LyrArc Article Gist
GDP of the USA contracted by 3.8% in the 4th quarter of 2008. Excluding the inventory adjustment which is the inventory of products made but sitting on inventory shelfs, the GDP contracted by 5.1%. In the last week of January 2009 there were 70,000 layoffs in the U.S. in all sectors from trucks to technology. 2009 is going to get a lot worse which does not bode well for Detroit automakers and other industries, and for economies overseas like China and South Korea which are heavily dependent on exports, and in turn for Germany which is dependent on the Chinese market.

LyrArc Article Gist
Middle managers is just a term, in reality leaders of tomorrow will be learning, practicing their craft, working on projects and products as a part of teams that report to some more experienced manager, who can provide the team the benefit of his experience and mentor these managers. These are not factory floor positions and interface directly with senior managers of the company. Without a seamless integration of all people in the company working in harmony, something has seriously gone wrong in the way the company should work. One might guess from the way companies especially financial institutions have been run, that along with CEO and senior manager aggrandizement, and layoffs of whitecollar workers who bear the brunt of the downturn along with people in the frontline in factories, that these teams and managers have been left out in the cold. Osterman in his book "The Truth about Middle Managers" points to this alienation of middle managers. These managers and teams especially in industries like the auto industry may lack the committment to the company and there may be widespread cynicism about the way senior management and CEO's are running the company. If things are happening the way they should these are the leaders of tomorrow and should be consulted and given increasing responsibility, and older management should make way for new leaders to better adapt to new conditions facing the company and meet new challenges. Instead as in the auto industry boards and CEO's and senior managers perpetuate themselves and their older mindset and their outdated strategies leading to disaster, and the elimination of the positions of these very managers and teams on which the real hopes of the company should rest....

LyrArc Article Gist
The Fed lowered its benchmark federal funds rate by half a percentage point to 1 %.

LyrArc Article Gist
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.

LyrArc Article Gist
Car sales have rebounded quickly in Russia. Total sales of 1.8 million are expected in 2010, according to Toyota. Sales should reach 2 million by 2011 according to analysts.

LyrArc Article Gist
The devaluation of the Argentine peso from 9.8 to the dollar to 13 to the dollar in Dec. 2015 by president Macri is leading to higher inflation hurting the working class. The cutting of export taxes is helping farmers. Removing most currency controls is designed to help increase foreign investment by letting foreign companies freely repatriate profits. Also expected to be removed are bureaucratic procedures that limit imports of new equipment for manufacturers. Middle class voters see the moves helping the economy in the long run with new foreign investment and changing the outlook for investment. A former central bank president Mario Blejer points out that after 12 years of the previous Kirchner administration Argentina needs investment- by improving the outlook for investment and removing import controls the government plans to stimulate investment to lead to economic growth. Inflation is up 25% and Macri is keeping Mrs. Kirchner's price control programs in place to prevent a surge in inflation beyond the impact of the devaluation. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
BBC cites a senior Foreign Office (Whitehall) figure about Starmer's appointment of Mandelson when the vetting raised serious questions, in this way-"it sums up Starmer's premiership: a man who claimed he was grown-up public servant turns out to be hopelessly out of touch with the detail." It cites many people from the UK Foreign Office and their concern about how the Labour government under Starmer has handled the Mandelson issue. Weith elections coming up, the BBC says this issue is not going away.

LyrArc Article Gist
The P5+1 countries in the Istanbul talks with Iran are the five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany. Catherine Ashton, the EU's senior foreign policy official is the lead negotiator. Saeed Jalili is the lead Iranian negotiator. By July the two groups have held three rounds of talks which proved inconclusive and were lowered to meetings at the deputy level in July, 2012. This was followed by bellicose statements from Iran and U.S. defense preparations in the Gulf of Hormuz. The Israelis described the situation as reaching a critical point, with the U.S. continuing to put its faith in tighter sanctions to persuade Iran to give up its program.

