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Italy's Five Star Movement is gaining in popularity before national elections in March 2018, because voters are fed up with the old political parties and the old political system. A Five Star Movement member Virginia Raggi is Mayor of Rome. Even though this has not led to improvements in tackling Rome's problems such as urban decay, garbage collection, and weak transportation, this is acceptable with angry voters who want to send a message to the traditional political parties that ran the government for 50 years. About a third of these voters who support the Five Star Movement are from the right, a third from the left and a third young people who never voted before, according to Italian pollster Pregliasco of You Trend. Recent polls show the Five Star support at 28% and the leading party. The anti-politician message really resonates in Italy with its lack of growth, and a sense that things will not change under politicians of the old system, right or left. As in France with the En Marche movement bringing in younger and new faces in parliament and in government, Five Star Movement is bringing younger faces to the forefront. As young as 31 years for the party's candidate for prime minister, Mr. Di Maio. As a result older politicians in their fifties from the established parties are running against younger people in their twenties and thirties, a situation seen in France in recent elections that brought new faces to parliament and new ways of governing.   ...

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Long Yu and the China Philharmonic perform in Tehran, Iran, in August 2015. The music of Dvorak's "New World" Symphony is performed by Long Yu. The China Philharmonic founded in 2000 is doing a six country Silk Road tour in 2015. The Pittsburgh Symphony played in Tehran in 1964. The Tehran Symphony is being revived in 2015. Daniel Barenboim, a German conductor may perform during Angela Merkel's visit to Tehran in Oct. 2015.

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Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif faces a trial on corruption charges in Pakistan in 2018, just prior to new elections. The military and the judiciary both support the trial which involves payments for 4 upscale neighborhood London apartments owned by Sharif. 

Mr. Sharif's party leads in polls with about 36% support, higher than the next leading party Tehreek which has 24% support and is led by Imran Khan a former cricketer. The Pakistan People's Party of the Bhutto family comes in third. The result of this could be a weaker coalition government. The Supreme Court has banned Sharif for life from holding political office. Pakistan has seen governments toppled and military rule for half of its 70 years since independence. The rivalry with India and the role of the military has affected political institutions and democracy in Pakistan making peace with India difficult to achieve for any elected government.

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For Kamala Harris cooking is a form of meditation, the kitchen a place to relax. Kim Severson shows this side of Harris who may even carry the tradition of cooking Sunday dinner into the White House. Looking back no one comes close. Kamala loves to cook, hopes to write a cookbook, has her favorite cooking experts, such is her passion for cooking.

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The average for tens of thousands of companies in the US is not in the 30's, it is 42 years. Taiwan Semiconductor was started by Morris Chang in his 50's. The reason for this is that startups need extensive experience, some of that experience comes from industry and companies the founders have worked with. With a deep knowledge of the field thay are in these founders can apply this knowledge to create new companies and discover new opportunities.

Even in government this is the case. In the recent appointments nominees selected by the incoming Republican DJT administration for Health and Human Services, Interior Secretary, Department of Energy, Homeland Security, had decades of experience in their field, some were governors of energy rich states. Another characteristic that comes with experience is the energy and aptitude for the job that they can bring. 

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S. Koreans do not like the Wal-Mart style large warehouse type of retail stores as a place to shop in. What they want is the Korean outdoor market comfortably tucked inside. A better comparison to Korea's own E-Mart owned by Shinsegae is Target stores in the U.S., where there is a a nicer spacious layout, lower shelves. Then you have to add the feeling of a Korean outdoor market with vendors in the form of girls with polo shirts showing the brands they represent calling out to customers, above the sound of butchers calling out prices of meat and fish. A senior executive at Shinsaegae's E-Mart says S. Koreans hate the warehouse format. As a result Wal-Mart and Carrefour had to withdraw from the Korean market. E-Mart's founder, Lee Myung Hee, is the daughter of the Samsung Group's founder Le Byung-chul. The company is now run by her son, Mr. Chung, who is combining professional mangement with ownership management to run E-Mart. The original E-Mart was a small operation acquired by the Samsung founder in 1963, and separated from Samsung under Ms. Lee in 1991. The first E-Mart opened in 1993. In 1999 Samsung took a 11% interest in Samsung-Tesco discount chain retail stores, a joint venture with Tesco Corp. of the UK. Shinsaegae expanded quickly after the 1998 Korean financial crisis, by acquiring land at attractive prices. With the failure of the Wal-Mart stores in S. Korea, Shinsaegae acquired the Wal-Mart operation for $872 million in 2008. ...

