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Donald Trump's remarks at a Wilmington rally that caused a storm- "Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish the Second Amendment. By the way, and if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do folks. But the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know." The second Amendment in the U.S. Constitution gives people the right to bear arms. Some newspapers saw it as threat, especially considering the heated rhetoric in Trump's other remarks in his campaigning. Speaker Paul Ryan called it a joke gone bad, and that the Second Amendment should not be talked about in this way.

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Brexit Leave was only supported by a minority of Northern Ireland voters, only 44%. British prime minister May insists that the open borders established through the 1998 Good Friday Agreement will be maintained between Northern Ireland and Ireland. May met with Northern Ireland's leader, Martin McGuiness, following a meeting with Scotland's SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, to assure other parts of the UK that opposed "Leave" that their views will be respected. May says the union is very important to her, and says about the  border- "We had a common travel area between the UK and the Republic of Ireland many years before either country was a member of the European Union. Nobody wants to return to the borders of the past."

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What Buffett has that others don't. The ability to strike a deal on favorable term because of the size of the investments he makes, and the number and firepower of analysts combing through every detail of a transaction. And more importantly his investments in companies like airy Queen and see's candies and the folksyimage belie the fact that he gets an advantage through his large investments in the insurance business where he has access to the float in terms of the premiums he can use on investments. And he is good at running the insurance businesses he owns.

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Aldi store name comes from the store name Albrecht's Discount for stores opened by 1961 in Germany by the Albrecht brothers. The brothers worked at their mother's grocery store in Essen Germany, following their father's disability and not being able to work in the mines. After serving in the war the two brothers expanded the small family grocery store into a chain of about 15 stores. By 1955 this chain had expanded to about 100 stores, and in 1961 the chain took on the Aldi name. The brothers separated their business in later years with Karl taking on the Aldi Sud stores in southern Germany and expanding into UK, Australia and the U.S. Theo, the younger brother, ran the Aldi Nord stores in northern Germany, of what was then West Germany. Aldi Nord expanded in Europe and acquired Trader's Joe in 1979. The two brothers agreed to stay out of each others territory in this unique arrangement. The Albrechts felt strongly in the post war conditions in Germany that "customers with very limited income should be able to eat and drink quality food," according to a statement by Aldi Sud. Karl Albrecht saw this as his calling- to find creative ways to do this. One way was to get rid of other unnecessary expenses such as display and advertising that could be passed on as savings to customers. In this sense Aldi laid the ground for American retailer Wal-Mart. By 1955 Aldi had 100 stores in West Germany. Expansion thereafter made Aldi a household name in most parts of Europe and the U.S. Karl and Theo remained reclusive throughout their life, more so after Theo's kidnapping in Essen in 1971 for a ransom of 7 million deutsche marks. Karl operated the Aldi Sud stores till he was 75 and passed away in 2014 at the age of 94. Ikea founder from Sweden also has a similiar history in being very private, frugal, and living in a small town in Switzerland, providing direction to the company well past his eightieth year. He pioneered the concept of well designed quality furniture at affordable prices that passes on savings to customers. The same concept and vision inspired Ikea founder- that people of average means and younger families starting a home, should be able to afford furniture quality and design in their homes....

