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Britain's Labour party will now back a motion in parliament supported by the SNP, Liberal Democrats and Tories for a general election December 9 or December 12. This is the first December election since 1923, almost one hundred years. December elections in winter could have uncertain turnout, but the high turnout in the election in 1950 with Labour's Clement Attlee shows that when major issues are involved voters do turnout.

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Energy subsidies costing billions of dollars are keeping gas prices lower in France than other parts of the EU till December. French president Macron says a series of crises from droughts, the war in Ukraine and energy shortages will lead to an end to the abundance and called for conservation, and restraint in energy use. France uses nuclear energy in much larger proportion than any other country making it dependent on Russian gas imports for only 17% of its consumption. 

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Wildfires that have burned 20 million acres in Canada in an area the size of Maine are affecting oil, lumber and tourism industries. Fires in Quebec have created a cloud of haze in cities as far away as New York and Detroit, and made its way across the Atlantic ocean to France for the first time. It used to be said that events in one part of the world affect us, now this is a reality and everyday life is affected.

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Ron de Santis now realizes the errors made in trying to base a campaign on out-Trumping Trump. It is 2023 and it is a different country. Lessons were learned, both Democrats and Republicans are a different breed these days, and have more in common than is realized. The shaking up and open discourse part was the easy part, the hard part of building America is what is taking place today, and requires a different disposition and frame of mind.

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The low pay for teachers in Sweden and Germany. A gross salary of 2500 euros per month is considered standard for teachers in the Stockholm area. Here a teacher points out that it is unfair that teachers are not paid better. With taxes cutting into the pay check even a senior teacher earning 42,000 euros a year or about 4000 euros a month is left with only about 36000 euros or 3000 euros per month to live on.

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Airlines are not taking delivery of planes from Airbus and Boeing as travel on airlines remains restricted by a surge in the coronavirus cases in July 2020. Boeing delivered only 20 aircraft in the second quarter down from 90 in the same quarter in 2019. Airbus delivered 74 jets in the second quarter down from 227 in the prior year. This is straining finances for Airbus and Boeing. This affects suppliers such as engine maker GE. 

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Transmission for people visiting other households is a big part of the transmission problem in northern England in July. Lockdown for these visits is being reinstated as cases rise. This is seen as a bigger problem than going to work so that restrictions have to be placed in a way that restricts the kind of activity that causes transmission, says Matt Hancock, health secretary. People from different households are now barred from meeting indoors in the Manchester area. 

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How the outmoded computer systems at China's brokerages are the weak link in China's stock markets. Even though the Shanghai stock exchange computer systems are modernized the brokerages computer systems are falling behind and have not seen the level of investment and attention as the major exchanges. this could be a real problem in a downturn without access to terminals in crowded facilities investors not able to get out of the market may create panic. And overloaded computer systems have crashed in the past and could do so again. In China investors are responsible for executing their own trades rather than leaving orders with a broker so having access to a terminal and for it and computer systems to function properly are really important to investors in the market. This could be a aggravating factor if there is a severe loss of confidence in the market.

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All the ministers and officers in the 2025 Trump administration are shown here in the BBC.

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President Obama's speech announcing the details of his executive order on immigration on Nov. 20, 2014, starts by saying he is not bypassing Congress or the Republicans. He says Republicans had the opportunity to pass legislation in the House that passed the Senate, or come up with their own bill. And still have an opportunity to come up with a bill he could sign into law that address the shortcomings of the current immigration system. In selling the bill to Americans he points out that this is not an amnesty, that the current system which allows immigrants here to stay illegally without paying taxes or any accountability is an amnesty. He points to deportation of millions as not an option, an out of the character of America. That deportation of criminals will continue and is up 80% in his administration, without mentioning that deportation under his administration for ordinary undocumented immigrants without any criminal record had reached a high of 400,000 a year under his administration, higher than under the Republican Bush administration. In fact it had reached such levels that Hispanic groups stated they would sit out the midterm 2014 elections and not vote for Democrats or Republicans, after providing a significant part of the winning margin for Obama in the 2012 presidential election. President Obama says he has the legal authority to prevent deportation, and that this is essentially what this executive order does- providing a temporary right to stay and work in this country to undocumented immigrants here living in the shadows who are here for more than 5 years, not a permanent status or citizenship. He cites other presidential decisions of the last 50 years, Republican and Democratic, that have integrated large groups of undocumented immigrants, including an executive order by President Reagan. And he refers to the Bush presidencies 41 and 43, where both father and son, considered Hispanic Americans "a part of American life," as good hard-working people deserving a chance to be Americans. The speech ends with an appeal to the compassion of Americans urging them to look at their own individual stories going back one, two or several generations, or Ellis Island where the early waves of European immigrants entered the country in the 19th century, and to immigrants from the period after the early British settlements in the 18th century. This is typical Obama, as much as the calculated decision to pursue a aggressive deportation policy was for the first 6 years of his administration, including the decision for "Dreamers" or young people before the 2012 election. "Scripture tells us, we shall not oppress a stranger, for we know the heart of a stranger. we were strangers once, too. And whether our forbears were strangers who crossed the Atlantic, or the Pacific, or the Rio Grande, we are here because this country welcomed them in." Over 2 million deportations in one of the most aggressive deportation policies of any administration, followed by an effort to stop deportations before the next presidential election, when the NYT had called his deportation policy "infuriating." ...

