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Dexter Filkins points out how the Pakistan army and ISI officers are running affairs in Pakistan. And the army and ISI officers are playing a double game both supporting the Taliban and using American dollars to finance it, and at the same time obtaining American financial aid to fight the Taliban. Never quite finishing off the Taliban in its shows of force, keeping it alive to obtain American financial aid. Filkins confirms this by talking to a malik or tribal elder from the old feudal structure, and to independent Taliban commanders who operate outside the control of Baitullah Mehsud. He calls it Playing the Game.

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Industrial production fell by 14.1% year to year, the biggest drop since the indicator was introduced in 1970, according to the National Statistics Office.

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Michael Corkery catches up with the indefatigable Paul Volcker at the office he shares with Richard Ravitch on the fourth floor of Rockefeller Center. Ravitch reminisces about events in 1975 when he tried to get a loan for New York City from the head of the New York Federal Reserve, who at the time was Paul Volcker. Today both men are working on another municipal crisis- the financial crisis facing U.S. states. They have raised $2 million from foundations and other sources, and hired a staff. They plan to publish a report on the crisis in 2012. The idea is to throw light on the issues so that the public can understand this better. Volcker says work is more relaxing than fishing, even though both men have spent much time fishing. The conversation drifts to the Occupy Wall Street protests and Ravitch says people forget what Teddy Roosevelt said about the malefactors of great wealth. Volcker insists it was Franklin Rosevelt, Ravitch says its Teddy.

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107 year old Irving Kahn is the only surviving investor who worked directly with legendary value investor Benjamin Graham after Warren Buffett. Zweig talks to Kahn at his offices in New York. Kahn works five days a week and has the same intellectual curiosity today as he did when he was assistant to Graham at Columbia University. He believes in knowing more about a stock than anybody selling it does.

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Investment strategies of China Investment Corp., China's sovereign wealth fund. WSJ's Lingling Wei's interview with Wang Jianxi, executive vice president and chief risk officer at China Investment Corp., in March 2012.

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Wha is life like for a grocer, a food store owner in a rural county in America. Frank Timberlake in this story is a former law enforcement officer running a store in Northhampton County, North Carolina. He looks after his employees, and his customers in this rural county.  Rich Square Market is the only grocery store in this town. He is all on his own as he deals with supplies of expensive Charmin toilet paper, or shortage of paper towels, and the rising price of eggs.

His worries- if one worker get sick the rest are quarantined. He has kept the store open through hurricanes, floods, yet this is tough. He jumps when he sneezes, sleeps in a separate room at home, and can't hold his wife's hand.

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Junichiro Koizumi's decision to support his son for the seat he held in Yokosuka, a naval port an hour from Tokyo. Fackler points out an astounding fact about second generation and third generation leaders in Japanese politics that make it an insider's terrritory. Second generation politicians in parliament make up an unusually large part of the legislature. About 40% of LDP party members of parliament are descendents of prior lawmakers. Of 7 prime ministers, only one was not a son or grandson of a former lawmaker. Shinzo Abe and Yasuo Fukuda were grandson and son of former prime ministers. Even the Democratic Party of Japan has its share of second generation members of parliament of about 20%. In this fascinating account of Japanese politics Fackler talks to Mr. Yokokume, a DPJ candidate running against the younger Koizumi, at his campaign offices. With a small fraction of the financing received by the younger Koizumi and voters at the train station telling him this is Koizumi country, Yokokume is worried that politics is for too long closed to outsiders in Japanese politics. Public opinion in Japan describes this in negative terms as depriving Japan of the fresh blood and new ideas from newcomers to politics to renew Japanese government....

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Koizumi's legacy 2001-2006, five years of change and a break with the past in Japanese economic policy. Sebastian Moffett review's Koizumi's achievements, bringing Japanese government and policy closer to the people bypassing the bureaucracy and ministries, appealing directly to the people and carrying on conversations with the public on television on critical economic policies such as privatization of the post office savings accounts system, and hiring newcomers such as Takenaka to implement reduction of bank debt that stifled Japanese economic growth. Koizumi also created an effective Prime Minister's office to execute policy and provide new directions to Japan.