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Andy Grove of Intel teaches a class at Stanford- he taught aclass earlier this year- and talks about his experiences. Some see Grove's disciplined management style as areflection of his experience escaping the Nazis from Czechoslovakia. Dr Grove says it comes from his experience at the CIty COllege of New York He recounts this in one of his books, where aparticular Professor helped mentor him but who was in the beginning very tough on the young Grove. Grove says that what impressed him most in those early years at City College was the way hard work and talent were rewarded and where students challenged their Professors without any attention to rank. Interestingly this is still true at many universities, and meritocracy prevails there. The opposite is true when one thinks of this at many corporations which gradually fall into astultifying mode where senior managers are not challenged and politics prevails. GM is a good example. Grove says he experienced this at Fairchild -where he worked with computer chip pioneers Moore and Noyce -with its elitist, back-stabbing and lax corporate culture. Senior executives at Fairchild walked in whenever they felt like, and younger employees were penalized or fired for similiar behaviour. When he took charge at Intel Grove imposed a strict arrival time of 8 am with latecomers forced to sign asheet. He also did not go along with trends like flexi-time and teleworking. He became known as ablunt and demanding manager, but afairminded boss who rewarded good ideas whatever the source. Asked about the strict arrival time Grove says that people don't understand that he was never that disciplined himself and he was not even amorning person. His view is that he wanted to avoid what he saw as aoutrageous double standard at Fairchild. With a better culture he was able to attract the best talent to Intel, and he used the strong discipline to improve the lousy manufacturing at Intel. Three decisions shaped Intel. The first, is the recognition of the strategic inflection point when current strategy is no longer viable, because unanticipated external forces make an existing business strategy obsolete. This happened when Intel got clobbered by the Japanese in the memory chip field it had dominated. And at such moments there are internal forces and inhibitions to overcome that make starting over or doing something totally different extremely difficult. For Intel this was the habit forming tendencies from having done one thing so well- the companies roots and the founders and engineering staff's knowledge and preferences lay in memory chips- such that that it became an emotionally stormy thing to break from this past. Grove made a complete U turn to go in another direction which he describes so well in his book -Only the Paranoid Survive. Timing is critical, and instinct and judgement is all that you have got to rely on. Its like a group of hikers in the woods and after suspecting that they are on the wrong track one of them says, "Hey guys I think were lost." Grove even describes the scene with acomparison to a scene in the World War II movie Twelve O'Clock High, where a new commander is called in to straighten out an unruly and undisciplined squadron of fliers in sel-destruct mode. The commander on his way to take charge, stops his car, steps out smokes acigarette while gazing into the distance. Then he he throws the cigarette down, grinds it with his heel and tell his driver "Okay Sergeant, lets go." Grove says he related to this scene in this decision at Intel, with every fiber of his being experienced this crisis personally, and learned what it takes to claw your way through a strategic inflection point, inch by excruciating inch. He says it takes objectivity, the willingness to act on your convictions, and the passion mobilize people into supporting those convictions. The second and third decisions was less gruelling but also courageous. The Intel Inside advertising campaign meant building abrand with customers even though Intel had never done this before. The decision to not have secondary suppliers and press the issue of manufacturing quality within Intel till Intel got it right also had never been done before. Andy Grove's strategic inflection point is what GM missed and set the process in motion towards bankruptcy. See the links in Intelilinks. The management style is also relevant to that discussion. Grove also provides insights in the Cross-Industry Insight Mechanism. He sees strategic inflectionpoints in autos and health care industries. He says the auto industry is going to be increasingly divorced from oil and the next big company will come in the auto battery technology field. He also believes health care and the pharmaceutical industry can learn from chipmaking. The clinical trials in pharmaceuticals take way too long, are slow-moving and bureaucratic. The pharmaceutical firms can learn from the fast "knowledge turns" in chipmaking, so that cycles of learning are accelerated....

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Netherlands is well ahead of other countries in remote working. The percentage of employed persons working from home is about three times that of the U.S. or Britain. It is about 15% in Netherlands compared to 4-5% in the U.S. or Britain. A culture of near universal fast internet connections, a culture of trust with companies knowing the work will get done, and companies providing employees with funds to set up a good working environment from home. In some Dutch companies employees can take vacation freely as long as the work gets done. The idea of a whole work day spent at a desk in the office in some office building is not entrenched in Dutch culture. A U.S. poll shows 59% of remote workers would like to continue working remotely after the pandemic. Companies are shifting to a new culture of work done away from the traditional business office as the economy reopens. In the Netherlands the pandemic is only giving more confidence in the idea of working away from a business office. This can now catch on in the U.S. and other countries. ...

