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Uber built up about $30 billion in operating losses and burnt up huge amounts of capital with its access to capital from from financial markets in the US, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. 2023 is the first year for profits of $1.43 billon of which the larger part of it $1 billion is from equity investments. It went public in 2019. Lyft a competitor of Uber has not yet turned a profit. Contrary to the general impression these kinds of startups have burnt enormous amounts of capital, and diverted capital from essential needs such as education, healthcare services, and public transportation. Consider the case of lack of investment in the New York subway system that lags so far behind that in other cities such as Tokyo to make it incomprehensible. The New York Port Bus Terminal  needed to be replaced- the planning took 10 years and the new terminal building will not be completed till 2032. Essential investments that improve the lives of millions of people in our cities are neglected or delayed. The real crowding out of capital from essential public needs is a feature of the Reagan era economics that have created many of the problems we face today of underfunding where it really counts. The capital allocation system is distorted so that capital does not generate proper returns or benefit the largest part of the population. ...

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Visiting the new presidential libraries is an excellent way to understand the history of America, American democracy at work, to grasp civic responsibilities, and to have a day's outing overlooking amazing landscapes. This NYT report shows the new JFK Library overlooking Boston harbor. The first Library and Museum of Franklin Roosevelt in Hyde Park opened in 1951 and shows that period of the Depression and the recovery under FDR, the Second World War. A visit to the JFK Library is an opportunity to see a temporary War exhibit with JFK's own experience in the war in the Navy. A Boston Harbor walk is also part of the experience on a 43 mile greenway on city's waterfront. Eisenhower's in Abilene Kansas and the Reagan Library are also shown in this report. New Exhibit at Eisenhower's library and museum shows connections between the suffragette movement of the 1950's and Ike's election in 1952. It also shows an exhibit on the Cold War. These issues are relevant today as is the exhibit in the FDR Museum on the New Deal- on Freedom from Want, Freedom from Fear. Libraries and museums of 13 presidents are open today. Under the Presidential Libraries Act of 1955 these libraries are privately built and federally managed, run by the Presidential Office of Libraries which falls under the National Archives. ...

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Punjab National Bank has seen fradulaent transactions for $2 billion in 2018 by 2 jewelers, a power and steel company defrauding it of $550 million in 2019, and now bad loans defrauding it of $491 to a housing lender Dewan Housing Finance Corp. Dewan Finance is in insolvency resolution under the RBI, the central bank of India.  To clean up this banking sector mess, a result of bad loans by banks after the 2008 financial crisis, the RBI has taken some serious steps. One of the steps in 2017 was to order major banks to resolve bad debts or refer the debts to bankruptcy courts. RBI took over Yes Bank , and the largest state bank the State Bank of India organized a consortium of banks to invest $1.35 billion to support Yes Bank. In other action the government has merged smaller lenders and banks with larger banks. Much of the bad lending is a result of bad lending practices without due diligence taken, poor management, and bad administration from an earlier period. The lack of strong banking sector is holding back India's growth and GDP growth as there is less to lend for infrastructure or industrial projects. The result is growth that has fallen below 6% in recent years, and the Modi government sees this as an obstacle to rapid growth of the economy under its Atmanirbhar Bharat plan for a self-reliant economy. ...

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France's high speed train network SNCF and its new trains TGV m are the focus of French Connections series in FR24. It is a great success for France as it connects 230 cities across France and decentralizes the country making remote areas reachable in hours. 770 kms Paris Marseille is covered in 3 hours. It has transported about 3 billion passengers since its founding in 1981 under Francois Mitterand. 122 million people traveled on TGV trains in 2023, and this is increasing by 20% a year. The trains travel at 350 kilometers an hour and are capable of over 500 kms per hour. For countries like India this is very useful to know as the first bullet trains based on Japanese technology are being built for route Bombay- Ahmedabad- Jaipur- Delhi. It shows that if it worked so well in France it can work well in the US or India. In India it could transport many times the 122 million in France and connect remote regions exceeding 1000 kms. Madras Srinagar is 3000 kms or 1900 miles. Imagine this being done in 7 hours at 400 kms per hour. It would really decentralize India. Same for the US for Austin Texas to Boston Massachusetts 1600 miles in 7 hours. It would better integrate communities in the US that are far apart socially.   ...

