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Pemex (Petroleos Mexicanos) CEO Emilio Lozoya is fired and replaced by Gonzalez Anaya, a close friend of finance minister Videgaray, as the company experiences a liquidity crisis by Jan. 2016. Anaya is known for cost cutting as head of Mexico's government healthcare institute. This report in the WSJ cites a Pemex official who says at one point in Jan 2016 Pemex was down to $8 million in cash. Under Lozoya Pemex failed to introduce financial discipline ahead of collapsing oil prices. Anaya is expected to cut spending by 19% or $5.8 billion. Mexico's governemt made a capital injection into Pemex of $4.2 billion to pay debts to suppliers, and offered tax relief of $2.8 billion. Pemex output is down to 2.2 million barrels a day in March 2016, decline of 4.5%. Pemex cuts will come in putting off exploraion spending of $800 million in one field in the Gulf of Mexico and paying less to rent oil platforms.

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Dionne,Jr., says the failure of the "supercommittee" to reach a deal would not be a failure at all if it leads to a flawed deal that does not generate enough revenues, such as the $300 billion in tax increases proposed by Jeb Hensarling. If the deal also makes 90% of the Bush tax cuts permanent this would make deficit reduction harder. Under such terms not reaching a deal, and having automatic reductions triggered by that outcome may be the preferred outcome, says Dionne,Jr.

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The U.S. Federal Reserve issued the results of the third round of stress tests since 2009. It said 18 0f 19 financial firms had enough capital buffers to continue lending in a sharp decline in the economy with a fall in housing prices and the stock market and unemployment rising to 13%. Ally Financial failed the test. Citigroup, MetLife and SunTrust Banks were asked to resubmit their capital plans to the Fed. Citigroup's dividend plan was rejected. No banks were asked to raise capital. J.P. Morgan and other banks were allowed to issue dividends and buyback shares. J.P. Morgan plans to repurchase $15 billion in stocks in the next 12 months. Wells Fargo and U.S. Bancorp also plan to issue dividends and buyback shares. Analyst estimates are for $32 billion in added dividend increases and share buybacks in in the next 12 months. The results are a boost for bank stocks.

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Matthew Slaughter of the Tuck School, Dartmouth, says that the principle of comparitive advantage should determine what America exports and imports. Under comparitive advantage each country concentrates its energies on the particular goods and services that it does better than other countries. Free trade operates under the idea of comparitive advantage, but in practice it is quite different than its textbook economic counterpart. It is constantly changing as new countries or industries in different countries try to upset the existing pattern. Under a textbook example Airbus should not exist because Boeing was the most efficient manufacturer upto that time, and new entrants in a industry are nurtured for years with support from the governments of their countries. And in some situations the governments may exclude certain companies or industries from support such as Komatsu and construction equipment in postwar Japan, and Infosys and software outsourcing in India, and still survive and grow. Under comparitive advantage Japan should still be importing construction equipment from Caterpillar in the US, and there would be no serious competition in that industry. This would work to the detriment of the principle of competition in free trade which is just as important to free trade as the idea of comparitive advantage, with new entrants in an industry upsetting the old way of doing things and creating price/quality improvements. Slaughter simply pulls back off the shelf the old idea of comparitive advantage without seriously considering its real life aspects. Without dealing with trade distortion from currency manipulation, from the impact on jobs, without considering the continuing critical role of manufacturing in developed economies to provide the standards of living for a large middle class, and creating the kind of society that people of developed countries aspire to. He mentions GE's Immelt and the President's Council on Jobs, but makes no effort to engage Immelt 's statement in his recent op-ed article in the Washington Post, that the concept of transitioning from a export-oriented economic powerhouse to a services led consumption based economy could be done without loss of jobs, prosperity and prestige, was fundamentally wrong. He has only one line for manufacturing's role in America's economy. This line says knowledge intensive industries such as education and software are just as important as manufacturing, but fails to mention that manufacturing has received less attention in recent decades. In so doing he is discounting his own profession of concern for the high rate of joblessness in the U.S., and the need for a new focus on manufacturing in the U.S. to reverse that trend. By saying that imports are not a sign of failure but can raise standards of living, and leaving it at that, Slaughter does not acknowledge that consumer debt that US consumers have taken on in the process certainly affects future prospects for the US economy. And he makes no mention of the need for rebalancing the world economy, which is exactly how free trade should work ideally. Countries that have high imports export more to rebalance the world trading system, as currency valuations are allowed to adjust makig their exports more attractive. By not taking into account the realities of free trade, and the need for practical measures to rebalance without policy induced distortions by state run economies, Slaughter ignores the idea of free trade that works as it should and for all countries. The irony is that Immelt's own committment to jobs and competitiveness has been questioned in online blogs and most recently by an editorial in the Wall Street Journal on January 26, 2011, titled "The Misallocators." That editorial refers to the outsize role of GE Capital in GE's earnings during the past decade, and the lack of credibility of a focus on competitiveness and jobs that this creates for GE. It mentions the loss of 34,000 GE jobs in the US during the last decade. ...

