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Wesley Morris provides a look at Sidney Poitier, who changed attitudes towards race in America and Europe, from a New Yorker's perspective. He says Poitier did so much to create the more open cultural attitudes in the US and Europe, and South Africa that we find today, and did this with humility and grace. He puts Poitier's contribution in changing racial attitudes in the longer perspective in America with Frederick Douglas, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King. In a larger sense these attitudes also led to changes in attitude towards people from Asia and other countries, that started with Mohandas Gandhi and his efforts against segregation in South Africa in 1900.

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Arwa Mahdawi writes in The Guardian about issues facing the Democratic party in the US, and Labour in the UK, of turning their backs on the working class. And to the roots of their parties in the working class and rising middle class under FDR, Truman and Clement Attlee in the 1930's 40's and 50's. Woman's issues are about men's issues and issues of the people as a whole, of fairness in the economy, about correcting grossly poor misallocation of capital away from education, health, infrastructure and children, when seen in this larger and very real context.

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Former president Trump is indicted by a federal grand jury for his efforts to reverse the results of the 2020 election. Charges in this criminal case include attempt to defraud the US, obstructing an official proceeding, and conspiring against the rights of voters. The 45 page indictment by special counsel Jack Smith says Trump leaned on election officials in Arizona, Georgia and Michigan to support his efforts to overturn election results, and later on vice president Mike Pence. WSJ shows a graph of the series of indictments Mr. Trump now faces including payments to a porn star, Georgia election interference, handling of classified documents, Jan. 6 violence, and in other cases.

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The Trump speech at Motera stadium in Ahmedabad, Gujarat in which he quotes Swami Vivekananda, with the line- "While our nations have many differences they are propelled by a fundamental truth, the truth that all of us are blessed with divine light, and every person is endowed with a sacred soul." 

Mr. Trump visited Sabarmati Ashram, the site where Gandhi spent many years,  right after landing on a 8000 mile non- stop flight to Ahmedabad, and is shown trying his hand with Gandhi's cotton textile making wheel and reflecting on the stone bench in this place by the river Sabarmati where so much happened.

 

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This NYT report looks at the transformation of Saudi Arabia with the investment projects of Prince Mohammad bin Salman who leads the country in modernization. In the past much of the oil money going from US, EU, China and India went into wars in the Middle East, Salman has focused on development. using the funding opportunities that need to taken to develop the region, funding which will no longer be there after the shift to renewal energy by 2035. The price tags are extravagant the coastal city and historic district of Jeddah remodeled $20 billion. New center of culture Diriyah near Riyadh, $63 billion. Futuristic city Neom. Red Sea tourism projects. 

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New uranium mines starting up in Arizona, Utah, and other parts of the western United States. In 1980 before nuclear energy went out of favor after the Three Mile Accident and Chernobyl US produced 44 million pounds of uranium. Much of it now comes from Russia. In 2024 the production is down to about 50,000 pounds. It is being revived in new mines in Arizona and Utah, underneath the earth's surface as shown in this NYT report. Yet fewer people work in extraction because of the technology which sends water into the ground which dissolves uranium and it is then brought up and sent to processing to make it into yellow cake.

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Over 50% of Israelis support Iran war, only 30% oppose. As Israelis see it Iran under religious clerics is the only real threat to Israel in 2025 because of Iran's policy of proxies for attacking Israel in Lebanon and in Gaza, and because of it's development of nuclear weapons and openly threatening Israel. The US involvement in Iranian politics dates from the Dulles and Eisenhower era with the CIA's involvement in the overthrow of the democratically elected Iranian prime minister Mossadegh in 1953. Working with British intelligence and for British oil interests, US oil interests, the US made a serious mistake as seen from today's perspective. The moral is British or French colonial policy stay from it America- George Washington himself would advise. Israel is paying the price and is asked to correct what was done by the British in Iran since 1850's- to bring back a peaceful democracy with the kind of struggles even Greece experienced. The unelected wholly unrepresentative government of the Shah who was put in the place of a democratically elected government was a serious mistake. The British and French colonialism and oil interests of Britain plus American oil companies have led to US getting on the wrong side of the Vietnamese people in the war in Vietnam against the French that ended at the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. It had repercussions in the Vietnam war under Kennedy and Johnson. This has happened in the case of Iran where the US has gained so little and lost so much in lives and resources sunk in the ensuing was in Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Yemen. The European Union suffered from the huge migrant flow from Syria with splits in its ranks. The distractions of these 30 years through Reagan and Rumsfeld who supported Hussein in Iraq against Iran in a balancing act is now foolishness, of elder Bush as he diverted attention to a long desert war in Kuwait, of Bush and then Obama in Afghanistan, who wasted enormous resources and impoverished the American people. Leaving legacy wars for Trump and Biden to handle. After Vietnam another failed chapter of Iran in the US for the American people by incompetent leaders who were taken in by French and British colonial and oil interests in wrong directions.   ...