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Few questions asked on the real issue -what went wrong in Ann Selzer's poll showing Harris ahead of DJT in Iowa by 3 percentage points, with error of plus or minus 3.4%. 3 days before the US presidential election. The actual result was DJT winning by 13 percentage points- how did Selzer get it so wrong? Selzer hints at the answer when she says "the reality is that more people supporting DJT turned out." That is what happened. One should know also that the polling methodology Ann Selzer uses does not look at the previous election turnout because it is not science says Selzer to think that the electorate has not changed in 4 years. She defends this by saying Obama won in 2012 yet DJT won in 2016 because the electorate had changed. Polling has to take into account the zeal or lack of zeal for vote turnout- and ways to measure it. It appears that the Republicans were more zealous than Democrats for their candidate on issues such as transgender and anxiety it causes parents, and about the millions of illegal migrants crossing the Border and the illegal flow of fentanyl across the Border, and working class Americans did not see infrastructure spending in their grocery store just prices soaring and lack of affordability of everything. ...

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Andy Kessler looks at the prospects for China's effort to dominate the market for advanced chips used in everyday devices, just as it did in solar panels and electric vehicle batteries.  He says Apple leaves US manufacturing technologies at a disadvantage by securing its M1 processor chip from Taiwan's TSMC. Intel has fallen behind in 10 nanometer chips and will need a few years says Kessler.  Kessler says Chinese threat to invade Taiwan which has made the US and the EU take a firmer stand on Ukraine poses a danger to TSMC which has 5 fabs or factories in just 1 science Park- Hsinchu Science Park. This poses a question is it safe to concentrate about 92% of the world's semiconductor production in one place Taiwan so close to the mainland of China? And knowing sit tight taking no action? Google's last chairman Eric Schmidt asks this question in the WSJ and calls for a new investments in the US to manufacture advanced semiconductors and other semiconductors for everyday use so that the US national security is protected. Even the $50 billion that is in Congressional legislation has yet to be approved by the US Congress, says Schmidt, showing that US Congress is not moving quickly to address this problem. South Korea and Taiwan including TSMC need to be told to make a large part of the semiconductors in the US and other locations such as India to diversify production. 92% of world semiconductors made in Taiwan that could be taken out with a few missiles, is no way to diversify manufacturing, when manufacturing can be done in India or other parts of the world with lower costs and with needed engineering manpower. ...

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This podcast in WSJ tells the amazing story of the development of a vaccine for malaria by a British scientist that took forty years. In a world of short run startups this tells the story of medical and indirectly other research include research on renewable energy to tackle climate change that takes years to develop and makes a lasting change in our lives. This is also true of the mRNA vaccine developed by two German scientists of Turkish descent who developed the Pfizer vaccine. The Novavax vaccine in the US also has a story of resilience in the face of many challenges. Mr Scholz of the SDP, currently vice chancellor of Germany and winner of the German election said recently he wanted to expose the myth that was created of the self-made man that has penetrated our culture over the last 2 decades. One cannot even conceive of self made people at a time when the whole world depends on vaccines developed such as mRNA vaccine by these 2 German scientists at university labs that are the first line of defense against the coronavirus. Both scientists took only half a day off when they got married. Both are children of immigrants to Germany from Turkey. They both cycle to work. Mr. Shin says "I don't have a car. I am not going to get a plane. What's life changing is to be able to impact something in the medical field." The electric batteries used in today's electric cars use technology developed by a Japanese scientist and professor who also worked at Toshiba in the face of many challenges. ...