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Typical of so much of what is written about the World Health Organization and its role in the pandemic, this podcast in the WSJ fails to quickly convey the critical function of the WHO as an early warning system the world has depended on, including China. The H1N1 epidemic originated in Mexico. Asian countries including China and India depended on very quick response from the country where the epidemic originated  in allowing entry into the affected area for experts from advanced countries such as the U.S. The global response was then coordinated across countries quickly with complete transparency. The head of China's CDC himself faced a problem with transparency with the provincial authorites in Wuhan. 1.    Fundamentally this quick entry was denied the U.S. Request by U.S. to China was made on Jan. 6 for U.S. team to go to Wuhan, quick permission was denied and given only about 6 weeks later on Feb 16. This delay is the crux of the problem for the U.S.. Taiwan confirmed human to human transmission on Jan. 1, the WHO was saying this was not clear as late as Jan. 14. These costly delays are what the U.S.  letter is about.  The head of the CDC China Gao Fu called Dr. Redfield head of CDC in the U.S. on the next day after he suspected Wuhan provincial authorites were vague about what was happening. Gao Fu was alarmed when scanning the internet on December 30, 2019, about rumors of a vaguely worded lung disease in internal memos of Wuhan. He called Wuhan authorites and was not getting clear answers on that day, then deciding on December 31 to send his own team to Wuhan, as reported in German magazine Der Spiegel- Hackenbroch, Zand, 05/20/2020.  Der Spiegel says in its special report on the early period in Wuhan that Gao Fu was so alarmed about what was happening enough to be in tears in his series of calls with Dr. Redfield in the immediate days that followed. The date was shortly after the GAO Fu sent the team to Wuhan, December 31 and New Years Day 2020, as reported in Der Spiegel. See the link to Lyrarc gist of Der Spiegel's "A Failed Deception: The Early Days of the Coronavirus in Wuhan."  2.  President Trump points out the standards of the WHO- in the concluding point of his letter to WHO- when a three time prime minister of Norway, Gro Brundtland was head of the WHO during the SARS crisis of 2003. She acted quickly and decisively and no time was lost. It is this failure of the early warning system under the new president of the WHO after 2017 Dr. Tedros that alarms the U.S.  with about 100,000 deaths.  3.  This failure it can now be said was partly a result of a election in 2017 for the position of WHO president which was flawed. This was the first time a WHO head, an important position was put up for an election. The Executive Board was responsible for this appointment since the founding of the WHO as part of the UN, based in Geneva, Switzerland, after World War II. This system worked. The election was clearly a bad process for appointing the president of the WHO which should be done entirely on the capabilities of the person holding this position not on a flawed voting process. It is flawed because India and Bangladesh hit by a cyclone during the coronavirus have suffered greatly, as have other countries, but had only 2 votes for 1.5 billion people, when Barbados (385,000 population) and Laos (7 million) which had less than one  hundredth the population had the same number of votes. The U.S. had one vote. The election resulted in lobbying and a process in which many candidates stayed away because they simply would not go through such a process. The position was too important to the world- most of the advanced countries had forgotten about the danger of epidemics to let this happen by 2017, as shown in the way the austerity years led to cancellation of the preparations for pandemic in France and Britain. The austerity years and neglect of public health during these tech boom years in the western world made it possible for this to happen. 3.   Along with the 1 month ultimatum action is already being taken to restore the effectiveness of the importance of the Executive Board. The head of the health ministry in India, Dr. Harsh Vardhan, has been appointed the new chairman of the Executive Board on May 22. This restores the voice of billions of people in Asia in the process, and brings the major countries with the greatest risk in a pandemic into the decision process for tackling the pandemic, this includes the rest of the world.     ...

