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Maria Bartiromo talks with President Medvedev of Russia. She asks him about the North Korean's nuclear missiles testing. Medvedev says "what has happened raises great alarm and concern." He says North Korea is close to Japan and S. Korea but is also close to Russia. He has had quite anumber of telephone talks with the Prime Minister of Japan and the President of S. Korea on this subject. He says the world needs to think about what measures can be taken to deter these programs. He is concerned about unemployment. 2.2 million are registered as unemployed but the number is much much higher. Russia he says is a hostage to the structure of the economy, and sees a danger in the overdependence on export of raw materials. He sees the crisis as an opportunity to change the "outdated and obsolete structure of Russia's economy." His idea is to use the extra revenues to support social programs and to radically change the structure of the economy.

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See the Breakthrough Agenda Report on Climate Change targets and hurdles after COP26, on the IEA website, and opportunity for 85 million additional jobs by 2030 in renewable energy. The report is done by the International Energy Agency, the International Renewable Energy Agency, and Climate Change Champions. It points out the need for better international coordination if climate change goals set at COP26 are to be achieved. The report calls for a breakthrough by addressing the international "collaboration gap."

IRENA makes 25 recommendations to be discussed at ministerial meetings. It also says that 85 million new jobs could be created in renewable energy worldwide by 2030 compared to 2019, offsetting the loss of 12 million jobs, creating a huge jobs opportunity with action on renewable energy.

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This 40 minute IMF Video looks indepth into how far the Paris Agreement on Climate Change of 2015 has moved the world to address 1.5 degree change in climate? What is the situation in 2023 as we move towards 2030? NIcholas Stern of LSE says the peak of emissions will be reached by 2024 however the curve will not be pretty as the drop in the curve will be a small dip in emissions not steep drop that we need. Action is needed to accelerate.. Pilita Clark of the Financial Times conducts a discussion with Nicholas Stern of the Grantham Institute at London School of Economics, Bo Li Deputy Managing Director of IMF, and Zhou Xiaochuan who heads China's Boao Forum and formerly was Governor of the Bank of China.

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Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif faces a trial on corruption charges in Pakistan in 2018, just prior to new elections. The military and the judiciary both support the trial which involves payments for 4 upscale neighborhood London apartments owned by Sharif. 

Mr. Sharif's party leads in polls with about 36% support, higher than the next leading party Tehreek which has 24% support and is led by Imran Khan a former cricketer. The Pakistan People's Party of the Bhutto family comes in third. The result of this could be a weaker coalition government. The Supreme Court has banned Sharif for life from holding political office. Pakistan has seen governments toppled and military rule for half of its 70 years since independence. The rivalry with India and the role of the military has affected political institutions and democracy in Pakistan making peace with India difficult to achieve for any elected government.

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At a videoconference between DJT and European leaders on Aug. 14, 2025, initiated by Germany's Merz , it was decided that no territory exchanges are to be discussed at DJT Putin meeting in Alaska. DJT and the Europeans will simply seek an immediate ceasefire followed by talks between Zelensky and Putin with DJT offering to be there to mediate differences. DJT says there will be strong sanctions on Russia in the event no ceasefire is reached. Legislation in Congress with 80 senators on board a clear majority of both parties is for putting a 500% tariff on countries such as China and India that import Russian oil. These imports exceed $100 billion each for China and India. DJT has placed a 50% duty on India if negotiations do not yield results on this issue. This is seen in Congress as fueling the continuation of the Russian war in Ukraine.

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By shifting production of the Santa Fe SUV model to Kia's West Point, Georgia, plant- which makes the Kia Sorrento- Hyundai plans to free up 100,000 units capacity at it newly opened Montgomery, Alabama, plant. This freed up capacity will be used to meet increasing demand for Hyundai's Sonata sedans. Hyundai owns 34% of Kia Motors. The West Point plant was built to produce 300,000 units and uses the same components for the Santa Fe that it uses for the Sorrento.

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The number of supercommuters is up significantly as a result of the drop in home prices and high unemployment. It is up 60% in Manhattan since 2002, up to 59,000 or 3% of the workforce. In the Philadelphia- New Jersey corridor- it is 7.3% according to NYU. Houston saw a large increase between 2002 and 2009. In Maricopa County near Phoenix, 131,000 people or 8.6% of the labor force supercommutes. About 13% of the workforce or 427,000 people supercommute in Texas. Prof. Mitchell Moss of New York University, defines a 100 mile plus commute to get to work as a supercommute. His work at NYU's Rudin Center for Transportation shows 1.15 million people supercommuting in 10 major U.S. metropolitan areas. Employers are showing flexibility not wanting to have to dispose off properties, and employees prefer not to uproot families.

