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High on the agenda for the G-20 Feb. 2013 meeting in Moscow is how to fund infrastructure projects in emerging market countries. About $191 billion in infrastructure investment is needed annually in South Asia alone, according to the World Bank. India's Economic Affairs Secretary, Arvind Mayaram, points to the need for finding innovative ways of funding and reducing the risks for private companies by some kind of joint effort from developed and emerging market countries. The needs are extensive especially in transportation, water, electricity, sanitation. Growth lower than potential is facing India- with estimates of growth at just around 5% for the fiscal year ending in 2013. This affects Europe and the U.S. as there is less demand for exports of developed countries. Transportation projects critical to easing congested overloaded rail lines in Jakarta and Manila could not get financing under existing arrangements, making this problem a serious priority.

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Nikki Haley of South Carolina decides to run for the Republican nomination for president. She joins Trump and Rod de Santis of Florida in the race for the Republican nomination.

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A football coach, Sid Edwards, is the new Mayor of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

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China, Japan and South Korea routinely provide assistance to their companies and through this to the workforce.  Economists who lacked understanding of business stuck to an ideological idea that the capitalist system of Adam Smith was built on fair competition. What they did not understand was what was meant by fair and what capitalism prevailed since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the 1750's and Adam Smith's days. Much of the British business was based on its own version of fairness and trade which meant whatever worked for British domination of trade, the oceans, and markets. These economists missed this completely. Now the US shows it is able to do what Britain of Smith's days and Japan, China in the post 1950's and 1990's have done to dominate world trade and world shipping and logistics, and has the funds to provide assistance to American companies for world markets. $550 Billion from standard 10-15% tariffs charge for all nations to access US market as a fund to finance US Manufacturing.  ...

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FR24 reports from a teashop in the old Turkish city of Gaziantep before the Turkish elections on May 14, 2023 in which the two decade rule of Mr. Erdogan is contested by a civil servant from the Republican party of Kemal Ataturk Mr. Kilicdaroglu. Ataturk was the founder of the Republican party, became president in 1923, and modernized Turkey. 

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This opinion in DW.com says the refugee camp in Calais, France, called the "Jungle" was ignored by the British who transferred border control to France and did nothing. The French government of Hollande also ignored the problem and the deteriorating conditions at the camp. Media attention and the election led to effort to disband the camp and find spots around France for about 7000 people. Because of the radical right in France the French government has not considered humanitarian help and providing certainty of status for the refugees.

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A federal committee in the U.S. now recommends no more than 6% of calories come from daily sugar intake not the 10% that is is the current guideline. It is smart to be wary of guidelines set in a different period when Americans and people in other parts of the world were not enough health conscious as they should have been. Artificially high limits set in guidelines serve as a danger to health, particularly as experts say obesity is like pouring gasoline on fire in fighting the coronavirus. Take a look at mean consumption today and it is not even the 10%, it is 13% double of what it should be. Nearly two thirds of Americans aged 1 years or older consumed more than 10% of daily calories in added sugar. And 70% of U.S. adults over 20 years are obese or overweight according to 2015-2016 figures from CDC. Today the figures from Europe and Asia, Latin America are also alarmingly high for obesity rates. Added sugar comes from processed foods from soda and pasta sauce to cereal and yogurt, and honey, sugar itself. Sugar sweetened beverages are common and dangerous. A 16 ounce grande pumpkin spice latte at Starbucks has 50 grams of sugar or 10% of a 2000 calories diet. The committee in the U.S. wants to see people eat healthy diets and does not want to discourage healthy foods like fruit and milk which people are not eating enough. It wants to see a shift away from processed foods to foods that have good health outcomes such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean meat and poultry. The beverage producers such as Coca Cola and Pepsi are a major source of resistance , as are Confectioners association, and other producers that benefit from setting the guidelines at 10%. It is not that for 3 decades as the obesity levels rose to the shocking and dismal health levels of today that the ideas of what constitutes a healthy diet were not known. It was just that we as a people did not care enough to fight for what is safe and healthy against whatever resistance was put up by producers with their vested interests, just as we as a people did not care enough to to fight to keep local manufacturing in place and the jobs and healthy communities across our land. A gram of sugar equals 4 calories. For a 2000 calories a day diet that is 120 calories to stay within the 6% that we should not exceed. Make a habit of looking at each packaged product and add up the added sugar grams and calories. ...

