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Evern though the Detroit carmakers initial quality as measured by J.D. Powers Initial Quality Survey is slightly higher than Japanese carmakers in pickup trucks, the Japanese carmakers still have a lead in the more popular cars and in crossovers. The Prius is made in a factory in Japan which ranks as one of the highest in quality. Quality is higher at plants in Japan for Toyota cars, and a bit lower here in the states for Toyota plants. Its on a par with Ford for the Toyota cars made in the USA. As the quality gaps shrinks to near zero between the quality of American and Japanese cars made in the USA, Toyota continues to maintain its edge in quality for its plants in Japan over both the Americans and the Germans. And the one carmaker that intends to surprise is Hyundai which surpasses Toyota, Honda, Ford and Chevy in quality and does this with a lower price. Consumers are noticing and making the switch, as Hyundai's market share is increasing. See Hyundai link. Here are some of the results. First the plants that produce the best quality, as measured by the J.D. Powers Initial Quality Survey. A survey of 80,900 cars between November 2008 and February 2009, for the first 90 days thses cars were driven, using the number of problems per 100 vehicles. All numbers refer to problems per 100 vehicles. Toyota plants in Japn that scored highest- Higashi-Fuji at 29 making Lexus SC and Toyota Corolla, Fuijimatsu at 30 making the Prius, Kyushu at 34 making the Lexus ES and Highlander. At the next level German plants, Bremen at 40 making the Mercedes Benz Classes- C, CLK, SL, and SLK. Daimler in E. London, S. Africa at 38, and BMW at 40 in Dinggolfing, Germany. And a cluster of Japanese and American plants in the USA that produce cars of comparable quality. Honda in E. Liberty Ohio at 41, making the Honda Civic, CRV and Element. GM at Oshawa, Ontario, at 42 making the Buick LaCrosse and Chevy Impala at 42. GM at Bowling Green, Kentucky at 43, and Toyota, Georgetwon, Kentucky making the Avalon and Camry at 43. What is notable from the last survey in this highly competitive market is the following. 1. Hyundai at 91 problems per 100 vehicles surpasses Honda at 95. Better quality at a lower price, so its no wonder Hyundai is gaining market share and is the new carmaker gaining a presence in the USA. 2. Toyota is at 101, Ford at 102, Chevy at 103, so the difference now in carmakers quality is perception, perception, perception. Its about lifestyle, what you like to be associated with and what you want your friends and neighbors to think about you in your choice of car, younger buyers who are the next generation that makes or breaks your business, the new trendy things among younger people, and design that appeals to them. 3. VW is at 112. So even though there is aggressive marketing and VW is picking up some market share with the Jetta, it still lags slightly in quality. 4. The American car makers still lack consistent quality. You have the Buick at 117, GMC at 116. Ford with Lincoln at 129. The Koreans with Kia at 112. 5. Chrysler is at the bottom of the list. Dodge at 134, Chevy at 136, Jeep at 137. THe lack of resources, changes in management and ownership, and the distractions of bankruptcy and dealership closings, and most of all dire lack of resources including the layoff of large parts of its engineering talent, all hurt. 6. GM sold Saab, Ford sold Land Rover and Jaguar. The neglect of Saab shows with Saab at 138, and Ford's distraction during the last 3 years shows with Jaguar at 134 and Land Rover at 150. also. 7. In summary Ford has done well overall, Toyota is coming up short in the USA and resting on its laurels, GM has a perception gap with younger buyers, Hyundai looks like a winner with both price and quality, and VW has work to do. ...