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James Warren talks to judges and other experts who are skeptical about the value of deterrance in stopping white collar criminal behaviour. Jim Cramer of the television financial markets show, says that on Wall Street they fear nothing more than jail time. Warren, who says the greatest corruption of legal and illegal kinds is to be found today in the financial sector, is still not convinced. He asks why was this guy Bagojevich elected a second time, when it was clear throughout Chicago and in Springfield that pay-to-play was typical of his behaviour. Is the public some virtuous group that gets hit with these undeserved types or is it that the public gets the politicians it deserves.

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Jan Hatzius, economist at Goldman Sachs, says the May 2012 jobs report of only 69,000 jobs added, and 49,000 fewer jobs added in March and April after revisions by the Labor Department, should be seen in the light of higher hiring in the winter months because of warm weather. His estimate is that the warm weather added 100,000 extra jobs in the 3 months through February 2012, taking jobs from the March to May 2012 period which averaged 96,000 jobs per month. The underlying job growth if these weather related effects are taken out would be 120,000 to 130,000 jobs added each month in the March through May 2012 period. Macroeconomic Advisors draws the same conclusions, and adds that reductions in energy prices should offset any negative effects of slower job growth by boosting real disposable personal income and supporting real consumer spending.

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Retired General James Mattis tells officers at the Marines' Club in San Francisco to remember the words of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, a former infantry officer in the Civil War: "As life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived." He points to the need to integrate into civilian life without cynicism, exceeding expectations in civilian and business life like service men and women before them, and remembering to have an impact on other people's lives.

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Steven Lee Myers provides an exceptionally good report from Russia on the 2014 Sochi Olympics. He describes an effort by the Putin administration in Russia to develop Sochi which extends for 90 miles along the Black Sea, the only subtropical seashore in Russia. Here Myers interviews Pakhomov, a Putin supporter, who is Mayor of Sochi, to get a picture of how Putin supporters see this effort. Pakhomov says this part of Russia was never developed and foreigners have a poor view of Russia, with one westerner telling him that Russia had little except vodka and bears. For the first time the entire Sochi areas has seen a massive infrastructure effort with roads, railways and a new airport. Myers gets a different picture from Yulia Naberezhnaya, a scientist who is a Putin critic and environmental leader in the Western Caucusus, who he interviews after meeting at a bus stop in Sochi. Naberezhnaya heads Environmental Watch of the North Caucusus which sees the environmental laws being ignored in construction work. The country is divided with nationalistic feeling running high before the Olympics, and a friend of Naberezhnaya finding herself on the opposite side with work in the security services. She warns her to be careful- something Naberezhnaya says has Kafkesque overtones. Myers also meets Boris Nemtsov, a senior official in the Yeltsin government, who participated in street protests during the recent elections in Russia, and is critical of the money spent in this Olympics. Estimates of the money spent run as high as $51 billion, in comparison the Olympics in Beijing, China cost about $40 billion. Dmitri Chernyshenko, president of the Sochi Olympics Organizing Committee sees the project as one that unites the nation, while critics such as Nemtsov see it as a huge overspending and corruption favoring Putin's friends in the business community. Myers is acting Moscow Bureau Chief for the NYT and has done extensive interviewing for this report, including an interview with Vladimir Yakunin, head of Soviet Railways. Yakunin says his company's investment of $1.3 billion will take 20 years to recover but puts it on the scale of the Trans-Siberian Railway build by Czar Nicholas II, which helped bring Russia its current borders reaching to the Far East. And yet the question of cost is never far from people's minds, coming at a time when growth is slowing in Russia- emerging markets currency values incluing the ruble are declining and they are having a tough time attracting foreign investment. A member of the International Olympic Committee, Gian-Franco Kasper, is reported to have told Swiss SRF radio that about a third of the spending on Sochi was lost because of corruption and excessive costs....

