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The President of the American Chamber of Commerce, Harley Seyedin, says that the days when migrant workers did not know their rights, labor laws were not enforced, and factory owners could keep wages low, are gone. With 787 million mobile phone users and 384 million Internet users- which includes migrant workers who can now get the news about the latest developments, send messages, video, and access the internet. For its part the government made serious effort to create awareness about new labor laws of 2008 through the state run media outlets. And workers have greater awareness and understanding of their rights for safe working conditions and double overtime pay, as well as other rights guaranteed in China's new labor laws. And something else is happening that connects the universities with workers. The expansion of the number of students at Chinese universities has brought more people from rural areas into the universities. This has created sympathy and support for migrant workers at the universities. Nine sociologists at Peking and Tsinghua universities signed an open letter calling national and local governments to implement actions that let migrant workers integrate into the city environment and share in the country's progress that they are creating. The government's security system has prevented the creation of a worker's movement in the past. But this time the government may be thinking of the need to develop China's domestic market, as the reliability of markets in the USA and European countries is uncertain as economic conditions change. For this to happen China's workers need higher wages to buy the goods China produces. ...

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Toyota moves back to its utilitarian roots, where costs matter and pricing matters. Higher cost technological advances are being rejected in favor of older approaches that accomplish the same thing in the manufacturing process at alower cost. And pricier features like the solar ventilation system option on the new Prius are being rejected so that the price can be made more competitive with American cars. Even the idea of pricing Toyota's cars at apremium of $1000 or $1500 over American cars is being questioned in this market. The new Prius mad due to come out this year, developed at a time when Toyota was coasting as it emerged as the most profitable and the largest auto manufacturer in the world, has a price tag of $28,000 versus the $22,000 for the current Prius. This has alarmed some of the bigger Toyota dealers so much that Akio Toyoda the new CEO visited Southern California to talk to these dealers about what has gone wrong with the pricing. These dealers told him that they were worried about that price when they were drastically discounting current Prius models to maintain their sales rate. This is also happening when Toyotas are piling up unsold on car lots at most ports in the US. As Toyota competed with GM for top spot in sales Toyota's management of Watanabe and Kinoshita, the outgoing CEO and his assistant, say critics inside Toyota, lost sight of the need for caution as the company's manufacturing capacity expanded in Japan and overseas. Now with the selection of Akio Toyoda to succeed Watanabe as new CEO, the decision has been made to make a shift to anew generation of managers, with the retirement of 3 executives including Kinoshita and Watanabe. ...

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The new oil law allowing foreign oil companies to compete with Pemex passes the Senate in Mexico and now goes to the lower house. The legislation removes the 4 oil worker union's representatives from the 15 person Board of Pemex. The oil law now leaves only a 10 member board- five appointed by the government and five independent members approved by the Senate. Because past opening of investment by the private sector in state owned railways and telecom sectors has led to wealth passing into the hands of a few business owners and worsening competitiveness, there is concern in Mexico about how this law will be implemented so that it benefits Mexico and Mexicans through foreign investment in the oil industry. Leftist parties are pushing a bill in the lower house to allow a referendum on the oil law by 2015 if 1.6 million signatures are collected. Oil experts point to foreign investment in the Mexican oil industry as further enhancing the prospects of North American oil production in comparison to the position of Middle East oil producers, because of Mexico's large shale oil and gas reserves and the prospects for new exploration in deep waters. ...

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Dagmar Breitenbach of DW.com  discusses today's youth in an interview with Albert Wunsch, author of the book "The Pampering Trap." Wunsch is a psychologist and education expert, who says today's youth lack the perseverance of their parent's generation. When confronted with difficult situations today's young people in Germany are seen as lacking maturity, persistence, and patience. Part of the problem is that parents have shielded their children from life's realities, says Wunsch. Parents want to be their kid's friends, and not act like an authority figure. In Germany authority figures still have the taint of looking bad, and parent shy away from that perception. The avoidance of conflict, including constructive conflict leaves children and youth at a disadvantage, because they go through life not having had to experience difficulties and learn from these experiences. Lacking this sensible kind of conflict in which parents have to ask themselves what is of value that they can transfer, the transfer of what one generation has learned is not being transferred to the next. Another problem is that young people prefer to hedge, not make commitments, says Wunsch. Financial literacy on how to manage money is also at a lower level. Some of these problems are mentioned for young people in America in the best selling book by Ben Sasse- "The Vanishing American Adult." Developments in Germany are also evident in other places. The dropout rate in Germany is also high. Studies cited here show this to be about 25% to 33% of college students dropping out.   ...

