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Comments about Edward Whitacre, who put AT&T together after becomng CEO of Southwestern Bell, and built the new business around cellular, wireless and internet services once the long distance market collapsed. Says board member and leader Kent Kresa, of Henderson and Whitacre, "they are both open to the ideas and opinions of others. I think there will be a good dialogue." Says a colleague Haskell Monroe, on the AT&T board, " he faces the facts, he looks for the truth and he is a person who takes responsibility for his decisions." Says Gerald Myers, a University of Michigan professor and former chairman of American Motors Corp, "he is'nt a loveableguy. He's not going to be your friend. He is blunt, but he is so often right that you accept the abuse."

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Mr. Modi tells the Summit for Democracy convened by president Biden- "We must jointly shape global norms for emerging technologies like social media and crypto-currencies, so that they are used to empower democracies, not undermine it."Mr. Modi refereed to need for continuous improvement -"There is much we can learn from each other, We all need to constantly improve our democratic practices and systems. And we all need to continuously enhance inclusion, transparency, human dignity, responsive grievance redressal and decentralisation of power."  In India the need to provide benefits to the struggling working classes, farmers and rural households so that democracy works for them is one of Mr. Modi's themes, as is the idea of "dignity" and "respect" for working class people and families that new SPD chancellor Olaf Scholz put forward in his campaign for Germany. For this to happen he told the virtual summit-  "Democracy is not only of the people, by the people, for the people, but also with the people, within the people." Within the people he said is about democracy becoming a part of the culture of the country. This happens with the concerted effort of many generations. In India this effort started under the British with Dadabhai Naoroji elected to the British parliament as a Liberal and continued into the 1910 period with 1 million people given the vote in India, and into the 1930's with 5 million, leading to the elections in the 1950's under Nehru and Sardar Patel with woman having the right to vote, and to today's 900 million large voter base. A lot of the work was done under Mohandas Gandhi and the leaders around him such as Govind Vallabh Pant and Ambedkar, with respect for the rule of law, for rights of citizens, and parliamentary institutions, and learning from the British system of democracy even after feeling the effects of colonial rule, looking for the best in all nations. Gandhi's genius lies in his willingness to take British ideals as a starting point and start building from that, leading to Clement Atlee's decision to withdraw and help setup the basis for the first Constituent Assembly to write India's Constitution by 1950. ...

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This article in DW.com looks at China's development of the port of Hambantota, made using a loan of $312 million from the Export-Import Bank of China. State owned China Harbour Engineering worked on the construction of the port. This report says the port can handle about 2500 ships initially to take some of the load off of Colombo port which handles about 6000 ships annually.