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

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

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Gordon Crovitz points out in this op-ed that an issue of this importance of preserving an open and independent internet free of influence of governments and politicians, should not be left to the Assistant Secretary of the Commerce Department and administration officials. He points out the need for Congress to play a role in determining the future openness and independent nature of the internet free of politics and governments. He says the Obama administration's move to use the Dotcom Act to transfer the role now played by ICANN to a new body in which other governments say they want to play a major role, is a mistake as it risks the very openness of the internet that has been its core quality and mission till now. Doing this by July 2016, in 30 days following its submission to Congress by the Obama administration, is prevented by Senator Ted Cruz's effort in Congress requiring clear approval by Congress. The U.S. has a unique role in this respect because of its role in defending freedom of speech since its founding, a role found nowhere else in the world. ...

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The unravleing of Borders bookstores chain in the US, after Borders management failed to anticipate and build on the new trend to electronic books and made a series of mistakes. Borders filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in early Feb. 2011. Its online strategies simply failed to come up with answers to the cultural trend to online shopping for books and buying e-book readers. A serious bad decision from which Borders never recovered was to transfer its internet operations to Amazon Inc. in 2001. Amazon quickly built up customer relationships with millions of customers. Other decisions followed which put Borders in an untenable position. Borders increased its debt from $159 million in 2001, to $554 million for the fiscal year ended Feb 2, 2008, using the money for overseas expansion and share buybacks, which did little to address the looming internet problem. By contrast Barnes and Noble took the opposite strategy of paying down all of its $667 million in debt. Borders has modest beginnings starting in 1971, when Tom and Louis Borders, started a small used bookstore. By the 1990's bookstores with tens of thousands of books in one location were changing the bookselling landscape, as smaller bookstores were closing. Borders was able to ride this wave. When the next wave hit in 2010 with the internet, Borders was unable to respond and went into permanent decline. A costly trip through bankruptcy court means Borders will have to close one third of its 674 Borders and Waldenbooks stores, and cut a large part of the 19,500 staff. This will mean customers shifting to Amazon, Barnes& Noble, Apple Inc. and Google Inc. Mike Shazin, CEO of Idea Logical Co, a New York consulting firm, says he expects 50% of bricks and mortar bookstores to go away in 5 years, and 90% to go away in 10 years. ...

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The BW Economics editor Peter Coy loks at what economist have to say and finds Akerloof (Nobel 2001) and Robert Solow (Nobel 1987) in favor of strong stimulus, with Solow saying that it is too small. Prescott of Arizona State (Nobel 2004) favors tax cuts and roll back of regulation for growth. Most economic forecasters who are more concerned about being right rather than some ideological bias say stimulus is necessary. Coy's view from years of watching the markets at work is that the risk of doing too little now are way too great, and this is no time to think in terms of ideological bias of any sort. Misdiagnosing this downturn could have devastating consequences and lead to something like the Great Depression. Its in this context that comments by Prescott that "people are now a little more hungry for jobs, its great I can get some work done on my house," implying that now they would work for less, and show a cavalier disregard of what is happening in the factories, in the streets and neighborhoods, in the workplaces, inthe country, and is too casual for a crisis of this magnitude. Which may be why one fourth of Republicans have more confidence in President Obama's economic plan than in the Republican approach in a CBS/NYTimes poll taken at beginning of April 2009. Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations cites this type of comment by employers in his day, in the Wealth of Nations, and says that this is a shortsighted approach not what would make England as a nation prosper and grow. ...

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Greece's economy is expected to shrink by 6% in 2012 by many private sector economists in Greece. This means Greece will have a deficit closer to 10% of GDP. Antonio Samaras, leader of the New Democracy Party, is expected to win the elections in Greece to be held by spring 2012. Opinion polls show his party getting 24% of the vote, and Papandreou's Socialists getting 15%, showing how little support any party can gather in Greece. Samaras told the Journal in an interview- the contagion is spreading rapidly, and what he fears is political and social contagion from high unemployment and austerity measures. Samaras says his government would continue with the spending cuts, but also reduce the tax burden on Greek households and businesses, which he views as having worsened the recession in Greece.

