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President Goodluck Jonathan as "Mr. Clean" aroused many of the same hopes now aroused by the election of Buhari as president of Nigeria. Under Goodluck Jonathan Nigeria's foreign reserves declined from $50 billion to $33 billion, and there is $1 billion in the sovereign wealth fund. About $20 billion in pilfering of state funds was reported by the Central Bank of Nigeria, but no action was taken by Jonathan. Indians may pride themselves on a better performance, yet prime minister Singh of India, seen as "Mr. Clean," allowed auctioning of telecom licenses in the second term, that had to be cancelled because of corruption. Throughout emerging markets not just in oil producing countries, poverty remains entrenched, because funds that should go into infrastructure and services are misused, which creates a disincentive for foreign investment, further adding to the problems in these countries. India and Nigeria are the two fastest growing countries in the planet, and the unspoken fear is that the demographic dividend with so many young people will be wasted by corrupt and inefficient management of the economy and resources of the two countries. The time lost in the last years of the Singh administration and the four years of the Jonathan administration will never be regained, the hopes of millions of young people are dashed again and again, and the goodwill of Europe and the U.S. eager to participate with the latest technologies in the development of the two countries, as they have done in China, is wasted....

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The American consumer is becoming frugal since the crisis hit in 2008. But it will take along time to reduce the debt piled up over the years. By 2008 end American households had $13.8 trillion in debt, which is close to the $14.3 trillion output of the entire US economy, not adjsted for inflation in 2008. American households started 2008 with debt at 133% of disposable income. At the end of 2008 this had only dropped 3 percentage points to 130% of disposable income. With unemployment higher, companies reducing hours, and local governments having a certain number of days of furlough, and wage growth slow or nonexistent, the debt will take longer to reduce. WIth this debt overhang, and the lack of easy credit even though the credit markets are working again, its going to be harder to see a consumer driven V shaped recovery. In the 2001 recession consumers took on more debt to provide aconsumer driven V shaped recovery. At that time the debt to disposable income ratio went above 100%. See graph. And its gone up steadily since, with super low interest rates encouraging borrowing, and then as the Fed raised rates consumers went heavily into mortgages and housing in a speculative bubble. This time not only is the credit not there to finance such a recovery, but a number of conditions such as permanent loss of a large number of manufacturing jobs, rising unemployment and use of parttime workers, the need to payoff debt, create definite constraints to consumer spending....

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Facebook announced changes in June 2016 for the way its algorithm for news feed will work with increasing importance for content that is posted by the friends and family of users. The impact of this change is that the content directly posted by publishers will now get less importance. Under the Instant Articles initiative Facebook had previously given publishers a way to reach the larger social media audience it attracts. This now changes with publishers reminded of the uncertainty in the way social media sites continue to change their algorithm.

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Pat Gelsinger is right about "fighting for every inch" at Intel for everyday manufacturing chips that make up our lives, to not let market forces swinging wildly in different directions one moment this way the other way the next, decimate American Manufacturing. Regulators have a job to do to protect America's vital interests and of its people. AI surge for Nvidia make it a one trillion company one day and briefly a two trillion dollar company for a day. In 1998 only a small $15 million loan from Iramijiri of Japanese videogame company Sega helped Nvidia founder Jensen Huang survive when it took a hard turn and a design failed. Huang even says in WSJ he would not start the company if he did this again as market forces can be crippling for personal lives as well. What does this all mean? The Biden Administration has a plan to revive America's chip making genius and innovation that has driven America from 40% of the manufacturing of chips to 5%. Intel is right at the heart of this plan. The Chips and Science law will do this including $8.5 billion for Intel manufacturing which Pat Gelsinger is pushing forward for Intel Corp.  Here comes a company that has outsourced Manufacturing entirely- Qualcomm to takeover Intel. It knows nothing about Manufacturing, it cares nothing about American Manufacturing and loss of leadership in Manufacturing, and for the millions of people who work in America in factories and research facilities related to manufacturing design.  ...

