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Stronger steps and leadership by the Fed expected during the 2008 economic crisis.

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Severstal to buy the Sparrows steel plant in Maryland formerly of Bethlehem Steel for $810 million. Expect more Russian investment in the USA.

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Competition in the trans atlnatic market with a Delta- Northwest merger.

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The USA military consumes 340,000 barrels a day or 1.5% of all the oil used in the USA. It is now working on a plan to use synthetic fuels as a larger part of its fuel and reduce petroleum consumption and dependence.

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The auto industry downturn is hitting Ohio, Michigan and Indiana the hardest. Ohio is also hit by the faltering banking sector.

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AT&T had 4.3 million iPhone activations in the first quarter of 2012, down 43% from the prior quarter. Of the most valuable subscribers who signed up for 2 years AT&T showed 187,000 additions. All but 7000 of these were in tablets. . This indicates that the smartphone market in the U.S. is being saturated. AT&T used the iPhone introduction in 2007 as a way to take subscribers from Verizon and Sprint. That advantage is now fading.

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The U.S. Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, will have his first Q&A and press conference on April 27, 2011. This is an effort to reach a broader audience with the Fed's view of the economy, his defense of the $600 billion quantitative easing decision, and views on inflation and the U.S. dollar.

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According to the American Society of Civil Engineers over 10% of the 607,000 bridges in the U.S. are structurally deficient. And 42% of U.S. highways are congested. A poor transportation system makes the U.S. less competitive. The cost to U.S. businesses from a poorly funded and maintained transportation system is about $430 billion more in operating expenses by 2020 and $1.7 trillion in lost opportunities, according to ASCE.

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Former Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin on Harvard, Columbia and other US universities dependent on full tution of foreign students to where they make up 30-40% of students, highly disproportionate to the American student population, which the author says funds the universities expanding buildings and bureaucracy. It means fewer opportunities for the American student population at the Nation's universities. An hidden aspect of this is that at the upper tier and upper middle tier of universities in the US this helps support rapid increase in the tution fees to levels not seen in two generations, making even upper middle class families with incomes over $200,000 a year find it hard to save for several children at such schools. It imposes an unnecessary and stiff burden on parents in the upper middle class. At the middle level of middle class incomes of $100,000-$150,000 the general inflationary trend for college tution puts these universities also in the range where the middle class can barely access them- cost of $30,000 a year over 4 years adding upto $120,000 and total of $360,000 for 3 children households. Basically universities have become an entrenched system operating in the interests of their own operations now in conflict with what is good for the Nation. ...

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Indian foreign minister Jaishankar describes the highly eccentric situation of lack of US India close economic and defense cooperation for over 50 years, when the natural flow of cooperation one would expect between the land of Washington and Lincoln and the land of Vivekananda and Gandhi was interrupted. The current form of cooperation has existed for about 14 years and accelerated after prime minister Modi was elected in 2016. This was a turning point in the US India relationship and in India US economic partnership. After president Trump was elected Mr. Modi and Mr. Trump held a huge public gathering in stadiums at Houston and Ahmedabad, in a way that was never seen before between an Asian country and America. What changed? For one thing India had a great weight lifted from its shoulders with the removal of the erratic Nehru policies of post independence India of forming a non aligned bloc with countries like Egypt and Yugoslavia. These were policies that had no connection to India and its history as the civilization where the East has its roots in Vedanta and Buddhism. It also resulted in alienating the Dwight Eisenhower administration and administrations that followed after John F. Kennedy, as the Cold War intensified and most of Eastern Europe came under Soviet domination. India never gauged the effect this had on America after the Berlin crisis in 1948, the Hungarian revolution of 1956 and similar uprisings in East Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Britain was no help even with the British Commonwealth, as the British perpetuated the idea that India was too divided to make up one country, having failed to grasp India's ancient civilization and  culture, and having built the Empire in India by using the division in the country. Mohandas Gandhi described this in Hind Swaraj in 1910 and told Indians that it was they who had invited the British into India, with rulers using military garrisons of the British commercial East India Company for help in their internal wars. Americans still unfamiliar with India till after 2000 simply accepted British colonial ideas about India. The new administrations in the US, the Trump and Biden administration, and the Modi administration in India have shaken this up and changed perceptions all around. Biden recently during the Modi visit to Washington DC said India US relations as he sees it would be "the closest on earth." So that today we have an ancient civilization roused to its depths in its youth for modernization, that extends from India to Indonesia all the way to Japan rooted in India's ancient civilization of Vedanta and Buddhism, with a population of about 2 billion people. That faces the US on its Pacific coast, united in its determination to build a new and common future with ideas of parliamentary democracy, participation of the people, and of modernization with science and technology, contributing to the betterment of all peoples. ...