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Osam Bin Laden is killed in a U.S. special forces attack on a compound 40 miles from Islamabad. The area known as Abbottabad is also the location of a Pakistani military academy. One Pakistani helicopter and 2 American helicopters were involved in the attack. Experts say this changes the dynamic of the war, with the U.S. keen on a disengagement in Afghanistan, and Pakistani concerns about the expanded U.S. footprint in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region working in the same direction. This also comes at a time when the Middle East is no longer what it looked like a decade ago. Democracy protests have changed the way ordinary Arabs look at the world. In recent months Pakistan's relationship with the U.S. has grown tense. Last week the Wall Street Journal reported that top civilian and military leaders of Pakistan met with the Afghan government leaders in Kabul recently. At the meeting Pakistan's leaders suggested that it would be better for Afghanistan to move closer to Pakistan and China, and distance itself from the U.S. The Pakistani leadership must be aware of domestic politics in the U.S., the changes in the Arab world, the desire of Americans and the U.S. government to wind down America's military involvement, and decided that the removal of Osama would give give America less reason to continue its military presence....

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Questions about the U.S. raid at Abottabad on May 1, 2011, that killed Osama Bin Laden. Was a Pakistani military helicopter involved in the raid as the Pakistanis say. President Obama said that the U.S. did not trust anyone, especially knowing where he was located. Abbottabad is 40 miles from Islamabad, and the location of a Pakistani military academy. Obama's statement that no intelligence was shared with the Pakistanis makes sense till the next question that comes up immediately.That question is how American helicopters took off close to the Osama compound- in an area with a large military presence- without the Pakistani military knowing.

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Scott Anderson of the NYT provides an indepth look at the Arab World and its fragmentation through the eyes of five people from each part of the Arab world- Egyptian, Kurd, Syrian, Iraqi and Jordanian. He says the countries that fell apart are precisely the ones that were formed by the British and the French, and Italy, following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire  using divide and rule policies- Britain in Iraq, France in Syria, and Italy in Libya- without much thought given to setting up viable nation states. This is why Iraq has a Sunni-Shia divide, Syria has similar divisions, and Libya with a largely tribal based structure, never really held together after the colonial powers left, and were held together only by strong dictators. Today's problems trace back to these historical events. This is complicated by the largely young demographic and restlessness of the people for change coupled with problems of underdevelopment in education, tribal loyalties, religious loyalties, and lack of political and social structures that could keep the countries together as change and transition to democratic processes took place. The role of the military further complicated matters in Egypt. Even Iran experienced these divisions because of the intervention of the great powers including Russia in Iran since 1900, leading to swings between liberal governments, foreign power supported governments, and a swing back to religious leadership as at present. This is one view of the region, others are presented by Ramadan (Oxford),  Bernard Lewis (Princeton), and leaders in Qatar and Emirates, other experts, some of whom point to the failure in leadership and the elites to find solutions to the problems of underdevelopment, in education, health, infrastructure, and aspirations for a voice in their governance. As the same divisions left by colonial powers affected Asia- in India, China, and Korea, but a larger vision of progress prevailed through crises and difficulties.        ...

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The U.S. and the EU join together for stronger economic sanctions on Russia. The sanctions affecting large Russian banks ability to raise capital in financial markets are likely to affect the Russian economy. Russia was suspended for export credit and development finance. VTB Bank was one of three more Russian banks added to the list of banks with economic sanctions. The EU took similiar action against Russian state owned banks and imposed an arms embargo in July end 2014.

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Oil traders are pricing in much higher oil prices- with $150 not being inconceivable- because of Mideast unrest. They see this unrest playing out over a long period of time, and do not see this changing even if the Libyan situation returns to normal tomorrow. Saudi Arabia will need to price oil at $85-90 a barrel just to meet the economic demands for a growing population, says Rachel Ziemba, analyst at Roubini Global Economics. Saudi King Abdullah recently promised $150 billion in new housing, higher wages and other benefits to prevent protests. The fiscal pressures are growing in these countries. A $15-$20 premium for unrest is assigned by Paramount Options, a trader at the New York Mercantile Exchange.