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Today GM announced that it is eliminating lifetime health coverage for about 100,000 white collar salaried retirees, as it is rapidly running out of cash to run operations. Also white collar salaries of current employees will be cut by 20 percent and the $1 a share dividend eliminated. This with other savings will save $1.5 billion annually GM estimates. Union contracts prevent this from taking effect for former factory workers even as the company is truly running out of cash. In paying the lifetime costs of hospital stays, surgeries, expensive drugs for retirees GM spends$4.6 billion in 2007 on health care for its one million employees and retirees and their dependents. This is larger that GM's entire active work force and a big reason GM has got into trouble. It also skewed management decisions in the wrong way. Management let it affect their strategy in the marketplace, they continued to run the company by emphasizing sales volume with frequent sales and discounting in the belief that the size was needed to support all these retirees goldplated medical care, care which does not exist in other industries and companies, even when GM coud least afford it. By carefully shutting down plants earlier as demand for some of its cars and vehicles was shrinking, and closing down some brands, GM could have focussed its efforts on the areas including smaller passenger cars and midsized cars and other models which were gaining popularity, and shifting ahead of the curve out of pickups and large SUV's in the face of higher gas prices. Its the collapse of the pickup and SUV market that exaggerated the impact even in October 2008, instead of the about 30% decline that the industry faced and GM faced in its cars, GM's dramatic drop in pickups and SUV's gave it an overall loss of 45% October 2008 over same month 2007. Without this aberrration of health care benefits from a previous growth era and a dominant GM - an anachronism in the present when GM was in decline and health care costs had mushroomed and company health care benefits cut back in industry after industry- and without the intransigence of the unions and the failure of management to build credibility, share the pain and convince the unions in good faith that this was unsustainable, GM could have had a much better shot of developing a strategy for renewal. Instead it sealed GM's fate, along with lack of foresight in taking decisive action to shift to higher fuel efficiency cars early in the curve, and closing unneeded plants and brands to focus on this task. In the end the gold plated benefits which were terminated today are lost for salaried retirees, and sooner or later the same is likely to happen inside or outside bankruptcy for union workers. Union workers who might then say what the salaried retirees are saying now, that if the company goes out of business, they would lose everything anyway, and could not blame GM for cutting them off. If only they had understood this earlier and accepted these facts, and if only managment had built the credibility and shared the pain so that company's interests came above union or management interests, as they should be for a company to grow or renew itself and grow. In the end union workers in the auto industry were living beyond their means, just as consumers in the USA were living beyond their means, and the outsized executive compensation also a kind of grab from another era. Renewal starts with getting a grip on reality, and reality slipped away from their hands....

