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This editorial Board opinion piece in the WSJ gives exceptional insights into major issues facing Germany, the cost of electricity generated from renewables, failure to meet climate change emissions targets set by the government, and the difficulty of forming a new coalition government with conflicting goals of the Greens vs the CDU and the FDP.  By one estimate it cost households and business about $125 billion extra in higher electricity bills for 2000-2015 to subsidize renewable energy from solar and wind. Utilities are required to buy renewable at above market rates, especially since the energy revolution called Energiewende was launched by chancellor Merkel in 2010. German electricity prices are about 36 cents per kilowatt hour compared to 13 cents in America. The 2011 decision following the Fukushima disaster to phase out nuclear power by 2022 made the effort to meet renewables targets of 40% by 2020 compared to 1990 -exceeding the 20% for the EU- even harder. Germany sees a 30% target for 2020 as reachable.   Even though renewables can generate 50% of required energy supplies, only 30% of the supplies are utilized as the renewables are generated mostly in the north of the country and there is a lack of transmission lines to bring it to the industrial south. The dirty secret says the WSJ editorial board for the renewable story in Germany is that a lot of coal is used in dirty coal plants to meet electricity needs when wind and solar energy are not available. Cheaper coal not natural gas is preferred for such generation as daytime peak use that recoups more expensive gas cost is managed with renewables. Leading to the situation that Germany generates only 9% of energy from natural gas compared to 30% in the U.S.. The further Germany has gone in renewables has also led to the paradox of increased dependence on coal. Getting to the new Jamaica coalition being planned between the CDU and the FDP and the Greens. The problem is that the Greens want to see the 20 most polluting coal plants closed, the CDU and the FDP are willing to close only ten coal polluting plants. The WSJ's opinion is that voters chose the AfD right wing party with 13% of the vote because of the platform promise to shut down Merkel's Energiewende policy.   ...

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Uber and Lyft, ride-hailing apps are adding to the traffic in downtown areas of major cities in the U.S. It is getting worse to the point where cities are looking for ways to ease the congestion in downtown areas of Chicago, San Francisco, New York, New fees are being enacted in these cities on Uber and Lyft, and regulators are also considering fees. The problem is that ride sharing apps customers prefer not to pool or share rides as the ride sharing apps said they would to prevent congestion. Another problem is that Uber and Lyft are actually pulling people away from buses, subways and walking creating new waves of congestion and poor utilization of public transportation designed to ease travel for most of the post war period. Worse they are not supporting healthy living because it is harder to walk on traffic congested streets and some people become lazy and just grab a ride rather than walk a short distance or walk to public transportation. Another issue is that an estimated 40% of the time the Uber and Lyft drivers in major cities cruise around for fares without passengers. San Francisco county officials have found in a study that over 60% of the slowdown of traffic speeds in San Francisco between 2010 and 2016 was due to the introduction of ride hailing apps. In Chicago, the policy director in the mayor's office says there is exponential growth in traffic congestion from these ride hailing apps.  A December report by the California Air Resources Board found that ride- hailing cars are driving with no passengers 39% of the time, and New York city estimates cruising at 41%. Mr. Schaller, a New York City official who has studied this issue says surveys in many cities show about 60% of riders in Uber and Lyft would have walked, biked or taken public transit or stayed home if a ride hail car was'nt available. More and more so called disruption by Silicon Valley in the interest of rapid and chaotic growth is looking like a bad thing, says this report in the WSJ, creating a whole new set of problems. What is not even understood here is the vast misallocation of resources, the billions of dollars that could have improved public transportation, bike paths and other means of getting around, improvements in cities downtowns to make them friendlier and with new park spaces with those dollars invested there instead of in ride hailing apps.   ...

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This story by Emmarie Huetteman describes the effort of three Republican women in the U.S. Senate who had the courage to listen to the different voices in their home state and use their informed judgement in deciding how to vote on a Republican healthcare bill or Affordable Care Act repeal effort. Especially when they heard that it would hurt people in their state, the elderly, low income and other vulnerable people without offering alternatives. Even when this meant resisting pressure from fellow Republicans. The senators are Capito of West Virginia, Collins of Maine, and Murkowski of Alaska. This is particularly significant at a time when too much polarization has led to paralysis in coming up with informed discussion and good solutions to problems. It is also significant that senators from the midwestern states such as Iowa- Mr Grassley, and Kansas- Mr. Moran, also joined the effort to listen first to people back home in their districts before making up their mind. 