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Changes in Eastern Europe, first with the departure of Sebastian Kurz after a second scandal. The Greens party in the coalition insisted that he resign. In the Czech Republic the government of prime minister Andrej Babis was voted out of office. A liberal-conservative three party coalition won 28% of the vote, and the Pirates and Mayors party won 16% of the vote. The two alliances won 108 seats in the 200 member lower house. Babis headed a minority government of ANO party, Social Democrats and supported by Communist party,(ANO is yes in Czech language), with many scandals, and opposed EU's climate change policies, says DW.com. 

With the changes in Austria this offers new opportunities for a closer European Union as Eastern Europe changes.

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Over zealous interpretation of data privacy laws is leading vaccination workers to in Lower Saxony state of Germany to guess people's age by their names. The Deutsche Post database used for finding names of people over 80 years only partially includes date of birth. Health ministry of Lower Saxony admits that not all people will receive letters for vaccination who are over 80.  Official records are held by 5283 local authorites across the country. Once again say former federal commissioner for data protection and other data protection officials, "the false impression is created that data protection is the highest good and prevents necessary measures." Post office data should not be used and minimal access ensured for vaccination purposes with a little common sense.

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The Alawite sect in Syria, a sect of Islam different from Sunnis and Shiites, consitutes only 12.5% of the 22.5 million population of Syria. Alawites live mostly in the mountainous coastal region near the Mediterranean. Under the French the Alawites who are open to foreign influences and western education, were used as a buffer against the majority Sunni population, with many Alawites joining the government and army. One of the Alawite military officers, Hafez Assad, took over Syria in 1971.

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How a vast intenal migration is taking place inside Iraq. And how the fighting is screating more displaced people who migrate in waves that ebb and tide, and make two or three migrations back and forth across the land into and out of different areas. Sunnis, Arab tribesmen, Shiites and others. Here the information from the Red Crescent Orgnization in Iraqwhich has 95000 voluteers across Iraq, with 130 branch offices, helping 280,000 families across Iraq.

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A real risk for the economy in 2010: the more than half of the $3.4 trillion outstanding commercial real estate loans, many of which will be souring in the coming year. A rerun of what happened in the residential mortgage is expected. A Fed document prepared by the Fed's Rapid Response program and presented Sept 29 by K.C. Conway points to the dangers to bank's with heavy commercial real estate exposure. THis will further constrict lending as banks fold and remaining banks are forced to set aside money for additional losses. At this time banks are simply extending the loans and paying the interest on these loans to themselves. A study of regulatory filings of 800 banks by the WSJ shows that banks with large exposure have set aside only 38 cents in reserves in the second quarter for every $1 in bad loans, a decline from $1.58 in reserves for every $1 of bad loans from the beginning of 2007. Conway's report presents ableak picture for 2010, with commercial real estate losses for warehouses, apartment buildings and office buildings reaching 45%....

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The European Union goes forward with $39 billion for Ukraine aid. The aid is backed by interest from the $300 billion in Russian assets in Europe frozen when war began. Another $15-20 billon is expected from the US when legal questions about frozen Russian assets are resolved- the US asking for a 36 month review of sanctions to replace 6 months in place in 2024. The European Union offices in Brussels have done a poor job of communicating how the EU is  aiding Ukraine with its own resources. Lyrarc.com had to point out that Ukraine aid from EU was about twice that of the US at about $200 billion compared to about $95 billion for the US. Former president Trump stated that this was just the opposite the US spending twice what the US was spending. Media in today's world means little or nothing because it operates highly fragmented and organically outside the control of any particular source online, television or print. And established sources apart from bias are spread so thin many important matters for the betterment of people's lives or giving a true picture from which to make observations, are left to wither or distort. The highly formal  corporate environments of the EU are impervious to the outside so that institutions such as the ECB, European Union headquarters are out of touch with the people worldwide.  ...

