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Ashes Test at MCG 2025 Day One shocker -20 wickets fall on this cricket pitch in Melbourne, Australia. England bowl out Australia for 152 then get bowled out themselves for 110- in just 1 day. Before the coin was tossed there was dismay at England's performance. Now there are questions about how many of the 94,000 fans at the MCG cricket grounds will stay for the rest of the match. The series is settled. Not since 1901 have so many wickets fallen on 1 day in the Ashes at the MCG cricket grounds.

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Japan's baseball pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto is signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers for $325 million over 12 year contract. Yamamoto was Japan's best pitcher for 3 years. He joins Shohei Ohtani another Japanese baseball player who also joined the LA Dodgers. 

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Claire Cain Miller of NYT looks at how Americans feel about the economy. It is shaped mainly by the cost of living crisis. Over half of Americans feel housing is unaffordable. And most Americans see prices as way too high at retail stores, for food and clothing, and do not see that president Biden has helped increase their wages through his support for the labor movement. Another aspect of this is that even though Biden has brought changes in wages and reduced inflation to 2-3% from 10%, the American people are feeling the effects of three decades of neglect of infrastructure, public services, and manufacturing under prevailing free market economic theory; that caused the disruption in living standards with the 2009 financial crisis, and the shift of manufacturing to China that devastated whole communities.

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The U.S. economy added an average of 284,000 jobs each month for October, November and December 2015. In December 292,000 new jobs were added. The monthly rate for the first 9 months was an average of 200,000 jobs. This shows the pace accelerated by Dec. 2015. In all 2.65 million jobs were added in 2015. The unemployment rate is now at 5%. Yet the wage gains are modest, at 2.5% for 2015. The average hourly wage is at $25.24. The labor force participation rate has declined for many years and stands at 62.6%, as many people are too discouraged to look for work- this is the share of Americans having jobs or looking for work. Experts say this is like a huge shadow work force existing on the side that could explain the lack of wage gains, as the official figure of unemployment is not reflecting the discouraged workers who have dropped out of the labor market.

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U.S. Federal Reserve officials are likely to take a wait and see approach based on incoming data following a likely rate increase in December 2018. Jerome Powell, Fed chairman and other members are likely to want to see how the economy is holding up from moves already taken. Under this evolving data dependent approach the Fed will step back from the predictable path of quarterly rate increases of the last 2 years.

Inflation has softened in the last quarter of 2018 with falling oil prices, reducing the Fed's sense of urgency. The dents in the stock market have not changed the situation of low unemployment and strong growth.

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The Labor Department's rate of labor underutilization is 14.8% of thepotential workforce, much higher than the 8.1% unemployment rate. Which means that a lot of workers are not able to make the fullest use of their skills. If unemployment stays high for a very long period some workers lose their skills and become less employable. THat could leave the floor for unemployment at amuch higher level. Something like this is happening now and stay with us as the unemployment rate grows and the underutilization of labor rate with it. Physiscists call it "hysteresis"., a kind of laggard impact of some sustained force. An example is if you squeeze a nerf ball for so long that it doesn't bounce back when you release it. Higher underutilization of labor which could hit 20% by 2010 at the rate at which job losses are ocurring of half a million a month, would mean pressure on wages and fears of deflation, lower tax revenues and fears of persistent deficits, less cash to invest and companies having less capital to invest leading to lower earnings. And falling behind the curve is what Krugman fears could be happening now, even with the large stimulus and budget of the new President, because of a series of problems ocurring at the same time and reinforcing each other. And the efforts of the government still not large or effective to meet the scale of the challenge. See the link to this. ...

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During the Battle of Britain Winston Churchill said on August 20, 1940, about the pilots in British skies from the Royal Air Force- "never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." Today as US, Europe, India and the nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America face the challenges of the coronavirus, climate change, and social divisions one could say this about the Cistercians in these abbeys in Europe about their message of self sufficiency, letting in sunlight into our lives, about their embrace of science and technology, about simplicity and concentration as ways to good mental health and opening the way to a better future. The Abbey at Fontenay near Dijon, a short train ride from the French capital, is the oldest and most complete of the Cistercian Abbeys. Their voices speak to us across the centuries. As Fesson points out the idea of self sufficiency is about returning industrial production home, about food sourced in the local region. The idea of sunlight in Cistercian architecture is about letting in Christ's- or the Buddha's or Brahman's- -light into our lives. The idea of simplicity and concentration is about lives that restore the spirit, bring peace into our lives. "For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us." (Ephesians, 2, 13). And in the Bhagavad Gita- "The Yogi, freed from taint of good and evil, constantly engaging the mind thus with passions quieted, with ease attains the infinite bliss of contact with Brahman."     ...

