of what doctors in the USA make. But French doctors don't have to pay back huge student loans as medical school is paid for by the state and malpractice insurance premiums are only a tiny fraction of that in the USA. And again the French government pays two thirds of the social security tax for most French physicians- which is typically 40% of income. So the $55,000, is more like $92,000 taking that into account and more like $110,000 when student loans and malpractice is taken into account at US levels. Specialists who have 4 or more years experience can charge what they want, but as one gastroenterologist says, there in an unspoken and undefined limit to what you can cahrge or what is socially acceptable. Yet even in France there is inflation in health care costs that the government deals with through price controls and more spending. The French national insurance system is running increased deficits each year and this is now $13.5 billion, and it has led to higher taxes for employers and workers. ...

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The civilian labor force participation rate for people over 60 years of age reached 29.4% in the U.S. in 2012, up from a little over 22% in 2002, according to the Labor Department. This reflects the slow growth in retirement savings with low interest rates and the economic shocks from the global financial crisis of 2008 to savings. A Conference Board report shows about two thirds of people between 45 and 60 years age are planning to delay retirement, up from 42% two years earlier.

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Phased retirement is becoming a popular option for many Americans nearing retirement. An example is a employee taking 25% less income for 13 weeks of additional time off to spend more time with a reitred spouse, for vacation, and for trying out new locations for retirement. It gives working Americans an opportunity to gradually adopt a more relaxed lifestyle, to better understand what it would be like in retirement. This option also has the advantage of using good health to add some working years and improve the retirement portfolio, with less demands of work.

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A Feb. 2011 NBC/Wall Street Journal shows only a small number of Americans think cuts to Medicare are necessary to "significantly reduce" the deficit. Only 18% favored cuts, 54% opposed cuts to Medicare to reduce the deficit. Only 22% said cuts to Social Security were needed, 49% said they were not needed. Tea party supporters by a 2 to 1 margin said significant cuts to Medicare were "unacceptable." What measures should be taken to put the entitlement programs on a sound financial basis? On this point over half of the people polled said they favor increasing the retirement age to 69 years by 2075, up from 66 now. A larger number said they support reducing Social Security and Medicare payments to wealthier Americans. Experts say these two measures could eliminate 60% of the underfunding of Social Security. On the issue of collective bargaining rights of public workers, this poll shows 62% of the people polled oppose effforts to weaken collective bargaining. This is similiar to the CBS/New York Times poll results of Feb 24, 2011 on this issue. See the group for this. This poll show a big yellow caution light for Republicans zealously advocating cuts to entitlements. Both polls show lack of public support for reducing the collective bargaining rights of public workers....

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Susan Jaccoby brings up a major issue facing healthcare in America from personal experience. A third of the Medicare budget, she says, goes to the last year of life, and a third of this goes to the care in the last month. At the same time public opinion polls show Americans see the problem being too much medical intervention rather than too little. Especially when there is no hope except to prolong life for the patient with an highly deteriorated qulaity of life for a few months or a year, doing no service to the patient or future generations who may see their basic services cut when they most need it as a result of the unaffordable spiralling cost of Medicare. A Pew Research Center poll in 2006, shows 22 percent say a doctor should not always make efforts to save a sick person's life, and 70 percent believe that patients should be allowed to die in some situations, when it only prolongs life for a few months for instance and patients live in pain. The problem only gets worse in future years as an estimated 8.5 million Americans are expected to be over 85 years in 2030 with these same choices facing patients, their families, Medicare and the country....

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The performance of stocks and bonds compared since 2000, and the view of experts for future performance.

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The labor force participation rate in Canada dropped by only about a half of the drop in the U.S. since the 2008 financial crisis, even though the population in Canada is slightly older there than in the U.S. This suggests that discouraged people who have stopped looking for work is more of a factor in the decline.

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David Blanchett, head of retirement research at Morningstar Investment Management, William Reichenstein, Powers Professor at Baylor University, Guyton at Cornerstone Wealth Advisors in Minneapolis, and Hebeler, former head of Boeing Aerospace (who does dissemination of free sound financial planning at www.analyzenow.com), provide a better understanding of the issues involved in making good retirement planning decisions and the thinking needed to avoid errors.

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How returns in the U.S. stock markets of over 30% in 2013 change the picture of five year returns to the end of 2013 compared to the end of 2012. Long run has to be much more than 5 years and even longer for decent returns.

