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Jimmy Lai is one of the prominent Hong Kong businessmen who have actively spoken up for universal suffrage without screening of candidates by the government, instead of sitting by on the sidelines. He says he is not talking to the student leaders, and it is upto the young generation to take the initiative as it is about their future. At age 12 Lai was smuggled into Hong Kong by parents in Guangdong province in 1960, making him one of the older generation who has lived through the many changes in Hong Kong- from the British period, through the years of turmoil on the mainland in the seventies, the transition period and transfer to China under the Basic Law. He worked in factories instead of going to school, and later started his own clothing chain Giordano, followed by a move into media publishing. He is the publisher of the Apple daily and Next magazine publications which support the pro-democracy student movement. Lai says the roots of student protest are in the May Fourth Movement of 1919, a cherished part of Chinese history because it led to the awakening of China, sparked the interest in breaking away from the past leading to modernization, lasting for 2 decades till the Japanese invasion and Communist control. Lai says the protest movement is more mature than the movement in China at Tiananmen in June 1989. Another factor that makes this different is that the protest in Hong Kong does not chart out an indefinite future for China just when it is embarking on the path to modernization, the situation facing a cautious Deng in 1989 who experienced the chaos of the sixties and seventies. The movement in Hong Kong is about reinstating what is felt to be in the spirit of the Basic Law- universal suffrage in its true spirit and intent without prescreening candidates for 2017- it is a limited objective and does not risk the modernization drive, more likely to enhance it by keeping dialogue with the outside world open as China looks for new ideas to tackle many prblems left behind from the industrialization period of 1990-2014. ...

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United Airlines has asked Airbus and Boeing to come up with competing bids for 150 new jetliners, an order worth an estimated $10 billion. After the 9/11 bombings, with the slowdown in air travel and the steep losses airlines suffered from high oil prices, its the overseas airlines that made the big orders. The domestic airlines were content to work with an aging fleet. United's move at this time may be calculated to take advantage of the improving credit situation, and the lower prices of steel and other commodities to get better pricing from manufacturers. The thrust of the order is to replace 11 of United's wide body fleet, the Boeing 747,757,767,and 777 model fleet. The average of these planes is 747-13 years, 777- 10 years, 767- 14 years, 757-17 years. See graph. The most crucual conditions United is looking for are financing arranged by the manufacturer that does not use United's cash, and the flexibility to change the order later if market conditions change. United sees this as amove to get good pricing and financing terms now so that when the planes are delvered over time, spread out over several years, the planes would come in just when air travel is picking up with an economic recovery. If it does not get the terms it wants, United may wait. It has already retired half of its oldest planes, the Boeing 737's, with the remaining half due to be replaced by end of 2009. United's competitor American Airlines, announced in fall 2008, that it wants to order upto 100 Boeing jetliners if it can get new agreements with its pilots union. In spring 2009 American speeded up deliveries of 737-800's to replace some of its old MD-80's. Newer aircraft mean better fuel efficiency, and ways to cover routes that are not possible with older aircraft....

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This report in the NYT says Hillary Clinton has studied policy briefings, academic papers and taken advice from 200 policy experts, including experts from Bill Clinton's administration such as Alan Blinder, all in an effort to define her own policy positions on issues facing the U.S. This happens at a time different from the period of slow growth when Bill Clinton ran against George H.W. Bush. Since then middle class families face the added problems of not being able to keep up with the rising cost of college education, health care, child care, low interest rates on savings and volatile markets dampening savings growth. For working class Americans in the middle class during Bill Clinton's time in office the problems take the shape of a sharp decline in the manufacturing wages that once supported a middle class life in industrial states of the midwestern U.S., with global competition doing the damage, and few solutions available except improving technology and technical skill of the workforce to compete in higher end products. Consider the points made by Janet Yellen, the Fed chairwoman at a Boston Fed conference in Oct. 2014- Fed information for 2013 showing the average net worth of the lower half of American families representing 62 million households is $11,000. Only this conceals the situation facing one fourth of these families who have zero wealth or negative net worth, and a significant fraction owing more on their homes than they are worth. Hillary Clinton told a audience at the New School in Greenwich Village in New York, this is the defining economic challenge of our time. " We must raise incomes for hard-working Americans so they can afford a middle class life. This will be my mission from the first day I'm president to the last."...