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Wang Xiaohong, head of public security joins a team led by vice premier He Lifeng, for China's talks with Treasury head Scott Bessent, and Jamieson Greer USTR. The talks are held in Switzerland and include fentanyl as a top topic. The US has called its tariffs fentanyl tariffs on China for lack of the necessary action to stop flow of fentanyl from China to the US. Progress will depend on action on this issue and discussion of other trade issues that cause the lack of a level playing field for the US in trade with China.

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Shehbaz Sharif 70,  is the younger brother of a three term prime minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif. He ran Punjab province, the country's largest state when his brother was prime minister. In this way he brings substantial experience to the problems of the economy that now face many developing economies such as Pakistan.  First on the agenda is to normalize relations with the US, rebuild ties with India, and restart negotiations with the International Monetary Fund. Pakistan faces severe inflation of 14% and devaluing currency that makes imports costlier as the foreign currency reserves have dropped to alarming levels of $24 billion when annual import needs are at about $56 billion. This has a direct impact on cost of living, standards of living and on industry. Shehbaz Sharif understands the situation and has said restoring the economy "will take effort, effort and more effort." A similar statement has been made by Mr. Modi in Hindi "sab ka viokas, sab ka prayas" which also mean effort, effort and more effort, which all of South Asia and Bay of Bengal, and South East Asian countries needs considering the impact of Covid pandemic, and now inflation from the war in Europe hitting food supplies. The situation is grim in other parts of South Asia- in Myanmar, in Sri Lanka, in Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia. The popular sentiment is also shifting as seen in the Indian part of the old British Punjab province. Mostly Sikh this part of old Punjab state in India made a complete change bringing in a new party Aadmi to improve the economy and provide good governance. In this situation all governments are expected to deliver on good governance and the economy.   ...

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Roy Cooper of North Carolina says Kamala Harris has visited the state 15 times and will be there next week. He says North Carolina is the fastest growing state in the country and was lost by 1.3%, that this time it can be won as it was won by Obama in 2008. Cooper,  two term governor of North Carolina says Mark Robinson the Republican candidate for Governor is the most extreme candidate for Governor in the US right now, with open disrespect for women, and it will draw voters to voting booths in large numbers. Cooper's view is that it will help Harris, that "all of the confluence of the issues makes this state a state Kamala Harris can win, and I believe will win." In 2020 Roy Cooper won by 250,000 votes or 5% of the vote margin over  Lt. Governor Dan Forest. The key to North Carolina is in the I-85 corridor, a suburban region with cities and university towns that are home to more than two-thirds of the state's population and casts almost 70% of the state's vote. The state's five largest counties-- Mecklenburg home to Charlotte) Wake (home to Raleigh), Guilford (home to Greensboro), Forsyth (home to Winston Salem) and Durham (home to Durham)--are all located in this area. Making many visits to the state, and strong grassroots effort is essential. Highly affluent and educated migrants from the Northeast, who traditionally tend to vote Democratic; as well as African Americans, Hispanics (an increasing population in the state), and college students are voting blocs that are likely to vote heavily on economic issues, abortion, student debt relief, and issues raised by extreme views of Mark Robinson and the future direction of the Nation. ...

