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91 year old Chuck Grassley is head of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He has a passion for vigorous Congressional Oversight that has not diminished with age. He says in an interview that he does alot of oversight and all of us should know from our 8th grade civics that Congress has a responsibility for checks and balances to make certain that the executive branch enforces laws consistent with the oath they take. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a veteran of the US Senate, who like Biden has served for a long, long time under many presidents since he entered the US Senate in 1980 and now holds the office of Senate President pro tempore, says- "We not only pass laws, but you learn in eighth grade civics that we’ve got a responsibility of checks and balances to make sure that the executive branch of government actually enforces the laws according to the oath that they take. So that’s my job and I do a lot of oversight. " He expects Democrats to rebound quickly so that we will have a very different situation in 2026.  ...

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Spain's banks have government debt holdings as a percentage of bank assets of 6.8% compared to 13.1% for Italy's banks. This is based on data available from the IMF. But Italian banks are far better capitalized than Spanish banks. Bank shares of Italy and Spain hit post Lehman lows in July 2011, but Italian bank shares are likely to recover faster than Spanish bank shares. Italian banks raised 8 billion euros of capital in 2011 and most banks have an average core Tier 1 ratio of over 8%. By contrast Spain's bank sector is perceived by markets as undercapitalized and the IPO's of savings banks Bankia and Banca Civica will be affected by the unsettled markets.

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Fed's Bernanke sees cuts and higher taxes by state and local governments combining with higher oil prices slowing the U.S. economy. He told the Citizen's Budget commisson in New York, that in the long run the most important issue in fiscal matters will be whether the composition of the federal budget serves the public interest. And in saying this he emphasized the benefits of early childhood education, preschool programs and lifelong acquisition of skills. He advised states to take anticyclical steps to avoid the impact of boom and bust spending. One way to do this is to build rainy day funds that are then used for capital investment when times are bad.

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Lim Chow Kiat, chief investment officer of GIC Pte. Ltd, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund, says he sees returns on financial assets in developed markets being much lower in future years, including possible negative returns, because of a sharp runup in recent years and changing monetary policy. He sees more opportunities in emerging markets because of younger populations and opportunities from overhauls to economic structures and behaviour. He says he will still look for opportunties in developed country companies that have significant international expansion. GIC invested $1 billion in Indian online retailer Flipkart recently, $680 million in Bank of the Philippine Island, and $1.3 billion in the Time Warner Center building in New York along with Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

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The new government of prime minister Enrico Letta in Italy suspended the summer instalment of the tax on primary residences which was unpopular in Italy. The new government plans to overhaul the tax code this summer to change the way it impacts real estate. This was one of the tax measures taken by the Monti administration. 1 billion euros will go to a wage supplement program, so that companies can retain employees during the economic downturn. Another program to provide business incentives for hiring is being considered. The new government committed itself to bring down the deficit in Italy to under 3% in 2013, which would help keep Italian borrowing costs down.

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Gen. Keane and Pletka say action by the U.S. is needed in 2013 to render ineffective the airdefense system and runways used by warplanes of the Assad regime. They emphasize that the U.S. has the technology and capacity to do this even with the Russian systems added in Syria. The lack of a U.S. response in the face of the Assad regime's attacks on civilian populations and use of chemical weapons, the support to the U.S. from the Arab world and Turkey, and the huge refugee problems in Jordan and Turkey, say Keane and Pletka, will lead to creating a worse situation than the relatively small risks of destroying the runways for Assad's warplanes and the airdefense system.

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About 700,00 depositors in Spain's banks, including Bankia and regional banks, converted their deposits, including life savings, into high yielding preferred shares in the last decade. The banks raised about 22 billion euros to help recapitalize. The sharp decline in value of the shares made it impossible for depositors to resell them. After the eurozone crisis with EU aid to Spain to recapitalize banks, the EU stated the depositors would have to take some losses. Now the two main parties, the Socialists and the Partido Popular are passing legislation to compensate the depositors after angry protests throughout Spain. Banks will use part of the 37 billion euros of loans from the EU to settle the arbitration cases.

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Peter Eavis says the too big to fail problem remains unsolved, and with the recent consolidation the "big four" accounting for 70% of all assets held by domestically cahrtered banks. There is no effort by the Obama administration to prevent banks from getting too big. And the Fed has accumulated greater powers as a regulator. It is still the same Fed, Eavis reminds one that failed as abank regulator by letting Citigroup's common equity ratios drop to perilous lows. And its overstimulative monetary policies having built up more risk than the system could handle. There will be more regulatory capital at these big banks as a result of actions by Treasury, but risk remains.