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The first presidential debate with Clinton and Trump is moderated by Lester Holt. The debate included an exchange on Trump's tax returns, policing in inner cities, and national security. The debate was broadcast by all television stations and was watched by over 100 million viewers. Trump made three times the interruptions made by Clinton. The birther issue raised by Trump also came up, and was cited as a "hurtful lie" by Clinton as it persisted long after the birth certificate information was seen by the public. In one exchange Clinton told Trump when he referred to all the infrastructure that had not been built, that one of the reasons was he had not payed taxes.

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Dana Goldstein of the NYT looks at the big problem in education today- the failure to teach reading and writing skills to students in American schools. Goldstein cites two alarming statistics. About 40% of students who took the ACT writing exam in the high school class of 2016 lack the reading and writing skills to pass a college level composition class in English. 8th and 12th grade classes in the U.S. have 75% of the students lacking writing skills proficiency, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Of the 1204 comments to this article in the NYT, many of the 17 selected by NYT say the problem is that students lack reading skills. Other problems shown here are the handicaps created by technology, yes technology. Mobile phone use is common and this is done quickly with the least attention to write good sentences, little attention to punctuation, spelling or grammar. Half or incomplete sentences are easier to type on mobile, so a new generation grows up thinking that this is normal. As a result a whole generation of kids have not learned to read or write well, constructing sentences with limited vocabulary. Steve Jobs and Apple may say that iPads and iPhones, smartphones and other tech devices have advanced reading with the beautiful display technology screens, but this is not what is really happening. Google may say that its search helps people access good reading materials, and this too is not what is really happening.  Equally alarming is that there is no clear agreement on how to tackle this problem. The No Child Left Behind 2002 law set a program emphasizing reading and use of multiple choice questions to test reading skills. This was followed by the Common Core standards now implemented in schools for 6 years that shift the focus to writing. Yet the results are still the same, showing little progress. Goodman cites as examples of disagreement, the Writing Revolution project which focusses on grammar and other writing skills, and the Long Island Writing Project that focusses on students finding their own voice by freewriting. A student in the freewriting class which encourages finding your own voice, expresses her frustration by saying she doesn't hear a voice- what voice, she asks.  One of the problems is that teachers themselves lack writing skills. A look at 2400 teacher preparation programs shows little attention paid to teaching writing. The head of the Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University's Teachers College, says Common Core failed in implementation of massive teacher training, which is required to address the problem. As a result remediation programs are needed badly in colleges to fix literacy skills, when better teaching would have prevented the problem in the first place. Little understood or debated is that every generation has to learn about the country's democratic institutions, every generation has to make its own effort to gain civic literacy- it is not something that can be taken for granted or handed down from one generation to the next. Without reading and learning about how these institutions function, young people lack the skills for participating in our democracy and in the global economy. ...

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As Dr Harsh Vardhan, India's representative and Health Minister, takes on responsibilities as the Chairman of the Executive Board of the World Health Organization this can be said about this critical juncture.The WHO is going through soul searching and a reevaluation of how it has implemented the vision of its founders during the closing years of a world torn apart  by war in 1945, and actual founding in 1946.  At the UN conference in San Francisco in 1945, Dr. Szeming Sze of China, Dr. Geraldo da Paula Souza of Brazil and Karl Ewang of Norway, were keen to set up an international organization for cooperation on health. The Indian representative was Arcot Ramaswamy Mudaliar, a member of Winston Churchill's War Cabinet, who chaired the committee on economic and social problems. He was the president of the Economic and Social Council which called for an international health conference in Feb. 1946. It was at that conference on 19 June 1946 that the World Health Conference came into being. A native of Madras he then returned to Mysore as chief minister. The vision at the time for international cooperation on problems such as smallpox which killed 2 million people each year were quite different from the fast moving epidemics with international travel in 2020. Today 4.4 billion passengers traveled by air in 2018, according to International Travel Association, 100 times compared to less than 40 million in 1950, and about 10 times the 400 million when Nixon's visit opened up China in 1972. The world we live in is different and the World Health Organization needs to be redesigned for the 21st century. The entire process of how the WHO operates has to be rethought. Immediate steps include- 1. The appointment by Executive Board should be reinstated as this is more representative of the world population and the major centres of advanced public health, including the major countries. Throughout its life the WHO made appointments through the Executive Board not by election. The election in 2019 by 200 countries was actually not representative of the world population as it gave India, Brazil and other early founders at the 1945-46 conferences only 1 vote each with population of 1.2 billion and 210 million, the same as tiny countries Barbados population 385,000 and Laos 7 million. 2. Reassessment of the entire process in which nations are requested to give permission of teams from major countries in Europe, North America and Asia, major population centres, so that the 6-7 week delay between the U.S. request to China for a special team to go to Wuhan on January 6, 2020 and the permission granted Feb 16, a costly delay of 7 weeks which added millions of cases and hundreds of thousands of deaths. In a super fast moving pandemic with international sports stadiums and 4 billion air passengers spreading it like wild fire around the world, there is little room for error, every day counts. Never should this happen again, as Dr. Sze Szeming China's representative said once in 1945 we must learn from mistakes, as mistakes were made in the years before World War II that were costly for China, India, North and South America, Other Asia, Africa, large population centres. 3. As was the effort then in 1946 and the early years, the effort to keep the staffing positions of leadership in the World Health Organization should be kept far from politics. Very experienced and capable people are needed from major countries with long records of public health experience and committed to the huge task, as was the vision of the founders.     ...

