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Estimates of the contraction of the Iranian economy in 2012-2013 show GDP declines for 2012 and 2013. The IMF estimate of the economic contraction for fiscal year ending March 2013 was 6%. Former president Ahmadinejad's policies led to hyper inflation, a sharp depreciation of the currency rial, similiar to the situation in Venezuela under Chavez and Maduro. To get a sense of the the scale of the damage to the Iranian economy- a decline of 39% in vehicle production in 2012 with the lack of essental parts and decline in demand, oil production declining to about 700,000 barrels at one point in 2013 from over 2 million barrels in the period before 2012. This was a result of lack of access to needed technology and parts as sanctions began to take a toll, and because of the decline in exports from the enforcing of sanctions by 2013. By June 2014 the newly elected leader Rouhani had made economic recovery the to priority- inflation had been cut in half and the rial currency had recovered from the lows in 2012-2013, and oil production increased to 1.2 million barrels. The IMF forecast is for GDP growth of 2.35% for 2015. The auto maker Khodro Industrial Group is keen on increasing production and partnering again with Renault, which left the country with the sanctions. Iran's oil producing company estimate is that about 700,000 increase in production could be achieved quickly with the lifting of sanctions for oil technology and parts. Rouhani has put together a large group of business leaders inside Iran and overseas to improve Iran's image with investors and attract foreign investment....

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Donald Trump's economic advisory team includes in addition to Harold Hamm, shale energy billionaire, Steven Mnuchin, CEO of hedge fund Dune Capital Management, hedge fund billionaire John Paulson, Dan DiMicco, CEO of steelmaker Nucor, bankers Stephen Calk, and Andy Beal, tax expert Stephen Moore, and David Malpass, a columnist for the WSJ. The team is headed by Stephen Miller, an aide to Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama. The Washington Post points out that the selection of the team with many hedge fund businessmen including John Paulson, who bet against faulty mortgages before the 2008 financial crisis, is at odds with his criticism of Hillary Clinton for her contacts with Wall Street and his message of not having any connections with Wall Street so that he could better represent the interests of ordinary Americans- people hurt by the 2008 financial crisis with the high jobless rate for older white men. In the 2008 election both candidates John McCain and Barrack Obama were shown in media articles to have connections to lobbyists for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In the 2012 election Mitt Romney as a private equity executive at Bain, was a part of the financial industry. This time in 2016- after all the noise and tumult about who represents Main Street- is no different for Trump and Clinton's connections to the financial industry. Only Clinton has to respond to the movement within her party from Bernie Sanders for providing a genuine example, and breaking with the past. The team of economic advisors put together by Jeb Bush led by Glenn Hubbard may be little different in substance than the one put together by Trump in its connections to the financial and real estate industry. The only person who took on the financial industry to fight for homeowners interests shown in Lyrarc since 2008 is Sheila Bair of the FDIC, a Kansas Republican. She could truly represent the interests of working class and ordinary Americans simply from a notion of fairness that  is so much a part of the American experience. Yet she has said running for office and fund raising in the way it is practiced today makes the thought too difficult to accept. Recent developments do not offer encouragement. Yet ordinary Americans ought not to forget, and ought not to let anger affect a discerning view of things. ...

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Raghuram Rajan interviewed by BW's Peter Coy. Rajan was prescient in questioning the Greenspan Fed's policies and the risks posed by the excessive leveraging in the financial system at the 2005 Jackson Hole conference. After the excessive monetary easing by the Bernanke Federal Reserve, Rajan questions the wisdom of keeping interest rates too low for too long. He joins John Taylor, George W. Bush presidential advisor, and Allan Meltzer of Carnegie-Mellon in making this point. Rajan was the chief economist at the IMF from 2003 to 2006. He is the author of a 2010 book, Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures still Threaten the World Economy. The fault lines he describes are rising inequality in the US and the dependence of the US on loans from China.

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An attempt to keep Iraq together as one nation even as it splinters into 3 with the Kurdish north and the Shiite south containing all the oil fields, by having a oil council at the central government which work with oil governmental organizations in the Kurdish north and one similiar to be setup in the Shiite south. Does it give Sunnis some hope for a share in the revenues and incentive to work within a national framework which increasingly is agoal only of the US and Britain only and possibly only given lip service by the elected government as the mostly Shiite government also prepares in the background to US presence for an eventual partitioning of the country. Remember many of the Arab states were creations of he British and French empires in the 20th century, and not necessarily natural divisions. Culturally and by religious beliefs parts of Iraq that are Shiite are brethren to western Afghanistan round kandahar and to the Shiite centres of religion ad culture in Iran, and have been so for centuries before Europeans had a presence here in the 19th and 20th centuries, and this won't simply go away especially when the post war modernization that occurred in Iraq whatever its appearance was of the worst type that exacerbated religious tension and did not bring communities together....

