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How Airbus is learning from the mistakes made in Boeing's Dreamliner, which will be out in late 2009. Airbus's competing plane the A350 will come out in 2013. Use of outside contractors and puttting all that work together is a critical issue once again, especially with production spread out around the world, including Russia and China.

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The moves by the Obama administration and the national feeling and mood, its views as taken in poll of 998 adults by CBS News/New York Times. On taxing those above $250,000 income levels at higher rates- 74% of respondents support it. On populist sentiment - 71% say Obama cares more about ordinary Americans than for large corporations. On the vast expansion of spending and programs 48% prefer smaller government and fewer services and 41% favor bigger government and more services. On spending to stimulate the economy at the risk of higher deficits- 45% support this. On the budget proposal- 56% support it, but 79% of Democrats like the priorities, only 27% of Republicans like them On helping banks recover- 29% supported this in Feb, 47% support this now. In the freedom to use his own judgement at a time when Republicans have rejected almost everything he does- by three to one people say they trust Obama to make better decisions about the economy than Congressional Republicans. This includes one quarter of Republicans, which is significant in giving President Obama the room to use his judgement of what is best and take aggressive action where necessary. This aggressive action may be necessary if taking over some failed or insolvent banks is considered to be the best option, and President Obama's advisors like Mr Axelrod must be taking notes from this poll by CBS News/New York Times. On security, on safety- by tqo to one people say they trust Obama to keep the nation safe. ...

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The New York Times reports that comments from Obama administration officials describe an alarming loss of trust and confidence between China and the USA over the last two years. David Shambaugh, director of the China Policy program at George Washington University, says the administration had hoped to work with China on major challenges like climate change, nuclear nonproliferation, and a new global economic order. China, he says, has failed to step up and play that role. He describes the Chinese as responding as an increasingly narrow-minded, self-interested truculent, hyper-nationalist, and powerful country. Jeffrey Baker, a key China policy adviser in the White House, says China's responses reflected a sense in Beijing that China was a rising power and the USA a declining power, especially after the strong rebound of the Chinese economy after the 2008 crisis. The administration is determined to counteract that impression. Other factors complicate things. China is facing a transition to a new leadership in the next year. There are differences within the Chinese Communist party leadership ranks about the direction China should take. Trade and currency issues have come to the point where American public opinion is shifting greatly, with educated professionals changing their views on trade and currency matters. See the recent WSJ/NBC September 2010 poll on world trade, reported by Murray and Belkin in WSJ, Oct 2, 2010. The Obama administration cannot ignore the deep concerns of the American people on these issues. The House overwhelmingly voted in September to threaten China with tariffs on its exports if the Chinese currency, the renminbi, is not allowed to appreciate significantly enough (experts estimate that it is overvalued by 20%). It is not clear whether the Administration's rhetoric on this issue is to assuage public opinion in a business as usual manner, or expected to achieve substantative results to rebalance world trade. The G-20 summit in S. Korea leaves this change for well into the future- China with current account surplus of 5.8% of GDP in 2009 is expected to lower this to 4% by 2015. With the high jobless rate in the US and the large and rising current account deficit, the United States may have reached a juncture where this cannot be put off well into the future years. Other issues, the different foreign policy objectives, and differing perceptions of China and the US of each other, the relationship with US allies in the region, may create additional tensions. These tensions may be navigated by governments of both countries, but the shift in American public opinion on trade, currency and jobs issues will require tangible and real change. As trade tensions will only increase in the next two years with the lack of fiscal stimulus on the jobs front, and no significant change in jobs expected from the Fed's purchase af additional Treasury debt, and a sense that the mutual benefit in the trade relationship with China has been lost to America's serious detriment. China's position may be perceived as stronger than it really is from the faster rebound from the 2008 crisis, and may in reality not be as Jeffrey Baker sees it. As David Barboza has reported in the New York Times, and experts have pointed out, the huge amount of lending encouraged by the government has accentuated weaknesses in the Chinese economy. A significant amount has gone into real estate speculation and will only increase the bad loans on the books of China's banks. This happens at the very time that growth is expected to slow down and make it harder to absorb the bad loans, as was done in the past. ...