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Nocera says that the Obama regulatory reform did not address the issue of banks or financial firms that are too big to fail. Issues that were raised by Former Fed chairman Volcker. It also does not address the issue of customized deritvatives, the derivatives that caused so much damage during the financial crisis, especially at AIG. For these derivatives the Treasury Department will establish a clearinghouse, so that their price and trading activity can be more readily seen. The reform places enormous trust on whoever is running the Fed. This trust has not supported by the actions of Mr Greenspan in letting the bubble develop, and in favoring little or no regulation.

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After the turnover of administrations and prime ministers in the last decade, a new wave is taking place. By 2010 with prime minister David Cameron mediocre leaders are running Britain, and after Boris Johnson, Truss, Sunak and Brexit politics, a new wave of Labor party unraveling is taking place following the Conservatives unraveling and falling apart. This is reflected in the Mandelson affair and the lack of firm direction on immigration policy with boatloads of migrants entering the country and filling up hotels in rural areas of the country. The ECHR (European Commisssion of Human Rights) written for different situations by Europeans who had little grasp or respect for the British public's attachment to their own history, culture and traditions, were being applied by British Labor leaders such as Keir Starmer to migrants who had no connections to Britain. Migrant crime and protests about migrants has weakened a Labor government, weakening the British state and its economy. Within hardly 1 year after winning  elections for a majority government British prime minister Keir Starmer faces the prospect of stepping down. ...

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Rex Tillerson, U.S. Secretary of State takes a strong stand on North Korean missile testing and nuclear program in a visit to Seoul and Beijing. He said the U.S. would be forced to take pre-emptive action "if they elevate their threat of their weapons program"  to an unacceptable level. Continuing a policy of the Obama administration following missile tests by North Korea, the Trump administration has rejected any talks with North Korea. Tillerson said that "the policy of strategic patience has ended." It was also meant to signal U.S. intentions before Tillerson goes to Beijing from Seoul. President Trump commented on Twitter; "North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been "playing" the United States for years. China has done little to help." Because China sees North Korea as a bargaining chip with the U.S., Japan and South Korea, the situation has ended repeatedly in a impasse with the North Korean nuclear and missile program continuing during the Bush and Obama administrations. This has also meant that North Korea was unlikely to collapse on its own, with China pursuing a policy of using North Korea as part of its defense policies in the region, as pointed out by Sanger in this report. As the North's missile program continues the U.S., and with the North seeing the missile program as the only way to ensure the survival of the regime, the U.S. needed to come up with a new way to tackle the situation.   ...

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About 50% of the workforce in Los Angeles earns less than $15 an hour, by some estimates. The Los Angeles City Council voted 14-1 in May 2015 to increase the minimum wage to $15 over 5 years.

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The U.S. Labor Department reported a gain of 236,000 jobs in February 2013. The job gains were broad based, an encouraging sign, with gains of 48,000 in construction, 32,000 in health care, 24,000 in retail. Government jobs declined by 10,000. The unemployment rate declined from 7.9% in Jan 2013 to 7.7% in Feb 2013. Part of the reason for the decline in the unemployment rate was 130,000 people leaving the labor force. Of this some were retiring or returned to school. About 80,000 were "discouraged workers" adding to the continued problem of a declining labor force participation rate, a serious concern for the U.S. Federal Reserve and Fed chairman Bernanke.

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Mr. Eike Batista's EBX Group companies were one of the prime beneficiaries of huge government investments in mining, oil and other commodities. The fading of the commodities boom is resulting in large losses for these companies. Street protests in Brazilian cities shows the weakness of the Brazilian economic model that neglected public services in transportation, health care and education and concentrated on infrastructure and mining projects.

