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Vehicle sales in the U.S. market went up by 18% in April 2011. There was a significant shift fuel efficient vehicles and small cars with gasoline running at over $4 per gallon. Sales are running at an annual rate of over 13 million vehicles for the February-April 2011 period. Helping sustain sales momentum is the aging of the U.S. vehicle fleet- average for vehicles in the U.S. is above 10 years according to G.M. vice president, Don Johnson. GM sales were up 27% in April 2011 over the prior year- with only a 2% increase for pickup trucks and a 50% increase in sales for passenger cars. There was strong demand for the Chevy Cruze compact and smaller fuel efficient sport utility vehicles. Ford had a 16% increase in sales, with strong demand for the new Fiesta, Focus small cars and the new lighter version of the Explorer SUV. Ford's Ken Czubay, head of sales and marketing, says dealers are selling the Focus right off the convoy truck, which gives some indication of the shift in consumer preferences. Chrysler vehicle sales increased 23%, with car sales up 41% in April over the prior year. Some indication of the shift can be seen in the incentives dollars- the largest rebates of $3200 were given for large trucks, according to Edmunds.com. At the same time overall dollars per vehicle for incentives dropped from $2600 in April 2010 to $2100 in April 2011. Toyota sales increased by only 1% because of shortages as a result of the earthquake, especially for the smaller cars like the Corollas and the Prius....

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Italy's oil company Eni's new CEO Mr. Descalzi, is a 33 year veteran, who headed the oil exploration division under former CEO Paolo Scaroni. He faces the challenge of reducing its 5.1 billion euro debt at the end of June 2014, with the possible partial sale of its 43% stake in oil services company Saipem. Eni's stake has a market value of 3.5 billion euros. Other decisions he faces are to reduce geopolitical risk in Africa by selling stakes in its oil projects in Africa. Under Scaroni Eni sold a 20% stake in its Mozambique field to China National Petroleum Corporation for $4.2 billion. Delays at its Kazakhstan project ,chronic problems in Nigeria, the fighting between militias in Libya have hurt earnings and cash flow. Reducing risks in Africa is a priority because Eni aggressively pursued opportunities for exploration in places like the Congo and Mozambique, so that a larger part of its oil comes from unstable regions than other large oil companies. Profitability from these fields is not what it used to be because of oil theft in Nigeria and the fighting between militias and the government in Libya, with North Africa coming in at $18 per barrel and sub-Saharan Africa at below $15 per barrel, compared to $30 per barrel from Kazakhstan for the last 3 years, according to Kepler Cheuvreux. Another problem the new CEO faces is the 800 million euro loss at the refining operations in the last 2 years. The government has a 30% stake in Eni, making refinery closings a sensitive issue. Refinery product demand is down with the economic crisis in Italy....

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This article in the Economist provides a detailed account on women in the U.S. armed forces. France, the Netherlands, Australia and Canada exceed the U.S. in the percentage of women in the armed forces. The U.S. is at about 15%. This is a good time for women to join the armed forces as rules are being put in place to protect women from sexual assault, women are increasingly accepted in combat units and are accepted for training in the U.S. Army's elite ranger school. Women are in senior positions in the Navy and Air Force. Getting the best people, intellectually capable as well as pysically capable is a challenge for the new forces. Technology has changed the nature of war, and intelligence, preparation, strategy are critical elements for success. Much needs to be done, as the article at about the same time in the NYT about Lieutenant Courtney shows to get intellectually capable women to stay and invigorate the forces. As this article does to some degree the emphasis on physical prowess, and the lack of enough women in the forces to create pressure to create a better environment for women, act as inhibiting factors. The rules are still set in a way that provides less psychic support for women than they do for men. Some of the psychic stress shows up in the higher rate of single parents for female service members, with 12% of active duty women bringing up children on their own compared to 4% for men, and the failure of marraiges of female service members 3 times the rate for male service members....

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Three very important point about a soda tax. First, obesity was rated as the No 1 problem of concern for business leaders at a WSJ conference for business leaders at the beginning of the Obama administration in January 2009. If obesity related costs are taken out of health care, and even though they are not collected as statistics they must be significant, it would reduce the costs of providing universal health insurance. Especially considering that most diseases are exacerbated by obesity, and in some obesity figures as one of the leading causes. Second, Centers for Disease Control Data shows that a typical person now consumes 190 calories a day from sugary drinks, up from 70 a day in the late 1970's. That 120 calorie increase, an almost threefold jump in consumption of sugary sodas, represents one-half of the total daily caloric increase during that span per person, according to C.D.C. data. This is a crucial finding. Just one product alone can cause so much disruption in people's lives. Just as thrifty ways of living are becoming popular in America, better education in schools and communities on good nutrition and eating habits can become popular to reverse the bad habits acquired in the last 20 years, habits that are careless and reckless. Third, research shows that soda drinkers are price sensitive, so that in the past when soda prices went up by 10%, consumption dropped about 8%. So a tax on sugary sodas would make sense. The huge soda sizes at fast food places are one of the signs of the excess of this age with no regard for the consequences to health. living habits....