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Nocera says that the Obama regulatory reform did not address the issue of banks or financial firms that are too big to fail. Issues that were raised by Former Fed chairman Volcker. It also does not address the issue of customized deritvatives, the derivatives that caused so much damage during the financial crisis, especially at AIG. For these derivatives the Treasury Department will establish a clearinghouse, so that their price and trading activity can be more readily seen. The reform places enormous trust on whoever is running the Fed. This trust has not supported by the actions of Mr Greenspan in letting the bubble develop, and in favoring little or no regulation.

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Comments from readers of WSJ about the interview with Rubin at Citigroup (Ken Brown, David Enrich, NYT, Nov. 29, 2008), and his defense of $115 million in compensation since 1999 on its pages. Readers expressed strong sentiment after the housing foreclosures, bank bailouts, and the shock to the nation's financial system. One reader says history will find Rubin, Greenspan and Barney Frank in the financial scrap heap, another says he is incredulous at the way Rubin condescendingly points to his opportunities to do better elewhere, another says Rubin uses a lot of B school mumbo jumbo like risk book and inflection points and laments the failure of Wall Street executives to take responsibility for errors of judgement.

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BP management says BP will invest $4 billion each year for oil exploration in the Gulf for the next decade. Investments will be made in safety for deep water drilling.

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A whole range of issues can be seen in the debt crises in developing countries. The margin for error shrinks with poor governance, lack of honest assessment and transparency for finances, wars and conflicts within or outside the countries, living beyond their means, lack of focus on development, infrastructure that is unproductive or unaffordable including some Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure at higher interest rates. Countries that are dependent on overseas remittances, tourism, that were hit hard by the pandemic have seen their finances further weakened reducing the margin for error even more to the point that the smallest tipping point can lead to huge crises. Once the finances are weak all it takes is an external tipping point that creates serious crisis. The war in Ukraine with shortages of wheat, fertilizer and skyrocketing oil prices acted as that tipping point. Because this was a major blow the crises have a level of magnitude that is more than a payments crisis. One sees this in South Asia in Sri Lanka and Pakistan, and in the Middle East for countries such as Egypt and Tunisia shown in this WSJ report. It is now not simply a crisis but a crisis of great magnitude because in the case of Sri Lanka and Pakistan this WSJ report says that both countries foreign exchange reserves have dwindled to the point where they can pay for only one or two months of imports according to central bank data, analysts and IMF. This crisis has affected countries that were seeing steady foreign investment such as Turkey for decades, then a sharp falloff in foreign investment with a change in the climate for foreign investment. The crisis has taken the form of high inflation, significant depreciation of currency that makes imports costlier so that shrinking revenues from loss of remittances, tourism, or other sources will now have less value in supporting import needs. Lack of a credible path can delay setting a path out of the crisis. The $1.5 billion fuel and electricity subsidy made by the prime minister of Pakistan in late February was done without IMF approval leading to the IMF program having to be renegotiated. Lack of national political and cultural consensus on a solution simply makes it that much more difficult to find the way through it. In this regard South Korea was able to tackle the 1997 financial payments crisis effectively because of a national consensus. The situation in Egypt- Egypt has borrowed $20 billion from the IMF since 2016., placing it second to Argentina in aid from IMF since 1980's.  In 2020 and 2021 Egypt' government spent more than 40% of its revenue servicing its debt, and is forecast to do the same in 2022. The situation in Tunisia- A shortage of sugar, flour, and other critical supplies, and government delaying wage payments to civil servants. The government got $400 million in financing last month from the World Bank and hopes to secure a lifeline from the IMF. Compared to the period between the 2 World Wars the two bright spots are China and India where lessons of the past of civil wars, religious or political conflict, and poor governance, lack of knowledge of how the western countries industrialized and modernized, was replaced with the conviction that drives patient effort, courage in the face of adversity, honesty, and humility to learn including from western countries that have forged their own path through the same difficult road. The most difficult experiences have offered lessons which were learned- for South Korea the Korean War and invasion from the north, China the civil war and Japanese invasion, for India the partition of India and million of refugees. Stagnation from stumbled efforts also taught lessons, the Great Leap Forward in China, the License Raj with corruption in India.       ...

