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Venetians say their city is being invaded by hordes of tourists who live in hotels on Mestre and cross a causeway to come to Venice. Venice gets an estimated 2 million tourists. A new referendum seeks to separate the city administration of Venice from Mestre giving Venice the autonomy to protect the city against floods and overburdening by tourists. Mestre has 3 times the population of Venice and is on dry land so that decisions made in Mestre are not in the interests of Venice.  The referendum is intended to stop cruise ships from coming to Venice at a time when new hotels are coming up in Mestre. The mayor and city administration oppose the referendum creating a situation after the damage caused by floods on November 12 which show how chaotic it is. Seventy two submersible yellow flood gates designed to prevent the flood were tested and could have been made activated on November 12, but no action was taken, causing about $1 billion in damage. The city is offering $5000 as compensation for businesses, but a bakery that sustained close to $77,000 of damage like other businesses is looking to the referendum to change the way the place is governed.  ...

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Italy's South is its poorest region, with scarce job opportunities. It has not recovered fully from the economic crisis of 2009. The Five Star movement in the current centre right governing coalition has many of its voters in the south of Italy. The government is fighting to save a Arcelor steel plant in the coastal city of Taranto. The state is working to prevent other factories from closing. The Italian north industrialized early being closer to France and Germany, the southern region remained agricultural with immigration as a way out of poverty. The government supported jobs in the south and industrial development after 1945, and expanded public sector jobs. Regional progress in the south stalled since 2000. Today per capita gross domestic product in the north is 35,000 euros compared to 19,000 euros in the south of Italy, according to Eurostat. Unemployment in some southern towns is 20%, compared to less than 10% average in the north. The answer says prime minister Giuseppe Conte, is to "have a sort of bank of the South for investments." The opposition party far right Northern League led by Matteo Salvini is popular and is also pushing for supporting southern regions with extra funding. ...

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Remote learning has not fared well during the pandemic in the U.S. as seen by teachers, administrators and students. It may surprise one to know that 20-25% of the homes of students in most southern states in the U.S. including Texas, the west including California, New York in the east, and Illinois in the midwest do not have a relaible internet connection.  Remote learning was used with the idea that young people are tech savy. Not so say experts because being a digital learner is not the same as being a digital consumer. The self discipline of digital learning is not the same as what goes into games and other stuff on the internet for young people. Teachers say they cannot be sensitive to students the way they are in a live class and detect when some students are falling behind. Many students did not turn up online, and homework was not done regularly. As a result preliminary research shows the 50 million students in this experiment in the U.S. will return to school in the fall with roughly 70% gain in reading compared to a typical school year and less than 50% for math (NWEA, Oregon). ...

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During 2018 negotiations China's vice premier Liu He asked finance business leaders "We need your help." This included  Black Rock, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and others. In exchange China which has protected its financial markets from American finance companies now offered to give some opportunities, though as other companies in other industries have found out this could be limited by other priorities.  The Trump and now the Biden administration are pursuing the decoupling of the Chinese and American economies after learning through two decades that it is damaging to the U.S. economic position in the world. The new law passed by unanimous vote in Congress to be signed into law by president Trump requires Chinese companies to have financial audits inspected by U.S. regulatory agency for them to remain listed on U.S. exchanges. However as the WSJ points out in a separate article this does not restrict Chinese companies access to global capital in unfair competition with the U.S. because the law goes into effect over 3 years giving Chinese companies. American investors can also invest in the Chinese companies on the Hong Kong stock exchange unless their entire thinking process changes seeing what is best for America as best for them. ...