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As the coronavirus pandemic reaches the 20 month mark in October 2021 and the government reaches a target of 1 billion vaccinations given in India, prime minister Modi talks about his experience handling the vaccination drive in this interview. It covers a wide range of topics from his initial experiences in development in Gujarat, translating this experience to the national setting, the multiple yojanas or projects from Swachh Bharat (Clean India), toilets for all, bank accounts for the whole population, cooking gas for women, decisions taken for Aadhar, digitization, GST. His 35 years spent in poverty as a social worker that gave him a clear idea of the aspirations of the working poor. On the achievement of one billion vaccinations- It was the careful preparation that happened as early as March 2020 that carefully anticipated all possible problems and tackled each one of them that made it possible. "Vaccinating such a large number of people comes with its own share of complexities. Ensuring proper temperature control of complexities, cold chain infrastructure across the length and breadth of the country, timely delivery from the manufacturing plant to the remotest vaccination delivery point, supply of needles and syringes, training of vaccinators and preparing for adverse reactions, from quick registration to certificate generation to reminder for next appointment. We needed to look at the entire logistics, planning, and progress of the vaccination drive." To understand the person completely one has to go back to the origins of his experience, skills learned, and his inspiration for the effort. Modi entered the chief minister's office in the western Indian state of Gujarat facing the Arabian sea in 2001. He entered office at the time of the Bhuj earthquake in Gujarat and describes his taking the chief minister's office as accidental as he had been a social worker for 30 years. "Let alone reluctance to join electoral politics, I had nothing to do with the political domain itself. My surroundings, my inner world, my philosophy- these were very different. Right from my younger days,my bent was spiritual. The philosophy of "Jan Seva Hi Prabhu Seva" Serving the people is akin to serving the Divine, which was propounded by Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Swami Vivekananda inspired me. It became the driving force in whatever I did." In 2014 it was with the inspiration from Swami Vivekananda and taking up Vivekananda's vision for the Indian people that Modi began his campaign to lead the BJP party. It may be looking back that Vivekananda guided Modi in all his projects for a Clean India, Jal Jeevan, Indian infrastructure that benefits the last man in the queue in the country, commitment to hard work. "Global experience says government should be there for those whom nobody is there. Government's whole focus should be on helping them." To do this, to meet the needs of that last person left out in India, he could see that old notions of opposites had to be set aside. "Outdated theories such as the private sector vs the public sector, government vs. people, rich vs. poor, urban vs. rural, are still on people's minds and they try to fit everything into this." Governments since independence in 1947 followed the same political and economic thought. After Gandhi negotiated with the British government for self rule or Swaraj an experimental form was set up with provincial governments ministries with limited powers formed in the 1930's through elections. Many of these ministries had the same problems that were found after independence in 1947, as one sees in the writings in the Gandhi library. They lasted for a few years before they were dissolved by the British government. These problems were more evident under Nehru and Indira Gandhi right into the 1970's and beyond. This was followed by a period of relative stagnation. Most ministries failed to seriously address India's economic problems, urbanization issues and agricultural issues remained unaddressed, and industry building was done with a limited vision and scaled down goals. In some ways the elections created a political class interested in perpetuating itself and did not build administrations based on learning, hard work and delivering on projects with scaled up targets to match the dire needs of the country. One sees similarities with France before 1960, before De Gaulle. A mosaic of peoples all separate from each other, with agriculture the main occupation, and most agriculture done the way it was in the nineteenth century by hand and using horses and cattle- this is the picture of France shown in Nous Paysouns, We Farmers, a documentary on Le Monde French television in October 2021. It was De Gaulle who supported a shift to presidential form of government for France that helped with the transformation through modernization and infrastructure development. Tractors were introduced in 1960 to mechanize agriculture. Road, bridges, rail transport, logistics were planned in the way Gati Shakti master plan for India is now being executed. There can be no transformation without this. Unstable coalition governments in France and lack of clarity and decision making before 1960 made such development impossible. India entered such a period in the 1970's. "The politics of our country is such that till now, we have seen only one model in which governments are run to build the next government (sarkar banane ke liye chalayi jaati haye). My fundamental thinking is different. I believe we have to run the government to build the nation (desh banane ke liye sarkar chalani haye)."  Chalta haye, Chalne do. What is will not change. Families, farmers and workers in India, for a long time accepted this without questioning.  "I take decisions based on Gandhiji's talisman that sees how my decisions will benefit or harm the poorest or weakest person." "While taking decisions, I stop even if the slightest of vested interests is visible to me. The decision should be pure and authentic, and if the decision passes through all these tests, then I firmly move forward to implement such a decision."           ...

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This NYT report on the Trump campaign in Iowa shows serious shortcomings- a failure to organize a grassroots effort and setup the organization to get people to the voting booth. This is particularly needed for Trump's base of people without a college degree and under 45 years of age, as supporters most likely to vote are evangelicals, those with a college degree and over 45 years. Evangelicals form a base of support for Ted Cruz who has also organized the best effort of all candidates among evangelicals.

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The title is misplaced- it is Vivekananda as Modi's mentor and hero that is central to the ideas he has put forth for Swacch Bharat, Jal Jeevan, to bring education, water and electricity to the common man. Vivekananda was also the inspiration for AatmaNirbhar Bharat. Mohandas Gandhi said that he had read Vivekananda thoroughly and through that reading he had come to be in touch with the common man in India a thousand fold. Modi has also read Vivekananda thoroughly and felt the same way. Vivekananda has said- "Loko ke shiksit karo ke ve atmannirbhar hona sikhe."  If the common man could not get to education, education had to be delivered to the common man. Vivekananda's vision was for an exchange with America and Europe in which he would bring Vedanta and Yoga to these countries in exchange for technology and capital. This is not Modi's project, it is Vivekananda's project, simply brought forward by Modi as service to the nation and the world. It also comes at a time 125 years after Vivekananda expressed these ideas when US and European Union are looking for fresh ideas to restructure their supply chain, and taking a new look at the potential of India and Indians. It is a different America that India faces, not that of the past, after this pandemic and the social plus economic ills that have affected the country. Biden is different, America is different. So is the European Union as it takes on new leadership after the German and French elections, just as America has done. Both look to the future for a partnership with India and Indians to realize India's potential.   ...