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In private conversations, Paul Volcker has advised administration officials, that in implementing the Volcker Rule, regulators should follow the practice in money laundering laws. There the government bans a certain behaviour, and then the burden is on the banks to screen for red flags and to ensure compliance. His advice is to ban banks from trading with their own funds if they benefit from any kind of government guarantee. Banks would be required to police their own actions, and the Fed examiners ensuring they are in compliance. The recently passed regulatory reform bill left a lot to the regulators, who have to fill in the blanks. Volcker's concern is that narrow rules would invite gamesmanship from the banks to evade the intent of the law. At one Congressional hearing Volcker suggested a Potter Stewart type of approach- Stewart as Supreme Court Justice said about pornography: "I know it when I see it." For Volcker bankers know what proprietary trading is and is not, and he does not want to let bankers tell anybody anything different. Thw new Financial oversight Stability Council is charged with the task of coming up with a course of action by January 2011, and then writing the rules by October 2011. The fear among a group of 18 senators is that bankers will weaken the Volcker rule protections. A letter pointing this out was sent by the group to the Oversight Council last week....

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In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, the commander in Afghanistan, General McChrystal, responds to a question about Vice President Biden, and says, "who is that?" An aide jumps in saying, is that "Bite Me?" These and other words of disdain for the Vice President and other policy advisors, are seen as the kind of frustration facing commanders from the slow progress in the enlarged effort in Afghanistan. It also brings to the fore the serious questions that have always remained, some raised by Biden, Reidel and others, of how any kind of success could be achieved without a reliable partner in the Afghan government, with the complicated situation in Pakistan where the Intelligence Services pursued a different agenda from that of the government, and with little interest from the people in the rural areas in a vast rural mountainous country, Kabul a little urban dot in a huge landscape of deserts and mountains. See the groups and links for Afghanistan and Pakistan for background.

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Chorin, a foreign service officer in Libya 2004-2006, says the problems in Libya stem from the lack of appreciation of the importance of Libya in the changes going on in the Arab world, the U.S. seeing it as a kind of sideshow. A major problem was a lack of understanding of the importance of Benghazi, which is where the protests for democracy and freedom began. Instead the U.S. focussed on Tripoli and did not give enough attention to Benghazi, including the potential of problems from Mali where arms were shifted from Libya.

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The Economist cites the Dartmouth Atlas Project which shows differences in cost across the country for health outcomes and spending involving Medicare. It cost $5000 per person in Salem, Oregon in 2006, $8000 in San Francisco, and more than $16,000 in Miami, with outcomes for health tending to be better in places where the costs were lower. This is one of the statistics that Peter Orszag of the Congressional Budget Office uses to come up with his estimate of 30% waste in health care spending in the United States. Prof. Skinner at Dartmouth and Prof. Garber at Stanford point out that of most health systems around the world the American system is "uniquely inefficient" and wasteful. The Economist cites information that the American system is twice as costly per person for healthcare than the Swedish system, and that it costs twice as much in Minnesota as in Miami. A poll done for the Economist shows 52% of the people in the UA are dissatified with the quality of care, 40% think the system needs fundamental change, and 29% think that it should be fundamentally rebuilt. The lack of uniform coverage is also causing turmoil in the system. About 49 million are uninsured, and a quarter or more are able to buy insurance and do not buy it because it is so costly, has exclusions and coverage is inadequate. But these people also end up in the emergency rooms along with the indigent costing the whole system tens of billion of dollars for costly late interventions that could have been avoided with preventive care early on. With the economic crisis and rise in joblessness, the dire condition of state and local budgets, the situation has probably drastically worsened, and the system near breakdown. ...