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Peter Baker quotes Obama as saying "I am like a Rorschach test," even if people find me disappointing ultimately, they might gain something.?" So what does this mean someone may ask. By setting up people's hopes in so many places, and especially among long disenfranchised black Americans, and in so many other groups and constituencies, and the possibilities of human beings limited in what they can do, how will all this turn out?

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On my bookshelf is NY financier Felix Rohatyn's 2009 book, Bold Endeavors, citing the bold investments America has made in the past from Louisiana Purchase, Erie Canal, Transcontinental Railroad, Land Grant Colleges, Homestead Act, Panama Canal, Rural Electrification, Interstate Highway System, and how this needs to happen once again. NYT lacks this vision. In this Op-Ed it  leaves the field open after comparing Mamdani to De Blasio's failure to run NYC. NYT Editorial Board says Mayor Bloomberg was an effective manager and ran the city better than other mayors, it describes the accomplishments of Andrew Cuomo but does not give Cuomo second chances to use his experience to serve New York City, after Michael Bloomberg comes out in favor of Cuomo. This is  NYT and NYC dysfunction. It says there is so much to do in NYC to improve life in the city but refuses to make the tough decisions needed to make things happen, turning into someone who decides who gets second chances to serve the city and the country.  The Washington Post was clear in warning about the danger of a "free everything" Mayor as this has never worked and fiscal chaos happened in NYC in the 1970's, a NYC near bankruptcy in 1975 which Rohatyn tackled as head of NY's Municipal Assistance Corporation and $10 billon in bonds backed by New York state. NYT and NYC residents have short memories. Most have forgotten Rohatyn and his vision in Bold Endeavors, or were not part of the American fabric of the 20th century, which again points to the importance of history, civics and education. ...

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Vindu Goel of the NYT gives this report on IBM's expansion in India including an interview with Vanitha Narayanan, chairman of IBM India. In 2017 IBM had 130,000 employees in India, at operations in Pune, Calcutta, Chennai and Bangalore and other cities, double that in 2007. The U.S. operations have about 100,000 employees. As IBM's revenues have declined with technology disruptions, it has concentrated on expansion in India with its vast base of knowledge workers and costs of about one half to one fifth of what it would cost in the U.S. IBM has 380,000 employees worldwide, with 26% in the U.S. and 34% in India, and 40% in other countries. Microsoft employs 8000 employees in India and 124,000 total worldwide, Google has 1800 in India and 72,000 worldwide.  IBM removed operations in India in 1978 after a dispute with the Indian government. In 1993 it started operations in India in a joint venture with Tata. By 2004 the operations had expanded and IBM took full control. A $750 million 10 year contract was signed in 2004 with an Indian phone company Bharti Airtel. As Goel points out the shift is happening towards expansion in India with the growing demand from industry and government in India. The Watson venture has expanded in healthcare in India with contracts including one with Maniphal Hospitals. In 2016 this had reached $38 billion in hardware and software, services, to Indian industry and the government agencies. IBM's work is not simply in offsourced work from American companies. High tech and cutting edge research is also taking place and expanding. IBM is now uniquely positioned to get an expanding share of the business as more tech services are provided to the hundreds of millions of people in India who did not have access to tech and tech services before. Research concentrates on doing this at a fraction of the cost and in new ways suited to the local region, so that services can be delivered with a wider reach. This report provides a new perspective on how the next decade could see American companies with a long term focus take advantage of the rapid growth in the fastest growing large economy in the world, with advantages for both the U.S. and India. ...