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Personal and institutional investing expert Jeremy Grantham has followed the market for several decades. Here he warns of an epic bubble particularly in technology related companies similar to 2000. The two stock market disasters in 2000 and 2009 hurt small investors. With the interest rates pushed down to near zero by central bankers, investors in the U.S. were faced with difficult choices of seeing no return on savings for a decade or investing more in the stock market. Collapsing stock markets lead to a loss of upward mobility in society as many families lose a portion of their savings. The significance of Mr. Grantham's call for caution is based on simple common sense when he says that electric car maker Tesla's stock price would mean over 1 million dollars for each car sold by Tesla, compared to $9000 for each car sold by General Motors. Traditional car makers and other manufacturers are being deliberately under priced on markets with the reverse for some tech companies. Major investment firms such as Morgan Stanley, large investment banks,  Grantham says are part of this system of overpricing, and are not going to say proceed with caution. ...

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Daily coronavirus cases dropped to the lowest level since March 30, 2021. Cases on June 19 were at 58,000 and deaths at 1154 for India's population of 1.2 billion people. The only state with cases over 10,000 was Kerala, and close to 9000 was Tamilnadu. Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh were at over 5000. All these states are in southern India. Only Maharashtra with about 9000 cases was in northern India. The positivity rate in Maharashtra state was 3% and in Mumbai 2%.  The Indian government has a clear vaccine policy and it is for vaccine supplies and vaccination drive to be under the federal government. This puts responsibility in one place and makes it possible to achieve the target of vaccinating 1.2 billion people by December 31, 2021, with the federal government putting all the resources it can muster into the effort. The economy is also linked to how the vaccination supply effort and vaccination drive progresses in the next 6 months, so that the goal of vaccination is closely linked to economic recovery and progress for India as a whole. A good monsoon rainy season would also help the rural economy recovery. ...

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Germany has 60.4 million people who can vote in the upcoming September 26 parliamentary elections. Of this more than half are over age 50 years. This is part of a demographic change in Germany with falling population, more deaths than births in the country. As a result German voting population is getting older and smaller, 1.3 million smaller this time than in the last election. In 1987 23% of voters were under age 30 years, in 2021 this is down to 15%. For older voters in 1987 26% of voters were over age 60 years, in 2021 this is up to 38%. Older voters also have higher turnout of about 81% compared to voters age 21 to 24 years at 67% turnout. Older voters had a strong party affiliation early in their life says one polling expert for Infratest. Older voters tend to vote mostly for SPD or CDU the two main parties. The far right and far left parties have support in East Germany's 12.5 million population out of 82.5 million in Germany. CDU gets its vote from workers with higher than median income, and SPD from voters at the median income. Greens are supported by higher income groups.   ...

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A sharp drop in men's college enrollment of 62% between 1959 and 2021 has led to women catching up from being way behind which is a good thing, yet the sheer size of this drop has created a new problem for both men and women as Americans. The college enrollment now is 60% women, 40% men- not a good one by any stretch of the imagination.  It is bound to have serious negative effects on women being able to find college educated men to share life's experiences. Yet more profound and insidious is the danger it poses for America's economic prospects and its leadership role in the world. The Biden administration seeks to correct one part of the problem which is the declining access to a college education because of cost. It wants to provide access to  college education at no cost through community colleges. This is only the first step and is part of the $3.5 trillion dollar plan for workers and families in America. A national consensus is needed on such an important issue before the American people- to make America a place of opportunity for all its people.  ...

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WSJ looks at how the case of Meng Wanzhou and the US Justice Department was settled. In early September the case of Canadians held by China was brought by Biden when he talked to Xi Jinping. Xi brought up the case of Meng, the daughter of Huawei's founder and CFO of the company. Meng was detained in 2018 in Vancouver at the request of US authorites for wire and bank fraud charges related to US sanctions on Iran. The case took a new turn in May when Meng hired a new lawyer William Taylor. Justice Department said it was willing to separate Meng's case from the case against Huawei. Meng's lawyer agreed to have Meng admit to doing what they said she did.  Both US and China wanted to remove an irritant in US Chinese relations. On September 19 Mr. Taylor sent a draft of what she was prepared to admit for wrongdoing. This was the basis of the statement of facts attached to her deferred prosecution agreement and release from Vancouver. The 2 Canadians were then immediately released from China- the Canadians had no knowledge of what had happened. ...