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Portugal in 2012-2013 stands as a good case study of what is good and what is bad about austerity measures, about what makes sense and is needed and what does not make sense and is bad both in a fiscal sense and for growth. Patricia Knowsmann does a good job of bringing this out, from the hundreds of stories written about austerity vs growth in the media. During 2011-2012, the elected government of Passos Coelho has supported an EU-IMF-ECB program that reduced wages, raised taxes, privatized state owned companies and changed labor laws that reduced hiring by businesses. During this time the Portuguese have patiently accepted the program compared to other countries and the budget deficit is shrinking from 9.8% in 2010 to an expected 5% in 2012. The unemployment rate has gone up to 15%. Now a new plan by prime minister Coelho in September has created an uproar and sparked popular opposition to the austerity measures threatening what has been achieved in deficit reduction, including the credibility of the austerity program. The plan is to reduce the portion of salaries that employers contribute to the social security system from 23.5% to 18%, in the hope that employers would increase hiring. At the same time it increases the portion of salaries employees pay from 11% to 18%. Coelho was looking at Germany and Slovenia where employees pay more than 20% of salaries to Social Security. What he failed to look at was the situation in Portugal where workers and pensioners have lost about 24% of their income through wage cuts and tax increases. The new plan would reduce incomes even further. Portugal's small business owners expressed strong disapproval for the plan because it would mean a drastic drop in consumer spending. The president of a Portuguese shoe maker, Kyaia, with 600 employees, says it makes no sense to reduce companies contribution if the company can't sell enough shoes to keep its workers. Kyaia has already experienced a 25% decline in demand and its CEO Fortunato Frederico, says he cannot understand how a company can hire workers if demand declines. This impact on consumer demand and sentiment is a fact that policymakers cannot ignore throughout the eurozone as austerity measures are implemented, especially when demand has already declined to an unacceptable point. The move by Coelho ignored a study by Portugal's finance ministry and central bank that showed export businesses may be induced to hire from the savings in contributions, but the businesses serving the domestic market would simply take in the savings. The EU-IMF-ECB recognized this and suggested increasing taxes to pay for the reduction in employer contributions, which would also depress demand by reducing incomes further. Portugal's economy and business is not focussed on exports, small business makes up 97% of Portugal's companies and most of them do not export. The introduction of such a plan gives credibility to the idea that there is a transfer of wealth from workers to business under the austerity programs, which affects the credibility of the entire deficit reduction and competitiveness improvement programs. For Coelho it also means the strong opposition of a minority party in his coalition government and from members of his Social Democratic Party. Large demonstrations were held on Sept 15 in 40 cities in Portugal in the first large scale opposition to further austerity measures and the Coelho social security contribution plan. Capital markets in Europe also see a problem with such plans because it removes the essential element of popular acceptance of deficit reduction plans jeopardizing the entire program. After the failure to win popular acceptance in Greece capital markets see additional risks and failures as one too many for the eurozone. ...

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The average U.S. light vehicle price was $30,303 in April 2012, up $1219 from the prior year. Incentives were also lower, down $146 to average of $2,446, according to TrueCar.com. This is happening even though cars account for a greater portion of sales of light vehicles. Used cars and trucks prices increased by 3.2% in March over the prior year, according to the Labor department data. Pent up demand is part of the reason. Another reason is the discipline exercized by auto manufacturers, especially the Big Three, in not letting supply exceed demand and therefore not having to offer higher incentives to get rid of inventory. These practices of oversupplying the market hurt the Detroit automakers in the period before bankruptcy, especially GM. Increases in used car prices and higher prices of new cars create a virtuous cycle for automakers to support higher margins. With the high retirement and healthcare costs reduced through bankruptcy and new agreements with the UAW, the Detroit automakers are now better positioned in the market to sustain margins by limiting production to demand. ...

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This NY Times editorial cites Defense Secretary Aston Carter's comments after the fall of Ramadi to Islamic State, that the Iraqi army units at Ramadi outnumbered the Islamic State militants but "lacked the will to fight." It points out the problem of the Iraqi government using Shiite militias which further aggravates sectarian tensions.