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WSJ asks the question how are companies run in America by CEO's during the 9 month old pandemic? To answer that question it looks at Emerson Electric, based in Ferguson, Missouri, with its 90,000 employees in the U.S. and around the world. David Farr is CEO of American conglomerate Emerson Electric that makes products in a number of industries, for longer than most CEO's in America. At 65 years today, he has managed the company since he became CEO at the age of 45. It has 8000 employees in China and 10,000 in Mexico, and plants in the midwest, all hard hit by the pandemic. Add to this racial riots after killing of a black man in Ferguson, Missouri, and you have a challenging situation for any CEO.    As a son of a plant manager at a Corning plant in Corning, New York and growing up in a manufacturing environment in England, his instincts are that customers are what matter the most. That shrinking production could lead to some competitors making it and others shrinking if they did not act quickly to protect their supply chains. His goal is to keep factories running to have parts ready for their customers who made the finished product in the oil and gas industry and in factories where Emerson supplied the automated processes. As a first step he has 7 charter planes fly parts from a Nanjing factory to Shanghai when the trucks stopped moving. He campaigns with the Mexican ambassador to the U.S. to have the company listed as essential business to be kept open in a lockdown but fails. He gets up at 5.30 am and works till 8 pm and spends most nights reading, lounging with 2 spaniels, and going to bed early. He tells his son who works at Caterpillar company to get back to work as soon as he can as he believes being on the job is really really important. Yet he is worried up his daughter working as a pastry chef in New York and wants her to come back home to the midwest. He is a manager in the old style saying he wouldn't hire American workers because the Obama administration was out to destroy American manufacturing with its environmental rules forgetting that he was doing just that in the end-  and what had America and the concept of a free nation and a free people with opportunities for all have anything to do with like or dislike of any president or party. He also has his quirks, keeping 5 baseball bats and swinging a bat while he took walks and did some thinking. Passionate, hard working, and getting it done he keeps Emerson in the game as an industrial competitor from the U.S. ...

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The results of the February 24, 2011, CBS/New York Times poll show strong support for public workers in schools, firefighters, police and other functions. On collective bargaining 60% opposes weakening the bargaining rights of public workers, only 33% support it. On reducing the benefits and pay of public workers to reduce deficits, 56% opposed cutting pay or benefits, only 37% support it. Are public workers overpaid or have overly generous health and pension benefits. On this issue 61% -including over half of Republicans- say the salaries of public workers were either "about right" or "too low" for the work they do. So how are states to reduce their deficits? The people polled say they prefer tax increases over benefit cuts for public employees- only 22% chose to reduce the benefits of public employees, 40% said they would increase taxes, 20% said they would cut financing for roads, only 3% said they would cut financing for education. How this breaks down in politcal groups. 71% of Democrats opposed weakening collective bargaining rights, the opposition was also strong from Independents with 62% of Independents opposing weakening of collective bargaining rights. Followup interviews showed independents saying the public workers work hard and still struggle to have a home, saving for retirement, and sending their kids to college, with both spouses generally having to work, which is why they oppose weakening collective bargaining rights. Which segment of the populations support cutting pay and benefits of public workers? The one income group that showed support for cutting pay and benefits- those earning over $100,000 a year! There 45% said they favored cutting pay and benefits, even here 49% opposed it. On the intentions of the governors and state legislators trying to cut pay or benefits of public workers- 45% said they did this to cut the deficits, and as many as 41% said the saw this as an effort to weaken unions. Which takes one to the last question, so how are unions perceived in the U.S. in 2011? A far smaller number of people, 37% saw unions as having "too much influence" on American life and politics vs. 48% who said that unions had the "right amount" or "too little" influence....