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Spain provides 14 public holidays that are mostly Catholic holidays, and an additional 22 vacation days, which is similiar to the the EU average. Unlike the practice in the U.S. and Britain to have these holidays fall mostly on Fridays and Mondays, in Spain many of these holidays fall in the middle of the week. This disrupts productivity as Spaniards use bridge days or puentes to create long weekends during which many offices and factories are empty, disrupting productivity. Most companies cannot plan for meetings and work because counterparts may be using the bridge days during these holidays, and working with international clients is difficult and hard to explain. Spain's new prime minister is determined to increase Spain's competitiveness, and bring Spain to the level of competitiveness of countries that do well in this measure, including other European and Asian economies. He describes this in his book "En confianza. Mi vida y mi proyecto de cambio para Espana." ("In confidence. My life and project of change for Spain") In his inauguration address he said Spain should correct "the work calendar to make the rights of workers compatible with the competitiveness of our companies." Vacations are a sensitive issue in Spain because tourism generates 10% of GDP and employs 10% of the workers. Alberto Nadal, who addresses labor issues at the main business association in Spain, says a change of mentality is needed in Spain, and doing away with bridges shows Spain is grasping the idea that things should be done differently for the eurozone community of nations. This also shows some of the differences in the Iberian peninsula countries of Spain and Portugal, where the countries are embracing the change and there is less unrest even with high unemployment, as compared to Greece. In Greece the changes are being resisted by politically connected groups, where political parties enjoy little support and there is much unrest, making the project difficult. Mariana Rajoy, Sarkozy and Merkel are from centre right parties in Spain, France and Germany, and have had a close association for years before Rajoy was elected- during EU meetings of centre right parties, as is evident in Rajoy's book. They also share a similiar business and political orientation. ...

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WSJ Analysis of government data shows on Feb 22, the actual savings from cutting fraud and waste, misspent funds of $2.6 billion less than the $7 billion shown on the DOGE website. Of this 2% of savings are attributed to DEI closures. What it shows is that generating savings is a long term effort requiring weeks, months and years of hard work with patience and perseverance, as shown by the Truman Committee of 1941-1948 of the US Congress during the War and the early part of the rebuilding of Europe. DJT corruption, fraud and waste cutting efforts owe it to the American public to take a long term view similar to the Truman Committee of 1941. That Committee was setup with unanimous support in Congress for Resolution 41 of Senator Harry Truman of Missouri in Feb 1941. This type of unanimous support remains a hope, yet just as the efforts of president Biden were needed for investment in crumbling infrastructure, there is also today the need to see that $4 trillion in the US budget is wisely and prudently spent, even if this effort is led by the opposite party. As the articles alongside show the Truman Committee lasted till 1948 for the better part of the decade. It helped Harry Truman replace Wallace for the Vice Presidency in 1944 under FDR, and within months to the White House till 1952. A period of spending for the Greece-Turkey and Marshall Plan for Germany aid efforts similar to aid to Europe today, on top of the wartime spending comparable to the 5 year effort against the pandemic starting in 2019.     ...