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Robert Stavins of the environmental economics program at Harvard is cited in this NYT article by Coral Davenport. Stavin says that even with the change in policy favoring fossil under Trump administration the trend is towards using less fossil fuel and this trend is unlikely to change. This makes the claims of Trump that half a million jobs can be created with less regulation of the coal industry and shale oil industry, less likely. Industry is shifting away from coal for economic reasons and investors preferences, say experts. At the same time the progress away from fossil fuels is likely to be inadequate to avoid the worst effects of global warming, says Stavins. The change by industry is reflected in the decisions made by executives such as Nicholas Akins at American Electric Power, Ohio based electric power company. Akins tells NYT that he is making decisions for power generation 20, 30 and 40 years from now, and this assumes some form of carbon control. He says no question but that industry will move forward with cleaner energy and that means closing large coal facilities. The incoming Trump administration does not affect his policy. Another factor away from coal is dictated by economics- the availability of cheap natural gas from hydraulic fracturing. Incentives for renewable sources such as wind, solar, are not likely to change either say experts, because the solar panels and wind turbines are made in Republican and Democratic favoring districts and have support of Republicans in places like Arizona, Texas and Kansas. ...

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Siss central will help recapitalize UBS with investment of $5.3 billion for a 9% stake in UBS. Credit Suisse told the central bank that it would raise its funds privtely. It is raising $9 billion privately with help of Quatar Investment Authority. This takes Tier One Capital Ratio to 13.7% for Credit Suisse and to 11.5% for UBS. The governments investment in UBS takes the form of a bond that pays 12.5% coupon and is convertible into a roughly 9% nonvoting stake in the bank. Under the Swiss bailout plan UBS will transfer securities backed mostly by US and European residential mortgages into a special fund, which will borrow as much as $54 billion from the Swiss central bank to finance the holdings. The other $6 billion will come from an equity injection by UBS. The fund will attempt to seel the assets over 8 t 12 years, with the government getting the first $1 billion of any profit and splitting the rest with UBS. In the case of a loss the governemnt would get added stake in the bank. The government intervention will meaqn a reduction in risk taking by the leading Swiss banks. The reason for the governments immediate actionto take the toxic assets off of UBS books was that other banks and institutions wer recently shying away from UBS affecting Switzerland's ability to keep its leading position as a banker for wealth management worldwide. The head of the Siss Federal Finance Administration said that the $60 billion asset purchasing agreement would not lead to losses for the government as the toxic assets had already been aggressively been written down on UBS books. ...

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The Labor Department says the US lost 598,000 jobs in January 2009. And the figure for December 2008 was revised upwards from 524,000 to 577,000. The figures from December 2007 were revised upwards by 400,000 and is at 3.6 million jobs lost. First time jobless claims reached ahigh of 626,000 last week. The current unemployment rate of 7.6% does not correctly reflect the true unemployment rate because it excludes those adults who have given up looking for a job after failure to find anything. One estimate of this based on labor force participation at the level it was when President Bush took office, is 9.4%, by Peter Morici, economist at the University of Maryland. Though the Fed is creating money at a prolific rate to support failing financial institutions and support consumer debt, having more than doubled its reserves from $900 billion to $2 trillion, the problem remains one of creating demand. Falling demand as nervous and shaken consumers reduce buying of all kinds of products, leads to buildup of inventories, cutting production, layoffs, and even more incentives to save leading to the downward spiral. As more companies layoff there is a general tendency for all businesses who already face tight credit to plan on a longer downturn and not to invest. The self reinforcing pattern is just as strong in a downturn as it is in an upturn....

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Pusing aggressive bank lending with a steep rise in bank lending of 34% in 2009 can lead to an asset price bubble in China. Factors the Economist cites mitigating this are the follwing: only about 25% of middle class Chinese have mortgages and loan to value is less than 50%. Also Chinese regulators are more alert to the dangers than were American regulators. At the same time the pegging of theyuan to the dollar means the instrument of raising rates to cool the bubble is not existent. And the US is likely to keep rates low for alonger period which may be adverse for China and prop up a bubble there. These dangers mean China had better take firm action in letting the yuan rise now rather than later because heavy inflows from currrency appreciation can only make the bubble worse later on. This will need to be watched carefully as so much of the global economy is dependent on China maintaining growth, Germany in particular. And with the US consumer cutting back China has to manage this carefully....