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Joseph Stiglitz writes that keeping the dollar as the reserve currency is no longer the option. He tells us that it comes with some hidden costs such as a weaker global economy. Having developing countries keep hundreds of billions of dollars in the US in low interest earning reserves makes no sense considering the needs of developing countries, and the improved prospects for the USA and Europe in exports to a growing developing country economies. He points out that a new global reserve currency, with an orderly transition, may be the most important reform to ensure the longterm health of the world's economy. Its bad for the USA to keep exporting T-bills, says Stiglitz, as it does not create jobs. And its bad for all concerned as it lowers global economic growth. Especially he says when it is so unseemly for developing countries not to use the money to improve living standards in their own countries, with the help of exports from developed countries, that in the end improves global growth and the global future....

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How does the National Rural Employment guarantee Scheme compare with what Brazil has done under President Lula with the Bolsas Familias program to help rural people with income below the poverty rate? India its reported is looking at the Brazilian program. There the focus is on cash payments with cards like debit cards issued on each individual's name that only that person can use so that the funds cannot be stolen by corrupt intermediaries with the person receiving it having to make sure that his children are in school and vaccinated. The focus there is on nutrition, education and health care especially of the family unit and in this way it has been a success according to the World bank and other experts.

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Air pollution concerns are leading China's National Development Reform Commission to set a higher goal for cleaner energy. The NDRC plans a 52 gigawatt increase in installed capacity for green energy in 2013, an increase from 36 gigawatts in 2012. This includes 10 gigawatts for solar energy. Clean energy will take up 57% of additions to installed capacity in 2013, compared to 35% in 2010, according to Tian Miao, an energy anayst at NSBO.

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The US gets the lowest score among the large industrialized nations- way behind Europe- in its record on greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution policies, agricultural policies, smog, and other environment criteria in a survey done jointly by researchers at Yale and Columbia Universities. On regional smog the US has a very poor score.

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This article in the Guardian points to the differences within Catalonia about the independence referendum planned for October 2017. The Spanish government says it will prevent a referendum from taking place. In a symbolic poll that took place 3 years ago in 2014, only 2.3 million of 5.4 million Catalan eligible voters took part. Sentiment is in favor of self-determination but only among less than half of Catalans, as most Catalans would not come out to vote. The Spanish government says the referendum would be a violation of the constitution.

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This article in DW.com cites experts who point out that the Republican Party always had tensions within it because of the diverging interests of three groups that have allied together to form the party- Wealthy businessmen and corporate interests, evangelicals, and white working class people who have seen their incomes decline for several decades. The interests of each group have some overlap, are sometimes masked but frequently they diverge. Nigel Bowles, former director of the Rothermere Institute at Oxford University, says there is no particular reason that this coalition would hold together, that it was unstable to begin with, a wonder that it did not split up earlier. Scott Lucas, an expert on American Studies at the University of Birmingham, says that Reagan showed great skill in holding this coalition together, and Donald Trump has taken it apart by mobilizing only one constituency of white working class voters and leaving out others. The break between Republican party leaders Ryan, McCain, and state party leaders, with Trump is unprecedented in post war American politics, and putting it back together now looks like a lost cause in the medium term.  ...

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Agatha Sangma, at 28, is the youngest member of Parliament in India. Se was reelected from the Tura constituency in Meghalaya,, in India's northeast. She is minister of state for rural development in the newly elected Congress coalition government. Her father PA Sangma was a speaker in the Lok Sabha, India's Parliament. In India's system the cabinet minister has the biggest chunk of work and under him comes the minister of state. But considering how big the rural economy is in India, at over 40% of GDP and growing fast from a low base, its aposition of great responsibility for ayoung woman. Here she talks to Jyoti Malhotra of the WSJ. She is responsible for drinking water and sanitation. Access to drinking water, contamination of water, and water supplies for agriculture are a huge challenge for India. Agatha has studied environmental management in the UK, so she can bring knowledge of modern methods for managing water to her job. She likes to be responsible for implementing work in the rural areas, and has the youth and energy to travel and see things first hand for implementation. She says accountability is important for implementation and out in the field she can observe and ask questions. One of the problems she shees in implementation is properly using the funds allocated. This fund alone is 62,000 crores. And seeing that these funds are properly allocated and spent to generate the best use of the resources is critical for improving lives and meeting the needs for rural development. She sees room for experimenting, for innovation and bringing fresh ideas to this job. She seems to handle the interview questions quite well....