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A Wall Street Journal Survey of how the credit ratings firms have performed in prediciting looming defaults. The Journal's Matt Wirz looked at 35 years of data. He found the ratings firms did not do an effective job with predicting defaults in the 12 month period before an actual default. Of the 15 government defaults since 1975 tracked by S&P, S&P's sovereign ratings division rated 12 of the countries single B or higher in the 12 months preceding the default. S&P says a single-B rating on sovereign debt signifies that the government has only a 2% average default rate in the next 12 months. For Moody's Investors Service the figures show that of the 13 governments rated by Moody's, 11 were rated B or higher one year before an actual default. By contrast the investment grade ratings of the credit ratings firms have worked better- as no government defaulted within 15 years of having a tripe-A, double-A, or a single-A rating. Ratings firms say that the ratings indicate a relative default risk for countries and not an actual default probability, a rank ordering for different countries and their relative risk. Research chiefs at investment management firms point out that once a crisis develops the ratings firms are not much help. They also say the ratings firms use static indicators like current account balances and other critical indicators for countries in emerging markets such as political sentiment and bank deposit flows get less attention. Historically bond yields have priced in higher risk premiums into government bonds before a default and investors look at the bond yields in assessing risk conditions, and not at the ratings which change only slowly. Brazil and Argentina both had a double B-minus rating in Jan. 2001. A year later Argentina had defaulted....

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Foreign investment in the auto industry is having a significant impact in the growth of Mexico's middle class. VW has plants in Puebla, General Motors in Silao, Chrysler in Toluca, Nissan in Aguascalientes. Production increased by 24% in February 2012 over the prior year. The growth is likely to continue. Facilities in Mexico have high productivity and are technologically equiped comparable to plants in the U.S., Europe and Japan. Nissan plans a $2 billion investment in a plant in Aguascalientes. Because of the lower cost of living, with food, transportation and health care costing less, even though household appliances cost more, workers at a Mexican plant earning $4 an hour in pay and benefits or $130 a week can still have a decent standard of living. Foreign investment is likely to grow with Mexico's emphasis on technical education - about 130,000 engineers graduating each year according to Mexico's president Calderon- the work ethic of young Mexicans joining manufacturing plants, the productivity of these lower cost plants, and a growing market in Latin America. Nissan plans to produce 1 million cars in Mexico with an investment of $2 billion in Aguascalientes. Nissan has succeeded in taking over from VW as the preeminent manufacturer in Mexico, and has 32,000 workers in the Aguascalientes area, once a small town but now a thriving city of 700,000. Drug cartels have no interest in places like Aguasalientes, which is why foreign investment continues to come into Mexico. The lack of economical credit- interest rate on car loans is about 10%- and the flow of about 600,000 used cars each year into Mexico from the U.S. has restricted growth in Mexico's automobile market. Jose Munoz, Nissan's senior executive for Latin America sees this changing as more credit including Nissan's new financing center in Aguascalientes make lower cost credit easily available to a growing middle class....

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The impact of labor laws that were once designed to offer job protection to workers are now having a pervasive and pernicious effect on Italy's economy. The world has changed too with globalization, making the inefficiencies of labor laws that freeze the labor markets- protecting existing jobs and at the same time making it difficult to create new ones, diminishing job mobility to an extreme level- lead to lack of competitiveness and economic stagnation. Most Italian businesses remain small because of the fear of hiring new employees who cannot be laidoff as in other countries. With manufacturing competitiveness growing in emerging markets, Italy is losing markets and job growth potential to places in Poland and China. Foreign direct investment as a percentage of GDP is the lowest of any country in Europe except Greece, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. The system also lacks fairness because it divides the labor market into three tiers. According to Italy's National Institute for Statistics, the labor force of 27 million people is divided into three groups. The first group of 15 million, of older workers, has stable jobs with generous benefits. A younger group of 8 million works in a freelance capacity with rolled over short term contracts, and few benefits. An additional 4 million work in the underground economy. Because of the way the system is structured there is considerable resistance to change, especially from the older workers who work in a stable system, even though the system offers younger workers in the second tier few opportunities. What started in 1947 with a constitution that protected the rights of labor at a time of difficult industrial relations in Europe and the U.S., with the added fear of change during today's period of economic crisis, is now holding back economic renewal in Italy....