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This editorial in the Economist looks at China's relationship with Russia. It says the Ukraine conflict and western sanctions have resulted in Russia moving closer to China. Yet the two countries have competing interests in central Asia, and different relations with India and Vietnam, in the Asian region. Russia is also wary of China copying designs of Sukhoi aircraft in sales to China of advanced military technology. The major oil and gas deal signed in 2014 provides Russia with a new outlet for oil and gas with the cooling of the relationship with Europe. Yet Russia has strong ties built with Germany over the entire post war period, and differences have emerged in U.S.- German relations. Germany's relationship with Russia- cooled by sanctions and German wariness over Russian intervention in Ukraine and Russian wariness over NATO close to its borders- spans 7 decades and is likely to remain strong in the long term. This comes from the shared sense of awareness of the terrible conflicts of an earlier period, just as it has for French-German relations, and from the strong efforts made by Germany to preserve the relationship and peace in Europe. Chinese president Xi's visit to Moscow on May 9, for celebrations of victory over Nazi Germany, will be followed by a visit May 10 by Chancellor Merkel of Germany. A factor in German-Russian relations is the close trade links, cultural exchanges, and history going back to the GDR where Chancellor Merkel is from, built up over many years, that are likely to set the long term future of relations. China's dominant partner relationship in the China- Russia relations does not bode well for the future of relations, compared to the equal partner relations with its European neighbor, Germany. In this different light Ukraine is a temporary pause, in German-Russian relations and peace in Europe, a situation which is in China's long term interest as it focusses on its economy and the next phase of development for a modernized economy. Especially as China continues to build on its own vital trade relations with Germany and the European Union, the latest example being Germany, other EU nations, and India, joining the China sponsored Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. ...

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The message from some Ivy League professors to students is "think for yourself."  The letter published by Princeton's James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, is from professors at Harvard, Yale and Princeton universities. Madison played a large role in the drafting of the U.S. Constitution and its First Amendment protecting free speech. By thinking for yourself one avoids getting caught up in a tide of conformism to whatever is popular at the moment, say the professors.

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One of the good things after the pandemic is that people are going to spend more time in their home countries instead of travelling overseas, says this report in the DW.com. World tourism has grown too quickly and too fast in the last two decades. Places everywhere are becoming extremely congested. I remember visits to Paris, to Notre Dame cathedral and its surroundings, in the eighties and nineties and compare them to two decades later with regret that it has changed for the worse. By 2010 everyplace looked different, transport, hotels, streets were so congested as to make trips less exciting and less fun to do.  The question posed here is whether having 3 million less people travelling around the world is such a bad thing? It says the tourism industry has grown so quickly and so fast that it poses a danger to the environment, to the quiet of neighborhoods and cities, driving a commodities culture. As this writer says it drives locals away from the cities they have lived in for generations, and robs those who stay of the quiet lives they have enjoyed. In fact once the cities experienced so much less pollution during gradual reopening, and streets had less traffic, a lot of people turned to use bicycles. Bicycle lanes were replacing car traffic lanes. A return to calmer living with enjoyment of one's own neighborhoods and cities, and travel within one's own country, is becoming an attractive alternative. People now remember that it was the huge amount of airline traffic that spread the pandemic from cities in Asia to cities in Europe, and cities in America. It also spread quickly through tourist destinations inside Asia and Africa, and Latin America. Even some of the early clusters in Germany, Italy and the U.S. had their origins in the the spread of globalized supply chains in China, Germany, and Italy for automobiles. Auto industry business people traveled to places in or near Wuhan, then to Bavaria, and on to northern Italy in the global supply chain for automobile manufacturing.  As new nations like China and India with billions of people are added to world tourism this changes everything in a way never imagined before. This pandemic gives one a pause to rethink whether it was a good idea in the first place to seek fulfilment by travel outside one's own country, without first exploring it and one's own neighborhoods in a quieter setting. We travel to new places seeking fulfillment. There comes a time when the tourism today has become so big that it is not sustainable, safe or economical anymore. A rethink and new habits make sense.     ...

