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A few events in the last 50 years are rewriting the rules for business, finance and economics, says the WSJ in this analysis. The admitting of China to the World Trade Organization under president Clinton in 2001 was one, another was the global financial crisis in 2009 with the selling of bad mortgages by the financial industry, the euro currency financial crisis with the bad accounting, real estate industry speculation, and lack of financial oversight in countries such as Greece, Ireland, Spain. The coronavirus pandemic is one more addition to this string of crises and events that have made the working class and middle class in US and Europe poorer and in worse shape after the recovery following World War II.  The changes indicated here are some of the surface changes- such as the shift to the suburbs for cleaner air and better living, the work at home as a serious option, the new focus on health care, wellness, exercise, nutrition and mental health, remote learning and community college as a realistic option to high tuition costs by the education industry, and a pharmaceutical industry refocused on public health and vaccines as it was in its early years before its shift into a simply profit driven industry. The underlying thread for all these changes on the surface is a deeper change in the public mind- a change that redefines what the people believe in just as happened after World War II. Rebuilding the devastated economies of Europe, America and Asia required a new vision at the time after World War II. And reconstruction could only happen with all the people involved and working for the public interest.  This also created a new hope for the future. President Biden's vision is for a new set of priorities that make child care, women's position in the economy, community college education as a right for all as a first step to opening the access to education that existed after the war in 1945. Investment in infrastructure, in building new roads, bridges and rail, water, internet connections, public services in transport, better layout of urban areas, better lives for retirees, are all part of an effort to improve quality and ease of living for all parts of society, not just those who can afford it.  This is uppermost on people's minds and administrations or governments that fail to deliver or simply talk with no action, will not have the support of ordinary working men and women in all countries. This is true for countries and regions as varied in their level of development as the US, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, Japan, India, Brazil and Mexico, and African nations. Democracy, government adminstration, technology and business structures exist for the people, to improve the ease of living, quality of life, through better health, education and public services.  ...

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The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities in the UK in its report published on March 29, 2021, says Britain has become a more open society and that racial inequalities in education and employment have narrowed. Bangladeshi, Indian and African backgrounds children are performing better across eight GCSE's using scores on average, than white British children, an amazing story. It says "this should be regarded as a model for white majority countries."  Much of this could be the result of strong families, ethic of hard work, help from the idea that hardship brings virtue, and single minded determination of families and children to excel in studies, showing that obstacles such as language and other economic barriers can not only be overcome but actually be a motivational influence. This should translate into more success in the workplace. The report says this is happening in the workplace with diversity in the professions of medicine, law and teaching, and shrinking pay gap with white population. Criticism persists and is true for the top of the public and private sectors, the report says. Yet it should be uppermost in mind that in terms of number of people benefitted it is important- that the process be strong at the ground level so that the talented individual can then move to the higher ranks. To do this the report says British employers should go for more "evidence-based alternatives" than let "unconscious bias training" prevail without quite realizing that this is happening in the absence of initiative. Much of what happens in Britain is also true for the US and other places with British based educational systems such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka. In South Asia there are disadvantaged minorities because of old caste based inequalities and bias. There the problem also has its perverse forms in which politically motivated moves to assign quotas are made before the emphasis on education and investment in education for disadvantaged minorities. This is leading to a general decline in education in government or public schools and reliance on private sector schools to provide quality education. A process seen in Latin American countries such as Mexico and Brazil that also involves public sector unions and their control of who gets hired and how. The result is that huge problems not entirely visible like an iceberg that cripples ships or economies is happening in these countries, and the focus is almost entirely on the disparities in British schools where progress is actually being made with results, intentions backed by will to accomplish. ...