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Parliamentary group of the ruling LDP party elected Fumio Kishida, member of parliament from Hiroshima, as the new LDP leader and prime minister. He has called the abolition of nuclear weapons his life's work. His grandfather and father were both members of parliament. Kishida was elected in 1993 to the Japanese parliament, and was foreign minister under Shinzo Abe. He supports the Hiroshima baseball team and is said to be good when it comes to washing up and cleaning the bathroom. As a child he grew up in New York and pictures of that time show him at a school in Queens, New York as a child. This has given him a sense of social injustice. He shares this in his plans for Japan with Biden in the US and Scholz in Germany, a sense that there should be a reduction in the income gap, and support for low paid temporary workers, families with young children. He also shares with Biden and Scholz plans to invest hundreds of billions of dollars for renewal of the country- for renewal of US, Germany and Japan in the manner of the postwar renewal in the nineteen fifties. ...

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Efforts by president Macron to setup a meeting between Rouhani of Iran and president Trump in New York to reduce tensions of miscalculation and disproportionate response after the attacks on Saudi oil facilities by drones and missiles. Macron says the "maximum pressure" sanctions placed by the U.S. are resulting in Iran placing "maximum pressure" on its neighbors. The Yemen civil war is fought by proxy.  One outcome appears to be the Houthi rebels backed by Iran in Yemen announcing a unilateral ceasefire. And the Saudis announcing a ceasefire of their own. This gives the European Union, the U.S., Saudis, Iran, China and Japan, time to consider the implications of the counterproductive approaches of the different sides to give enough room for new talks. Iran nuclear deal, U.S. relations with Iran, and any new talks on these issues are now seen in a different way. The nuclear deal is now linked with other issues in the region, including building peace in the region. Countries that depend on oil flowing through the Straits of Hormuz such as Japan, China, South Korea, and India are now also involved as silent partners pushing for peace in the region.  ...

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There is a two week period before the 25% tariff on steel coming into the U.S. goes into effect. This gives time for Canada, Mexico, the EU, Japan and other countries to come up with offers to negotiate or as with the EU come up with its own plan to put tariffs on some American goods. An exemption for Canada is supported by the United Steel Workers Union, as many American companies make steel across the borders. Canada sends the most steel and aluminium to the U.S. With the departure of Gary Cohn as economic advisor, Mr. Lighthizer, the U.S. Trade Representative who pushed for the tariff plan becomes a trusted advisor to the President. Lighthizer is to be seen in Lyrarc pages as having consistently supported fair trade and protecting U.S. workers in these situations since his work in the Reagan administration. The other advisors who are ascendent are Peter Navarro, a trade expert, and Wilbur Ross, the Commerce Secretary. Ross is an experienced business veteran in consolidation of steel and auto parts companies, who pushed for a moderate position to renegotiate NAFTA and convinced president Trump to pursue renegotiation instead of rejecting NAFTA following calls from president Nieto of Mexico and Trudeau of Canada. ...

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After years of austerity policies from the Conservative Party, Britain is looking at new ideas to reorganize the economy and society. The 40% of the British vote taken by the Labour Party has given new impetus to think tanks looking at ways to reshape the British economy and society in coming decades. At issue are the effects of austerity in increasing poverty, rising inequality, and fewer protections for working class people.  The new think tanks include Common Wealth which aims at making changes to British business to provide more representation for labour and provide share of ownership to workers in an enterprise. Common Wealth came up with the ideas and policy for the Labour Party's plan to give 10% of ownership equity in large companies to worker owned funds. Mr McDonnell, chief economic policy maker of the Labour Party, has suggested a trial of a universal basic income, which has led to policy ideas and economic framework development from think tanks. A key idea is to frame how these new ideas can be implemented under a future Labour government, now that there is public disillusionment with the Tories under Theresa May.  ...