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This editorial in the Economist points to the slow progress made in the first year of the Modi administration in India. Because the last years of the previous Manmohan Singh administration were a period of slowing economic growth and the built up expectations are high, there is a general sense that the Modi administration could have moved faster to make changes. As the Economist points out India is a large region with accumulated problems, and the Modi administration needs to have a good grip on the problems and how it plans to tackle them. Key bottlenecks such as energy will free up huge resources in the economy. How to tackle these individual problems with the most leverage for growth is critical to the approach to be taken, as all of the problems cannot be tackled at once. Coal India is an example of the government trying to find an approach that will work, following previous wholly unsuccessful efforts to overhaul the monopoly coal supplier. Modi also has to work within the framework of democracy, so the Indian experiment in change is likely to involve freeing up other energies for rapid development, unlike the Chinese experiment which was able to use the Communist party's total control of the country and top down direction. Under such a framework Modi will have to improvise and come up with a different framework for making rapid changes, that includes keeping the support of the farmers and working classes for a sustained 10 year effort. Moves such as the 150 million new bank accounts and the structure of providing relief to the poor in rural areas come from a good sensible approach, but also help the Modi administration completely change the way things are done, a cultural change which removes the old culture of support developed by Congress administrations since 1947. A similiar cultural approach is seen in the Clean India campaign, which is huge in cultural terms because in a democracy people have to change the way they think to keep their neighborhoods clean. In this sense the Modi administration as it studies and grapples with the problems to plan effective solutions to seemingly intractable problems in a vast region, is simply laying a strong groundwork for 2016-2018. Steps taken for the groundwork covered separately in the Economist report on India in the issue of May 23, 2016, are the efforts to get a goods and services tax implemented to improve the federal government's revenues, the shift of revenues so that about 62% of revenue goes to the states to promote development- which economic advisor, Arvind Subramanium, calls a big constructive change as states are better at competing for talent capital and investment, and the setting up of the think tank to replace the Soviet style Planning Commission of the Congress administrations since 1947....

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During the presidential debates Donald Trump was asked about his proposal for a 45% tariff on imports from China to the U.S.. Trump's response was "if they don't behave." he would use this as a negotiating tactic against China. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas responded by reminding viewers of the high tariffs under Smoot-Hawley legislation that were one of the factors that created the Great Depression in the 1930's. Economist and former Federal Reserve chairman Bernanke is a student of the Great Depression, and says "it was highly counterproductive, it lengthened and deepened the Great Depression." Economist Peter Petri of Brandeis University in his study cited in this article, says that the tit for tat that starts with such a move could eventually cost the U.S. 1 million jobs. It might fix one problem the one of imbalanced trade with China his figures show, and create another huge problem the loss of markets for U.S. goods all over the world. Overall a 45% tariff would reduce U.S. merchandise imports by $383 billion and reduce U.S. merchandise exports by $658 billion, says Petri. Gordon Hanson, economist at the University of California, San Diego, who has actually shown how trade has affected different counties in the U.S., leaving some dependent on government assistance. Hanson sees this tariff as counterproductive, it makes the U.S. more self-sufficient but hurts U.S. exporters, would significantly hurt the tech boom, and reduce America's standard of living. The problem is that everybody can get into this in a tit for tat. France did this even before the Smoot Harley Act of 1938 was passed in 1930 with 60% increase in tariff on individual items, by higher tariff legislation in 1928. Close allies Canada followed quickly after Smoot Hawley increasing its tariffs, so did Great Britain. Unemployment went up significantly after 1931, worsened by weak banks and lack of support from the Federal Reserve. Trade with Mexico would come to a halt Petri shows, and the result would be more Mexicans trying to cross the border turning a relatively non existent problem of immigration in 2015 -with Mexicans preferring to remain home and net immigration dropping significantly following the 2008 financial crisis and the strict Obama policy of deporting illegal immigrants- into a real one. Trump says its just a threat, but it is likely to lead to a tit for tat response by China, then by U.S. allies, other trading partners. Consider that president Herbert Hoover opposed the Smoot Hawley bill for raising tariffs on industrial goods, and only proposed adifferent legislation reducing tariffs on industrial goods and increasing the tariffs on agricultural goods to give relief to American farmers. Politics intervened as Smoot from Utah and Hawley from Oregon, from mountain and agricultural states with a lack of understanding of how the international trading system works but as heads of two influential commmittes, the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee, let politics overrride and pushed their legislation through Congress. In 1932 Smoot and Hawley were defeated for reelection, but the damage had been done, and promises of better conditions for workers and farmers never kept. A significant reason for the U.S. standard of living is that it is a leader in the global trading system. Even in 1945 and the years following the end of the war tariffs were higher in Britain and other countries. In return for this leadership the U.S. enjoys the advantages of the dollar being the main global currency, and the advantages of a world leading technological sector that has large global markets. Hanson and Autor have pointed out how imbalanced trade has hurt some counties in the U.S. This is a very real problem for workers in the manufacturing sector, as shown by elections in the midwestern states, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois and other parts of the country. The problem is compounded by the tech sector looking out for itself, the financial sector looking out for itself, and forgetting that we are all in the same boat. And that includes the Chinese who are in the same boat. China is doing a major shift in policy towards a consumer driven economy, and this needs to be accelerated for the benefit of ordinary Chinese. This makes the policy of a 45% tariff by the U.S. doubly unproductive because it hopes to add urgency to the problem of the U.S. trade deficit and manufacturing workers, but takes an approach that risks ending up damaging the global trading system by setting in motion a process that no one controls or can foresee the destination....