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Sally McGrane of the NYT brings us this delightful story about trees, looking at them in a new way. She tells the story of Peter Wholleben, a best selling author, No. 1 on the Spiegel list, a career forest ranger in the Eifel forest area near Cologne, Germany. Wholleben's book The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How they Communicate - Discoveries From a Secret World." is popular in Germany, describes trees in social terms, as having emotions, and caring for each other in wooded areas. Wohlleben noticed as a forest ranger that the artificial planting of trees away from each other using modern techniques in managed forests differed from forested areas in private properties where trees were clustered close to each other helping preserve social networks. This reimagining of trees giving the woods new life has become popular, with one talk show host saying he now takes a walk in the woods with a fascination for the nature around him.

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On the surface Turkey's implementation of an IMF program to reduce its deficit in 2001 has lessons for Greece, but looked at closely the situation has some serious differences. Turkish tax collection was weak and this was corrected by the incoming Erdogan administration, salaries were capped and spending was reduced, taxes raised and state assets sold to improve the deficit. But as Tim Ash an economist at RBS bank points out, achieving GDP growth will be very difficult for Greece. For one thing Turkey's lira fell 54% against the dollar in 2001, spurring exports and increasing growth. Greece is part of the euro currency system and this won't be part of the solution. Also Turkey's debt approached 80% of GDP in 2001 (down to 46% of GDP now), compared to 115% for Greece in 2010, so Greece is in a much worse position than Turkey in 2001. Ash sees a restructuring of debt as the best way to restore growth in Greece.

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Dana comes out ahead of Delphi and exits bankruptcy. Mistakes made by Steve Miller which are costing Delphi. One was to take on the unions publicly. Dana's McCracken thinks its best not to do this publicly and create antagonisms. Delphi's rocky relations with the unions means that talks that ended in June 2007 took 21 months of negotiation. And then with the involvement of Cerberus the talks dragged along for longer. Because of the deteriorating union-Delphi relations Cerberus exited. By then in late 2007 Delphi faced the credit crunch and changed credit markets so that financing is difficult. Hedge fund Appaloosa Management is the lead investor in Delphi and its founder David Tepper has poor relations with the UAW. In contrast the UAW brought in private equity investor Centerbridge Capital Partners and they had good communications witht the unions. Delphi is losing $1.3 billion in 3rd quarter 2007, whereas Dana is expected to breakeven in 2008.

