LyrArc Article Gist
Excellent article on GM and how it lost of market share in the coastal regions of the eastern, western and southern United States. Uses Miami as an example, and traces the large demographic changes there that GM failed to keep up with in its marketing. Describes the failures of corporate strategy in centralization of marketing and advertising, and the effects of the silos in decisionmaking at GM offices in the Detroit Rennaissance Center. Hawkins describes the four Renn Center towers as resembling massive steel grain silos. Just getting to an office in another tower requires taking an elevator to the ground floor , making it along a long walkway to another tower elevator. GM once ran a snow ad in Florida, and market share in South Florida is only 13.8%. The first ads to Hispanics were in 1995 and used the Alamo as a backdrop even though Mexicans make up only a small part of the Hispanic population there. The situation is repeated in other coastal cities of the U.S. - centralization of advertising and marketing, a sense at Detroit head offices that they knew what to do and did not have to ask people in the regional offices, a failure to delegate decisionmaking to regional offices and to people more attuned to the customer preferences for that demographic. A former Avon employee who marketed Avon products to Hispanics in South Florida is the new GM marketing executive in Florida. A regional sales manager for GM's southeast region says the organization is becoming flatter and for the first time he can talk directly with head offices in Detroit. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
This article clearly shows that Russia is turning the corner for full scale use of western technology to tap oil and gas fields in the North. Note the efforts to bring in western expertise include- 1. Efforts to hire Donald Evans, former U.S. Commerce Secretary, to be Chairman of Rosneft. Evans turned down the offer. The hiring of Peter O'Brien a former Morgan Stanley investment banker as chief financial advser.2. With China National Petroleum as a strategic partner. 2. The financial backing and expertise of state run oil companies around the world now give them the ability to contract directly with Schlumberger or Baker Hughes or other oil field technology suppliers. This changes the whole playing field with less need to negotiate with the major oil companies and the ability to do it themselves at their own pace and strategic advantage and execute their own oil policy. Previously negotiating with the oil companies meant giving up some of the ownership of the oil fields to the oil companies in return for the technology. The oil services companies sell the technologies on a fee basis. 3. The pressure to move ahead aggressively with new technology. Estimates from IEA in Paris by Chief Economist Fatih Birol, show that increasing oil production by one and half million barrels a day to level of ten and half million barrels a a day requires Russia to invest $900 billion dollars by 2030 or about 40 billion a year. The only way to generate this kind of investment is to grow its oil development capabilities, keep prices high but stable, invest in the latest technology and bring some of it inhouse....

LyrArc Article Gist
Mr Obama meets Mr Putin at his residence for breakfast which lasted 2 hours. Mr Obama said that he recognized "the extraordinary work that you've done on behalf of the RUssian people." And Mr Putin said, "with you we link all our hopes for the furtherance of relations between our two countries." Pavel Palazhchenko an interpreter for Mikhail Gorbachev, who met with Obama, put it this way about Medvedev and Obama- "they represent a different generation, many of the dogs in the old fights are really not their dogs. And they will be willing to take afresh look at some issues." As the head of one of the investment funds put it to a CNBC reporter about U.S. -Russian relations, the left does not like Russia, and the right does not like Russia. When asked about corruption in Russia, this businessmen said that he had worked in India, and sure he knew about corruption , "I'm from New Jersey." So with all the hopes and good intentions, and new leaders, Obama can get stuck on issues like Georgia, and political freedom, still agree on reduction of nuclear weapons stockpiles. He attended aconference on civil society and while stressing importance of freedom of expresssion and assembly, the rule of law, he brought ameasure of humility. He said" Icome before you with humility. I think in the past there has ben atendency for the United States to lecture rather than to listen. And we obviously still have much work to do with our own democracy in the United States. But nevertheless share common values and interest in building a strong democratic culture in Russia as well as the United States." ...