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Global supply chains in industries such as clothing and other consumer items, in autos, and in tech products are changing as the shift away from China continues with the Trump administration's tariffs war. The clothing and other consumer products manufacturing is shifting away from China. Auto production is centred on regional hubs for manufacturing under renegotiated trade agreements such as the one that replaced NAFTA in North America, correcting imbalances in wages and U.S. content. Mexico gets to stay as a auto hub with exports of $50 billion in 2018 but under new rules that the Trump administration sees as fair. India is being considered as an auto production hub in Asia. In tech products China continues to have an edge but this is changing gradually. Samsung has built a huge smartphone manufacturing complex in Vietnam. South east Asia is a beneficiary, so is Mexico. In the future India stands to gain as its manufacturing base expands and infrastructure develops. In this changed scenario China will be moving to produce more advanced technological products, as it shifts away from lower end products. This will also correct some of the grossly unfavorable trade imbalances that have developed with the U.S. ...

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One survey of corporate leaders show that 82% of them now plan to allow at least some time remote working from home, and 47% to allow full time remote working from home. A Microsoft survey of managers shows 82% support more flexible work from home policies after the pandemic. About 53% of workers work from home in the U.S. as of July 12, down from as much as 70% in May.  One of the lessons learned is that in remote work overcommunicating is important because more signals are picked up in person to person face to face communication. There is also now more time to do this as the commuting time and other time related to coming in to the office is saved. There is so much new information that new insights are gradually coming of how to redesign work based on how people work and communicate. One of the personal insights in working from home is that more can be accomplished so that after 3-4 hours of intensive work one needs understand that this may be equal to what one gets done in a whole day at the office with intermittent interruptions, endless meetings and so on. ...

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U.S. president Trump admonished GM for delaying the delivery of ventilators with negotiations, and called it  "always a mess." GM offered varying numbers, initially says the president saying it could supply 40,000 ventilators but later saying it could supply 6000 by late April. As a result the president used the Defense Production Act to order GM to make ventilators for the government. The Trump administration then pulled together other companies that could make ventilators for the government. The president has publicly criticized GM in the past for closing factories and laying off workers in midwestern states.   The president said yesterday that the administration was working to sign contracts with other companies including, General Electric, Philips, Hamilton, and Medtronic. In all the administration wants to get 100,000 ventilators in a short time frame to meet the needs of hospitals in states with need. Any surplus ventilators could be sent to UK, France, Italy, and other friendly countries that cannot manufacture on their own. At his daily press briefing Friday Mr. Trump said he called Boris Johnson of the UK and the first thing Boris told him was "we need more ventilators." ...

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Chira and Einhorn of the NYT provide this detailed report on sexual harassment affecting women at Ford Motor Company's manufacturing plants in Chicago. The report describes a culture in which this was tolerated in the manufacturing plants.

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U.S. president Trump is to announce U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 Paris climate change agreement. The process of withdrawing is one that takes 4 years to complete, putting off a final decision till after the presidential election of 2020.

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25 years in the making at a cost of 10 billion euros, the new speed train between Berlin and Munich cuts the travel time to under four hours. This cuts it down from six to four hours.

