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Germany's chancellor gives her support to French president Macron's call for agreement before the summer holidays on a 750 billion euro rescue package. Merkel told 27 leaders of EU countries Europe faces "very, very difficult times" and even said that she was not sure the gravity of the situation was truly understood. The value of the economies of some states could drop by 10% in 2020.

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Eric Cantor is the senior Republican leader in the House of Representatives. He is a key figure in the negotiations with the Obama White House over the budget, deficit reduction, and raising the debt ceiling. Cantor and House Speaker Boehner are leading the negotiations on the Republican side. Cantor rejects any compromise on tax increases. He told reporters: "I think behind this notion of 'We want shared sacrifice' that they continue to say means 'We want to raise taxes,' and we don't accept that we raise taxes in an economy like this." Cantor is a lawyer and a former state legislator from a district that covers the Richmond, Virginia, suburbs. He was elected in 2000. Through his "Young Guns" program Cantor recruited many of the 87 new Republicans who were elected in 2010. It is this support from rank and file Congressman that has propelled Cantor into a leadership position for the deficit talks. Responding to critics that say a compromise is needed from both sides in the talks, Cantor says- "I don't think the White House understands how difficult it is for fiscal conservatives to say they are going to vote for a debt-ceiling increase." On June 23, Cantor pulled out of talks with the White House. In the current round of negotiations Boehner pulled back from "a grand bargain" which included tax increases, after consulting with Cantor....

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Apple's success in the iPad market and the discounting by competitors as their tablets pile up in warehouses. H-P discounted its tablet by 20%.

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The OECD forecast is for close to 3% U.S. annualized growth in the first and second quarters of 2012, and a mild contraction in Europe.

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Age ol trading patterns between UAE and Iran separated only by 70 miles of ocean and the US sanctions on exports of sensitive items to Iran.

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China passes the U.S. in OPEC oil imports, with daily average imports of 3.7 million barrels compared to 3.5 million barrels for the U.S., according to Wood Mackenzie.

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Henry Ford, Eleanor Roosevelt and H.G. Wells slept on Simmons mattresses. Eleanor praised the virte of the Beautyrest brand. THe company is 133 years old starting in a small city in Wisconsin. The company has since 1991 been sold and resold to leveraged buyout firms and private equity firms and debt which was $164 million is now $1.3 billion. The recession has destroyed any chances of serious recovery and the debt has made the company's prospects dim and uncertain. THe employees have been devastated and risk losing more jobs. Along the way $750 million were made by the various private equity owners. Julie Creswell says that in many ways this mimicks the subprime mortgage boom. With easy money from banks, endowments and pension funds, private equity firms were using this money with little of their own to flip companies with reliable cash flows after taking on extra debt, at higher and higher prices. Question this raises is what sort of activity is best as a society for America, innovation, new products and building companies by investing in human capital, technology and research or risky investments, and Simmons type investing? See the link to Chapman....

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US DJT Tariffs impact 1 year later- global trade has held up well with US unemployment at 4.4% and economic growth at 2.1%. China imports down from 20% in 2016 to 10% ten years later in 2026. For DJT that was a promise kept leading to a sharp decoupling of the US economy from the Chinese economy that was leading to huge trade deficits of 1 trillion dollars. Too much of the world's supply chain was tied up with manufacturing in China. It got so bad under Reagan, the two Bushes, Clinton/Obama that the US and EU were facing deindustrialization with huge risks to the future of the US and Europe as industrial powers. 150 years of industrialization and scientific advancement, the great achievements of Europe and the United States since 1860's was going up in smoke over reckless policies of Republican and Democratic elites who gave little thought and barely understood the long run effects of their policies and textbook theories of the economy. Most economists from ivy league universities got it completely wrong. ...

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Lou Jiwei chairman of China Investment Corporation met with Treasury officials in Washington to give reassurances that China's sovereign wealth fund would invest as a portfolio investor and be a good citizen when it comes to investing in the USA. He reiterated the pledge by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao that the Chinese government would not interfere in the operations of the fund, and that the fund would have its own corporate governance structure. He also met with officials of the IMF who are drawing up a code of "best practices" for sovereign wealth funds. Following the Chinese experience with the Unocal deal and the experience of Dubai in a deal to buy a company that manages USA ports, both deals falling apart on concerns in the media and Congress, the Chinese and the Persian Gulf sovereign funds have become more savy and aware of these concerns and tried to handle them better. They also point out that in the case of the financial institutions caught in the US mortgage securities crisis, it is these companies like Morgan Stanley and Citigroup that have come to them, to China, to Persian Gulf countries and to Singapore and other countries, asking them to invest for small stakes in the companies. Their line goes like this- if you have second thoughts about our investment we will invest elsewhere in other countries. Another facet of this is that these portfolio investments are spread out between many different countries sovereign wealth funds, and the possible influence is small in management decisions. China Investment Corporation has $200 billion in assets. Lou says that only a third would be invested to buy foreign assets, about $70 billion. The other two thirds would be used to support China's three large commercial bank balance sheets. ...

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Entergy is still short of the over half a billion dollars needed to close each of the aging nuclear plants in Vermont and at Indian Point in New York.

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sales up in the middle east by 20% and in Asia by 17%.