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People are looking at their neighbors and in their neighborhood, and at their friends. If someone loses a job, it influences how they respond. They read things in the print media, and see people leading frugal lifestyles and tips on how to save, how to grow your ownvegetables and save here and save there for children's tutions and for arainy day. In this way even those who have secure jobs and good incomes are changing their lifestyle and how they look at things. They are also not likey to believe anything anybody says about things getting better, until they see things are different in their neighborhoods. It also makes sense to be frugal, especially after the overspending and bad habits of previous years. There may be a yearning to go back to frugal and responsible ways of their parents and their grandparents, the memories and the stories they heard from childhood may still be alive and a return to these ways seen as desirable behaviours. In this way frugal and thrift can become a lifestyle of many people in this country....

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On December 29th 2007 just before the new year 2008 the year of the Beijing Olympics a predicition that sooner or later, sometime soon maybe after the Olympics the stock market in China which is running at some 65-75 time earnings in Shanghai and Shenzen is going to blow up. Its a facade of an orderly equity market which it isn't. The state control many of the stocks and how the stock market operates, good information on companies is scarce, some of the earnings and the investments of companies are in the stock market itself, and not many shares actually change hands as government held companies or other companies have large holdings. Without good accounting who knows if the earnings are not inflated. There are very few alternative investments as savings accounts yield less than inflation and Chinese laws do not permit investing abroad so all this money is flooding the stock markets and it keeps going up so there isn't the situation where stocks go up and down as in a normal market.

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Andrew Hall of trading firm Phibro, which traces its roots to the Phipps Brothers a German scrapmetal and raw materials dealer from 1900, and is now a part of Citigroup. He started making big bets after 2004 that futures in oil prices would instead of the then prevailing 20% discount to current prices be priced higher than current prices because of the rising demand from China and India and shortage of supplies. Once he had locked in on this idea and had researched the facts he got the agreement of the head of Ciigroups trading group to place large bets such as buying a lot of oil futures at the prevailing prices. As oil prices shot up this paid off and Phibro kept 20-30%of the profits. Hall made about $250 million dollars and put $100 million into his art collection of new artists. At a time when speculative buying by investors has pushed up oil prices this is a story of one person who made big bets and thrived.

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The report by Hope Now, the White House backed mortgage industry group formed to help homeowners who are having serious difficulty and may face foreclosure says the help offered so far in 2007 was simply to help distresssed homeowners by extending their payments a bit. In effect postponing foreclosure but doing nothing more. Treasury Secretary Paulson says lower interest rates are helping. But this help isn't going to do much as millions of homeowners face foreclosure in the next 24 months. As interest rates rise in the future these homeowners will face foreclosure and fundamentally little will have changed. This is the view expresssed in a NYT editorial calling for action on the eve of aspeech by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke callig for serious help by reducing the size of the loans so that homeowners can see some real relief. This means somone is going to have to take a loss or a hit, in some way private lenders with help from the Fed and the Government have to take some serious action before this situation descends into disastrous consequences for all....

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The story of Ma Yinjiang. Ma lives in Hangzhou and a reporter caught up with him at his ancestral home in Dushi, 10 miles noth of Hangzhou. His is a typical story in China of optimism about the future and a feeling that there are opportunities to make progress even without the connections in his case like that of many Chinese. Even though he graduated with an engineering degree and postgraduate work he decides to go into business and invents a new kind of soap dispenser based on ones available in western countries. And then branches into hair dryers and electric kettles with sales of $200,000. He dabbles in Christianity and has participated in student protests in 1989. He has aspirations for the future like those of people in western countries yet the reporter finds him just as sensitive when it comes to Tibet, seeing it as an effort to breakup China. Provides some insight into the new China and the millions of urban Chinese some of them like Ma who were on farms in their father's generation and spent time there themselves....

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Its of huge importance that the banks who had a capital injection of $125 billion on Monday October 13, go out and lend some of that capital but this looks increasingly unlikely for the next quarter for some of the banks with gaping holes in their balance sheets and even for a couple of quarters according to some analysts. Merrill's Thain said it was unlikely considering Merrill's losses that it would do so for another quarter and Barclsy's analyst Roge Freeman "its quarters off , if not months off, before you see that capital being put to work." In that case proposals that help homeowners become critically important as more and more howeowners in a downward spiral could find themselves under water which is a point that has not been grasped by the Bush administration. As access is denied to credit markets unemployment rises for small and large businesses and this alone leads to more troubled omeowner loans. nd the auto and credit card debt problems still remain to be worked out creating more downward spiral....