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Questions about the every 5 years 20th Party Congress of the CCP or Chinese Communist Party, and the 2300 representatives attending from all parts of China are answered in this report in The Guardian.  Xi Jinping is expected to get a third term. To outsiders in US and Europe it is all about power in China, to insiders in China it is about China making it through the 100 years since the 1901 revolution and the tumult, the chaos of the first 100 years, and now a period of modernization and growing incomes,  the need to create jobs, tackle climate change, ensure a good future for the Chinese people. 2300 party members representing millions of party members in China attend the gathering. New appointments and retirements take place at this Congress. Of this there are 200 elite members of the Central Committee with voting rights. This central committee is responsible for electing a 25 member Politburo, of which the seven most senior persons are appointed to the Politburo Standing Committee. Xi Jinping is the General Secretary, the most senior position in this hierarchy. Age related retirements are at 68 years and a new Politburo standing committee is announced at each Congress. After the Bo Xilai effort to take power and take China in a new and unknown direction, and the gradual loss of the party's respect from corruption and abuses of power by local officials, Xi Jinping sensed problems in the future and conducted a anti-corruption campaign. Most of the system of government set up during the Deng and Jiang Zemin years after 1980 remains in place with Jinping calling for a revival of China, the next stage of modernization, under the banner of the CCP. The result of the anti-corruption campaign and a third term assumed by Xi including lifting of a term limit for heading the CCP, gives Xi Jinping an opportunity to shape the future for China as Deng did after 1980. Jinping in the manner of Deng sees the CCP as the organization that can continue the modernization and growth of China. The model set by Deng and Zemin of local autonomy for economy and centralized overall direction continues under Jinping who is General Secretary since 2012. China has made rapid growth during the period 2000-2022, but faces challenges of reorienting its economy away from dependence on a tight economic export oriented relationship with the US and EU, as supply chains are being shifted after the pandemic. This means more unemployment and need for careful economic planning and investment to create jobs in other sectors, and to meet the challenges of unequal distribution of wealth in China after hypergrowth that hurt China in some ways, and in the climate change effects of use of coal other fossil fuels. As focus of interest is on Jinping externally, within China it is these three challenges that must be uppermost in the minds of the 20th Congress members. Much of this stems from the tumult of the century that began with the 1901 revolution through Japanese invasion and upheavals in the 60's and 70's, leading to the rare period of stability and growth in the last 20 years. Jinping like Deng and Zemin has personal memories of the anguish of this period and the tumult, the chaos of the 20th century for China, and the yearning for stability with modernization.   ...

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In his foreign policy address following the northeast state primaries Donald Trump outlines a policy with less foreign engagement in trouble spots, and greater reliance on partners in Europe and Asia contributing to joint defense. It also includes building up the military and nuclear arsenal. It criticizes the Bush administration for intervention in Iraq that benefitted Iran, and the Obama administration for policies that led to the rise of Islamic State. Because Trump is not for supporting foreign engagements in trouble spots the difference in Trump's policies is not announcing or signalling in advance what U.S. response would be, instead keeping it unpredictable. It is not clear how much this would work given that any president would inherit the situation before him, and also the complexity of the situation would not change, such as the need to have Iranian cooperation and Saudi cooperation to tackle Islamic State. The Bush administration started with a similiar intention to focus on domestic policy, till the 9/11 surprise attack steered it away towards nationbuilding overseas. The pendulum swung in the latter years of the Bush adminstration to the Iraq intervention, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, followed by a swing in the other direction to allowing Libya and Syria disntegrate leading to millions of refugees. Complexity, surprises, and swings of popular opinion, are unlikely to go away, even as caution is exercized and military capabilities enhanced....

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Tom Keene of Blomberg BusinessWeek talks to a panel of experts about the future prospects for the US and the global economy. The discussion was spurred by Carmen Reinhart's paper at the central banker's Jackson Hole, Wyoming, conference. This paper forecasts high unemployment, low housing prices and very low growth in the US upto 2017. Shiller, Calomiris, Orszag, Kaufman and Bill Gross are part of this panel. Shiller's to do list main item is to get help to local and state governments by restoring general revenue sharing arrangements. Gross would focus on jobs that can hold up in a competitive economy, and put back some of the production that is taking place in the developing countries back into the developed countries, as part of a rebalancing; through a currency realignment. Kaufman would like to see a capital expenditure program by the US government, including infrastructure and education. Calomiris would like to see a setup of a new Republican Congresss to set the stage for post 2012 efforts. Calomiris favors cutting entitlements, cutting payroll taxes, but is not clear how this would help lower the deficit. Orszag points to feedback from business leaders suggesting a lowering of payroll taxes will not spur hiring, as the real reason for not hiring was low 1-2 % expected growth. Shiller, Kaufman and Gross see government efforts as realistically needed in the current situation....