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This report on Danish wind energy company Orsted, looks at the journey of the largest developer of wind energy in the world from a company sending natural gas from North Sea to Europe to a joint developer with Denmark's Vestas of offshore wind farms. Last year Orsted, pronounced Ehrr-sted in Danish for the O and named after a Danish scientist, decided to invest $57 billion in offshore wind farms by 2027. It was not easy and the path required a bold vision and bold action to invest in wind energy for the long term even as debt piled up from losses in natural gas competing with coal, climate change committments were not yet strong, subsidies were required to make wind energy competitive, and debt was piling up. It would take a decade of hard work and technological innovation to produce wind energy that could outcompete coal and natural gas on cost without subsidies. The year is 2009 with the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. The predecessor company to Orsted was losing money in natural gas with lower cost coal energy generation in Europe at the time. Yet the mood was changing governments were willing to invest in renewables. In 2012 a new CEO Paulsen did a review of 12 businesses of this Danish energy company and decided wind energy was the only one with long term prospects. The Copenhagen Climate Change Conference created new awareness for the need to come up with a long term solution for energy that has no negative health effects and is renewable. That Conference set a goal of 20% for renewable energy by 2020 in the total mix for Europe up from 14%. Paulsen saw an opportunity in the crisis at the company then called Danish Oil and Natural Gas. The new company was called Orsted and the old divisions in fossil energy were sold to invest in wind farms offshore. The way Paulsen saw the situation was that the company had to take radical action whether it wanted to do so or not. By 2012 Danish pension funds were investing in large offshore wind farms of Orsted, taking a stake of as much as 50% in the Nysted wind farm. The Danish government which owned 80% of Orsted thought its projects were risky. Hard work with Vestas which builds the turbines in Denmark paid off in developing a huge new turbine that would bring costs down 65% comparing 2020 with 2012.  In 2018 the European Union was spending about 92 billion euros or $112 billion on energy subsidies including to wind farms. Britain also heavily subsidized offshore wind farms such as Hornsea 1 at about $198 a megawatt hour for 15 years double the electricity price in recent years. Windy conditions and shallow waters in the North Sea were favorable. Technology was being developed with Vestas which would reduce the cost each year. By 2016 Orsted was listed in Copenhagen. The remaining oil and gas business was then sold for $1 billion. The returns are less in wind than coal and natural gas- about 7-8% a year but the big thing is that there is certainty in this compared to coal and natural gas which are volatile and uncertain. The lesson companies are learning in renewables is that with solar and wind technology can. bring down costs, a lot of hard work and creative work lies ahead, that crisis can be turned into opportunity for companies that can be focussed enough to produce results. ...

