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Investors compare Goldman Sachs which has retained its trading commodities business with Morgan Stanley which has shifted focus to wealth management and other less risky business. Morgan Stanley's share price has increased more than Goldman Sachs since the 2008 financial crisis, showing the different approaches taken by financial institutions that were battered during the financial crisis of 2008. Morgan Stanley had a change in management after the crisis, Goldman is still being run by CEO Blankfein, showing a key difference between the two banks. Morgan Stanley was battered during the crisis as its share price plunged on rumors in a way and extent that Goldman was not. Goldman was relatively better managed and avoided the frequent egregious errors made by other banks such as Deutsche Bank, UBS, Citigroup, taking fewer risks, leading upto the financial crisis of 2008, though it faced increased public scrutiny in the Abacus case for mortgage securities. It also helped with regulators that Goldman has a tradition of public service with executives working in government- Treasury Secretary Rubin worked in fixed income trading at Goldman, Treasury Secretary Paulson was former CEO at Goldman with strong China connections, and Gary Gensler at the CFTC. Now Goldman gets a larger share of its revenue from trading than competitors and was affected by the sharp commodities price swings in the 4th quarter of 2014. Revenue from fixed income, currencies and commodities trading declined by 29% in 2014 to $1.22 billion. Since the low reached in share price during the 2008 financial crisis, Goldman is up 267%, Morgan Stanley is up 291%. Even as tighter regulation is squeezing returns and banks are required to set aside more capital as buffer for riskier assets, Goldman continues to maintain its focus on commmodities business and trading. Mr. Blankfein and another senior executive Cohen, both got their start in commodities trading which generated about 8.2% of revenues in 2006 when Blankfein became the new CEO. Blankfein and president Gary Cohn worked at J.Aron & Co., a coffee importer, when it was acquired in 1981 and the location moved to Goldman's former headquarters in New York. The commodities business took off with China's surge in demand for metals and other commodities. Goldman's traders buy and sell aluminium, crude oil, natural gas, soyabeans, sugar, and derivatives. Goldman's revenue of $34.53 billion in 2014 has declined from $45.17 billion in 2009, and Goldman has reduced its balance sheet by a quarter. Net income increased in 2014 by 5% to $8.1 billion. But other than these changes Goldman unlike Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, Barclays, has not let its commodities trading business shrink. Goldman's commodities division is headed by Gregory Agran and co-chief Guy Saidenberg in London. Goldman says CEO Blankfein, "remains unabashedly an investment bank," and is waiting for economic conditions to improve....

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Japan's new prime minister runs into difficulties in improving public finances by cutting some of the pork-barrel spending and making chages such as abolishing the gasoline tax to put more money in the hands of consumers. Cuts of wasteful spending came to less than a fourth of the target of $33 billion. The Finance Minister said that tax receipts for the year ending March 2010 would come in at $400 billion, about $100 billion less than estimated earlier, and this is less than the deficit for the current fiscal year of $590 billon.

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Italy's bond auction of three year debt showed lower borrowing costs and strong demand from domestic investors, even as Moody's downgraded Italy by two notches on July 12, 2012. Italy's Treasury sold 3.5 billion euros of July 2015 BTP, having 6.06 billion euros worth of bids. The interest rate of 4.65% was below the 5.3% paid in mid June. Interest rates were overall slightly higher on 1.75 billion euros of longer dated benchmark bonds. Barclay's described the Moody's move as "somewhat perplexing," conisdering the steps taken at the June 2012 summit of EU leaders, at least moving in the right direction. Italy's Treasury cancelled the Aug. 14 BTP auction, because of improvements in the budget situation.

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Serious concern about lower consumer spending in the U.K that would reduce growth and reduce government tax receipts. The unemployment rate has remained at 7.6% for 22 months. Wage levels are not keeping up with inflation of about 4.5%. The increase in the sales tax from 17.5% to 20% has added three quarters of one percent to the inflation rate, according to the National Statistics Office. VocaLink says annual wage growth in the three months through May 2011 was 1.8%, much lower than the inflation rate. Deep spending cuts are going into effect in 2011-2012, and about 300,000 jobs would be lost in the public sector with spending cuts by 2015. The IMF has reduced its estimate for growth in the U.K. to 1.5% from 1.7%. At the same time the Bank of England is under pressure to increase the interest rate of 0.5% (which is a record low), to control inflation. Britain under prime minister Cameron plans to cut government spending from 47% of GDP to 40% of GDP over six years. This will take 6 years of spending cuts, something even a previous prime minister Margaret Thatcher was not able to do. The government's Office of Budget Responsibility predicts a drop in the deficit from 11% of GDP to 7.9% by March 2012. Yet a lot depends on government tax receipts which in turn depend on economic growth. Britain showed a large deficit of 10 billion pounds in April 2011, and the situation is fraught with a high degree of uncertainty....

