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In the third and final debate of the 2016 U.S. presidential election Hillary Clinton shows she has mastered the techniques used by Trump to use short jabs and comments to unsettle her opponent, yet doing it in a meaningful way to make a point about how she is better qualified and her program helps the middle and working class.

On taxes she added to her plan about not increasing taxes for people making more than $250,000, with the comment that it would increase her and Trump's taxes provided she said Trump hasn't "figured out how to get out of it." It also was meant to draw Trump's response about not revealing his tax returns and plans to give hugely disproportionate tax cuts to higher income people. Trump called her "a nasty women," in response, which was a point cited by media reports as a negative for women voters.

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The prospect for increased consumer spending in China are not as strong as in the US. The increasing cost of living and the general uncertainty following the pandemic and release from covid restrictions mean that the average Chinese person is less inclined to spend. Savings pool is also smaller estimated at savings accumulated of $425 million during the pandemic years 2020-2022 compared to the US savings accumulation of $2.3 trillion in 2020 to 2021. US public also received cash payments which supported spending, and China by comparison had no cash payments.

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Steve Jobs of Apple never intended the iPhone to be used as an ubiquitous device that is there all the time with user attention riveted to it. A computer scientist, Prof. Cal Newport of Georgetown University, says the vision of the iPhone presented by Steve Jobs at the Mosconi Center in 2007 was very different from what it has become today. It was an iPod that could make calls, help you listen to music, not a device on which you had to constantly check emails, constantly be on the alert for messages, use for getting instant breaking news you didn't need all the time. At the time in 2007 the App store did not exist and Jobs by design did not focus on apps believing that whatever apps there would be would be better designed to be aesthetically good by Apple engineers. It was an iPod that made calls, a engineer on the team that developed the iPhone at that time tells Newport. Jobs vision was of an iPhone that did a few activities well- helping people listen to music , get directions, make calls. What he did not want to do was to change the rhythm of people's lives. Newport calls it a shame that this vision got somehow diverted and disrupted by what happened afterwards. We have become so used to the constant companion model that we forget its novelty, only a little over 10 years ago none of this existed. As a computer scientist writing about the influence of technology on culture Newport says it is important to remember the magnitude of this unintended shift, to know that Jobs got it right the first time and that it would be better for many of us to return to the minimalist vision for the phone that Jobs espoused. ...

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Morocco's effort to replace fossil fuel imports from Spain and Algeria with wind and solar energy are shown here in DW.com. Also shown are 10 pictures of unusual locations in which solar panels are used around the world. In one picture machinery in Denmark agriculture that plants beetroot and rapeseed is operated through GPS using the solar energy from panels placed on the roof of the machinery. Click on Original article to see these amazing pictures.

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It was not till 1.39 am in the early hours of the morning of January 7, 2023, that the just elected Speaker of the US House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy swore in all the new members of the 118th House. This ended a week of voting that went into 15 rounds before five Republican member holdouts of 20 rebels voted "present" to make it possible to elect Kevin McCarthy as the new Speaker. A bitter fight led to concessions being made to Freedom Caucus members who wanted to limit spending and cut spending on infrastructure and defense. McCarthy opted for the route of repeated ballots to avoid making concessions on who controls key committees and to limit concessions to ab out 20 rebel members of the Republican Congress. The vast majority of remaining members do not share these views including Democrats who make up about half of the House and many Republican members of Congress.

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A 70 year rivalry between two of the greatest teams in American baseball gets off to another start in Game 1 of the World Series on Friday night, October 25, 2024. In 1978 44 million viewers tuned into to watch them compete in the World Series. New players such as Shohei Ohtani are playing for the first time in a World Series that is bringing new energy to baseball as an American pasttime.

