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Germany faces serious problems in its vaccination drive and efforts to control the pandemic in November 2021. The rate at which people are getting vaccinated has slowed to 150,000 a day and the percentage of the population that is vaccinated is stuck at 67%. This percentage of 67% fully vaccinated in Germany as of November 3 is much lower than that in Spain, France and Italy.  Spain is at 78%, France at 69% and Italy at 72%. (Data from NYT) This report in the Guardian points out that most of the remaining one third of the population is not eager to get vaccinated as surveys show that the those who have refused to get a jab are unlikely to change their minds.There is also the problem of booster shots. Germany's 16 regions conduct the vaccination drives and with many of the vaccination centers not active since September staff has to be retrained or rehired. This makes it harder to give booster shots to everyone that was vaccinated early by the start of winter. Why is it that Germany lags behind Spain in vaccination? There is a great deal of trust in Spain and Portugal in the health service and people are 100% behind their health system. The other countries that have a low rate of fully vaccinated are the US at 58%, Brazil 57%, Russia at 33%. Even the UK with its well respected National Health Service remains at 68% fully vaccinated. Today the US, Russia, Brazil, European Union countries and India have many of the 5 million deaths from coronavirus. India's vaccination drive is approaching 1100 million vaccinated, yet there is along way to go in getting most of the population fully vaccinated because of the large population of 1.3 billion. This is why the Indian prime minister on the first day of returning from the COP26 climate summit devoted his time to meeting with leaders of different states and heads of districts with low vaccination rates to press home the idea that the effort had to be taken up vigorously in the coming months. ...

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For the first time in decades the U.S. trade deficit with China is falling significantly. China's exports to the U.S. dropped 12.5% to $296 billion in 2019 from $323 billion in 2018, according to Chinese customs data. Actually China's trade surplus with the U.S would have fallen even more had not the U.S. exports to China declined by 21%. With the Phase 1 trade deal negotiated recently U.S. exports to China will increase significantly, while 25% tariff on $250 billion in Chinese goods still in place limits China's exports. This means in 2021 and 2022 and years ahead China's surplus should shrink much faster achieving one of the principal goals of Mr. Trump and his trade negotiator Mr. Lighthizer. Mr. Lighthizer was chosen by Mr. Trump for having accomplished a similar goal decades back in the eighties with Japan's surplus. Even though China has not stated this in writing, American officials have said China will increase purchases of American goods and services by at least $200 billion over the next 2 years from 2017 levels. China and the U.S. have essentially agreed that the two economies so tightly intertwined works to the detriment of the U.S. with the Chinese surplus creating tensions. China will now have the European Union as the largest trading partner followed by south east Asian countries, and other regions. China decided that its priority is technological development and was unwilling to meet U.S. demands to reduce its efforts for technological competition and access to western technologies. Instead opting for shifting it economy away from dependence on exports to the U.S. in a gradual way. The other demand of the U.S. for stopping state subsidies is also a concession China is not willing to make as it sees it as an economic feature of its business model that is working and a competitive advantage.  This leaves the U.S. with a limited win so that trade and resulting jobs can be brought into favoring the U.S. a key Trump goal, and not a win in the technological competition with China which will continue. ...

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The U.S. and China sign Phase 1 of the trade agreement in a sign of reduction of trade tensions between the two countries. Difficult issues of state subsidies under China's state enterprise model of development, and technological competition were put off for the future. China made the deal possible by agreeing to double its purchases of agricultural products, and offering to purchase about $200 billion in American goods and services over the next two years. This gives relief to farmers, a key part of Mr.Trump's support base. This also helps achieve a key Trump and U.S. goal of cutting the U.S. trade deficit with China quickly, just as happened decades ago with Japan.  See the related article and link on how for the first time in decades China's trade surplus with the U.S. is now set on a path for permanent decline. It dropped significantly in 2019 by 12.5% even though China's imports from the U.S. dropped by 21%, based on Chinese customs data released for 2019. With China increasing these imports significantly and the U.S. holding on to tariffs of 25% on $250 billon of China's exports to the U.S. which are outside the Phase 1 agreement, the downward course is set for the next few years for correction of a dangerous trade imbalance. That imbalance was allowed to develop over successive Republican and Democratic administrations. China already has the European Union as its first leading trading partner and south east Asia as its second. China plans to not be so closely intertwined with the U.S. in trade, and yet preserve its state sponsored development model and drive to compete in technology. China's increased purchases from the U.S. of $200 billon are broken down in terms of farm products- $32 billion, manufactured goods- $80 billion, energy products- $50 billion, services $35 billion. In effect the U.S. gets its goal of cutting the unsustainable China trade surplus quickly and with certainty in 3-5 years. China uses the period to transition for less trade linkage with the U.S. yet preserving its state sponsored model of development and drive for technological advancement.   ...