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All the extreme rhetoric on how Project 2025 is going to be adopted under a DJT administration has led to unease that there will be deterioration in the government and society.  Yet it simply may not work that way.   A second objective look at Project 2025 and how it's value to Republicans will be carefully evaluated piece by piece by DJT is needed. Keeping in mind 2026 House and Senate elections, winning broad support for the traditional Republican conservative line of thinking, and maintaining the support of all Republicans in the business, government, media and other sectors.  1. Replacing federal employees with party loyalists. This happens at the top of every agency of the government for every government in the US and Europe after an election for the last century. At today's unemployment level of 4 percent, adult males actually 3.9% and adult females 3.6%, and considering the higher salaries paid in the private sector, the tenuous nature of joining as a party loyalist as the national mood can shift at any time and things change again in 2027; where was the federal government going to find employees to be replaced at mid and lower levels? There is also the situation seen in 1928 when a Republican Hoover victory made Democrat NY Governor Al Smith compel a reluctant Franklin Roosevelt, who was just recovering from polio, to run for NY Governor. By 1931 over 3 years Franklin Roosevelt and Columbia University's Frances Perkins tested programs to stabilize employment in the US, introduce unemployment insurance as a new concept, and a 40 hour week also new, in the entire northeastern + midwestern states, all governors working together. By 1931 in just 3 years Franklin Roosevelt was on the clear path to sweeping victory in 1932 with a tested program to stabilize employment. 2.  The No. 1 goal is to restore the traditional family. It is clear in 2024 that the vast majority of Americans, whites, women as well as men, of all age groups, whites as well as Latinos and Asians, blacks, see that things like transgender "have somehow gone too far." 3. Cultural Literacy is needed for any nation to long survive. This is not even on any platform. Yet knowledge about America's history of settlement of the continent -correcting for treatment of American Indians, blacks, Chinese, Japanese without pointless race controversies- is being rapidly lost, and with it an understanding of America's civic institutions and Constitution, its founders and presidents, and evolution of the nation over the 20th century with the Industrial Revolution. The very terminology that has defined public knowledge about these United States is fast disappearing. It is a cause for unease in the minds of people in rural and urban, conservative and other parts of the political spectrum alike of what will happen to America as this is lost. 4. On immigration  a consensus was reached by president Biden that migrant flow was mishandled and the Lankford legislation offered by Republican leaders accepted by both parties to stop the flow. During his first term president Eisenhower conducted a program of returning illegal migrants to their home countries, Germany is doing this now and the UK's Labor party has made it No. 1 priority to stop migrant smuggling. 5. An effort to increase oil and gas production. This will help bring down the cost of living by reducing energy costs in the US and also helping Europe to do the same. Biden had already accepted the idea of the temporary need to do this to ease cost of living burden on the people of this Nation. The economic cost of wind and solar, are ultimate drivers for expanding renewable energy as major form of climate change action. In the first term of DJT 2016-2020 the lower cost of natural gas made it economical to switch from oil to gas. In the Biden term 2020-2024 all the effort to increase EV's on the road ran into the problem of lack of charging stations. It is possible that spread of charging stations could reverse this in the second term of DJT. It is the private sector and also the local governments that play a big part, climate change action will continue, and new R&D breakthroughs will happen to jump start it again.    ...

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Few questions asked on the real issue -what went wrong in Ann Selzer's poll showing Harris ahead of DJT in Iowa by 3 percentage points, with error of plus or minus 3.4%. 3 days before the US presidential election. The actual result was DJT winning by 13 percentage points- how did Selzer get it so wrong? Selzer hints at the answer when she says "the reality is that more people supporting DJT turned out." That is what happened. One should know also that the polling methodology Ann Selzer uses does not look at the previous election turnout because it is not science says Selzer to think that the electorate has not changed in 4 years. She defends this by saying Obama won in 2012 yet DJT won in 2016 because the electorate had changed. Polling has to take into account the zeal or lack of zeal for vote turnout- and ways to measure it. It appears that the Republicans were more zealous than Democrats for their candidate on issues such as transgender and anxiety it causes parents, and about the millions of illegal migrants crossing the Border and the illegal flow of fentanyl across the Border, and working class Americans did not see infrastructure spending in their grocery store just prices soaring and lack of affordability of everything. ...

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Conversation with Ford's marketing chief Jim Farley who had 17 years with Toyota and marketed the Scion brand. He is a guy who likes to get a fresh look at things like talking to a security guard before coming up with a marketing plan for the Scion, and talking to a maintenance technician about the 150, all off the beaten track. This is reflective of the approach of Jim Farley. Even talking to psychologists about how to convince people to come and try out Ford cars. He is excited about Ford's Eco-boost engine which is a direct injection technology engine which Ford can democratize as he puts it to put it, on some 500,000 cars and trucks by 2013, something not done before. This is a technology that scales up pretty well. Drivers in Western Europe are familiar with direct injection diesels as a way to cut high gas costs and cut emissions, but Americans are not that familiar with it. It boosts fuel economy by 20% and reduces emissions by 15%, and giving a V6 the power and torque of a V8 engine. Basically it injects fuel directly into the engine in small specific amounts so that very little is wasted and the turbocharger uses waste energy from exhaust gas to drive the turbine. He is also in charge of promoting and marketing the Eco-Boost engine, which will show up first in the 2009 MKS Lincoln sedan. ...