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Sri Lankan High Commissioner Milinda Moragoda, is interviewed in Indian Express in Idea Exchange, with Shubhajit Roy, moderating the questions. Moragoda explains what happened over the last three decades and how Sri Lanka got to this point. About politicians he says Sri Lanka has too many politicians, and the violence of the JVP in the south and LTTE in the north and northeast set the country back by decades. Leaders from J Jayawardene, Kumaratunga to the Rajapaksas all failed to understand the spiral downwards of the economy, says Moragoda. Debt increased and 80% of the government revenues goes to pay pensions and government employees, leaving only 20% for debt service and little for investment in the economy. He says there are 1.5 million government employees and 500,000 pensioners, for a country of 22 million people. Of the population of 22 million about one million Tamils left the country during the civil war, and another 1 million people are in West Asia. Moragoda says most of the borrowing came after 2009 as the civil war ended with $12.5 billion borrowed or 40% of the total debt. About 80% of government revenues goes to pay pensions and government employees and another 70% goes to pay interest on debt, but he does not elaborate or explain this. What one can say from the experience of other countries in debt spiral is that at some point the interest accumulates to create a vicious cycle of interest on the cumulative total which includes interest from earlier years. Argentina is a recent example. And he makes no effort to say how he sees Sri Lanka is finding a path out this situation with a $2.9 billion IMF loan on debt of $51 billion.  Of the $12.5 billion borrowed since 2009 Moragoda says "that's  40% of our debt." Yet the total debt on which Sri Lanka defaulted is shown at $51 billion. $12.5 billion is 25% of the $51 billion. He does not provide any details about the financing terms on which Sri Lanka borrowed. It is clear that the interest rates were high over 6% in many cases which can be very burdensome for poor countries dependent on commodity exports. Countries such as Greece with debt crises had very large numbers of pensioners and government employees in Europe during the eurozone crisis, but nowhere does it show that it took up 80% of the government revenues in Greece. The number of government employees range from 1 to 1.2 to 1.5 million according to different figures for Sri Lanka. Even in Greece the number of public sector workers in government were 616,000 by some estimates during the severe eurozone debt crisis years around 2015. They are now estimated at about 369,000 in 2020.  Without a clear idea of these figures and transparency it is hard for any economy to be managed in a prudent way. See the related report "Fallacies of Sri Lankan Debt Patterns," a report by the Observer Research Foundation, on this same page today which say that Sri Lanka borrowed at exorbitant interest rates for a poor country.  Moragoda has worked for administrations in different portfolios including in economic affairs. He says Sri Lanka's economy is too small to get attention and investment it needs from India, and that the Adani investment shows that this can still be made to happen. India remains Sri Lanka's key partner as it grapples with this crisis. ...

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Saudis are now prepared to increase oil production after weeks of US diplomacy in exchange for security guarantees against attacks by Yemeni rebels and Iran. Russian oil output has declined by about 1 million barrels a day since the start of the war says WSJ. Drops in production lead to a rise in oil prices more than making up for the decline in revenues for Russia. This makes oil sanctions a weak deterrent for Russia in its invasion of Ukraine unless Saudis and UAE step in with increased oil production to make the EU embargo on Russian oil work effectively to cut Russian oil revenues financing the Ukraine invasion. Europe has stepped up with its embargo on about 90% of Russian oil- all except pipeline supplies to Hungary and Czech Republic, Slovakia as an exception. This will reduce oil production in Russia as EU is the biggest importer of Russian oil, bigger after previous German chancellor Merkel's failure to see the risks in such dependence and increased imports. For the oil embargo to lead to sharp reduction in Russian oil revenues that reduces financing of the Ukraine invasion, and for the EU oil embargo to bring results the missing piece is Saudi action to increase production. This may now be in place as Mr. Biden visits Riyadh next month. Crown Prince Salman of Saudi Arabia has pushed Saudi Arabia to make changes to modernize the country's culture providing the US with a partner that is now different than the Saudi Arabia steeped in tradition and inward looking under previous rulers. Under president Obama Democrats favored Iran and reduced security guarantees that were set up since president Franklin Delano Roosevelt met the Saudi King in 1944 aboard an American ship during the war. The turn of events with Russian invasion of Ukraine with Chinese support have created risks of a China invasion of Taiwan with aggressive action of China. President Biden has made this clear and stated straightforwardly the American position on Ukraine- Russia winning by invading a neighboring country sets the precedent for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. This is why the US remains resolute with its European partners in seeing to it that Ukraine remains as Biden said in the NYT  "independent, sovereign and able to deter invasion and defend itself." For Europe it is about defending its neighborhood from the Baltic Sea to Bulgaria in the Balkans with American support. For the US it is about keeping its leadership presence in Asia in an alliance with Japan, India, Australia and most of South East Asia including Indonesia, Bangladesh with a population of close to 3 billion people. China which was supported by the US throughout the period of colonial dominance since the 18th century preventing its breakup and foreign rule as happened in India, and a major recipient of American aid and investment in the 20th century is now where Japan stood in the two decade period 1925 -1945 with its aggressive expansion under Japanese imperialist rule. In this sense the world is moving back to the days of the Free World's struggle in the days after the Iron Curtain fell over Europe with Soviet expansion in Eastern Europe. Saudis, UAE, and Turkey as part of NATO, are also moving back to the positions they had over a long period for centuries from 1800. Saudi Arabia and UAE came into prominence after discovery of oil and were backwaters to Egypt and Turkey which were supported by Britain to keep Russia from advancing in Asia and Europe during that period. India under the British Empire is now in the Indo-Pacific Framework with Japan which was inward looking and under European influence for most of the last 200 years.  ...