LyrArc Article Gist
German drug company Boehringer has applied for FDA approval for a drug that treats low female sexual drive for premenopausal women. A staff report by the FDA recommends not approving the drug. An FDA advisory panel meets this week to vote on whether the FDA should approve it. Meanwhile Boehringer is setting up a marketing campaign for the drug, including a website, Twitter feed, Discovery Channel documentary and a publicity tour by Lis Rinna, a soap opera actress. Boehringer's R&D designed the drug to treat depression but it did not work. Along the way Boehringer discovered that this drug, flibanserin, taken for weeks restores female sexual drive. It works by reducing the brain chemical serotonin and increasing dopamine. Results for this drug in a medical conference report show that the increased self-reported "sexually satisfing events" to 4.5 a month on average, and this compares to 3.7 a month on a placebo, and 2.7 for women not taking any pill. Critics at Georgetown University say this shows how drug companies are medicalizing normal conditions, and working on the insecurities and psychology of people. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Raphael Minder points out one episode in the life of Emilio Botin that shows how intertwined Spain and Santander had become. During the period when Spain took EU help after the collapse of Bankia bank in 2012 there was pressure on Spain to take a full government bailout. Finance minister Guindos says it was Botin who called him at that time and told him: "You know what you have to do and I will back you up." Botin's advice to the Spanish government was to resist the pressure. Botin expanded what was a family bank based in Santander in Northern Spain, through a series of successful acquisitions. He had a rare intuitive sense for timing of acquisitions, going into Brazil around the time candidate Lula of the Workers Party was elected president, with considerable uncertainty about how financial markets would respond to the election. About a quarter of the bank's profit now comes from Brazil. Besides Brazil Santander has commercial banking presence in Britain and the U.S., taking a bank that had 20 billion euros in assets in 1998 to 1.1 trillion euros by 2013, which is about the value of Spain's GDP....

LyrArc Article Gist
A detailed account of how the Treasury under Secretary Paulson and the Fed under Bernanke worked through the evening of Friday and through Saturday and Sunday, to come up with a plan -coordinated with the heads of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank- to support Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before both companies ran into serious difficulties. The stock of both companies had been on a serious downward decline in the past 4 trading sessions with Fannie Mae shares losing 45% of their value and Freddie Mac losing 47% of their value. Also rumors in the financial markets on Friday had affected their share prices. Secretary Paulson felt it necessary to send a clear signal to the markets by making an announcement at 6pm Sunday that Treasury would get congressional approval to increase significantly the credit line at Treasury for the 2 companies, and also get approval for Treasury to take equity stakes in the 2 companies. Meantime the Fed Governors met over the weekend and made the decision to open the Fed's discount window to lend to the 2 companies....

LyrArc Article Gist
Chief of TechMet a company in mineral resource development says that it will take years to dislodge China's dominance in rare metals mining and development for metals critical to technologies in car batteries, wind turbines, cellphones. This includes nickel and cobalt for car batteries.Last week president Trump signed an executive order declaring a national emergency and authorizing use of the Defense Production Act to speed development of mines. The U.S. imports 80% of its rare earth elements from China, with further supply coming indirectly from the country. For 14 of 35 critical types of minerals the U.S. has no domestic production. Gallium for light emitting diodes in cell phones is one of these metals. Half of Barite a metal used in hydraulic fracturing for shale oil is imported from China. To get some idea of the neglect in U.S.policy in these area under three administrations, the U.S. in the 1980's was the largest producer of rare earth metals and the technology to process them. Today there is only one mine the Mountain Pass mine in California, and no processing plants. It takes about 10 years to develop a mine. Just as in health care products essential to tackle the virus the U.S has found its manufacturing and technology base left in woeful shape after manufacturing and mining were neglected in a failed policy. Under the guise of globalization corporations transferred essential manufacturing from the U.S. and Europe to China, without understanding the importance these products played in the life of countries, and governments neglected to help local manufacturers and mining companies. Governments play a critical role as China has done by providing loans and grants to develop the national industrial base. Tariffs and quotas are also used to promote local development of the manufacturing base and mining base. Another factor is that investors are more able to invest in these companies when the government take some of the risk with its help and active support. With the Trump executive order comes a new awareness in Canada, Australia, and European Union which are now taking active steps to nurture and develop the local resources. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Admiral Giroir, Assistant Secretary of Health Services, tells a Senate committee led by Lamar Alexander and senator Murray that the U.S. should have capability for 40 to 50 million tests a month by September. Current testing target for May of the U.S. government is about 12.9 million tests a month. 

LyrArc Article Gist
The methods to fight fires in Canada on the vast empty forests of Quebec and Alberta are very different from that in more populated California. Fires in Canada get less attention and fire fighting starts later than in the US where there are homes to save in fire burning areas of California. Fires in Canada are even allowed to burn themselves out with little action taken where this works best. 

LyrArc Article Gist
Berliners were leaving for smaller towns nearby even before the pandemic. This trend will accelerate. The situation is like that of Paris, New York, London and other cities.