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GE's Jack Welch on a preplanned bankruptcy with government financial, and debtor in posession financing including finacially backing all car warranties, as the best solution to the GM and Chrysler crisis. Will it be tough? Jack Welch says this task would be at the outer limit of difficulty and leaders may balk at leading such painful change, but it is necessary. He says for the sake of self-respect, national defense, and jobs, the country needs to keep the auto industry, and even after the loss in market share during the transformation ahead GM and Chrysler could still have 25% of the market. This is the first time a seasoned veteran of American industry of the stature of Welch, who is known for tackling such problems with realism, gives his approach to the auto companies problems. He sees the problem with a bailout with strings attached as simply letting the Big Three heave along basically as they are on life support, because a bailout simply won't enable the transformative change required....

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With slow growth in sales of PC's which use Intel microprocessors, Intel CEO Krzanich plans to make job cuts and management changes. Intel first quarter profit was up only 3% on overall revenue unchanged from the prior quarter. Executives leaving are Ms Renee James staying till end of 2015 for transition planning, Hermann Eul and Mike Bell. Intel Capital chief Arvind Sodhani is retiring in Jan. 2015. Intel's efforts in smartphones have poor results, and sales of chips for tablets had to be subsidized leading to operating losses. Intel will reduce spending in 2015 by $300 million. Renee James was made president sharing the top position with Mr. Krzanich in May 2013 in a dual appointment. In practice it was Krzanich who took the leadership role at Intel Corp. In other changes security products, including McAfee, were integrated into Intel Operation's under general manager Chris Young. Josh Walden, general manager of new technology group now leads all product and research teams including wearable computing devices. Aicha Evans moves to the management committee....

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Krugman sees France has a fairly successful country with a strong safety net, contrary to perceptions. He asks then why the vote for Le Pen of the National Front, with its perceived racism and ideology. He points to the bureaucrats in Brussels and how they are perceived in Britain, the way austerity policies were favored by the European Union and Germany. Much of the reporting to date shows the effects of neglect for rural communities and small towns and the loss of jobs as the reason for discontent with established parties. It appears that this has affected the vote more than the anti-European Union message. During the last debate Macron was more effective in showing that there were advantages for France in remaining connected to the global community and to remain in the eurozone, calling it a huge mistake to follow Le Pen's policies. 

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About 110,000 workers, or about 20% of the number of people retiring each year in France, will be able to retire at the age of 60 in 2013 under a new presidential decree. These are workers who started to work at the age of 18-19 and put in 41 years of contributions into the state run pension fund. The decree by French president Hollande leaves the Sarkozy reform of increasing the retirement age to 62 from 60 in place, but creates an exception for these workers, at a cost of 1 billion euros in 2013, and 3 billion euros in 2017. This could also be a way to get labor union support for public spending cuts to reduce the deficit which are expected.

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World Expo in Osaka-Kansei in Japan opened April 13, 2025 exceeds 10 million visitors in July 2025. An Air Show by Blue Impulse of the Self Defense Forces of Japan on July 13 is shown in the Asahi Shimbun. The goal for this world's fair ignored by most of the official media is 28.2 million visitors with 158 countries and regions participating.

The theme of this world's fair is “Designing Future Society for Our Lives.” The song is “Kono Hoshi no Tsuzuki wo”, by Kobukuro, it means Let's go see the future.The future society is one that would be inclusive, innovative and sustainable after covid.

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FR24 looks at all the presidential contenders in the French election. The fragmentation is evident in the French electoral scene similar to that in Germany. In a runoff for the second round on April 24 who these contenders support will be crucial for the outcome.  

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The head of Lexus James Farley, who is a Detroit native and has family connections to Ford, will join Ford as head of Marketing.

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Harold Meyerson poses some difficult questions for those who like Mitt Romney say America's choice is between the merit based society Romney sees and the "European social democratic vision." In Romney's words- "a merit-based opportunity society- an American-style society- where people earn their rewards based on their education, their work, their willingness to take risks and their dreams." Meyerson cites several studies to show that European societies today are more dynamic on several measures of performance than America's. In intergenerational mobility he cites a Brookings Institution study by Julia Isaacs, that shows incomes are three times more likely to remain the same in America compared to Denmark, Norway and Finland, and one and a half times more frequently than in Germany. Another measure evident from Germany's experience is the degree of union-company-government cooperation to worker retraining, corporate boards that have representatives of workers and management, the "kurzarbeit" program of retaining employees to smooth out impact of cyclical swings in the economy on workers and companies, and worker's willingness to show restraint on wages especially because management wages are not way out of line as in America. Meyerson reminds readers that the U.S. had a more merit based society in terms of upward intergenerational mobility, distribution of rewards of work between workers in manufacturing and service sectors and management, educational mobility with the G.I. bill, in the first 30 years after the Second World War. In a separate article in the Washington Post on Jan. 5, 2012, David Ignatius poses questions about the effects of globalization in shrivelling the middle class. The access to lower wage manufacturing in China, India, Mexico, and other countries, and lowering of wages in the U.S. to be competitive, was part of globalization. The two tier wage structure in the U.S. automobile industry is one example, making middle class wages a thing of the past. Globalization opened up new markets for American companies. Yet many of the gains in employment were made in emerging markets, as the example of GM's expansion in China showed, with automobile manufacturing expansion inside China....

