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Thomas Fuller of the NYT cites Thai historian Nidhi Eoseewong about the social transformation taking place in Thailand and the emergence of farmers in the northeast as part of the middle class. This change is a result of Asia's rapid economic growth and brings with it new tensions in the social and political fabric of the country. Suthep Thangsuban, a leader of the Democrat Party, is leading protests in Nov. 2013. Because the northeast Thailand voters form about one third of the vote, the older established Democratic Party- allied to the middle class in Bangkok- has failed to win elections since 1992. The established older middle class wants to see less electoral participation that diminishes its role and is pushing for a Senate with half of the members appointed by civil servants and judges. The party of Thaksin Shinawatra and his sister, the current prime minister, appeals to the northeastern voters who want greater representation. These issues are behind the protests in Bangkok and are not likely to be resolved anytime soon as it will take time to integrate the northeast....

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Andrew Ross Sorkin points out that investors are sitting on their hands and money is moving out of the stock market. About $171 billion has moved out of mutual funds over the last year, according to the Investment Company Institute. About $208 billion has gone into the bond market in the same period. There are now fewer long term investors and the market is dominated by professionals which increases the volatility. There is a lack of confidence in the economy, the same reason that businesses in the U.S. are sitting on $2 trillion in cash that could be invested, and for investors the feeling that the market is rigged to favor insiders. The Financial Literacy Group surveyed 878 students at 18 high schools in 11 states in the U.S. It found that three fourths of the students agreed with the statement: "The stock market is rigged mostly to benefit greedy Wall Street bankers."

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Jason Zweig cites the St. Petersburg Paradox in questioning how much someone should pay for a bet on Facebook shares at the high valuation set for this inital public offering. This riddle asks how much would one pay for playing a game in which one gets $1 for winning the first toss of a coin and the game ends, or $2 if the coin comes up heads the second time, or $4 the next time, $8 next and keep doing this , the payment doubles each time. The point is that the payoff is infinite because at each toss the probability is 50% and 12.5% for the next toss, and one could get to the 30th toss or the 60th toss, with payoff in hundreds of millions. People also could be out of the game when the heads come up and not see the later supposed gains. Because of this experts say the most people should pay for playing is $20. The Facebook offering has infinite potential of this sort, but the reality is that for businesses of this type one can only see a couple of years ahead in terms of growth, with large uncertainties ahead about growth beyond that point. Charles Lee, professor of accounting at Stanford Business School, and former head of equity research at Barclays Global Investors, says its hard to see further than two or three years for this type of company. Another problem is pointed out by Prof. Ritter of the University of Florida. He says the valuation is so high today that even if Facebook followed Google's growth and had a total market value of $190 billon that Google has today in 10 years, the annual return would be around 6.8%....

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 Mayor Reiter of Munich, Christian Kern, head of Austrian railway OBB, say here that the actions of Viktor Orban of Hungary gave the German government very little time, only a few hours, to act. The first motivation was to act in a humanitarian way, which is what happened. The German government had asked Orban to register and handle immigrants in an orderly way. In the end with the failure of Orban to do this, the immigrants who would have come north anyway, streamed into Germany and Austria in buses and trains. Clearly Hungary and Germany could have handled this better. The German public provided support with a large number of volunteers helping. One German minister is cited here as saying that if Orban wanted to build a fence he should have done it in a quiet way, as there are fences between Bulgaria and Turkey, and Turkey and Greece and it has not bothered anyone.