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Planning for lifestyle issues and how time will be spent together, as well as expenses, when one partner retires before the other.

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The is WSJ report points out that there were differences between the president and his defense secretary Mr. Esper, over the issue whether active duty military should be sent in to control protests in Washington D.C., Minneapolis and other cities in America. On May 25 president Trump considered firing Mr. Esper who said at a Pentagon press conference that he opposed bringing in the military to cities to quell domestic protests. Mr. Esper stated "The option to use active duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort. And only in the most urgent and dire of situations. We are not in one of those situations now."  Military and defense officials were very much opposed to this as fundamentally contrary to military values.  Mr. Trump consulted several advisers who told the president that this was not the right thing to do. Mr. Esper for his part also was making his own preparations to resign and here again his advisers persuaded him to not do this, says this report in WSJ.  The incidents happened as protesters crowded Lafayette Square, the park across from the White House, and the president believed that violent protesters were making it difficult for National Guard troops to maintain control. Mr. Esper is a West Point graduate and former Army officer. The president's advisers from the military included Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark Milley. Milley and Esper discouraged the president from invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807 and calling in army troops to the cities. Mr.Trump later visited the area around the church near Lafayette Park. The advisers consulted by the president on May 25 were Mark Meadows, White House chief of staff, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, David Urban, and two senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and James Inhofe of Oklahoma. Mr. Cotton, a first term senator from Arkansas, later wrote a article in the NYT opinion pages on June 3 supporting use of the military. That article had the title "Send in the Troops- Tom Cotton" which NYT says was placed by editors, and appears baffling, considering the importance that this matter presents for the military and the nation. The NYT later stated with the article that it did not reflect "a thoughtful approach"  and lacked the "additional context" that would let readers be informed and think carefully. The essay also had a reference to the constitutional duty to the states from the federal government that could be misinterpreted, and without context. Mike Pompeo, one of the president's close advisers is Secretary of State. He is a West Point graduate, standing first in his class from the U.S. military academy in 1986, served 5 years in Germany in the 4th Infantry Division, before being elected to Congress from Kansas. The other key adviser in the decision Mr. David Urban headed the Trump campaign effort in a key state Pennsylvania. Both appear to be sensitive to public opinion and the thinking in the military.  By June 6 the White House press secretary said that Mr. Esper was instrumental in bringing calm to American cities after a week of protests following the death of Mr. Floyd in Minneapolis. For both Mr. Trump, Mr. Esper, senior White House officials, and the nation, moments for reflection and a sense of gratitude that calmer minds prevailed. ...

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Sperling shows how Biden's economic plan rescued America and set the stage for America becoming the leader in the G7 economies. Gene Sperling is adviser to president Biden, coordinator of the America Rescue Plan, and had 8 years as adviser in 2000 and 2011 after the financial crisis to previous presidents. Here he says the arguments made that the trillion dollars investment spending Biden and a bipartisan group of senators have supported with legislation in Congress were causing inflation have proved not to be true. Inflation caused by bottlenecks in the supply chain, the pandemic shifts, and the Ukraine war, has come down to 3.4% in Dec 2023. By investing in the US economy, in US manufacturing and US jobs, the US under Biden now has the best economy of the 7 advanced economies with higher growth and unemployment below 4% for 24 straight months, lower inflation apples to apples. Sperling says there were 4 lessons learned during his work with the White House. The first to avoid harm to workers whose lives get scarred by loss of jobs. This happened in 1982 and again in 2008 after the financial crisis. Unemployment took 6 years to recover after 2008. And he says the unemployment rate was 15% for younger workers. For the first time economists like Sperling and Treasury Secretary Yellen have grasped what workers feel and have gone through. Sperling cites the devastation to people's lives - the mental health, the divorce, the loss of earnings and depression. The new policy after 2020 resulted in the fastest drop in longterm unemployment ever with black and hispanic unemployment reaching record lows by 2023. A first ever national eviction prevention policy led to 20% less evictions than prepandemic. Second Sperling says 650,000 jobs were lost by state and local governments in the three years after 2008 financial crisis. State and local budget cuts and mass layoffs seriously hit the economy. This time in after 2020 1.2 million jobs were added with the money in the Rescue Plan and lost jobs recovered in one third the time it took in 2008. Third state and local governments need to deal with the harm coming from the downturn and after 2008 the cupboard was empty. Whereas after 2008 only 154 cities and counties got help to tackle commericial blight, effects on communities, foreclosure and long term joblessness in 2020 Biden was able to send direct funding to all 20,000 local governments and 15,000 school districts. This helped tackle learning loss, crime, and address mental health needs. What a difference it made. Lastly one needed to anticipate something unexpected to happen that flattened projections of recovery. In 2011 3.7% growth projected was flattened when Sperling was senior adviser, and this was flattened by Fukushima nuclear disaster, Arab Spring spike in oil prices, and debt default negotiations. This time there was cushion in the plan so that when covid variants and unexpected Ukraine war happened the rescue could withstand and deliver with resilience. Growth was 3.4% average for the first 3 years of Biden's term and unemployment went down from 8% to 4% for 24 months. Coming from someone who had seen mistakes happen and corrected them, who had served three presidents and the last Biden ,this is a story of how Sperling, Yellen, with the help of Powell at the Federal Reserve, and the bipartisan support put together by a US president in Congress , one who has served the country in the Senate more than any other recent Senator and led the nation with courage, patience and determination. ...