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Hispanic immigrants make up a big part of the construction industry and a big part of industries like carpet making in Georgia. This has been hit hard and jobless rate for Hispanics is 6.9% according to the Labor Department up from 5.5% in April 2007. States with expandig Hispanic populations like Florida, California, Georgia and Nevada are hit hard by Hispanic job losses. Overall the jobless rate has gone up from 4.5% last year to 5% during th same periodand when one takes out the Hispanic component the jobless rate is down much less, which also tell us something about why the pace of the economic downturn is felt less among the whites and the rest of the population, because the construction industry got hit the worst and the Hispanics especially immigrants who dominate the construction industry are taking the brunt of it. The subprime story plays up here as well. From 1994 to 2006 the rate of Hispanic homeownership climbed to 50% frm 41% according to census data, at a rate more than double for the increase amon non-Hispanics. By 2006 47% of the loans issued for home purchases by Hispanics were subprime or loans with poor credit histories, double the rate for non-Hispanic whites, according to a paper by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, only exceeded by African Americans. In 2006 homeownership fell among Hispanics and one in 12 mortgages made to Latino households in 2005 and 2006 is likely to fail according to Catherine Singley, a policy fellow at the National Council of La Raza, an advocacy group in Washington. Georgia has one of the heavy concentration of new Latino immgrants, with a 70% increase in the state's Hispanic population between 2000 and 2007, according to census data. From one fifth of the construction work force in 2000 Hispanics made up one third by 2006 according to the Economic Policy Institute. Among foreign born Hispanics construction was responsible for 46% of the growth in employment from 2004 to 2006 according to Rakesh Kochhar, an econist at the Pew Hispanic Center, which tells us that the new Latino immigrants dominated the construction industry in places like Atlanta and in the rest of the country and are now getting hit the worst. Not only construction but industries that parallel the growth in construction like carpet making based in Dalton, Georgia, were dominated by Latino immigrants, so that as construction fell these towns and Latinos there are hit hardest. Investment manager El-Erian of Pimco points to employment as the key the critical thing to watch for the next 6 months and its useful to see that unemployment has increased by about half a percentage point to 5% from 4.5% April 2006 to April 2007 according to Labor Department data. As most of this unemployment has probably been taken up by the new Latino immigrants to the USA its probably not changed much excluding that component, which is possibly why the economy has not felt like it is in a recession when all around the signs of recession or what causes a recession are evident around us. Another way to say this is that there are built in hidden mechanisms of the American economy in its present form such as immigration, and possibly others that act as delay mechanisms that throw the recessionary impact back by anywhere from 6-18 months depending on how they operate and can blind one about the reality of oncoming storms. This was to be seen in 2005 for the economy with consumption spending and mortgage industry excesses, and which is why Pimco decided in 2005 at its spring meeting, that the big secular story was about the economic downturn. It actually took until 2007 for this to occur because of similiar things to what we are seeing now in terms of recessionary pain, then the new structured investment vehicles and other ingenious innovations in the mortgage industry may have extended the boom and delayed the economic downturn being felt till 2007. There is a lot of grief among Hispanic people. The numbers tell the story. For the 19 million Latino immigrants in the USA...

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Some insights into the thinking of Robert Rubin from an interview by Ken Brown and David Enrich with the former Treasury Secretary in the Clinton administration about the 2008 financial crisis. As Justice John Paul Stevens. the longest serving Supreme Court justice on the bench once said, those who administer the judicial system form the backbone of the law. In a like manner those who administer the financial and economic system form its backbone, which is why Rubin faces some tough questions in this interview. At the time he was Treasury Secretary, the NYT magazine ran a story on Robert Rubin, as the kind of person who liked to put things down rationally on a note pad, and think things through on the basis of this rational analysis. This is how he approached the Mexican financial crisis of 1994 and the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Here is some of that note pad Rubin, in the context of CDO's and risk taking, with something gone awry. Risks that according to this NYT report Rubin encouraged at Citigroup in 2004 and 2005, on the basis of the idea that Citi's competitors were taking on more risk and making bigger profits. His note pad approach appears to have led to conclusions by Rubin that considering the additional profits that could be made by Citi by ramping up the risk taking in 2004 and 2005 and afterwards like its competitors, it could lead to losses if things went wrong, but these losses would'nt come close to wiping out the profits made during the good times. The cyclical downturn he expected to see in 2004 and 2005 when he is reported to have added his voice to others that the bank take on more risk, was a cyclical downturn of the type he had seen during the 1994 Mexican devaluation and the 1997 Asian financial crisis. He had no idea that it would be a cyclical undervaluing of risk added on to a housing bubble, and to a triple A ratings issuance that was misguided. Rubin says here that there was hardly anyone who saw that low-probability event as a possibility. Was the housing bubble a low probability event, and were the issuance of ratings by the credit ratings agencies compromised by the drive for more business a normal pattern, or would some digging up of facts and some innate skepticism of the prevailing current in favor of one's own instincts that something was overdone missed in the notepad analysis of a supposedly rational approach? Or was there a feeling that somehow the U.S. with its long tradition of technology, its work ethic and sophisticated financial system was somehow immune to something as severe as what the Asian countries were experiencing in 1997, or what happened in the 1930's. Asked about his view of what happened Rubin says that looking back there was an enormous amount that needs to be learned. Rubin is also in a quandary when he has to respond to the public concerns about excessive executive compensation. Rubin made $115 million in pay since 1999, excluding stock options, while under his purview as the highest ranking board member Citigroup let some of the problems that it faces now accumulate. As Citigroup faces $20 billion in losses in 2008, a bear raid on its stock by short sellers who ironically were able to do this because of some of the lax regulation set in motion in the Rubin Greenspan years leading to the suspension of the Uptick rule, and the $45 billion government bailout last week. Rubin may have helped Citi but in a different sort of way. He was able to persuade Treasury- Treasury Secretary Paulson was a fellow executive at former employer Goldman Sachs- through the days before the bailout, ensuring government help was on its way. Citigroup shares had dropped to $3.77 a share in the third week of November 2008, losing 50% of their value in one week, as the discussions took place. ...