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After the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Change Agreement, China and the European Union sought to fill the leadership on this issue. Yet the reality now looks to be different. China decreased coal consumption between 2014-2016. Now China is ramping up coal generation as it needs to provide stimulus to a slowing economy as trade relations with the U.S. worsening.  In 2017 the trend reversed with state backed loans to help economic growth and surge in provincial permits.  China is now moving forward with plans to add coal fired power equal to almost the total U.S. capacity, according to Coalswarm, which tracks power plants worldwide for coal use. This would push coal fired production to above the cap of 1,100 gigawatts China has set and its current cap. Its current production is already about half of the world's total coal fired generation and quadruple that of the U.S. In 2017 China made up one fourth of total CO2 productions.  Canada is missing its emissions targets and is not likely to meet 2020 targets say experts. In the EU members reliant on coal power energy oppose EU parliament efforts to end subsidies to the most polluting plants by 2025, seeking delay of one decade. At the climate change talks in Katowice, Poland, these changes are facing opposition. As a sign of how the situation is changing since the 2015 Paris Accords, the protests in France by yellow vest protestors started in opposition to a carbon tax intended to meet France's climate change targets. That tax increase is being withdrawn by president Macron. Families struggling financially had a different perception of the increase in the fuel tax and even young people who support meeting emissions reduction joined the protests, as reported in the New York Times and The Times. This tells a lot about how the issue of climate change has changed in the public perception in three years. ...

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Toyota ended its relationship with Tesla to focus on fuel cell technologies. Panasonic is taking up electric car batteries project in stages to limit risk. As Tesla focusses on a car for the mass market at $35,000, both the upside and the downside are evident, as shown in this report by Pulliam, Ramsey and Mullins of the WSJ. The reporters say the arrrangement of interconnected companies Solar City, Tesla, and SPace X through Musk's holdings and his personal loans to companies in difficulty such as Solar City- using his Tesla shares as collateral- is a risky business. This follows the way Valeant shares lost 14% in one day, as market perception changed. Venture capital companies such as Jurvetson with which Tesla has connections, and relatives, round up the ownership of these companies in a tightly knit arrangement with Musk as the key shareholder in an unconventional arrangement, says WSJ.

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Winnie Hu of NYT on the BQE Brooklyn Queens Expressway that for half mile has cantilevered 3 level structure that will fall apart by 2029. How to fix it concerns city planners in New York. Some planners want to put a park in its place and build a tunnel for the heaviest traffic. There is interest in being transformative and doing something big. The other actions already taken are  are to keep reinforcing it, cut traffic to 2 lanes, not to salt it in winter. Now planners say 2029 is when it will fall apart and time is running out for this as well as other infrastructure in New York such as Penn Station with Madison Square Garden built over it. And yet one finds no reflection on the sad state of New York and other city infrastructure in the US, when capital is being invested with plans to spend to the tune of 1.5 to 3 trillion dollars by 2030 on AI data centers and other sites. This will simply result in crowding out investment in infrastructure, so that the US will trade places with China and even India as a Third World country. And yet wealthy New Yorkers who use the nation's and the city's subways present an attitude of indifference to the decrepit condition of the Nation's and their own city's infrastructure. ...

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This leading investment bank G. Sachs Jan Hatzius forecast for the US economy is for inflation to go down further from 2.8% in December 2025 to 2.4%. The forecast is at 2.5% growth for 2025 for US economy under a DJT administration including impact of tariffs on China imports of 20%, selective tariffs on EU imports, not an additional 10% tariff across the board.

Net Immigration is forecast at 750,000. This is lower than what it was in the last 4 years with it's surges in some years. The remigration deportation plan will have some impact on growth yet the growth forecast will not be affected to a large extent. Strong real disposable income growth of 3.3% and the wealth and income effect will support spending growth in 2025, says this forecast by G. Sachs investment bank's Jan Hatzius.

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Problems for women and for childcare in Germany after the Merkel administration's failure to invest in child care. This DW.com report looks at this problem. Mothers have to send their children to grandparents or pay for expensive private day cares and nannies if they are able to do this. If they are not able to do this the mother usually reduces her work hours or delays returning to her job entirely. A German Youth Institute DJI study is cited which shows that in 2020 49% of parents with children under age three said they require child care. Of these only 24% were able to secure a place at a child care center for the necessary hours. For children over age three 97% needed childcare and only 71% said the necessary hours were covered. This problem was bad before the pandemic, during the pandemic it has only become much worse for women. A similar problem is happening in the US, so that this problem has consequences for women in both the EU - in Germany, France, Italy- as well as the US. It places additional burdens on women with children in the workplace. ...