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 India would be 27% richer if it rebalanced its workforce to include more women, according to the IMF. Women's participation in the workforce is the lowest of the G20 countries except Saudi Arabia. Contributing only one sixth of economic output, half the global average. The employment rate of women in India has dropped instead of rising from its low level, an alarm signal. It was 35% in 2005, now in 2018 it is 26%. In the last decade the economy has more than doubled in size and number of working age women, according to the IMF is 470 million. Part of the reason is that more girls are in school. Conservative social rules mean that women are discouraged by their families or in-laws from working outside the home. As families become richer more women stop working. The lack of manufacturing jobs is also a constraint. Men have taken 90% of the 36 million jobs in industry created since 2005. Census data show that more than one third of women would take jobs if they were available. Urbanization and the shift to cities means less work in farming, mechanization of farming makes for less agricultural work. Changes in attitudes and better policies for maternity leave and women friendly workplace could help. Because most of the jobs are still in the informal economy, this is not as effective today but could make a difference in the future as more formal jobs are generated. Attitudes where men do more housework can make a difference. If men spent about 2 hours doing dishes and putting kids to bed, there would be a 10% increase in women's participation rate in the workforce, according to a World Bank study. One study shows this would add 550 billion dollars to India's economy. True especially as more women are getting university degrees and high school education. and the census study shows women have the desire to work if cultural attitudes, more men doing housework, and the job market were to change.       ...

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First disrupt the young people's attention and create effects on mental health of long hours spent on social media such as Tik Tok. This results in a loss of literacy on basic knowledge of civics and American history to lower and lower levels. Then let these young people decide who should run the country and its government for the next 4-8 years. The founders never intended this and never anticipated this threat. Congressmen Republican Gallagher of Wisconsin and Democrat Krisnamoorthi of Illinois introduced a bipartisan bill to ban TikTok in the US considering that it was foreign adversary application when its literacy effects are even more a concern. Byte Dance has appealed the law that goes into effect Jan 19, 2025. The appeal is now before a 3 person panel of the Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals of Sri Srinivasan, Neomi Rao, and Douglas Ginsburg. Does Byte Dance have recourse to the First Amendment rights in the US Constitution when the US sees Byte Dance as a foreign adversary controlled internet social media service, is the question before the Appeals Court and next before the US Supreme Court. The US government has shown the judges confidential classified data that shows why it thinks there is foreign adversary influence of some sort.  It is interesting to note that national literacy standards and the ability of average American young people to know enough about American history and civics that is in a dire state today and a key vulnerability for US democracy. This is gravely harmed by social media influence. Only negative effects on mental health of children and young girls has been put forward. Too many hours spent on social media is a negative influence which is why China and now Australia and UK have put restrictions on is use. US has none. India has banned Tik Tok for security reasons. In all situations there are negatives here yet it is an appalling thing that literacy is not the biggest one put forward when it should be for this Nation. ...

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Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor of the Washington Post makes some serious points about the Obama presidency, its hesitation at each point to take decisions that previous presidents from the Democratic Party have taken, Bill Clinton for Ireland, the Balkans, and before him Harry Truman for Berlin, Greece, Korea. The result in Syria is a humanitarian catastrophe with millions of refugees in Turkey and Jordan, and in Germany and Austria. Hiatt gives a counter point to Obama's point about "ancient hatreds," that the same could be said about Ireland, the Balkans, and yet Clinton acted in both places, and Truman acted in Greece, Berlin, and Korea. As Dana Milbank of the Washington Post says about Obama's foreign policy advisor and White House Chief of Staff, Dennis McDonough- McDonough is even more cautious than president Obama. This provides insights into the making of foreign policy in the Obama presidency.

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Here the NYT answers questions about the Panama Papers- what they are, who is shown to have used the tax havens to avoid taxes, and what this all means. Politburo members in China, relatives of president Xi Jinping, close associates of Mr. Putin of Russia, prime minister Cameron's father, the new head of FIFA, the head of Transparency Chile, president Mauricio Macri of Argentina, prime minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan, President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine, are some of the figures mentioned by the NYT. An unnamed source tapped into the files of offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca in Panama to collect 2.6 terabytes of data or 11.5 million documents that contain this information, and gave it to a German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung about a year ago. These papers were then shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and 100 news agencies including The Guardian.