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Bill Spindle of the WSJ describes the Iranian Quds military organization led by Suleimani that operates alongside the Hezbollah organization in Lebanon as Iran intervenes in regional conflicts across borders. Using the militia and Quds Iran is supporting the Assad regime in Syria, and fighting Islamic State in Iraq. Quds has also supported Shiites in Yemen. The problem with the interventions may be that they may have created new problems from which Iran has gained little. The intervention on the side of the Assad regime created an opening for Sunnis supporting Islami State insurgency in both Syria and Iraq, creating another problem for Iran, and weakening the Shiite led government in Baghdad with the loss of Mosul Iraq's second largest city. The cost is in tens of billions of dollars for the intervention at a time when the Iranian economy is suffering from tighter sanctions because of an expanding nuclear development effort. Suleimani is head of the Quds military force, and Alaeddin Bouroujerdi is head of the foreign policy and national security committee in Iran's parliament, who says Iran is now a powerful force in the region. But at a heavy price and complicating the effort of Sunnis and Shiites to live side by side for centuries in the Middle East. There are no serious benefits for the Iranian people suffering from severe shortages at home, a devaluing currency, cost to subsidize other countries, getting into and exacerbating military conflicts. Prime minister Rouhani says- "Until when should our economy subsidize our policies? Lets have our foreign policy subsidize our economy, and see what happens." ...

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How will higher food prices affect people in the emerging market countries, from tortillas sold in Mexcio to chapattis made in India. How does it affect the urban poor and how does it affect farmers. Will rising income for farmers be agood thing and can the badd effects on the urban poor be mitigated by government help to keep prices moderate even as the farmers incomes are raised and farm production incentives are made.

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With Whitacre in charge at GM there is a change of style and substance that just flows from who the man is. He is a no-nonsense guy, who once told a colleague from his days at Southwestern Bell, that God gave us two eyes and one mouth for the right reason so we should use it in that proportion. He is quite matter of fact about approaching the probems at GM right from the beginning. From those early meetings at the Westin airport hotel in Detroit, where he would tell GM executives and Henderson that if things did not happen the way they should and quickly he would find the right people. After there was a lot of soul searching about Henderson's decision to sell Opel- and three directors with private equity background decided it was bad for GM, that GM needed Opel for its compact and midsize car engineering and sales volume- Henderson was replaced as CEO. The decision was reversed. Within 3 months of Henderson's departure four other executives were let go, 20 more were reassigned and seven outsiders were brought in to fill top jobs. Lutz was marginalized. Reuss in his forties was placed in charge of N. America. The metrics were simplified from Wagoner's days to six: market share, revenue, operating profit, cash flow, quality, and customer satisfaction. His approach to get managers who make decisions fast and correct mistakes speedily. Vice chairman and CFO, Christopher Liddell, is from Microsoft and joined in January. Liddell points out that 12 of the 13 person GM executive committee are either new to the auto industry or outsiders. And the seniormost Whitacre and Liddell, are new to the auto industry and outsiders, so Whitacre can point out that GM has run the business in a more complicated way than it needs to be. The big changes are cultural. And making these changes for a company the size of GM and with the trauma that happened at GM with the speedy decline, required someone with the experience Whitacre gained in tackling the problems he faced at Southwesten Bell and the new AT&T, with its changing culture. The tough down-to-earth nature of the guy, with no affectations or layers to his personality whatsoever, proved an asset at the new AT&T and now at GM. Other decisions he has made at GM, are some strategic ones like bringing down incentives to sell cars, the latest being letting market share drop in March in the face of Toyota's heavy use of incentives to recover from the recall crisis, but sticking to reducing the incentive dollars by $1200 to $3500 per car. This made it possible to achieve sales goals. And some tactical but of great significance, from a common sense approach to GM advertising with his remark "I'm sick of Howie Long." Pitchman Long was a football player, and what Whitacre insisted on was showing off GM's best models and features to blow the competition, like the "May the Best Car Win," campaign. That many of GM's ads didn't focus on the cars and didn't make any sense, like little Cadillacs flying out of a birdhouse, makes this truly incredible to an outsider. Other things Whitacre brings are a change in his expectations, and his overall demeanor. This impatience may be a good thing for GM especially with the capital investment in new models, plant investment and better decisionmaking, and commonsense approach, to back it up. In the car industry it can't hurt for the top guy to look at the car clay models and ask why they can't be brought to market in 12 months. It gets people thinking differently. Asking a Cadillac dealer he knows in San Antonio why they should'nt be selling twice as many Cadillacs if the marketing was better. It helps when the top guy can visit a plant and have "diagonal slice meetigs" with plant staff, workers and UAW people, to talk about things in sweat shirt and jeans with no airs about yourself whatsoever, and to follow this up with a repeat meeting some months later and announce a $136 million investment, as he did with the Fairfax plant in Kansas....

