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The pace of fundraising for the Sanders campaign picks up pace in the 48 hours after the virtual tie with Hillary Clinton in Iowa- raising $3 million in small donations most well below $2700 maximum, and 40% from new donors. The Sanders campaign gains momentum with about 80% of the vote from young people going to Sanders in Iowa.

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As shown in other articles in the NYT Gen. Kelly is bringing some discipline and coherence to the White House. This includes bringing Jared Kushner the president's son-in-law into the chain of command, having him report to Mr. Kelly. At the same time as Kushner is seen less of in meeting with Mr. Trump, he is now more focussed on his own projects. He is also shown here to be more cautious as he realizes more now than earlier that the Mueller investigation is a thorough one, that is looking into all the details. Some insiders even say Kusher and Ivanka Trump look wistfully at going back to their lives in New York without all the chaos and tumult of the White House in 2017.

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This report in the WSJ points out that president Trump's planned withdrawal from Afghanistan to reduce the number of the 14000 troops there by half is an attempt by Mr. Trump to bring the number below the 8400 troops there that president Obama left there at the end of this term. In this way president Trump could show that he has not increased the presence there as he prepares for reelection, for a war that is not popular, and which Mr. Trump sees as a waste of national treasure. The U.S. had at one time 100,000 troops there. But at no time was the U.S. close to ending the war or the insurgency. Since 2014, 45,000 Afghan forces were killed in the war. 

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China's central banks cuts the reserve requirement ratio, the amount of money banks need to keep at the central bank, by half a percentage point. Banks are required to use the money that is freed up of $100 billion to help heavily indebted companies and small business lacking collateral to get new loans.

This is a response to the Trump tariffs on $100 billion of Chinese goods with a equal response from China and the trade war between China and the U.S., so that the Chinese economy can be bolstered before the impact of the tariffs hurts the economy. In the past China was reluctant to reduce the reserve requirement. Chinese debt soared with local government debt and debt accumulated from the 2008 large stimulus in the financial crisis.

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Dollar Thrifty shares fall 40% on July 1, 2008 and Avis shares drop 13%. All car rental shares are seeing share prices tumble as airline traffic is going down and higher gasoline costs cut into expected car rental customers.

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Bernie Sanders points out in this NYT op-ed the idea that Donald Trump could benefit from the same discontent among working class voters that helped the Leave campaign is a wake up call for the Democratic Party. He calls for global trade and a global economy that works for working class, middle class Americans.  Sanders is pushing for a Democratic Party that embraces the concerns of working class Americans, that understands the impact of factory closings and loss of jobs, of economic uncertainty, of declining incomes and shrinking opportunities.

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U.S. Secretary of State Kerry visits Tunisia in Nov. 2015 and offers economic aid with $500 million in loan guarantees.

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Much of the debate in Germany today is around the topic of reunification, was it good or bad for Germany, and why there is an issue of a separate identity in the East. Most East Germans feel they live in a separate country with a separate identity. This issue has social cultural and political consequences, says the Economist.    The CDU is increasingly facing questions about how it has turned out for East Germany. It is losing votes to the AfD in Saxony, Thuringia, and other places in the east. The migration crisis in 2015-2016 created new fault lines. When the Integration minister in a government in Saxony, which includes east German city of Leipzig, talked to people in her state why Germany was helping refugees, she was told to first integrate East Germans.  East Germans do not like resources being wasted on refugees when they feel left out themselves in their own country. After reunification of Germany by chancellor Kohl in 1990 about 8500 companies in the east were privatised or liquidated leading to a loss of jobs in old industries such as mining. Many of these older people ended up in odd jobs and then on Hartz IV, skimpy unemployment benefits. At unification 1 million people moved to the west from the east, predominantly younger people and predominantly women.  Over time one fourth of the population in the east 18-30 years moved to the west, two thirds of them women. Rural areas especially hit hard, with tax revenues slumping, shops and schools closed. Some estimates are that 80% of east Germans were out of work at one point. The humiliation their parents felt is only now being discussed as children in the east talk to their parents about what happened and the hardships their parents suffered 25 years ago. Was unification done the right way is a topic for discussion today. Today the east is much older than the west. Since 1990 over 60's increased by 1.1 million even as the overall population dropped by 2.2 million. In future some districts in the east will have 4 funerals for every birth say forecasters. So what could have been done differently in 1990 so that East Germans did not end up feeling like a "colonized people" by a biased western exploitative culture that portrayed them as culturally inferior and with very little that the west could learn from. Today it is said that the government agency Treuhand that handled closure of businesses could have moved slowly. The 1:1 transfer of west german currency for east german currency was to make east german companies uncompetitive overnight, and should have mitigating plans to tackle the problems of keeping these businesses in operation to keep local jobs. A new constitution and economic plans could have been written, a transition period for such a constitution and economic plan be put in place, so that changes could be studied and plans made to reduce the negative effects.  Culturally there was something the east did better. It had a culture of social solidarity that could have provided lessons for the west.  The good aspects in the east such as respect for women and encouraging them to work outside the home, free child care, the welfare state protecting vulnerable groups, could have lessons for the west to emulate and adopt practices. This would have given easterners a sense of self-respect as in some ways the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as the country was called in the east, had aspects that the west could learn from. For this to happen west Germans need to change their views- half of them see the reunification as a success, two thirds of east Germans see it as a failure culturally, and socially, and wrought with the economic impact of sudden shift in population and business, and loss of most productive young people to the west. ...