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Keir Starmer of Labour says he stands behind every word in the ad that shows Tories including Sunak are weak in prosecuting crimes against woman and children. Labour says it will halve violence against women and girls. Starmer says- he will "make absolutely zero apologies for being blunt." That Labour will continue to use the Conservatives record on crime as legitimate criticism no matter how squeamish it made some people feel. "For the first time in my lifetime, everywhere you look from the economy to the NHS to the chaos on our streets- we have been set on a path of decline." Starmer said the last decade had seen the UK "become a country where thugs, gangs and monsters mock our justice system and make decent people's lives a misery." Starmer was head of public prosecution in Britain from 2008 to 2013. As early as 2002 he was Queen's Counsel. He was also a human rights adviser for Northern Ireland Policing Board and Association of Chief Police Officers. Starmer cites his work in improvements in Northern Ireland policing as one of the key factors in his decision to pursue a political career. The issue in the ad is a subject in which Starmer has much experience. ...

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Poetry of migrant worker Xu Lizhi at a Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, China.

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Patricia Kowsmann provides this picture of life in a town on Portugal's northern coast, Viana do Castelo, with a population of 87,000, as Portugal struggles to make a recovery. Viana do Castelo has shipyards and companies making metal bridges for highways. The money losing state owned shipyard was privatized and sold to Martifer SGPS SA to run till 2031. 600 workers at the shipyard were laid off. The new company plans to rehire 400 workers by 2016 but jobs will not be permanent. Companies making the bridges now sell to former Portuguese colonies of Angola, Mozambique, Brazil. 200,000 people have left the country to look for jobs or higer education, including the mayor's daughter in London. Exports are up and now make up 40% of Portugal's GDP, up from 27% in 2009. The economic growth is 0.9% in 2014, after declining 6% 2011-2013. Portugal accepted the last instalment of the bailout loan of 78 billion euros in 2014. It will auction 1.25 billion euros of bonds on July 22, 2015. Unemployment is now declining dropping to 14% from a high of 17%, and higher than the pre crisis level of 11%. Here in this coastal town the mayor Jose Maria Costa cut public employee salaries 15%, and also cut sports and cultural programs. Two food centers provide free lunch and dinner, and half of the 4000 children in school get subsidies for food and transport. A shipyard worker Antonio Gomes Barbosa 64, is one of the laid off workers. His son's architecture company closed and he left Portugal for Angola. Some of his co-workers now work at a shipyard in neighboring Spain....

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Williams and Stone founders of Twitter talk to Michael Malone. Williams is from a rural part of Nebraska, soyabean and cattle farm in Clarks, Nebraska, pop. 361. He dropped out of the University of Nebraska, drifted around the country key, West, Dalla, Austin, doing various technology jobs, then ending up in the farming town of Sbastopol, Marin County, working for and oldstyle media/conference firm , where he started writing code, extending it to freelance work for Intel anfd HP. He could not hold traditional jobs, and teamed up with another freelance code writer to found Pyra Labs for management software. As this did not generate enough revenues though widely admired, he then started Bloogger.com, turning abug intoo afeature through one of his recurring brainstorms. He developed it from anote taking applicaton in Pyra, and invented the term "blogger." Pyra was started in 1999, Blogger.com attracted some financing and was turned into a product. Google acquired the company. At that point Williams teamed up with a chap named Noah Glass, to start Odeo, a podcasting company, and bought out the venture investors with his Blogger cash. At that point he took asidelight of Odeo, its social networking tool and developed it into Twitter. Twitter enables users to send short messages called tweets, of less than 140 characterson their personal feed. These are real time diary entries that can be read by other users, called "followers", wo have subscribed to that page. Its like sending short powerful personal messages to ones own inner circleof people, like Obama's tweet, "we just made history," on the night of his win....