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The 3000 delegates at the annual China party Congress and premier Li Keqiang showed support for President Jinping as the Congress makes changes to the constitution. The constitution was amended to include a reference to Mr. Xi's political theory, that the Communist Party would lead the country as it implements socialism with Chinese characteristics, creating a new anti-corruption commission that has party oversight of all public servants. As Mr. Jinping, 64 years,  begins his second five year term, to ensure continuity and stability the clause in the constitution that limits a president to 2 five year terms was removed. Wang Chen is the Congress vice chairman and he led the anti-corruption campaign in China that firmed up popular support for Jinping in China. Wang Chen explained that the term limit changes were designed to bring presidential tenures more in line with Mr. Xi's other positions as Party chief and military commission chairman, positions with more power and no formal term limits.  The process is part of government restructuring that puts the Communist Party more in charge of decision-making.   There was some instability under the administration before Jinping and growing corruption had undermined confidence in the Party, just as China's economy was slowing, with a bubble in real estate, high debt to GDP and need to pursue a soft landing for the economy. The present effort say some delegates including the president of Haier Appliance, is an effort that stable economic policies can be pursued to ensure China's future as its society ages, and the need to complete modernization in parts of the country that have not seen the gains seen in the coastal regions. And that corruption does not undermine the party's credibility to lead this change. The huge economic problems China faces, bigger now from a public interest perspective of pensions, social security in the Chinese context for an aging society, bringing the rapid development of the coastal regions to the interior of the country, housing, the high debt to GDP ratio, and need to ensure good economic growth to provide a stable economic foundation, may have led to a sense that a stable political foundation was needed to ensure this takes place. Political stability was affected during the previous Hu Jintao administration with the Bo Xilai episode when the party unity was affected as "some  party cadres and leaders were giddy and feverish on the waves of the market economy" as Jinping put it at Central Party School in 2013. Mr. Jinping grew up amid such tensions as his father a senior party leader went out of favor first with Mao and then with Deng after the Tiananmen protests. This instability in the country that affected economic progress is part of the experience of older Chinese leaders and affected their perception of events from memories of this period. Some of the media coverage on this topic can be misleading, as it is important not to forget that China suffered for 2 centuries in the nineteenth and the twentieth century -with British invasion in the nineteenth century and Japanese invasion in the twenty first century followed by the chaos of the Cultural Revolution before finally finding a way out of poverty and backwardness in the final decade of the twentieth century and the first two decades of the twenty first century.  ...

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More revelations such as Pandora papers may not do much because the inertia is institiutionalized and the political system is available for hire, says Prof. Prem Sikka of the University of Sheffield, UK. He says armies of accountants, lawyers and financial experts support this system, the regulatory system in the UK is ineffective, and too many MP's are on the payroll of corporations, says Prof. Sikka in The Guardian. It is the sheer size of the problem that is staggering and could be an indication of how it reduces upward mobility in society, leads to financial crises, and defunds infrastructure, defunds healthcare and housing in US, Europe, Britain and India. The size of illegal money and tax evasion money in the world today is according to this article in The Guardian simply astonishing- $3.6 trillion. 