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U.S. Federal Reserve minutes for Sept. 16-17, 2014 released October 8, show the mood shifting away from raising interest rates, as a stronger dollar and weak overseas growth are likely to lower U.S. economic growth, A stronger dollar is likely to keep inflation down. Fed officals showed serious concern about slowing economies of Europe, Japan and China lower U.S. exports. A former Fed adviser Jon Faust, director of the Center for Financial Economics at John Hopkins University, says even with no action from the Fed on interest rates, the stronger dollar makes financial conditions more restrictive, and acts as a tightening. The Fed minutes are before the crisis in Hong Kong which created geopolitical tensions and affects foreign investment climate for China, reducing Chinese growth even further.

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Britain staged a rehearsal for a pandemic called Cygnus in 2016. Till that time the preparations for a pandemic that started years earlier during the SARS crisis were conducted vigorously. Yet the by this time Britain was becoming immersed in the Brexit struggles in the ruling Conservative Party. Prime minister Cameron resigned on July 13, 2016  and was replaced by Theresa May. From that time on the struggles with pro Brexit factions led by Boris Johnson consumed the COnservative Party and sucked the life out of the pandemic planning that Britain had conducted for years before. The recommendations to correct deficiencies from the pandemic rehearsal exercize were ignored. The second failure happened as the crisis approached. Again the Brexit date of January 31 intervened and the months long struggle to get Brexit had taken so much energy and tired out most of the British public including new prime minister and leader of the Conservative Party Boris Johnson. Johnson did not attend the first Cobra meeting of the highest level ministers and military, convened on January 25, 2020, as reported in the Times. Such meeting are convened only for a national threat. Only 5 weeks later on March 2 did the prime minister attend a Cobra meeting. During this time the situation was grave in Italy with rising cases and infections. The entire process was conducted during this time by the Health minister Mr. Hancock who had assured the public that the situation was under control. Britain now has the highest number of infections in Europe exceeding that in Italy- at 240,000 on May 15, 2020. The prime minister and his adviser Mr. Cummings, were also infected by the virus, and Mr. Johnson spent time in ICU before recovering. Queen Elizabeth addressed the nation on Easter day, the first such address since 1940, to boost Briain's spirits. Never had Britain been less prepared as in 2020 when earlier preparations were ditched for austerity plans and events such as Brexit fatigue conspired to strip the nation of the crucial 5-6 weeks of preparation since the first January 25 Cobra meeting of the highest people in government.  Never had such preparation even for 6 weeks been more crucial than in February and March as the infectivity ratio was determined by infectious disease specialists at the best British universities and scientific institutions to be between 2.6 and 3.4 compared to the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 which was somewhere between 2.0 and 3.0. This means every one person infects another 3 persons, compared to about 1 person in a regular flu season. This reproduction ratio and the nature of coronavirus remain a threat today as Britain, Europe, the U.S. and the world reopens.  As reported in the Times the infectivity ratio was also the reason for the mindset that refused to believe that the virus was real because at 3.0 infectivity the only way to tackle it was a "lockdown," and this was itself an "apocalypse" scenario for many in the pro-Brexit Conservative party that won the election, which badly wanted to get back to economic activity after Brexit. ...

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US Business has considerable apprehension about the former president in 2024 compared to its willingness to consider Trump in 2016. At the time executives from investment bank Goldman Sachs and heads of oil companies joined the Trump administration. This time US business and corporate interests are apprehensive about becoming the target of a tweet they might find the next morning under a Trump administration. They are not supportive of student loan forgiveness, but when it comes to the CHIPS and Science Act they see president Biden as effective and helping industry. Business leaders have a negative view on the Trump effort through appointment of 3 Supreme Court Justices of overturning decades old rights of women on abortion, and on this issue alone many will support Harris-Walz, overriding other concerns they might have. The visions of Harris and Trump are so vastly different with one calling climate change a hoax and hyping up social issues and infrastructure needs without any record of delivery when in office, and the other a strong position on climate change, wages and income, delivering on infrastructure and CHIPS that US Business. The result is that it leaves US Business with no better option in 2024 than to support the vision  that takes America forward. There are different sections of the business community which have different priorities.  Silicon Valley, and oil, pharmaceuticals because it profits most from light regulation which brings with it social costs is a special issue not addressed here. Other business, banking, automobiles, and a range of other industries have other priorities yet also see the need for the economy and the US to move forward with a different vision than one that simply ignores climate change, and fails to address child care, child poverty, wide disparities in wealth, and other issues facing of wages, cost of living facing most Americans.  ...