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U.S. States faced a shortfall of $86 billion during the 2011 budget season, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. This was after a rise in tax collections during the last year from an improving economy, and about $30 billion of tax increases passed in 2009 and 2010. States faced the end of $66 billion in federal stimulus aid, and their share of Medicaid costs are expected to go up by $16 billion in this fiscal year, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers. The political mood has shifted with worries about the deficit and fears that tax increases could make the states less attractive for employers. As a result there is a focus on spending cuts with very few tax increases. Forty six states began a new fiscal year this week after legislatures focussed on spending cuts, mostly avoided tax increases, and some states placed restrictions on the pay and benefits of public employees.

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Failing schools with poor teachers, and no examination system to keep out teachers who lack training and education, are a major problem for Mexico. It was part of the education reforms passed in Congress in 2013. A week before elections the militant teachers union CNTE has mounted protests to prevent this from taking place. The Mexican government of president Nieto temporarily suspended examinations as a result of the protests. This article in the Economist magazine says this affects the credibility of the government's committment to the reforms Mexico needs to become competitive in the global economy, and could affect how investors see the reforms being implemented for the oil industry. It also questions the autonomy of independent bodies setup to implement the reforms, leading to a statement by the National Institute for Education Evaluation(INEE), clearly setup by Congress to implement this reform, that this violates the constitution. Can this happen to the telecom and energy regulators, whose authority could be undermined in other ways, say critics....

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This piece in Der Spiegel points out that Brexit may be an opportunity if European leaders recognize that there can be different levels of unity, and that different countries in the EU can advance at their own pace with Germany and France providing a core group. There is no longer the need for continual enlargement of the European Union as has happened before. It also offers a time to take some deep breaths and reflect on the progress so far and where it has come short, what to do about it, such as the bureaucracy that has grown in Brussels, the different views on immigration, and public sentiment. Actually the whole progress towards the European Community, and then the European Union has evolved over time. In the immediate postwar years, after one setback Adenauer once said during the difficult negotiations in 1951-52 between France and Germany to set up the European Coal and Steel Community, predecessor of the European Community and the European Union- "arme Europa, arme Europa," (poor Europe, poor Europe). The Dutch and Belgian delegates had strong differences for the headquarters for the ECSC- Turin was rejected, Liege and Brussels were proposed, until Monnet was made head of the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community with headquarters in Luxembourg. Monnet himself considered stepping down a couple of times because of differences, and the Editor of Le Monde described Monnet's plans for European integration as "a leap in the dark." This was the first of many difficult steps in the evolution of the European Union. Nationalist feeling was nothing new, as the Gaullists opposed Monnet's drive for European unity when it differed from their ideas. Still Monnet persevered and progress took place every ten years as it must now.  ...

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Sales of automobiles in China in July 2012 declined 12.6% from the prior month according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. There are two parts of China's automobile sector, the foreign brands of GM, Toyota, VW, Ford and others, and the Chinese brands. There are 48 Chinese domestic carmakers for 30% of China's automobile market, with sales of 87,500 per brand on average, according to J.D. Powers. Many of these carmakers will not survive even with subsidies from local governments. China's car buyers prefer foreign brands because of the better quality and reliability. Foreign carmakers face an oversupply of cars as GM, Honda, Ford, VW have continued to add capacity. Total automobile manufacturing capacity is about 28.5 million cars and commercial vehicles. This is 9 million more than the expected sales in 2012, according to J.D. Powers. The most recent company adding large capacity is Ford Motor Company, which was relatively late in the Chinese market, and decided to boost capacity from 450,000 in 2011 to 1.2 million in 2015, to make it the largest manufacturing location outside of its home base of Michigan. This creates the prospect of foreign carmakers having to offer larger incentives and discounts to manage inventory and operating with higher levels of unused capacity, reducing profits in future years. Most of the plans to increase capacity were made when China's GDP growth was over 10%, it is now slowing to 7.5%....

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What happens when wind turbine blades pile up in landfills. Places like Casper Wyoming, are shown in this report in NYT about turbine blades filling landfills. 43 million tons of landfill waste will be generated globally by turbine blades by 2050. European countries have banned turbine blades in landfills. In the US places in South Dakota, Wyoming and Iowa have been used to take the chopped up blade pieces. Blades can measure the size of football fields. This is because blades are not recyclable. The federal government needs to support industry in making blades that are recyclable.

The National Renewable Energy Research Laboratory has come up with a recyclable material that could be used for making turbine blades that can be recycled. Disposal should be addressed at the time of production to have a complete product cycle and for responsible climate change action. 

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The head of Italy's statistics agency Istat, Enrico Giovannini, says Italy's manufacturing sector has performed quite well, and the problem is with the services sector, in lagging sectors such as transport, communications, tourism, retail and social services. The manufacturing sector is only one sixth of the economy. He says productivity is poor and there is lack of investment in human capital and information technology for the services sector. IT's contribution to growth in Italy's labor productivity is the lowest in Europe, according to the European Investment Bank. Italy's total efficiency gains declined one half percentage point from 1995-2005. Retail and tourism sectors lack the needed productivity gains. This means actions taken by prime minister Monti to change labor laws and related changes will not be enough to generate confidence in the economy and economic growth. Giovannini says investment in human capital and productivity is badly needed, and shifting education and training to where there are new job opportunities....

