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Failure by EU leaders to take early and decisive action to reduce Greece's debt to sustainable levels in 2009. This was when the IMF report by Dutchman Bob Traa blew the cover off the Greek coverup of deteriorated finances. Policy missteps included ECB president Trichet and other EU leaders pushing austerity measures and not taking needed tough action on reducing the debt. By November 2011 a 50% reduction in debt with bondholders taking the losses is not enough to correct the situation. Greece's debt is discounted by 70% by Nov 2011. Analysts estimate an 85% reduction in Greek debt being necessary for Greece to pull through without a default.

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Jerome Fons rates the credit rating agencies F for failure, and says its time to leave out ratings language from financial contracts. Its time to rely on good judgement. He is former managing director of Moody's. The system is rife he says with conflicts of interest and the whole system has failed and is still in failing mode. The finacial system he says can function without letter ratings, regulators and investors should consider all the relevant information about an investment including market prices. And he says lets return to the tool we all used before we delegated responsibility to ratings agencis, and this tool is our better judgement of things.

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Higgins cites the IMF and other experts on Greece's debt being unsustainable. He includes a long discussion with Charles Dallara who negotiated in the Brady Plan restructurings for Latin American debt, and for the European banks in 2010-2012 with the EU. Dallara says the issue has become politicized with national parliaments involved making it difficult to tackle the issue of debt reduction. Dallara points out that the Brady plan restructurings were possible because national parliaments were not involved.

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Martin Feldstein says China is gaining control of three problems it faces of shrinking export markets, the effects from a large stimulus in response to the 2008 financial crisis, and inflation especially high real estate prices. The economy is shifting to higher role for services and less dependence on exports under the new five year plan. The real estate prices are levelling off after steep increases. And inflation is under control. New investment will go into infrastucture needs such as power development and low income housing. As the economic problems are being tackled, the political problems remain. China faces an aging population under its one child policy, and it will have to support an increasing number of retired people in the future. Inequality and corruption are two problems that continue to grow and present challenges to the new leadership taking over in 2013.

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Gikas Hardouvelis was finance minister during a crucial period of impementation of the 2012 bailout program for Greece from June 2013 to Jan. 2015. Here he outlines the mistakes he sees made by the IMF in not agreeing to the 7.2 billion payment to Greece in 2014, 4% of Greece GDP, with one third of that not a loan. At the fifth review of the 2012 bailout the EU commissioner for economic affiars, Pierre Muscovici , said Greece had completed its requirements and the 7.2 billion euro funding should be released. Yet he says the IMF to preserve leverage over a future Syriza administration in the 2015 elections decided to hold back. This made it harder for the Samaras administration to tell voters that it had completed the program a year earlier, and the lack of the funds hurt the Samaras administration as it erased signs of growth that had appeared in early 2014. Following this error he points to 4 mistakes made by the Syriza Tsipras government. The first was that it was bitterly opposed to the lenders (IMF, EU and ECB) and failed to focus on the economy. Hardouvelis points out that the maturity of the debt of 16.5 years and low interest rates meant that it was not the immediate issue facing Greece, and he calls it very manageable. This was not to say that it was important but with creditors worried about moral hazard, other issues could be taken up first. Another mistake was to allow a loss of liquidity to the private sector so that prospects of growth were erased. The new finance minister acted as if the $7.2 billion infusion was not important and let payments be delayed. Tsipras and Varoufakis let the uncertainty increase in the private sector, and let the economy decline all the way to the closing of the banks. How costly was this is evident from the IMF's own paper in Juy 2015 and the 3 page update of July 14, 2015, on the Greek debt, showing it cost Greece a total of 60 billion euros in additional financing needed and an additional 25 billion euros for the shock from the closing of the banking system. That 3 page IMF paper shows that within the space of one year a shocking amount of damage was done by Syriza left government- it says Greece went from being on track for reaching Debt to GDP of 105% by 2022 under the Samaras-Hardouvelis administration in July 2014, to 142% by June 2015, and with the closing of the banking system to 170% by July 2015. Some of this would have come from the IMF's own withholding of the 7.2 billion euro payment to the Samaras government. ...

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China's state run companies constitute about 45% of China's economy, according to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Commission. This includes banks such as Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Petrochemical Corp. or Sinopec Group, and China Mobile.