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Merkel's leadership as Germany goes through the economic crisis. There is not much enthusiasm for further reforms among the Social Democrats or the Christian Democrats. Other than raising the retirement age to 67, the mood is not for any changes in that direction. The economy will contract by 6.1% but Merkel's decision is not to go in for a big stimulus under pressure from the US, and instead stay with the status quo combined with help to workers for unemployment benefits and for retention of workers by companies. As elections approach Merkel is considered favorably, and according to a recent poll by Forschungsgruppe Wahlen nearly 60% are satisfied with the grand coalition of the CDU and the SPD, 78% think Ms Merkel has done well as chancellor, and 58% want her to remain on the job. Actually Merkel's popularity is behind the CDU's prospects, the CDU itself is popular among only 35% of voters. Her analytical habits from her training as a physicist show in the way she is governing, which is thoughtful, and connects well with voters. Merkel benefits from the reduction in unemployment. Unemployment fell from around nearly 5 million in 2005 to around 3 million in 2008. The risk is that Merkel's popularity may be affected by an increase in unemployment to 5.1 million from the averaage of 3.3 million in 2008, according to an OECD estimate. Merkel stands behind a German response to the crisis which is to support the priciples of a social-market economy, make unemployment as least painful as possible to the jobless, to keep every job that can be saved in the nonfinancial sector with a 115 billion euro "Germany fund" providing guarantees and credits to companies that are in trouble because of the credit crisis. Stimulus packages of 64 billion euros supported the auto industry with subsidies to car buyers, and subsidies to keep workers intheir jobs. The idea was to come up with a German version of the response to the crisis by balancing the need to respond based on German conditions, and the concerns for inflation and the budget deficit, that is shared by most Germans. THe vision offered by Merkel is that of a physicist daughter of a protestant minister in East Germany, who is low on the rhetoric and good on substance, and willing to make decisions based on careful study and discernment rather than ideology, without sharp swings in any direction. Her vision comes from her days as environment minister, which is quietly pushing Germany into the forefront of countries developing renewable energy, moving ahead in energy efficiency, with anational goal of cutting emissions by 40% by 2020. The other areas are immigration and education, both key to the future of Germany because of the huge demographic change happening there. She has afamily minister Ursula von der Leyden, who introduced "parents pay", a14 month stipend for parents of newborn children linked to salaries, and to to improve daycare by providing places for 35% of children aged three or less by 2013. And Merkel has approved 18 billion euros of additional funding for research and universities. Says Leyden Merkel has made "daycare" an acceptable term in the CDU, and made Germans accept that they are an immigration country. Which tells you that you have to look closely to find the reasons for Merkel's popularity, which does not carry the rhetoric of an Obama, but is just as effective in German conditions. There are deepseated demographic changes going on in German society, which require a cultural change, and change in mindset, such as that for daycare, immigration, and blending the best of the old in the social market economy with the new like the changes in the educational system. The Economist says that in big cities today nearly half of the children under 15 are immigrants or their children and grandchildren, who are more likely to be poorer, unemployed and with less education. ...