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U.S. economic growth in the third quarter of 2020 was 7.4%. This is a record and the closest to this was the economic growth in 1950 which was 3.9% a little over half of that. This is the equivalent of 33% on an annualized basis.

The economy is about 3.5% smaller than when the pandemic started. This record is better than the one in 2008 financial crisis when over a period of one and half years the economy declined by about 4%. By 2021 the U.S. economy will have recovered to where it was back to its original shape if recovery proceeds at this rate.

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Argentina, South Africa, Mexico, India, UK, European Union elections are taking place by June 2024 and US in November 2024. Yet it is misleading to lump them together. Much discontent is there to see as in the UK with cost of living, governance, time wasted on Brexit, India with lingering effects of the pandemic on rural voters, caste based voting. In India protest vote of lower caste Dalit voters in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, even with government support in forms of universal healthcare, food for poor households during pandemic extended, cooking gas, housing support, clean tap water, direct bank account deposit to accounts of poor and farmers. Yet in the states in the south and east in Orissa and Andhra Pradesh, and generally in the south the BJP vote count increased so that losses in the north were made up leaving the percentage of vote for India for Modi's BJP party at 37 percent in 2024 instead of 38% in 2019, losing the absolute majority 240 seats of 543 yet having campaigned heavily for partners who added seats 294 of 543. In the UK Keir Starmer may see some vote preference for Labor erode yet the Conservative record is in shambles even conservative experts will say, as in India where the opposition parties offer no prospects for the future and little track record for making India the second or third largest economy in the world which the BJP has set and shown to have achieved over 10 years by taking India to No. 5 in the world economies. ...

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Annalena Baerbock returns Benin Bronzes to Argentina is the lead story in Germany's national channel DW.com. She was speaking in Abuja- "We are here to right a wrong." Baerbock quoted a Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie- "Art informs who we are. It shapes how we perceive ourselves and how we perceive the world. We have learned from you: what we are returning is a part of your history, a part of who you are." Annalena is the rarest- who could speak in Abuja, in Africa, or Asia, like that, in a way that touches the African, or Asian people, like that? The warm words and action touched many in Abuja and around the world. 

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There are four pillars to this fight Biden and Harris are now waging. Biden tackled infrastructure by getting the Congress to pass the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act to put trillions of dollars into rebuilding aging and dilapidated American roads, bridges, airports, ports, rural internet. This also tackled Manufacturing and factory jobs in the US neglected for 3 decades, the second pillar. The third pillar for Biden was getting American wages that had fallen behind to catch up by supporting labor in wage negotiations.  Something was missing as Cost of Living for housing, childcare, remained. This is where Harris has stepped in with Jerome Powell of the Fed. Powell cutting interest rates to make housing more accessible and Harris putting in $25,000 for first time homeowners for a down payment, build 3 million new homes, $6000 for childcare for parents, and $50,000 for small businesses to start. Specific programs at specific targets in FDR type "bold, persistent experimentation" activity. Put together the four pillars mean giving strength to the US economy which Powell says is "in solid shape." ...

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Shell reported a 60% drop in profit for the second quarter of 2013, after taking a $2 billion writedown on the value of its liquids rich shale assets. Excluding the charges, Shell's profit was $4.6 billion, declining 20% on the prior year quarter. Shell has the largest investments among oil companies in unconventional sources of oil and gas in the U.S. It is producing 300,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day from unconventional sources, including 50,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day from shale at end of 2012. Shell expects the exploration and production division for the Americas to remain at a loss during the second half of the year because of current oil and gas prices. Shell is now conducting a strategic review to sell around half of its main nine unconventional oil and gas assets in North America.