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In a 5 to 4 court runling the U.S. Supreme Court gives president Trump the authorization to use $2.5 billion in Pentagon funds for building a border wall with Mexico. This was a campaign promise and energized his election campaign after years of failure to reach agreement between Democrats and Republicans on how to tackle the migration issue. In the court's decision it overturned an appellate court decision.  The Supreme Court stated in its order that the groups challenging the administration did not appear to have the legal right to do so. This indicates that the Court's conservative majority is likely to support the Trump administration in the end.  The surge in migration from Central American countries such as Guatemala through Mexico has revived the issue of migration. President Trump also secured an agreement with Guatemala to cut down on the migration.  President Trump has cited the need to control flow of illegal drugs across U.S. southern border in addition to the migrants from Mexico and Central America. In bringing the case to the Supreme Court the solicitor general, Noel Francisco wrote that the Plaintiff (Sierra Club) "interests in hiking, bird watching and fishing in designated drug smuggling corridors do not outweigh the harm to the public from halting the government's efforts to construct barriers to stanch the flow of illegal narcotics across the southern border."  The dispute between the Trump administration and the Democrats controlled House of Representatives led to court decisions stopping the use of government funds to build the wall. This led to the declaration of a national emergency along the Mexican border by president Trump on Feb. 15, 2019, after a government shutdown during an impasse with Congress on this issue.  Now the Supreme Court has given president Trump access to Defense Department funds to proceed with the wall and meet a campaign promise.   ...

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The failure of the 117th Congress to pass key parts of president Biden's agenda for hard hit families and workers in America is now taking place. The 50-50 standoff in the US Senate and failure of two Democrat senators Sinema of Arizona, Manchin of West Virgina to support Biden's Families and Workers Plan leaves key parts of the safety net being left out. This leaves out the education, and paid leave part of the agenda and provisions for utilities to accelerate shift away from coal out of the bill. It fails to implement a new national agenda for upward mobility, child care and paid leave to help stressed out mothers and families. The failure to include even a modest community college 2 years of support at a time when men's college enrollment is dropping to disastrous levels for America's economic competitiveness is a failure of the 117th Congress to grasp the needs of families and workers in America today. Only a new Congress in 2022 can take up the needed action for families and workers in education, health care, child care and help for families. The passage of the infrastructure bill and the current version of the social spending bill can only be seen as a first step in the right direction, after three decades of different administrations neglecting infrastructure, education, healthcare, childcare, elderly care, upward mobility, and climate change. On the plus side as the first step to restore dignity and health of families and workers in America it includes- $150 billion for rental assistance, home buying help, public housing repairs, and building 1 million affordable housing units. $150 billion for federal programs for home health care and community care for older Americans and people with disabilities $165 billion to reduce premiums for people under Affordable Health Care Act, cover additional 4 million through Medicaid, adding hearing coverage but not dental or vision to Medicare. $200 billion for child care tax credit to parents. $400 billion to reduce health care costs and give universal pre-kindergarden for 3-4 year old children. $40 billion for worker training $555 billion for fighting climate change including through tax incentives for sources of energy that are low emission and low carbon. It will be paid for by additional taxes on incomes of very high income earners in annual $1 million plus range, and by having a corporate minimum tax of 15% for large corporations, including on profits overseas, that previously did not pay this tax. A wealth tax on unrealized capital gains of billionaires or other wealth of the richest Americans is left for a future Congress to consider for financing the key parts of climate change provisions, education and health care that were left out. The education and healthcare provisions need to be expanded to restore America's historic mission of upward mobility for all. A provision for Medicare to comprehensively negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies that would be taken for granted in any advanced country as in Europe, is also left for a future Congress that understands and responds to the dire needs of families and workers in America for affordable healthcare medicine neglected by administration after administration for the last three decades.   ...

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A Hank Aaron phone call in 1967 to Dusty Baker's mother gets Dusty Baker to join the Atlanta Braves when Baker prayed that he did not have to go to the Deep, deep South. Dusty Baker, 72 years, is now the manager of the Houston Astros in the finals of American World Series baseball between the Astros and the Atlanta Braves. Dusty Baker says it was the best thing that happened to him because he met Hank Aaron, who broke Babe Ruth's record in 1974 with 715 homers. 

This started a long friendship with Hank Aaron. Of Hank Aaron Dusty Baker says- "He really taught me discipline. This guy was the most disciplined guy, most hard working guy, most concentration guy I ever met."

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Romney says in the first presidential debate he will not increase taxes on the middle class: "I will not reduce taxes paid by high income Americans. And I will not, under any circumstances, raise taxes on middle-income families. I will lower taxes on middle income families." How he would do this is through limiting or eliminating deductions and loopholes among several measures, with work done on this by his advisor Martin Feldstein, Reagan's economic advisor and a professor at Harvard University- Romney's Tax Plan can raise revenue, WSJ, 8/28/2012. Where the Democrats and Republicans differ is that economic growth generated by creating incentives for business to invest and hire also plays a part in generating the additional revenues as it did under Reagan's economic plan. Behavioural factors play a large part of this as much as the incentives and other steps, to create a climate of business confidence- search in Janvoo for the Group "Reagan memo of 1980 by Shultz, Friedman," for more on this....