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For years Peter Bernstein has watched the US markets, from the postwar recession of 1958 till today. He is now 89 years old. He sees 2 culprits one is oversecuritization and the second is years of overborrowing by financial institutions and consumers alike. He rules out a V shaped business cycle. he sees an L shaped business cycle or a a flat U. It would be a flat U because it will take a long time for the memory to recover from the excesses of recent years and the consequences. He remembers the early years after World War II, it took a very long time to get the depression out of business and banking decisions. And he says one of the things that helped people take risks was the feeling that the central bank had got things right and knew what it was doing but he says the Fed too now is going to feel what it should do now is less clear. So the feeling going forward will be to be very careful. He thinks this will take a long time to clear up, much longer than people think. Not 2009, he is sure they are wrong, there has to be a respite along the way is how he puts it. He says until credit is going up instead of down you can't have growth. And he thinks housing has to be a part of this. And then there is the uncertainty. What if, what if China goes into a recession? His point that " nothing can go in one direction forever." And China has been growing like this for twenty years since the 1990's. It just does'nt go on forever. and there has to be a respite. Again here him speak: first he goes to housing, he says somehow housing has to flatten out. Then he shifts to say "we have to underpin the consumer" and with that he shifts to saying this is why its different, and to saying this is why its like nothing we have had before. And then he turns to investment, saying its investment that made the V at the bottom of the cycle but he doesn't see the consumer in the USA coming up with a positive till he has worked out the excesses of overspending. Exports or consumer overseas? He thinks they maybe too infected by us to do it. Though Asian growth will help....

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The fickle basis for recovery in the Phoenix real estate market with a surge in buying of speculative buyers from out of state or Canada. One in four buyers is from out of state or Canada. The normal buying by homeowners or apartment renters moving up is absent.

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This exceptional and detailed WPost report by Rosenwald, Boorstein and Clement on Pope Francis's popularity, also shows that on other aspects of the Catholic community's openness in the pews change is slow and gradual. In the parishes and on the pews for practicing Catholics there are not many signs of change. And Catholics who do not go to church are not coming back to the pews in increasing numbers. A slight surge under Pope John Paul II after his visit in 1993 for World Youth Day faded out, and this time the situation with Pope Francis's visit looks to be no different. About 1 in 8 Americans consider themselves former Catholics, according to the 2014 Pew Religious Landscape Survey. The Post-ABC poll of September 7-10, 2015 shows 45% of self-identified Catholics saying they attend Mass about once a week or more frequently, 19% attending monthly, and 35% saying they attend less frequently or never. There is a large gap between Pope Francis's popularity among Catholics with about 75% holding strongly favorable views, compared to 47% strongly favorable for the Catholic Church. Kathleen Cummings of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame, says the difference is because Pope Francis has accentuated the positive. The Pope's own roots in Argentina and his practice of a more humble Catholicism as a bishop, his intermingling with people in the subways in Buenos Aires and in poorer neigborhoods of the city, not only affirms the original teachings of the Church, but also affirms this at a time when the bishops and the Church have drifted away from the original message, in a period of increasing social disparities in the Western World, Latin America and Asia. The Pope has called for helping immigrants, migrants, refugees, the poor, and the environment. Most people in the U.S. are comfortable with the Pope's activism on social issues and saying this before a joint session of Congress in the U.S. on September 25, 2015. To shake up the lethargy in the Church hierarchy Pope Francis described the bishops of the church in the Christmas 2014 message as "lords of the manor, superior to everyone and everything," and having "spiritual Alzheimer's." The extent of support for the Pope's activism shows how the public now views the need for someone of the Pope's stature to speak out on issues of social, economic and environmental change. Only 14% of Americans in the September 2015 Post/ABC poll say Pope Francis should be less active. 30% of Catholics say more active is better, and 50% say continue the way he is. And over half of non-Catholics want him to continue to speak out. Issues of the role of women in the church, abortion and same-sex marraige continue to create differences. By focussing on the original teachings of the church for humility, a humble church, and serving the poor and less fortunate, the Pope has reached the hearts of most Americans and people around the world, in a way unimaginable only a few years before....