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The tensions that exist in Australian society, as a result of the large Chinese investments and imports of infrastructure building commodities such as iron ore, natural gas and other commodities. Australia's Pilbara region in the northwestern part of the country, has become one huge quarry for China, as an estimated 1 million tons of iron ore raw material is loaded onto 2 story high trucks each day- with automated driverless trucks system being implemented- and shipped by 2 mile long trains to waiting ships on the coast. Australians remember this done on a smaller scale in the 1980's by Japan. At the time Japan brought in Japanese workers. The same is true today but on a bigger scale, with China bringing in workers with lower pay. The concern now is what it was then, as one local leader put it- are we going to have towns with mines or mines with towns, he asked. The mining companies are looking at it purely as a commercial venture, and not investing in the towns. The towns now fear they will find the boom times gone someday and nothing tangible to show for it, no schools, hospitals and no infrastructure. And because the mining project companies fly people in and out, the 8000 aboriginal people in Pilbara- the original people of this land- see little of the mining expansion's benefits. Wandoan, a small place with 300 homes in the outback in Queensland, in eastern Australia, is an example of the gut wrenching change taking place in the mining areas. The lives of the people from the local pharmacy, the local supermarket, and the local ranchers, depend on the mining decisions made in China. This area was part of a planned, on again off again, $6 billion coal mine -part of a A$150 billion complex of natural gas and coal projects for exports to Asia in Queensland- and involved Xstrata buying 70,000 acres of the best grazing land for 7 coal mines. With the locals selling off, the mining uncertain, the supermarket closing, the whole town has the feeling of being up in the air, and fading out someday. Australian public sentiment recognizes this feeling, and at the same time is ambivalent about the impact. Polls conducted by the Lowy Institute for International Policy, show 73% of Australians feel Chinese economic growth has a positive impact, and at the same time 57% feel that there is now excessive Chinese investment, and 46% feel China will be a military threat in 20 years. Australians remember the same feeling about Japan's investments in raw material sources in the eighties. In 1988, polls then showed 70% of Australians saying there was too much Japanese investment, even though they also recognized that Australia had benefitted. The difference now is that there are also fears of China's influence, and foreign investment guidelines limit investments in Australian mining companies to below 50%. China's investment in Australia's natural resources comes in several ways: in the year upto July 2009 A$42 billion in export demand, A$3 billion in direct investment in Australian companies, and about A$5 billion in project financing. Iron ore sales to China amount to A$22 billion each year, and about one fourth of Australia's exports went to China, growing at a rate of 31% in 2009. According to the chief economist of Austrade, the government trade organization, Australia benefits from the economic relationship with China- this adds A$3,400 per year to every Australian household. Efforts to use some of the profits made by mining corporations for infrastructure and other public purposes, by increasing the mining tax have failed; as the mining industry launched a campaign against the government of Kevin Rudd, who was removed from office by his party. In the recent national elections, the ruling Labor party lost its majority, after losses in the resource rich states of Western Australia and Queensland. In the meantime the Australian currency has become the currency used by currency speculators who cannot use the yuan to make a bet on the currency- as the yuan is pegged to the dollar- and instead use the Australian dollar as a proxy. This makes it volatile, with the Australian dollar losing 10% of its value in a single day, when pessimism increased about China's growth forecasts. It also shows how much of the good story of employment and gdp growth in Australia is tied to the story in China, and the extent of the negative impact a reversal in this area can mean for Australians; especially now that the bad debt in the post-2008 explosion of bank lending poses risks to China's banknig system. ...

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Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar makes a 3 day visit to Saudi Arabia. He addressed diplomats at the Prince Saud Al Faisal Institute of Diplomatic Studies in Riyadh. He will co-chair with Prince Faisal bin Al Saud the first ministerial meeting of the Committee on Political, Security, Social and Cultural  Cooperation (PSSC), established under the framework of the India-Saudi Arabia Strategic Partnership Council. What is happening here is that the Saudis can build their own ties in the region as they choose what is best for the future, compared to the relationship in the past which was as a state mainly dependent on the US but which sorely lagged behind in educationally, culturally, in developing its own scientific and technology institutions to transition into the modern age. The relationship in the past also appeared to be rooted in the colonial period that had transitioned only half way out of the colonial period into the relationship built by America's FDR and succeeding presidents with the royal family and monarchy of Saudi Arabia. Under Mohamad Bin Salman it now gives Saudis an opportunity to make its own choices with the help of neighbors such as India, Japan, and other countries. It also strengthens the relationship with the US and the EU in unseen ways through the Saudi relationship with India, Japan and other countries. Bilateral trade is at $30 billion for FY22 April to December. India imports 18% of crude oil imports from Saudi Arabia. Indian imports worth $23 billion, Indian exports worth $7 billion to Saudis. About 2.2 million Indians are living in Saudi Arabia. During the pandemic India was the closest health ally of the Saudis.   ...

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Chloe Kelly of England soccer plays a key role with her self belief, energy and pace in Euro Finals 2025 against Sweden in a come from behind second half, against Italy, and now in a come from behind against Spain in the second half. She makes the pass that Russo heads into the net for 1-1 going into after time. She comes in after Lauren James ankle injury and immediately makes a difference with her pace attacking with Hemp and Bronze the back line of Paredes and Batlle of Spain.