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In a aspirational country where even US president John Kennedy's grandparent's father Patrick Joseph arrived from Ireland during the potato famine in the 1850's and aspired to reaching the level of the more educated Americans over 2 generations, whose grandson JFK's father worked as a manager in the Quincy shipyards in Massachusetts, this extraordinary concentration of support for Republicans among less educated is astonishing, perplexing, and at odds with what America is. Super Tuesday results analysis of 1000 counties in 14 states in 2024 show Republican Trump getting 83% of the vote in counties with a higher share of voters without a college education. Where voters are a higher share of the college population this drops to 61%. A sharp drop in support is seen in counties with a higher percentage of voters who have college a rapid fall as one has college education.  A strange phenomena can be seen in graphs shown in WSJ of voters by counties and income, education. A large cluster of voters in incomes below 70,000 and without a college education then falling off like off a cliff. In Iowa, New Hampshire primaries it was seen as being mostly rural voters, more isolated and in less proximity to other people. The question remains how well this category of under $70,000 without a college degree reflects the country as a whole in 2024, how has the country changed since 2012, 2016 and 2020. It is easily said there is a polarized country yet this ignores the unusual nature of this support where it is concentrated so heavily in one group in this way with cutoff of $70,000 falling precipitiously in support for Trump for incomes above that. At above $70,000 support quickly drops to 80% and falls steeply with every $1000 increase in income after that. In a country like the US this means almost the entire educated population in the US and the entire population above the $70,000 per year level excluding itself from support, so sharp is the fall off from moderate income and education levels, and so heavily clustered is the support almost like a ball up in that corner of the graph with just a few specks on the rest of the graph. This is most unusual for the US and may not be reflective of the whole population of the US in 2024. This is also unprecedented in US history since 1776, may not compare to 2016, and for the Republican party even more unusual. Two questions also come up what happened to all the country club, more educated voters who voted Republican and made the party what it was an upper class business supported party, and what happened to all the factory workers, teachers, nurses and others in America who make about $70,000 or $80,000 and who are generally Democratic. These people will be part of the electorate for the whole country in 2024. ...

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The National Assessment of Education Progress, NAEP, which is a report card of educational levels in the U.S. secondary school system shows 36% of fourth graders in the U.S. are proficient in reading for 2017. For eighth graders this drops to 34% in 2017. This shows that a little over a third of fourth and eight graders are achieving proficiency in reading, a glaring sign of failure leaving about two thirds of young people behind. With declining level of reading proficiency and proliferation of social media, the bottom 25% are faring much worse than even this dismal result.

Between 2015 and 2017 there was no improvement in NAEP scores.

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US Business has considerable apprehension about the former president in 2024 compared to its willingness to consider Trump in 2016. At the time executives from investment bank Goldman Sachs and heads of oil companies joined the Trump administration. This time US business and corporate interests are apprehensive about becoming the target of a tweet they might find the next morning under a Trump administration. They are not supportive of student loan forgiveness, but when it comes to the CHIPS and Science Act they see president Biden as effective and helping industry. Business leaders have a negative view on the Trump effort through appointment of 3 Supreme Court Justices of overturning decades old rights of women on abortion, and on this issue alone many will support Harris-Walz, overriding other concerns they might have. The visions of Harris and Trump are so vastly different with one calling climate change a hoax and hyping up social issues and infrastructure needs without any record of delivery when in office, and the other a strong position on climate change, wages and income, delivering on infrastructure and CHIPS that US Business. The result is that it leaves US Business with no better option in 2024 than to support the vision  that takes America forward. There are different sections of the business community which have different priorities.  Silicon Valley, and oil, pharmaceuticals because it profits most from light regulation which brings with it social costs is a special issue not addressed here. Other business, banking, automobiles, and a range of other industries have other priorities yet also see the need for the economy and the US to move forward with a different vision than one that simply ignores climate change, and fails to address child care, child poverty, wide disparities in wealth, and other issues facing of wages, cost of living facing most Americans.  ...