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Pete Pyhrr is interviewed by the WSJ's David Kesmodel 40 years after his zero based budgeting method became popular in the Carter administration. Pyhrr developed the method as a controller at Texas Instruments in the 1970's, and says it is a great tool in difficult economic times or periods of rapid technological change to make cost reductions. WIth zero based budgeting budget figures are not simply adjusted upwards or downwards from last years numbers, but the budget is developed from scratch to reflect purposes served in the current environment. It brings costs and benefits of each expenditure into focus, so that more profitable projects can be financed over less profitable projects. Pyhrr published "Zero-Based Budgeting: A Practical Management Tool for Evaluating Expenses," in 1977. It was used by President Carter in managing the budget process in the state of Georgia and in the Carter administration, but fell out of favor in the Reagan administration. Pyhrr says he sees the need for using the method in today's budget cost reductions for government agencies to help taxpayers. As with TQC under Deming, which came back to the U.S. following Japan's use of quality control methods developed decades earlier in the U.S., zero based budgeting is coming back to the U.S. through its use by private equity firm 3G Capital Partners of Brazil in its Heinz operation....

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Brooks says no to the current health reform bill as most experts say it does little to control the bulging healthcare cost curve which will take it from 17% of GDP to 22% and beyond. He goes over the pros and cons. Passing this gets little done for health care reform in a fundamental way that is so badly needed today. Says Brooks the system today is rotten to the bone with opaque pricing and insane incentives, with consumers insulated from the costs of their decisions, this won't change with the current health care bill. In fact he says according to the chief actuary for Medicare it will cause health care spending to grow faster. At this rate we will be giving more money to insurance companies and programs that have great social value like expanded preschool and other needs that America has will be shoved aside. In coming years as the population of America ages there will be growing needs for health care. With no increase in supply, and the perverse incentives still in place, prices will continue to grow rapidly without the focus on efficiencies that is badly needed. Brooks points out that its not the politics is the chief obstacle to reform as most people say, but the reverse is the truth, unless one gets the fundamental incentives right politics will be terrible forever. ...

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Productivity as measured by GDP per hour worked was $44 in Italy in 2009. It has remained the same as in 1999. In the EU-15 (first 15 members of the EU) the GDP per hour worked increased from 47.9 in 1999 to 49.0 in 2009. For the U.S. this GDP in the same period went up from $56.0 to $58.0. This shows the lack of productivity growth in Italy. With the current focus on Italy's slow economic growth efforts are underway to make changes that would increase growth. GDP growth in Italy was 1.3% in 2010, compared to 1.8% for the eurozone, according to Eurostat. Italy's Minister for Public Administration Renato Brunetta says he would like to cut that gap in half. Some of the measures in the recently passed $40 billion spending cuts package, include efforts to help the underdeveloped southern region. This includes cutting red tape for real estate developers, and streamlining accounting for business. Italy's growth comes mainly from exports that make up about one fourth of GDP. But this comes from lower tech sectors such as textiles, chemicals and machinery, where it must compete with China and other countries. In May 2011 industrial output was up by 1.8% in Italy,compared to 7.5% for Germany. Another problem is the large and inefficient public sector and the gap between protected state workers and a younger generation- with one in three Italians 15-24 unemployed....

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Reporting for this highly informative article on wind energy development in Brazil was done with a grant from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting. Forero gives a detailed account of the setup of about 400 huge wind turbines larger than the size of a Airbus 380 in a windy area of Bahia state by a Brazilian company Renova Energia. It is an area that experts say is nearly perfect for the steady wind needed. Brazil has increased its wind generation capacity to 3% of its energy generation in 3 years since the first auction for companies seeking to build wind farms. By 2021 energy planners in Brazil see this going up to 10% of its energy generating capacity. New limits on the generation of hydropower is shifting the focus to speeding up the development of wind energy by the government of Dilma Roussef. State owned banks provide loans to companies like Renova Energia. New technology from French, Dutch, and Spanish companies with advanced sensors that shift the position of blades to adapt to wind conditions, the size of windmills of over 400 feet, and 1.6 megawatt turbines, make wind energy a realistic option for Brazil's expanding energy needs growing at 5% a year. French energy company Alsthom has a plant outside Salvador, the capital of Bahia state, to manufacture windmill components. This helps meet Brazilian government requirements for a certain percentage of local manufacuring of components....