England beat Spain 3-1 on penalties with Chloe Kelly making the winning penalty kick.

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There are differences between the governors of 10 worst hit states and the president of the U.S. on when to reopen the economy. The seven on the East Coast including New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and three on the West Coast including California and Washington, all but one have Democrat governors and want to wait beyond May 1, till it is believed to be safe to reopen.190,000 of the 592,000 infected cases and over 10,000 of 25,000 cases of deaths are from New York alone. This is as though a third of the problem is in one state. The feeling in New York is that it should be the last to reopen, other states can go first in the middle of the country. The position in the U.S. Constitution is for states to maintain public order and safety. This was the basis of the president's position to work with the governors and continues to be the case, though there is pressure from economic advisers to the president to reopen earlier balanced by the opinion of health experts around the president.  Some states are taking action to reopen because the virus has not severely affected these states. President Trump says it is for governors to decide what is best for each state in consultation with the federal government. The U.S. government would step in if a state is taking risky action with the coronavirus. On the issue of whether the president could have acted quickly in February following his decision to stop flights from China and set up quarantines in January, the BBC has this to say. Dr. Fauci, the president's respected health expert was one of many public officials who did not see the magnitude of the crisis evolving with lack of good information from China. BBC North America Editor Jon Sopel cites Dr. Fauci's comments on February 13- that the coronavirus danger is "just miniscule" compared with the "real and present danger" of flu. As it happened the president acted alone in his sense of the danger from the outbreak in China through incoming flights and not relying on others. Here is what the situation of each country on reopening is- India -  has extended the lockdown to May 3. France - has extended the lockdown till May 11. U.S. - has extended the lockdown to May 1. States are taking the responsibility. UK - continues lockdown restrictions till May. The French president Macron had a simple answer to the question " when will we be able to get back to a normal, prior life?" Macron said "Quite frankly, humbly, I have no definitive answer to that." Some nurseries and schools will reopen May 11. Not restaurants, hotels, museums and theaters. By May 11 France will be able to test and quarantine anyone with symptoms and general public masks will be available to all. This is what Dr. Fauci in the U.S. also wants to see before being able to reopen, that testing and tracing, isolating, procedures be efficient and reliable. ...

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Tom Hanks and Robin Wright in the movie "Here" a technical experiment in deaging and new kind of cinematography different from the past. Robin Wright's vision of growing up as adults in the 1960's, the period John F. Kennedy was campaigning in 1956 and in 1960 in Wisconsin, with radio the main medium and life moving slowly. There is this image from a writer in Wisconsin about that time when John Kennedy turned up at a supermarket in suburbs of Wisconsin to talk to customers for his Wisconsin campaign, and with Robert Kennedy also in the store, Mrs Kennedy takes a microphone and talks to customers at the store about JFK's campaign.  A new spirit of social change was being felt in the air when Kennedy represented this not just for America but for the Free World across Asia, Latin America, and Africa. It is this optimism that America felt and reaches out for again. It is also a period of optimism in the US and the Free World, a spirit John Kennedy really captured. The FDR-Truman period laid behind the chapter of excesses of capitalism and Roosevelt's response, Truman set the Free World's response to the Soviets, Eisenhower period completed the Interstate Highway System but was stagnant in other respects. It is this Wisconsin campaign that put Kennedy on the map for the Democratic nomination in 1960 with a new feeling in the air about what America could really aspire to and aspire for. ...

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Joe Nocera of the NYT, says prosecution of individuals responsible in the 2008 mortgage financial crisis is mostly a joke. Not one official of Countrywide Financial, says Nocera, that was at the heart of the financial wrongdoing in the crisis has been prosecuted. This may be one of the strangest aspects of this crisis and the behaviour of the Obama administration, the Justice Department and the regulatory agencies including the SEC remains dubious at best, when it comes to how little can be seen in this area that Nocera points out. By contrast says Nocera, about 1100 prosecutions were done in the S&L crisis and Charles Keating, a key figure in the crisis was prosecuted. When he inquired why the government was so intent on prosecuting figures involved in the S&L crisis, Nocera was told it was because the country insisted that this happen. This is because without this the deterrent effect no longer has an effect in preventing future behaviour of this type. Now he points out this is what the country is insisting happen. Regulatory actions alone may not create enough of a deterrent to protect the ordinary people who were worst hit in the crisis from another crisis. The exacerbated social tensions emerging from the crisis have created a large fragile part of the population with minimal savings that can hardly afford future hits of this type....