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It makes for good political rhetoric, but in reality the flow of money goes both ways. A lot of investments are made by American companies overseas. This time the flow of oil money because of high oil prices, from the USA and Europe to the Middle East is being recycled back to the USA in the form of investments in the US through small equity stakes in companies and more so through purchases of capital equipment and services to build Saudi infrastructure projects. The $500 billion investment plan over several years in Saudi Arabia is to build everything from new cities, aluminium plants, electricity generation plants and chemicals and plastics plants. The fears and rhetoric are overblown, as the USA also invests overseas with holdings according to the Treasury department of $6 trillion of foreign stock and debt. The acceleration of foreign investment in the US is to be seen in the numbers, as the dollar gets weaker, and its more advantageous for Canadians and Euuropeans to invest here. Last year $414 billion of foreign investors money went into buying stakes in American companies and building factories and purchasing stock, according to Thomson Financial. Thats up 90% from 2006 and represented one fourth of all announced deals. This year in just 2 weeks foreign investors poured $22.6 billion in just the first 2 weeks of January, and that represents one half of all deals. Shows how quickly the picture is changing. One way of looking at it is that Americans buy a lot of foreign goods and the money Americans use to pay for a lot of imports is now being returned to the USA in the form of foreign investments. Note that foreign investment is desirable because it brings new ideas and technology and new management methods to the host country from other countries. These foreign investors in many cases are able to make these investments overseas because they are good at what they do, having them in the host country benefits the host country and shakes up competition in the particular industry in the host country that is receiving the investment. This is why economies once relatively unfavorable to foreign investors like Japan and S. Korea are now passionately seeking foreign investment to make their economies thrive through the exchange and inflow of new ideas and ways of doing things. The same can be and is true for the USA. The other aspect is that most of the investment is still from countries like Canada, Germany, Japan, S. Korea which are big free trade partners of the USA. Manufacturing investment is heavily skewed to European and Japanese companies. Foreign multinational investment (Sony, Toyota etc) grew to $43.3 billion in 2007 from $39.2 billion in 2006 according to OCO Monitor, and will accelerate significantly as companies like VW and other German companies find it cheaper to build in the USA and shift more manufacturing here. To get an idea why the rhetoric is overblown Canada spent the most in buying American companies, $65 billion in 2007, according to Thomson Financial. Russia spent $572 million and India $3.3 billion. How will this improve the chances of the USA making it out of this recession? Five million American work for foreign companies in the USA. Of these one third are manufacturing jobs. These jobs pay about 30% more than jobs in American owned companies. Figures from Treasury Department. There will be more of these jobs as companies like VW build plants here. Roubini Economics estimates that an infusion of about $300-400 billion is needed for the USA to overcome the effects of the current mortgage and credit crisis. $414 billion was invested in the USA by foreign investors according to Thomson Financial in 2007, going up from something like $200 billion in 2006. If this pace continues becasue of some of the same underlying reasons as the weaker dollar, stronger economies overseas, then $200 billion additional investments this year would add that much to a stimulus package of $150 billion by one estimate, to provide a boost of somewhere around $350 billion. In the range of the needed boost. Companies like IBM and GE which have significant investments in India and China and investments in software or infrastructure industries that are growing rapidly or Caterpillar with growth in construction overseas, may keep growing through this downturn. This recession may hit selectively and differently, not be a complete hit to the USA economy, and could prevent it from going beyond 2009 with recovery in 2010. ...

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Jose de Cordoba of the WSJ provides this excellent story on the nature of the migration crisis in the U.S. that is creating political divisions in the U.S. What is causing this surge in migration to the U.S.? Cordoba provides some useful insights to understand the nature of this problem. Nine out of ten migrants in Guatemala which sends most of the migrants from Central America are moving north from Guatemala through Mexico to the U.S. for financial reasons, it points out. Only 10% are because of violence in the region, the rest for financial reasons according to the United Nations International Organization for Migration The jump in apprehension of Guatemalans at the American border shows a surge from 15,000 in 2007 to 236,000 in 9 months of 2019, according to U.S. government data. The surge began in 2008 and jumped in 2014 after U.S. court rulings that first required migrant children to be allowed to join relatives in the U.S. followed by a ruling in 2015 that allowed a parent to join the children and allowed court proceedings to take place that takes years. The result was that smugglers advertised on radio and families sold small plots of land to join relatives in the U.S. who had gone before them. The migration is also specific to certain areas hit by damage to crops, including coffee crop from drought, or certain towns that simply sent more people simply for financial reasons advertised openly.  For 8 hours of work a migrant could make at $12 per hour amount of $96 per day, in Guatemala the daily wage would be about $5.  Overwhelmingly it is financial reasons or economic opportunity that sends migrants north. After it became known that kids could help migration the people in family groups apprehended at the border jumped from about 40,000 in 2015 to 390,000 in fiscal 2019. Smugglers charge $8600 per adult and half that for a child and an adult that can be dropped off at a checkpoint. The efforts of president Trump to close the border to this migration include having Mexico sign an agreement to police its southern border with Guatemala using its newly setup National Guard. As a result the migration has actually surged in 2019 with migrants seeing this as their one last opportunity to join relatives in the U.S. or to migrate to the U.S. The Trump administration tried separating families because of the loophole in the law that allows children to be not deported and parents to join their children. But this created a public outcry and the effort now is to close the loophole in the law. It is also strange that as many migrants are coming from one town Joyabaj  with population 100,000 as from Guatemala City the capital population 2.5 million. In fact the economy has grown by 3.4 % a year in Guatemala and efforts have been made to improve conditions with the help of donor countries in the West for several years, though the drought conditions exist. The situation is similar to that in Europe. If one looks at the violence by gangs in central American region after the end of the guerilla wars and compares it to the wars in Syria and Iraq, one can see how humanitarian concerns preceded what eventually turned out tobe a full blown migration for economic reasons. Initially chancellor Merkel adopted a humanitarian stance but failed to recognize that there was another side to his situation that would attract a wave of economic migrants from places as far apart as North Africa to Afghanistan. Poverty has existed in these regions for many many years before the current migration, with drought and lack of economic opportunity going far back in time. Merkel only recently recognized this problem and the new CDU leader Kambrauer has clearly recognized this. CDU policy shifted in 2018-2019 with curbs on economic migration that has reduced it to a trickle. This process is underway in the U.S. at its border with Mexico and for Mexico with its border with Guatemala. In the short run Europe and the U.S. are paying a price. Not just in the way it has divided each country with a far left and a far right eroding the centrist parties that existed before. In some cases centrist parties that were popular on the right and the left now hve leaders from a far right or a far left faction within the centrist ruling parties. Boris Johnson in Britain, Trump in the U.S., leaders in Italy, Austria and Hungary. Or as in Germany and Spain new far left or far right parties causing the centrist parties to dwindle in influence or as in Germany this combined with a shift to the Green Party in Germany and Liberals Party in Britain as a show of disapproval for how the migration issue has been tackled.  The Economist in a July 2019 issue also points out that the country's own citizens have fared worse with migration. It shows how the Conservative Party's austerity cuts for welfare budgets was popular in Britain as long as eastern European migration at high levels in Britain were allowed starting with the Labour party under Blair. This disproportionately hurt the middle class and the poor after the hit already taken from the faulty banking caused recession. With the drop in migration it is now felt by a majority in Britain that the austerity cuts have just gone too far and a mood is set in to restore many of the cuts and fund public services. Meantime some of the damage has been done and will take a decade to correct as the issues that mangled the centrist parties and led to fragmentation on views of what society should look like have taken place with Brexit and high levels of poverty, income inequality in Britain, lack of investment in infrastructure with overallocation to tech with declining productive benefit for every additional dollar spent. ...

