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Cerberus Capital will lose its entire stake under the plan announced by the Obama administration. And Fiat will be limited to a 20% stake in Chrysler, down from an earlier figure of 30%. And Fiat will have to repay the $6 billion loan that the Obama administration is willing to make before in can take astake in Chrysler of above 49%. Obama administration official confirmaed that the Cerberus 80% equity stake no longer holds value and that the firm's ownership would come to an end. Only if Fiat and Chrysler reach an agreement in 30 days will Treasury invest $6 billion in Chrysler. The task force requires Chrysler to eliminate the "vast majority" of roughly $9 billion in outstanding secured debt. Cerberus acquired Chrysler from Daimler AG in august 2007 when US vehicle sales were 16 million a year, and did this by having Chrysler borrow heavilyusing its plants and property as collateral. $10 billion of secured debt was raised, and $2.5 billion was paid down of it. With prices of gasoline hitting $4 things collapsed. Chrysler sales fell 40%, and Chrysler was loaned $4 billion by Treasury. Now Chrysler has 30 days of working capital from Treasury till it reaches an agreement with Fiat, and before the government provides an additional $6 billion if the agreements as required by the Obama task force are reached....

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Low prices are a curse says an energy expert at Stanford University. He says it makes public policy sense to do something akin to boosting the price.

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This report by Thomas Erdbrink of the NYT from Tehran, shows the Iranian economy almost at a standstill as sanctions are lifted in Jan. 2016- with little or no growth after years of western economic sanctions. Iranians in Tehran do no expect an immediate improvement in conditions after the lifting of sanctions. The expectation is that it will take years to undo the damage done by sanctions.

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Athenahealth, a provider of software for physicians, is intervewed by Jon Kamp about the efforts to promote digitization in physician's offices.

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The skills to navigate different personalities and work patiently on the issues surrounding changes to the U.S. tax system of Rep. Dave Camp (MI), chairman of the U.S House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, will be immensely useful in the effort to make changes to the U.S. tax system. Camp works well with fellow House Republican leaders Boehner, Ryan, Cantor, and his Democratic counterpart in the U.S. Senate Max Baucus. Camp is a good listener, refuses to engage in partisan criticism, and has the patience to work through difficult issues of achieving savings and keeping fairness in the the tax changes. Earlier efforts to achieve consensus in late 2011 failed, making it even more important to have leadership which can create productive debate and bridge the differences. The tax changes are part of the overall effort for U.S. economic recovery by reducing the deficit.

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Leonhardt points out a couple of problems with Paul Ryan's budget proposal for Medicare. He says Medicare recipients, with the exception of the very affluent, currently haven't paid enough for the benefits they receive. He cites a study that shows Medicare pays out several hundreds of thousands of dollars for the average retiree more than they ever paid in. Medicare funds go for hospital expenses, the rest for doctors bills come from general government revenues. Government borrowing increasing the national debt to unsustainable levels so that current retirees do not have to pay higher taxes, is simply shifting the burden to the next generation. He says the Ryan plan shields those who will retire in the next 10 years because they are a powerful voting bloc, making this more of a political calculation than a bold reform step, as this means younger people will have to bear a disproportionate share of the burden. The other part of Ryan's calculus is that it has proven extremely difficult to reduce the volume of medical care that is consumed in terms of tests, lack of preventive care leading to graver problems, and surgeries. Simply by shifting a larger share of the cost to future retirees this will have an effect on the volume of medical care consumed and put a lid on costs. This is something that needs to happen says Leonhardt, but at the same time all Americans need to share in the higher taxes that are necessary to fund Medicare, exempting 75 million Americans only creates an imbalance in contributions. The other problem with this is that the costs of this exempted group will postpone serious deficit reduction for ten years....

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The number of households without a car increased the fastest in Detroit of any city in the U.S. from 2007 to 2012- by 5% to 26%. In a city which neglected to put in a rail system, many residents endure subzero temperatures for long waits and long commutes to job locations in the winter of 2014.

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William Daley, the head of Washington lobbying for JPMorgan Chase, is appointed Chief of Staff to President Obama. He also serves on the board of directors of Boeing and Abbott Labs, companies which a strong interest in Washington lobbying. William Daley is with Chase since 2004, and was hired primarily to strengthen Chase's Chicago connections. In the past he has served as the main liasion with the White House. In 2007 he joined the bank's senior leadership as head of its new Office of Corporate Social Responsibility, which oversees the company's global lobbying efforts.

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ZTE of Shenzen, China has 3% global market share and has a new model the F230 which can show streaming video at broadband internet speeds. ZTE will double its cellphone sales to 60 million this year. In the mobile phone business things can change very quickly. The market for mobile phones can change very quickly, is defined by a younger demographic that loves to try new things, and where new technologies and capabilities get incorporated very quickly and in new combinations, navigation, video, broadband, different market segments from the lower end to the upper end especially in developing countries of Brazil, India and China, and the constant competitive churn that brings in new technologies and new companies like ZTE into the market. Upper management at Nokia realizes this as Motorola twice came up with hit models the Star-Tac and the Razr in 1996 and 2005, and each time falling behind after the one time hit. Motorola is even looking at exiting this market. New competitors are in the field with Apple's I-phone in 2007 and with Google and Microsoft developing new software for this market. It requires not just a product hit but a management team and a structure for manufacturing and distribution that is strong and resilient enough to respond to the changing market and to anticipate market trends that are just taking shape and to have the cultural mindset in management at upper and middle levels to deal with huge fast growing markets like India and China, and also Brazil, Russia and other developing countries in Asia and Latin America and Africa where the nature of the demand is different and varies among the different regions also. Nokia has come closest to putting this capability together. It has market share of 40% in this global market with sles in India of 8 million phones a month. There is room for competiton as competitors like Samsung sell about 200 million cellphones a month and are growing at 25% a year. Nokia is also taking a new approach to stay ahead. Its buying smaller companies and developing in-house technology to build its own mobile services business named Ovi. It acquired a number of software companies, acquiring Navteq for $8.1 billion for software on satellite location services. It has its own web portal and and lets wireless providers like Vodafone and Verizon offer their subscribers the option of using portals of Vodafone, Verizon or Nokia's....