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Days after the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore's outer harbor, a key part of the industrial and jobs infrastructure in Maryland, this WSJ report shows 8 other bridges in the same dilapidated condition and at risk of collapsing. The eight bridges are- The Verrazano Narrows Bridge  NY-NJ,             The George Washington Bridge NY-NJ, The Golden Gate Bridge and the Oakland- San Francisco Bridge in California, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in Maryland, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington state,  the Lewis and Clark Bridge and the St. Johns Bridge in Oregon. Note that all but one are older than Scott Key built in 1977, and all have "fracture critical" elements according to their WSJ report, meaning that even the failure of one steel component in tension could cause a collapse. Jennifer Homendy, chair of NTSB safety authority doing the investigation into Scott Key says that there are 17,000 bridges in the US that are fracture critical, showing how much of US infrastructure is aging and in need of investment that is today being sucked up in mad sprees of venture capital investing in startups, and in misallocation of capital, that contribute little to the ease of living, to jobs and essential infrastructure for the American people.                  ...

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2014 Xi visits Gandhiji's Sabarmati Ashram as is shown in this picture in BBC News and is curious how the weaving is done by hand taking a try at it with prime minister Modi, both sitting on the floor Asian style. In 2020 China advances its troops in a part of Ladakh leading to a clash with Indian forces. What happened? India's resilience in the face of the pandemic and the bright future for its economy, greater integration with the American and European Union economies in its draft plan to 2030. A sense in China's leadership that India's modernization would follow in the same way that China's and South Korea's have followed Japan's modernization. A sense also that better relations with the US and the European Union would require better relations with India, as an indispensable condition. A sense also that the issue of Taiwan was a bigger issue and a core interest for China than the border disputes in the remote regions of the Himalayas. It just did not make sense to have a conflict with India in the priorities of China to 2030 or 2040. That India needed to be seen not through the lens of the British but as an ancient nation that had similarities with China and Japan from its Buddhist roots. ...

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This report in WSJ shows how Mexico is planning to receive hundreds of thousands of migrants returned back to Mexico by the DJT administration in the US. The deportation program has led to a 90 percent drop in jungle border crossings across Panama into Mexico from Central and South America. Migrant entry from other countries is also expected to drop similar to this. Previous Mexican administrations allowed the flow of migrants through Mexico from Central and South America helping create the problem of illegal migration to the US of such large numbers of people, without carefully looking at the consequences of such policies. This happened also after World War II leading to president Truman appointing a Commission on this issue in the waning days of his administration and the Eisenhower administration putting the Attorney General in charge of the Operation Wetback in 1954 which returned about 1 million migrants back to Mexico. At that time as happened in 2024 the US was no longer able to cope with flow of such migrants across borders. US legislation has fallen behind the times in addressing immigration issues and this has placed an inappropriate burden on the American people. Bipartisan legislation has to be done as was agreed by Biden and Senator Lankford on the US Congress Republican side, with changes that DJT Republicans sought to have in that bill on numbers of entry and other points. ...

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DAta from FIrst American CoreLogic and LoanPerformance Home Price Index show home price declines accelerating in more stable markets. And new foreclosures are accelerating in Washigton, Maryland, Montana, Utah and New Mexico.

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This NYT report by Eric Schmitt describes the efforts of U.S. troops in Europe under Lt. Gen. Frederick Hodges to build  a fast movement capability to counter the threat from Russian forces on the borders of countries in Eastern Europe. Hodges says speed of movement is crucial. American forces are deployed in smaller numbers than the Russian forces. A 10 day exercize under Hodges involved 25,000 American and allied forces across Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. Russian forces exercizes involve more than 100,000 troops. The war in Ukraine involved a breakaway region in the east supported by Russian forces.

Commanders and younger officers were trained to address the Cold War threat with the soviets. Then for over a decade the focus shifted to Afghanistan, then Iraq and Syria. Now the focus shifts back to the Eastern European area with a new Russian threat.