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Indian foreign minister Jaishankar describes the highly eccentric situation of lack of US India close economic and defense cooperation for over 50 years, when the natural flow of cooperation one would expect between the land of Washington and Lincoln and the land of Vivekananda and Gandhi was interrupted. The current form of cooperation has existed for about 14 years and accelerated after prime minister Modi was elected in 2016. This was a turning point in the US India relationship and in India US economic partnership. After president Trump was elected Mr. Modi and Mr. Trump held a huge public gathering in stadiums at Houston and Ahmedabad, in a way that was never seen before between an Asian country and America. What changed? For one thing India had a great weight lifted from its shoulders with the removal of the erratic Nehru policies of post independence India of forming a non aligned bloc with countries like Egypt and Yugoslavia. These were policies that had no connection to India and its history as the civilization where the East has its roots in Vedanta and Buddhism. It also resulted in alienating the Dwight Eisenhower administration and administrations that followed after John F. Kennedy, as the Cold War intensified and most of Eastern Europe came under Soviet domination. India never gauged the effect this had on America after the Berlin crisis in 1948, the Hungarian revolution of 1956 and similar uprisings in East Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Britain was no help even with the British Commonwealth, as the British perpetuated the idea that India was too divided to make up one country, having failed to grasp India's ancient civilization and  culture, and having built the Empire in India by using the division in the country. Mohandas Gandhi described this in Hind Swaraj in 1910 and told Indians that it was they who had invited the British into India, with rulers using military garrisons of the British commercial East India Company for help in their internal wars. Americans still unfamiliar with India till after 2000 simply accepted British colonial ideas about India. The new administrations in the US, the Trump and Biden administration, and the Modi administration in India have shaken this up and changed perceptions all around. Biden recently during the Modi visit to Washington DC said India US relations as he sees it would be "the closest on earth." So that today we have an ancient civilization roused to its depths in its youth for modernization, that extends from India to Indonesia all the way to Japan rooted in India's ancient civilization of Vedanta and Buddhism, with a population of about 2 billion people. That faces the US on its Pacific coast, united in its determination to build a new and common future with ideas of parliamentary democracy, participation of the people, and of modernization with science and technology, contributing to the betterment of all peoples. ...

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David Brooks says the Paul Ryan Budget proposal is a bold step forward that is badly needed in this debate on health care, even though it has some grave weaknesses which need to be corrected. It is a bold step forward because he says Democrats say they want no middle class tax increases, or are not willing to say what kinds of tax increases they support, and yet they believe the Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security programs are worth preserving. This is'nt based on reality. He cites the weaknesses, beginning with the one discussed in David Leonhardt's column in the New York Times on April 7, 2011. Too many Americans pay too little into Medicare taxes and expect to collect several hundred thousand dollars more in Medicare benefits. The example given in Leonhardt's column is from a study that shows 56 year olds with average earnings pay about $140,000 in dedicated Medicare taxes over a lifetime, and then go on to collect $430,000 in benefits. Middle class and affluent boomers can't get off paying their share like everybody else. Its just the right way for their children and the nation's children. Ryan's plan excludes older people reaching retirement in ten years. The other major weakness is that the cuts are too deep. Things like the Pell grants which Ryan proposes to cut back to 2008 levels need to be preserved, and more money has to go into science, education and research and early childhood education for the U.S. to be competitive with China and India. The Ryan proposal places cuts that would be required so that tax revenues need to be at 18% of GDP. The number where a larger consensus exists is for tax revenues at 20% of GDP (also supported by business and the Wall Street Journal's editorial columns). This would preserve programs that are most productive for the economic future of the U.S. Ryan's proposal lets the hope for reducing costs of medical care rest entirely on future retirees deciding how much medical care (tests, procedures etc) they consume through larger cost sharing. Yet a structure and framework is needed to manage these costs effectively, and some combination of incentives to retirees to control costs and an effective structural framework is needed. ...

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This editorial in the Hindu- after encouraging news from Moody's and the World Bank on India's economic future- says that the Modi government should not be distracted by the upcoming elections as it focusses on the task ahead. After a gap of 14 years Moody's raises India's credit rating one notch. Moody's cites steps taken by the Modi government as creating a better environment for future growth- the implementation of GST goods and service tax, efforts to clear some of the bad loans in the banking system so that capital can be freed up for infrastructure investment, and reducing bureaucratic hurdles for clearance of projects. Moody's cites the high public debt burden as a constraint for growth. General government debt is at 68% of GDP in 2016, higher than the 44% median for economies in this range. On the plus side the better targeting of welfare measures to help the poor including steps in the banking field, bringing more businesses into the formal sector to improve tax revenues, and the large pool of private savings, are cited by Moody's. Critical is timely implementation in the future. As the discussion in the media on bullet trains and other new infrastructure shows, there is not enough momentum for stretch goals as China has done over the last 2 decades.   ...