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There are some major problems in the American jobs market which suggest a long drawn out effort to reduce the high unemployment rate. One is the divergence between the vacancies that are developing and the rate at which firms are filling these vacancies. With vacancies remaining, unfilled and firms remaining cautious about the economic outlook and leery of hiring, the increase in economic output or GDP growth of 3% expected on the optimistic side in 2011 is not translating into lower unemployment. Structural problems are causing a great deal of difficulty in reducing the jobless rate. The recession hit manufacturing and construction very hard. And those who worked in these industries are not those with the skills and training to take up jobs in health care and education or other similiar fields- here skill mismatches are the problem. Geographic factors and the property prices drop are creating additional barriers. About 25% of mortgage borrowers owe more than their property is worth, and their are fewer buyers in regions with depressed job prospects like Michigan. There is a large increase in long term unemployment- over 27 weeks. Those out of work for more than 6 months see their skiils, job connections and confidence erode. A Brookings Institution paper estimates that this rise in long term unemployment by itself can cause labor market recovery to take twice as long as after the 1982 recession under Reagan, when unemployment reached a high of 10.8% and took 2 years to get back to 7.5%. Add to this the fact that a lot of jobs were lost in 2008 and 2009, with a six percentage increase in unemployment in a short period unmatched by anything since the Great Depression, with long term unemployed reaching 6.5 millon or nearly half of the total. And the 3% growth rate estimated by the government is anything but certain. It is questioned by the IMF as a stretch. This does not take into account the problems in the banking sector, as home equity loans gone bad show up on their balance sheets in latter part of 2010. According to a CreditSights report (see the US economy in 2010 in Group search for more information on this) with estimated losses of $33 billion. A struggling banking sector and tighter credit will add a structural dimension from the banking sector to the wobbly hiring. The "muddle through" approach to banking problems of the Obama administration in tackling bank's bad debt will continue to pose risks....

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John T. Chambers has some very useful guidance on questions to ask and what to look for in hiring. Fairly simple but a lot of attention needed to get the right answers and make sure the hiring is done right. Here he talks to NYT's Adam Bryant. How did Chambers respond to dyslexia as a child? See it as a curve ball said a teacher,once you see it and observe that it comes a certain way, then you can handle it. He reads right to left. And he learned about near death experiences with Cisco in 2001. And he learnt from Jack Welch why they are very powerful and useful. He learnt from his parent, an obstetrician, that you are best being calm when there is an accident happening and people are not. People express emotions at such times and this says little about what's really going on, said his dad. Chambers admits his virtue and fault about being a command and control person, possibly from his early training at IBM. But he is open to changing when pushed, he says. He says his wife of 35 years keeps him from becoming too self-conscious. Questions he asks new people interviewed about joining the company. Tell me about your results. Tell me about your mistakes and failures. All of us have mistakes and failures, he says, so someone who says "I can't think of one, immediately loses credibility." The ability to be candid about mistakes made, and what they would do differently this time, helps make people learners and adapters as they go into different things. He says that he learns more from these two questions than from anything else. He also asks who are the best people you recruited and developed, and where are they today. He does this one gently , which is to figure out if they are oriented towards the customer or merely see the customer as someone who gets in the way. And then he looks for communications skills, and the key part of that is listening. He likes to see how they listen, how they interpret, and are they willing to challenge you. And then he looks for their knowledge in the industry segments, and the areas he is interested in. And that kind of covers the things he has looked for in the last 20 years. For today's world he looks especially for collaboration skills, teamwork skills, and their use of technology to share information, collaborate and work as a team. As its not immediately clear whether someone who says he is a team player is actually a team player, he checks with other people who know the person. Chambers grew up in a individualist world. So he is candid about this. He says that when he was trained it was about me and winning as an individual. The future, he adds, is about how do groups think and work together collaboratively. And how can one add discipline to that through practice and capability, and being able to use the necessary technologies. ...