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A change in strategy by the Obama administration towards action against illegal immigration, by avoiding a confrontational approach. Instead anti illegal immigration efforts will now focus on the large employers of illegal immigrants such as American Apparel . Immigration and CUstoms eEnforcement or ICE has sent audit notices of hiring records to American Apparel where abot athirsd of the 5600 workers in Los Angeles are thought to be illegal immigrants. Deportation proceedings will go on as before, but the breakup of immigrant families and the trauma faced by immigrant workers that advocates of improved enforcement have spoken up against, will be avoided. About 652 companies like American Apparel will be sent notices.

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The Pakistan army and its anti India mindset is at the root of the problem Pakistan faces. The army has factions that support the Taliban. Its intelligence agency, the ISI, helped create the Taliban as a way to get strategic depth (as they called it) in Afghanistan, for it sees as a necessary perpetual conflict with India. And the failure in Pakistan, the crisis of Pakistan, lies in the failure of elected politicians, the failure of the army, to provide responsible government and peaceful relations with India and with Afghanistan. By pursuing a Hindu-Muslim conflict agenda, and a anti-foreigner agenda for Afghanistan, Pakistan has ended up undermining its own government, institutions, and sovereignty over tribal areas and the North West Frontier Province. The US by getting involved in the Hindu-Muslim conflict agenda, and the anti-foreigner agenda during the Cold War, by supplying weapons and aid for this to successive Pakistani military governments, now finds itself as the foreigner in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Pakistan army's anti-foreigner agenda, now that the Americans are the foreigners, is not something that even the army or the civilian governments can control. The only thing the army knows, and its raison-de-etre, is the protection of the state of Pakistan and an antiIndian, Hindu-Muslim conflict agenda. After 60 years of doing this since its founding the Pakistan army knows no other way. Failure to do what it is doing would remove it from its critical role as the most important institution in Pakistan, and relegate its officers and the army to a smaller role, with smaller committments of resources, a smaller army, and the loss of its privileged role in Pakistani society. This is the answer to Holbrooke's question to Pakistani businessmen, and civilian leaders, in Lahore recently, what is the crisis of Pakistan? And these businessmen and civilian leaders also touched on the army's role. For America as it sees the need to build a new economic partnership with Asia that would help revive economic growth, there is the need for deep soul searching. The Pakistan military sucks up resources that are so badly needed elsewhere, for the kind of construction the Obama administration sees for America, of roads, bridges, schools, new energy infrastructure. How can what is good and planned for America not be whats good for South Asia, for India, Pakistan, SriLanka and the entire region? The resources that are sucked up by the Pakistan military and its actions to foster aconflict atmosphere merely adds to the way resources are sucked for the military in India, when they are badly needed for development, economic growth, and the same kind of infrastructure building and education that the Obama administration plans for the US. Without correcting this flaw in its policies in South Asia the Obama administration cannot create a partnership with Asian countries that could play a critical role in America's own economic growth....

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Paul Krugman in NYT outlines the options president Biden faces if Republicans decide not to increase the debt ceiling in the House of Representatives. All the alternatives are better than defaulting on the national debt. All options also create some short term volatility in financial markets before things stabilize. Biden and Democrats refuse to allow a repeat of negotiations of the kind Mr. Obama made with Republicans on the debt ceiling. The cuts a small faction in the Republican party is asking for come from spending that has already been approved by the House. It is also spending that meets the needs of the American people during a cost of living crisis, and for national priorities in fighting climate change, health and defense. Krugman also points out that cuts to welfare spending won't put more people to work as the unemployment rate is at a new low, and the theory behind it in this situation only deprives the neediest from getting help during a cost of living crisis. ...

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The cushion of pandemic savings of US households is thinning About 35% of it is spent already and by the end of the year 65% of it will be spent, says this report in WSJ. American households accumulated $2.7 trillion by the end of 2021 in extra savings during lockdowns that restricted spending and with stimulus government aid. At the exact time when transfer payments by the US government to households stopped there was inflation lowering the purchasing power and this has resulted in some households increasing credit card balances, dipping into savings and cutting spending. This is what economists are seeing at the Fed as resistance to price increases. Estimates show the percentage of disposable income saved in the US doubling to 16% in 2020 from 8% in 2019 with lockdowns, then dropping to 3% in 2022 with extra spending, and up to 4.5% by the end of 2023. This will have the effect of putting up resistance to inflation and lowering the Fed's interest rate increases to cut inflation. ...