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The Romney campaign is trying to keep Obama's support among Hispanics and Latinos to 65-70%. Latino leaders say Romney's positions on immigration during the primaries, when he chose to go to the right of Governor Perry, have affected their perceptions and his more recent centrist positions are being discounted. Republicans are awakening to their weak position in the fastest growing demographic in the U.S. Positions on abortion, gay marraige and religion are affecting a portion of the Latino vote. One question is how enthusiastic is the voter turnout, especially because president Obama failed to take up immigration reform in his first term and gave it a lower priority.

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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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The confusion among Tsipras supporters in Athens as the creditor terms that are stricter than the ones rejected in the July 5, 2015 referendum win 250 votes out of 300 in the Greek parliament on July 10, 2014. The centre right New Democracy and centre left Pasok parties and other parties support Tsipras, and the far left of Syriza abstains in the vote. Serious damage was done to the economy in the 6 months of Syriza negotiations ending in the referendum, increasing the size of a new bailout. The increase size of the bailout came as a shock in Germany reducing any flexibility for chancellor Merkel in the internal debate within Germany. In addition relations were damaged with the EU by the referendum and Syriza's handling of it. As a result opinion polls showed German support for concessions dropped to a low of 10%, increasing pressure on chancellor Merkel within her CDU party. Analysts say Greeece could lose another 10% drop in output if Greece leaves the eurozone, showing the risks taken by the far left Syriza party and economic mismanagement. Even if it stays within the eurozone Greece faces additional costs with lower tax revenues from the fallout in the economy of events in July 2015. Greek officials say the restrictions on ATM withdrawals to 60 euros a day for each account could stay in place for months. These developments are not taken into account by academics and young people in Greece as they refer to European solidarity. ...

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This editorial in the WSJ says Obama's silence when it comes to the jailed opposition leader in Malaysia is one more silence when it comes to issues related to suppression of democratic freedoms. When this issue was raised in June the WSJ reports it drew the Obama comment: "democracy is hard." This is all the more astounding now says the Journal, after the WSJ report about corruption in the Najib Razak government related to the $700 million from a state owned investment bank. This editorial says about the record of the Obama administration on going silent when issues of freedom and suppression have come up from Iran in 2009 to many other events and Malaysia today- that this is one of the most puzzling aspects of the Obama presidency. It also points out this is is one of the most discouraging aspects of how the U.S. is seen in the world under the Obama presidency, when it comes to protecting freedom and freedom of speech and expression.

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Phased retirement is becoming a popular option for many Americans nearing retirement. An example is a employee taking 25% less income for 13 weeks of additional time off to spend more time with a reitred spouse, for vacation, and for trying out new locations for retirement. It gives working Americans an opportunity to gradually adopt a more relaxed lifestyle, to better understand what it would be like in retirement. This option also has the advantage of using good health to add some working years and improve the retirement portfolio, with less demands of work.

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Foreign institutional investors responding to negative sentiment for emerging markets in general took out $2.6 billion from India in August 2015. Yet average allocations to India for emerging market funds have increased to about 10.7% in July 2015, because India looks much better than other emerging markets. By comparison China is at 20.25%.

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A plan to postpone a 21% cut in payments to doctors for treating Medicare patients, and instead give a slight payment increase under a House proposal, at a total cost of $245 billion over 10 years, is raising questions about the the impact on the USA budget deficit in coming years. The Congressional Budget Ofice says the House health bill will increase the deficit by $239 billion by 2019. In past years the lawmakers in Congress have postponed the implementation of these cuts, and the administration would like to see this as a separate item and not showing increasing the deficit. The American Medical Association lobbied to have this provision in exchange for its support to the health care plan.