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Martin Fackler talks to Yasuhiro Nakasone, former LDP leader and prime minister during the Reagan days. He gives his views on improving the relationship with the U.S., advice to prime minister Yukio Hatoyama on his goal of building a more equal relationship with the U.S., the issues surrounding the U.S. base in Okinawa. He says Hatoyama should have a relaxed conversation with president Obama, over dinner and after dinner. Not one or two hours but much longer and increased contact with much time as possible spent together to increase rapport. He points to a picture of him and Reagan in windbreakers walking through the woods in Camp David as an example of the trust needed to be built in the U.S.-Japan relationship. Nakasone once described Japan as an "unsinkable aircraft carrier" in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Nakasone does not think the LDP dominance was a good thing and says the DPJ's rise and the LDP voted out of power was good for Japan. His view is that Japan can become more equal by being closer to the U.S. than becoming apart from it. An approach he took by being less deferential than his predecessors at summit meetings, but at the same time working closely with the U.S. Nakasone says Hatoyama is not doing this by showing he values Japan's relationship with China more than its relationship with the U.S. These remarks he describes as not being prudent, and do not reflect the security alliance wih the U.S. and the shared values of a liberal democracy. Okinawa and other problems can be resolved through talking between partners, friendly relations and a relationship built on trust between leaders....

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The FDIC chairman, Mr. Gruenberg has defined the agency's strategy under the "orderly liquidation authority" given by the Dodd-Frank legislation to deal with financial firm failures. The Lehman Brothers collapse ruffled fianncial markets worldwide because of the lack of such authority and a organzed well defined plan to deal with bank failures. Gruenberg described the plans to the WSJ. Once the Treasury Department and federal agencies agree that a financial institution has to be taken over, the FDIC would first unwind the parent holding compay of the firm by putting it in receivership and revoking its charter. Unlike the situation for Lehman, the firm's subsidiaries can continue to operate, with financial support from the FDIC held parent company provided by the U.S. government under Dodd-Frank legislation. The next step would be for FDIC to create a "bridge company," with most of the firm's assets going into it. At that point equity holders would be wiped out and a debt for equity swap would be made with creditors. The firm would come out of this process as with a Chapter 11 bankrupcy, as a new recapitalized private firm. The FDIC is trying to build credibility in the markets that it has the ability to do this smoothly, and Gruenberg admits that till it happens its hard to convince markets in a decisive way. Another problem is that 85% of the international assets and derivatives of top U.S. banks are in the UK. Former Fed chairman Volcker is guiding the FDIC, and he sees the FDIC's efforts to work closely with the UK very favorably. These efforts are significant and vital to avoid the worldwide disruption in financial markets that ocurred after the Lehman collapse, and provide a well planned action plan in place of an ad hoc day by day response....

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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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New York Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor, is President Obama's pick for the Supreme Court. Saying that Stomayor had arigorous intellect and a mastery of the law, President Obama went on to say at an announcement ceremony, that the judge's inspiring story was crucial in his decision. One that was made with deep reflection and careful deliberation. Obama quoted Justice Oliver Wendell Homes- "the life of the law has not beenlogic, it has been experience." And added his own words to those of Holmes- its vital that ajustice know "how the world works, and how ordinary people live." Sotomayor is from the Bronx part of New York City. Her parents immigrated from Puerto Rico and lived in a poor neighborhood. Her mother worked six day weeks to earn enough money to send her and a brother to Catholic school. From there she got into Princeton University, where she once felt like "a vistor landing in an alien country," but graduated summa cum laude. She went on to Yale law school, where she was editor of the Yale Law Journal, workwed for Robert Morgenthau in the district attorney's office in New York and later went into private practice. She was nominated by the first President Bush in 1991 to the federal appeals court on the advice of Senator Patrick Moynihan, and then by Bill Clinton to the appeals court in 1997. Judge Sotomayor takes pride in her ethnicity, gender and growing up in the poor part of the Bronx, and said in a2002 lecture- " I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who has'nt lived that life."...