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Rauhala cites an email from Apple CEO, Tim Cook, saying updates he gets about performance in China every morning show strong growth for Apple's business for July and August. China's retail sales are up 10.4% for the first 7 months of 2015, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. The services sector as a whole showed growth of 8.4% in the first half of 2015, and it now makes up 49.5% of GDP, according to government statistics. Overall economic growth is about 4-5%, as the 7% official figure is considered overstated. Zhao Longkai, the executive director of the Beijing Univerisity Guanghua School of Management, says the retail sector should not be affected that much because losses are largely limited to a small number of wealthy investors, though some ordinary retail investors are affected, with overall stock market participation quite low compared to the U.S. and Europe. This and other expert opinion points to a situation of slower growth and debt overhang from the last stimulus, but not a strong connection between the stock market and the economy. The government's credibilty is affected by the failed intervention in July and this time during the sharp declines on August 24-25 the government is letting the market finds its own level, believing it will be better for markets and let them stabilize. ...

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Ami Ayalon, a former director of Israel's Security Agency (Shin Bet), proposes that Netanyahu take the small tangible steps in the direction of a two state solution for Palestine. He says this would lay the groundwork for reduction in tensions in the Middle East by aligning Saudi Arabia and other Sunni States, Turkey, Israel and the U.S., towards a lasting settlement. Ayalon refers to two changes in the Middle East that others have observed- the street is exercizing major influence on events in the Middle East and this presents an opportunity to defuse a lasting irritant in the form of treatment of Palestinians. The Iranian Shiite influence in Iran and Iraq provides Sunni and other Muslim states an incentive for serious and lasting settlement of the differences with Israel. These are two influences that present opportunities to move forward, says Ayalon. Adding that if Netanyahu fails to grasp this and make serious moves in negotiations, Israelis should vote him out of office. The move he is calling for is for Israel to declare it has no sovereignty claims over areas east of the security fence built in the West Bank. A voluntary evacuation and compensation would take place and settlers who stay would have some form of assured status under the agreement. The Israel Defense Force would remain in the area till a firm agreement with guarantees is put in place....

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  “And 5 million manufacturing jobs were lost while racking up trade deficits of $19 trillion." The Washington Post does not deny this as false, and this is the crux of the point DJT has made what everyone with eyes to see has seen for 40 years. DJT sometimes exaggerates to make his point. False should mean the meaning is false not that a particular number 70% vs 50% for India's tariff on Harley Davidson motorcycles. It should also consider PM Modi's stand for India- to support the US position when it comes to American factories closing by the thousands and destroying not just it's manufacturing but also it's middle class, just as Gandhi would have done. That close is India's sentiment for the American people and the Republic, and the defense of its recovery as a manufacturing nation for its workers and families. DJT did not say that it is a poor country as the Washington Post says is "Trump's telling." As Greg Ip of the WSJ pointed out in 2024, it is that the US simply cannot sustain the blows to its workers and its manufacturing base from a $1 trillion deficit year after year with China. Before bringing economist's into the picture one has facts of what the devastation to American workers has done to communities across America. DJT said and most workers will stand by his words- "For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped, and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike. American steelworkers, auto workers, farmers, and skilled craftsmen. They really suffered gravely. They watched in anguish as foreign leaders have stolen our jobs, foreign cheaters have ransacked our factories, and foreign scavengers have torn apart our once beautiful American dream." Not a single report in the US and foreign media reports of Liberation Day Rose Garden speech by DJT on April 2, 2025, says that DJT said he would trust what he sees with his own eyes and experience for 40 years, and not economists who have turned their backs on American workers, turned to a UAW worker from Detroit and asked him to tell what he saw for 40 years.  "Brian, I’d like to have you come up here for a second. Okay? I just see him sitting. He’s been a fan of ours, and he understands this business a lot better than the economists, a lot better than anybody. Brian, say a few words, please. Would you?" And this what Brian a retired autoworker from Macomb Conty, Michigan saw for 40 years that economists refused to see in their economic theories- "I have watched my entire life, I have watched plant after plant after plant in Detroit and in the Metro Detroit area close. There are now plants sitting idle. There are now plants that are underutilized, and Donald Trump’s policies are going to bring product back into those underutilized plants. There’s going to be new investment. There’s going to be new plants built."     ...