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Turner Adair, head of Britain's Financial Regulatory Authority thinks that banks have assumed an outsize role in the British and world economy, and are coopting their regulators. He sees the need to check many of the excesses. Why not use profits to build up reserves rather than give out huge bonuses and paychecks, he asks. He sees the need to challenge the accepted thinking on Wall Street and in the City of London, where the ideology of efficient markets became embedded, as it did also in the regulatory community. He came in the week Lehman Brothers collapsed as chairman of the FSA. And he wants to shake up the existing thinking. In March, the Turner Review. a 126 page report was published. A lot of attention was paid to his suggesting atax on financial transactions, called the Tobin tax, but its designed more to get people thinking and questionning the existing way of running banking as Turner said in an interview, "we have begun to accept this idea of liquidity as the new God." Can British or American society and the financial industry in both countries work to the benefit of both? Nobel prize winning economists and other experts have advised ashift to productive investments that grow the economy using technology, science and brainpower and new ideas, as opposed to the investment in mortgages and other speculative investments. As the regulators -including former and current heads of the SEC, and other regulatory bodies in the US, Cox, Schapiro and others- once held on to the same theory of uninhibited operation of free markets as best for generating increased wealth for society as the banking community, they tended to get co-opted in letting bad practices flourish. Went to sleep on the job as it were. See the links in Intelilinks. Adair Turner's admonitions are designed to get people thinking. He says, "banks need to be willing, like the regulator, to recognize that there are some profitable activities so unlikely to have a social benefit, direct or indirect, that they should voluntarily walk away from them." Investments in science, technology and new products, as in the 60's that generated a revolution in living standards, than the mortgages and consumer lending of the last decade, is what he may be saying, as do these Nobel prize winning economists....

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The dangers to China's economy and banking system from the large number of bad loans at the local level. Difficulties of absorbing bad loan losses by the central government as new loan losses are piled on top of previous loan losses from earlier efforts to tide over bad loans. Considering all nonperforming loans that may end up as sovereign debt China's national debt is upwards of 80% of GDP, say Walter and Howie. The lack of any serious change in policies, inability to control lending for state enterprises and local governments, the tax on savings with low interest rates which keeps down domestic consumption, and the absence of a serious discussion on these issues leaves China exposed to higher systemic risk from excessive financial leverage.

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How German political leaders view the Euro currency and the European Union. German history and the need for fiscal discipline and the European Union. The constant between Chancellors Adenauer, Kohl and Merkel- a sense of European unity as part of the fabric of the new Germany. A desire to find a way through the sovereign debt crisis of 2010-2012, by introducing fiscal discipline into the structural framework and preserving the hard won gains for the Euro currency and the European Union.

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Renewed calls for higher capital reserves by banking regulators and Britain's Independent Banking Commission after $2 billion in losses at UBS. The losses were a result of derivatives trades made at UBS's London trading desk.

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The U.S. Agriculture Department cuts its estimate of corn crop yield per acre in the U.S. by 15.5%, as a result of the severe drought in 2012. Agriculture Secretary Vilsack, says the situation for farmers is better this time than during the last drought in 1988. Now 85% of farmers have crop insurance compared to 25% in 1988. The Agriculture Department estimate is for a 3-4% increase in prices in 2013. Capital Economics says the impact on GDP in the U.S. will be about 0.1%. Because 40% of the corn crop goes into ethanol production there is renewed debate about the 2005/2007 Renewable Fuel Standard, which requires 13.2 billion gallons of corn based biofuel be made in 2012. Worldwide the bad weather conditions in Brazil, India and Russia are worsening the outlook for food supplies. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization says global food prices increased by 6% in July 2012, with corn prices up 23%.

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The practices of Bain Capital under Mitt Romney, as it merged management consulting with private equity to take stake in companies that it would be asked to turnaround. The main focus for this type of investing was to harvest as much capital out of the acquired company as early as possible, leading to management decisions that were driven by this overriding aspect. This meant large layoffs to reduce costs, loading the company with debt which in many cases led the company to bankruptcy yet benefitting the investors. The practices were adverse to the accumulation of human talent.

