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There is overwhelming evidence of atrend to lower cost value oriented purchansing habits, and emphasis on essential purchases, that companies should pay attention to. Out of 46 economists surveyed by WSJ 43 agree that a fundamental change is underway, that will last for years, into the next decade and beyond, in the way consumers in the USA save and spend. And a couple of fundamental facts which won't just go away, are shaping things this way. American households doubled their outstanding debt between 2000 and 2007, to $13.8 trillion. In 2008 total debt went down for the first time since World War II. $13 trillion in wealth has been lost since the recession began. And this number will grow as the economy goes deeper into this downturn. The confidence in the capitalist system has been shaken. People want to get debt free. AlixPartners, found in asurvey, that Americans plan to save 14% of total earnings once this downturn ends. Two thirds of those surveyed say they plan to buy less in the future, and more than halfplan to buy less expensive things. There is a fundamental mood change from those who have been interviewed like Mr Bailey here in Boise, Idaho, a small business owner stuck with a lot of debt and no income. His goal: to get rid of debt and concentrate on making just enough money to enjoy myself and my family, and not trying to get rich anymore. So he goes out and sells his SUV to eliminate a $800 monthly payment and replaces it with a used minivan paid for in cash, he sells off a vacation home he built, sells another home to renters, cuts his staff to a handful. Many like Mr Bailey remember how their parents lived and heard the stories passed down from parents who lived through frugal times in the 40's and 50's, when America was still largely rural and peopled by families with modest incomes especially in most of the south and west. Its this change and shift in attitude and mindset from wanting to be rich to just wanting to be happy for themselves and their families, valuing the really important things, not piling up material acquisitions that the latest advertising is getting them to buy, in taking pride like their fathers and mothers before them in thrifty behaviours and saving, that may lead to a very different economy than seen before. Something like this is happening in Germany and Japan where consumers tend to save. ...

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Profit outlook for global airlines dims with the sluggish global economy and high fuel prices. This is affecting most airlines including Etihad and Emirates airlines in the Middle East. Qantas forecast a 91% drop in pretax profits for the fiscal year ending June 2012 falling to A$50 million.

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How their strains in the the the Toyota manufacturing system and how Toyota's quality is not what it once was. Its image as a environment conscious company is also suffereing with its attempt to stall new fuel economy legislation in Congress like th Big Three American companies. And new hybrid engines are being introduced in joint development between Mercedes, BMW and GM so the novelty of Toyota hybrid may just wear out. And competitors from Germany and the US are now working harder to reduce Toyota's advantage by producing quality cars. As styling design and creative innovation has not been Toyota's strong point the Americans and the Germans have an opportunity to come up with something new. Even the incentives Toyota has to offer to sell its cars have now come up to what the Gm, Ford and Chrysler had to offer. According to CNW Marketing Research Toyota's dealer incentives have almost tripled in the last 3 years to an average of $3752 per vehicle. This is not a good sign. And we may have reached a point where the difference in quality between the GM Malibu and the Honda Accord from the Toyota Camry may really not be that much. No surprise that this is shaking up Toyota. The "Customer First Initiative" in response to quality issues and recalls is to have more power put into the hands of the chief engineer for any product launch to ensure quality problems are addressed early. And the dealers have EN2 (everything matters exponentially to address quality issues at the dealer level. And there aren't enough sensei or teachers of the Toyota Production System to meet the rapid growth of plants and the Global Production Centre was designed to meet this need by training teachers in an accelerated way in Japan. But there is a sense that a lot of the old Toyota magic may be fading just as Toyota reached te peak of its popularity sometime last year or 2005. Not because Toyota hasn't made the effort but because the whole dynamics of the car industry keep changing and Germans and the Americans are also pushing harder nowadays....

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The vote count in Indonesia for 13 million election ballots shows Joko Widodo with 53.15% of the vote and Prabowo Subianto with 46.85% of the vote. Voter turnout was 70%. The margin for Widodo was 8.5 million votes according to the elecion commission. Former president Yudhoyono served a maximum term of 10 years since his election in 2004. The democratic period began in 1998 with the fall of army general Suharto who ruled Indonesia for several decades.

