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Ted Cruz is seen as the most pro-Israel of the Republican candidates for president. Pro-Israel groups are joining to fund his campaign for president after his win in the Wisconsin primary. Sheldon Adelson is one of the donors sought by the Cruz campaign. Paul Singer and the Ricketts family have funded super PACs that have financed the anti-Trump movement's advertising efforts, but not directly supported Cruz. Cruz is trying to change this following the win in the Wisconsin primary seen as the turning point in the election campaign. Cruz added to the bit of humor about the Cruz campaign on the late night show "Jimmy Kimmel Live," with this exchange: Kimmel saying that Cruz simply held out till these donors found someone they liked less than Cruz. "There you go. its a powerful strategy," said Cruz. Even backers trying to recruit new donors are aware of Cruz's ideologue reputation, saying he is still the "good designated driver" after the party. Cruz has put forward the economic message of Jobs, Growth and Opportunity, as he broadens his appeal outside the conservative values base following the Wisconsin primary....

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Democratic Party U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders tells a Georgetown University audience that Muslim nations should bear the biggest share of the burden of fighting Islamic State. He cites reports Qatar was spending $200 billion to host the Soccer World Cup in 2022 but providing little to bear the cost of fighting extremism in the Muslim world. Sanders says his focus in running is not on pursuing "reckless adventures abroad, but to rebuild America's strength at home." This contrasted with remarks by Hillary Clinton in New York the same day calling for the U.S. to lead the fight to defeat the the Islamic State terror network after Paris attacks in Nov. 2015, and putting forward a position that contrasts with that of the Obama administration.

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 Donald trumps economic plan would worsen the country's economy through extravagant borrowing and lower economic growth in the long run. Because it lowers taxes by 15 percent without any paired cuts Trump's plan would worsen the deficit, so that large debt would hurt the economy in the long run. Clinton's plan would increase taxes by 4  percent largely on high incomes so as not to hurt consumer spending, with paired spending to help lower income households. Because Trump's tax cuts benefits go disproportionately to higher incomes the benefits in terms of consumer spending are slight or insignificant. In the current state of weak income gains of the last ten years it would take some time for the middle and working class to recover. Clinton's plan carefully nudges that recovery forward without aggravating the debt, so that as incomes and net worth recovers across broad parts of the population, the U.S. is poised to go forward with strong growth as in the postwar years. Trump's plan frontloads tax benefits to higher incomes at the expense of worsening debt and enlarging future debt. In the process it worsens income disparities already aggravated by the 2008 financial crisis. Reducing the chances of a broad based recovery for all parts of the population, necessary for a strong recovery.                       ...

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David Gelernter, Yale professor of computer science, says above all things Steve Job was designer-in-chief. At his Stanford commencement address in 2004, Jobs recounts his experience in a calligraphy course at Reed College as one of the singularly important experiences of his life, and something he carried over to the the revolution in portable devices- portable Macs, iPod, IPhone and iPad. The search for and building of elegant, easy to work, fun to use devices. Job was able to grasp the potential of such devices, says Gelertner, from his very first visit to the Xerox research labs in Palo Alto in 1979. In doing this he gives credit for long forgotten pioneers of the personal computer, who were just as important perhaps even more so, Douglas Engelbart and Alan Kay. At Xerox, Kay built on the earlier innovations of Engelbart. Engelbart was first to develop the mouse, onscreen window, and the concept of computers doing more than just computing, such as controlling machinery, doing everyday stuff, and doing things with pictures. Xerox's corporate executives failed to grasp the significance of the developments in their labs. Jobs grasped this rightaway and put all his efforts into developing the Apple Macintosh in 1984 incorporating these ideas. A decade later Gates copied the Mac's eay to use features and created economies of scale, creating the personal computer that we know today. The internet was a parallel development during that decade after the pioneering work of Tim Berners-Lee on the worldwide web. Jobs took the experience one step further and created new devices like the iPhone and the iPad that brought mobility, ease, and refinement to the internet experience....

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Entous, Malas and Abushakra of the WSJ give a detailed account of the series of smaller chemical attacks that ended with this large attack in the suburbs of Damascus in August 2013, the actions of key participants, and the responses of the global community.

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Vernon Jordan points out the problems with media and new tech and the loss of quality journalism. He says this has damaged the political process in the U.S. and Europe by spreading rumor as facts, and not providing reliable information, with news and entertainment not being separated. The failure to educate people he says, risks in Jefferson's words the "perversion of power into tyranny."

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This article in the NYT explains why the loss of jobs particularly in the auto industry to Mexico, with the experience of NAFTA passed by president Bill Clinton, has caused widespread opposition to the TPP trade agreement proposed by president Obama. Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in 2016 oppose the TPP.

