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Coral Davenport of the NYT provides some of the basics of the Paris climate change agreement. This includes an effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions by half to avoid a situation in which atmospheric temperatures rise by 2 degrees Celsius or 3.6 degree Fahrenheit.  The earlier effort to negotiate an accord failed in 2009 in Copenhagen. This time all 186 countries were asked to signup with the USA and China, the No. 1 and No. 2 polluters and India leading the way. Germany is well on its way to self sufficiency through development of solar and wind energy with the German government leading the way, and France leads in the use of nuclear energy. How did this happen now? As Davenport points out there are scientific studies. But this is not the primary reason China is shifting.Davenport fails to emphasize the health concerns and pollution concerns that motivated China to shift away from coal. China's industrial revolution of the last 3 decades has come at a huge cost in pollution of air and water, and president Xi Jinping has decided to make the shift away from coal a top priority. It is estimated that mortality rates for areas of high coal use north of the Yangzte river have higher mortality rates than areas of lower use of coal south of the Yangzte river. The other big polluter India is shifting because it is learning from China's experience. Davenport mentions the resistance to the scientific evidence in the Republican party. As a result it is already clear that it lacks support in Congress and under a future Republican administration. In a fashion similar to healthcare, president Obama failed to create a consensus before proceeding in the hope that this would be better than waiting. However American industry is already moving away from coal as documented in Links- "The Trump executive order on coal and the continuing shift to natural gas." Utilities in the U.S. are making the shift away from coal because of the economics and planning ahead as governments can change every four years. ...

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When asked what projects they wanted to see in Helmand province, ordinary Afghans said they wanted the repair of the main sluice gates that lead to the irrigation canals off the Helmand River. These were built with American aid in the 1950's, and its been 30 years since anyone did any work on that canal. See the link to India and irrigation, only 50% of the land is estimated by experts to be irrigated in India. WIthout irrigation, as the uncertain monsoon rains this year showed, India's agricultural heartland in the Punjab and Haryana would collapse. When other Afghans were asked they mentioned security, they did not want to see the Americans in tents, but in some sort of permanent presence. BUt considering the vast and undeveloped landscape of Afghanistan, one sees several differences from Iraq's insurgent dominated priovince near Baghdad. It has mountainous terrain, with no electricity, no roads, no water, totally desolate in most parts of Helmand and other provinces, and it is a vast country with illiterate people tired of war. Would America's 40,000 troops be enough, or would you need more and more. If McChrystal's strategy shown here is to occupy civilan areas and fight the Taliban, and the Taliban with the help of Pakistan's ISI dissident elements are getting more and more sophisticated with roadside bombs, there will be growing casualties. The Americans could hold their own if there was no outpouring of support because of unpopularity of the Afghan government, but throw that into the equation- something McChrystal has not thought through according to Dexter Filkins of the NYT- and things get muddied. And from his training as a Special Operations commander this is a problem McChrystal is not as well prepared to understand or tackle. Consider the implications if Afghanistan is not Iraq- where Shiites and Aytollah Sistani their spiritual leader formed a core of support that the US always had on its side once it supported a democratically elected government- and no core of support here in Afghanistan except an unpopular government. McChrystal may also not have factored in a key factor of the "allergy" of Afghans to foreign boots on the ground. With a largely illiterate police recruits and army recruits, would the idea of transferring the job become delayed and the American boots end up in an untenable position? See the link to Commander Adams and Khost province, where Adams points out its all about visible evidence of progress. For his 250 paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne this meant delivering on roads built in Khost province, and a spring water system for 12,000 villagers. Here Filkins starts with Afghan villagers asking for the repair of the canal leading to the Helmand river which has not been repaired since the 1950's. McChrystal could only say "it takes time." But the US has been in Afghistan for 8 years and as commader Adams says only fighting "one year wars." The other point Adams says is that an effort in Afghanistan only works by befriending the tribes, because its the tribes who will see that IED's are reported and any insurgents in the area are reported, and only they have the capabilities to do it, which no number of American troops can do. These are serious questions that need answers. See the groups for- Commander Adams, and for Dexter Filkins (the article on McChrystal's Long War), which touch on similiar development issues....