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Argentina's new president takes over a failing economy in 2019. Mr. Fernandez declared a public emergency until 2020. A legislative package recently passed includes tax increases on the wealthy, tax relief for the poorest, a 30% tax on foreign currency transactions abroad, and a currency cap of $200 per person per month imposed by the previous Macri administration.  About 70% of new revenues will go to social programs, including free food vouchers for two million of the poorest Argentines. About 40% of the people in Argentina are in poverty, according to the World Bank, a shocking figure for a country that should be doing better given its natural resources and agricultural resources. The economy is suffering from hyper inflation at over 50%, jumping external debt at 90% of GDP. Total debt is $332 billion including a $57 billion IMF loan. About half the total debt is in foreign currency and is hard to service now that foreign currency reserves have fallen from $66 billion to $43.5 billion. The debt restructuring strategy now is to delay as much of the $70 billion of repayments due before the end of 2020.  ...

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This story by Asa Fitch of the WSJ shows how NVIDIA co-founder Jensen Huang, built NVIDIA into a major semiconductor company. He did this by developing faster chips for graphics and other uses using parallel processing instead of sequential processing. It is now a rival to Intel as it plans an acquisition of ARM Holdings in Britain. Huang started NVIDIA in 1993 when computer users wanted faster computer graphics.  NVIDIA has about $10 billion in sales compared to larger rival Ital with $72 billion in sales. With its efforts in AI and other tech fields NVIDIA now surpasses Intel in valuation. Softbank bought ARM Holdings in 2016 for $32 billion. It is now looking to sell ARM to NVIDIA or another buyer. Problems it faces in the acquisition is British laws that may decide to prevent approval for sale of the company and the loss of jobs. ARM based in Cambridge has 6700 employees. ARM makes the chips for smartphones. The trade war between the U.S. and China and the sale of ARM chips to Huawei are also factors that will be considered in British approval or disapproval of this sale of a British company owned by Softbank of Japan.  ...

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Pictures of Sheikh Sabah of Kuwait in peacekeeping roles as a diplomat for the Gulf region including Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Gulf states. He passed away at the age of 91. The pictures include one with British prime minister Alec Douglas of Britain in 1964 three years after gaining independence from Britain in 1961. With the renewed effort for peace in the Gulf region his role is better appreciated not only as an ally of the U.S. but also as a diplomat keeping good relations for the Gulf states and neighbors. He was foreign minister since the sixties and ruler since 2006. He was one of an older group of leaders in the region who operated with a slow ruling style but sought consensus. During the divisions in the Gulf Cooperation Council with Qatar splitting from the rest in 2016, Sabah was active in keeping the Gulf states together. When he was born in 1929 oil had not been discovered in Kuwait and the area the size of New Jersey was run by his father as part of a dynasty that ruled for 3 centuries. Kuwait has 6% of the world's oil reserves. ...

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The Dutch government of prime minsiter Mark Rutte resigned on January 14, 2021, after a parliamentary report showed that 26,000 families were wrongly accused by the tax authority of claiming child allowance since 2012. 10,000 families were asked to repay the amount leading to bankruptcies, divorces. Mr. Rutte admitted that there wa a breakdown "at all levels of the state." The opposition Labour Party social affairs minister at the time in the government resigned over the affair. The parliamentary investigative committee chairman says that the problem was pervasive at all levels of the government, including civil servants, bureaucrats and judges. There was he says systematic racism as people with foreign sounding names were singled out. Experts from think tanks say there is little political cost to Rutte and  ministers from his People's Freedom and Democracy Party. New elections are to be held soon and Rutte will continue with a caretaker government. Polls show he has 30% support twice that of the next party the anti-Islam Freedom party of Geert Wilders.  The government has set aside 500 million euros in compensation, 30,000 euros for each family. ...