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Enabling access to broadband to millions of people in developing countries that lack this access is the next goal for Facebook. Facebook embraced open source software and it is relying on open source technology, including its own as open source, as a way to reduce the cost of building and operating the world's telecommunication networks- an operation that costs $150 billion a year. This will put pressure on telecommunications providers such as Ericsson to cut costs. Nokia has joined Facebook in the Telecom Infra Project or TIP, a Facebook initiated group that has set as its goal cutting telecom costs. Some of this is to be seen at Facebook developers' conference with open source efforts such as urban wireless network that checks performance 125,000 times a second, and a long range wireless system that can send a gigabit of data a second, according to Facebook.

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H-P CEO Leo Apotheker defends H-P's plan to spin off its PC unit. He says it wasn't possible for H-P to invest enough in the business to be competitive and make the necessary structural changes needed in other parts of H-P's business. The new product development cycles are much faster than what a congomerate like H-P could accomplish in areas such as the tablet PC, as consumers are looking for a stream of new product devices. H-P's PC unit generated $40.1 billion in revenues and $2 billion in operating profit in the recent fiscal year. Analysts say H-P has overpaid for Autonomy, leaving less money available for additional strategic moves. Apotheker defended that decision saying the Autonomy acquisition makes it possible for H-P to skip a generation of technology as it enables businesses to make sense of unstructured data.

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Indifference on the Republican side, and a sense that not much is going to get done on the Democratic side, as President Obama pitches a $447 billion second stimulus plan in a speech to both houses of the U.S. Congress on September 8, 2011. Dana Milbank documents the attitudes and skepticism with which members of Congress received the proposals- a general sense that President Obama was too weak and ineffective to get things done and has lost credibility. John Taylor, senior economic advisor on the Republican side pointed out in a Wall Street Journal column a few days before the speech, that the jobs proposals Obama and economic advisor Alan Krueger were presenting were similiar to old plans that have not produced results. Taylor viewed them as placing too much reliance on government and not enough on the private sector to generate economic growth and jobs.

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Feldstein, adviser to the Romney campaign, refutes the assertion based on computer models that the Romney Tax Plan of a 20% across the board cut in taxes cannot be paid for by limiting the deductions of high income tax earners. His own analysis based on IRS data, shows taxpayers with adjusted gross incomes of over $100,000 made itemized deductions of $636 billion in 2009. By taxing these deductions at a 30% marginal rate, additional revenue of $191 billion can be raised to pay for the Romney Tax Plan's static revenue loss of $181 billion. A smaller revenue loss of $148 billion is predicted based on increased incomes and taxes from the behavioural effects of lower taxes on earners. He says this was the thinking behind the Reagan tax cuts of 1986 and the Simpson-Bowles commission plan that would generate economic growth by reforming the tax system's distortions.

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Zhang Juwei of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences believes that the overall fertility rate is at most 1.6. A recent report by CASS says the figure of 1.8 used by the government is an overestimation. CASS says its data shows the fertility rate for migrant workers is about 1.14, much lower than people think. The policy for one-child only was introduced 30 years ago, when the fertility rate was close to 3, having fallen to that level from close to 6 in 1960. Does the policy serve China well in the future as China's population ages and there are more older people for younger workers to support, is a question raised by critics in the Chinese media. China's government family planning officials say it applies to 40% of the people, considering the two child policy operating in some areas of the country.

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The serious problem of the large number of long term unemployed in the U.S. in 2012, strikingly different from any previous recession the U.S. has experienced. This means that if the problem is not addressed or solved these unemployed people will simply fall by the wayside, say experts. U.S. Federal chairman Bernanke, says this is a priority to be taken into account in setting interest rate policy. His fears are that this will be a permanent loss to the productive capacity of the U.S. Evidence of the extent of this problem is that the share of the population that is working has barely budged since late 2009 when the global financial crisis hit. It dropped from above 62% to about 58% in late 2009. It was 58.6% in ealry 2012, based on Labor Department data, even though the unemployment rate edged down to 8.3% by Feb. 2012.

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Greece shows the first sign of returning to positive economic growth after years of decline leading to a drop in GDP of about 25% since 2008. The Greek economy contracted by 2.6% in the 4th quarter of 2013 compared to the 3rd quarter, according to Hellenic Statistical Authority. For 2013 the economy contraced by 3.7% instead of an estimated 4%. Growth is expected to be flat in 2014 or growth of 0.6%. For the first time manufacturing and retail sales are showing signs of growing and new car registrations increased in Jan. 2014. Finance ministry data show Greece's budget with a surplus of 691 million euros in 2013, compared with a deficit of 3.46 billion euros in 2012, before debt payments. The figure is higher at 812 million euros when money from the EU coming in for public works is added. Unemployment remains high at 28%.