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Arseniy Yatseniuk, resigns as prime minister of Ukraine in April 2016, as his popularity declines with falling living standards and corruption scandals. The new government is still from the old political elite. Prices have gone up by 50% in recent years and GDP has fallen in the three years of conflict with Russia.This article in the Economist magazine says young civil activists in Ukraine are working hard to set up institutions- sometimes parallel institutions such as the Reanimation Package of Reforms of 50 non-governmental civic organizations- that wil give Ukraine better governance after decades of corrupt governments. Online coverage on corruption is increasing creating an environment where the poor governance of the past is no longer the norm.The IMF which has a $17 billion loan package for Ukraine has ceased disbursements till Ukraine can take action against corruption and improve governance. The IMF insisted on the formation of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau. As the U.S., EU, and NATO, come closer to Ukraine, during a period of tense relations with Russia, the quality of Ukrainian governance is an important issue for formerly Communist Eastern European countries and for the rest of Europe. It all depends on civic society and young people with new aspirations to change the way things are done....

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Global trade flows should slow from 9% increase in 2021 to 3.5% in 2022 as the economies of EU, US and China slowdown, according to the World Trade Organization (WTO). This should also ease supply chain bottlenecks and inflationary price increases as demand declines across the EU, US, China and other countries.

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The iphone 16e 2025 for $599 more battery, more camera and larger screen offers more features at the lower end of the price range. One can see this as a phone that helps tackle the cost of living crisis that could hurt Apple sales from buyers with moderate incomes who are cutting back. It could also target a growing middle class buyer segment in India. The e in 16e could stand for economy buyers who want basics in the Apple and could attract upper income buyers of Xiaomi , Huawei and Samsung. Apple iphones have strengths in: seamless ecosytem navigation interface reliable and secure ios software higher resale value Apple discontinues support for older iphones after about 7 years. iPhone 13's can still be used in 2025 4 years old, a good time to change would be by 2026. iPhone 15 was introduced in 2023 which means a good time for changing it is 2028 using a 5 year change which balances the need to update and  update to have access to newer iphones. ...

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Ms. Annegret Kramp-Krarrenbauer, elected leader of the CDU party in 2018 with the support of Angela Merkel, will not run for chancellor in next years election and will resign from her position by the end of the year. She will continue as Germany's defense minister. After losses for the CDU in recent elections and the embarrassment of local CDU leaders in Thuringia supporting the far right AfD, AKK as she is known decided to step down. Angela Merkel has decided not to run for chancellor again. Germany is set to chair the EU in the second half of 2020, and Merkel is no longer seen as a leader of influence. The Nationalist Alternative for Germany AfD has gained votes in recent elections following the 2015-2016 migrant crisis, with large numbers of refugees from North Africa and Arab world landing in Greece and Turkey and walking to Hungary, Austria and Germany. Merkel's handling of the crisis with acceptance of a million refugees in 2015-2016 unsettled European and German politics. Why? One way of looking at it is that in the same way that the U.S. took in Chinese imported goods ending in the Trump tariffs war, at some point it just becomes too big to handle. That ended up at $1 billion a day in imports from China when president Trump called it off and accused Obama Democrats, Bush Republicans, of betraying the country. Putting it into perspective Germany with one fourth of the population of the U.S. took in about twice the number of refugees in just one year 2015-2016 that the U.S. took in 10 years 2005-2015. The U.S. took in 675,000 immigrants between 2005-2015. This is as if the U.S. took in something like 20 million immigrants in a short period of 1 year on an equivalent basis- though the cultural impact is even greater in a nation like Germany that is like Japan an historically immigrant averse nation. All this happened too quickly for Germany to handle for its fragile cultural fabric. Much of the initial outpouring of support and positive sentiment came from the sense of having gone through World War II and the refugees in that and the early post war period, the need to return in the same spirit support Germany had received. Over time it eroded support for the Christian Democratic Union and Merkel. That Merkel could have done this is itself a small miracle. Now the rebuilding has to begin. Adenauer's CDU and the socialist SPD party of Willy Brandt now have less than 50% support, only with the Greens Party do they make up 50%. The question now is can the CDU, and the SPD which has fallen to 14% in elections, make it back and what kind of future makeup political parties will have in Germany, how the social fabric can be restored. AKK's achievement is to mend relations between the liberal Merkel wing of the CDU and conservatives from Bavaria (CSU) over immigration.  Candidates for CDU leadership are Armin Laschet, Jens Spahn, and Friedrich Merz. Laschet premier of North Rhine-Westphalia has Merkel's support. Looking back too much attention was taken up by the euro crisis, and too little was done in the areas of infrastructure, inequality gaps, education, child care, under Merkel's leadership and of the preceding SPD years, much like what happened under Bush and Obama administrations in the U.S. where wars, economic crises led to neglect on issues that affect lives of ordinary working families. ...

