LyrArc Article Gist
A trial by Merck and Schering Plough that lasted 2 years with 720 patients in the Netherlands found that while Vytorin helped reduce cholesterol more than Zeta taken alone, the plaques of patients on Vytorin grew twice as fast as the one on Zeta alone. Vytorin is a combination of Zetia and Zocor in a single pill. About 60% of patients take Zetia in the Vytorin form. Zetia by itself reduces cholesterol by 15-20% but its not clear if it reduces the plaque formation in arteries at all. The trial was completed in April 2006 but released now only after articles were written about it in the media. Zetia and Vytorin account for 20% of the overall cholesterol lowering drug market. Its about 70% of Schering's earnings and about 100 million prescriptionhave been filled in US so far. The drugs cost $3 a day. For Merck its reputation after the Vioxx issues would be affected by these results leaving some doubts in the public mind.

LyrArc Article Gist
Trump says he supports the House Republican tax plan for three brackets 12%, 25% and 33%. In his earlier proposal Trump has supported a top rate of 25%. He made these comments, including support for deducting childcare costs, in a speech at the Economic Club of Detroit. Trump did not repeat a call for repealing Dodd-Frank bank supervision legislation. Clinton was critical of Trump's economic team of business people from hedge funds and the real estate industry, saying this was another example of "trickle down economics,"  for giving  "super big tax breaks to large corporations." Michigan has not voted Republican since 1988, and the auto industry rescue was organized by president Obama, a point heavily advertised in the 2012 presidential campaign. Romney had opposed the rescue effort, and during the 2012 campaign the WSJ reports say  Trump called the bailout of automakers a mistake because of expansion overseas.

LyrArc Article Gist
Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs executive is the new Treasury Secretary in the Trump administration. His ties to Goldman Sachs go beyond his own work at the firm. His father joined Goldman in 1957, and worked for his entire career at the investment bank. Steven's brother Alan also worked at Goldman. During the campaign Trump was severe in his criticism of his opponents Cruz and Clinton's ties to the bank. Ironies abound, not only is the new Treasury Secretary from Goldman, his connections go back a generation. The Treasury Secretary under Clinton was Goldman Sachs executive Robert Rubin. Under Bush who followed Clinton the Treasury Secretary was Goldman Sachs executive Henry Paulson. Under Republican and Democratic administrations Goldman Sachs executives have held key positions. Mr Mnuchin was campaign finance chairman for Trump for 6 months leading to him being chosen for Treasury Secretary. Mnuchin joined Goldman in 1985. During the campaign Trump was also severe in his criticism of financier George Soros, making this a key point in a debate with Clinton for taking Soros's support. This report by Das and Ensign points out that in 2002 Mnuchin left Goldman to run a credit fund set up by George Soros. In 2004 Mnuchin founded hedge fund Dune Capital Management LP with Soros support.  When IndyMac bank collapsed a deal with the government was arranged that covered a part of any future loan losses being taken by FDIC, and Dune was one of several hedge funds and private equity funds including Soros funds that acquired it for $1.5 billion. The renamed IndyMac bank was called OneWest with Mnuchin as chairman. OneWest was sold in 2014 at a large profit to CIT Group Inc. This report says CIT Group took a $230 million charge in July 2015 for accounting problems at OneWest.  During the latter part of the Trump campaign after he joined it in May 2016, Mnuchin set up a joint fundraising agreement with the Republican National Committee. This made it possible for major donors to give to the Republican party and Mr Trump. The head of the Republican National Committee is Mr. Lewis Eisenberg. Having run the technology division at Goldman, Mnuchin was prominent in Goldman and investment banking circles in New York.    ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Geithner in written testimony to the Senate Finance Committee, stated that "President Obama - backed by the conclusions of a broad range of economists- believes that China is manipulating its currency." What is noteworthy is that experts are generally in agreement that something should be done about this in cooperative fashion, from Obama's economic team, Obama's own views on this, The National Association of Maufacturers, Labor and so on. The trade deficit with China has continued at high levels even with the current economic slowdown, so this issue remains as one that the Bush administration never really addressed. Simon Johnson, a MIT Professor, and former IMF Chief economist says that even the IMF has not addressed it, and that the Obama administration needs to call China to account. He says this could lead to a spat with China, and if the US does not back down to a row. The concern has been that China would not buy up Treasury debt the way it has in the past, at the same time the question is whether there is some point where the deficit is so large and the US so dependent on foreign buyers of Treasury debt, that it needs to be addressed on a number of levels. Including addressing currency and fair trade issues, a more rational balanced consumption of everything from oil to goods from lowcost Asian countries, to reduce the toll on the overextended American consumer and on the extent of US borrowing needed. From China's perspective there may also be the same concern about export led growth, which may come to be seen as undependable anyway, because with or without some currency advantage the overextended US consumer is not buying anyway, holding off on purchases of everying from cars to flatscreen televisions. With growth at 6.8% in 4th quarter 2008, according to the Chinese Government Statistics Bureau, and expected to drop to 5% in 2009, the export growth model is no longer the panacea for China's unemployed as it once was at 12-13% growth rates in 2006-2007. In fact it may now look to be a better wiser policy if China had increased the value of its currency even more than its slow gradual approach to slow the growth rate from 12-13% to a more sustainable 9-10%, and lower American imports and lower the American trade deficit. Part of the problem in China was the difficulty of applying any sort of brakes once the local governments were set free to expand as much as they could, and prevented any controls from being effective. Steel production continued to grow even after there was evidence of large overcapacity, and government direction failed. Buy some time to shift to domestic consumption based recovery, is what the Chinese policy may be now. Indications of this are evident with its grappling at the issues it has not tackled like giving ownership of land to farmers in rural areas, and to building a healthcare system for the country, both of which are part of a host of issues to shift to domestic consumption based recovery. So unlike the way the media and some experts portray it its not a tough line that the US is taking against Chinese unwillingness. China may want to cooperate.That may be true if China was missing out on 10-13% growth rates, but these were unsustainable anyway and bad policy. At growth rates below 5% as projected by analysts China may want to jettison the export model of growth and build an alternative one. In that case as China shifts to domestic consumption, currency adjustments may be seen quite differently than they were in the past....