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Taiwanese engineer, William Wang, who earlier ran a failed computer monitor company Princeton Graphics, started Vizio in 2003 in Irvine, California. He started Vizio as a low priced brand with a focus on high tech HD sets and a supply chain in Taiwan to make HD sets at lower prices. He negotiated agreements with Foxconn and AmTran Technology giving them equity stakes in Vizio. Costco provided shelf space for the early HD sets. Vizio still manages to make 4% in operating margins on $2 billon in revenue with an efficient supply chain. Wang's insight was that televisions would go the way of PC's where lower prices were the norm. Sony Electronics U.S. Division chief, Stan Glasgow, says it is harder to charge premium prices as technology and improving quality rapidly converge in the television industry, similiar to what is happening in PC's. The story of Vizio at the low end, and S. Korean manufacturer Samsung at the high end, is also the story of the decline of Japanese companies in the television business. In 2010 after seven years Vizio passed Sony to become the second largest television brand in the U.S., with sales of 6 million LCD TV's. This is up from 3.6 million in 2008, according to research firm iSuppli....

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New Sony CEO, Kazuo Hirai, plans to cut 10,000 jobs, about 6% of its total employees, over the next 2 fiscal years ending March 2014. Sony's television business has faced 8 years of losses, and the entire electronics business has faced 4 consecutive years of losses. The price competition and the high price of the yen has hurt Sony's sales and margins. This has affected the entire Japanese electronics industry, which has suffered consecutive years of losses, including Toshiba and Panasonic. Hirai is changing Sony's strategy in the television business. Instead of targeting a goal of 40 million in sales for television sets, he is cutting this in half to 20 million and reducing the size of its television sales operations. Sony's plan appears to be to focus on its strengths in new technologies and maufacturing, including the new 4 K technology, which would have to be adapted to mass market from its current specialized application. By doing this Sony would not have to compete on price in the manner it does today with Samsung and other Asian brands which have closed the gap in conventional technologies. Hirai's employee cuts follow the 16,000 job cuts made by Howard Stringer in 2008, during the global financial crisis. During March 2011 Sony had 168,200 employees....

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The Soviet experience in Afghanistan and the documents now in the hands of Ameican and Russian scholars from the archives. These documents show the commander of Soviet forces in Afghanistan Akhromeyev sent amessage similiar to General McChrystal's to the Soviet Politburo on November 13, 1996. It asked for more troops just as the soviets were in the seventh year of their nine year long Afghan conflict, with 110,000 troops unable to do more than control the provincial centers. With the rest of the country in the political control of the mujahideen. He told his commander in chief; To occupy towns and villages temporarily has little value in such avast land where the insurgents can just diappear into the hills." Victor Sebestyen points out that the scenes of the soviet's fighting were in places like Knadahar and Helmand provinces where the Americans are seeing the heavist fighting, in the south and eastern parts of Afghanistan. He also points out that the Soviet Defence Staff chief Ogarkov actually advised against the Soviet invasion from the beginning saying: "it will align the entire Islamic East against us, and mire us in unfamiliar, difficult conditions. But he was overruled by Brezhnev and cutoff in midsentence with the reply, "focus on military maters and leave the policy making to us." ...

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Since 2002 when the AKP came to power consumer loans have surged from 2 billion Turkish lira to 129 billion lira or $81.55 billion. While this has created a larger middle class, the huge expansion of credit puts the economy at risk say analysts. Turkey is taking in imports at a rapid rate and the current account deficit is now 8.1% of GDP. The ratio of the current aaccount deficit to foreign exchange transactions is at 37%, according to Ankara based economic research foundation Tepav. This is significantly above the level reached before Turkey's last four economic crashes. The EU is Turkey's biggest market for exports, and the fastest growing market is the Middle East. With the economic growth sluggish in both regions the prospects for Turkish exports increasing is weak. Signs of excess are visible in Istanbul. A shopping mall for cars is being built the size of three sports stadiums with a test track on the roof called Autopia. Prime minister Erdogan talks about building a huge new shipping canal that would bypass the crowded shipping in the Bosporus. And the elections are being fought for the AKP to get more than 330 seats out of 550 in parliament, which would enable the AKP to change the constitution. This will be an unneeded distraction for the country at a time when economic policy needs a sharp focus to reduce the current account deficit before it is too late....