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Whats the breakdown of costs for Detroit's Three Auto Companies. The following infomation is from documents submitted by Ford Motor Company to Congress. Detroit Auto Companies Foreign Makes like Toyota Hourly cost Hourly cost Hourly wage for workers $29 $26 (Toyota Kentucky plant) Holidays and Vacation pay & pay for Detroit laid off workers $14 $9 Cost of Health Care and Pensions for $16 Toyota has only 300 retired retired workers workers Overall cost $71 $49 The biggest difference is in the cost of paying laid off workers, jobs banks, and in the cost of paying the health care and retirement pensions of retired workers. And for GM there are about 1 million of them, (96,000 active workers, 497,000 retired workers and also the dependents of retired workers) costing GM $4.8 billion on health care. At $1500 per car for GM costs on health care vs. $200 per car for health care costs at Toyota. The difference is $1300. If this is factored in to the profitability of small cars then the field is skewed one way. On a $23,000 car that is a 5% margin right there for adiffernce of $1100 in health care costs. If this is the way profit is calculated on small cars with this health care differential factored in then there is always a muddleheaded tendency to product he bigger cars and trucks because they can absorb this differential better. But it doesn't make sense that this should dictate how the business is run. And it could lead to serious mistakes which appears to be the situation at the Detroit companies, the way they went into the downturn right into 2008 with a product mix that was going to be hit hardest by a change in customer preferences. ...

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An enormous achievement of president Joe Biden and of the Federal Reserve's Powell goes unrecognized with the highest growth of any the economically developed nations by far in the US, as groups stuck in old frayed concepts of economic orthodoxy and wanting to keep as FDR said "their place in the economic order," work to denigrate this achievement. They have sold trickle down economics, broken some common sense rules about failures in indiscriminate use of tariffs from the 1930's, which will put at risk this remarkable growth in the US economy. And does the current economic leadership respect Rural White people, Republicans in Republican States Absolutely. It is sending the largest part of the IRA Act funds to these states. It is also standing up for workers and families even on the picket lines for higher wages, a better future for America. True it is that in 4 years the effects of problems that were unanticipated from the pandemic relief and the supply chain crisis with ensuing inflation and price gouging in groceries and essential items, have affected the most depressed groups in America including blacks and Latinos and rural White Americans. These also are largely in the process of being overcome.      ...

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Car insurance and tariffs on Mexico made auto parts would take a 2 year lag in inflationary impact, says this report in WSJ. Insurance companies will wait to see the impact and how long the tariffs are in place. Tariffs are put in place to stop fentanyl flows through Canada, Mexico and China to the US, which have cost 490,000 deaths in the US over the last 12 years. Canada now fully supports the US for action to be taken and cites similar loss of lives in Canada from fentanyl comparable to the US for its smaller population. Much of the focus on tariffs is seen as economic action in the media, when as Commerce Secretary Luttnick pointed out it is being used as an instrument to get immediate action from countries that have not acted to stop the flow of fentanyl -action they should have done taken many years back. DJT's action is to protect average Americans, communities across the US that have lost their manufacturing base to Mexico and China, and are being hit by the flows of fentanyl across borders for over a decade now. Never in American history has this kind of flow across borders happened since the first settlers came to America in 1600. ...