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From now on the vaccination program in India will be run nationally by the federal government. This will ensure fair access to vaccines to all parts of the Indian population. Earlier vaccine costs were bid up as states and private hospitals bid up prices. Under the new national program 75% of vaccines will be given out by the federal government and 25%  by private hospitals and other private health institutions. The government in New Delhi under prime minister Modi will offer adults free vaccinations. Modi said "We will increase the speed of procuring vaccines and also increase the pace of the vaccination program." Even in private hospitals the cost of vaccine will be kept at Rupees 150 or $2.06. Experts say this is the right policy and the government has learned from errors in letting states and other private institutions run vaccine policy, which made it too fragmented and subject to too many variables, resulting in inequity, and slowing vaccination drives. The Supreme Court stepped in asking for clarity, leading to the clear policy from the federal government announced today.  Advantage of the new policy is that the responsibility lies in one place, and the federal government also has the clout to make things happen, to negotiate with companies and other parties involved effectively. India has vaccinated 222 million people but because of the population being so large at 1.2 billion this comes out to be a small fraction of the population. This puts the task of getting vaccine supplies and getting the vaccination drives to work in the only place that has the determination and the resources to deliver results by vaccinating 1.2 billion people by December 2021. It has never been done before in history says Mr. Modi, and it is a challenge that India is now taking up for itself and for the global community. It also lays the ground for India to help its neighbors in Asia and in Africa, Latin America in 2022.   ...

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The culture wars around the national debt and government spending as the national debt reaches $12 trillion.

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The startling truth about health "reforms," - they won't control spending, and without that the whole system of health care will rapidly become unaffordable and unsustainable. Obama's Council of Economic Advisors points out in new report that since 1975 annual health spending per person, adjusted for inflation has grown 2.1 percentage points faster than overall economic growth per person. At this rate health spending which was 5% of the GDP in 1960, and is 18% of GDP today, would grow to 40% of GDP in 2040. Medicare and Medicaid would increase from 6% of GDP now to 15% in 2040, or equal to three fourths of federal spending. Employer paid insurance premiums for families which grew 85% in inflation adjusted terms from 1996 to $11,941 in 2006, would increase to $25,200 by 2025 and $45,000 in 2040. This would force employers to reduce take home pay. Samuelson says the uncontrolled health spending is singlehandedly determining national priorities, reducing discretionary income, raising taxes, widening budget deficits and squeezing other government programs, while it is producing large amount of waste in medical spending. See the link to Prof. Tyler Cowen of George Mason University in NYT, 6/14/ 2009, who cites the habit of doctors to write many expensive tests as one of the prime culprits in the wasteful spending. And in the process it delivers higher cost for lower overall quality of health for the American people. This at a time when many European countries provide live examples of doing it in a better way- lower cost, better health. The serious problem with the Obama health reforms says Samuelson is that it talks about restraining spending but may end up increasing spending. Its talk about controlling spending he says is good intentions, but based more on hopeful thinking, public realtions and risks becoming cosmetic reform. Because to really control spending will require coming to grips with its fundamental cause- hospitals and doctors are paid mostly on a fee-for-service basis and reimbursed by insurance, private or governmental. Such a system encourages doctors and hospitals to provide more services, expensive tests, favors heavy use of expensive medical technologies to increase profits, and for patients to expect them. Samuelson puts his finger on the root of the problem - there is no incentive and every disincentive for all the players in this game , doctors, hospitals and patients to seek reform of this system. For doctors and hospitals the hope would be that this cosmetic "reform" would leave the system basically unchanged, and patients to continue with a lifestyle and expectations that do not not acknowledge the fact that a lot of healthcare does not come from spending but from preventative care, education, good eating and exercize habits, and healthy lifestyles. And the uninsured are no exception, they would simply start consuming the expensive care for lower quality of overall health like everyone else. With this kind of situation confronting us, the views of Samuelson, and Professor Tyler Cowen of George Mason University, as welll as a growing chorus of informed public opinion on this subject, is that insuring the uninsured is a good idea, but doing it within the bounds of the present system, can only increase the costs. And too much is at risk, to rely on what Samuelson calls a scattershot of measures to control costs made up by Congress such as "evidence -based guidelines," "electronic record-keeping," "bundled payments to hospitals, to give the illusion of progress that won't make a serious difference. A sweeping restructuring of health care is needed, that would overhaul "fee-for-service" payment and reduce the fragmentation of care. It will also need what has not even be touched on adequately in the debate. This is the massive need for education in the schools about nutrition, eating, exercize, healthy lifestyles. It would also require opinion leaders in each field from sports and other fields to lead by example and with constant public presence, the media, and companies to form a partnership with private institutions to change existing eating habits and lifestyles that encourage obesity, smoking, fast food eating habits, large portions in restaurants....

