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Lahart points out that it will take time for Electrolux to put the the two businesses together following its acquisition of the GE appliance business. The $3.3 billion Electrolux paid is much less than estimates made earlier, showing the still depressed state of the housing market. Electrolux shares went up 5.1% in Stockholm. The potential of sales in the U.S. market will help as Europe recovers from a sales downturn. Economies of scale will help Electrolux, yet its main competitor Whirlpool has made investments to compete effectively in a larger market with growing sales in emerging markets and U.S.

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The continuing decline in copper prices in Nov. 2015, and the Federal Reserve's decision to hold off on raising rates, are the subject of this comment.

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Stiff competition from Toyota, Honda and Hyundai in the minivan segment. GM and Ford exit this segment. Chrysler is trying seats that face each other, one child can watch a dvd and another play a videogame, placing a table 2 backrows of seats, and so forth family friendly changes in the new Dodge Caravan and Town and Country. But Chrysler sales are't doing so well to retail customers Of 211,0000 sales volume sales to retail of Dodge Caravan are about 126,000 compared to Honda Odyssey at 180,000 and then Toyota Sienna.

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The 1 hour 20 minute flight London to Amsterdam uses a Virgin 747-400. Virgin teams up with Boeing and GE Aviation for this project. The plane will use 20% biofuels and a drop-in solution, meaning the GE engine needs no modification and the engine performance is not affected. Virgin gets marketing cache from this move. Why aren't other airlines doint this? Another thing Virgin will not use biofuels that are derived from crops like palm oil or others that consume vast amounts of land and water.

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Gujarat has a mortality rate of 6.2% compared to 2.8% for India. In total number of confirmed cases Gujarat comes fourth after Maharashtra, Tamilnadu and Delhi, with 21,500 cases. Most of the deaths are in the city of Ahmedabad and mostly at the city's large Civil Hospital. This report in the BBC says the deaths can be attributed to the reluctance of people in the city to go to the Government Civil Hospital because the quality of care is not good. Many patients come to the Civil Hospital only after failing to find a bed at other private hospitals. This means the patients condition is getting worse as he is not admitted rightaway but days afterwards when his condition has deteriorated. The weak health infrastructure of the state and the lack of quality care at the Ahmedabad Government Civil Hospital say experts has led to increasing number of deaths in Gujarat from coronavirus. Gujarat has been known for its improvements in transportation and roads infrastructure. This has not happened with health infrastructure. This situation is being seen also in China where not enough money is being invested for quality health care. Ahmedabad's Government Civil Hospital is one of the largest in Asia providing low cost care to a large population. ...

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Remarks by president Biden in Accokeep, Maryland, at the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 77, April 19, 2023 outlining his vision for American workers and for its economy. "I am pro-union because union workers are the best workers in the world. Not a joke. That's the God's truth. That is the God's truth. You are the best in the world. It's better  for them to hire you, because you get the job done, you get it done on time, and ultimately it costs them less when they hire you." "So I've said many times Wall Street didn't build America. The middle class built America. And unions built the middle class. That's a fact. Unions. One of the reasons I ran for president was to rebuild the backbone, the backbone of this country, the middle class, to grow the economy from the middle out and the bottom up, not from the top down. Because when the middle class does well the poor have a ladder up and the wealthy do very well still. And we middle class can get a shot. We do well as well." "And that's in clear contrast to my friends on the other side of the aisle these days. DIdn't used to be. Did'nt used to be, but it is now. For decades they've said the best way to grow the economy is from the top down- trickle-down economics. Well, growing up, I didn't see a whole hell of a lot trickle down on our three-bedroom house with four kids at our dad's kitchen table. You know what, Trickle-Down did'nt work for us, and it did'nt work for a long time." "And by the way it's not just what's been with MAGA Republicans. For the last three, four decades we have been losing ground. And you know- it's hollowed out the middle class, you know rewarding wealth, not work; rewarding companies moving overseas because they get cheaper labor. Look at all- a lot of you know- and maybe you come from neighborhoods and small towns, like Scranton, Pennsylvania, where I come from, or Claymont, Delaware- where there used to be a lot of pride, because we had businesses, we had factories that were working, operating. In Scranton, and Claymont, there were 4500 steelworkers. There are none today. And not only do you lose jobs, you lose a sense of pride, lose a sense of who are you. You begin to wonder. Does anybody see me? I mean it sincerely." ...

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In a new twist drugmaker AbbieVie will bring out less costly versions of Humira in Europe where its patents have expired and still keep the U.S. market at higher Humira prices using a thicket of patents. Reports show pharmaceutical drug pricing as a major issue in U.S. midterm elections. Biologic drugs are costly. In this case Humira will sell at a 10-20% discount in Europe. Abbie Vie countered by getting hundreds of new patents in the U.S. to continue selling at high prices.