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The Biblioteca Alexandrina, as a symbol of the new Egypt. This library dates back to classical antiquity. Youths formed a human cordon to protect the new library during the weeks of protests in Alexandria. The library's director, Ismail Serageldin, says the people love the library and protect it. He says the library is revising its work program to operate from now on as the focal point for the promotion of reform and civil liberties. In 2002, the library opened with a soaring structure designed by the Norwegian architectural firm Snohetta. It was funded by Unesco, the Egyptian government and other Arab countries, Mr Serageldin says the library is spreading the values of democracy, pluralism, freedom of expression, tolerance, diversity, which he is hoping is taking root in the younger generation. The library had 1.5 million visitors and 700 events in 2010. It has 4 museums, a planetarium, a children's science center, a library for the blind and 8 research institutes. It holds 1.6 million books, including a gift of 500,000 books from the Bibliotheque Nationale de France. The library has access to 50,000 electronic journals, and houses an archive of every page on the internet. We taught a lot of the kids who are demonstrating and protesting how to use the internet and how to use social media, and he is glad it has been put to good use, says the chief librarian, Sohair Wastawy. Wastawy is now dean of libraries at Illinois State University. Debate at the library has been open and and annual confernece is held by its Arab Reform Forum to promote human rights and civil society. A website is run to facilitate communication between Arab NGO's. Vartan Gregorian, a trustee of the library, who formerly headed the New York Public Library, says Serageldin has been a marvelous defendor of freedom and scientific thought....

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Adly Mansour, a judge with the Supreme Constitutional Court in Egypt, is appointed by the military as president of Egypt. He was to take office as Chief Justice before the June 2013 protests in Egypt intervened to delay this. On July 3, 2013 he was sworn in as president before the Supreme Court. Mansour is one of two judges selected by president Morsi. He is a graduate of Cairo University, and studied public affairs and management in Paris before joining the judicial sytem in 1977. His decisions as judge went against both Mubarak and Morsi, showing his independent position as a judge on the Supreme Court. The judiciary is now taking an important role in Egypt similar to the role it has played in Pakistan, another Muslim country adopting democratic forms of governance after decades of coups and military rule since the 1950's. The larger Muslim countries in the Middle East, Turkey, Pakistan, Iran, and Egypt are faced with the challenge of balancing the demands of modernization with tradition, the demands of educated urban population with the more devout Islamist rural population, and creating stable transitions in democratically elected government. Islamists such as president Erdogan in Turkey who described western democratic forms of government as a train to get to a destination have still to take in to account the need to incorporate opposing secular views in governance. In this sense Turkey is not the model for governance as it once appeared for Egypt, Pakistan Iran and other Muslim countries. A new consensus in society needs to develop that respects all aspects of democratic governance including respect for the role of the opposition in a democracy, the role of an independent impartial judiciary, and the role of independent media. This will take time to develop just as it took time to develop in Europe and North America....

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Nikos Voutsis, Greece's interior minister, says Greece lacks the money to make debt repayments of 1.6 billion euros to the IMF in June 2015. A proposal by the Left Platform, a faction within Syriza party led by energy minister Lafazanis, which has support of 30 of the 149 Syriza representatives in the Greek parliament, calls for not making debt repayments and looking for an alternate plan. It was defeated by the central committee of the Syriza party on May 24, 2015, with the vote 95 to 75 showing intense opposition within Syriza. Instead Syriza voted for a proposal to call for mutually beneficial negotiations and a deal that would preserve its core goals- a low target for the primary budget surplus, avoid more cuts to pensions, and restructuring Greece's debt to include an investment plan for economic recovery. Both sides in the negotiations, the EU/IMF and Syriza government in Greece, reached an impasse as the negotiating tactics of finance minister Varoufakis led to German finance minister Schauble also taking a tougher stance, saying he could not rule out Greece defaulting on its debt. ...

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With a low voter turnout estimated at 25% the United Russia Party which supports President Putin wins regional elections in Russia.

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A detailed account of the developments that unfolded for Bankia bank during and after the initial public offering of its shares, after it was put together from seven failing cajas savings banks with bad real estate loans made during the housing bubble. The procrastination and small steps taken to paper over the problems by the Spanish government and regulators during the last year of the Zapatero administration and into the first year of the Rajoy administration.

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Paul de Grauwe, a economist at the London School of Economics points to two problems with the June 28, 2012 EU deal that allows the EU rescue fund to buy Spanish and Italian bonds and provide capital aid directly to Spanish banks. One is the limited funds of the rescue fund, European Financial Stability Facility or by its other name European Stability Mechanism. The EFSF or ESM lacks credibility because it lacks resources, it has only 248 billion euros, and has to first raise money in the bond markets. A better approach would be for the ECB to buy Spanish and Italian bonds aggressively, allowing a smaller spread between these bonds and the German bonds, says Grauewe. Germany is the largest shareholder at the ECB and opposes this move as a form of mutualizing of debt in the EU. Grauwe's recent paper shows that the depressed bond conditions for Spain and Italy are driven largely by a psychology of fear and not hard true economic numbers. Christopher Marks, global head of debt capital markets at BNP Paribas, says it is important to create the confidence to get longer term core investors such as pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and insurance companies back into this market for Spanish and Italian bonds by reducing volatility and yield. These longer term investors have left the market creating a severe problem. The shorter term investors, who came into this market in the last 1-2 years, are now the loudest voice saying Spain and Italy are likely to fail. These shorter term investors are either selling these bonds short or getting credit default swaps. A big problem coming out of the June 28, 2012 agreement, is that it is short on details. The details of how the rescue fund will operate, its funding, and the conditions for making making direct loans for stakes in banks or buying government bonds are still to be clarified. Germany's Constitutional Court also will rule on how this would be conducted and the Merkel government would continue tough negotiations on the details creating added uncertainty. ...

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Adly Mansour, Chief Justice of Egypt's Supreme Constitutional Court is sworn in as interim president in July 2013, after the ouster of president Morsi.