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Carrie Lam, Chief Secretary for Administration of Hong Kong SAR government from 2012-2017, led the negotiations on Beijing's side with the Hong Kong movement for more autonomy. She did not back down in the negotiations and is favored by Beijing over the former Financial Secretary Mr. Tsang. Tsang spent some years in the U.S. compared to Lam who spent some time in the UK for education. Chinese official are skeptical of Mr Tsang because he said in the past that more legitimacy for Beijing could be gained with further autonomy for Hong Kong.  Tsang is supported by the autonomy movement in the election to be decided by the 1200 member election committee, and Ms. Lam by pro-Beijing members. Tsang also has good relations with the Chinese government and has higher popularity with the public, but his early years in the U.S. are paradoxically making Chinese officials skeptical, even though Ms. Lam's husband and two sons are British citizens.

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Samuelson shows why the Ryan Plan needs serious consideration because it brings in competition from the private sector to control medical costs. The Obama plan does not reduce Medicare costs he says because it merely transfers the costs to mandated Affordable Care Act spending. And the Independent Advisory Board of 15 experts given the job of reducing Medicare spending if it exceeds a certain amount is ineffective- it cannot increase patient cost-sharing, restrict benefits or modify eligibility or cut spending by more than 1.5% in any particular year according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Important points to remember about health care are: 1) sustainable Medicare for current and future generations can only be on the basis of sound finances 2) sound finances mean first and foremost controlling health care costs 3) private sector competition is the better way to control health care costs in todays environment where cost reduction needs to be large enough to make Medicare sustainable especially when competition shifts health care delivery away from the cost increasing fee-for-service system 5) Obama Affordable Health Care Act does little to change the costly fee for service system and the basic mechanism of cost escalation in U.S. health care. The Ryan plan's voucher option injects this dose of competition into the system and only for those who choose this option, it was also drafted with the help of Democrat Ron Wyden, and is cautious because it does'nt start this till 2023- giving time for discussion and improvement, and therefore a constructive effort to look at serious ways to control uncontrolled fee-for-service spending....

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Loan officers in the Institute of International Finance Survey showed a tightening of credit standards and moderation in loan demand for the 2nd quarter of 2011. Commercial real estate sector showed a sharp decline in Latin America and Europe. A third of respondents said local funding conditions had tightened. More than 40% of banks in Europe reported decline in funding conditions.

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The employment to population ratio in August 2011 was 58.2%, down from 62.7% in December 2007, according to the Labor Department. For men the ratio is 63.6%, down from 69.4% in 2007 when the recession began. About one percentage point of this is a result of a surge of retirements during this recession period.

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

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1. PETROBRAS KNOWHOW IN DEEP-WATER DRILLING HONED IN DEEPWATERS 100 MILES FROM RIO. In the 1970's Petrobras discovered oil in the coastal area near Maca. Later geological tests showed large deposits more than 100 miles offshore and more than a mile deep underwater. Senior Petrobras engineers worked with manufacturers to develop pressure resistant instruments and the hardware needed to drill deeper. This technology was developed over the years and Petrobras has now honed its skills in deepwater drilling. Since then Petrobras has become the leader in deepwater drilling.. The fact that Brazilian oil was offshore made Brazil focus on offshore oil exploration and use the Atlantic ocean near Brazil for one big R&D project. Petrobras uses floating platforms, of which many are converted oil tankers. These platforms are more agile in deep and remote waters and better weater waves and storms. Petrobras gets 90% of its oil from the waters over 100 miles north east of Rio de Janeiro from a cluster of 38 such platforms. The floating platforms are like large ships that can be connected to hoses to pumping points on the seabed. 2. PETROBRAS INVESTMENTS IN OVERSEAS OFFSHORE DEEPWATER OIL PRODUCTION. Petrobras has the size and profits to have global reach and make the large investments and bring deepwater expertise to other regions. It is 55.7% state owned. Production was 1.9 million barrels a day in 2006. Sales of $45 billion and profits of $10 billion for 2005. The 2005 profit was a 50% increase from 2004. Countries where Petrobras is working include Angola, Tanzania, Turkey and India. Petrobras has stated that it will increase overall investments by 66% in the next 4 years investing $87 billion, mostly on exploration and production from 2007 to 2011. Of that $12.1 billion will be invested overseas for new platforms off the Gulf of Mexico and new fields off the coast of Nigeria and Angola. Petrobras plans to invest $2 billion in the Gulf of Mexico for deepwater drilling. ...