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HTC was the first company to come out with a smartphone using Google's Android software in 2010. By the second quarter of 2011 HTC's share of the global smartphone market climbed to 10.7%, only to see a sharp decline in 2012 dropping to 2.2% according to IDC, as it faced stronger competitors Samsung and Apple. Second quarter 2012 revenues were down 27%, and an expected drop of about 50% in the third quarter. Samsung and Apple invest significantly more in distribution and marketing, and discount prices on older high end models making it difficult for HTC to compete. In 2012 the company's value declined by 50%.

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HTC Corp., Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer, says strong competition from Apple and Samsung hurt its position in the U.S. market which will be hard to recover. HTC was one of the first companies to market smartphones in the U.S. in 2010, gaining the top spot with 11.8% market share that year. HTC started as a contract manufacturer, shifting to making smartphones on its own brand name in 2006.

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Competition from HTC for the Samsung Galaxy and Apple iPhone. HTC puts out its new Android smartphones the HTC One S and One X in June 2012.

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HTC's declining market share in Brazil and its decision to concentrate on the mid to high priced market segments in India and China. It is pulling out of the Brazilian market where the low priced phone segment is growing. HTC has about 7.2% of the global smartphone sales and is experiencing slower sales in 2012. HTC was a Taiwanese contract maker till recently when it launched its own line of Android smartphones.

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HTC is building its own operating system for mobile phones designed to work closely with China's apps and websites.

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The Supreme Court's ruling against Wyeth knocks down a 2006 Bush administration regulation which declared that permitting product-liability law suits conflicted with "FDA's role "as the expert federal agency responsible for evaluating and regulating drugs." Justice Paul Stevens writing the majority opinion said the Bush position is "entitled to no weight, and was "inherently suspect because no evidence was given in support of its position and the states and the public did not get an opportunity to comment before it was issued. Wyeth had argued that it met FDA guidelines in the label for its antinausea drug Phenergan, and wasn't liable when a 63 year old guitar player lost her arm after receiving the drug.

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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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The tough job President Obama faces as he faces opposition from politicians who have interests to protect, and healthcare businesses with interests to protect. The President has to come up with a plan that is deficit neutral, because financial markets could see a healthcare bill that further widens the deficit as a signal for higher interest rates that would deepen the recession. At the same time each of the three sources of revenue puts him at loggerheads with political leaders in Congress or groups with interests to protect. Limiting income tax deductions for high earners could raise $267 billion in 10 years. It would require taxpayers in the top tax brackets deduct their mortgage interest, state and local taxes, and charitable donations, at the 28% tax rate instead of the 33% and 35% tax rates. The opposition is with democratic leaders that it would hurt charities, universities that depend on tax deductible donations, and taxpayers in high tax cities like New York city that are the home base of Democratic leaders. Yet only 1.4% of households would be affected says the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, says charitable giving would decrease by 2%. The other opposition on this comes from the preference of Senators Baucus and Grassley, who head the Senate Finance Committee, for tax increases or cost savings to come from the health sector. Specifically they want to see the value of workers' employer provided health benefits subject to income taxes. It is a situation in which every sensible person admits the need for healthcare reform and would see the current pace of healthcare costs as unsustainable and dangerous; and after that will just go back to his group and try to preserve as much of the status quo as possible, so as not to disturb by much the benefits or compensation they have secured from the system over the years. Then there are political leaders in Congress with their own preferences, and Congressmen who are the subject of heavy lobbying by these interests. The administration and the Presidents job is to navigate this stream with a workable deficit neutral plan, without any requirement for any group to make sacrifices, and in some situations even small sacrifices for the public interest. Would charitable institutions be hurt that much, what if charitable institutions were exempted, why would other interests the try to obtain the same exemption. Its like the unions trying to keep the old unsustainable goldplated healthcare and other benefits at GM even as the ship was going down. Taxing employer provided employee health benefits as income would raise $2.5 trillion over a decade. The opposition here is from unions which are a force in the Democratic party and which count tax free health benefits as a legacy of the labor movement. Employer provided health insurance covers 160 million American employed and their dependents under the age of 65, so it has a wide impact. Yet most economists favor ending the tax break. They say it mainly goes to upper income taxpayers, and discourages cost consciousness among consumers of health care, thus encouraging excessive spending and surging health care costs. Senior Obama advisors, Peter Orszag, the budget director, and economist Jason Furman favor this approach. So do Republicans in Congress. Senators Baucus and Grassley are not asking for the complete removal of the tax break, what they want to see is capping the value of benefits that go untaxed. If the tax-free limit is $13,000, a policy worth $15,000 would pay income taxes on $2000. A third spource is to spend less on Medicare. About two thirds of the $948 billion in savings Mr Obama has proposed over 10 years comes from a number of reductions in Medicare spending. $177 billion comes from insurance companies bidding for government reimbursements for offering private plans to seniors. $106 billion comes from cutting the subsidies to hospitals serving the uninsured as universal coverage should remove this need. And $110 billion in reduced payments to hospitals and doctors because of productivity gains. A range of industries insurance companies, hospitals, doctors drugmakers, nursing homes, home health care companies and medical device makers, all stand to lose from reduced payments from Medicare and Medicaid. And these groups with interests to protect are another factor in this process of working out a healthcare plan. ...