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GE is moving head offices of major operations overseas like GE Healthcare moving from Wisconsin to outside London, England, where a company GE acquired Amersham is located. GE Money will move it head offices to London, England from Stamford, Connecticut. And GE Transportation moved its annual sales meeting from its head offices in Erie, Pennsylvania to Sorrento, Italy. GE now generates over half of its sales overseas and its fastest growth businesses are in infrastructure and turbines that are in Asia. With the slowing USA economy this point has simply hit home. And IBM which gets 65% of its revenue overseas has been a clear proponent of this strategy of locating where the growth opportunities are greatest, a poin not lost on Immelt at GE who sees it essential to be part of the culture you are selling to. IBM operates most of its software and services business from India. This is also true for things like Training and R&D increasingly moved overseas to places like Bangalore, Beijing and Shanghai. Another aspect of this is to expose Americans to working overseas and to avoid he insulation of becoming too immersed only in American culture and not be able to operate effectively in other cultures, languages and environments, where increasingly most of the action is....

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Argentina's president Christina Kirchner's popularity increases from 31% in September 2014 to 43% in June 2015 during her last year in office, according to polling firm Management and Fit.

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Seib cites a career foreign service officer, William Burns, who says that China is offering its model of government as a competing model to that of the U.S. and Western Europe for Asian countries. He says he cannot recall a time in the last 40 years when China was doing what it is now in showing China as role model. Here Seib also mentions the Electoral College and the shift in demographics as creating strains for American democracy. The electoral college does not give enough weight to the largest states in deciding who wins the presidential election as happened in 2017- which gets worse in future years as people move to the west and southern states.

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A former solicitor general questions the 4 page summary of Attorney General Barr as a misrepresentation of the findings of the Mueller investigation following the protest by Mr. Mueller himself that the findings were distorted in the summary. It defeated the very purpose of appointing the Special Counsel. It was upto Congress to come up with its conclusions according to how the U.S. constitutional process was intended to work on questions of national importance, and not the Attorney General appointed by the president. Neal Katyal helped draft the regulations about the way a special counsel is supposed to operate. He can show the findings on each matter whether the president is cleared or not cleared, bu it is Congress that has to make up its mind and come up to its own conclusions. That is Congress's role and not the Attorney General's role. By taking on Congress's role and drafting a 4 page report that exonerates the president Mr. Barr has violated the letter and the spirit of the regulations set for the Special Counsel's office. Mr. Katyal concludes this article saying -"There is no more sacred duty for Congress than gettting to the bottom of whether our president has taken care that the laws of this country have been faithfully executed." He says in drafting the special counsel office regulations he and others had thought of the possibility of there being "a nefarious Attorney General" though "we didn't predict this amount of duplicity."  The U.S. Congress now faces the challenge of getting to the bottom of the matter and drawing its own conclusions. Katyal questions polls showing that the public does not want further inquiry because he says the Attorney General has created confusion, misrepresented Mr. Mueller and delayed the release of the Mueller Report to the public.     ...

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Juan Montes of the WSJ describes the problems facing states in Mexico as the governors have accumulated power, debt has risen rapidly, and accountability of state officials is at a new low. Half of the states with elections in 2016 have doubled their debt in 6 years, according to government data. The federal audit office points to irregularities in $13 billion of federal funds transferred to states. Elections in states in 2016 shows public discontent with poor governance, corruption, and the lack of rule of law. This is leading to a close election in Veracruz with the PAN and PRD parties challenging the PRI in the state.

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Loan Programs Office Department of Energy with $400 billion to lend  is seen in this NYT report as a Bank within the Department of Energy designed to lend for superior solutions to tackle climate change for a better environment. It will keep the efforts of private industry moving to create a better environment in years ahead.

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Captain Sumeet Sabharwal 56 years and First Officer Clive Kunder 32 years are the two pilots of Air India Dreamliner that crashed in Ahmedabad iseconds after takeoff in 2025. Preliminary investigation reports in WSJ shows the fuel switches were turned off depriving the plane of fuel in the critical moments of takeoff. The Captain is heard asking why the fuel switches are turned off seconds after takeoff.

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The difficulties Microsoft is having in integrating Skype into its products even as the use of Skype increases by 26%. This is similiar to the situation EBay faced when Microsoft acquired Skype from EBay in 2011. Skype users are now estimated at 250 million Microsoft has given Skype management special autonomy with its head offices and president Bates located in Silicon Valley. Microsoft CEO Ballmer say it is importaant that Skype work well on all platforms and devices.