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Krugman says France is getting a lot of attention, but it is Germany where attention needs to be focussed. German long term bonds are yielding 0.7%, a yield level associated with Japanese deflation. He says Greece's problem was a fiscal mess limited to a small country, and Italy has a problem of low productivity that is unique to Italy over several decades. Loss of French competitiveness is overstated, as France has only a small trade deficit, and some of that lack of competitiveness comes not from excessive growth in cost and prices but from policies pursued in Germany. He points to France's GDP deflator (the average price of French goods and services) since 1999 when the euro started, as rising 1.7% a year, and labor costs rising 1.9% annually. By comparison German price growth was 1% and labor cost growth was 0.5%. France is close to the ECB target of 2% inflation. Germany falls way short of the 2% inflation target.

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American manufacturers are importing more of the parts that go into each product. According to Susan Houseman, a senior economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the imported portion for these parts is up to 25% from 17%. Even the Bureau of Economic Analysis figure of the share of GDP coming from manufacturing is overstated, says Houseman. That figure was 11.2% for 2009, but is closer to 10.5% if all the imported components are included instead of being counted as domestically made. This is down from 14.2% ten years ago, and about 30% in the 1950's. There is deep concern that the manufacturing decline has weakened America. Houseman says that one cannot separate manufacturing from innovation, and she asks if America can continue to be strong in R&D with a shrunken manufacturing base. James Jordan of the Interstate Maglev project, says Maglev- which uses special magnets to levitate and propel high-speed trains- was invented in the United States. Today equipment for that technology is manufactured and used in Japan, and innovation in high speed trains is taking place in Japan and Germany. The decline in manufacturing is shockingly large. From 1979 employment in manufacturing went down by 8.1 million to 11.6 million, with the largest drop occurring in the last ten years. With it America is losing something significant- all the knowhow and skills that go into making things. Today the airplane wings for several Boeing airliners are made in Japan and shipped here. In a not too distant past these wings would have been built here, and workers with the knowhow and skills for these critical components were part of Boeing's workforce....

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Leonhardt argues that rationing is rational allocation of limited resources, health care budgets are limited resources even in rich countries like the USA, and if you overpay here you cut somewhere else. Now the cuts that are not noticed he says are in take home pay as employers face increased premiums from insurers. Rationing is taking place all the time with poor health outcomes relative to the cost for poor allocation of resources as survival rate for many diseases are not that much better than other countries. Rationing takes place everyday when patients see doctors only for a few minutes as doctors race to see more patients, and when diseases are not caught early on in the process as doctors do not know their patients well enough. And rationing is taking place as patients simply delay or forego treatments based on the extra cost, or as uninsured get no care. There are so many buzzwords like this thrown around, with doctors, hospitals and insurers and other groups trying to preserve the status quo, even as it is becoming rapidly unaffordable fort the US to be spending so much on health care....

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Sacramento is the first city going through an amazing transformation from a city with urban sprawl to a city with its own plan that is trying to bring residents closer without sprawl, and planning the layout from scratch so that residents can live without the long commutes and can bike to work or use other transportation. It has a socalled Blueprint which was developed by a coalition of ordinary citizens, politicians, developers and environmentalists. Behind this Blueprint is the dedication, the insight, ability at effective persuasion of Mr. McKeever Sacramento leading advocate for the Blueprint, using a model which showed what Sacramento would look like un the future and the impact on traffic, job growth and pollution depending on which way the houses were built, nearer jobs or distant from jobs. McKeever took this database, software and computer to townhall type get togethers in which people tweaked the models to see what impact it would have on pollution and traffic, even letting them play with it all day in a kind of display of grassroots democracy at work. He also showed how this would help developers by providing additional business of a different type than their typical lots and typical urban sprawl type construction of individual homes. By spreading their business they would do better if one type of housing suffered. This is what has happened in the current downturn and the housing demand and values of housing have done much better where they followed the Blueprint as this took account of higher gasoline prices and the bad effects of urban sprawl. Now neighbors can talk to each other walk down to where the community places like restaurants, library etc are. It has a feeling of community. Between 2003 and 2007 the number of projects with apartments condominiums and townhouses for sale in the region increased by 533%, while the number of subdivisions with homes on lots bigger than 5500 square feet fell by 21%, according to housing-research firm Hanley Wood Market Intelligence....