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Ed Gorman of The Times talks to British skipper Ben Ainslee before the Prada sailing competition. Ainslee is a four time Olympic gold medalist who is working with a new design for the boat Britannia that has problems in light winds. Much technical work on the boat has been done and Ainslee with his team hopes to turn things around in adverse conditions. The team is pulling together from this low point and hope to use the days of the competition and rest days to pull through.

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Jay Powell, a former US Treasury official, now a scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center, says the fears of budget problems in US states are survivable, even though they will be difficult and painful. He does not see widespread defaults, the way Meredith Whitney has predicted. Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University, says a major default would cause serious macro-economic dislocations. It would have impact beyond the US, in the European economies with serious budget problems such as Greece, Portugal and Spain. Analysts cite the following reasons why a widespread debt default by states and local governments is unlikely. Municipal bonds are held mostly by individuals, who own about two thirds of US municipal bonds, directly or through mutual funds. Most state and local government debt is long term, and does not rely on short term borrowing the way a Lehman Brothers did in the recent financial crisis. The states can raise revenues, as Illinois did recently. With the economy improving state tax revenues were up 6.9% in the fourth quarter of 2010, compared to a year earlier, according to preliminary data from the Nelson Rockefeller Institute of Government, Albany, New York. That said, the following reasons show that life will be difficult and painful for states and local governments. State budget gaps total at least $125 billion, as they look to the coming fiscal year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. And no federal help is in the works, as it was in 2009. Far less of newly issued muni-bonds are insured today - 6% compared to 57% in 2005- according to the Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Insurers are still recovering from losses in the recent financial crisis. A massive supply of new bonds has depressed the market just as Dec 31 expiration of a federal program, Build America Bonds, which provided help to states that were borrowing. Investors withdrew $23.6 billion from muni-bonds mutual funds since November, 2010. Moody's Investor's service has listed the states that will need to issue bonds to fund current operations. California will borrow billions to cover cash flow needs, and Illinois is considering an $8.75 billion 'debt restructuring bond' to pay past due bills, and a $3.75 billon bond for contributions to its pension system. Because banks have only 1.3% of assets in muni-bonds any defaults will not affect their ability to lend. But the impact will be felt in the US economy and overseas. In the event there was a default, some analysts believe the federal government would find it hard to say no when the federal government said yes to AIG....

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Nelson Schwartz of the NYT looks at the town of Neenah, Wisconsin, a year after the election in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania with 80,000 votes swinging the other way from blue to red handing the election to Mr. Trump. The pressures are still there with cheaper imports, paper mills about to close, and workers still struggling to keep the same lifestyle as their parents. Even with low unemployment of about 3% in Wisconsin, with the slow increase in wages and corporate pressures for profits, trade wars, the sense is that the problems of the American middle class are still just as deep.

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The rise of Japan was a major challenge for president Reagan in the 1980's in the way president Trump is confronting the rise of China. The Reagan administration obtained the concessions it needed from Japan. The negotiator for the U.S. side during the Reagan years - Robert Lighthizer. Lighthizer is using his experience in winning concessions from Japan in his role as top trade negotiator with China.  As the WSJ points out Japan ceased to be a threat to the U.S. faster than anyone thought possible. 

But there is one problem even if this happens the warning is that the imbalances with Japan simply transferred over time to China. The warning is for America's tendency to spend money it does not have, and for how long.

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In an intervew with WSJ's David Pearson, Tom Enders, CEO of Airbus, points to the changes at Airbus after improvements in governance in 2012, leading to a smaller role for the governments of France and Germany. One is the shift away from Europe. Compared to 2004 when Airbus orders were 50% from Europe, this has dropped to 10% in 2014. Airbus is also staying away from a 623 million euros loan from Germany for the new Airbus A350 widebody jet, because of pressure from the German government to allocate work to German factories. The same policy will be followed in future programs to rely less on government support. Enders does not want to be tied down to certain workshare agreements imposed by governments with the loans. In 2012 Airbus reduced the role of the German and French governments with a large increase in the percentage of shares traded on stock markets. In the past the funding was critical for programs. Today Airbus has 9-10 billion euros on its books because of booming sales.