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ECB president Mario Draghi tells a newsconference on April 14, 2015, that the bond buying program is "proceeding smoothly." He said that he does not see scarcity in the bond market. The ECB plans to continue its purchases of government bonds and other debt at a rate of 60 billion euros a month through September 2016. He said the program of very low interest rates for a very long time "is fertile terrain for financial instability imbalances," but he did not see evidence of systemically large financial imbalances at this time. The ECB approach would be to tackle the risks by using its power as a bank regulator, not by changing monetary policy, said Draghi. He was optimistic about the initial results, saying "more accomodative monetary policy is being translated into better credit conditions, which is something we have not seen before." The euro is down to $1.06 and low oil prices have helped improve economic conditions, as well as ongoing structural reforms pushed by the EU and ECB. Draghi's forecast for economic growth in the eurozone is now up from 1% to 1.5% for 2015....

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Professors Cole and Ohanian of the University of Pennsylvania and UCLA, provide a new interpretation of FDR's economic policies during the period 1932-1934 and the period 1937-1941, based on their research. This suggests conclusions different from that of Obama advisor, Christina Romer, and Fed chairman, Bernanke about that period. Changes in economic policies under the Roosevelt administration that helped bring wages in line with productivity, reduced strikes, and gradual elimination of the undistributed profits tax, improved incentives for business investment during 1938-1939. Cole and Ohanian, say that by 1941, before the U.S. entered the war, close to half of the increase in nonmilitary hours worked in the U.S. between 1939 and the peak of the war, had already been achieved. And this was primarily the result of the changes in FDR's policies in 1938. They say a similiar opportunity is presented by the proposals of the Bowles-Simpson commission on deficit reduction, by lowering the corporate income tax through simplification of the tax code and reducing or eliminating most tax expenditures. Improving the incentives for business to hire and invest through this and other steps is likely to do more for the economy than the steps tried so far since 2009....

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Prof. Scott Kennedy of the Research center for Chinese Politics and Business, voices concerns of experts who think that the $585 billion stimulus and the doubling of lending this year, increase in exports by a third last month, all point to an economy that is expanding too quickly. Kennedy says that no one defies economic laws, that eventually endless growth can get get you in trouble. The concern is whether the overexpansion of credit and the size of the stimulus may have led to overreaction in stimulus spending. People's Daily newspaper of China said that China's leaders are moving much faster than leaders of developed nations. But the flip side of this is that in the rush to increase spending there may be a lot of wasteful spending resulting in many bad loans a few years from now.

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The German government has taken notice of hate speech on social media and social bots. The Justice Ministry convened a task force on hate speech on internet. Justice Minister Heiko Maas promised legal action against social media like facebook and twitter if it violated laws of libel and inciting to violence. Chancellor Merkel is bringing in a data science expert Professor Simon Hegelich of the Technical University of Berlin for consultations in Dec. 2016. Only AfD of the main parties, with its anti-immigration stance, has not come out in favor of not using social bots or paid trolls in the 2017 elections. Hegelich in talk with DW.com says it is hard to legislate on this because the whole phenomenon has not been fully understood. Article 5 of the Constitution provides for free speech. Hegelich also says the state of technology moves faster than legislation, and being international sites like facebook, twitter and others pose additional issues. He does not say laws cannot be helpful but that its not clear how best to do this. Thomas Jarzombek is a CDU member of parliament and digital media expert. He says social bots are more likely controlled by foreign countries, and fake news sites are more of a domestic problem. Making this worse is the incentive for unemployed journalists to do blogging of the crude and aggressive type to make more money. Jarzombek sees the need for the press to do more in its role for the democratic process to function properly, by functioning in the role of "enlightenment" and "awareness."  Jenna Behrends, a law student and CDU local politician for Berlin-Mitte, says it is necessary for good bots to be used to fight bad bots, in an article in Der Spiegel. Major mainstream media would then have to launch social bots themselves to fulfill their role of providing the public with correct and fair information free of excessive bias and distortion of the bad bots. One example of this is shown explicitly here of German chancellor Merkel's picture with the words " Guilty of betraying the people," with links to "Drain the swamp," and "Brexit." A more complex question is one of how to let people vent out frustration about the mainstream media itself being biased in favor of the established views and not doing enough or giving enough space to reflect alternative views, so that these can be debated without inflammatory language and deliberate distortion. A whole range of tools and modifications of behaviour may be necessary ahead of next years elections in France and Germany, now that the phenomenon is better understood following a vote in the Anglo-Saxon countries.   ...