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A WSJ/NBC poll of Sept 20, 2012 showing Obama with a eight percentage point lead in Iowa, and a five point lead in Colorado and Wisconsin.

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First signs that OPEC may relent on production increases, as price of oil takes a new turn and becomes driven by forces that are beyond what OPEC may either foresee or be able to control. OPEC's different oil countries' senior officials are probably studying these new signals. Shukri Ghanem of Libya, a former prime minister and former head of Libya's national oil company, comments on new developments and shows willingness to increase production, to support a meeting before September and to look at the option of increasing production is his comment to Bloomberg News, May 8, 2008. Shukri was trained at the Fletcher School, Tufts Unversity, with a Masters degree in International Economics, and may have a better understanding of what is happening in international oil markets than senior officials of other OPEC countries. The signals that OPEC as well as the rest of the business community are watching are first the estimate by analysts at Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and CERA's Yergin that prices are headed in the direction of another spike to $150 to $200 per barrel before coming down sharply. Ghanem and others at OPEC may find that it is not in their interest to actually lose all control of prices if this happens, that is lose the market stability that enables a cartel to do well. Price spike would generate huge spike in revenues for a short period 6-12 months before setting up for a big fall as a result of setting in motion a whole set of new forces in the use of oil. Some of this are much higher and aggressive automobile fuel efficiency targets for Europe, the US and also in places like India and China, conservation in a big way, fuel efficiency in other uses such as generating electricity and other industrial uses in plants and so on, almost like the race to the moon, with new urgency. The spike in revenues followed by a drop may actually hurt OPEC long term revenues over next 5 years as the moderation in growth in developing countries like China and India is quite likely as the US slows down and this would only accelerate the pace of this moderation. With focus on efficiency in the use of oil worldwide, accelerated new production in non-opec oil fields, and moderated growth worldwide, enough savings could be generated in 24-36 months to bring oil prices down from the demand side and reduce speculative investments. The second signal was a WSJ survey of 53 respondents n this case economists, and 51% of the economists surveyed said that the oil price rise's key reason was on the demand side from developing countries. And speculation was a smaller factor attributed to by 11% of the economists. So the combination of these 2 factors added up to 62%. Foreign exchange was cited by 15% of the economists, adding all three factors would attribute 77% of the rise in oil prices to demand from developing countries, speculation based on rising demand, and the weakness of the dollar. If demand the key element in this drops as a result of an even bigger spike in oil prices to $150-$200, with demand moderating in developing contries, and the dollar strengthens in 12-18 months, then the spike would be temporary, leading to significant correction afterwards. This sharp correction would then become entrenched as the world would look at oil in a new way entirely different from the way it did in the years 1945-2007. ...

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Kristof of the NYT says the narrative about Hillary Clinton being dishonest is clearly overdone and inaccurate. He says the gaffes about the use of personal email server have unfairly created a distorted narrative. On changing positions on trade and minimum wage- this happens frequently with all the candidates. Some are glib enough for not being noticed, Clinton not a natural politician drawing attention. On Libya, and on Syria, Clinton is blamed for the President's errors and not given credit for pushback in league with Panetta, Gen. Kean and Gen. Jones, that has influenced changes made in 2016, and the president accepting blame for errors. In this instance Clinton has been far from shifty by publicly allying herself with Leon Panetta's position in "Worthy Fights," and Gen. Jones's remarks. Far from having erred on Libya and Syria policy, Hillary Clinton, like Chuck Hagel and others in the administration including Joe Biden, showed exceptional patience in dealing with the president, national security advisor, and McDonough in policy matters- when they were right but the country was weary of what were seen as futile global engagements in remote areas setting too high a bar for any action. Clinton rightly described this as a pendulum swinging too far in the opposite direction after the Bush/Cheney years. On young women and being "progressive" Hillary Clinton is from a older generation that experienced the kind of discrimination that young women fail to grasp, according to a recent analysis of University of Massachusetts polling survey results cited in the Washingon Post. A PolitiFact Pulitzer winning fact checking site shows 50% of the Clinton statments are either true or mostly true, compared to 49% for Bernie Sanders, 9 percent for Trump, 22% for Ted Cruz, and 52% for John Kasich. ...

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California Governor Schwarznegger points out that about 80 cents on every government dollar in California goes to public employees compensation and benefits. He says spending on state employees went up three times as fast as state revenues during the last decade. The result is crowding out of other programs such as higher education, parks and recreation. Because of large unfunded pension and retirement health-care benefit committments, California faces $550 billion of retirement debt. Costs of servicing that debt have grown at the rate of 15% for the last decade. The result is that California will spend more on retirement benefits than on higher education in 2010. Schwarznegger points to the fact that most employees in the private sector do not have $1 million in savings, but are in effect guaranteeing a retirement account of $1 million to state employees who retire at 55 years age- with a $3000 inflation protected check for the rest of their lives- as evidence that politicians in the State Assembly have made committments for the future that they cannot keep. And if they are kept they will leave little money for essential programs in education and public services....