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As long as free and fair presidential elections do not happen migration from Venezuela will continue said this report from CSIS in 2023. a clear warning to the US, to Latin America and the world. This is relevant to the actions taken by the Republican party and by DJT to make the immigration an issue in 2024 elections and as shown alongside in the action by DJT to revoke the Chevron license because of Venezuela's failure to take in deportees quickly and the failure of the Maduro regime to allow free and fair elections to let Venezuelans decide their future.  Eight million Venezuelans have left the country because of mismanaging the economy, runaway inflation, repression, and failure to honor free and fair elections. Taking the 2015 population of 30 million this is about 25% of the population with millions fleeing to Colombia, Peru and the US. "If no indication of regime change seems in sight and the 2024 presidential elections are not free or fair, upticks in migration should be expected, as Venezuelans will continue to leave the country in search of better opportunities. Therefore, it is critical not to overlook this migrant crisis nor normalize it, as it is evidence of the persistence of the democratic and economic breakdown in this country, which continues to be a threat to the stability of the region and the world." (CSIS, Nov. 27, 2023) ...

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Julia Preston of the NYT looks at Mr. Trump's speech on August 31, 2016 in Pheonix, Arizona, and compares what one can discern about the Trump policies on immigration with that of president Obama. She points out that it is similar to the deportation that was conducted under president Obama in some ways, but is more extensive in its dimensions. It includes sanctioning sanctuary cities, expanding the deportation law enforcement personnel, and deporting about 2 million people with criminal backgrounds. The estimate under the Obama administration is for about 176,000 people with such backgrounds. The Trump estimate appears to include people with minor offenses says Preston, because it is so much higher. As a result this could also include people who have no criminal background and disrupt families on a large scale, with hundreds of thousands of longtime residents and families deported. Under the sanctuary example of Trump, Denver, New York and counties in California would be places where Trump would cut off federal funding. On the wall itself, Mexico's president Nieto says he told Trump Mexico would not pay for the wall, and Trump says exactly the opposite that Mexico would pay for the wall in his speech to supporters.  A Gallup poll shows that 76% of Republicans, 91% of Democrats favor a path to citizenship for those here in the U.S. illegally. For the whole population only 15% oppose giving illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship and 84% support doing this. Which suggests that Trump is only appealing to his base of support, not adding to it, as Cillizza points out in the WP fact check.   ...

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Shrinking cable systems business with cord-cutting in the US in 2024. Strategies for streaming services and news/entertainment business at Comcast.

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Reports from Afghanistan say that at a high level meeting took place in Kabul on April 16, 2011, between the top leaders of Pakistan and the government of Afghanistan. At that meeting Prime Minister Yousaf Gilani of Pakistan is said to have suggested that Afghanistan distance itself from the U.S. and work more closely with Pakistan and China. The story was first reported in the Wall Street Journal.

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Japan's International Cooperation Agency plans to fill some of the gaps in western participation in accelerating African infrastructure building that have opened up in the last  two decades. Unneeded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan led to lack of attention and focus on much needed development in Africa by the US and Europe. This is changing and the JICA with its long history of participation in African development is also now taking on an important role to give Africa a new opportunity to accelerate economic progress after the pandemic.

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Spain and Portugal growing at 0.7% in the first quarter of 2024, and Italy at 0.3%  are outpacing Germany and France at 0.2%. Manufacturing has slowed down in Germany and France. Overall US 1.6% growth in matched by the EU in 2024.