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Combined percentage of homes in foreclosure and delinquent homeowners is 14.41% or about 1 in 7 mortgage holders.

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According to data from the American Mortgage Banker's Associationone in seven households are behind on their payments on mortgages or in foreclosure. This data shows that 14.4% of first lien mortgages on one to four family homes in the third quarter were 30 days or more overdue or in foreclosure process. This results in about 7.5 millin households at risk of losing homes. This percentage was 10% in 2008 and 7.3% in 2007.

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Mr Mussa's forecast at the peterson Institute of Intenational Economics shows world economic growth moderating from 4.75% this year to 4.25% in 2008 and 5.25% in 2006 with continued global economic expansion. The IMF is expected to forecast USA economic growth slowing to 1.9% in 2008 from 2.8% in an earlier forecast. The IMF global forecast of 4.8% for 2008 is in line with Mr. Mussa's estimate. The IMF trimmed eurozone growth to 2.1% in 2008 from 2.5% . One reason given for the resilience in USA growth is the boost to US exports from the weakening dollar and the increase in worldwide demand, so by these estimates the housing crisis will be offset by general global economic growth and factors such as exports and its impact will be softened. Also eurozone growth will continue especially Germany, France and eastern europe whereas Britain and Spain may see some fallout from housing bubbles. Overall growth in India, China, Middle Eastern countries, and other parts of the world, including Germany, and export led growth in the USA will keep the global economy in decent shape. general increase in exports as world demand contimues to grow....

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David Wessel says there are three hypotheses about the slow recovery with growth of 1.9% in the first quarter of 2011, estimated growth of 1.4-1.5% for the second quarter. The first, is that this is transitory, with gas prices, Japan's tsunami disrupting supply chians, and Europe's poor handling of the financial crisis. This he scores as wishful thinking. The second, that the stimulus was too small, the need for a second stimulus, or the related hypothesis of the large uncertainty hanging over business, including the debt ceiling negotiations, deficit etc. This he scores as more convincing, but one is not sure different policies would have led to a different situation. The third hypothesis is that the underlying diagnosis of the economy itself was hopeful but flawed and wrong. Hope about the housing market- which has been proved wrong. The same for exports, or consumer spending. Wessel cites Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhardt's new book on the afterperiod of financial crises and asset bubbles, with data going back to many historical periods showing that the periods following crises are difficult having protracted periods of slow or marginal economic growth....

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The situation in Guangdong province in 2012, with older factories unable to compete with the rising wages, stricter environmental enforcement, and lower export demand. Many Taiwanese manufacturers are closing factories. The growth in Dongguan, a manufacturing hub in Guangdong, is estimated at 3.5% for the first three quarters of 2012, half the overall rate for Guangdong province. A researcher in a Chinese think tank says China's manufacturers are in a kind of "sandwich trap" with competition from Vietnam and India in lower wage production and competition from Germany and the U.S. in higher wage technology intensive products. This is especially true in 2012-2013, now that U.S. and German manufacturers have reduced costs and increased competitiveness.

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U.S. Federal Reserve chairwoman, Janet Yellen, says the Fed's promise to be "patient" before raising interest rates means it will hold off for 2 months to check economic conditions before taking action. This would put the decision off till June 2015. The Fed will look at a range of factors including inflation, says Yellen. Yellen's comments to the Senate Banking Committee on Feb. 24, 2015 were- "I don't want to set down any single criterion that's necessary for rate increases to occur. We will be considering a range of evidence that pertains to the inflation outlook." In testimony Yellen said she wanted to be "reasonably confident" that inflation will return to 2% before raising rates. The Fed's measure of inflation, Commerce Department's personal consumption expenditures price index is below the 2% inflation target of the Fed for 52 of the past 68 months, and for 34 consecutive months.

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Senators opposed to renomination of Bernanke to Fed chairman position include Boxer, Feingold, Sanders, and a non-commital Reid. Growing crtiticism of the Fed and the cozy relationship between Bernanke, Geithner, Summers, and the bankers. The role of Bernanke in the Greenspan years of low interest rates and high liquidity both in Congress and in the country as the national mood changes.