LyrArc Article Gist
The Journal cites figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture showing 44.7 million participated in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program in fiscal 2011. This is a big jump from the 28.2 million people in 2008. Texas has 4 million on food stamps, California 3.7 millon, Florida 3.1 million.

LyrArc Article Gist
Suddenly, says Friedman, the Arab world has a truly free space, a space that Egyptians themselves created, and the truth keeps gushing out like a torrent from a broken hydrant. The hopes and aspirations bottled up for 50 years keep gushing out, like this bearded man Friedman sees in Tahrir Square, going back and forth screaming all the time that he feels free, that he feels free.

LyrArc Article Gist
Efforts by Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates to influence or slow the transition to democracy in Egypt.

LyrArc Article Gist
Friedman suggests a 2009 book "Generation in Waiting," edited by Navtej Dhillon and Tarik Yousef, as giving a real insight into what is happening in Egypt. It says that the great change that is occurring in Arab society is not about political Islam, but about a "generational game" in which over 100 million young Arabs are fighting stifling economic and political strucutres that have taken away their freedoms, provide the poorest education systems, the highest unemployment rates and the biggest income gaps of any society in the the world. ElBaradei tells Friedman that the Arab states of today are nothing but a collection of failed states who give nothing to humanity or science, and this because the people are not taught to think or act and are given an inferior education, in a part of the world that experienced in the past a high level of learning and made contributions in the arts, humanities and science.

LyrArc Article Gist
Chris Cillizza of the WP says there simply is no "new Trump," as mentioned in the meeting with president Nieto of Mexico. The speech on the same day in Pheonix, Arizona, following the meeting with Nieto, showed the Trump of the election primaries in which he talked about the criminal activities by undocumented immigrants and about building the wall on the Mexican border. Cillizza says Trump had left the impression that he was trying to expand his base with Hispanic voters through a meeting with Nieto, but it appears that it did just the opposite with Trump's reaffirming old positions on deportation and the wall in his speech. 