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The Obama administration's proposed budget for fiscal 2013- for the year beginning Oct. 1, 2012- shows the budget deficit for the year at over $1 trillion. It shows new revenue of $1.7 trillion over 10 years mostly from ending the Bush period tax cuts on families earning more than $250,000 a year, restoring the estate tax to the 2009 level and limiting subsidies for oil and gas companies. It proposes raising the tax rate on dividends from 15% to as much as 39.6%, for households earning more than $250,000 a year. This measure is expected to generate $206 billion over 10 years. The budget also offers "principles" for future tax reform by proposing the Buffett rule replace the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). The AMT was not indexed for inflation so it has the weakness of putting more middle class taxpayers into AMT, leading to temporary solutions by Congress. The Buffett rule would have people earning more than $1 million pay a tax rate of at least 30%. Many wealthy Americans like Mitt Romney paid lower taxes using deductions to lower tax rates- Romney's tax disclosures show he paid effective tax rate of 14%. The White House says the budget will reduce the deficit by $3 trillion over 10 years through the new taxes, and small changes to Medicare and Medicaid and other spending cuts. This is in addition to the $1 trillion in spending cuts agreed to in a deficit reduction agreement in 2011 between Democrats and Republicans in Congress. The budget proposal proposes investment in education and transportation projects of $137 billion, and continuing through Dec. 2012, a tax break for businesses to increase investment. It includes mandatory spending of $2.7 billion for new community college programs, $6 billion to modernize schools, and $1.8 billion to make homes more energy efficient. It also increases the resources of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the CFTC (two agencies overseeing the banks), $26 million for a new Interagency Trade Enforcement Center to counter unfair trade practices, and cuts U.S. postal delivery to 5 days a week. The result is a program designed to be balanced in terms of economic fairness, making modest investments in the future for education and energy, continuing policies to stimulate growth, and extending the date for bringing the deficit under control to 2018 instead of 2014 as planned earlier....

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Paul de Grauwe, a economist at the London School of Economics points to two problems with the June 28, 2012 EU deal that allows the EU rescue fund to buy Spanish and Italian bonds and provide capital aid directly to Spanish banks. One is the limited funds of the rescue fund, European Financial Stability Facility or by its other name European Stability Mechanism. The EFSF or ESM lacks credibility because it lacks resources, it has only 248 billion euros, and has to first raise money in the bond markets. A better approach would be for the ECB to buy Spanish and Italian bonds aggressively, allowing a smaller spread between these bonds and the German bonds, says Grauewe. Germany is the largest shareholder at the ECB and opposes this move as a form of mutualizing of debt in the EU. Grauwe's recent paper shows that the depressed bond conditions for Spain and Italy are driven largely by a psychology of fear and not hard true economic numbers. Christopher Marks, global head of debt capital markets at BNP Paribas, says it is important to create the confidence to get longer term core investors such as pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and insurance companies back into this market for Spanish and Italian bonds by reducing volatility and yield. These longer term investors have left the market creating a severe problem. The shorter term investors, who came into this market in the last 1-2 years, are now the loudest voice saying Spain and Italy are likely to fail. These shorter term investors are either selling these bonds short or getting credit default swaps. A big problem coming out of the June 28, 2012 agreement, is that it is short on details. The details of how the rescue fund will operate, its funding, and the conditions for making making direct loans for stakes in banks or buying government bonds are still to be clarified. Germany's Constitutional Court also will rule on how this would be conducted and the Merkel government would continue tough negotiations on the details creating added uncertainty. ...

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DW.com sees the choice of Timothy Kaine for Democratic vice presidential nominee as a safe choice, with no effort to mobilize the base activated by Bernie Sanders using a choice from that segment of the party. Both Hillary Clinton and Timothy Kaine come from the moderate wing of the party. This is likely to help Hillary Clinton in the swing state of Virginia. Kaine's choice may also be a way to balance the more serious Clinton with the sunnier disposition and campaigning energy of Kaine. To bring a different set of campaigning skills from Kaine- conveying a positive message for Democrats on how they could help the middle and working class, and appeal to independent undecided voters.

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Gerard Baker in the WSJ says there is a dizzying collapse in the quality of leadership in  Britain and also in the US and other countries of Europe.  we are led by too many inferior people, he says. Liz Truss, Johnson and Sunak in Britain are examples of this, he says. They lack the experience and the capabilities needed. This is also true of Meloni in Italy, Macron in France and Merkel in Germany, ineffectiveness of Obama and Trump in some ways in the US.

Yet he says there is another problem for Brexiters in Britain and for Trump Republicans in the US. This is one of the abject chaos that emerges from trying to reconcile the desire for strong government and government support of working class supporters and the tradition of lower taxes and no deficit spending in the Conservative and Republican parties. This is he says a warning for the Republicans from what he sees happening in Britain with Truss, Johnson and Sunak after Brexit.