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The views being currently argued in meetings with the President about the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Vice President Biden's view: Completely change the goal and strategy. Scale down the military presence. Change the goal from protecting the people from the Taliban- and note that reports on the ground suggest that the people are indifferent and see the Americans and the Taliban as equally bad, with the Americans as foreigners far worse, see Doris Kearns others- to accelerated training of the Afghan forces to fight the Taliban. The focus of US interests would shift to Pakistan. Biden points to the disparity for every $1 spent in Pakistan $30 goes to Afghanistan, and the US real interests lie in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. The US would work with Pakistan to take out Al Quaeda in the border regions. And the proof is that this is working, as Al Quaeda figures have been taken out with Pakistan's help. Counterinsurgency would be replaced by counter terrorism so the US doesn't get bogged down in support of a failing government. The fraud in the recent elections and increasing isolation and loss of support for the Karzai government, supported by unofficial evidence from the ground, make this a serious option, especially as President Obama knows the Karzai government does not merit support and presents a losing proposition. The second view is that of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton- Ike Shelton of Missouri on the Armed Services Committee and Leslie Gelb (see links) share this view- who said in an interview on PBS, "Well Al Quaeda's no longer in Afghanistan. If Afghanistan were taken over by the Taliban, I can't tell you how fast Al Quaeda would be back in Afghanistan." The problem with this view is that the US has only a limited presence in a large mountainous country with the difficult terrain that Afghanistan has, and its not American ground troops that have done the damage in taking out Al Quaeda, its mostly high tech drones. WIth a wider engagement and expanded US ground troops in support of a failing government, that is alleged to have corrupt and narcoltics connections, the popular support would dwindle to the point that the extra troops would not be seen as protecting the population- because how do you protect a people who simply don't care or are suspicious of you? The solution requires some sort of settlement with the Taliban, which guarantees that it not serve as a haven for Al Quaeda. Progress with schools and modernization would have to be, at least in the short run, be given upon the basis of the U.S. coming to terms with what it can and cannot accomplish at an acceptable cost, and the idea of vital interests not lying in Afghanistan but Pakistan. The missing elements in this puzzle would help this strategy, bringing together key countries in South Asia, India and Pakistan, to assume greater joint responsibilities and abandon the entire postindependence. approach to relations. The third view is that presented by Bruce Reidel, who led the Obama administration's strategy review of Afghaistan and Pakistan earlier this year, and is based on pragmatic considerations and the unofficial information on the ground. Reidel puts it this way: "A counterinsurgency can only work if you have a credible and legitimate Afghan partner, and thats in doubt now." And he goes on to say "part of the reason you are seeing a hesitancy to jump deeper into the pool is that thay are looking to see if they can make lemonade out of the lemons we got from the Afghan election." For a complete change in policy and focus Obama would have to admit that he now has different information, and he is willing to admit to have misread the situation during the first 6 months and during the campaign. That is a test of leadership, being able to change after looking at the reality of the situation and digesting it fully. ...

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Considering the fines and sanctions by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, during the time Mary Schapiro headed the organization from 2007 -2008, it did not take a serious watchdog role over the brokerage business that it was expected to supervise. NASD which she formerly headed, and FINRA, did several examinations of the brokerage business of Mr Madoff who ran a$50 billion Ponzi scheme, but failed to find anything wrong. Her agency in 2007 concluded that Madoff's firm had only violated some technical rules. Also fines and sanctions assessed by FINRA declined during the time she headed it. Fines levied by FINRA declined from $148 million in 2005, the year of her predecessor, to $40 million in 2008. Ms. Schapiro headed NASD regulatory arm in 1996, NASD itself in 2006, and FINRA after its creation in 2007. FINRA is a private agency set up by Wall Street to regulate itself. As the prevailing opinion at the time, with the SEC severely understaffed, was that Wall Street could regulate itself, agencies like FINRA had a bigger responsibility than was realized by Ms Schapiro and others. One securities lawyer who represented firms examined by FINRA, says FINRA should at least have asked more questions about the Madoff operation. In a November 2006 speech to the Securites Industry and Financial Markets Association, Mary Schapiro says, "we remain utterly committed to our regulatory mission but we should be also committed to doing no unnecessary harm or restriction to innovation in the industry and markets". Some of the stuff that went on in the name of innovation went against some basics and commonsense, and the failure to follow tested old good financial practices to separate sound innovation from unsound innovation, was a failure of that period. Schapiro's statement seemed to be a contradiction of a severe nature when examined closely, because how could she remain committed 100% to the regulatory mission if she made strong exceptions for innovations whose true logic and effectiveness only time could tell. The element of caution that should be a key part of the regulator's temperament and mental build was entirely missing. See the link to financial regulators in India, and of how this task was handled with that element of caution and skepticism of prevailing opinion. Other failure of FINRA is that it lagged behind state regulators in catching upto the mess resulting in afreeze up of auction rate securites markets. In June and July 2008, Massachusetts and New York securities regulators filed fraud charges against big firms in that matter. Another failure was the failure to look into the mortgage securites that were held in brokerage accounts and see that the valuations of these securites are sound. Finra only filed small cases against Lehman Brothers, with a fine of only $125,000 for failing to keep accurate books and records. As late as May 7, 2008 in speaking at the Financial Services Institute meeting, Schapiro was asked about what FINRA was doing to regulate complex packaged products like mortgage securites. And even though credit rating agencies had by this time been exposed as having failed, Ms Schapiro would only say, according to a financial advisor who asked the question, that "we have credit rating agencies that rate them." A pretty hands off view for a regulator when the cracks in the system were already exposed in mid 2008. Another facet of this is the high levels of compensation especially for a regulator. For her job at FINRA she received pay of $3.1 million a year including $2.5 million in compensation and $615,000 in benefits and deferred pay. In 2007 she also earned $449,000 in cash and stock grants as director of Duke Energy and Kraft Foods. All of which means that it is straining credulity for Obama to suggest that Mary Schapiro is the best person the Democrats could find for this critical job, in which the record has been severely impaired....