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The lack of trust in negotiations on the terms of spending cuts between Greece and EU ministers in February 2011. In difficult exchanges between German finance minister Schauble and Greece's finance minister Venizelos, Schauble criticized the Greek government for not beginning negotiations for reduction in the minimum wage. EU ministers at a meeting with Venizelos on Feb 10, 2012, showed a distrust of Greece's figures on austerity cuts and asked for an additional $428 million in cuts to make up for the refusal of Greece to cut supplemental pensions. In Greece five ministers in the Greek cabinet resigned in protest over the conditions set by the troika of the EC, ECB and the IMF, just as unions launched a 48 hour strike in Athens. Greece is in the fifth year of a recession with unemployment at over 20%, making sharp cuts more painful. A shrinking economy makes achieving budget defict targets even more difficult and worsening the debt situation.

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Goggle's Eric Schmidt speaks at the annual meeting of the Newspaper Association of America on the issues raised by Google News use of newspaper content. He says it is unlikely that Google would buy the content behind a pay wall for a subscription and make it available to users for free. Under the current arrangement only AP is paid for content. Newspapers can choose not to be part of the Google Search but choose to get traffic from Google Search to their websites, and from Google News to their websites, which they monetize through advertising. Schmidt provided as one solution publishers creating more personalized news products that could be effectively delivered on the Web, on mobile phones and on the iPad.

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The relations between the former president Obama and the current president Trump have soured in the first 100 days. Obama lauded activists opposing the travel ban, and Trump sees leaks being conducted for his administration by Obama supporters. Obama was clear from the beginning that he would voice his opinion when it came to systematic discrimination, right to dissent, and deportation of children. Trump's claims that Obama ordered his offices to be wiretapped during the election have caused a rift. Trump took to Twitter to says that Affordable Care Act was "a total disaster," and made it personal by saying "How low has President Obama gone to tap my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!" Attorney General Sessions said he will recuse himself from the investigations into Russian efforts to influence the election.

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Lawyers Buchheit and and Gulati help Greece design a legal agreement that writes in a new collective action clause. The collective action clause ensures a 95% participation for the bond restructuring deal Greece is doing in March 2012 to cut its debt to sustainable levels. A similiar deal could be designed for Portugal says Mitu Gulati, a law professor at Duke University. Because Greece's bonds are written under Greek law, writing in a new collective action clause is a legal mechanism for achieving a meaningful debt reduction and bond restructuring deal- this is something Gulati and Buchheit figured out because of their expertise in this field. A joint paper by Buchheit and Gulati in 2010, first explored the way in which private bondholders of Greek bonds who reject a bond debt restructuring could be forced to accept the same losses as other investors who accepted the deal. They are now advisors to the government of Greece. In early 2011 there was serious discussion that the Brady Bonds debt restructuring for Latin American debt of Argentina, Mexico and Brazil of the 1980's, under which private investors traded in their old bonds for new bonds with longer duration at reduced interest rates and lower value- reflecting voluntary losses accepted by bondholders- was the approach needed for Greece, Portugal, Ireland and other eurozone countries. Then U.S. Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady took the lead- in Landon Thomas Jr., NYT, 11/30/2010. Bondholders held out throughout this period, with Charles Dallara, one of the architects of the Brady bonds restructuring, hired by European banks to negotiate on their behalf. It was only when German Chancellor Merkel delivered an ultimatum by telling Dallara "this is the last offer," during a late night meeting on Oct. 27, 2011, at EU headquarters in Brussels, was an agreement reached on serious debt reduction- in Walker, Forelle, Meichtry, WSJ, 12/30/2011. The long delay meant a worsening crisis in Greece and the rest of the eurozone. ...

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One of the quirks of the unemployment rate released by the Labor Department is that it is declining- declined to 8.1% from 8.2%, from March to April 2012- even though the number of unemployed may be increasing. When adjusted for the discouraged workers who would be working today in a more normal environment the unemployment rate today would be around 11%. Crucial in grasping unemployment numbers is the labor force participation rate- showing the number of working age Americans with jobs or looking for jobs- which is affected by the number of baby boomers retiring and leaving the work force, and by the number of workers who are too discouraged to look for work. The long term unemployed currently form about 40% of people unemployed in the U.S., which is quite high and cause for concern for Fed chairman Bernanke. Many of these long term unemployed it is feared will permanently drop out of the workforce, causing a drop in the productive potential of the economy and lowering economic growth. Already many have dropped out of the workforce, causing the labor force participation rate to decline faster than the gradual decline seen in the last decade as baby boomers retire. Between 2009 and 2012, a three year period, the labor force participation rate dropped about 2% to 63.6%, compared to the normal drop of 1.3% over a seven year period from 2000 to 2007. Combining the impact of the two trends, one demographic and the other a result of the 2008 global financial crisis and excessive risks in the U.S. banking system, leads analysts to to lower the longer term economic growth forecast for the U.S. to 2%, compared to the U.S. Fed's forecast for 2.3-2.6% growth....