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Fareed Zakaria points out that the primary elections of the Republican and Democratic parties can pose a danger to democracy because of demagogic politicians who can appeal to popular passions to bring a fringe group or individual to the presidency. Primaries for both parties became important after 1968. Eisenhower and Lincoln won the nomination after the person nominated on the first ballot failed to win the necessary votes. Another serious problem is that the turnout in the primaries is low, so low that a 15% turnout is considered high turnout. The media attention is so great that it creates the impression that a real election has taken place when in reality about 85% of the people have not voted- as the Economist magazine points out a representative turnout would change the outcome significantly so it is not clear how much this promotes democratic process.

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The Treasury and Fed's handling of the financial markets crisis on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday as it unfolded Sept 17, 18, 19 and 20, the worst since the 1930's. With the credit markets battered, the collapse of Lehman Brothers investment bank and the rescue of AIG right on the heels of the rescue of Fannie and Freddie the previous week, and all these moves barely improving the general loss of confidence and increasing fragility of the financial markets worldwide. Steps like the ban on short selling by the SEC to stem two 400 point declines in the last few days, and the Fed setting aside $50 billion to shore up money market funds by making them whole where needed, and providing about $200 billion through the European Central Bank and the central banks of Japan, Britain, Canada and Switzerland, were tactical moves so Paulson and Bernanke had to address the real problem of removing the highly illiquid assets of risky mortgages from the financial markets. This would require working with Congress to put together the necessary legislation which is what Congress, Treasury, the Fed, and others will work on this weekend of September 21, 22, so that the legislation could be drawn up the following week and passes into law creaing some Federal agency that will buy up the illliquid mortgage assets owned by banks, investment banks, and other financial institutions before there is another series of collapses in the financial markets necessitating rescues by the Fed. Meantime Treasury has raised another $200 billion last week through sale of Treasurys and provided this money to the Fed to use as needed. The result of the most recent chaos in the financial markets has resulted finally in agreement among all parties about the need for committing taxpayer money in hundreds of billions of dollars to be used to buy up the risky illiquid mortgage assets at steep discounts to be resold later to bargain seeking companies so that the banking sector can repair their balance sheets and recover, as being much safer and less costly route than the cost of rescuing financial firms with systemic risk on an individual basis after a run on these firms or their imminent collapse. Which is why people like Laurence Meyer of Macroeconomic Advisors himself a former senior Fed official believe that this is the first serious effort to tackle the crisis by getting to the root cause of the problem and removing the illiquid mortgage assets and the Government an taxpayers spending the hundreds of billions of dollars but at the same time finally seriously tackling the crisis in a manner that will restore confidence to the markets and to the industrial economy of the USA. His comment, "the markets voted and they liked the proposal", as the Dow Jones went up 610 points at one point and ended up the day Thursday September 19 at 410 points gain for the day....

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IMF's differences with Greece and Germany on relative weight of tax hikes and cuts to pensions for the Third Bailout Program accepted by Greece in July 2015. The IMF wants to see further cuts in pensions, the Tsipras centre- left government in Greece is committed to protecting pensioners and the poor, and has agreed to tax hikes that do not put a disproportionate burden on the poor and working class. The IMF fears the relative weight on tax hikes for generating a surplus to pay down debt could hurt prospects for economic growth.

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Alan Mulally talks to Charlie Rose about cost competitiveness, negotiations with the UAW, creating jobs, and the repayment of $20 billion of the $23.5 billion borrowed in 2006. Mullaly points out that 70% of R&D is connected with design and manufacturing- all the technology that goes into designing and building and the associated R&D.

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Following the Wisconsin primary Ted Cruz plans his campaign to prepare for a contested convention. The strategy is to focus on California, and states such as Nebraska and Indiana, and on delegate selection, so that Trump has little chance of winning the required 1237 delegates on the first ballot at the Republican Convention. To do this Cruz plans to hire additional staff, and work at the local city and county level winning endorsements from local and state officials. A similiar process unfolded in the Wisconsin primary, with local Republican base support that was crucial to his win. The focus inside California is on Orange County, San Diego county, San Fernando Valley, rural agricultural Central Valley, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo his wife's home town. In the New York primary where he is behind Cruz is planning to win delegates in heavily Democratic Congressional districts, using ads by pro-Cruz super PAC Trusted Leadership, to add to his delegate count. Cruz is depending on mid-size donors with the help of Jeb Bush and previous backers of Senator Rubio, for additional fundraising to increase campaign efforts....

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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. ...