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The S&P 500 was down 41.9% in 1931 and 38.6% in 1937. In 1974 it was down 29.7%. What was it down by in 2008. In 2008 the S&P 500 was down 45.5%. This matched what happened in the Great Depression and we are not through 2008 yet as one can see from what is happening to the share price of Citigroup, other banks and the Detroit automakers. It a hell of a year and the errors during the Great Depression were different but there are errors in policy and in managing the crisis in this one also. For example the announcement by the Treasury Secretary Paulson that none of the money in the bailout will go towards buying mortgage securites may have led to renewed doubts about Citigroup's portfolio of toxic assets. The failure of the banks and other companies to get the uptick rule reinstated also ends up causing a run on the stocks of faltering companies exaggerating the impact of any doubts and creating a need for government help. Whern the history of this is rewritten the management of this crisis and the policy making will also be faulted in amanner that the Great Deprtession policies were faulted but for different reasons. The failure to address foreclosures early in 2008 as Martin Feldstein repeatedly urged in the WSJ since the early months of 2008 and continues to do so, and as other policymakers like Sheila Bair at FDIC have urged repeatedly, will be one of these major errors. Any failure to address the automakers cash funds crisis for operating expenses both with money and with the proper conditions could also go out of control and cause a major unemployment crisis in the midwest that could spread to the rest of the country. The NYT editorial took note of this on November 22, 2008, asking for funds however distasteful the behaviour of the automakers management may be. See this link. And public opinion could get the managemnt to resign or this could be a condition for signing onto the bridge loan from the government. In this particular issueof automakers Detroit automaker's management's serious errors will be written about years from now which combined with any indecision or slippage on the part of awmakers could lead to the economy and unemployment spiralling out of control, because so much is happening at the same time. It comes at atime when the storm is shifting to the consumer side to credit card and other consumer loans even as it is continuing to take its toll on the housing sector in the USA and on exports and the auto industry and other sectors around the world. ...

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As expected Iran boycotts the talks in Doha of 16 major oil producers seeking to stabilize oil prices. Saudi Arabia, Russia, Qatar and Venezuela sought to stabilize oil production at January levels to support oil prices. Wth the Saudia and Russia producing all out, Iran seeks to do the same, effectively closing the door on any agreement to freeze production levels.

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The OPEC meeting in Doha in April 2016 fails to lead to an agreement to freeze oil production at Jan. 2016 levels, with Iran staying away from the meeting.

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Full time workers in Sweden have the right to take leave for 6 months to do something they want to do, including starting a new business. This includes taking care of a relative or study leave. Workers can come back after 6 months to resume their old job. Employers cannot say no except for special reasons.  This leave has the support of employers, unions and the government. In Sweden's unique culture which emphasizes work-life balance workers taking 6 month leave of absence can get back to their old jobs smoothly.  In Sweden it is very hard to fire an employee who is permanent. So that once an employee has permanent status there is very little incentive to leave to do something else. The 6 month leave option lets workers try out something different or start a business without incurring career risk in addition to financial risk. Workers are more comfortable venturing out when they know they can come back to their old job and are not risking their careers. This BBC report shows profiles several new business owners who took 6 month leave to start a new venture they were passionate about. The way this happens is that an employee first tries out an idea in his spare time while he works full time. When he is comfortable making the move he can take the 6 month leave to devote time to it full time. Experts say Sweden is the only country in the world to give this right to leave to start a new business. In 2017 175,000 people took this leave compared to 163,000 in 2007, according to Statistics Sweden. During this period registration of new companies shot up from 27,000 to 48,000. ...