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During the debate on the name of the country in the Constituent Assembly in 1948 the wording was to be changed from "India, that is Bharat, is a Union of States" to "Bharat, that is India, is a Union of States." This was suggested by Kamalapathi Tripathi and Kamath. At some point in history the Union can only be "Bharat." Why? Because for the hundreds of millions that Gandhiji led in the Independence Movement it was for the idea of Bharat and freedom that they were fighting for. Freedom could only be defined in the word Bharat. It can be argued that Gandhiji and Sardar Patel, Nehru left it as "India, that is Bharat" so that at some point it would be changed once the country had taken Gandhiji's movement of "We, the People" to the next step lifting up the hundreds of millions of people from poverty and illiteracy, a process that is Gandhi 2.0 happening today.

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One of the leaders who has emerged with solid skills and with patience, firm resolve is Olaf Scolz, former mayor of Hamburg, finance minister and deputy chancellor. He is leader of the SPD and has a shot at chancellor in coming years. His hard work has led to increasing popularity during the pandemic and he is in charge of disbursing the euro recovery funds for recovery of Germany and the rest of Europe.  Being labor minister under chancellor Schroeder in 2003 did not help as he tried to sell Schroeder's labor reforms with harsh cuts for welfare recipients and he ended up looking like a bureaucrat and someone doing somebody else's work.  But hard work persistence in doing the work that mattered has helped him regain respect in Germany. Leading the youth wing of the SPD, then in 1998 joining the Bundestag, running a business law practice in Hamburg, on to the mayor's office, now Scolz is a transformed figure as he appears more emotional, more accessible, friendlier. ...

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Spain's cabinet announced new changes to labor laws to provide incentives to business to hire. Spain has some of the most restrictive labor laws in Europe and high unemployment. The unemployment rate reached 23% in December 2011, and about half of the people under 26 are unemployed. The cost of downsizing is so high in Spain that Spain's representative on the executive committe of the European Central Bank, Jose Manuel Gonzalez-Paramo, says companies prefer to close rather than downsize. The World Bank has singled out the labor laws as one of the main reasons for Spain's rising unemployment rate. New rules will reduce severance payments to 33 days per year of employment from 45 days. Severance packages will be reduced to a maximum of 24 months from 48 months. To encourage companies to hire permanent workers and depend less on temporary workers the new rules say employers must switch temporary workers to permanent contracts after two instead of three years. As an incentive for companies with a maximum of 50 employees to hire young people the rules give a 3000 euros corporate tax break for each new person hired under age 30. If the hired person was jobless he can still collect 25% of previous unemployment benefits for a limited period with 50% of the unemployment benefits going to the employer. Companies having losses for three consecutive quarters are allowed to pay less in severance payments- only 20 days per year of employment. Companies will now find it easier to leave collective bargaining agreements and make deals with their own staff. Luis Garicano, a professor at the London School of Economics, says this is a good step forward. He finds missing from the new rules subsidies to train young and unemployed people given the high dropout rates in Spanish schools. The government approved the rules by decree, but they will be discussed in the Spanish parliament. The government of prime minister Mariano Rajoy was recently elected with an overwhelming majority in parliament. This makes making major changes different from the process in Italy where a consensus has to be established....

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A report by international inspectors says Greece's funding requirements can be met only if bondholders such as French and German banks take writedowns of 60%, or if more loans are made to Greece more than planned. This reinforces Germany's position that Greece's debt be reduced to less than 50% for a long term sustainable solution. Volker Kauder, conservative leader in Germany's parliament, told the German weekly Der Spiegel, "the governments in Europe are going to have to get used to this," (the German position). Germany opposes using the ECB to print more euros to make loans to the eurozone bailout fund, the EFSF, which would relax prudent financial practice. After warnings from Kauder and other German parliament members, Merkel is staying firm about the German position. German law requires Merkel to get approval from a parliamentary budget committee for any additional loans.

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Ford Motor opened its new plant in Chongqing, China. It was approved in 2009 and is operated in a joint venture with Chongqing Changan Automobile Company and Japan's Mazda Motor. It has annual capacity of 150,000 cars and will manufacture the redesigned Ford Focus. Ford says this will be part of 15 new models in China by 2015. Further expansion is expected to be slower from now on, because China's policy is shifting towards consoldating its manufacturing base for automobiles- which experienced hyper level growth in the last decade- and not adding new capacity. Ford made a late entry in the Chinese market compared to GM. It sold 519,300 vehicles in China in 2011, compared to GM's 2.55 million vehicles. The change in China's policy may mean Ford has less opportunity to catch up with VW, GM and Toyota in China.