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New home sales in the USA rise 4.7% in February 2009 from the previous month, reversing the steady decline in new home sales from August of last year. This puts them at a 337,000 annual rate and this is sharply down from this time last year when sales were in the 500,000-600,000 range. A lot of the activity in housing sales is in foreclosure sales especially in California. Foreclosure sales in California in February 2009 were 58% of total existing home sales compared to 33% in February 2008 according to MDA DataQuick of San Diego, cited in Bloomberg News. The drop in the median home price for a existing single family detached home was sharp from $418,000 in February 2008 to $247,000 in February 2009, a drop of 41%. As aresult sales of existing family homes in California went up by 83% in February from the previous year as reported by the California Association of Realtors, shrinking inventories to about a 6 month supply if the current sales pace holds from the 15 month supply existing in 2008. The government's $8000 tax credit for purchases of homes, the falling prices and lower mortgage rates, are helping to lower inventories of new homes. The number for the US has fallen to 330,000 new homes, as inventories are dropping and new construction is slowing. The housing picture depends also on the number of jobs that are lost during the rest of 2009 and into 2010. And this will play abig part in determining whether housing recovers. The current job losses of 600,000 a month are grounds for caution....

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The domestic market is declining as Japanese consumers spend even less than before. Household spending declined by 3.5% in February, as unemployment went up to 4.4%. This means recovery based on domestic demand picking up is not going to happen. Exports declined by 46% in February 2009. Even though policymakers are trying to revive the domestic market, Japanese companies are looking for innovative ways to increase exports. Panasonic is making products specifically for emerging markets like China and Vietnam. In cars the domestic market is weak as younger Japanese are not showing an interest in buying new cars. Sales have gone down by half from the peak reached in 1990, and an industry organization expects sales to go to the lowest since 1977. Toyota saw overseas sales double since 1998, but Japanese sales declined by 10%. Sales of beer are declining as Japanese are shifting to drinking wine, so Kirin came up with a cheaper beer flavored drink in 2005 that did away with malt altogether, bought a winemaker. It is expanding overseas with $1.26 billion to raise its stake in Philippines beermaker San Miguel, and $1 billion in National Foods, an Australian company. Japanese are also becoming poorer in a relative sense, with Japanese income per capita not in the top five, it is now 19th in the world. And as the nation's birthrate declines, companies that make diapers like Unicharm are making diapers for the elderly, and products for pets called litter sheets. And Unicharm is expanding its network in China from 300 cities to 500 cities, is targeting the 18 million babies born in China, as well as selling diapers in South East Asia....

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Clearly a company thats privately held like Chrysler now is under Cerberus and under Feinberg's direction can provide the incentives, compensation and equity that others can't match. Feinberg was talking to Jim Press since this summer, and leaves Toyota at a time when it doesn't have any respected American face. Its surprising that his new role at Toyota even as a Board member left him away from the day to day operations that he loved doing and was unhappy about his role as mainly a public affairs person. At the same time the events in the credit markets and the broader economy also point to the urgency of having the right leadership in place. This is reflected in the difficulty financing $10 billion of the remaining Chrysler debt in the credit markets with investors reluctant to invest in prevailing market conditions, thus Cerberus and Daimler each took $2 billion in debt to complete the buyout. Top priorities for Chrysler getting the same concessions that the UAW gave GM and Ford in 2005 for health benefits. Tom LaSorda will lead these negotiations as well as look after plant operations and purchasing. Jim Press will lead the effort for product strategy, marketing and shaping Chrysler's new dealer network from the oversized network of 3700 dealers that it has become over the years. As this was his passion at Toyota and he has a decent credibility with Dealers. He also brings knowledge of the Toyota way of constant improvement which he applied in marketing and at the customer level in addition to its well known application in manufacturing....

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The Social Democrats suffered defeat and the lowest share of the vote in any election since 1949. THe SPD got only 23% of the vote down from 34% in the last election. The centre left parties in UK, France, Italy and Poland are also facing serious divisions between balancing social protections and business freedoms in a period of global competition. With its promarket reforms the SPD lost much of its traditional working class base.