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Spain's coach at the Euro finals 2024 is De La Fuente of La Rioja,Spain, who is little known even in Spain. He came to prominence coaching the Spanish under 19 under 21 teams. This is how he came to know players like Dani Olmo and Unai Simon, Mikel Merino and Fabian Ruiz. All have delivered at critical moments for Spain as Spain play England in the Euro finals 2024.

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The issues raised by the storage of residue from Canadian oil sands production processed into coke at midwestern oil refineries. The Marathon refinery in Detroit processes this residue for export companies such as Oxbow owned by the Koch Brothers, which then export this to China, India, Mexico and other S. American countries. A huge open pile of this dirty coke is seen along the Detroit river in May 2013. Residents in Detroit and Windsor ask if Detroit is considered a dumping ground?

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Britain's Office of National Statistics shows that the deaths during this pandemic match the deaths during World War I in 1918 and World War II in 1940. The vivid picture of Winston Churchill at Coventry Cathedral in England with this story in The Times tells a lot about what has happened and what is happening today. There were 608,000 deaths in 2020 exceeded only slightly by the deaths in 1918 when deaths were 611,000. 1940 showed a jump of 16% from 1939 in deaths, 2020 showed a 15% increase.

With 168,000 of the deaths in private homes there is say health care experts "a silent crisis raging."

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The Dutch had their tulip bubbble, the Chinese have their Pu-er tea bubble which has just burst. It was a pure speculative bubble with speculators cornering the market and bidding up the price of tea in Yunnan province on the Burmese border. From 1997 to 2007 the price of these green tea leaves from Yunnan- that make a fermented brew called Pu-er- wentup from $15 to $150 a pound. Actually a group of manipulative buyers drove prices up. Production doubled from 2006 to 2007 to 100,000 tons. Unlike other teas this tea is said to grow better with age and is packed into compressed cakes for transport. Now prices of this tea have collapsed to $3 a pound. Russia had its own experiment with unbridled capitalism, now China is struggling with the effects of the aftermath of its own unbridled capitalism.

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This BBC report looks back at the Solomon Islands which were part of the Guadalcanal campaign in World War II and the importance of the Pacific. In 1943 a Japanese destroyer sank an American ship under John Kennedy in these Pacific ocean waters. About  80 years later his daughter Caroline Kennedy, ambassador to Australia in the Biden administration, takes a trip to this Pacific region and islands of Samoa and Tonga, with Wendy Sherman. China is seen as planning a base in the Solomon Islands which is on the southern sea route near Australia.

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Higher interest rates and the peaking of car prices in 2022, the decline in used car prices, is keeping buyers away from car dealers.

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The Southport killings in the UK where a delinquent 17 year old youth attacked children leading to riots in the UK in 2024 has led to a public inquiry. 

Terrorism was previously dominated by terrorist groups, yet the new threat Starmer says was of “acts of extreme violence perpetrated by loners, misfits, young men in their bedroom, accessing all manner of material online, desperate for notoriety. Sometimes inspired by traditional terrorist groups. But fixated on that extreme violence, seemingly for its own sake.” 

Experts say there have been a number of such attacks before in Reading in 2022, and in the killing of a Tory MP. Neil Basu, former head of Counter Terrorism UK says when he retired in 2021, the “mixed, unclear or unstable” suspect category — someone who did not align with a particular ideology but was set on violent activity was about 40 per cent of casework.

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A former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors during 2010-2011 offers his reflections on the quantitative easing policies of Fed chairman Bernanke. He points out that the Fed was simply offsetting the effects of tight credit channels when it employed QE to prevent this from damaging the economy at a sensitive time. Inflation would have increased as critics say, only if the Fed did not reverse its policy with tapering as it is doing now. Bernanke offers a similiar assessment and says Fed critics refuse to look at todays inflation numbers which are below 2% for 2013- and also below 2% for 2012.