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The South China Morning Post, SCMP, looks at China at the 40th year of the great economic experiment  that changed China. This started with the Deng reforms by the then Chinese leader that opened up the economy in 1978. As this report points out in 1978 Deng Xiaoping's efforts at loosening the state control of the economy and business was actually a way to get out from the effects of the Cultural Revolution and prevent another Cultural Revolution. Deng was removed from office during the Cultural Revolution. Instead of unquestioned acceptance of Mao the new criterion was "Practice is the Sole Criterion for Testing Truth." In economic and business matters this was followed so that if it worked then the experiment was expanded, gradually giving life to the Chinese model of state capitalism, economic expansion under the state with the state supporting state corporations that operate in a market economy.  This means the Communist Party was to continue its control but with experimentation away from the planned economy in the coastal provinces of Guangdong and Fujian, and then into Shanghai. Experts close to Jiang Zemin, the next leader after Deng, say China's Communist state would not have survived without the changes started by premier Deng. Farmers still did not own the land but they were free to plant and own the yields for their efforts.  Deng established the Three Benefits Principle in 1992 trip to Guangdong, whatever helped increase productivity, increased the strength of the country and improved living standards was good, you did not judge it by whether it was socialist or capitalist. Jiang Zemin's work was to follow Deng's ideas and help negotiate the entry into World Trade Organization and set up the new economic regulations. Capitalists were allowed to join the Communist Party for the first time. State and local government ownership of land was turned into an advantage as this provided one of the critical inputs in terms of land for setting up new factories, with capital coming from savings, and other inputs of technology and investment coming from the U.S. after entry into the WTO brought American and European companies to China. A steady supply of labor poured in from the countryside and urbanization became a goal of Chinese development policies. Today India and other countries in Africa, Latin America, can look at the Chinese experience and effort and look for ways to modernize, urbanize and improve living standards, productivity and strength of their economy. One key is to experiment and look for what works that can then be expanded to other locations, and build on the advantages that may open up as the experiment makes progress. Following entry into WTO China was able to take advantage of overseas markets and build an edge in manufacturing, something that was not evident even in 1992.   ...

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Women have one of three positions in senior management in the federal government compared to one of six in corporate management. Women make up 41% of management positions at the Government Accountability Office, a federal agency that has women friendly policies including family friendy culture, daycare site at the Washington headquarters, flexible relocation policy, telework policies, and advancing women to positions even as they balance their professional and personal lives such as needs of children. It is not necessary to work 70-80 hours a week to advance to senior positions as in law firms. Susan Poling is a senior executive supervising 156 lawyers, and says in the beginning she was able to work part time to spend more time with her son and still have great things to do and be given higher responsibilities.

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Reited Gen Gantz appears to be the likely head of a new government after winning the most seats in parliament. Policy towards Iran is not likely to change. But a Gantz led government is likely to reduce the divisiveness in the country, and provide a more unifying effort in Israeli society. The role of religious groups in daily life would also be held back. Better relations with Jewish people in America would result and peace negotiations with Palestinians would be encouraged. The prime minister would concentrate less power in his hands. By temperament Gantz is a quiet leader who preferred not to engage in the back and forth attacks in the election campaign even when Mr. Netanyahu  did not hesitate to do so. As the head of the military from 2011 to 2015 he also has the confidence of people in Israel looking for a new start after a long period of Netanyahu rule. The current prime minister could be indicted soon after a hearing next month on charges of bribery and fraud. Mr. Trump has said that U.S. relationship is not with any leader but with the country Israel. Gantz makes it clear after Netanyahu's style of politics has rocked Israel for many years- "We will bring about a real change in priorities, and heal Israeli society in all its parts." Mr. Gantz has said that he think the Obama administration could have done more in securing a better nuclear deal with Iran. Yet at an event in 2015 when the deal was being set, Mr Gantz said he also saw "the half full part of the glass." That the deal would keep Iran 10 or 15 years from making a nuclear weapon "with the right price." At this juncture in world affairs this is important because Mr. Trump has shown flexibility in dealing with Iran following the firing of National Security Adviser Bolton. Trump held back on a response at several points during the attacks in the Straits of Hormuz and the taking of ships hostage by Iran and the UK. The attacks on Saudi oil facilities and the difficulty of protecting oil installations in the region, Iran's increasingly difficult position under tight U.S. sanctions and pressure on Asian buyers of Iranian oil to cut back purchases, the efforts of Japan and India dependent on Saudi and Iranian oil to reduce tensions, all point to a new policy in the region with a new Israeli government playing a useful role to keep policy control in the hands of Asian countries dependent on oil supplies for their economies, and in the hands of a U.S. president better informed about a policy course that is in U.S. interests of avoiding unnecessary engagements overseas when there are other pressing priorities. ...