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Laura Meckler describes the many experiences as First Lady in Arkansas and in the White House, the many political investigations that happened, that led to the more cautious style Hillary has taken since becoming Senator from New York. This combined with her intense longing for privacy have led to the strange situation where people do not the human person that is Hillary, when they are inundated with information about the Clintons as a couple. With the 2016 campaign that human person is what is coming out as her fighting spirit kicks in, for someone who has seen all sides over a long time. 

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What is behind the runup in oil prices and commodities prices? Gongloff of WSJ sees a decoupling between commodities prices and economic fundamentals. Oil inventories are the highest they have been in a decade, according to information from the Energy Department. And global supplies are high compared to the demand. Two factors are influencing the price of oil which reached $68 on the Nymex crude oil futures- $80 is a realistic prospect. According to one commodity strategist at BMO Capital Markets, China has more than doubled its gold holdings since 2003, and is accumulating bigger inventories of crude, copper, and other materials both for future use and to protect against the potential decline in value of its huge dollar holdings. The other factor is the huge amount of global liquidity as a result of the action of the central banks of the US, Europe, England and other countries. Morgan Stanley Economists Fels and Pradhan say, the ratio of global money supply to GDP has never been higher, which supports a "global liquidity cycle" that puts cash into the hands of investors. These investors bid up the prices of commodities. Fels and Pradhan say similiar cycles propped up the tech-stock and housing bubbles....

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The International Energy Agency lowers its global oil demand forecasts on Dec. 11, 2014, leading to further drop in the price of oil with oil futures in electronic trading for WTI at $58.89 on New York Mercantile Exchange, and Brent crude at $62.83 on ICE in London, for January 2015. The price of WTI U.S. oil dropped to $59.95 on Dec. 11, 2014.

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Arseniy Yatseniuk, resigns as prime minister of Ukraine in April 2016, as his popularity declines with falling living standards and corruption scandals. The new government is still from the old political elite. Prices have gone up by 50% in recent years and GDP has fallen in the three years of conflict with Russia.This article in the Economist magazine says young civil activists in Ukraine are working hard to set up institutions- sometimes parallel institutions such as the Reanimation Package of Reforms of 50 non-governmental civic organizations- that wil give Ukraine better governance after decades of corrupt governments. Online coverage on corruption is increasing creating an environment where the poor governance of the past is no longer the norm.The IMF which has a $17 billion loan package for Ukraine has ceased disbursements till Ukraine can take action against corruption and improve governance. The IMF insisted on the formation of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau. As the U.S., EU, and NATO, come closer to Ukraine, during a period of tense relations with Russia, the quality of Ukrainian governance is an important issue for formerly Communist Eastern European countries and for the rest of Europe. It all depends on civic society and young people with new aspirations to change the way things are done....

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CNN reporter Cassie Spodak provides this exceptional report into the minds of New Hampshire Democratic voters who gave Bernie Sanders a 22 percent lead in the New Hampshire Democratic primary over Hillary Clinton. In October 2016 Hillary Clinton has the support of Bernie Sanders against Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential election. She described it as "100 percent support" in television debate. Sanders has appeared with Clinton twice, and campaigned 4 times in New Hampshire, and continually across the country. Younger New Hampshire voters still long for Sanders as their favored candidate. Older voters and some who have been motivated by Sanders to run for local office see the shaping of the Democratic Party platform as a victory for Sanders. Key planks of Sanders, taxes on the wealthy and higher incomes to pay for student tuition, infrastructure, and helping working class families, are now key parts of the Democratic platform. These voters see this as a pragmatic step and are enthusiastic in their support for Hillary Clinton. Overall Clinton now has 87 percent of Democratic voter support in New Hampshire according to a WMUR/UNH poll in mid October 2016, and she is doing well with millenials and independents nationally, a critical bloc of voters for Clinton to show nationwide support. One member of the steering committee for Sanders in New Hampshire named Dudley Dudley, reflects the opinion that has shifted the party to emerge united during and even more so in the final months of the presidential campaign of 2016- she tells the CNN reporter Spodak that she supports Hillary because "of the way she has grown, and stretched," and the way Clinton and Sanders are now campaigning together and working together. Both Clinton and Sanders deserve credit for their extraordinary ability to grow during their campaigns and during the party's way to shape the way forward. ...