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Efforts by prime minister Erdogan of Turkey to reach a peace agreement with the Kurdish PKK and its leader Mr. Ocalan who is in a Turkish prison since 1999. Mr. Ocalan is reported to be ready to reach an agreement. Prime minister Erdogan is keen on reaching an agreement because of the war in Syria, where a group related to the PKK and Ocalan is in control of the Kurdish northeastern region in Syria. This creates a situation where the Kurds in northern Iraq and in Syria could form a Kurdish state. Other reasons for Erdogan to push forward with an agreement are his intention to rewrite the Turkish constitution to setup an executive presidency. Erdogan would then be able to run for president. He would need Kurdish voters support for this move. In recent years Turkey has moved closer to Iraq, is its main trading partner and a destination for Turkish exports. Turkey now sees itself as a regional power in the Middle East after years of waiting to become part of the European Union. Turkey sees other advantages for this move to a peaceful Middle East- it sees benefits from trade with Egypt, and a new Syria after the fall of the Assad regime, making the whole region a destination for Turkish exports and foreign investment. As part of this move Erdogan's administration is lifting curbs on the use of the Kurdish language in the Kurdish southeast of Turkey and in the regional capital of Diyarbakir. This is an example of how trade, commerce and changing political conditions can create peaceful progress. It is reminiscent of the situation in Spain where the Catalan language was suppressed by the government of Franco till the 1980's, when the formation of the European Union and the changed political climate led to autonomy for Catalonia under a elected federal government....

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Only refugees from war zones are eligible for asylum in Germany. People coming from the Balkan countries looking for better job opportunities are being sent back home in September 2015.

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Boris Johnson, who heads a minority government in Britain following resignation of Theresa May, will do just about anything to push Britain out of the European Union by October 31st. He has said he would "rather be dead in a ditch" than ask for an extension of the October 31st deadline. The British parliament is dead set on preventing that and has passed legislation requiring a extension of the October 31st deadline to January 2020. Johnson is even willing to go to jail for breaking the law, on the grounds that he is simply supporting the people's referendum choice over an elected parliament. This is itself a strange situation because the elected representatives in parliament decide for the people, and views in a referendum can change over time. Johnson says the reports of Britain's economy taking a blow from simply falling out of the European Union without a negotiated deal are exaggerated. He even once said all it means is that there might be "a shortage of Mars chocolate bars." Before becoming prime minister with a one vote majority in parliament which he promptly lost on the first day parliament met, Boris was a journalist who was elected Mayor of London. His only other position was for a brief period with controversy as Foreign Secretary in Theresa May's government. By taking in as chief adviser the head of the Brexit referendum Leave campaign Mr. Cummings, Mr. Johnson shows he believes he could win a general election with a carefully orchestrated campaign like that of Leave that blames the Labour Party, and the Scottish National party for stopping Brexit and halting the people's mandate.  The question is whether Cummings has gone too far or Boris Johnson has gone too far using Cumming's methods and views. Many Conservative moderates were expelled from the Conservative Party by Johnson and Cummings leaving the Conservative Party in self-destructive mode and the worst shape it has been in its history. It is not clear that after 10 years of austerity and rule by the Conservative party, and the mess from the single minded pursuit of Brexit that has overshadowed Britain's other priorities, that the British public would simply give a broken Conservative Party another mandate without thinking carefully about all the consequences. More so amid the lack of trust that is a feature of the Boris Johnson minority government.  ...