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Since the last landing of a man on the moon in 1972, not much has happened. China recently made 3 lunar landings and Israel failed in its recent Beersheba module effort. India is trying a second time with Chandrayan 2 to make the soft landing in the last critical 15 minutes on the lunar surface without any problems.    The Indian space program has the potential to build up the global research and knowledge about our planet.  Factors unique to India's space program are its development of its own rockets, similar to China's. The multipurpose satellite system services a number of users- telecommunications, TV broadcasting, meteorology, disaster warning, land and water management, ocean studies, drought and flood forecasting. The fleet of satellites IRS (Indian Remote Sensing Satllite Systems) will be used for teleducation, telemedicine, and other new uses. The NAViC navigation Constellation System acts as India's own GPS reducing the need to rely on U.S. based GPS. Other aspects of India' space program are the effort to explore new planets with the Mars Orbiter Mission MARS , with a module reaching Martian orbit in 2014. ...

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The Wall Street Journal looks back at president Trump's first year in office from the inauguration speech to the passage of the new tax law. Race and immigration issues form the background of much of the domestic politics as Democrats prepare to shutdown government by December 2017 over a comment by the president. This happens during a meeting between the two parties on the Dreamer legislation to allow children of people illegally in the U.S. to stay in the country, when the president makes a derogatory remark about immigrants from Haiti and says he prefers immigrants from Norway. Efforts to repeal the Obama healthcare legislation fail during the first year. Democrats win a Senate seat in Alabama. A special counsel, Mr. Mueller, is appointed to investigate the Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential election. The tax law is skewed towards more tax cuts for the wealthy than the middle class, with the increase in the deficit not justifying the cut as infrastructure and other needs in health and education require funding. In international affairs Trump recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and takes a strong stand on Iran and North Korea.    ...

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Bangladesh is seen as doing better than India and Pakistan in life expectancy, hunger, fertility rates, and other key development indicators. The new Padma Bridge over the Ganges river operational in 2019 will link different parts of the country and is expected to add 1% to GDP growth. Other infrastructure projects are being planned with $30 billion in projects planned with China including a new port south of Chittagong. The Vision 2021 Plan plans to take Bangladesh out of the poorest nation group by 2021, the 50th anniversary of independence. Germany is the second largest donor and the gender equality in Bangladesh with coeducation in schools is seen by experts as unique among all Muslim countries. The growth of Dhaka and the social and economic change from 5 million garment workers, mostly women and rural could lead to social and cultural change that may be underestimated, says DW.com, providing the view from Germany. DW.com also warns that there are risks for Bangladesh in relying on remittances from Gulf countries, and in not diversifying so that it is not dependent on textile exports alone. Overall German view is that development aid works, and Bangladesh is welcomed from that perspective in Germany. ...

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Robert Mueller, the special counsel, says the Mueller Report and his investigation into the 2016 presidential election does not exonerate president Trump. If we had exonerated the president we would have said so, said Mueller in a public statement. "If we had confidence the president did not commit a crime we would have said that," Mueller said. He said the constitution of the U.S. does not allow a sitting president to be charged by the special counsel. Because the special counsel office is under the Justice Department and the department policy set the manner of the report, charging the president was not an option he had. The Republican party controls the Senate and the Democrats control the House of Representatives. Any effort by Democrats in the House to impeach the president would fail in the Senate. Democrats and Speaker Pelosi are wary of impeachment proceedings. Mr. Mueller's statement suggests there is also growing discomfort in Congress about taking no action at all that would be construed as exonerating the president for what happened during the presidential election, because it might set improper precedent for the future. This increases the pressure for impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives from some Democrats for more information to let Congress decide. ...

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Most of it is because of Donald Jr. and his affinity for Vance, a bonding that developed once the former president left office. Donald Jr. championed Vance choice over Burghum and Rubio. For the former president the choice was natural because his style fitted that of Vance of saying directly with candor what he thought. Vance's criticism that a second Trump administration focused on tax cuts and not investing in the American economy would not lead to economic growth still rings true as shown in the adjoining article on the US dollar, on inflation moving up with tariffs and job growth affected by lack of the government investing in the economy and American manufacturing. Even in the Depression years Republicans stuck to their idea that governments should stay out, are they likely to change that today? Vance's criticism was made before he became senator, in 2016. It would lead to another lost decade for the American economy and people, and put America just where the Tories have left Britain today so that Keir Starmer's Labour cannot bring immediate relief to the British people struggling with cost of living in 2025, with the mess the Tories have left behind.  ...