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Friedman on the ouster of president Morsi after only one year in office following large scale protests. He sees this as the beginning of a fallback of political Islam, with the protests of secularists in Turkey, the shift to a moderate candidate Rouhani in Iran's presidential election, the shift of the Emhada Islamist party in Tunisia to work with center-left parties in writing the constitution, and the election of a western educated political scientist to lead a coalition government in Libya. In each country the secular and liberal leaders and the young people felt the revolution was being stolen from them by Islamist parties and are asserting themselves to gain a voice in government. The Islamist party in Egypt has older leaders, an authoritarian structure and hierarchy, which failed to incorporate liberal and other opinion in writing the constitution and in forming the government. A more tolerant and open Islamist party needs to be part of a broad based government with other parties, which can focus on the economy, unemployment, infrastructure and public services....

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American companies on the Standard and Poors 500 stock index are sitting on a pile of cash-estimated at $960 billion. This includes undistributed foreign earnings that would incur 35% taxes if brought into the U.S. At the same time companies are hoarding this cash, using some of it for acquisitions, and only gradually increasing dividends. The dividend payout ratio- the percentage of earnings paid out as dividends- is at 28.9% for the past 4 quarters according to Standard & Poors. The dividend payout ratio was 46% for three decades since 1936, and 52% for the last two decades, according to Standard & Poors. Zweig cites Benjamin Graham who stated that companies should pay two thirds of dividends to shareholders. Why? Because shareholders can make better use of the money. With too much money companies tend not to make the best productive use of capital. One example is Microsofts's purchase of Skype at $8.5 billion, considered inflated by many analysts. Graham stated that when the companies are not making productive use of the capital it is appropriate to expect that it be returned to shareholders in the form of dividends. At the 50% ratio one dividend fund manager says companies could return $207 billion to investors. ...

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It took a long time for the banks to understand what is in their best interests is in the best interests of the country's economy and homeowners, something Sheila Bair has been saying since the beginning of this year and implementing at IndyMac. Its just too costly for banks to use the foreclosure process to recover their money and it makes much better financial sense on the bottomline of banks and for the economy to make home payments affordable. Because the worse home prices get the worse the economy and banks do and nothing drives home prices down like foreclosures. The Bank of America settlement for Countrywide with state attorney generals to modify loans for 400,000 homeowners because of predatory lending practices also set the direction. Chase Bank is now using the Bair template to get the monthly payments down to an affordable level which is about 40% of the current payment by reducing interest rates and using a smaller loan balance and keep homeowners in their homes. Chase's plan will help 400,000 homeowners and will also help homeowners who are having difficulty making payments. It will put a 90 day hold on foreclosures till the program is put in place. Yet there is one problem. Only $350 billion of the 1.5 trillion in home mortgage it services are owned by Chase, the rest are owned by investors in the form of mortgage securities. It can do little for homeowners covered by these securites that are owned by hedge funds and other funds as a few of these funds oblivious of the overall interest including their own have threated to sue if loans are modified, and it would take some time to figure out who owns each security and what the terms are for modifying loans for that security. Its this part of mortgage securitiization that has slowed down a rational process of unwinding this problem throughout housing by making homeowners monthly payments affordable. And Fed's Bernanke did not come to grips with this point in his talk about mortgage securitization to UC Berkeley on October 31,2008, that mortgage securitization done in a way that make loan modification difficult is dangerous as it is today, and makes a crisis bigger than it otherwise would be, and turn a USA crisis into a global crisis through ricotcheting effects and a series of bad decisons....