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Tells the story of Cherry, a state owned company that is China's largest independent car maker. It started about 1995 with just an idea in the head of Zhan Xialai an assistant to the mayor of Wuhu, and some other local government officials, in a poor eastern province Anhui who saw this is a way to boost incomes and growth in the province. Zhan brought in Zhoua manager in a cityowned building supply company. They brought in Yin an Anhui native who worked at a VW joint venture. In 1996 Zhou went to England to buy engine assembly equipment discarded by a Ford plant there and in March 1997 started building its first factory. It hired a Taiwanese company to help design its first model the Fengyun or Wind Cloud which it cobbled together using parts from component makers that supplied the China operations of VW and GM. It was not till Dec 1999 that the first cars came off this makeshift assembly line. And then it ran into bureaucratic obstacles as the company did not have a government license to be in the auto business . To solve this it became a part of the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation a large state owned company that had partnerships with VW and GM. Then it wasn't till 2001 that this Fengyun made it to market with 28000 being sold that year. Cherry then began work on a 4 door hatchback minicar that was called the QQ when it went on sale 2 years later in 2003 and looked like the Chevy Spark, a GM model. GM sued Cherry in Chinese court in 2004 saying Cherry had copied its design for the Spark and the lawsuit was settled in 2005. The settlement was described by Cherry as "very friendly." GM may have secured other concessions for manufacture and assembly in China because the QQ was then manufactured with local partners at a plant in southwestern China. It is Cherry's No. 1 model and far outsells the Chevy Spark. About this time in 2003 a big shift was ocurring in China as the car market was being pushed up by continuing development of infrastructure and road expansion, new ventures from Europe and the US expanding car sales in China. Government planners and executives began thinking about how China could develop its own potential in this growing and about to explode market. They decided they had to move upscale and buy the best technologies from Europe and the United Staes and recruit Chinese engineers working in the automotive industries in these regions. This led to a new phase of massive new investments. One of the goals after Cherry's brush with GM over copying its designs, was to acquire and then develop the technology so that it would be Cherry's own technology. In 2003 Cherry hired Xu Min an engineer at Delphi who was an Anhui native and was a specialist in combustion and fuel injection. They turned to an engineering consulting firm in Austria that specializes in internal combustion engines, and this firm AVL List GmbH agreed to train Cherry engineers to design and build the sophisticated engines. The culture that has grown up around this company in Wuhu, Anhui province, is also what drives the company. It exhorts employees in posters hanging on factory walls, "Know plain living and hard struggle." And in some areas of the plant JD Powers charts showing where Cherry lags behind its western counterparts in quality control surveys are shown on bulletin boards. Zhou, Zhan and Yin are known around Anhui and in the rest of China as "the Eight Guardians", a reference to eight defendors of the faith in Buddhist legend. ...

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High degree of popularity of Putin and Medvedev among Russia's younger people who see greater economic opportunity thanks to the progress in the Putin years.

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Cohn and Monkovic of the NYT show how the shift of blacks, hispanics, and white collar professionals is doing to the demographics in the eastern, coastal and southern states, and how this will impact 2016 and future presidential elections in the U.S. This includes North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Virginia, and Florida. It means the electoral map may have changed by 2016 and 2020, as the less educated voters in rural areas are balanced by a growing minority and white collar vote in the suburbs and major cities of the South.

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U.S. president Obama calls Hillary Clinton more qualified for the job of president than himself or Bill Clinton, in his speech at the Democratic National Convention. He made a strong effort to rally the party behind Hillary Clinton in his speech, and thanked Bernie Sanders in a separate phone call for helping bring party unity. Vice President said that Trump did'nt have a clue to what would help the middle class, that the truly passionate supporter for the middle class was Hillary Clinton. Kaine and Bloomberg built on this theme.