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An overwhelming number of readers who commented on this article by October 27, 2009, were opposed to sending 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Looking at all comments in detail one finds that of the 64 readers commenting only a handful, about 8-9 supported sending these troops. Ninety percent of the comments to this editorial asking Obama to fight this war with conviction seriously questioned the wisdom of doing this. Many readers asked why aren't the Europeans putting thier lives at stake, and two asked how the Economist could with astraight face say that Britain's 500 troop increase was a welcome gesture. Readers questioned the assumptions and statements made by the Economist such as" letting the region "slip into amaelstrom of conflict," or "permanent cross-border instability," and "a terrible betrayal of the Afghan people, " in many of the comments. Readers seem conscious of the fact that its not a precipitate withdrawal that is being discussed, its a war for the long haul that it inevitably becomes as the US forces get deeper into the conflict in the mountains of Afghanistan. The discussion is not about the next 6 months but of next year and the year after that and the year after that. That is also what General Colin Powell advised President Obama. He asked Obama to think clearly about the clear goals of this mission. See the link to Powell. The question arises is whether the Economist sensitive to its readers thoughts on this subject, and it is how does it account for such an absolute majority of sensible readers having serious questions, doubts, and outright opposition to a deeper conflict in Afghanistan?...

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Arvind Panagriya, Prof. of Economics at Columbia University, points out the key initiatives of the Modi government in its first four years which will show results in future years for development of the country.  He mentions the Swachh Bharat Mission and cites results that show rural households with toilets are now 84% up from 38%.  By 2019 the whole country will be defecation zone free on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi. The Dhan Jan Yojana DJY accounts opened for rural households are up to 316 million. Aadhar cards for identification are up from 650 million to 1.2 billion. The Aadhar and DJY work together to enable direct transfer of benefits to poor households, eliminating the leaks in benefits transfer and ghost accounts of the period since independence in 1947. Not mentioned by Panagriya is the Health Insurance scheme for lower income households that enable families to survive a sudden medical expense that could put them in dire straits.  These efforts work in a way to change India from the ground up from its villages and rural areas as envisioned by Mahatma Gandhi in the struggle for independence. The land acquisition law amendments were put on hold till farmers concerns could be better accomodated, an area of concern for industrial development cited in an editorial in the Hindu newspaper. Fiscal consolidation and inflation targeting have resulted in an average inflation rate of 4.3% for the 4 years of the Modi government. Inflation was over 9% in the last 2 years of the previous Congress UPA government with GDP growth dropping to 5.9% for the last two years. Average GDP growth for four years for the Modi government is 7.3%, even after the changes to implement GST taxation for one national tax eliminating state barriers in interstate commerce and demonetization to fight corruption and black money. Rate of GDP growth should be higher after the gains from the initiatives and the new GST integration of the country are felt, with increase in investment and FDI, after infrastructure improvements and land acquisition arrangements are made. Transportation infrastructure modernization initiative pushes ahead with the first bullet train in the pilot project for Ahmedabad- Mumbai set to start in 2022. This is a $17 billion project financed for $13 billion by the Japanese government at 0.1% loan for 50 years, moratorium on repayments for 20 years, using E5 Shinkansen series technology. Implementation of this project on a sound financial basis should lead to transformation of the Indian rail network, raising the level of technology implementation across the entire Indian rail system. Such an achievement would rival the first introduction of railways into India in the nineteenth century under the British. A new bankruptcy law is intended to free up capital for investment by putting behind the large number of non performing loans in the Indian banking system. Changes made by the central bank RBI are designed to speed up this process so that loss making enterprises are absorbed, consolidated or shut down, a legacy from the earlier period.     ...

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The new low cost Abbott test is about the size of a credit card and can be adminstered in a doctor's or school nurse's office. Test results are given in 15 minutes. Abbott says 97% of positive cases are detected. Plans are to increase production to 50 million in October from tens of millions shipped in September. It sees this test as the kind of test that can help schools and offices reopen. It is called the Binax Ag Card. 

It searches for virus proteins and is intended for use within 7 days of coronavirus symptoms. It involves a nasal swab given by a health care worker or nurse.

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The Wall Street Journal points out that about 3.92 million people in the U.S. reported income above 200,000 in 2009, and paid $434 billion in taxes. Of these people 90% are not millionaires. The overwhelming majority of the people affected by an increase in taxes on the middle class with incomes above $200,000 are not millionaires. The editorial asks a question about "fairness" for these Americans- who pay a large share of their income for higher university tution payments for kids- for whom the taxes can make a difference.

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This WSJ editorial says prime minister Abe deserves to continue his efforts to revive the economy after Abe calls a snap election for Dec. 2014. It says the Finance Ministry's ideas for increasing spending and taxes have not worked to win over deflation. It points to the need for prime minister Abe to take supply side actions and get the Third Arrow of structural reform to work.

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The trade figures for Dec. 2012 show the deteriorating picture for Japan's exporters. This supports the reasoning of the new LDP government of Shinzo Abe to keep the yen down to support exporters. Figures for the full year show Japan was able to maintain a current account surplus of 4.70 trillion yen only because of investment income from overseas. The merchandise trade deficit for 2012 was the highest since 1985.