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U.S. president Obama in his speech at the Democratic National Convention describes Hillary Clinton as someone "who has been there for us- even if we haven't always noticed."  He warned against "home grown demagogues," and said " there were no serious solutions to pressing problems" at the Republican convention that was "not conservative, and wasn't particularly Republican."  

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It may come as a shock to the Egyptian people and freedom loving Arabs and Americans everywhere that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the Mubarak government "stable" and "responding to the legitmate interests of the Egyptian people," on Tuesday January 25, 2011. Vice President Biden said on Jan 27, in a night interview on PBS, that he would not call Mubarak a dictator and did not think he should step down. This Washinton Post editorial is strongly critical of the Obama administration for its statements implying that the 30 year Mubarak regime would continue. It says Mr Obama spoke with Mubarak on Friday night and after speaking to Mubarak stated that he would continue working with Mubarak, and not once mentioning elections. The Washington Post says it is dangerous to assume that the energized and enraged people of Egypt protesting on the streets of Cairo and other cities will back down and carry a dialogue with a regime that has repressed every form of assembly and free expression for three decades. It supports the moderate and democratic platform of leaders of the protests and of Mr El-Baradei. This includes lifting of a hated emergency law that bans peaceful assembly, the right to freely organize political parties, and allowing free democratic elections. The Post calls on the Obama administration to prepare for the peaceful implementation of the opposition platform, and telling the Egyptian army without qualification, that violent repression would rupture the rellationship with the United States....

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Easwar Prasad, Cornell University economist, and a former head of the IMF's China division, says the new report by the World Bank and the Development Reform Commission (DRC), is part of an effort by government officials in China to push the agenda for change forward during the transition to a new leadership. This includes Premier Wen. There is pushback from large state enterprises. The DRC and the World Bank had called for a change from the current situation to allow more private sector involvement in the economy, which means restricting the growth of the large state owned companies and letting the private sector operate in more parts of the economy. The alternative is to see growth slowing quickly and -some economists- say suddenly without warning. The role of Zhu Rongji, a former prime minister during the period Jiang Zemin was president, in pushing for changes appropriate to the period, is also cited. The last decade under prime minister Wen Biao is seen as one in which China relentlessly pursued its currrent export led model of development with large state run companies and state run banks dominating the economy. This has made change even harder to achieve because of the pushback to preserve the status quo....

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The new generation of Communist party leaders that takes over from Hu Jintao and Wen Biao. Chongqing region's party chief, Bo Xilai is one of the leaders expected to be part of the senior communist leadership, along with Li Keqiang as prime minister and Xi Jinping as president. Xi and Bo are sons of communist party veterans from the Long March. Chongqing was the main base of the Communist party in the 1930's and 1940's, as Mao and the communists fought the Nationalists and then the Japanese. Bo has suppressed the influence of Mafia elements in the region, and is campaigning for a place on the Politburo's Standing Committee with a call for a return to Maoist values of "conscientiousness." Chongqing's state companies are supporting a project launched by Bo in 2010 to build 800,0000 subsidized apartments in 3 years, with an investment of $18.5 billion. This comes as income and wealth gaps in the country are widening and housing is becoming increasingly unaffordable for ordinary wage earners....

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Krugman points to the economic muddle that China is getting itself into. He says one way of looking at what is happening now with high inflation is that inflation is the market's way of undoing the currency manipulation that China has engaged in. By following aweak currency policy to protect export interests China has created an artificially high trade surplus. But this is now turning into a lose-lose proposition for both China and the US as market forces push wages and prices up, whittling away at any competitive advantage of China's weak currency policy. He says some estimates he has seen show that Chinese undervaluation could be gone in two or three years. Chinese consumers are asked to accept interest on savings limited to 2.75% and below inflation, with the spread designed to help banks earn their way out of bad loans made during the stimulus lending binge of 2009-2010. What is happening is a massive allocation of capital away from consumers to lending for state owned companies that have created overcapacity in many industries, and use part of this capital to engage in real estate speculation. Krugman says China may be on its way to some kind of crisis with collateral damage to the rest of the world as it is a major importer of commodities from Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, and a major importer of high tech goods from Germany and the USA....

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Thomas Friedman of the NYT points out the three aces held by Donald Trump in the U.S. election campaign of 2016. He could move to the centre in a campaign against Hillary Clinton and voters could give him a pass saying he only meant to start a conversation on immigration with his comment on the wall, that his comments on Muslims read carefully only means he would tighten controls on some countries, that he was acting in the way he said in his book "The Art of the Deal." A terrorist attack could change the atmosphere in the election and benefit Trump. And he could set a barrage of ads against Hillary bringing anti-Hillary Republicans back to his side after the divisions in a Republican convention. On the opposite side of this is Trump's penchant for making wild statements that could lead to a break with his support base, especially women who are shifting away according to some recent polls in mid March. Another vulnerability says Friedman is the rough way in which minorities are treated at Trump rallies, which could backfire with a serious incident resulting in hugely negative media coverage....

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IMF Managing Director, Christine Lagarde says Greece should have 2 more years to achieve the deficit targets. Speaking at a news conference during the annual meeting of the IMF in Tokyo in Oct 2012, Lagarde said: "it is sometimes better, given circumstances.. to have a bit more time... This is what we advocated for Portugal, it's what we advocated for Spain, and it's what we are advocating for Greece, where I have said repeatedly that an additional two years was necessary for the country to actually face the fiscal consolidation program that is considered." A two year extension would add an estimated 20 billion euros to the financing cost for Greece, at the same it improves the chances for growth and means having a program that is more likely to work.

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Buffett's view that higher capital gains taxes will not result in less business investment. He favors a $500,000 figure instead of the $250,000 proposed by president Obama for Bush tax cuts for incomes below that level.