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The former Surgeon General of the U.S., Vivek Murthy, has tackled issues such as the opioid crisis, obesity and poor health outcomes. In his new book "Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World," Murthy looks at the loneliness he says is pervasive in the new culture of iphones and social media that have perversely reduced not increased social connection and the feelings coming from good relationships and social concerns.  A 2020 Cigna survey shows 61% of American adults are lonely, up from 54% in the 2019 survey. It is not about having a lot of people around you, it is about feeling a genuine connection and the quality of relationships. Murthy finds this lack of genuine social concerns and social connection as fairly pervasive from his conversations with people all across the country. Normally it is felt in the fifties as life changes, and in the eighties with loss of mobility. Today the tech devices and what is called scoal media that appear to have increased communication have actually reduced the level of quality connections and interactions. Dr. Murthy suggests volunteering, and service in the community or larger communities worldwide as a way of breaking this. Capitalizing on informal day to day contacts, including with people one has not known before, is another way. This shifts the focus to the people around us and brings a new dimension and quality to our lives.  Saying hello often and smiling genuinely, says Murthy. Improving the  quality of time in day to relationships is another. This can also give us the confidence to connect with people on a regular basis.  ...

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Walmart comes out in favor of requiring employers to provide health insurance to all workers, a central feature of President Obama's effort to provide near universal coverage in the USA. As the country's largest private employer, employing 1.4 million Americans, this change is significant. In a letter to the President, Walmart CEO Mike Duke, joined by Andrew Stern of the Service Employees International Union, and John Podesta of the Center for American Progress, who also signed the letter, say they are for an employer mandate which is fair and broad in its coverage. Walmart had a couple of reasons for doing this. For one Walmart needed to join the negotiations, as the Senate Finance Committee is considering other proposals that are less favorable to Walmart than employer mandate. Already Walmart is covering 52% of its employees, and has improved health benefits in recent years in response to criticism of the company. The industry average is 45%, according to a 2008 Kaiser Foundation study, and some companies do not provide the health benefits that Walmart does, so this helps level the playing field by requiring all large companies to share the burden. Walmart wants to see effective cost controls to keep costs down, and Rahm Emmanuel, the President's chief of staff, assured Walmart that "cost control and employer mandate are heads and tails of the same coin." Under the plans considered by the Senate Finance Committee under Max Baucus, small businesses are exempted from the employer mandate. Republicans have opposed employer mandate. And the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has opposed it saying it would make companies lower wages and cut jobs. Walmart's shift has been gradual. From a company used to providing skimpy benefits, it has evolved as it improved benefits, and two years ago it joined the SEIU union to call for affordable health care for all Americans by 2012. It has Mr Dach as its governmental affairs vice president, and this is significant, as Dach is an advisor to Democratic party politicians....

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Economists are calling this a "wage-less" recovery in the U.S. With unemployment at 8.8%, wage pressures are weak. Average hourly earnings were flat in March 2011. The annualized growth of average hourly earnings for the last 5 months is 1%, according to Gluskin Sheff chief economist Rosenberg. After accounting for higher inflation, real wages are actually falling.