LyrArc Article Gist
This op-ed essay by the President of Toyota Motor Company, Akio Toyoda, talks frankly about the situation that led to the quality failures at Toyota and promises that Toyota will try to live up to the ideals that shaped its beginnings some 70 years ago. Toyota had humble beginnings in the thirties when the original founder of Toyoda was in the textile loom manufacturing business. Following a new venture in automobiles in the 1930's, for three decades Toyota was only trying to catchup with the U.S. in auto manufacturing. It started with the current chairman Shoichiro Toyoda's father -and Akio Toyoda's grandfather Kiichiro- visiting a Professor of Metallurgical Engineerig at a university in Tokyo to collect ideas and information for entering the automobile manufacturing business. Akio Toyoda seems quite cognizant of these beginnings in this essay. Action steps he mentions are a top down review of global operations, establishing an Automotive Center of Quality Excellence in the United States, and asking a blue-ribbon safety advisory group of outside experts in quality management to independently review Toyota's operations, with the findings made public. Akio Toyoda points to the lack of effective communication in quality matters in its global operations that led to the problem festering for so long. He says that in regard to sticking accelerator pedals, Toyota "failed to connect the dots between problems in Europe and problems in the United States because the European situation related primarily to right-hand-drive vehicles." Toyota also moved to address problems in its Prius and Lexus HS250h models for anti-lock braking systems....

LyrArc Article Gist
Paul Singer, head of hedge fund firm Elliott Management and its unit NML Capital, has relentlessly pursued a case in U.S. courts involving collecting full payment on bonds from the Argentine government after its default on the bonds in 2001. Singer bought bonds with face value of about $170 million according to legal filings, but paid a price well below the original value. Elliott and other investors are now seeking $1.5 billion, including unpaid interest. Judge Griesa's ruling in a federal court in Manhattan blocks Argentina from paying bondholders who accepted an agreement for about 25 cents on the dollar from being paid $530 million in interest in July 2014. Argentina has to consider other risks in settling the dispute as more than the $1.5 billion as a one off payment is involved, because as Stevenson points out in another article (see link), the payment could run from $15- $27 billion depending on whether it then has to pay all holdout bondholders or all exchange and holdout bondholders at a higher rate. The result is an intractable dispute beyond the statement of honoring creditor rights, seen by a debtor country facing difficult finances in a different light. Serving as a reminder for Greece, Argentina, and other countries with chronic borrowing and debt history about the need for care and constant vigilance on state finances. In May 2012 Greece paid over $436 million in a one off payment to holdout bondholder financial firm Dart Management in a similiar bind, even as pensions were being cut and Greeks protested daily on Athens streets with over 20% unemployment (see link)....

LyrArc Article Gist
Prof. Cusumano of MIT, says that with the loss of Apple's Steve Jobs, the company has lost a great visionary, and it will be difficult for Apple's new CEO Time Cook to make up for this loss. Cusumano has talked to many Apple employees in 2013-2014, and is writing a book on innovation. In this piece Chen and Richtel point out the ways Tim Cook is trying to fill the role Jobs filled, by assembling a group of people within the company who can play the pioneering role for new products, and making new acquisitions such as the Beats acquisition to bring in outside talent. Cook pushed for the introduction of the iPad Air, which now accounts for 60% of all iPad sales. The constant push for the magic in new products that Steve Jobs obsessed with down to details, will be missing. Jobs met daily with design chief Jonathan Ive for lunch at the Cupertino headquarters. Cook meets Ive 3 times a week. And Jobs pulled all the pieces of the new product together in a way that others will have difficulty doing. Cook has brought a different dimension to leadership at Apple by talking about Apple in terms of "advancing humanity," talking about his own personal experiences in the South, and seeing racial discrimination barriers for minorities. He was challenged recently to address issues of working conditions at Apple supplier factories in China. Cook is bringing some manufacturing back to the U.S. with building of new plants in Arizona and Texas. These are areas which were gaps in Jobs record, which Cook is filling gradually, and asking shareholders, customers, to be patient....