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On major issues- her pledge to sign into law the Lankford Biden bipartisan Immigration and Border Bill after Trump blocked it in Congress for electoral advantage,  Cost of Living going up under Trump with his tariff plan, on abortion restrictions, the BBC says what Harris says is True.  Lyrarc has done its own fact check with effort for broad understanding of how her vision differs from Trump's- "As a prosecutor, when I had a case, I charged it not in the name of the victim. But in the name of. “The People.” For a simple reason. In our system of justice, a harm against any one of us is a harm against all of us." Every day in the courtroom, I stood proudly before a judge and said five words: “Kamala Harris, for the People.” And to be clear: My entire career, I have only had one client. The People This is True. It is also most revealing about this candidate regardless of sex, creed, color or race. It tells so much about this person and the influence that Gandhi and the struggles of India for independence have influenced her views on life through the influence of her mother and her grandfather who had great influence on her life and work- mother Shyamala Gopalan and P.V. Gopalan Shyamala's father a senior Indian Civil Service head for India's Department of Labor 1954 who lived and worked with the ideas an ideals of Mahatma Gandhi. On Immigration she makes a pledge to sign the Lankford Biden immigration law the first in four decades that closes the Border with Mexico and fixes asylum policy. "But Donald Trump believes a border deal would hurt his campaign. So he ordered his allies in Congress to kill the deal. Well, I refuse to play politics with our security. Here is my pledge to you: As President, I will bring back the bipartisan border security bill that he killed. And I will sign it into law." Trump blocked it for personal advantage at the elections to use this as an issue which has blocked a permanent solution. Confirming this is a month old interview in NYT by Republican Senator Lankford saying the legislation he drafted would have passed Congress in December 2023 and signed into law by Biden. It came up in Congress in February by this time Trump was made nominee of the party and he blocked it so that he could use the issue in an election. This says a lot about character and more than mere fact checks shifts focus on the characters of the two people running. Steve Kerr coach of the men's basketball Olympic team says decency humility, values and character, a clear authenticity are essential in a leader. People ask yourselves what you would have done in this situation, and what would Kamala have done, would she have blocked a bill that would permanently fix the Border and change US asylum policy?  Biden went on to do this by executive action bringing migrant flow numbers down to where they were under Trump and Obama, and more than that put together a bipartisan bill with Republican Senator Lankford that Kamala can now sign into law.    ...

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Greece's minister for migration tells the Times that seven charities including one in London form part of a chain stretching from Somalia to Britain in which smugglers move migrants illegally.  One of the seven charities is in London and is seen as colluding with human traffickers who are putting lives of migrants at risk. Greece has 70,000 migrants living in squalid refugee centres. Of these 17,000 are on islands in the Aegean sea. Europe cannot cope with all these migrants illegally making the crossing, much less during this pandemic. It has also unsettled the countries where migrants are settled on a humanitarian basis as there is at the same time serious neglect of poverty stricken communities inside Europe who are not getting the assistance they deserve. The result is even less focus on the development needs, on infrastructure, education and healthcare of the countries in Europe where migrants are headed, with the attention diverted to the migrants issue. Economic progress in Europe and rapid development could not only improve the condition of people in all communities, it could also help finance more foreign aid development project assistance to Africa and other countries. This would if vigorously done keep people in their home countries and help fulfill their development aspirations there, which is the better way.  Chancellor Merkel of Germany should have opted for a better way by setting up a program for aspiring migrants in the countries of Africa with a generous visa program offering training and technological skills, which could then be brought back to the country in Africa where it could generate jobs and opportunities with the necessary capital from European and other financial institutions and governments. This effort made in alliance with Britain and France could be powerful in its impact. Instead a haphazard three years of migration led to internal divisions, loss of confidence in the CDU and the SDP, FDP parties in coalitions, ending up where it should have started in the first place- reducing the migration to a trickle, returning some migrants back to their countries, and focussing on bringing economic assistance and development assistance to African countries for opportunities in these countries and a brighter future so that no one would want to leave and drift on oceans in tiny boats in the first place. The condition of the people in Africa is not so hopeless that the best they can do is to send their young people to drift on boats on the high seas in the hope of refugee status. China has shown that the there is a path from famine during the years following the Great Leap Forward to the development of today. India is doing that now and can repeat that story. Japan and South Korea, Taiwan have done this after devastating wars and out of nothing. Imagine what the world would be like if all these people in Asia set out on small boats for Europe.       ...