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This editorial in the Economist magazine says the banks have paid large fines for wrongdoing but individual accountability has not been achieved. Only one individual conviction has been achieved related to market rigging in Britain. The penalties paid by banks between 2009 to 2014 worldwide add up to $245 billion, according to CCP, a research group. The problem says the editorial is that without individual accountability this is likely to be seen just as a cost of doing business. For the culture at banks to change individual acountability has to be established, and only now are banking regulators realizing that the public's disillusionment with the political parties in power during the last decade in Europe and the U.S. has its roots also in the way accountability has been tackled. Editorials in the WSJ and the NYT have addressed the same theme and expressed the same concern. The May 21, 2014 editorial on the U.S. Justice Department's legal settlement with Credit Suisse. "Holder convicts Switzerland," was critical of the Justice Department because this settlement did not bring accountability or justice. Columnists Eavis and Reilly in the WSJ, Protess and Greenberg in the NYT, were also critical of the settlement. Other legal settlements followed the same pattern throughout 2012-2015. Another aspect of this and a larger problem is that the same management has remained in place in some places. Shareholders expressed their feelings at the recent Deutsche Bank meeting in June 2015 when one shareholder association asked the question: "Mr. Jain are you the solution to the problem or part of it?" questioning how the same management that created the problems was going to fix the problems. A week later the two co-CEO's departure was announced and a new CEO appointed. BaFin, Germany's regulatory authority was described as not providing effective oversight on management at Deutsche Bank, by Eyk Henning in the WSJ March 28, 2014. It is too early to say if the public's frustration with the slow pace of establishing accountability and generating culture change is at long last registering with regulators and the political parties running the government. Prime minister Cameron and chancellor George Osborne's decision to put $1 billion into communities throughout Britain from the fines, described in the WSJ May 31, 2015, and an additional $227 million pounds from a legal settlement with Deutsche Bank in April 2015 for creating 50,000 apprenticeships, is the first sign of a conviction developing in political parties that instincts of fairness and the compact between the people and their government handed down over many, many years and generations, need to be respected. In the U.S. communities devastated by the recession and foreclosure crisis, especially inner cities, could benefit from Cameron and Osborne's exceptional idea. For the political parties and the political elites in Europe and the U.S. it is a way to restore some of the trust lost in the last decade. For banks a change of management, cultural change, will benefit the employees and shareholders, and improve relationships with customers, restoring trust over the next decade....

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The month of August 2011 ranks as the 10th worst month for U.S. stocks in 75 years. Or to put it another way of the last 900 months, the month of August 2011 ranks the 10th worst month in terms of volatiltiy. The average up and down movement each day in August was 1.%. In August the Dow Jones Industrial Averages were down 529 points, or a drop of 4.4%. This is not what worries investors as much- as their are months like May 2010 which had a 7.9% drop. The impact on investors is in the increased uncertainty that this creates about how an investment will perform in the future.

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James Warren talks to judges and other experts who are skeptical about the value of deterrance in stopping white collar criminal behaviour. Jim Cramer of the television financial markets show, says that on Wall Street they fear nothing more than jail time. Warren, who says the greatest corruption of legal and illegal kinds is to be found today in the financial sector, is still not convinced. He asks why was this guy Bagojevich elected a second time, when it was clear throughout Chicago and in Springfield that pay-to-play was typical of his behaviour. Is the public some virtuous group that gets hit with these undeserved types or is it that the public gets the politicians it deserves.