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Manjoo provides an informative account of why WhatsApp became popular. The site started out in 2009 as a mobile status updating app. The site's founders realized after its introduction that users were using it for sending texts without incurring SMS fees. After the initial cost of a data plan and a smart phone the band width used by thousands of messages is so small it costs pennies compared to a AT&T non-plan rate of 20 cents a minute. It is this pricing gap that opened up opportunities for WhatsApp as a messaging app that is practically free, 99 cents to sign up and 99 cents for the second year on. The founders were savvy to know that ads annoyed users and kept it ad free. And they made it fast and efficient to use which accounts for estimated 450 million users worldwide in 4-5 years since 2009.

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The NASDAQ Internet Index is up 46% in April 2014 over the past year, even though it was down 12% in March-April 2014 as investors grew wary over high price rises for stocks in the "cloud," "big data" and "social" fields. Investors turned to old tech stocks such as Microsoft which were seen as value stocks because of lower price and valuations. Gallagher suggests watching the IPO market for signals of where this market is headed. In the 1st quarter 2014 companies raised $10.6 billion in the U.S., the busiest quarter since 2000. 103 companies submitted initial IPO filings in the same quarter. Venture Capital has invested $29.4 billion in 2013, an increase of 7% from 2012, according to MoneyTree Report. Even though the NASDAQ Composite Index is down 5% over the last 30 days, Gallagher points out that the NASDAQ has witnessed 4 drops of about 10% since 2010.

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Inflation in the eurozone is running at 0.7%, well below the target of 2%. In a opening speech for a 2 day conference organized by the ECB in May 2014, ECB president Draghi said the increase in the value of the euro since 2011 has made commodities like oil cost less in euros, contributing to lower inflation. A key concern referred to in Draghi's speech is the data from Spain and Portugal about the difficulty for business to get loans in Spain and Portugal. About 25% of Spanish businesses and 33% of Portgual's businesses have difficulty getting loans. Even profitable companies have difficulty getting loans. One way the ECB could tackle this is to make cheap loans available to eurozone banks conditional on the money being lent to businesses and not invested in government bonds, as has happened during prior ECB efforts to capitalize banks.

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Ford gains market share in California, as Toyota and Honda's share of the market declines. Ford's market share is up 2 percentage points on the east and west coasts compared to 5 years ago, according to R.L. Polk data. The Ford Fusion sales for the first half of 2013 are up 18% over the prior year and exceed 300,000. Growth in the coastal U.S. markets comes from the 2013 Fusion, the C-Max, hybrids, and the redesigned Escape. Cars and crossovers are especially important in coastal markets. In the past Ford depended mostly on SUV sales in the midwestern markets with imports dominant in coastal markets. This is now changing with models like the Fusion and hyrids introduced by Ford. With it the image of Ford is also changing, as buyers in California are among the most affluent and culturally influential in setting trends.

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With prices of iron ore jumping from a little above 50 dollars to $200 per metric ton between 2006 and 2007 and now back to alittle above $50 in November 2008, mining companies around the world are pulling back according to Thomson Reuters. China's building boom is seeing a big slumo with new floor space up 30%in 2007 now down close to 40% from peak according to data from Macquarie Securities. And the Australian dollar up almost 30% in 2007 is now down about 50% from peak. The last time the mining companies saw such a slump was after the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and the US recession of 2001, with metals coming back only after Chinese demand kicked in in 2003. This affects mining in Africa which was seeing boom times in places like S. Africa where there were electricity shortages because of huge demand from mining.

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The median net worth of Hispanic and Black families has been severely affected by the recession. Because minorities hold a much larger part of their assets in household equity the foreclosure crisis and the recession have had a devastaing impact on both minority groups. The median net worth of Hispanic families dropped by two thirds and black families by half after the 2008 recession from the 2005 figures, and was around $6000 for 2009 for both groups, according to data from the Pew Research Center. The Pew report shows median net worth of a white family is 20 times that of a black family, and 18 times that of a Hispanic family, with the gap between these minorities and whites twice as large in 2009 compared to the period before the recession in 2005. This was even true for Asian American families, whose median net worth dropped by half from 2005 to 2009, to $78,000. The figure for whites dropped much less from $135,000 to $113,000 during the same period. Another significant finding is that within each group the share of the wealthiest 10% of the people increased between 2005 and 2009, for all households this went up from 49% to 56%, for Hispanics from 56% to 72%, for Blacks from 59% to 67%....