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Rakuten CEO, Hiroshi Mikitani, lived in Connecticut, completed graduate studies in the U.S. and speaks fluent English. It is now two years since his announcement that all business in the company will be conducted in English. July 1, 2012 was set as a target date after which all employee communication, including internal emails and memos would take place in English. All employees were required to take English language classes and employee tests in the language. Mikitani planned to expand Rakuten's operations overseas, and in these two years it has expanded to 12 countries from two countries, and plans to take this to 27 countries with 70% of sales generated overseas. Mikitani runs an e-commerce competitor to Amazon and he sees opportunities for the company worldwide and the need for employees to come out of their shell. He has long been a critic of Japanese elementary and secondary schooling in English. Most of the 3000 hours studying English after the seventh grade are wasted he says because most Japanese have trouble speaking English. A similiar effort to get employees to learn English has been launched at Uniqlo, a clothing retailer, and there is much discussion about this issue of improving the country's language proficiency as Japan's population ages and companies have to focus on overseas markets....

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Delta Airlines has one of the oldest fleet of planes in the U.S. Delta is turning this into a strategic move by having to invest less in new planes and with the ability to get good flight performance from older planes with proper maintenance. Delta says it is saving about $1 billion by acquiring 49 MD-90 planes with age of about 13 years from China Southern and other global airlines, compared to the cost of buying new planes. The estimate is that it is about 10% cheaper per seat to run these planes than new 737's, when the cost of buying planes is figured in. It also took over the leases for 88 Boeing 717's with average age of 11 years from Southwest. The focus at Delta is on profitability and debt reduction by selecting routes carefully, avoiding unprofitable ones, using tight cost management. Delta is on its third year of making profits and is on plan for reducing its debt from $17 billion in 2009 to $10 billion by 2013. The older Delta fleet is also the most punctual of the large airlines in the U.S., with 86.3% of flights on time in the Jan-Sept. 2012 period. Fitch Ratings raised Delta's credit ratings to B-plus and says Delta is "the strongest player in the much improved airline industry in the U.S."...

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The EBRD shifts its focus to Central Asian Republics and only has Bulgaria and Romania as European states that it works with. The need for patience and helping build the economic conditions to sustain democratic forms of life says its German head Thomas Mirow, formerly of the German Finance Ministry. He fears the twin pressures of higher food costs and fuel prices on fragile economies.

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Ford showed a profit of $1.6 billion in the third quarter of 2012. Profit of $2.3 billion in North American operations with North American profit margins of 12% helping overcome pretax losses of 468 million in Europe. In comparison to earlier years Ford held incentives down and maintained North American profit margins, earning $3500 on every vehicle sold in N. America. By comparison operating margins for Chrysler for third quarter were 4.6% and GM's margins in 2012 are about 7.4%.