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Turner Adair, head of Britain's Financial Regulatory Authority thinks that banks have assumed an outsize role in the British and world economy, and are coopting their regulators. He sees the need to check many of the excesses. Why not use profits to build up reserves rather than give out huge bonuses and paychecks, he asks. He sees the need to challenge the accepted thinking on Wall Street and in the City of London, where the ideology of efficient markets became embedded, as it did also in the regulatory community. He came in the week Lehman Brothers collapsed as chairman of the FSA. And he wants to shake up the existing thinking. In March, the Turner Review. a 126 page report was published. A lot of attention was paid to his suggesting atax on financial transactions, called the Tobin tax, but its designed more to get people thinking and questionning the existing way of running banking as Turner said in an interview, "we have begun to accept this idea of liquidity as the new God." Can British or American society and the financial industry in both countries work to the benefit of both? Nobel prize winning economists and other experts have advised ashift to productive investments that grow the economy using technology, science and brainpower and new ideas, as opposed to the investment in mortgages and other speculative investments. As the regulators -including former and current heads of the SEC, and other regulatory bodies in the US, Cox, Schapiro and others- once held on to the same theory of uninhibited operation of free markets as best for generating increased wealth for society as the banking community, they tended to get co-opted in letting bad practices flourish. Went to sleep on the job as it were. See the links in Intelilinks. Adair Turner's admonitions are designed to get people thinking. He says, "banks need to be willing, like the regulator, to recognize that there are some profitable activities so unlikely to have a social benefit, direct or indirect, that they should voluntarily walk away from them." Investments in science, technology and new products, as in the 60's that generated a revolution in living standards, than the mortgages and consumer lending of the last decade, is what he may be saying, as do these Nobel prize winning economists....

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This WSJ editorial points out that the biggest thing in Mr Renzi's favor is the desire for change in Italy, and the public frustration that favors "haste and boldness." Renzi's changes to the tax code are needed as many middle class Italians take less than half of their pay after taxes. Business will get relief from high payroll taxes to boost employment and create new jobs. The current payroll taxes of between 28% to 30% for employers and another 9% for employees are too high.The lower taxes should also reduce the part of the economy that is underground and increase tax revenues. One opinion survey show 48% of Italians favor leaving Italy because of the economic stagnation, another reason to move with speed on the changes.

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White, Thomson and Blumenstein interview Russian President Medvedev. Medvedev says he is very conscious of what is happening to the EU and its fiscal affairs, and to the euro, in this intervew. He sees Russia's future as a European country closely related to the future of the EU and its member countries, especially how the EU countries do as they adopt austerity measures and cut spending.

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Hysteresis is the term used for entrenched stubborn unemployment especially as workers stay on the job market for so long that they become dispirited and permanently unemployed. Britain's New Deal policies introduced by the Labor party do not work well in such situations because forcing people to find jobs has to be accompanied by jobs being available. The most successful so far are job subsidizing programs like Germany's Kurzarbeit. Kurzabeit encourages companies to adopt shorter working hours and reduce job losses and layoffs, because 60% of the lost income is paid to workers by the government. Since September 2008 the numbers taking advantage of this scheme went up from 80,000 to 1.4 million in June 2009. At present the OECD counts 22 governments that support a shorter working week to reduce job losses.

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Seib points out why the current political landscape with the popularity of Trump and Sanders reflects demographic, economc and social changes in America compared to when Geroge H.W. Bush won the election in 1988 and Bill Clinton won in 1992. The Republican party is more populist, with older Americans, more Southern and conservative, making it harder for Jeb Bush or Wall Street backed candidates. The Democratic Party more liberal, more popular on both the east and west coast of the U.S., with younger Americans, diverse demographic groups, making it harder for Hillary Clinton as an establishment candidate. A Journal/NBC poll of Oct. 2015 shows 28% of Republicans describing their views as very conservative, and 26% of Democrats saying they are very liberal. Yet there is another aspect that will show up once the primaries are over. And this is the steady group of somewhat conservative and moderate combined in the Republican Party of 64%, and the steady group of somewhat liberal and moderate in the Democratic Party of 62% in the 2015 Journal/NBC poll. The moderates are up from 26% in the above 1990 poll to 31% in the 2015 poll for the Republican Party, and from 26% to 33% in the Democratic Party. So that one sees about a quarter of people polled in each party pushing for fringe views and a countervailing trend for moderate or close to moderate views with about two thirds support in the 2015 Journal/NBC poll for each party....

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RFK Jr. and the effort to cut dyes, sugar, ultra processed foods, in the diet of the US and the UK.