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Who is Ed Whitacre? What is he like and where is he from? Ed Whitacre headed Southwestern Bell or SBC, which he merged with AT&T. Bored as a retiree in San Antonio after leaving AT&T, he took the job at GM. He golfs, wishes and hunts with his chocolate Labrador retriever at a ranch near his house in San Antonio. He is impatient by nature and likes to see things done. Managers who worked with him at Southwestern Bell say while they were working on day to day business, Whitacre would be the one thinking ahead, trying to figure out how to compete in the future, and the things that were likely to happen in the changing environment. For a smaller Bell he saw that it was simply whether his Bell would be acquired or whether he would acquire other Bell companies. He is a hands-on guy who like to do things himself, like running a bulldozer around his ranch, one of the things Whitacre likes to do. His beginnings are in small town Texas. The place is a sleepy railroad town called Ennis, Texas, where for 50 years his father was a locomotive engineer. Whitacre says his father had never finished high school, and he did not want Whitacre working for the railroad. Both his parents insisted that he get acollege degree. Whitacre went to Texas Tech in Lubbock, Texas, because the tution was only $75, and landed a job at Southwestern Bell in 1963 as a facility engineer. And he stayed with the company all the way- with 19 moves living in Texas, Arkansas, Missouri and Kansas- till it became the new AT&T. Frost, a retired San Antonio banker and a member of Southwestern Bell's Board in 1990 when Whitacre became CEO, says Whitacre started from the bottom, and literally, even climbing telephone poles. So it isn't surprising that this guy walks around the GM Renaissance Center, talks to GM employees, tries out a Taco at the Food Court at the Renn center (says its OK but not like Texas tacos), and uses all elevators like everybody else, unlike GM executives who equiped elevators so they could bypass floors. And he isn't hesitant to wear jeans and a sweat shirt while visiting a factory, which he says is all the clean clothing he had at the hotel. Now he has an apartment. Works 14 hours a day, 5-6 days a week, and has his phone ringing just when he hopes to leave town to escape for a weekend. ...

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A new family sedan will come out of a new manufacturing plant VW has built in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 2011. The plant will turn out a new version of the Passat to compete with the Toyota Camry and the Honda Accord. Production capacity will be 150,000 A new Beetle will also be introduced. This is the first time VW has built a car specifically designed for the U.S.. During its previous efforts in the 80's VW used European designs and transferred them to the U.S. Its plans are to sell 400,000 VW's in the U.S. by 2013. VW sold 213,000 cars in the U.S. in 2009, so this means doubling sales in 4 years. At it height VW sold 577,000 cars in 1970, but this was before the Japanese and the Koreans entered the market in a significant way, and now the potential is there for Chinese and Indian imports at the low end of the price scale. Another factor making this goal difficult to achieve is the smaller car market and lower economic growth. By 1992, sales had dropped to 49,000, after the boxier replacement to the bug- in its Rabbit and Golf models- never took off. The new Beetle's introduction in 1998 improved sales, which reached 356,000 in 2001, and then declined as a result of too few new models, declining quality and a weakening dollar. There is a feeling among VW's American dealers, that VW's European headquarters staff is not giving the US the priority it deserves. The revolving door change in CEO's for the US operations, has only reinforced this impression. Mr Browning of GM's European operations replaced Jaccoby recently. Jaccoby joined Volvo as its new CEO. Steps taken to address these issues are to revamp the Jetta model for American customer preferences, and advertising that appeals to price conscious customers with the line: "Great for the price of good." Another innovative effort is an ad strategy that tries to capture Hispanics in the US market, with ads on Spanish language television networks. A sign of how much German management is involved in the detail of the new Jetta, is the discussion at the management board level about whether the new model should have American style cup holders. This meant pushing the brake two inches forward towards the driver, a decision that was made to do so after some deliberation at the management board. This will lead to intense competition in the US market, with Asian, European and US manufacturers all vying for the same price conscious customers....

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Pope Francis takes an open attitude to listen before making up his mind in his meeting with Trump at the Vatican in May 2016. Landler and Horowitz describe the visit by Trump and his family including Ivanka, Melanie and Jared Kushner, accompanied by Tillerson and McMaster. The pope handed out rosaries and said before the meeting: "In our talk, things will come out, I will say what I think, he will say what he thinks, but I never want to make a judgement without hearing the person." 

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Eric Spector is an ultra marathon runner at age 71. He lives in Palo Alto, Calif., and is semiretired, until 2014 he worked as CEO of OneRoof a social enterprise that opened internet centres in rural Mexico and India. He has run as much as 100 miles. His first was 50K. He avoids trail running because of the hazards.