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  “And 5 million manufacturing jobs were lost while racking up trade deficits of $19 trillion." The Washington Post does not deny this as false, and this is the crux of the point DJT has made what everyone with eyes to see has seen for 40 years. DJT sometimes exaggerates to make his point. False should mean the meaning is false not that a particular number 70% vs 50% for India's tariff on Harley Davidson motorcycles. It should also consider PM Modi's stand for India- to support the US position when it comes to American factories closing by the thousands and destroying not just it's manufacturing but also it's middle class, just as Gandhi would have done. That close is India's sentiment for the American people and the Republic, and the defense of its recovery as a manufacturing nation for its workers and families. DJT did not say that it is a poor country as the Washington Post says is "Trump's telling." As Greg Ip of the WSJ pointed out in 2024, it is that the US simply cannot sustain the blows to its workers and its manufacturing base from a $1 trillion deficit year after year with China. Before bringing economist's into the picture one has facts of what the devastation to American workers has done to communities across America. DJT said and most workers will stand by his words- "For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped, and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike. American steelworkers, auto workers, farmers, and skilled craftsmen. They really suffered gravely. They watched in anguish as foreign leaders have stolen our jobs, foreign cheaters have ransacked our factories, and foreign scavengers have torn apart our once beautiful American dream." Not a single report in the US and foreign media reports of Liberation Day Rose Garden speech by DJT on April 2, 2025, says that DJT said he would trust what he sees with his own eyes and experience for 40 years, and not economists who have turned their backs on American workers, turned to a UAW worker from Detroit and asked him to tell what he saw for 40 years.  "Brian, I’d like to have you come up here for a second. Okay? I just see him sitting. He’s been a fan of ours, and he understands this business a lot better than the economists, a lot better than anybody. Brian, say a few words, please. Would you?" And this what Brian a retired autoworker from Macomb Conty, Michigan saw for 40 years that economists refused to see in their economic theories- "I have watched my entire life, I have watched plant after plant after plant in Detroit and in the Metro Detroit area close. There are now plants sitting idle. There are now plants that are underutilized, and Donald Trump’s policies are going to bring product back into those underutilized plants. There’s going to be new investment. There’s going to be new plants built."     ...

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Robert Selander, retiring CEO of MasterCard, talks about the questions he asks and what he looks for when interviewing and hiring for jobs in the organization. His experience in multicultural and multilingual environments like Brazil has shown him the value of not judging by linguistic skills alone how knowledgeable and capable a person is. He asks about strengths and weaknesses, and asks how the interviewed person is going to work on his weaker side to be able to overcome these barriers. He looks for chemistry and initiative, the kinds of things that tell him that that person would be right in the infield with him. For leaders he look for how they have brought in talent and pulled the team together to get a real business together from scratch, if it is a new business.

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According to the American Society of Civil Engineers over 10% of the 607,000 bridges in the U.S. are structurally deficient. And 42% of U.S. highways are congested. A poor transportation system makes the U.S. less competitive. The cost to U.S. businesses from a poorly funded and maintained transportation system is about $430 billion more in operating expenses by 2020 and $1.7 trillion in lost opportunities, according to ASCE.

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Insights offered by a actor- growing up as a child in London of parents from Ghana and Sierra Leone- on the younger years of Nelson Mandela. Idris Alba is interviewed by Barbara Chai of the WSJ on his role in the movie "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom." To understand his role Idris spent one night at the prison on Robben Island where Nelson Mandela spent 18 years of his life. Idris says he focussed on bringing the younger Mandela to life, not on his lines but everpresent the idea of a man setting a revolution in motion. In doing this he was bringing to life a man with all his character and flaws, a man unknown to young S. Africans, who only know the older Mandela.