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The median household headed by a person 60-62 years of age with a 401(k) account has less than one fourth of what is needed to maintain a standard of living at retirement, according to data from the Federal Reserve and analyzed by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College for the Wall Street Journal. Including Social Security and any pensions or other savings, the savings are way short of what is needed for retirement. Households used in this data had a median income of $87,700 in 2009. The 85% needed for a decent standard of living upon retirement is $74,545. Social Security would provide an estimated 40% of pre-retiremment income, or $35,080 for that median family, leaving $39,465 that has to come from other sources. The median 401(k) account has $149,400 which would only provide a fixed income each year of $9,073- only one fourth of the $39,465 needed. To generate that $39,465, households have to have $636,673, and only 8% of American households approaching retirement have that amount. Half of the families have other pension income of $26,500 a year, which added to $9,073 in 401(k) income gets the total income up to $35,573. Other studies using different data by the Employee Benefit Research Institute show results that are largely similiar. The Employee Benefit Research Institute, is supported by 401(k) providers. Its estimate of the median person is based on individuals in the 60's who have worked at the same company for more than 30 years. This data shows an estimated median person having about $158,754, not much different from the Fed data. Why is the amount in most Americans 401(k) savings so low? There was a mistaken sense that a 6% annual contribution, with a 3% company match would be enough. Vanguard Group says the current median amount that people contribute is 9%, counting the employer contribution. Now Vanguard is advising people to contribute more, 12 to 15%, including the employer contribution. Other problems for the low savings is that saving started late, or contributions were suspended after a job loss, or medical emergencies, other debt. The stock market collapses of 2000-2002 and 2007-2009, added to the problems, by wiping out a portion of the savings. The low rate of interest on savings for most of the last decade hurt even conservative investors and lowers the kind of retirement account income used by seniors. The way people are coping with this is to work longer, in some cases into the 70's, cutting down on spending for food, travel, and taking greater risks for higher returns, risks that could make the situation worse....

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All the extreme rhetoric on how Project 2025 is going to be adopted under a DJT administration has led to unease that there will be deterioration in the government and society.  Yet it simply may not work that way.   A second objective look at Project 2025 and how it's value to Republicans will be carefully evaluated piece by piece by DJT is needed. Keeping in mind 2026 House and Senate elections, winning broad support for the traditional Republican conservative line of thinking, and maintaining the support of all Republicans in the business, government, media and other sectors.  1. Replacing federal employees with party loyalists. This happens at the top of every agency of the government for every government in the US and Europe after an election for the last century. At today's unemployment level of 4 percent, adult males actually 3.9% and adult females 3.6%, and considering the higher salaries paid in the private sector, the tenuous nature of joining as a party loyalist as the national mood can shift at any time and things change again in 2027; where was the federal government going to find employees to be replaced at mid and lower levels? There is also the situation seen in 1928 when a Republican Hoover victory made Democrat NY Governor Al Smith compel a reluctant Franklin Roosevelt, who was just recovering from polio, to run for NY Governor. By 1931 over 3 years Franklin Roosevelt and Columbia University's Frances Perkins tested programs to stabilize employment in the US, introduce unemployment insurance as a new concept, and a 40 hour week also new, in the entire northeastern + midwestern states, all governors working together. By 1931 in just 3 years Franklin Roosevelt was on the clear path to sweeping victory in 1932 with a tested program to stabilize employment. 2.  The No. 1 goal is to restore the traditional family. It is clear in 2024 that the vast majority of Americans, whites, women as well as men, of all age groups, whites as well as Latinos and Asians, blacks, see that things like transgender "have somehow gone too far." 3. Cultural Literacy is needed for any nation to long survive. This is not even on any platform. Yet knowledge about America's history of settlement of the continent -correcting for treatment of American Indians, blacks, Chinese, Japanese without pointless race controversies- is being rapidly lost, and with it an understanding of America's civic institutions and Constitution, its founders and presidents, and evolution of the nation over the 20th century with the Industrial Revolution. The very terminology that has defined public knowledge about these United States is fast disappearing. It is a cause for unease in the minds of people in rural and urban, conservative and other parts of the political spectrum alike of what will happen to America as this is lost. 4. On immigration  a consensus was reached by president Biden that migrant flow was mishandled and the Lankford legislation offered by Republican leaders accepted by both parties to stop the flow. During his first term president Eisenhower conducted a program of returning illegal migrants to their home countries, Germany is doing this now and the UK's Labor party has made it No. 1 priority to stop migrant smuggling. 5. An effort to increase oil and gas production. This will help bring down the cost of living by reducing energy costs in the US and also helping Europe to do the same. Biden had already accepted the idea of the temporary need to do this to ease cost of living burden on the people of this Nation. The economic cost of wind and solar, are ultimate drivers for expanding renewable energy as major form of climate change action. In the first term of DJT 2016-2020 the lower cost of natural gas made it economical to switch from oil to gas. In the Biden term 2020-2024 all the effort to increase EV's on the road ran into the problem of lack of charging stations. It is possible that spread of charging stations could reverse this in the second term of DJT. It is the private sector and also the local governments that play a big part, climate change action will continue, and new R&D breakthroughs will happen to jump start it again.    ...