LyrArc Article Gist
The MIT Economics Department helped shape the thinking of influential central bank governors, Mervyn King of the Bank of England, Ben Bernanke of the U.S. Federal Reserve, and Mario Draghi of the European Central Bank. Bernanke (1979) and Draghi (1977) received their Ph.D.s in economics from MIT in the late 1970's, with Prof. Stanley Fischer (1973-94) as their advisor. Charles Bean, deputy governor of the Bank of England followed them a few years later. Mervyn King was a visiting professor at MIT (1983-84). King and Bernanke shared an office as professors at MIT. The MIT school came up with a pragmatic and activist approach which argued there was a role for government when markets and the economy stumbled. This followed a period when economists from the universities at Chicago, Minnesota and Rochester were influential, making the case for efficient markets and businesses holding rational future expectations which were ahead of government planners; saying government should play a minimal role. The MIT trained central bankers have made shaping public and market expectations an important part of policy actions. Draghi's July 23, 2012 remark- "Believe me this will be enough," was an effort to shape expectations after the European Central Bank's July 2012 bond buying actions in the eurozone. Germany has a competing version based in Bonn. Germany's former Bundesbank president, Axel Weber, was the tutor at Bonn University for current Bundesbank president, Jens Weidmann. Both Weber and Weidmann supported austerity measures, inflation fighting efforts of former ECB head Claude Trichet, and opposed Draghi's monetary easing and bond buying efforts to reduce excessive yields of Italy and Spain....

LyrArc Article Gist
How the supply and demand for oil is changing according to updated forecasts by the International Energy Agency. Demand is expected to be 500,000 barrels a day less than originally forecast for the fourth quarter by IEA. Also Iraq's northern fields produced 600,000 barrels a day and Angolan production also went up to increase supply by 1.4 million barrels a day. This provides some slack in the supply-demand situation to ease price pressures. Examples of energy conservation are given one of a refrigerated truck firm, Willis Shaw Express in Arkansas which runs a fleet of 725 refrigerated trucks and has installed "governors" on its truck engines to max speed at 65 miles per hour and thus get more fuel economy per gallon used. The full impact of recent price increases has not been felt at the pumps till noand this should also encourage further conservation. The slowing down of the U.S. economy should help reduce demand in 2008 as the full impact of the mortgage crisis is felt (see the OECD report of further losses ahead estimated at $300 billion by 2008-2009) this should lead to slowing demand. At this time demand in the US is rising by 1% down from 3-4% in the 1990's. This could be be part of a trend that could lead to actual decline in consumption in the industrialized countries. The impact of a US slowdown could impact less industrialized countries and moderate demand there. Slower growth is reported for Eastern European countries. Meantime Saudi Arabia states its on schedule to increase production from 11.3 million barrels a day to 12.5 million barrels a day by 2009. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
In the past decade alone overdoses of fentanyl and other drugs have killed half a million Americans. Federal projections show deadly overdoses killing 72,000 people last year. The pandemic has made things worse, The social isolation and stress, and the difficulty meeting help providers is taking its toll and adds to the 188,000 people dead from the coronavirus. This silent crisis that affects Americans and families all across the country from the dangerous flow of these drugs into the U.S. from other countries and from their overuse and abuse is taking about half as many lives as the coronavirus itself, without the effective government response needed at every level to end this crisis.

LyrArc Article Gist
Former CIA chief Brennan tells Congress that he warned the head of Russian security services that Americans would not accept interference in the election, that this would lead to a backlash and damage relations. Some of this is already happening as the investigations into Russian interference are filling the media coverage in May 2017 following the firing of FBI Director Comey. The FBI investigation also had since July 2016 included a small team that included the CIA and other intelligence agencies. Brennan was part of this team. Brennan said he told Bortnikov, the head of Russia's Federal Security Service- "I said American voters would be outraged by any Russian attempt to interfere in the election."