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Only 28% of the people in Portugal between 25 and 64 have completed high school . This compares with 85% in Germany, 91% in Czech Republic and 89% for the U.S. Portugal's high-school dropout rate is 37%, one of the highest in Europe. Its reading scores lag behind the OECD average, even after improvements in the last decade. The military dictatorships that ruled Portugal did not emphasize education, and education was neglected for several centuries before that. Even after efforts by the democratically elected governments in recent decades there is a huge gap between Portugal and countries like Ireland. This becomes important for Portugal to build industries and have the technical skilled workers to support these industries. Without this Portugal's financial condition can only get worse. With a technical skilled workforce such as that in Ireland, analysts estimate the growth in GDP would be 1.5% higher. Sharp cuts in education spending are going to make the situation tougher. Portugal lacks industry, yet at the same time cumulative deficits with the rest of the world are over 130 billion euros after years of cumulative deficits. This highlights the problems facing the euro currency countries with vastly different educational systems, industry structures and economic management....

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Kodak Labs in Eastman Kodak Park, Rochester, New York, in 2015, as the struggle to come up with new applications to reinvent the company continues.

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The inability to convince farmers to trade land for a fair settlement in money, new homes, schools and other benefits and to make this a win-win proposiion between farmers and companies is holding up abut $98 billion in investments in steel plants and other plants. A bill in Parliament would require companies to negotiate directly with farmers and reach a settlement that is good for farmers to resolve what is increasingly a serious problem. It is holding up an industrial revolution and the creation of manufacturing industry in India to provide the kinds of jobs that are needed badly.

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The 2016 primaries with Sanders and Trump have brought to the forefront voter dissatisfaction with the agenda of both parties, especially so for Republicans with the lack of specifics and personality driven campaign of frontrunner Trump. On a whole host of issues from poverty, wages and inequality, regulatory reform, to trade, borders, security, ISIS, both parties are facing questions from voters. Particularly the Republicans who have lacked specifics during the two terms of the Democratic Obama administration with a divided Republican Congress, and the risks for Republicans running for Congress under frontrunners Trump or Cruz who have provided few details on their agenda. The Agenda project of Ryan will have about 25 meetings and prepared specific agenda, including white papers and legislation, that would give Republicans hope to run on positive proposals that are placed before the Republican Convention in Cleveland. Chairmen of House standing committees were assigned 6 areas- health care, taxes, national security, regulatory reform, poverty, and Congress reasserting constitutional authority. Ryan told the Ethics and Public Policy Center on April 19, 2016- "A lot of people don't like conservatism as they know it. For too many people Republicans seem to be caught in a time warp. They're thinking, 'We don't control our borders. Wages are going nowhere. College and healthcare keep getting expensive. ISIS continues to spread. And what are Republicans going to do about it?' So we need to adapt our policies to meet the challenges of the 21st century."...

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Russian planes fly very close to a U.S. destroyer in the Baltic Sea in 2016, sources say about 30 feet. The. U.S. protests the incident and this is discussed at a NATO-Russia Council meeting to avoid accidental flareup of tensions. Russia sees higher U.S. military presence near its borders as a threat. Russian response is to upgrade its nuclear submarine fleet and operate in the Baltic Sea, North Sea, Atlantic and Mediterranean. Russian intervention in Ukraine led to increased U.S. presence to protect the Baltic Republics and Poland, members of the NATO alliance. The U.S. and NATO is conducting Operation Atlantic Resolve to deter any Russian action. Chancellor Merkel called for a "persistent NATO presence in the Baltic States" during the Ukraine war in 2014, in a visit to Latvia. Germany led an early version of a Rapid Response Force of 5000 troops deployable in 48 hours setup in 2015.