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Procter and Gamble's new CEO, Robert McDonald, set a new goal of over half a million customers a day for five years, hoping to add people in remote villages of China, India and other developing countries for its shampoos, toothpaste, diapers and other products. In many places people are not even familiar with the products like diapers, and need education about the benefits and use. McDonald sees the potential as just "absolutely amazing, amazing." And under the prior CEO, Lafley, progress was made in Mexico, and developing countries are now 32% of the $78 billion in sales, up from 23% four years ago in 2005. Sales are doubling every 4 years in these countries. In Mexico the marketing at low price points throughout Mexico has moved sales per capita to $20, which compares to $1 for India and $3 for China. The idea is to move China, India and places like Nigeria up to the Mexican level. McDonald sees sales growth of $40 billion with this move. Distribution is a challenge, and new ways to use these products and their design for low price markets and local customer habits is needed to make this a success. Families that don't use diapers are encouraged to start using them only once a day at night to promote restful sleep, and young girls are introduced to feminine hygiene pads. Shampoo is in tiny packets for 1-2 uses and may cost no more than an egg. Even though this puts P&G in head on competition with better established Colgate and Unilever, P&G executives see the efforts of all 3 companies actually helping to educate the people in using these products and broadening the market for all. ...

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Questions abound about Steven Chu, is he a scientist who handled administrative positions, like being vice chairman of the Physics department at Stanford, and head of the Berkeley Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, with its $600 million budget and 400 staff? Or is he something more with the stuff to get things done to remake the way America makes and uses energy? Because running the Energy Department means running a place with 114,000 employees and a budget that has doubled under the Obama administration. And he has to disperse $39 billion in Stimulus money without it being wasted. And the priorities are just as big and important- ending America's dependence on fossil fuels, rebuilding the nation's electrical grid, and addressing climate change. WIth so much to be done, answering questions in Congress and handling the media may not be the hardest part, even though its the stuff that he likes the least. Its making things happen with the right investments in place for the new technologies that would help break the dependence on fossil fuels, and address climate change. Right now he has no Deputy secretary. He has brought in Matt Rogers an energy expert at McKinsey & Company. Matt and Chu's brother Morgan provide insights into his character. Says Matt Chu is kind and nice but he is not patient. He likes to see things move muuch quicker than things are done around the Energy Department. Chu himself talks about this. He says the bureaucracy in Washington is a place where Newton's law of motion does not work. Once things are set in motion you have to apply force or the bureaucratic atmosphere gets it derailed and it stops. His brother Morgan points to Chu's inclination to challenge established dogma. ...

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If Morse's thinking holds and crude prices drop to $90 range per barrel (see the link to Morse) then we have another major problem on our hands as the incentives for conservation diminish and there is less money invested in energy conservation, and investment, effort and enthusiasm for new technologies for conservation also diminishes. This risks the environment and carbon dioxide emissions and keeps sending money on expensive oil imports to Saudis, Russia and the middle east which could be better invested in the US for innovation and R&D or returned tothe public. For energy saving conservation technology investors the drop in incentive through a return to cheap oil or expectations of prices that are below $100 for instance can be the worst of both worlds high prices and low investment says Vinod Khosla. He advocates a floor on the price of oil. Stanford Professor Hillard Huntington, executive director of the Energy Modeling Forum, a group of energy experts, says energy saving initiatives could easily take 4 million to 5 million barrels a day of demand off the market in 10 years from the 20 million barrels a day that the USA uses to heat homes, power industry, and fuel cars, trucks and planes. It would be a huge loss for that not to happen. And this has happened before as the oil crisis in the 1980's became a dim memory once oil prices hit a low of $11 in the mid 1980's after conservation kicked in at the time. The idea then is to have some sort of gasoline tax that would keep a floor on the price of oil that Europe already has. And British Columbia has shown how by having a small tax and returning money to the taxpayers with a $100 check refund and in other ways to small business and other txpayers....

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Dudley Althaus looks at Mexico's 2018 election from a working class suburb of Mexico City called Valle de Chalco. Once a squatter settlement outside Mexico City this area was courted by the ruling PRI Institutional Revolutionary party for 3 decades with a social investing program building sewers, water and power lines. Today this area like others in the state of Mexico have turned to a new party Morena led by Manuel Lopez Obrador, to find a way out of the corruption, violence and failure of the rule of law under the PRI. Obrador left the socialist PRD party to form Morena in 2014 after running for president on the PRD ticket twice. The thirst for change is widespread inside Mexico giving Obrador a higher vote margin in state of Mexico than the 53% he won overall in Mexico. The PRI won just 16% of the vote. The old politics of piggy bank and patronage of the PRI is now discredited in Mexico.  The reason the old politics does not work anymore is the change in places like this from a shanty town of tin shacks to a bustling city of 400,000. This place has a technical school, a state university branch, rows of well kept cinder  block homes along with malls and wealthier homes. With basic necessities being met Mexican workers are turning to larger issues of national identity and how the next chapter can be written in the social contract. Obrador's nationalist message and criticism of the globalized economy struck workers and middle class as the right direction for Mexico. This came just as president Trump brought new views on immigration and NAFTA on the other side of the border challenging Mexico to find its own direction and independent position in the world economy, even building new links to other countries in Europe and Asia. ...