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Saudi global forum on oil price issues meets even as differnces emerge inside OPEC with Algeria, Iran and Venezuela opposed to increasing oil supplies and to a unilateral decision by the Saudis to increase production. After the Bush visit the Saudis increased production by 300,000 barrels a day or 3% to 9.45 million barrels a day. The bulk of the unused production capacity of 2 million barrels a day in OPEC is with the Saudis. The Algerians and the Saudis blame the price increases on futures speculation, lack of refining capacity to produce gasoline in the western countries, and geopolitical tension. For the Saudis and the Kuwaitis there is also resentment that they are asked to use their declining oil supplies while the USA is not allowing offshore drilling and drilling inside its borders to the extent that it could. Note that the ordinary Saudis lower and middle classes are not seeing much change in their lives as inflation is high, and the prices of food and other needs is reducing their purchasing power. Much of the oil price windfall is going into large projects to build aluminium and other plants, and to build new cities in the desert for a growing population, which effectively rechannels the money back to western countries who are actively involved in these projects. The projects themselves may produce value but it is still an open question whether this is the best way to invest this money. And the other serious question is whether this will come at the expense of future oil earnings as the world reduces its dependence on oil. The money is also spread very disparately across the Middle East, with neighboring countries like Yemen in southern Arabia without oil revenues suffering serious lack of development. The political structures like Saudi Arabia created after the first world war by western powers, itself may impede a proper distribution of commodity resource revenues across the region....