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Michael Fathers reviews two detailed accounts of Mao's Great Leap Forward. From 1958-62 Mao launched an effort to industrialize China in its effort to surpass Krushchev's effort to surpass the U.S. and western nations in one decade. Yang Jingsheng's account in the book 'Tombstone,' is a result of decades of research to find what happened during this period. He lost his own father to starvation during this period when all Chinese agriculture was forced into communes with communal living and communal kitchens. The result were disastrous as agricultural production suffered badly leading to famines and loss of an estimated 45 million lives. The policy was continued even as the result showed a looming disaster by 1959. It was only by 1962 that Mao was forced to accept the failure of the program. As an editor of Xinhua news agency, Jingsheng had access to accounts of waht happened in provincial documents and archives. The other book reviewed is 'The Great Famine' by Frank Dikotter which provides an illuminating account of what happened in these years. Dikotter says the final responsibility rested with Mao for calling for higher grain deliveries from the countryside at the height of the famine and for continuing the policy of force and coercion leading to starvation- he quotes Mao who said: "It is better to let half the people die so that the other half can eat their fill." The truth about this period was hidden by propaganda and the mistake accounts of westerners who visited China including Francois Mitterand till the 1990's. Jasper Becker, a former correspondent in China for the Guardian, gave one of the first accounts of what had happened in "Hungry Ghosts: China's Secret Famine" (1996). What shocked readers was the extent of the dead, the violence, and the fear of speaking out even after 30 years. The fear of speaking out is evidenced in the pen name Mo Yan of the Nobel prize winner in Literature for 2012 which means do not speak out in Chinese because his parents were from a more affluent farming family in the village. Mo Yan uses animal and fairy tale characters and Chinese history in his novels and stories including his effort to describe the behaviour of arrogant local officials. The chronology of this period also tells a story. China's Communists took control in 1949, the famine and violent repression to establish the commune system occured in 1958-1962 only 8 years later, and the Great Proleterian Cultural Revolution was launched by Mao in 1966 and was to last a decade till his death in 1979- a period which saw a new effort of upending of China's countryside to establish communism....

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Jeff Madrick asks what kind of Wall Street and banking industry would best serve the American people.

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Artists from Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China give different interpretations of the period from the Opium Wars in 1842 to the rise of Communist China at an exhibition of art in Hong Kong, March 23- May 10, 2015.

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Nossiter of the NYT describes the growing popularity of Nicolas Sarkozy in France as he tries to regain the presidency. Sarkozy's book, which has placed the importance of preserving France's identity as the main question in the upcoming general election, has climbed to the top of a popular best seller list. With weakness on the right in local elections, Mayor Juppe of Bordeaux and Francois Hollande appearing content with the status quo, Sarkozy hopes to gain the support of voters dissatisfied with the way France is tackling terrorism and its sense of identity as a predominantly Catholic and Christian country. France's political scene which makes it harder for outsiders to break into politics is likely to help Sarkozy, says Nossiter. The other factor is the campaigning style of Sarkozy and projection of strong leadership- which may be more attuned to the present voter sentiment shaken by terrorism than it was in the last election when he was seen as arrogant and self-centred. Sarkozy also lost the last election because of the economy, something that has not improved under Hollande, more likely because the economy takes many years to change to a pattern of growth following a crisis and beyond the control of any particular party. ...

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Problems General Petraeus sees in Afghanistan as he does information gathering before taking up his position as head of Central Command. His point is that every situation is very unique so it has to be addressed as a unique situation with its own topography.

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Mexico is close to becoming the U.S.'s largest trading partner. Trade increased by 17% between Mexico and the U.S. to $461 billion in 2011, compared to $502 billion in trade between the U.S. and China.

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Discount airline Azul carried 2.2 millon passengers in its first year. It was founded by David Neeleman of Jet Blue Airways. Azul operates out of Campinas, a city near Sao Paulo, with 14 Embraer jetliners covering 16 cities. Plans are to add 4 desinatios in 2010, and increase the fleet to 21 by end of 2010 and 33 by end of 2011, according to Neelman. Azul now has about 4% market share in Brazil with plane occupancy at 80%.

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A wide ranging interveiw by New York Times reporters Archibold, Cave and Malkin, with Mexico's President Felipe Calderon. Calderon tells the reporters that Mexico had to be cleaned up and it was upto him to do it. A Pew Research poll shows that only 45% of respondents say Mexico has made progress in the fight against drug cartels, yet 83% support the use of the military against the drug cartels. Calderon's six year term ends in 2012 and the opposition PRI candidate leads in the polls. Calderon is limited to the six year term by term limits. PRI candidate Nieto has a program that is not very different from Calderon's to fight drug gangs. Calderon says he should have taken on the task of buillding up the state and local police forces more aggressively from the very beginning, now that it is clear that corruption and lack of training have diminished their capacity to provide safety. Calderon points to the success in creating jobs, expanding health care, building trustworthy police and judicial institutions, and social programs to fight roots of crime, as achievements of his administration....

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President Calderon takes over Luz yFuerza, Mexico's major power company serving Mexico City. This sets up aconfrontation with the SME union which by having extra workers and higher benefits raises the costs to about twice what the company earns. Money the government uses to support the electricity companyis now the same as what it uses in an antipoverty program for 25 million Mexicans and twice that it uses to support auniversity system for 350,000 students.