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China's BYD started in electric batteries and expanded into electric cars. It has emerged as the dominant electric car company in the world as China now has half of the electric cars on the road in the world. 35% of exports of electric cars are from China. Keith Bradsher of NYT reports from Shenzen that its first car was made in 2007 of poor quality, similar to Toyota in the 1930's as it tried car manufacturing for the first time. It has surpassed Tesla in making electric cars. In each of the last 2 years it has increased electric car sales by one million to reach electric car sales on 3 million. EV sales in China were up in 2023 to 9.49 million cars giving BYD the largest share of 31%., by comparison US electric car sales were 1.2 million. New assembly lines are being built in Brazil, Hungary and Thailand. And new lines are planned for Mexico and Indonesia. This kind of growth was seen only by General Motors in 1946 after the end of the war. It also shows the progress China is making. In solar panels something like the addition of 900 million solar panels meeting the entire increase in electricity demand for each year, so that emissions targets can be met earlier than planned to tackle climate change.  The same changes are happening in electric cars. China now has 40% of electric cars or gasoline/electric plug in cars going up to 50%. For export China is building large carrier ships, the first that will take 5000 cars for export to the Netherlands. The lowest priced electric car model the Seagull was priced at $11,000. BYD's lowering of manufacturing costs have given it the ability to price the cars to attract new car buyers.  Wang Chuanfu who studied at Central Southern University in Changsha known for its battery research, was an engineer who started the company in the 1990's to make batteris for Motorola. Between 2003-2006 he experimented with making cars in the hope of making electric cars. Stalled efforts in 2009 and 2011 were met with arenewed effort in 2016 trying a new approach to cut costs by developing a battery where supplies of lithium or cobalt would not be a constraint. He developed a new battery using iron and phospate to replace lithium cobalt batteries. A big break came in 2020 with the Blade battery that increased range to the level of cobalt lithium batteries at a much smaller cost. BYD hired German Audi designers for new model design. This time BYD was in the right position to build a car company matching all others with costs lower by about 35% than VW for some models. This comes from- lower costs to make in China, making its own parts inside the company for 75% of parts compared to VW only about 35%, and by the savings from its battery research.  BYD has shown ability to shift with market needs and opportunities. In 2022 assisted driving was facing hurdles, BYD had second thoughts about the new technology, by 2023 as it was increasing in use BYD committed $14 billion in autonomous driving technology. Driving range is a problem for people in urban areas going back to their villages in China. BYD has an advantage here compared to Tesla- it makes hybrid plug ins that account for half its sales. Toyota has also had emphasis on hybrid plug ins where it missed the opportunity was that it moved very slowly on all electric cars not realizing how fast things were moving outside it's world. This is the situation America also faces in 2024 and beyond who can deliver on the infrastructure capabilities, new research ,and tap American potential to compete in this new world where one innovation will follow another. ...