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After the Phase 1 trade deal with China led to cancellation of new tariffs on computers, mobile phones and the remaining products imported from China, tariffs are still in place on $370 billion of imports from China. President Trump says China agreed to import $32 billion of agricultural goods, with the figures reaching $50 billion in 2020. The prior high was $26 billion in 2012. This comes as a big relief for the agricultural farm sector which had 24% more bankruptcies in 2019. Farmers are now more likely to vote for president Trump as they did in the last election. In addition China agreed to buy $200 billion more of American goods over the next 2 years. This combined with the USMCA agreement to replace NAFTA, for North American trade, is good news for president Trump and for the U.S. economy for 2% annual growth. The S&P stock index went up by 29% in 2019. The big concession by China is its agreement to agree to penalties if it does not keep up its part of the bargain.  Intellectual property protection remains a challenge and Mr. Trump may have decided to take a tactical success and shore up his base of farmers and small business people before taking up these issues in the future. China for its part may have decided to make a tactical move of its own as it has nothing to lose in importing more farm products from the U.S. in exchange for being able to continue to make the computers, iPhones and tech products it manufactures, just like before. China has not conceded much in terms of its goals set  in "Made in China 2025." Both sides are taking a much needed pause to consolidate their positions, as the fundamental differences remain to be tackled. Huawei and Chinese technology issue remains as before with the U.S. wary of China's technological gains in 5G telecom equipment and keen on building and protecting America's technological advantage in future trade relations. ...

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Mexican president Lopez Obrador overhauled the way the Mexican government buys pharmaceutical supplies to avoid being overcharged by suppliers. This has led to some shortages.The government says this has led to significant savings. It says the government paid out 58% more for medicines and acquired 38% less in medical supplies under the previous arrangements. The Mexican government first handed purchases of all drugs to the Finance Ministry and then in mid 2020 to a UN agency, the UN Office for Project Services which will handle purchases till 2024. 

The UN agency says it secured 97% of the supplies but only 44% of the medicine has reached hospitals across Mexico, according to Insabi the agency set up by president Lobrador to provide access to medical care to people without social security. This is because of logistical problems.

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Darren Woods of Exxon gives the view of many in business in the U.S. when he says of the Paris climate change accords of 2015- "We need a framework like that to address the threat of climate change." GE's CEO Immelt says a decision to leave the Paris accords "is not going to change one thing we do for energy efficiency, and I think all business is going to feel the same way." Most utilities including AEP see the political changes in government as coming and going, making it important to base their long term strategies on the economics and the general trends worldwide. Only support for the move to leave is coming from some coal companies and the steel industry, a small fraction of the overall industry in the U.S. Not mentioned here is the moves worldwide, by China motivated by health and pollution concerns to shift away from coal after disastrous pollution effects seen in China, and the decades old effort in Germany that has made the country self sufficient in renewable energy through use of solar and wind energy. India has set aggressive targets for renewables energy and is likely to join this long term trend as the economics shift in favor of wind and solar, especially when the health costs are counted in.   ...

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Greg Ip of the WSj points out that Britain is in a weaker position to tackle Brexit than it was when Boris Johnson called for supporting the Yes vote to Leave the EU three years ago in the referendum. Business investment is lower than France, Germany and even Italy. And today protectionism, nationalism, hostility to globalization mean that its not so easy to increase exports by signing free trade agreements with other nations. Even a treaty with a friendly Trump administration  is not certain as Mr. Trump favors looking at how he can get the best deal and reverse any advantages of other trading nations, Britain being no exception. A trade agreement with the U.S. could mean the U.S. barring Britain from signing one with China as a condition of Mr. Trump. Greg Ip also points out that it was precisely joining the EU that helped Britain catch up with German and French standards of living after a period of low growth, inflation, and balance of payments crises in the 1970's. Joining the European Economic Community was as prime minister Heath stated would " enable us to be more efficient and more competitive in gaining more markets not only in Europe but in the rest of the world."   ...