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Japan's Sanseito anti-immigration party gets 7 seats, enough to deprive the ruling LDP-Komeito alliance of its parliamentary majority. Prime Minister Ishida of the LDP party may not last more than a few months. The LDP seems to have lost its way like the Democrats in the US. A recent article in NYT says LDP wanted to bring in 60 million tourists to Japan each year to boost the economy. Yet Japanese people in cities have a hard time handling 40 million tourists in 2024, with reports of disturbance of the once quiet life in city neigborhoods and failure to adopt the culture and language of Japan. Reports of migrant/tourist or immigrant crime get much press coverage. Japan has 124 million people and birthrate of 1.26 below the birthrate of 2.1 needed to stabilize population. Business asks for new immigrants to fill unfilled positions. The public has different ideas and the migration is causing disturbance in traditional way of life in Japan. Similar to what is seen in the US and Germany in more striking ways. The nationalist parties including Sanseito say even if the population falls to 100 million this is more than the population of 90 million in Germany, and is enough to sustain its economy. Use of robotics and AI is not talked about as much but offers Japan, US and Germany, a way to make up for the loss of foreign labor. In essence both American, British, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Austrian, Dutch, Danish and Japanese society share a yearning for traditional ways of life that are being ruffled and disturbed by the migration, immigration, or over tourism affecting their countries. Politicians need to pay attention to people affected and not live isolated in their own neighborhoods from the people in other less sheltered communities and neighborhoods across their countries. ...