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Mexican president Nieto's poll numbers are at all time low of 24%, according to Reforma newspaper. He took office in late 2012 and has been hurt by human rights scandal of the murder of 43 students in the state of Guerrero, corruption issues, and failure to improve the economy. The invitation to Trump to visit Mexico left even people close to the president surprised, and was criticized widely inside Mexico. It is not clear what Trump or Nieto gained from the trip. As Trump continued his talk about building a wall on the Mexican border and having Mexico pay for the estimated $23 billion it would cost. He did this in a speech to supporters in Pheonix on the same day he met Nieto, showing the use of teleprompters and prepared script was not his way of campaigning. Just as the message to black people that Democrats take them for granted cannot resonate without the basic message delivered with compassion and understanding- such as done by the presidents Bush and Reagan- so also the message to Hispanic people is suffering from the same lack of empathy. Recent polls show only 3% of blacks support Trump. McCain and Romney gained only 4-6% in the U.S. presidential elections of 2008 and 2012. The message of the wall is also baffling as an election strategy. A Gallup poll in July 2016 shows only 15% of Americans opposing a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants, and only 24% of Republicans. There is another problem in the strategy. The rhetoric about walls and mass deportations, and the Trump temperament combined with handling of nuclear weapons is not winning college educated women in the suburbs with polls showing Trump lagging behind Clinton by about 20 points or 4 million voters with this group. It is hard to undo the damage done by this kind of rhetoric used in the primary elections as it gains distrust of voters. It would require a bad economy with illegal immigrants taking local jobs, and handling of immigration seen as weak, for such a message to gain some national traction. Both are absent for the most part with a steadily improving economy since 2012, lower unemployment, a tough enforcement policy on deportatons under Obama that exceeded that under Geoge W. Bush, and the talk of a wall comes with illegal immigration having declined steeply since the 2008 financial crisis. The real culprit appears to be elsewhere, the triple hit taken from hollowing out of the manufacturing economy that hurt the Conservatives in Canada, the insecurity created for older whites from the job losses and hits to net worth from the 2008-2009 financial crisis, and the increasing loss of access to health care and educational opportunities with high  costs. About 62 million households or the bottom half of the distribution in the U.S. have a net worth of about $10,000, a quarter of this group having zero net worth, according to the Federal Reserve's Janet Yellen at an Inequality Conference in Oct 2014. Problems no wall is going to solve, problems that built up over 2 decades, problems that will take a generation to fix.  It shows the tech miracle of the last 2 decades as a mirage for quality of life of the middle and working class. Tech as a tool to a goal, not a goal in itself, is the better way forward. ...

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The firing of John Bolton as National Security Adviser opens up the possibility of a meeting of Trump with President Rouhani of Iran. There is a need for both sides to begin talks on a nuclear deal that would replace the one Iran signed with president Obama to address issues raised by Mr. Trump and Republicans. Iran and countries that buy oil from Iran such as India, China and Japan have an interest in relief from sanctions imposed by the Trump administration on imports of Iranian oil. The European Union is keen to preserve aspects of the nuclear deal. Relief from sanctions is critical for Iran to develop its economy. The last two decades have seen Iran struggle to develop its economy with the sanctions imposed by  different U.S. administrations.   President Trump expressed flexibility on sanctions saying "we will see what happens. I think Iran has potential. They are incredible people." President Rouhani urged Mr. Trump "to put warmongers aside." Mr. Trump told reporters that he had resisted Mr. Bolton's opinions on issues and realized he had moderate views when compared to someone like Bolton.  Trump told Iran "We are not looking for regime change. We hope we can make a deal and if we can't make a deal thats fine too. But I think they have to make a deal." Helping the U.S. and Iran come to talks is president Macron of France who hopes to setup a meeting at the UN General Assembly which meets next week following his efforts at the G-7 meeting in France last month. In the past when tensions were high in the Straits of Hormuz President Trump refrained from aggravating this by saying actions that are "disproportionate" should not be taken and respected Iranian intentions. The tone of the conversation between the two sides has moderated to the point where both sides realize the need for coming to some compromise. This is in sharp contrast to the period a few months ago with rising tensions in the Straits of Hormuz and the seizure of an Iranian ship. Bolton's opinions were not the only issue for president Trump. He was also seen as the source of leaks including one that said Mike Pence, the Vice President, had opposed Mr. Trump's plan to bring the Taliban to Camp David. Also contributing to the new climate for talks is Mike Pompeo the Secretary of State, who has promoted the idea of talks with Iran. He told the media about such a meeting at the UN General Assembly in New York- "Sure. The president has made it very clear that he is prepared to meet with no pre-conditions." The willingness to try new ideas even contrary ones to policy pursued only a short while ago as long as the desired goal is reached is a feature of this presidency and key advisers. From the beginning of the Trump administration there is a firm sense of the need to end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. and reduce foreign entanglements that have dragged on wasting resources and destroying priorities. With a willingness to try all sorts of approaches even ones that appear to be contradictory always keeping the end goal in sight. ...