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A new CBS-New York Times opinion poll in June 2012 shows 44% of those polled approve the job the Supreme Court is performing and about three fourths say the decisions of justices of the court are influenced by their political and personal views. By comparison only 15% approve of the job done by the U.S. Congress in the most recent poll. Only one in eight say the justices make decisions based solely on legal analysis. About 60% say they agree that life tenure for justices is bad because it gives too much power to justices. On the health care law two thirds of those polled say they hope some or all of the 2010 Obama health care law is overturned.

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NYT exhortation for Congress to resist the lobbying pressures of the banks to weaken regulation for a Consumer Protection Agency and derivatives trading on exchanges. The first by amending legislation for a Consumer Protection Agency so that no states can pass tougher consumer protection laws, something that prevented states from protecting consumers from abuses in the mortgage business. The second to propose legislation for derivatives trading that allows corporations and hedge funds to trade derivatives privately. NYT editorial says Congress should require all derivatives dealers and users -banks, hedge funds and corporations- conduct their trades on exchanges where they are reglulations and public scrutiny. NYT responds to the banks and corporations that say this would raise their transaction costs to hedge any given risk, by saying that this is debatable. Greater transparency should reduce costs but even if there were some higher costs it would be outweighed by the larger benefits to the banks themselves and the country through the lower systemwide risks. ...

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The Obama first family and its many mulicultural faces from Kenyan, Indonesian, Chinese to African American and White abolitionists from Missouri. Truly a new face of the American continent. About 25% of white Americans have interracial marraiges and nearly half of all black Americans belong to a multiracial family, according to estimates made by Joshua Goldstein of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. What it does is wake one up to the reality, the changes that have already ocurred in the country which most people had not realized. With Blacks, Hispanics, Jewish people, Asian Americans, the 25% of whites in interracial marraiges, recent immigrants, white women, and white males making up this mosaic of cultures and communities that makeup America. And the geographical mix is also just as varied, with the west and the northwest and the midwest and east having a bigger share of this mosaic than the south and the mountain states. Whites in interracial marraiges tends to breakup the traditional white protestant insular demographic. On the religious side there is a breakup of the traditional white demographic with Irish Americans especially those in the east tending to move away from the traditional white protestant insular demographic because of their own particular historical and cultural narrative. The Obama story is one of tapping into these different demographics and changing faces of America at the right time, when the conservative southern demographic, represented by the Bush family, combined with related demographic groups in counties and neighborhoods around the country had lost popular support from two wars and a failing economy....

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The U.S. Federal Reserve likely to take into account very low inflation in the U.S. and deflationary trends in Europe, as it makes monetary policy in 2015.

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A new report from Tepco and the Japanese government says the reactor core melted fully. Nuclear-fuel rods melted completely, burning through to the bottom of a second containment vessel and eroding two metres into the concrete bottom, and close to breaching the vessel's steel casing.

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"Kurzarbeit" job preservation programs incorporate an idea that workers make up for less pay when a company is doing well by being paid and on the job when a company is doing poorly, leading to job preservation benefitting the employee and skills preservation benefitting the company. In 2013 in the throes of the eurozone crisis France passed a labor reform law and committed to improving competitiveness by adopting some ideas from its close neighbor and partner in the eurozone experiment, Germany. But experts say little has changed. France's unemployment is at a high of 10.4% in the third quarter 2014, according to the French statistics office Insee, with little prospect of economic growth in 2015. What happened? A report commissioned by the French and German governments from economists Jean Pisani-Ferry and Henrik Enderlein, says job preservation agreements in France are too strict and ineffective. Half a million more people are without jobs in Dec. 2014 compared to May 2012 when president Hollande took office. Insolvencies in France are 35% higher in 2014 than the average between 2003-2007, for Germany 31% lower, according to credit insurer Euler Hermes. Just in the 12 months to Sept 30, 63,000 companies in France were declared insolvent. Job preservation agreements have failed because other changes in the legal system are needed. Currently a company must prove to an employee council why it is reducing wages in a downturn. A small group of employees can still reject the agreement and ask for severance packages, leading to layoffs. The reforms were done in piecemeal fashion, say economists Jean Pisani-Ferry and Henrik Enderlein....