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There is a sense of cognitive dissonance in the states of former East Germany, known as the GDR or German Democratic Republic in the Soviet Union period from 1950's to 1990. The 5 states that formed the GDR continued to build close ties with Russia after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in the perception that this would build good long term relations. The crisis in Ukraine with border states of the Soviet Union opting in favor of close ties with the European Union and not Russia have disrupted the economic relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and Russia. As long as Russia needed the economic ties to build its economy and standard of living the political issues posed by NATO expansion and EU expansion were set aside by Putin and political parties within Russia. The very ties that were supposed to usher in an era of peace in Europe helped strengthen the Russian and Chinese economies. Leading to a point where these two economies were strong enough by 2021 in the midst of the waning pandemic to  assert themselves on political issues where serious differences existed such as expansion of NATO and Taiwan. When the economic relations such as making China a manufacturing powerhouse  was the path taken by American and European business in 1990's, business interests were focused on the declining quality and high wages demanded by unions and workers in the US and Germany. This could be personally witnessed at Apple's factory in Colorado Springs where quality was failing badly in the 1990's. Apple when Steve Jobs returned in 1997 adopted a China manufacturing strategy when its manufacturing operations in the US failed to deliver the quality and cost structure needed for it to expand. The high margins with low costs of manufacturing in China was the strategy adopted by Steve Jobs to compete with Microsoft and turbocharge its expansion. Soon other companies followed. A similar process happened in economic ties with Russia on a smaller scale. Two decades of such expansion whittled down American manufacturing, hurt American workers, hurt European manufacturing and European workers.  This process could not continue- yellow vest protests in France, the protest vote in US midwestern states in recent elections, the protest votes in German elections and fragmentation of parties, made this clear. The US imposed trade tariffs on Chinese products and moved to restrict flow of technologies to China under the Trump administration, accelerated by the Biden administration. President Xi was once of the view that China's ties with the US were important "thousand fold" in the period as late as 2010. Yet this lopsided trade relationship was not beneficial to American workers or American interests as a technologically advanced leader. It is true that American workers and engineers at Apple had failed to ensure American quality competitiveness in the 1980's into 1990's, yet no advanced country or its business can come up with a false narrative that cedes its manufacturing leadership and jobs for the working class of its country. That false narrative is being challenged today by Mr. Biden, Mr. Scholz, and all American and German political parties, and by Mr. Modi with Atman Nirbhar Bharat for local manufacturing. The integration one sees of the port of Hamburg as Chinese export hub with China's economy is one aspect of what has happened. A new leadership is taking its place in Europe and in America that sees clearly the false narrative. The visit of the new Danish prime minister to India is the beginning of the effort to set up a new logistics relationship with South and South East Asia, as Denmark's Maersk is a world leader in shipping logistics for exports and manufacturing. The planned Noida logistics center outside of New Delhi under Gati Shakti integrated development is part of the change happening today as a new supply chain is being built. The unwinding of the one sided trade relationship with China, and its related relationship on energy with Russia, led to the changing perception in Russia and China of the value of the relationship. Political relations superseded economic and cultural relations during Putin's second phase and Xi's second phase with assertive attitudes on NATO, and on Hong Kong, Taiwan under Xi and Putin 2.0. As could be expected Germany and the US were caught flat footed as leaders who were cast in the mold of Putin as a Soviet representative in Dresden, and Xi with his father leading the Communist struggle in the 1930's and 1940's against Chiangkaishek, acted in ways that reflected the Soviet period. Chiang left for Taiwan in 1948 when Mao-tse-tung setup the People's Republic of China. Taiwan and Hong Kong remained important in the perceptions of Xi 2.0, in the effort to build "China Dream" and erase last vestiges of what in Soviet times were seen as western colonialism. US and EU particularly Business and the new IT telecom Business failed to grasp these matters, and historical events such as the opium wars of the 1850's. Business and cultural interests lacked both the inclination to learn and the knowledge of these events in Chinese history and its relations with colonial powers Britain and Japan, and also Russia. In 1900 the Boxer rebellion against ceding Chinese ports to colonial powers Britain, Japan, Russia, ended with permanent colonial settlements in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tsingtao, other Chinese ports. Chinese rejuvenation in the mind of leaders such as Xi from the second generation of Communist leadership, means putting this behind, leading to the action taken in Hong Kong. In some ways as some observers have commented it is as much a problem of the sluggishness of American and European thinking, particularly business interests including in Taiwan, post British Hong Kong, and ignorance of recent Chinese history which was mistakenly thought not to exist or forgotten. This is as much of a problem as the action taken by Putin and moves by Xi Jinping. The great democracies such as India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, were ignored as American and European business interests integrated the American and German economies with China's. In terms of population the population of these regions and related parts of South East Asia such as Malaysia and Vietnam which have a shared cultural history is about 1.5 times the population of China. Travelling through the parts of India's largest state Uttar Pradesh, an Madhya Pradesh one finds how much American and European business interests have failed both their own interests, their own workers and failed the great democracies of the world, by not only not investing in the democracies of Asia, and also of Africa and Latin America and bought into a narrative of China which no longer holds true and may never have been true all along. This is starkly evident in a once in a century pandemic in these great democracies of the world. These democracies have been left to fend for themselves during the pandemic and their leaders facing false narratives in the media such as the BBC and American media outlets even on issues such as vaccination of the largest part of the world's people.           ...

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Arvind Subramanium, outgoing Chief Economic Adviser to the prime minister in an interview with the Hindu newspaper, shares some of the knowledge he gained from failures and successes. The key lesson he gained is that it is important to have independent advisers in government who can speak their mind. Finance minister Jaitley has embraced this point, that such an adviser is not just one more part in the technocratic machinery of government. The success in getting GST he says shows that cooperative federalism is needed going forward as a kind of technology for many changes, including agriculture, DBT.  Subramanium calls the Economic Survey a success with 350,000 unique visitors. He likes the independence and distance of the CEA job to propagate the big ideas combined with closeness to decisionmakers. He counts as a failure not being able to create an office of CEA to the states, a request from 7 chief ministers and state finance ministers. Subramanium sees the need for more people in government with specific expertise in different areas as opposed to generalists as the work of government is becoming much more sophisticated. There is much need for talent and the flow of lateral talent into government.  Responding to economic issues such as the impact of oil prices on the economy Subramanium sees CAD at 2%, inflation at 4.5% much better compared to 2013 levels of double digits and not in unhealthy territory and very manageable. He sees risks in the impact of a combination of oil prices, dollar appreciation, and currency trade wars that are happening. On Iranian oil imports and strict U.S. sanctions on importers Subramanium sees the cost of not complying as stiff once you are in the dollar trading system. On demonetisation he sees there are short term costs and potential long term gains that requires an assessment every 2-3 years provisionally, what happened to tax and formalization, and the costs. Including costs in inconvenience and hardship for informal cash intensive sectors noted in the Economic Survey. For GST he says the revenue growth rate is 16-17% in aggregate for next year, growing 12% in the first year after a difficult implementation. The poorer states have seen an expansion of tax base and revenue performance is unprecedented.    ...