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The U.S. Supercommittee in Congress fails to reach an agreement to come up with $1.2 trillion in savings to reduce the deficit by the Nov. 23, 2011 deadline. This shifts the focus to the sequester or triggering automatic cuts in Jan. 2013, as mandated in the Congressional deficit reduction deal of August 2, 2011. These automatic cuts would reduce defense spending by 10%, cut social programs without touching Medicaid and Social Security, by 7.8%, and reduce Medicare payments by 2%.

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IBM's researchers predict five developments in new technology in the next five years to 2016- precise language translation, precise voice recognition, storing of biometric information to replace passwords, conversion of energy from walking or water moving through pipes to power small devices, search engines and software that gives people the information they want. IBM has invested $15 billion in analytics companies and other fields in the last 5-7 years to accomplish some of these tasks. Bernie Meyerson, vice president of innovation at IBM, and a scientist in advanced microprocessor design and computer systems, issued the list. He says predicting this requires a deep knowledge of what happened before in the last five decades of technological advances. A novel application is conversion of the approximately 65 watts of energy generated from walking to power devices such as a phone. Precise and ubiquitous language translation also means ease of communication and a whole range of benefits in increasing communication between people in different parts of the world....

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Hernando De Soto, a prominent economist, heads the Institute for Liberty and Democracy. He has an intimate knowledge of the workings of the Egyptian economy, and describes the socio-economic marginalization of large parts of Egyptian society as Economic Apartheid. Simply put Egypt has fallen behind the times, way behind the economic progress in large developing countries.The Institute was hired by the Egyptian government in 1997, with the financial support of the US Agency for International Development, to look into what reforms were needed. It presented its 1000 page report in 2004- after years of work involving 120 Egyptian and Peruvian technicians, participation of 300 local leaders and interviews with thousands of ordinary people- to the Egyptian cabinet. The then Finance Minister Hassanein supported it and the cabinet approved it. What followed was a cabinet shakeup, and blocking of any reforms by hidden interests wanting to protect the status quo. De Soto's objective was to find out how many people were marginalized in Egypt, and how much of the economy operated outside the legal system- small business that did not have the protection of property rights or access to normal business tools and credit, that makes businesses grow. He found that 9.6 million people were employed in this sector operating "extralegally" with no protections. This being the largest sector of employment in Egypt. His action plan was intended to remove the legal impediments to these people and businesses urban and rural, so that they could grow. He says the value of these businesses outside legal protections is $248 billion or 30 times larger than the total value on the Cairo stock exchange, and 55 times greater than all the foreign direct investment in Egypt since 1800 including Suez Canal and Aswan Dam. De Soto says that because of burdensome, discriminatory and bad laws it takes 500 days to open a small bakery, getting a legal title on a vacant piece of land would take 10 years of red tape. This barrier of bad laws, poorly trained bureaucrats, inertia of the status quo, prevents people from legalizing their property and business. As a result whereas one of these types of small businesses is now India's largest company called Reliance Industries, and another Infosys is the second largest software company, most Egyptian enterprises are stuck being small and relatively poor, and do not generate jobs for the demographic surge of young people. De Soto's point is that Egypt will need good leadership to pull off this task of legal reform, and democracy alone will not be enough. Empowering the large majority of the Egyptian people operating outside the legal protections will mean giving property rights for $400 billion of assets, De Soto says. And this would unlock an amount of capital hundreds of times larger than what foreign direct investment and aid has brought to the country....

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Local investment companies were allowed to borrow beyond their limits after the financial crisis of 2008. There are about 8000 local investment companies (LIC's) and they were used during 2008-2010 to get funds quickly to projects. The LIC's borrowed for local governments, and borrowed extensively to build roads, railroads, power plants, and other infrastructure and buildings. Northwestern University Professor Shih has followed this carefully, and estimates LIC debt owed to banks at $1.68 trillion, or 34% of China's GDP. Some of the banks have collateral in land, but many banks are relying on the ability of the local governments to pay back the loans. And some of this is in money losing projects.

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Paul Krugman points out that the Bush tax cuts if continued in the US for all income levels will cost $680 billion over the next decade. This estimate is from the Tax Policy Center.