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President Trump outlines a plan for Afghanistan that increases the U.S. troop presence from about 8500 with an addition of 4000 more troops and advisors, in addition to a counter terrorism force. To war weary public in the U.S. he says: "I share your frustration over a foreign policy that has spent too much time, energy, money- and most importantly, lives- trying to rebuild countries in our own image instead of pursuing our security interests above all other considerations." About his criticism of the war when president Obama was in office as a huge costly waste of resources Trump said: My original instinct was to pull out, and historically I like to follow my instincts... I heard that decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk at the Oval Office." After resisting the advice of his own advisers Trump decided to fire Bannon who had supported use of American private security contractors for the war in Afghanistan, and used parts of the media to question national security advisor McMaster's views on this. Gen. Mattis, completed a strategy review that showed the mistake of creating a vacuum would repeat the situation of Iraq where president Obama withdrew forces in 2011, leading to a sequence of negative events- with Russia, Iran and Islamic State moving into the vacuum, making American intervention in the war necessary, increase in terrorist incidents worldwide, and a flood of refugees into Europe. Ironically clearing the path for an outsider's bid for the White House, with Brexit in which refugee fears and uncontrolled immigration played a part, and the news of terrorism and the war in Syria-Iraq creating a sense of insecurity. A key difference in the Trump approach with Obama's approach is that "conditions on the ground, not arbitrary timetables will guide our actions from now on," in line with Trump's criticism of Obama's approach. The military in the U.S. has long maintained that the best approach would have been to insist on U.S. presence in negotiations with the Iraqi government under the sectarian prime minister Nouri Maliki. Gen. Mattis was head of Central Command under the Obama administration and must have pushed the view of the military to president Obama to no avail. Failure to do so led to the growth of Shiite militias and the alienation of Sunnis in Mosul, leading to the fall of Mosul to Islamic State thus creating the current crisis. Gen. Mattis and Lt. Gen McMaster are intimately aware of the problem and must have convinced Trump that this is what really happened, that a repeat would waste the sacrifices of American soldiers in the twin wars. Trump gave this as his reason when he said in his televised speech to the nation- essentially a criticism of Bush that he expanded the conflict too quickly, and Obama exiting too quickly to create a void. Trump call his policy "principled realism."  The roots of the crisis are in the India-Pakistan conflict. Like the conflict in South East Asia the conflict in South Asia extending from Iran to India and Pakistan, may take a generation to overcome. A rapprochement between India and Pakistan, beginning with trade and economic relations, is not only in America's interest, it also provides the basis for a realistic American withdrawal. ...

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The Times correspondent in Beijing says he sees two Chinas one that is showing technological advancement in 5G, in space technologies, in information technologies, infrastructure building in big cities. The other China is in rural areas away from the big cities, in smaller towns in regions away from Beijing and Shanghai. These areas have suffered neglect and have changed little over decades, with the focus during industrialization on larger cities and the coastal areas. This is evident in the manner health services infrastructure and development of medical personnel and doctors were neglected in the rush towards building manufacturing and infrastructure of road and rail. There is a shortage of doctors and hospitals, health services are costly, and waiting lists for beds at hospitals is huge. Doctors are also not held in high esteem because the focus is on profit in the market economy that has taken over the health sector.  Education of citizenry on respecting the common welfare which is expected and normal in Europe and America has also suffered during the rush to industrialization. Efforts to ban and eliminate use of certain wild animal foods not being respected by fellow citizens can be seen in this context. This caused the SARS virus epidemic and the epidemic today from the coronavirus. Seen from this angle a slowdown in construction, infrastructure building, and a slowdown in the economy, can even be healthy, so that focus can be shifted to better health, better sanitation, and better medical infrastructure including medical human resource capabilities. Investment in public education on health and self enforcement of rules by citizenry for a better society is indispensable for progress. It is in these conditions that the challenge of the national and international emergency of the coronavirus can be seen today. It also provides an opportunity to reflect on progress so far and the needs of the future. These challenges are even tougher than repeating what one has done before such as building more and more infrastructure, as they involve building a better society through public discipline along with investment in health and education services. This provides a lesson for many Asian, Latin American and African countries in the rush to industrialization. Turning over the health sector to a market economy making services costly and distributed unevenly in the population has not worked in the U.S. for the betterment of all citizens and a healthy society. Carrying this over from U.S. to China and not learning from Europe in what Europe has done well in the less costly and broad distribution of health services for the people, is one of the poorer lessons learned. This is also true for India and South Asia, South East Asian countries in their rush towards industrialization.  ...