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Turner Adair, head of Britain's Financial Regulatory Authority thinks that banks have assumed an outsize role in the British and world economy, and are coopting their regulators. He sees the need to check many of the excesses. Why not use profits to build up reserves rather than give out huge bonuses and paychecks, he asks. He sees the need to challenge the accepted thinking on Wall Street and in the City of London, where the ideology of efficient markets became embedded, as it did also in the regulatory community. He came in the week Lehman Brothers collapsed as chairman of the FSA. And he wants to shake up the existing thinking. In March, the Turner Review. a 126 page report was published. A lot of attention was paid to his suggesting atax on financial transactions, called the Tobin tax, but its designed more to get people thinking and questionning the existing way of running banking as Turner said in an interview, "we have begun to accept this idea of liquidity as the new God." Can British or American society and the financial industry in both countries work to the benefit of both? Nobel prize winning economists and other experts have advised ashift to productive investments that grow the economy using technology, science and brainpower and new ideas, as opposed to the investment in mortgages and other speculative investments. As the regulators -including former and current heads of the SEC, and other regulatory bodies in the US, Cox, Schapiro and others- once held on to the same theory of uninhibited operation of free markets as best for generating increased wealth for society as the banking community, they tended to get co-opted in letting bad practices flourish. Went to sleep on the job as it were. See the links in Intelilinks. Adair Turner's admonitions are designed to get people thinking. He says, "banks need to be willing, like the regulator, to recognize that there are some profitable activities so unlikely to have a social benefit, direct or indirect, that they should voluntarily walk away from them." Investments in science, technology and new products, as in the 60's that generated a revolution in living standards, than the mortgages and consumer lending of the last decade, is what he may be saying, as do these Nobel prize winning economists....

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People from Denmark are known for fluency in English, and are some of the best non-native speakers of the English language. About 38 percent of courses at Danish universities are in English. Yet debate is shifting to the inflluence of immigrants in society as "pizza-Dansk" or "pizza-Danish" is spoken by Middle East immigrants at pizzerias. One Danish member of parliament from the DF Party is suggesting the government prevent the spread of "pizza-Dansk" and help preserve the Danish language spoken by 6 million people in the country. It is reflection of the anti-immigrant mood in Sweden, Denmark and other European countries, where parliamentary elections have given parties opposed to immigration a larger number of seats.

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Derivatives were touted as ways to manage risk and to help grow amodern economy. But compensation of 370 derivative traders who are the few who know what they put into these complex contracts, so they are the ones who know how t best unwind them, raises anumber of questions. Are derivatives pushed because its highly lucrative for the few traders who write them? Haven't derivatives proved that they can be highly dangerous instruments on the downside, with unlimited risks that are ultimately borne by the taxpayers? Consider that the $165 million is only part of the $450 million in bonuses to 370 employees in the FInancial Products unit at AIG. Of this $55million has already been paid out. And there is an additional $230 million still to be paid out. One of the things that stands out most is how everyone involved with these financial innovations for a modern economy, and the pushing of different financial products, makes a lot of money with risks that are passed on down the line and end up in the taxpayers lap. It has proven that transparency, prudence and safety are tests for financial innovation just as they are for financial markets in general, and that excessive compensation leads to distorted self-interested presentation of the facts of the matter, and ultimately perversion of stable processes in the financial system....

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Tech is not going to fix this, say software experts from tech companies. Google and Apple's efforts in coming up with an app have fizzled out, says this report in thee WSJ. Has the U.S. lost precious time in waiting for an app by tech companies to be developed, instead of doing what India and Britain have done. India introduced its own app Aarogya Setu app from the Indian government. Britain had the National Health Service develop its app. India acted quickly. Is an app needed or essential? Germany decided that contact tracing based on Asian country experience was mainly about human contact tracers with skills to make the phone calls. All they needed was a centralized database on a computer and a phone. Germany set up teams at offices in each district in Germany and quickly plodded ahead even if all the offices were not fully staffed. In fact a third of the offices needed more people and resources. Yet the speed of action is something like 80 to 90% of the contact tracing effort when the team has the skill set to call. This is because clusters of infections do not wait - they spread. There is simply no time to waste. The German effort has produced the best results so far of any country of this size- Germany has 85 million people. The reproduction ratio is at 1.13 and Germany remains vigilant. It is the first country to reopen in Europe, and is methodically doing the right actions, much that the world can and should learn from. Contact tracing teams worked round the clock in the early days, they are still hard at work today, using their human skills to talk to people and find out who they were in contact with, calling the contacts in turn, at each step working to isolate where needed with followup calls from the state health departments. ...