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Brooks describes the U.S. presidential campaigns of Republican Romney and Democrat Obama as very consequential but incredibly dull, an effort to get uninformed voters with a barrage of negative advertising. There is very little enthusiasm for either candidate in their parties and the only feeling motivating each party is that the other candidate and his policies would be a disaster. There is hardly any effort at intellectual innovation, bringing new ideas or thoughtful debate into the election campaign. With four months left before the presidential elections the situation appears likely to drag on in this way right into the final days, with each side running a well oiled media campaign around themes that cast the other side in a negative light.

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Obama adminstration officials say Mr Obama did not call for the resignation of Mubarak because it feared creating a power vacuum at the top. The administration's fears include one about Egypt under a new government not honoring the 1979 treaty Egypt signed with Israel. In doing so- as Elliott Abrams, deputy national security advisor under President George Bush, points out in the Washington Post, the administration's attempt at denying liberty in the Arab world is "nothing short of a tragedy." Abrams points out that the protestors span all classes of society, from businessmen to housewives in Cairo and Tunis,, including moderates and human rights activists. It is a supreme irony of the times that the law school analytical processes of Obama have shunted out the very voices of the dispossessed and the oppressed that Obama claimed to hear in his first book, and of his sometimes poignant personal encounters in Africa. In doing so Obama has missed an historic opportunity to put America in a right standing with the people of the Arab world, and as Abrams points out made "engagement" ring hollow, as "engagement" not with the peoples of the Arab world and Africa, but engagement with dictators who have outlived their time and place. In a separate editorial the Wall Street Journal called into question the credibility of the US foreign policy establishment that was caught by surprise with the protests in Tunis and Cairo....

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The role of the Judiciary in Pakistan in acting as a check on corruption in the Zardari government, and a check on the army's interference in Pakistan's democratic process. For the first time in Pakistan's history a peaceful tranistion between elected governments is planned in 2013.

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The U.S. Supercommittee in Congress fails to reach an agreement to come up with $1.2 trillion in savings to reduce the deficit by the Nov. 23, 2011 deadline. This shifts the focus to the sequester or triggering automatic cuts in Jan. 2013, as mandated in the Congressional deficit reduction deal of August 2, 2011. These automatic cuts would reduce defense spending by 10%, cut social programs without touching Medicaid and Social Security, by 7.8%, and reduce Medicare payments by 2%.

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Karl Rove, advisor to President George W. Bush, and organizer behind American Crossroads political action committee, says the election will be decided by the higher support for Romney among independents and the high turnout of Republican voters. The prediction for the voter turnout among Republicans is 36% Republican vs. 35% Democratic, according to Gallup. This compares with the 39% Republican and 37% Democratic in 2004, and 39% Democratic 29% Republican in 2008. The early and absente ballot voting advantage has significantly gone down almost by half for Democrats as more Republicans cast early votes in swing states like Ohio. Closing statements and crowds also appear to confirm this trend. Rove sees this as 51% to 48% favoring the Republicans. The addition of swing states - Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania also appears to suggest that a broader movement is underway that is happening right now in the final week before the election on Nov. 6, 2012. Rove focusses on the numbers. A behavioural assessment shows the importance in this campaign of the centrist position adopted by Romney in the closing months of the campaign; the selection of Ryan which gave Romney support from the Republican conservative base so that he could talk freely about his record in the liberal state of Massachusetts to independent voters and women, and most important the clear message to voters focussed on a five point plan to get the economy recovery were critical in shaping these numbers....

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Economists using data from Greek banks estimate the tax evasion in 2009 through unreported income at 28 billion euros. Using a tax rate of 40% 11.2 billion euros of taxes were evaded by Greek taxpayers. This is one third of the Greek deficit in 2009. The economists say doctors and engineers were prominent in the tax evasion list and find that these groups have large representation in Greece's parliament. Italy has taken steps under the Monti government to crackdown on tax evasion, but Greece is still to take action in this area, which is particularly glaring considering that the previous Greek government agreed to cut the minimum wage in Greece.

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Narendra Modi is now the choice of the BJP party in India to lead it against the ruling Congress party of Sonia and Rahul Gandhi. The corruption in government and the slowing growth have improved the chances of Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat state in northwestern India, near Mumbai. Modi has done well in Gujarat state in a number of areas- from foreign investment in manufacturing, infrastructure development, and better governance. His plan is to replicate this at the national level. His slogan is minimum government and maximum governance.

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This Washington Post editorial says the Obama administration is complicit in the military attack on Morsi protester camps and civilians in Cairo on August 14, 2013, because of its failure to follow through on its warning that U.S. aid would be cut of in the event of the military taking a leading role in the overthrow of an elected government. U.S. legislation requires this action. By failing to call it a military takeover and by the administration's failure to strongly condemn the massive violation of human rights in the military attack on protesters and civilians, the Post says the Obama administration becomes complicit in the action. It sees this as self-defeating for the U.S., and unconscionable.

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In a speech at the Conservative Party Fall conference British prime minister Theresa May positions her party as an advocate for the working class against establishment views. She was critical of smug views that the current situation was acceptable for working class families concerned about immigration and jobs. She also pointed out that the policies of central banks including the Bank of England hurt working class families and savers." She pointed out the development that has also happened in the U.S. economy and other European countries as the Federal Reserve and the ECB cut rates to near zero. "People with assets have got richer. People without them have suffered. People with mortgages have found their debts cheaper. People with savings have found themselves poorer." Her response she said would be to "put the government at the service of those who found themselves poorer as a result of monetary policy." This follows May's first speech at 10 Downing Street where she referred to "the burning injustice."  ...