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The enthusiasm for Six Sigma was carried by McInerney from GE to 3M. 3M was sluggish at the time and growing bureaucratic over time so an outsider and the efficiency focus of getting more for every buck spent and focus on quality in all processes and designing for quality and reduced defects may have helped to bring a new dimension to 3M. But as the author reflects and Buckley who stepped into McInerney's shoes says aloud, as well as several B School Professors, this imposed on a culture like 3M's that thrived on innovation, the post it note being a classic example, was not going to produce the best results in the long run. Interestingly GE itself under Immelt has emphasized innovation, research and development in addition to Quality Control. Going back over the years Japanese QC actually was taken from earlier work at GE in the 30's and 40's in Quality Control, so it was natural for GE to return to its own accomplishments in this area after a period when it had lost its leading edge in Quality. But foremost GE was about innovation and creativity and new products, back from its origins with Thomas Edison's company. The other GE person Nardelli at Home Depot also tried to bring a numbers only focus and doing it in a marine corps seargent type of way stumbled badly and resigned. So this piece on McInerney and buckley and 3M reflects a quiet shift to thinking of new ways to approach the complex global markets of today and the global competition of today. And the rapidly changing marketplace where shifts in buyer behaviour and competitor innovation create a constantly changing playing field. Is Tata Motors small car at an incredibly low price going to change the car industry, if the same companies can then make better cars at a much lower cost after developing lowcost high quality technologies? What is happening as Apple and then HP achieve success by selling their brands through stores and Dell starts to slip? Why is P&G and Unilever looking at the prospects in selling to consumers with smaller budgets and shifting its focus to these markets for growth? Doesnt this require one to think on ones feet and listen and observe and reflect on what these changes mean? Roger Martin of the University of Toronto has a piece in BW, May 21, 2007, with a similiar thought. ...

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Proposals by economists Rajan, Stein and Kashyap on financial catastrophe insurance, and bonuses held in escrow, as corrective measures after learning from the 2008 global financial crisis.

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In a major western nation the Shadow Government is now being led by someone who did not spend childhood years growing up in that country, putting this out of reach for millions of children whose parents and grandparents have lived there for generations. The result is that the common people are losing faith in government. In that major western nation people are deserting the main parties looking for alternatives and common sense even though the laws on birthright citizenship were finally and belatedly changed in 1983. US vs Wong Kim Supreme Court case of 1898 is about Wong as a son of parents lawfully and permanently domiciled in the country, and was seen by the Supreme Court as a natural born child for good reason. That this does not apply to women coming to a western country to give birth specifically to gain citizenship for a child and then departing appears obvious. Just one year after a mother from West Africa arrived along with others who made the same journey from around the world to give birth for citizenship in the UK, the UK changed its laws to prevent this from happening again. In the US as it seeks to  follow other countries in Europe to prevent birthright citizenship used in opportunistic ways not inherent in genuine citizenship, this jurisdiction does not apply to people here illegally or temporarily.   The authors of this article in WSJ say temporarily as understood by ephemeral jurisdiction. They cite the citizenship clause.Sen. Jacob Howard (R., Mich.), sponsored the Citizenship Clause. Senator Jacob Howard argued that it “ought to be construed so as to imply a full and complete jurisdiction on the part of the United States.”    ...

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A formal lifting of economic sanctions takes place in Jan 2016 with the implementation of the nuclear deal with Iran, a landmark event.

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German politicians are critical of Finance minister Schauble's remarks comparing Putin's takeover of Crimea to Hitler's annexation of the Sudetenland. Merkel distances herself from the remarks considering that a singular event. Former chancellor Kohl tells the Bild newspaper, "there's been a lack of sensitivity in dealing with our Russian neighbor, especially President Putin." Decades of hard work in building relations with the Soviet Union since Willy Brandt initiated engagement, followed by Schmidt, Kohl and Schroeder, are seen as being put at risk by the German public and government. Business interests are also at stake. Polls show 60% of German's oppose sending the German air force to NATO's eastern borders, and German foreign minister Steinmeier said there was no way for Ukraine to join NATO. A former German ambassador to the U.S., head of the Munich Security Conference, Wolfgang Ischinger, says Germany not the U.S. would suffer the most from a deterioration in relations. Companies like Siemens and Deutsche Bahn put a high priority on de-escalation of the crisis....

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The relationship of former German chancellor Schroeder with Russian president Putin reflects personal experince with the deaths and destruction of the Second World War. Schroeder lost his father in the war. Putin is the only surviving child, born in 1952, of a mother who barely survived the siege of Leningrad from 1941 to 1944 when 641,000 Russians died of starvation in the city. His mother lost one child in the siege.