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This exceptional and detailed WPost report by Rosenwald, Boorstein and Clement on Pope Francis's popularity, also shows that on other aspects of the Catholic community's openness in the pews change is slow and gradual. In the parishes and on the pews for practicing Catholics there are not many signs of change. And Catholics who do not go to church are not coming back to the pews in increasing numbers. A slight surge under Pope John Paul II after his visit in 1993 for World Youth Day faded out, and this time the situation with Pope Francis's visit looks to be no different. About 1 in 8 Americans consider themselves former Catholics, according to the 2014 Pew Religious Landscape Survey. The Post-ABC poll of September 7-10, 2015 shows 45% of self-identified Catholics saying they attend Mass about once a week or more frequently, 19% attending monthly, and 35% saying they attend less frequently or never. There is a large gap between Pope Francis's popularity among Catholics with about 75% holding strongly favorable views, compared to 47% strongly favorable for the Catholic Church. Kathleen Cummings of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame, says the difference is because Pope Francis has accentuated the positive. The Pope's own roots in Argentina and his practice of a more humble Catholicism as a bishop, his intermingling with people in the subways in Buenos Aires and in poorer neigborhoods of the city, not only affirms the original teachings of the Church, but also affirms this at a time when the bishops and the Church have drifted away from the original message, in a period of increasing social disparities in the Western World, Latin America and Asia. The Pope has called for helping immigrants, migrants, refugees, the poor, and the environment. Most people in the U.S. are comfortable with the Pope's activism on social issues and saying this before a joint session of Congress in the U.S. on September 25, 2015. To shake up the lethargy in the Church hierarchy Pope Francis described the bishops of the church in the Christmas 2014 message as "lords of the manor, superior to everyone and everything," and having "spiritual Alzheimer's." The extent of support for the Pope's activism shows how the public now views the need for someone of the Pope's stature to speak out on issues of social, economic and environmental change. Only 14% of Americans in the September 2015 Post/ABC poll say Pope Francis should be less active. 30% of Catholics say more active is better, and 50% say continue the way he is. And over half of non-Catholics want him to continue to speak out. Issues of the role of women in the church, abortion and same-sex marraige continue to create differences. By focussing on the original teachings of the church for humility, a humble church, and serving the poor and less fortunate, the Pope has reached the hearts of most Americans and people around the world, in a way unimaginable only a few years before....

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U.S. president Obama called Libya and the policy of not following up on helping establish a stable democratic government in Libya his biggest mistake. Kristof of the NYT says people looking back would say Syria and not establishing safe zones is Obama's biggest mistake. He describes the 470,000 deaths in Syria as a huge tragedy that could have been avoided to a large extent by setting up safe zones. In addition the UN estimates that millions of refugees on a scale similar to the partition of India in 1947 were created.There is bipartisan opinion on this. Kristof cites General Cartwright's opinion in a conversation he had with Cartwright that this should have been done. Others who agree are Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton's Secretary of State, who spoke at the Democratic Convention about how America helped change her life as a young refugee after Russia's invasion of Czechoslovakia following Prague Spring. Albright says force should be used carefully so as not to aggravate the situation but action taken where needed, something that was done successfully under Bill Clinton in the Bosnian conflict following Serbia's ethnic cleansing policy under Milosevic. Not only that, with the diplomacy of ambassador Holbrooke Clinton was able to negotiate the peace accords that hold till today- a huge achievement.  Kori Schake, director of defense strategy in the George W. Bush White House also agrees. This would have improved U.S. relations with Turkey as this was a key Turkish request. And it would have reduced the dimensions of the refugee crisis in Europe, which has hurt the European Union. The Brexit "No" vote many in Britain have attributed to ads showing refugees in endless numbers streaming across Europe's borders. Similar ads were used in Austria's elections. Kristof points out that Secretary of State Kerry's job of negotiating a peace is difficult in these conditions. Another issue raised by Kristof is the lack of Obama's leadership in helping the refugees in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, as he points out only 41% of this is funded. David Miliband former British Foreign Secretary, who heads the International Rescue Committee , says 200,000 Syrian kids are growing up in Lebanon without an education. George Washington counseled against getting involved in the wars on the European continent for a young nation, this advice was not followed in the Reagan and other administrations without showing the carefulness needed before action is taken. As Hillary Clinton has once pointed out the situation has resembled a pendulum swinging in the other direction under president Obama, and former Defense Secretary, Panetta, has expressed similar views. Hillary Clinton and Leon Panetta, Gates, Gen. Jones, served in the first term of the Obama administration, many of these mistakes were made in the second term by president Obama and his White House advisors Dennis McDonough, Valerie Jarrett who clearly lacked the deep foreign policy experience of Hillary Clinton, Leon Panetta (who served under Bill Clinton), and Gates who served under many presidents). ...