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John T. Chambers has some very useful guidance on questions to ask and what to look for in hiring. Fairly simple but a lot of attention needed to get the right answers and make sure the hiring is done right. Here he talks to NYT's Adam Bryant. How did Chambers respond to dyslexia as a child? See it as a curve ball said a teacher,once you see it and observe that it comes a certain way, then you can handle it. He reads right to left. And he learned about near death experiences with Cisco in 2001. And he learnt from Jack Welch why they are very powerful and useful. He learnt from his parent, an obstetrician, that you are best being calm when there is an accident happening and people are not. People express emotions at such times and this says little about what's really going on, said his dad. Chambers admits his virtue and fault about being a command and control person, possibly from his early training at IBM. But he is open to changing when pushed, he says. He says his wife of 35 years keeps him from becoming too self-conscious. Questions he asks new people interviewed about joining the company. Tell me about your results. Tell me about your mistakes and failures. All of us have mistakes and failures, he says, so someone who says "I can't think of one, immediately loses credibility." The ability to be candid about mistakes made, and what they would do differently this time, helps make people learners and adapters as they go into different things. He says that he learns more from these two questions than from anything else. He also asks who are the best people you recruited and developed, and where are they today. He does this one gently , which is to figure out if they are oriented towards the customer or merely see the customer as someone who gets in the way. And then he looks for communications skills, and the key part of that is listening. He likes to see how they listen, how they interpret, and are they willing to challenge you. And then he looks for their knowledge in the industry segments, and the areas he is interested in. And that kind of covers the things he has looked for in the last 20 years. For today's world he looks especially for collaboration skills, teamwork skills, and their use of technology to share information, collaborate and work as a team. As its not immediately clear whether someone who says he is a team player is actually a team player, he checks with other people who know the person. Chambers grew up in a individualist world. So he is candid about this. He says that when he was trained it was about me and winning as an individual. The future, he adds, is about how do groups think and work together collaboratively. And how can one add discipline to that through practice and capability, and being able to use the necessary technologies. ...

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The eight member panel of experts led by a retired judge gets high marks from the youth movement, and all oppositon parties. All have a good grasp of the legal theory to build a good system of democratic processes with checks and balances and necessary protections. The chief of the panel, Tareq-el-Bishri, is a retired senior judge, and an author of a book titled: "Egypt: Between Disobedience and Decay." Bishri wants to see prosecutions done in civilian courts, and wants a balance of power between government institutions. Members of the Youth Movement say they encouraged military leaders to setup the tasks of writing a new constitution in several steps, the first being rewriting the key articles and holding an up or down referendum. It was felt that a better constitution would emerge once elections were held, and enough time and debate could occur for the new constitution.

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Academy Heights Elementary, of Pinehurst, N. Carolina, is expected to close as part of the cost cutting efforts in North Carolina. The state is trying to close a budget deficit. Monroe County's superintendent proposed closing the school to save $500,000. The school has a 98% pass rate on state exams, an award winning math program. It is ranked the second best kindergarden to 5th grade schools in North Carolina. Parents and teachers point out that many of the students come from middle class families where both parents are working, and military families from Fort Bragg, and this is not just the demographics of being near Pinehurst resort; as higher income parents tend to send their children to private schools. They point to the way staff, parents and students work to create an environment that challenges children to learn. The questions here remain ones that are being taken up throughout the country- how to invest or disinvest in education in the face of budget deficits. Should education take cuts and how much? Another twist here is that Academy Heights is in a depressed black neighborhood of Tarrytown whose residents go to to other schools even though Academy Heights urges students from Tarrytown to apply. It is an elementary school and as elementary education has a special role to play in early childhood development, how much of these cuts should fall on elementary schools? Should the best schools be cut under any circumstances or should they be supported with sacrifices made elsewhere or do moderately higher taxes make sense in these situations? Does it make sense to preserve existing excellent schools even as the search for improvement in educational systems takes place -with investments like the $290 million the Gates foundation is committing to improving selected schools? produce excellence in other schools?...