LyrArc Article Gist
Another significant development in this crisis, is how small businesses got addicted to credit card debt as a way to operate for ongoing expenses of the small business, from a small nursery, to abed and breakfast or a solo law practice. There are an estimated 27.2 million small businesses who are supposed to be one of the growth engines of the economy. Credit card debt when banks are tightening up credit and businesses are unable to meet expenses, is extremely costly because of the underlying usurious nature of the industry in the US and lax regulation. It will only push more businesses, that have acquired the bad habit of credit cards to finance operations, into bankruptcy. There were 5 million business credit cards in 2000. By 2009 after Visa Inc, American Express Co, and MasterCard Inc. and Discover Financial Services Inc. pushed these cards aggressively, using a new credit scoring system that looked less at the business and more at personal credit scores, the number jumped six fold to what Nilsen Reports estimates as 29 million business credit cards. The spending on these cards jumped for this period four fold, from $70 billion to $296 billion. As the average debt on each credit card jumped so did the likelihood of some of these card holders difficulties. Missed payments could lead to interest rates for some card holders jumping to 30+% from initial rates of 7-8%, all in the last 12 months. This makes small businesses less likely to create the jobs they created in the past, and one more troublespot in this economy....

LyrArc Article Gist
With more women getting higher education and pursuing careers, young Chinese women now prefer to be independent and postpone marraige. This has important consequences including smaller households and lower demand for some products. Women now make up more than half of all undergraduate students and half of graduate students in China. Beyond pursuing a career many women also see the importance of a loving relationship before marraige as opposed to being introduced to someone and finding a partner to go through life.

LyrArc Article Gist
This WSJ editorial says the U.S. should use what little influence it has to prevent Egypt from descending into civil war after the violent crackdown on protester camps in Cairo on August 14, 2013 by the Egyptian military. It says that continuing military aid will not be politically possible if the violence continues. A separate comment by Marc Lynch of the George Washington University Institute for Middle East Studies in online Foreign Policy magazine, says the Gulf States will make up for U.S. aid and the important thing is for the U.S. to be credible in the region in the long run.

LyrArc Article Gist
Fareed Zakaria points out that the primary elections of the Republican and Democratic parties can pose a danger to democracy because of demagogic politicians who can appeal to popular passions to bring a fringe group or individual to the presidency. Primaries for both parties became important after 1968. Eisenhower and Lincoln won the nomination after the person nominated on the first ballot failed to win the necessary votes. Another serious problem is that the turnout in the primaries is low, so low that a 15% turnout is considered high turnout. The media attention is so great that it creates the impression that a real election has taken place when in reality about 85% of the people have not voted- as the Economist magazine points out a representative turnout would change the outcome significantly so it is not clear how much this promotes democratic process.

LyrArc Article Gist
The view from Germany on Trump's economic plan and the need for changes by his advisors. DW.com's Wenkel says Trump needs to understand that 80% of job losses in recent years have come from not from globalization, but automation and higher productivity, rationalization. He says higher tariffs on Mexico could backfire.

LyrArc Article Gist
Jim Dwyer discusses proposed legislation in the New York City Council in November 2011, to set a "living wage" of $10 per hour, plus benefits, for workers at new developments receiving more than $1 million in public money. Under this legislation employers who do not include benefits would pay an hourly wage of $11.50. Discussion in the City Council has led to questioning this legislation on the grounds that the developments would not be built under the new rules. Dwyer points to San Francisco, which has set the minimum wage at $10.24 for January 2012, plus mandatory contributions to health insurance funds. The number of low wage workers in New York City with some college education has increased by 70%, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute. Wages at the bottom were $10.85 an hour, adjusted for inflation in 1990, in 2010 the wages were $10. What this does is further increase the income disparities and inequality in the U.S. Because of the demographic changes in America with Hispanic children representing a large proportion of young children, and the high rate of dropouts from highschool in the Mexican American community in New York, this means more children in New York City growing up below the poverty line....