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Zhou Xiaochuan, is head of the People's Bank of China since 2002. For a long time Zhou has tried to convince party leaders in China to make financial sector changes. The new leadership of Jinping-Li Keqiang has now adopted most of the road map and priorities drawn up by Xiaochuan. The first is bank deposit insurance, which would especially protect small depositors and provide a basis for new private banks to compete with large state owned banks, creating competition in the financial sector. By supporting creation of privately owned banks impetus could be given to loans to the private sector to rebalance the economy away from state owned banks and state owned enterprises. This is a key goal in the road map drawn up by the think tank Development Research Center (DRC) which has the backing of premier Li Keqiang. Competition from new private banks would let banks compete to offer higher rates to depositors, another goal. In a September article for the Communist Party Seeking Truth magazine, Zhou pointed out the pressing need for " supporting private capital to set up private banks and guide them to position themselves in serving small and micro companies." These new companies especially in tech and information technology fields can be the new drivers for growth in the future as the burst of infrastructure building generated growth slows down. The one area Zhou faces resistance is his idea of opening up China to foreign capital inflows and outflows. Here critics,including younger economists, say this protected China in the Asian financial markets crisis of 1997, and would protect China in the event it faces outflows of the type that are happening in India in 2013 after the U.S. Fed's plan to withdraw from its quantitative easing. Xiaochuan sees the flow of foreign capital as another way for capital to flow to new private companies and balance away from the state owned enterprises, and for China's savers to be able to obtain more attractive returns. Zhou says his plan would include the option for China to reintroduce capial controls in a crisis. As China's debt to GDP ratio is set on a trajectory to approach the levels reached in Japan before its banking crisis there is greater awareness from party leaders about the need for prudence. Xiaochuan has worked with party leader Jinping's key economic advisor Liu He for years, and has the support of He and Jinping for introducing deposit insurance as a top priority. President Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang see the need for Xiaochuan's experience and foresight "as a talent who can be counted on," as the sense of importance of changing the economic structure has deepened in 2013. Mandatory retirement for Xiaochuan at 65 was set aside to give him a third five year term, and his road map long ignored by former premier Wen Biao, is now at the top of China's agenda. ...

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China Investment Corporation, China's sovereign wealth fund is expected to issue upto 28 billion in bonds to help recapitalize China's state owned banks. These banks face the prospect of increasing bad loans as a result of the hectic pace of bank lending in 2009-2010. Loans guaranteed by muncipal governments are estimated at 7.7 trillion yuan, or 17% of overall lending, about 50% of these loans face uncertainty in the event of falling housing prices, and 25% are bad loans. The recent IPO of Agricultural Bank of China raised funds, but the environment for raising money in this way does not look good, as information is spreading that these banks face large loan losses. The bonds from CIC would be picked up by state controlled companies. Yet these state controlled companies are engaging in the real estate speculation, as reported by David Barboza of the New York Times and Peter Coy of Business Week. In a down cycle things could get much worse as a state sovereign fund is selling bonds, state controlled companies would buy these bonds, and state controlled banks are expected to be recapitalized making a complete circle....

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A new report on American driving habits by Samantha Gross and Aaron Brady of Cambridge Energy Associates shows that finally the gasoline price increases are beginning to bite the consumer and American drivers are changing their habits. After increasing from about2.5 trillion miles of total vehicle miles travelled by Americans in 1998 to about 3.0 trillion miles in 2007 the last 6 months are showing a downward trend for the first time. In the late 1970's and early 1980's something similar happened with a deep recession, rising gasoline prices and improved fuel efficiency standards, during this period gasoline consumption declined by 12 % accordingt o CEA. What is different now? For one thing the environmental issues are a big factor now and they take a new meaning as developing countries like India China Brazil and Rusia as well as other countries with much larger numbers of people than the US and Europe are now part of the car buying and electricity using peoples of the world. Its impossible both for the environment and for resource supplies to meet the needs of billions of new people joining the global economy and western ways of living without doing something radically different. And he problem is immediate as China becomes the second largest car buying country and India is not far behind with an explosion in Nano sales expected in the next few years, and the huge demands on electricity in these countries meaning burning huge amounts of coal to generate this electricity and create global environmental problems. All this makes the 70's and early eighties period remotely relevant. We are looking at something hugely different and 21st century defining now as its clear fuel has to be conserved and resources shared between the western world and the developing world, and technology moved forward quickly to meet the needs of a new world of Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas all bundled into one both by the global ecoomy and the way business operates and by the needs of people everywhere. And the media and public perceptions may be just catching up to these changes which are already taking place on the lands and under the feet of millions of people around the world. Some clues to what might have happened. Americans spent 4.5% of their after tax income on transportation fuels in 1981 according to Global Insight, a forecasting firm, and this went down to 1.9% in 1998, and is back up to 4% now in 2008. In California and more affluent areas of the country where the incomes are higher and gasoline prices are higher over 4% is spent on transportation fuels, whereas in areas of Alabama and Mississippi in the poorest areas where gasoline is less expensive this is over 16% according to the New York Times interactive graphic. During this period 1998 to 2008 demand increased for gasoline, in terms of the number of miles driven went up by 25% from 2.5 trillion miles driven to 3.0 trillion miles driven, and the sales of large pickup trucks and SUV's soared to make them the largest number of vehicles sold each year. At 1.9% of after tax income nationally, transportation fuels were cheap and consumers reacted rationally by splurging on gasoline in the USA. As a sobering note to all this sign of improvement in conservation of fuel the miles driven are still at about 3.0 trillion miles the high reached last year 2007. It will take a lag of a couple of years before a changing fleet to smaller vehicles and more fuel efficient vehicles and better driving habits and conserving fuel habits to make itself felt in transportation fuel usage across the USA and this requires prices at least at these levels to make the change seen as necessary to meet global needs and global environment....