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Contrasting reviews of Maggie Smith in the Wash Post and the NYT. This one looks at her popularity outside Britain in the US in the kind of series about Britain Americans love- Downton Abbey about aristocratic life in Britain.

Mark Smith in the Post by contrast looks at her humor and her performances that have more meaning such as the one that got her noticed in Britain with the Academy Award for "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," about the Spanish Civil War and a teacher of impressionable girls, her admiration for fascism and her discovery of her moral blindness.

And also for her striking humor and wit in other performances. 

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Mexico's growth rate has averaged annual growth of below 2% for 2013-2015 under the Pena adminstration. Predictions were for growth of 5-6%. The investment in the oil industry is low with decline in demand for oil. The peso has dropped in value to 16 to the U.S. dollar in August 2015 compared to 13 in 2014. The popularity rating of the Pena administration dropped to 34% in August 2015.

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More proof that China's real estate prices resemble the period of the bubble in real estate prices in Tokyo in the late 1980's. One parking space goes for $760,000 in Hong Kong in a luxury development.

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The new president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, says in his inaugural speech that he wants a national pact to free Brazil of corruption, crime and economic mismanagement. And also of ideology.

After being elected Bolsonaro picked Brazil's famous anti-corruption judge, Segio Moro, as his minister of justice. Moro was involved in the investigation called the Car Wash that looked into the state owned oil company of Brazil.

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Sabine Kinkartz of the DW.com looks at the way in which Olaf Scholz achieved what was seen as impossible through patience, grit, and hard work in the face of adversity. SPD was seeing poll numbers of as low as 15% in the spring of 2021, just months before the election. Scholz believed in his party's ideas for the renewal of Germany, remained undeterred even after losing an election to lead the SPD to Esken and Walter-Borjans in 2019, when Esken and Walter-Borjans reinforced the idea that the SPD should stand for workers and families, what it always stood for. Scholz was put forward as candidate by Esken and Walter-Borjans in 2021 with conviction. By Spring 2021 it was clear that Scholz had achieved the impossible, getting the conservative Merkel and the CDU, with instincts against borrowing in all situations, to agree to a huge aid package for Germany to fight the pandemic, and a huge aid package for the European Union to fight the pandemic.  That Scholz remained undeterred in his campaign by low poll numbers and went on campaigning on the basis of convictions about what is right for Germans and Germany, comes from deeper convictions from his days growing up in the Hamburg youth wing of Social Democrats in the years following SPD's Wily Brandt and the post war recovery. Germany's most remembered leader after Adenauer, Willy Brandt was leader of the SPD Social Democrats from 1964 to 1987, and chancellor 1969-74. Both Adenauer and Brandt are respected some 50 years later in the world and in Germany. That Germany is going back to this tradition of leadership after the period of the Merkel years when Germany was held back, brings new hope to Europe and the world. In allying with the Greens under a younger generation leaders Scholz saw the promise of an opportunity to tackle problems of climate change and investment in infrastructure together. Both parties see borrowing as essential to invest big in the future. Scholz message to Germans, Europeans and the world is - "Big jobs, but our country is capable of doing them." A message sent out from the US by president Biden, and from Asia by the Indian prime minister. ...

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This interview conducted by Bret Baier of Fox News of the vice president Kamala Harris was more like a debate with a Republican nominee for president as Baier would not let the vice president finish several times. The interview took place on October 16, 2024, in an effort by Harris to reach voters who supported Trump but would consider alternative visions of the future than the one offered by the former president.