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Shiller says policy is captured and communicated by metaphors, the most effective being belt tightening for a family. However what works for a family does not work for a country in the same way, especially if not accompanied by other measures and implemented in a strict manner without looking at the real situation. Better suggests Shiller, and more real is the metaphor of "winter on the family farm," where people work to do other chores than planting and harvesting, because a lot of other things need to be done and this is a good time to do it. This would include cleaning up the place, fixing the farm and the barn, fixing machinery, building fences. The farm's members pay a tax in terms of donated labor which goes to do all the work needed and helps the farm's productiveness as the weather changes. Similiarly the Salant-Paul Samuelson balanced budget theorem from the FDR days shows an increase in national output by the amount of a tax, such as the one proposed in France by president Hollande; that would then be invested in hiring more teachers (the labor) and investing in education infrastructure....

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Russia's decision to make Crimea an autonomous region inside Russia. This follows a referendum in which Crimeans voted to join Russia. Russian president Putin says Russia has no further interest in the rest of Ukraine.

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What Handan Iron and Steel in Hebei Province 300 miles south of Beijing and ThyssenKrupp in Dortmund, Germany, have in common. The transplanting of Germany's aging defunct iron and steel furnaces and plant to Handan, boxed and crated away- its unreal that in 1998 Handan Iron and Steel bought and transferred an aging polluting plant to a city where the steel works are located in China which has 8.5 million residents. When years later the steel works were debated to be moved to a distance away from the city with Baoshan Steel, the decision was made to instead put a new plant there instead. The solution was to make pollution payments to residents of Handan. It was Mao's dream to build a steel industry in Hebei province ,which has large deposits of iron ore and coal and a rail line. Couple of questions come up to mind- one why did the first steel works go up right in Handan, and same is true of Dortmund, labor supply perhaps but couldn't homes be built nearby instead and these plants located away from cities. Second the deal for bringing the ThyssenKrupp plants was as recent as 1998, by this time China was already a big steel producer (producing more than the US by one estimate) and in a few years Chinese steel production was to exceed the US, Europe and Japan combined. With steel production already on the rise why didn't China move more carefully. Some of the Thyssen Krupp assets were built only a few years before 2000 and met stringent environmental control. China bought these.. Why didn't China pick out the best assets instead of old aging blast furnaces. The possible answers are that they were available at cut rate prices, but were they worth it. The second is that Hebei must be competing with other parts of China, and there wasn't a rational allocation of capital as would happen if a sophiticated company like a Mittal or a Tata Steel is involved. Is China operating on a outmoded concept- nationalism, competition between provinces with local government officials running the show? The other question is that in the case of the automobile industry a different pattern is seen, the most modern technology was selected , and in the case of Cherry, the most recent technology was selected for manufacturing cars, then why was this same pattern not adopted in the case of steel. In the end China has a surplus of steel mills, which makes this rush into steel production without carefully thinking through this appear to have been a mistake. The visual picture if one flies into Dortmund of manmade lakes, green park areas and residential housing and shopping from the $22 billion the EU and Germany are investing to turn the Ruhr valley region of Dortmund into a centre of education, technology and tourism now contrasts sharply with Handan in Hebei province. Can emerging countries do better, build manufacturing for jobs but keep living conditions in mind, be patient and work to achieve the best overall results, and build education, technology, appropriate for their own situation. ...

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For decades the auto companies lobbied vigorously against stricter fuel efficiency standards. NYT editorial points to this failure in policy of the Detroit automakers, and the failure of Congress to do more for fuel efficiency standards with lobbying from automakers even in the recently passed legislation. That target of 35mpg fleetwide for 2020, a low target with no stretch or imagination built into it should be revised and a higher target set. If the companies build smaller cars like Europe does they could reach a target of 50mmpg fleetwide by 2020. That would be a serious target with stretch built into it. Tough conditions have to be atttached to any rescue money. This includes firing top management, no payment of dividends, limits on executive pay, tougher fuel efficiency target, reopening labor agreements on pay and benefits to reflect the new realities. If taxpayers are going to take the risks Congress must insist on these changes or the money will be wasted says the NYT editorial. Some of these steps would be painful for workers but they are necessary....