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Greg Ip says in WSJ that China turned to lender after 2010 and financed loans for development, for roads, highways and infrastructure in Asia and Africa. Between 1970 and 1990 the World Bank was extensively involved in infrastructure projects, by 1990 it retreated from this role and China after 2010 was lending at double the rate of the World Bank for it Belt and Road Initiative programs. At G20 New Delhi, India, Biden and Modi, leaders of Brazil, and South Africa, agreed on advancing the World Bank's loan capacity by $100 billion for next decade under leadership of Ajay Banga. Thjis is happening at the meeting of finance leaders in Marrakech, Morrocco in 2023. The IMF and the World Bank were set up after World War II under the agreements signed at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, as postwar finance system. The IMF was to serve as lender to countries facing short term finance crises, and the World Bank to finance development in poor countries such as India, Indonesia and after 1990 China. The largest borrowers from the World Bank were India, China and Indonesia. India is at $37 billion loans outstanding in 2021, China at about $21 billion after repaying much of its loans. By 2010 Brazil, Mexico, China and India had shifted to international capital markets for development support. Total outstanding debt of World Bank is $460 billion in 2021. ...

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Leakage of state funds is serious. Just think how many hospitals and schools, how many solar panel farms or wind farms can be built with $4.5 billion that is reported as the money laundered in the 1MDB leakage of state infrastructure funds? Here it is reported that Goldman Sachs settles for its involvement in the 1MDB with $2.5 billion in cash and guarantee recovery of $1.4 billion in proceeds from assets lost by the Malaysia state infrastructure fund. This is what the WSJ says on July 24, 2020, Ben Otto and Chester Tay- "Goldman Sachs was the main banker for the Malaysian fund 1 Malaysia Development Bhd. or 1MDB. The bank raised billions of dolars for the fund which was allegedly stolen by people working for the fund, government officials and two senior Goldman bankers." It also says Goldman raised $6.5 billion for the 1MDB through bond sales in 2012 and 2013, much of which was stolen by a Malaysian government advisor. And that Goldman received $600 million in fees which would be about 10%. Many of the countries in Asia and Africa have a colonial past in which little or no investment was made for centuries in heath, education and infrastructure. This makes it all the more appalling and heartbreaking. Goldman bankers were also involved in advising China during the hyper growth years which are leading today to little or no growth and concentration in property sector, with appalling devastation of the climate in China over a compressed period of 10-15 years 1995-2010,  leading to fires, floods, drought in China and worldwide, including in Africa and Asia. Was this good advice or self-serving for investment banks as this was accompanied by shift of manufacturing to China leading to decay of communities throughout America and and now a reversal after the pandemic all compressed so as to wreak havoc first one way and then the other way leading to a world more prone to conflict and war. Was this good advice or a cautionary tale for both America, for African and Asian countries and for China most of all a country that has a colonial past and treated with respect by Americans. Two Americans come to mind  Theodore Roosevelt who helped establish the now famous Tsinghua University in Beijing in 1911, and Joe Stilwell who led the Allied operations in China against the Japanese. Were Roosevelt, Stilwell sincere friends of China and Asian countries or the Goldman bankers is a question that just comes up. ...

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The surge in the value of the dollar is creating turmoil in the world economy. The dollar reached 1.04 to the euro and 118 Japanese yen by Dec. 15, 2016. This means Japanese and European exports will be more competitive and lower U.S corporate earnings.  Emerging market economies hold about $200 billion in dollar denominated debt and this will become harder to repay with the surge in the value of the dollar. China faces larger capital outflows and the Bank of Japan has to navigate a new situation. Some countries such as Mexico are raising interest rates to reduce inflation as the value of the peso drops. The prospect of trade wars is also another aspect of uncertainty with the new Trump administration in the U.S.