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The recovery effort in Japan following the tsunami has increased to $300 billion with the cost of construction doubling over 10 years. Half a million people were displaced and the Fukushima nuclear reactor in meltdown. Many people have not returned. At the time of the disaster half of the people affected by tsunami in the northeastern Tohoku region were over 65. Population is now down by 6% as people move to large cities. The effort was meant to rebuild homes, damaged infrastructure, and to revive agriculture, fishing and tourism. It has cost $2400 for every person living in Japan.

The tsunami crashed into 1000 miles of northern coastline, putting entire communities 6 miles inland under water.

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A logistical feat with 200,000 tents 67,000 streetlights, half a million parking spaces, Indian spiritual festival Kumbh Mela 2025. A tent city was built over 15 square miles to accomodate people 4 million to 80 million on festival days. It took months to build and will take 2 months to dismantle  before monsoon rains. Where is this festival? In Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh state, India, in prayers to Lord Shiva on the Ganges river.

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Women doing well in US governors races include Kathy Hochul of New York, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Maura Healey of Massachusetts. New faces include Wes Moore in the governors race in Maryland.

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A former Comptroller of the Currency Ludwig thinks the Citigroup rescue plan is the way to go, to isolate and separate the troubled assets and deal with them. Better still he says a holding structure like the Resolution Trust Corporation which can be used to isolate and separate the troubled assets and deal with them separately, so that management resources can be used not to worry about those assets but to get back to running their business, recovery and lending for the economy to grow.

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Who knew that Prince William had actually slept on the streets of London in 2009 to understand homelessness and his passion to end homelessness through affordable housing. There is also the passion of the King Charles to do this another way by building aesthetic, friendly housing at lower cost so that it serves the needs of ordinary people. Around this one idea the deputy prime minister Angela Rayner and  William, Charles have found a new relationship. Charles chats freely with Angela, says the Times in this report and the two have developed shared concerns, as it is Rayner who as housing minister that has to come up with the 1.5 million new houses to be built under Labour's and PM Starmer's promise to Britain. It is agood sign for the new Britain that the royal family can come together with someone who has had her own struggles as Angela Rayner has had in her earlier years with an early pregnancy, as the three people come together to fight homelessness in our communities. ...

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On the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti here is the podcast of President Franklin Roosevelt's Secretary of State Cordell Hull's speech on July 23, 1942 that you can hear from the US National Archives.  Roosevelt in his letter of reply to Mohandas Gandhi's letter on July 1, 1942 one month before the launch of the Quit India Movement asking for help to achieve Hind Swaraj said- "I am enclosing a copy of an address of July 23 by the Secretary of State, made with my complete approval, which illustrates the attitude of this government.

Roosevelt wrote back to Gandhi that "I am sure that you will agree that the United States has consistently striven for an supported policies of fair dealing, of fair play, and of all related principles looking towards the creation of harmonious relations between nations."

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Brooks on the Obama inaugural address- what it said about America's progressive character and the need for collective action, and what it left out about the individual initiative and innovation that made America what it is today.

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The National Maritime Heritage Complex as a World Heritage Site is shown here in the Indian Express, as prime minister Modi opens  the maritime site of the Indus civilization that existed in India in the period 2500 BC to 1500 BC. It was discovered in 1921 by Sir Hubert Marshall in the region that extends from Gujarat to Sind and the Punjab settled by the Harappan people. The four oldest civilizations are the Mesopatamian, Egyptian, Harappan Indus, and Chinese civilization, which makes this an important part of human history and cultural development.

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The asset bubble may be due to the huge infusion of liquidity in the economy. This inflates the value of financial wealth in stocks relative to real wealth in goods and services and businesses that produce them. Industrial production is down but stock prices are up. This leads to distortions that can show up elsewhere such as in the currency markets with depreciating dollar or in the stimulus being withdrawn too early.