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All the regional groupings of countries and the post second world war institutions such as the UN, The Security Council, and the economic institutions IMF, World Bank, and the OECD, and the G-8, and the difficulty and controversy of inclusion or exclusion of emerging economies like Brazil, Russia, India and China, as well as countries like Mexico, Indonesia, South Africa and so on. There are no easy answers but the gradual direction is for inclusion of emerging economies over time.

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Underreporting of coronavirus cases in China poses risks for other nations in not giving them a sense of the magnitude and severity of coronavirus. This leads to a false sense of security- in Japan, Sweden and other countries, much delayed action and a sense of exceptionalism that we can ride this thing through like an ordinary virus, In the U.S. and Italy, Spain, UK and Germany, loss of crucial weeks before taking action. Looking to the future this poses new risks as it still leaves people without a sense of how long to continue lockdowns.  The pandemic poses huge risks for Asia and Latin America because of poverty, crowded conditions and sanitation levels. The early action by prime minister Modi was a huge step in the right direction before coronavirus spread could damage the economy and people- as Mr. Modi said if not done right such as with a 21 day lockdown this could set India back by 21 years. It had value in that it alerted other countries such as Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Pakistan to take strong action early. As the WSJ says here in this essay by what is important for China and all other countries reporting on coronavirus is that this reporting is vital only because it can save many other countries from making costly mistakes. Which is why the direct doctor to doctor contact between Chinese doctors and American doctors is an encouraging right step, says WSJ.  ...

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This is huge- for Germany, for France, and for the European Union. After initial hesitation and a decade of not looking ahead, Germany under Angela Merkel is finally not just looking ahead to its vision for Germany but doing this as a part of the larger European community. And the European Central Bank after its initial lack of community spirit, is paving the way with its own actions for the Europe wide recovery with a significant increase in lending to EU countries.  Germany's finance ministry has agreed to spend 130 billion euros on more than 50 initiatives to promote growth in Germany. No longer is the government looking at the car industry as it did in the past. It is looking beyond to what Merkel calls the "profound upheaval" coming from climate change and digitisation. For Merkel after the changes caused by the pandemic something more had to be done- "We just could'nt introduce a traditional stimulus package. It had to be done with an eye to the future, so that is what we especially emphasized."  This also brings together France's Macron and Germany's Merkel in a combined effort to bring Europe up to face the future with confidence. It is amazing how the pandemic has changed minds in Europe. From the long drawn out period since 2008 when traditional policy ideas and austerity thinking prevailed, to the idea today that this is no way to face the future with confidence for Europe to be back on its own feet, for hope to return. Instead of partnering in austerity with the Dutch and the Swedes, the finance ministry is now looking to France, Italy and Spain, considering the common pain of the core European countries during the pandemic and looking to the future.  Merkel moved to circumvent the traditional Bundestag's refusal to permit debt sharing  across the euro area by producing 500 billion euros of grants for hard hit businesses across the European Union. As Macron says it was a necessary  step- " What is sure is that this 500 billion euros will not be repaid by the beneficiaries.... We are proposing to do real transfers (of money) ... that's a major step." Forecasts from Capital Economics and other forecasters show the European Union's major economies of France, Italy and Germany rebounding quickly in 2021 after the blow in 2020, in a V shaped recovery with growth of close to 6% in France, and higher in Italy because of the bigger hit taken there than Germany. The strong U.S. jobs report with addition of 2.5 million jobs for May shows that the rebound can be sharp upward swing if the policy, will and community spirit is summoned up by leaders and people, no matter what happened in the past decade. It is also based on having the right spirit that knows about investing where it really counts for the people - in infrastructure, health, public services, and avoiding the misallocation of resources and spending that happened before. ...

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The story of Rajat Gupta, quiet with a soft manner, who headed McKinsey consultants from 1994 to 2003. What eventually happened with Gupta showed another side which the Economist described in an article on McKinsey in July 1996. His relationship with hedge fund manager Rajaratnam, and his other business dealings have come under investigation by the S.E.C. and federal authorites in the U.S.

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Small business loans as a percentage of all business loans held by U.S. banks has dropped to 24% in 2014 from 35% in 2007 before the financial crisis of 2008-2009, according to the FDIC. Even as business loans to larger corporate customers is recovering small business lending has failed to recover. This reduces the prospects for recovery in the job market.