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Tom Albanese of Australia's Rio Tinto resigns, ending a six year period at the company, after taking a $14 billion loss in Jan 2013. Of this $10-11 billion is for the failed Alcan Aluminium acquisition, and $3 billion for the acquisition of Riversdale Mining with coking coal assets in Mozambique. The Alcan Aluminium acquisition has resulted in $30 billion in wirtedowns for Rio Tinto including the latest writedown. Aluminium prices have declined 22% since 2007. The coking coal prices have declined 43% since 2011. Shipping coking coal down the Zambezi would require dredging the river and approvals, the coal is also of poor quality requiring additional processing. Sam Walsh who headed the iron operations since 2004 takes over as new CEO. Walsh has managed the large Pilbara iron ore projects on time and on budget. Earnings on the large iron ore projects have increased 15 times since 2004, with near doubling of production. Rio Tinto is the world's second largest iron ore producer. The focus of operations will now be on developing iron ore deposits to meet demand from China, India, Russia and the Middle East. A string of CEO's of commodity producers have resigned. Anglo American's CEO Cynthia Carroll resigned after investing in an iron ore project in Brazil in 2007 which cost $5.6 billion more than expected to develop. Going to remote regions of the world has increased risks for mining companies and overoptimistic projections have hurt the companies badly....

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Dana Milbank of the WP says the views of some Democrats on Trump as a good Republican nominee based on the notion that he has high negative perception with voters is fraught with dangers for U.S. democracy. Milbank points out that this ignores what is good for the country. Having Trump as the nominee of one of the two main parties would create a divisive atmosphere and is not good for the country, says Milbank. In comparing Trump with Cruz, he says Trump is likely to follow his instincts to operate outside the U.S. constitutional system. Cruz as a person believes in the U.S. constitution and would never endorse violence or action against minorities. Cruz has not done enough to come across as a likable person with his persistent focus on conservative or Reagan values to the exclusion of everything else. This is changing in mid-April 2016 following a CNN interview with the Cruz family, a MSNBC town hall answering questions from undecided voters, and NYT coverage of Cruz at a Brooklyn bakery, that shows a different human face that people have never seen about Cruz. Cruz's self-deprecating humor in a NYT article where he talks about voters not liking "a hectoring scold," is part of this needed change that could have happened earlier in the campaign. About Trump Milbank cites Conservative party prime minister Cameron who says Trump would unite all Britons against him if he ever came to Britain....

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Jerry Brown Attorney General of California and Lisa Madigan Attorney General of Illinois led the negotiations on behalf of the states of California, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, Ohio, Washington, Arizona, Texas, Florida and North Carolina, Connecticut, against predatory lending by Countrywide and obtained a settlement of $8.4 billion for homeowners. Shows that states efforts can be effective where the federal government failed. Brown expects loan modifications worth $3.4 billion in California. Congress has proposed various programs but none made it through the legilative process, so this is the largest most comprehensive mandatory loan workout program that exists. The program will be mandatory and will be monitored by state officials. Bank of America owns Countrywide which it acquired and it says that it had anticipated and made allowance for this kind of settlement. Borrowers whose first payment was due between Jan1, 2004 and Dec 31, 2007 can participate. The loan balance must be at least 75% of the current value of the home and the borrower must be able to make the adjusted monthly payments. It will focus on borrrowers who were placed int he riskiest loans because of Countrywide's misleading and predatory lending practices. Under the program Countrywide will reduce laon balances in some and cut interest rates in others. Rates could decline to 2.5% depending on borrowers ability to pay and remain at that level 5 years. Help is also provided for those facing foreclosure or are 4 months behind in their payments and homeowners already foreclosed....

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Fifteen heads ofhome building and financial services firms each got $100 million in cash compensation and sales of stock during the past 5 years according to a WSJ analysis. Four of those heads of companies including heads of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers led companies that filed for bankruptcy. The overall study looked at heads of 120 public companies in sectors like banking and mortgage finance, student lending, stock brokerage, and home building, showed that top directors and executives of the firms cashed out a total of $21 billion during the past 5 years. In the tech bubble of the late 1990's more than 50 individuals each made more than $100 million from selling shares just prior to the crash, with many founding companies that were never profitable. With much of the profit coming in areas like mortgage finance and banking where many of the errors dangerous leveraging and risktaking, and failure in ethics, caused the global financial crisis, the whole issue of executive compensation without results or pernicious to the public interest is taking centre focus for today's public opinion. With the auto industry also there is a perception that there was poor management and failure to respond to national and later customer need for energy conservation till late in the day, and yet the executive compensation and entrenched management behaviours and lobbying in Congress suggested a management impervious to public opinion....