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In this report WSJ looks at US Treasury Secretary's warning to China about its role in the free world and its position in the international trading system and the obligations to human values that come with it. Janet Yellen is so well known as head of the Federal Reserve and as US Treasury Secretary that it is easy to forget her experience at Yale studying under James Tobin who supported meeting social goals, whom she calls a life long mentor. Tobin set the foundations for economic policy in the Kennedy administration in the early post war period, after working in the Franklin Roosevelt administration during the war. Social goals, business paying its fair share of taxes, building infrastructure, were all a part of the FDR and Kennedy-Johnson administration.  It is also easy to forget that Yellen set the foundations for economic policy under Clinton and then under Obama administration the period when social goals were not met, infrastructure was neglected, globalization meant shipping jobs and factories overseas to China, and lack of financial oversight over banks that led to the 2009 financial crisis. The contradiction made Yellen realize only late during the Obama administration how much of a diversion she had taken from the social goals of the FDR-Truman-Kennedy post war period.  As one of the architects of the economic policy underpinning the emergence of China's role as the factory of the world, that destroyed many working class communities in the US, Yellen is in the economic role that Merkel shares in world of political economy with her integration of the German economy with that of China. Today as she calls for a retreat to the values shared by her mentor James T, Tobin and of FDR and Truman as they responded to the Berlin Crisis in the aftermath of 1945, and the Korean War with large scale invasion of South Korea and the kind of refugee crisis that we see today in Ukraine, there is much room for reflection. Reflection on what was lost in the intervening years of the Bush-Clinton and Obama years that led to the situation that the free world faces with totalitarianism today.   ...

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Because India is still largely rural with about 65% of the population in the countryside rural poverty is a matter of huge importance. In a country of a billion people this is easily about 600-650 million people the vast majority of the world's poor. Though low inflation in agricultural produce and in agricultural wages have increased concern for rural poverty in India there are changes in multiple dimensions that have raised the quality of living in a big way. There is a major thrust in government programs directed at multiple levels for clean India, housing healthcare, cooking gas, electricity, banking, in the rural villages. About 4 million homes are built annually with government assistance and investment in rural programs has more than doubled in the last 7 years.  The National Food Security programs NFGSA guarantees purchases of rice and wheat at very low prices -set at 2 rupees per kilogram of wheat and  3 rupees per kilogram of rice or about $0.03 per kilogram.  This reduces the pressure on migration to cities making cities less inhabitable and finding it hard to cope as in countries like Indonesia, Philippines and in Africa. It gives more time for urbanization to take place in a better way as more resources and infrastructure is created for urbanization. Some states in India are about 50% urbanized with Tamilnadu (Madras or Chennai),  and Kerala (Cochin, Thiruvanathapuram) in the south and Maharashtra (Bombay or Mumbai) and Gujarat (Ahmedbad) in the north west, are at about 50% urbanization rate. The low inflation rate for agricultural wages affecting farm incomes combined with contributions by rural people to complement government contributions for housing, healthcare,  reduces the mount of money available for consumer spending in rural areas, affecting the economy. A problem in the short run, but with synergistic changes across multiple dimensions pushing the country forward across urban and rural areas. With the huge urban infrastructure spending increases creating more space for economic growth across the country. There is a general sense that for development a multi dimensional approach is needed, and a rising tide lift all boats as India urbanizes like China has done in the last 20 years. ...