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A report by the World Bank is cited showing that in many industries the gap between the leaders in that industry and the companies trailing it is so wide that its as much as 5 times the value added per worker. Based on this the World bank estimates that India can increase its national output rapidly simply using existing knowhow of the best firms in the industry fort those firms that are trailing. This sounds fine on paper but in practice a lot goes into best practice with leadership being hard to replicate easily, and the technology of the leading firms may not be available to the other firms. However its possible for the other companies to increase their productivity if the efffort and determination was present.

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How many jobs will leak out for the fiscal stimulus if a lot of them, like 40% of manufacturing ouput in the US consisting of imported goods, are jobs created in China and Europe or other countries that make the parts for the wind energy and the solar energy products made in the USA? There will be domestic content rules but the international economy is better off if some of the jobs that result from a USA stimulus are offset by the jobs created here from the stimulus packages of Europe, China and other countries. China's infrastructure spending would lead to jobs in the US making some of the infastructure equipment that is exported or in the case of India the nuclear plants equipment that is exported.

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After an emergency cabinet meeting and a vote in the Spain's Senate prime minister Rajoy imposed direct rule on Catalonia, dismissing the government of Mr. Puigdemont in Catalonia. He set local elections in Catalonia for Dec. 21. Rajoy was responding to a vote in the Catalan parliament with 70 in favor, 10 against and the rest abstaining, in favor of independence. As the BBC points out Catalonia has 16% of Spain's population and generates 25% of exports, 20% of foreign investment, leading to a feeling among Catalan people that they are sending resources to other parts of Spain. The vote was still far short of the large majority that would show Catalans overwhelmingly support Mr Puigdemont's move for independence. As the reality of the consequences of such a move- when the EU and other parts of Spain have shown little support -begin to be felt it is possible that new elections could bring a result like that in Scotland where the Scottish Nationalist party lost ground to the Conservative party in the recent British parliamentary election. It is significant that the BBC cites a recent poll which shows 41% of Catalans favor independence, 49% opposed. Particularly now that Catalans may have time to consider carefully the difference between redressing a grievance and making a complete break into an uncertain future outside the European Union. Also relevant is that Catalonia enjoys a high degree of autonomy, and that other parts of Spain including Mr. Rajoy's home region of Galicia also suffered under the Franco dictatorship. Even the Basque region has come to terms with the past from the period under Franco and has opted to be part of Spain. ...

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Did U.S. Treaury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, ignore a key request by President Obama to present plans for the restructuring of Citigroup after the government bailout of Citigroup? Ron Suskind says this is what happened in his book on the Obama administration and how the White House operated to make key decisions. Ron Suskind, intervewed key members of the Obama White House economic policy team, Lawrence Summers, Christina Romer, Peter Orszag. In all Suskind conducted 700 hours of interviews for his new book in Sept 2011: "Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington and the Education of a President." According to the book, in early 2009 after Obama authorized a series of stress tests for banks he told Geithner to develop a plan for restructuring Citigroup. A month later at a meeting not attended by Geithner Obama raised a question about the status of the plan. He was told by Romer that no restructuring plan had been developed for Citi. Suskind says Geithner disagreed about a plan to restructure Citi and decided to ignore the request. Geithner and the Treasury Department say Obama asked Geithner to develop a backup plan to overhaul banks if the government was forced to keep a big ownership stake in the companies, and "there was fortunately never a need to put them in place." Geithner told Suskind that he doesn't slow-walk the President on any matter. Other aspects of the operation of the economic policy team that Suskind covers are a series of memos from top aide Pete Rouse raising questions that ongoing communication between some members of the economic team and Summers was giving Summers power to shape policy. Summers, Director of the National Economic Council, is shown as trying to keep out the views of Romer and budget director Orszag from reaching the President without going through him. When Orszag gives a private report to the president on the deficit, Summers objects saying that this was immoral. Obama lacked the fresh ideas needed to tackle the problems created by the mortgage and banking crisis of 2008, when he used the Clinton administration economic policy team of the 1990's- Rubin, Bernanke, Summers and Geithner. Fresh approaches were needed two decades after Clinton's election in 1992, and the Bush administration that followed, as many of the problems developed during this period. The similiar embedded thinking was shared during the Clinton and Bush administrations and the economic advisors about dealings with the banking sector, but the situation for deficits, unemployment, housing, and the economy had completely changed requiring fresh approaches. ...

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This report in the NYT shows Silicon Valley Bank and Silicon Valley its people are highly intertwined, each supporting the other except when SVB's looked insolvent. At that point there was a run on the bank as venture capital pulled out, and $42 billion was withdrawn on just one day, according to the reports. The next the FDIC took over the bank.