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Now that finance ministries around the world are trying to save their economies with trillions of dollars in aid packages their finances are stretched to the limit. The so called digital tax is not really a digital tax. And efforts to recover lost tax revenues in Europe are being opposed by the U.S. because tax levies by France go only to France, not the U.S. The U.S. Treasury or U.S. government or the American people would not turn down tax revenues that it normally gets when its finances are stretched to the limit with trillions of dollars for cornavirus leaving little for crumbling infrastructure and essential public health services, other services that determine quality of life in America.  This Washington Post report shows that there is greater awareness that the right approach is to pay taxes based on where revenues are located and by the number of users in each country. But the problem goes deeper than that. The coronavirus changes the entire perspective and take this back to roots. Companies pay taxes because it is the right thing to do. In Japan Panasonic's founder Matsushita felt that it was a national duty to pay its share of taxes as it too was sharing in the benefits provided by society- in the health, sanitation, education and transportation, parks, and hundreds of services provided by government. Once this is seen as dispensable or somebody else's problem, then these very services and infrastructure can be starved of capital. Coronavirus changes this perspective. People crave for outdoor spaces- who is going to maintain them and set up new spaces. People crave for not moving around on crumbling bridges, roads, subway systems. Who is going to provide them? People crave for good schools, community colleges. Who is going to provide them? People crave for good sanitation systems? Who is going to provide them? People crave for good public health systems. Who is going to provide them? Its just good common sense. Is it possible for common sense to be missing? It is- just ask people today, and it is good common sense to have good critical infrastructure such as sanitation, medicine, public health, and local manufacturing of medicine, yet economic experts and economic theories thought it made sense not to do this.  ...

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Modi's visit to Moscow and Vienna could be symbolic in setting the stage for a Ukraine peace settlement. Here is why- Austria was occupied by the western powers and the Soviets in 1945. By 1955 Austria sought to become a free country free of occupation zones. It offered its neutrality and asked Indian prime minister Nehru to convey this to the Soviets. Nehru was seen by Austrians as the only person in international affairs who could talk to the Soviets about Austrian neutrality to end occupation. Nehru and his ambassador to Moscow Menon met with Austrian officials. When Russian foreign minister Molotov was approached on the Austrian neutrality proposal by Menon in Moscow Molotov said such neturality could be revoked, Russia needed better assurances. It was the death of Stalin in 1953 that led to the Russian position changing and relaxing its occupation of Austria. Bruno Kreisky, Austrian prime minister, says in his memoirs that the name of Nehru will forever be connected to Austrian neutrality and independence. This led to an independent Austria being formed in July 1955. As Austria accepted entry into the European Union in 1995 and identified with US and EU this part of its history is now forgotten. So it is again that Indira Gandhi in 1983 and Narendra Modi in 2024 visit Vienna. In 2024 Modi can be seen as the only person in international affairs who could take the message of a peace settlement in Ukraine to Russia. For this reason and because of India's call that the war cannot be settled on the battlefield that Modi is stepping into the role that Nehru played in 1955, even though this role is in its early stages. This shows the relationship with Russia has meaning for Europe even as India sees itself as a partner of the US and Europe and Japan. As in 1953 the results are not there, yet as in 1953 this and a changing world situation could finally lead toa breakthrough in this war in Ukraine.   ...

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RFK Jr's views on reducing the overuse of pesticides and agricuture that harms human health are positives. Will the RFK noimnation for Secretary of Health and Human Services make America's health and well being worse? WSJ and business thinks it will if it makes people skeptical of all vaccines. Covid vaccine being made compulsory brought RFK Jr. to public attention as some states closed too soon for too long prolonging the economic effects and not leaving an option for some groups to not get vaccinated. WSJ points out that RFK skepticism for all vaccinations is dangerous. It points to polio vaccine, and to the local areas where measles has increased where vaccination was turned down. Other risks are in betting so much on organic food that the benefits of the green revolution of adequate food supplies from the use of fertilizer for output increases per acre are lost. Sri Lanka is an example of a nation unable to feed itself as it bet everything on organic overnight. ...

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With auto sales collapsing, initially for trucks and large vehicles in the face of gas prices at $4-5 per gallon, and the shift to fuel efficient small cars that the Detroit automakers failed to have in their product lineup, and in October 2008 with the credit crisis choking off credit to even credit worthy customers, GM is running out of cash for operations. The aftermath of the Lehman bankruptcy is to choke off credit to car buyers and to practically all companies. Sales declined 45% for GM in October over the prior year October. GM reported that it burned through $6.9 billion in cash in third quarter 2008, and ended the period with just $16.2 billion in cash reserves. Today GM made a honest assessment, saying "it will fall significantly short" of the cash needed to run its business in the first half of 2009. "GM's estimated liquidity during the remainder of 2008 will approach the minimal level necesssary to operate its business." Ford Motor said it burned through $7.7 billion in cash in the third quarter, leaving it with $18.9 billion at the end of Septemer, as its sales in October declined by over 30%. Ford's automotive business lost $2.7 billion in the third quarter....