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Comedian and politician Beppe Grillo, from Genoa, who leads the Five Star Movement party. This party has increased its support from 4% in 2011 to about 18% in recent opinion polls. Grillo is a moderate liberal who has benefitted from the unpopularity of austerity measures taken by prime minister Mario Monti and the rapidly declining support for Berlusconi's People of Freedom party after recent coruption scandals. He has opposed traditional politics of established parties since 2005 when he pulled together people over social media and the internet. Support for political parties in Italy is rapidly fragmenting with Berlusconi's party dropping to 17% in polls and no party having significant support. In this situation business leaders support a continuation of the Mario Monti government beyond the April elections if no party gets a mandate from voters. Grillo says his movement is similiar to other movements that oppose the euro and austerity measures such as the Marie Le Pen movement in France. It is against this background that the Social Democrats in Germany have united behind Peer Steinbruck, a former finance minister, who has the best chance against Merkel in 2013 elections for chancellor in Germany. Most of the difficult and necessary actions that Merkel and the German public have supported are already taken- the changes in labor laws in Italy, France's 2013 budget that targets 3% deficit in 2013, efforts of Italy, France and Spain to improve competitiveness- and capital markets continue to provide vigilance in this direction, creating a situation where Merkel may have exhausted her effectiveness. This creates an opening for a change in policy in the eurozone that offers more German flexibility on stabilizing the eurozone and supporting the embattled governments of Monti in Italy and Rajoy in Spain facing popular protest and not enjoying the kind of support Monti says France has from Germany....

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Xi Jinping is said to have brought up the collapse of the Communist Party in Russia under Gorbachev in a closed door Dec. 2012 meeting of Communist Party officials in Guangdong province. A summary of comments obtained by the media shows Jinping bringing up the situation in Russia, where he said the "ideals and convictions wavered," the system suffered decay, the military and the party went in different directions, leading to collapse of the Communist party system. In Jinping's words it took only one word from Gorbachev for dissolution of the Communist Party, and nobody else came out with a different view. Jinping faces several challenges- tackling corruption in the party, making changes in the economy that move it in a different direction from the dominance of the state owned enterprises, improving the condition of people left out by the economic boom from unemployed students and migrant workers to people in rural areas.

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Katsuya Okada is elected leader of the Democratic Party of Japan in Jan 2015. He is from a prominent business family. His brother is CEO of Aeon, a supermarket chain in Japan, which was founded in 1758. Okada says he supports Abenomics, saying: "I have no intention of completely rejecting Abenomics. On the contrary, there are many areas where I'd like to tell him, 'Go for it. Step up the pace.' " Policies he backs are deregulation to improve productivity, and Abe's policies to increase worker wages. He also supports being better prepared for regional conflicts, and said the DPJ would study Abe plans for legislation to strengthen the role of Japan's defense forces. Okada's comments reflects the changing sentiment in Japan about Abenomics since Abe's win in the snap election, and winning credibility for his economic policies.