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Some figures on the foreclosure situation. 2.3 million Americans faced foreclosure proceedings in 2008, 81% increase over 2007. 860,000 properties were repossessed by lenders, more than double the 2007 level, according to RealtyTRac a foreclosure listing firm in Irvine,, California. Moody's Economy.com predicts the numbers to go up 18% in 2009 before slowing through 2011. That is 2.71 million foreclosures in 2009. To prevent the foreclosure levels from getting much worse as unemployment drops, the new administration plans to use upto $100 billion of the remaining $350 billion TARP funds to help homeowners. The 4 states hardest hit are Nevada, Arizona, California and Florida. More than 1.1 million properties there received foreclosure notices, almost half the total nationwide. The hardest hit areas are in California, with the metro areas worst hit in order are Stockton, California, Las Vegas, Nevada, Riverside and Bakersfield, California, and Phoenix. In December more than 303,000 properties nationwide received foreclosure notices, up 40% from year ago month, and 17% above November 2008. At 303,000 the yearly rate is 3.6 million foreclosures or higher for 2009, so the Moody's estimate for 2009 must take into account acceleration of steps to help homeowners with the new administration. Are the rather modest steps taken upto now helping? RealtyTrac analysts estimate that without a state law requiring lenders to give borrowers a 30 day warning before starting the foreclosure process, the foreclosures in California would be 10% higher. There are similiar state laws in Massachusetts and Maryland. Throughout 2008 few steps were taken by the Bush administration to slow foreclosures, even though Republican economists like Martin Feldstein repeatedly advocated this. See links to Feldstein and Sheila Bair of the FDIC who also advocated aggressive action, and providing the numbers to show that it was costlier for lenders to see borrowers go into foreclosure compared to reducing principal and interest payments significantly. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Leslie Gelb says US should focus on its strengths, on the areas that it can build on to come up with something of enduring value and not focus all one's energies on situations and troublespots that siphon off a lot of American energies. This is a good idea and should be something that policymakers at State and the National Security Council and advisers to the President could keep in mind. There is alot to be said about the Truman example of the Marshall Plan in building western Europe after the war. At the same time its not as clear cutthat troublespots and the difficult work can be avoided. Was the Berlin airlift a troublespot? And Truman had little time to respond to the invasion of South Korea from the north, acrisis he would have chosen to avoid, if he had the choice. Instead he was drawn into along drawn out war on the Korean peninsula. Still the idea that you want to save your energies and not dissipate them in conflicts which can't clearly be won is a useful one. The Korean war was fought on conventional terms so the US could point to success years later in South Korea. But for conflicts fought in the jungles of Vietnam or in the remote mountainous terrain of Afghanistan, limited objectives and willingness to consider history, customs, and local tribal cultures is very constructive. ...