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India European Union Trade Deal - huge potential for EU and India for 2 billion people size markets, new manufacturing hubs, and advanced scientific + technological cooperation. Timing is critical. From the first term of DJT 2016-2020 it became clear that the supply chain concentration in China was a serious error for America and Europe. Modi came into manage the federal government in India in 2014- that first phase was to tackle the basic problems in health care sanitation and road infrastructure, agriculture. By the second term of DJT Europe had realized something had to be done to reduce concentration of trade  supply chains in China. Two things had to happen to bring India and EU together. The Ukraine War and China's indirect participation on the side of Russia, the change in administration from Merkel to SPD's Schulz,  and in 2026 to Merz and the CDU created a new awareness of the need for EU and India to come together. Yet Scholz SPD hung onto the special trade relationship even in the face of the Ukraine war and China's shift when it allowed the port of Hamburg stake taken by China to be retained. Something had to happen to jerk Germany and with it the EU out of its inability to shift towards India. Merz took this step in 2026 as the relationship with China soured over Ukraine war and the grasp of the dangers of overconcentration of the China relationship with Germany that Merkel had created. On the other side Modi had to get India's logistics, road and rail networks, ports ready for such a trade relationship where goods could be quickly shipped into and out of India. Modi worked on these investments on a rapid basis in his second and third terms. India had to offer stability in the relationship. This meant winning elections to set up state governments in key states such as Maharashtra for Bombay (Mumbai) region, Delhi capital region, and Bihar/ Orissa (Patna region northeast), Rajasthan (Jaipur northwest region), local city governments in Bombay (Mumbai) region and in the south in Andhra (Vizag region) + Trivandrum (Kerala). The combination of federal and state and city governments working in unison plus logistics and transportation, put India in contention for the role of a size and magnitude that would make a difference for Europe in its relations with China and Russia. That necessity was now fulfilled and in place. Merz and Modi, seized the chance at the kite festival in Gujarat's Ahmedabad, with a vist to the Sabarmati Ashram of modern India's founder Mohandas Gandhiji. Von Der Leyen also from CDU now joins the former premier of Portugal Antonio de Costa as heads of EU to attend the Republic Day parade celebrations in New Delhi on January 26. Nothing happened by chance. It took the hard work that in Robert Frost's words in Mowing ( "the fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows my long scythe whispered, for the earnest love that laid the swale in rows"). Japan plunged headlong into imperial ambitions after its modernization, China has ambitions under its Communist/ Markets system, India as the homeland of the Buddha and the Buddhist civilization of China, Japan and Indochina, and with its special place for Mohandas Gandhiji brings the European civilization in connection with a civilization that is just as old and advanced as the European in its philosophical and religious foundations with practice in real life, and not likely to flounder on the rocks as the Japanese and Chinese expansionist ambition based ideas. And once again with Robert Frost in- Putting in the Seed in Springtime, for Merz, Leyen, Da Costa, and for Gandhi and Modi - "On through the watching for that early birth when just as the soil tarnishes with weed, The sturdy seedling with arched body comes shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs."     ...

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The European Commission has proposed a 9 month limit for vaccination validity for travel to and within the EU. If approved by EU ministers non EU travelers and travelers within the EU will be required to show they had booster shots once original vaccination status is more than 9 months old. 

The current practice of countries being added and dropped from red lists will be dropped and instead of 27 countries in the EU having a confusing set of their own restrictions, a uniform set of rules will apply for the whole of the European Union. Six months are set for waning immunity from the vaccinations and three months were added to give countries more time to prepare their booster shot vaccine campaigns.