LyrArc Article Gist
Defense Secretary Gates does not see Russia as the threat it was in the Cold War, first because Russia's conventional forces are a "shadow" of what they were during the Cold War, and Russia has adverse demographic trends that will diminish Russia's ability in conventional forces. He sees the Georgian war in the context of Russia's seeking to exorcize, as he puts it, past humiliations. And Gates sees opportunities in the relationship with Russia. Such things as Russia's willingness to work with the US on Afghanistan. Evidence of this is Russia supporting the renwal of the UN resolution on Afghanistan. Another indication is that Russia he says is very worried about the drugs coming out of Afghanistan, and has been supportive to provide alternative routes for Europeans to get equipment and supplies into Afghanistan. These views come across in an interview on December 17, with Charlie Rose, a five time elected Congressman, for the PBS Charlie Rose show. They are also reflected in an article in Foreign Affairs journal's current issue. Gates was a CIA analyst and has some insightful observations. Gates told Charlie Rose that he does not see the Islamic radicals and violent Islamic extremists as a threat in the same way as the threat in the Cold War years. This threat is not as big as the threat to freedom during the Cold War. He says the failure in strategic communications was huge as agencies of the US government engaged in activities in other countries, like the Agency for International Development and the US Information Agency, were neglected starting in the in the 1990's. Communications in other countries of what the US represented and stands for was left to the Pentagon, a role the Pentagon was ill-suited for. He sees the Islamic terrorism as more of an ideological conflict. Speaking at a town hall meeting at the Balad Air Force base in Iraq, in December, Gates pointed to these communications failures as a real challenge for the new administration. But he now sees a huge opportunity in this past failure, and ways of addressing it creatively, in addition to commiting resources and people to this effort. Walter Pincus wrote this article, and its part of the fineprint analysis effort at the Washington Post in which speeches, reports, and other documents are examined by people like Pincus, to catch the really important things, uncovering the fine print that really makes the headlines. Another aspect of this fineprint effort is that there are a huge number of reports, and speeches and documents that had a tone reminiscent of the Cold War during the Georgia war and yet they do not correctly reflect the real situation about Russia, as Gates sees it from his analysis of what is actually happening. Gates has used Foreign Affairs, the Dec 17 Charlie Rose Show on PBS in which he was interviewed, and the speech at the Balad Air Force base in Iraq, to communicate his views and analysis. They are important to underline and emphasize precisely because they show that all that cold war hysteria reporting and speeches may be misleading and lead to improper conclusions and mistakes in policy, wasted effort, wasted resources, and lost lives. And just as the US strategic communications was starved of resources and effort, so also this necessary work to retrieve and give emphasis to the important things is neglected. One additional link to this is the speech, discussion, and QA session in Washington DC at the time of the G20 summit in which President Medvedev and the new administration's elder statesman and diplomat Marilyn Albright, former secretary of state, expressed their hopes and plans for a new era in Russian-American relations. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
A simple sentence from Ms. Aslam, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry spokesman -as she confirms Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif will attend the swearing in ceremony for prime minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi, May 26, 2014- says it all: "Pakistan sees peace with India as a precondition for economic development." A long established truth that applies to a large degree in reverse, that peace with Pakistan is also a precondition for a singleminded focus on economic development in India. How else can India tackle the problem of 1 million young people joining the labor market every month for the next 15 years, according to the UN Department for Social and Economic Affairs. The figure is much larger when including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Myanmar (Burma). And would approach 2 million a month if Indonesia is included, the entire region sharing the Buddhist-Hindu-Muslim legacy and lacking the strong engine for growth provided in East Asia by Japan and China.

LyrArc Article Gist
Population experts including Liang Zhongtang a demographer at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, are not convinced the change in the one-child policy in 2013 will have come in time to reverse the trend in increase of elderly population relative to the younger population. Zhongtang says the whole policy should have been removed. According to UN projections China's labor force will lose 67 million workers from 2010 to 2030. During this period the elderly population is expected to increase from 110 million in 2010 to 210 million in 2030. Wang Feng, a demographer at Fudan University in Shanghai, is skeptical about how much difference the new policy will make. He says the figures by population experts showing a maximum of 2 million additional childbirths over the next 3 years, starting about 10 months from now won't make much difference, and these additions will not enter the labor force for another 20 years.

LyrArc Article Gist
With the theme of championing the interests of the people left out in the last 2 decades under both Bush and Obama, left out my technolgical changes and world trade trends, left out by the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath of deep unemployment for older people especially white men, struggling economically, Hillary Clinton tells the Democratic convention, "I will carry all your voices and stories with me to the White House." She tells millions of Bernie supporters  that she has heard them loud and clear-  "your cause, is our cause." In this way Hillary Clinton sought to dispel any doubts about her in people's minds for not being forthright on questions related to a private email server and from earlier periods, and from overzealous fundraising. Telling people that on the things that really count and matter in people's lives, just as Bill Clinton did in his campaign at a similiar juncture- she will be there for them always, and always working to put their hearts up and centre, with her Methodist upbringing and her unmatched ability to work relentlessly in pursuit of worthy public goals. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Vodafone, the world's largest mobile carrier outside China is temporarily halting purchases of some components made by Huawei Technologies. It pauses purchase of Huawei made gear for use in core of 5G networks it is rolling out in Europe. Vodafone says it is uncertain that some governments will restrict sales for national security concerns.