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The German people offer a heart warming welcome to refugees suffering enormous hardships as they make their way through countries in Eastern Europe to Germany.

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Speaker Paul Ryan's effort to fix what he calls "a House that is broken," as he becomes the new Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives in Oct. 2015.

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Charles Dallara, managing director of the Institute of International Finance, which represents large global banks, describes the deal that was reached by eurozone leaders for restructuring Greece's debt in July 2011. He was one of the key negotiators. He says the agreement helps prevent contagion to Spain and Italy, and helps increase confidence in banks. By showing the losses are better understood and seen as manageable conveys a message that builds confidence for the banks and for the EU. And the effort to create the conditions for growth in Greece will make all the difference, he says. The Institute of International Finance estimates the deal will cost the banks and other investors $54 billion. Dallara says the turning point in the talks came in mid-July when European governments agreed to a plan for banks to swap Greek debt for new securities, backed by collateral.The focus then shifted to shaping the details. Josef Ackermann, chief executive of Deutsche Bank and chairman of the International Finance Institute, used his skills to pull the package together with European leaders. Dallara has experience going back to his days working on the negotiations for the Brady deal for Latin American debt in the 1980's. The Brady deal was also designed around banks swapping the old bonds for new ones with longer maturities and reduction of principal, and lower interest rates. In return the banks were given guarantees of repayment removing uncertainty- through 30 year U.S. zero coupon bonds- and making it possible for banks to start anew. The reduction of principal in the July 2011 eurozone agreement is around 20%, the Brady reduction was much larger, around 30%. This suggests eurozone governments are putting up more of the funds in this situation with the weaker condition of banks which may need to be recapitalized at some point, and the preservation of the euro itself at stake....

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Winkler says Nokia may make it but it looks more likely that Research In Motion may not make it through the current storm.

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There is cramped space for renters and limited supply of housing space per capita in Shanghai, China. After a decade of hyper building China still lacks affordable housing space. The residential space per capita in Shanghai is only 183 square feet or 17 square metres per person- about the size of a small room. And estimates by GK Dragonomics Research show one third of China's 225 million households lack kitchens and plumbing. At the same time housing is increasingly unaffordable for the middle class. Government restrictions on price increases reflect growing concern with the fact that the average Shanghai residential home sold for about $276,000 in 2011, even though annual per capita income in Shanghai is about $13,000. Prices for homes in Shanghai increased 2.6 times in 5 years, according to the Shanghai Urban Real Estate Surveyors Company. With the slowdown in construction developers are working through inventories, and more homes were sold than built in 2012, compared to about 1.5 units built for every unit sold in 2011. ...

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Efforts to setup an autonomous Kurdish region in Syria based on the model set by the Autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq. An opportunity for Kurdish people to be able to live with their own language and culture within the framework of a federal state in Iraq and Syria. The Kurdish Autonomous region based in Erbil has acted as a mediator between Sunni and Shiite interests and worked within the framework of a federal state in Iraq. Turkey still fears the minority Kurds within its borders and seeks to assimilate them into Turkey. The government of prime minister Erdogan has shifted the political stance with Kurds by seeking Kurdish support in elections. There is the example in Europe and Asia of people in certain regions working within a federal state that tolerates the culture and language of the people within the state- the Catalans and Basque people in Spain are one example. This has come after years of repression of language and culture, and it has only changed as a new spirit of tolerance has prevailed in Europe after the pain of the period between the wars. A range of other communities with distinct language and culture have learned to function and prosper within a federal state- French Quebec within Canada is another example in N. America. In Asia, the best example is India, which is a federal state with many languages and cultures, varied enough to be amazing. A properly functioning democracy and economic system, with educational systems that support tolerant attitudes, provides the framework for this to happen. It is challenging at times but it is a better alternative to generations of conflict....