LyrArc Article Gist
Ford is offering packages with additional incentives, college tution for entire family, packages of upto $140,000 to sign up workers to take buyouts. Its goal is to get 8000 more workers to take buyouts. This is in addition to the 32,000 workers already given buyouts or early retirement.It is putting up job fairs in its plants and mailing each of its 54,000 hourly workers full length DVD " Connecting With Your Future" that shows the advantages of looking beyond the assembly line jobs in auto plants. This suggests that Ford has done its anlaysis and sees things getting tougher in the US auto market over the next few years. The US auto industry will definitely see a smaller market and shrinking sales from now on. Just look at the shrinking sales in the Japanese and German auto industry. Something like this is likely to happen in the US and the attention to sales is going to shift overseas where most of the new sales are going to occur. Companies like GM and Ford will do what IBM and GE are doing shifting their focus to overseas sales in an expanding global economy with more than 50% of their sales from overseas and the US markets playing a smaller role. All this means fewer workers needed in the USA and new workers and plants to be put up overseas in new international locations over the next 10-15 years. Its not just a down cycle for the auto industry, its a big shift and the kind of change that happens every 50 or 100 years as huge macro changes are underway in the world....

LyrArc Article Gist
John Havens who was cofounder with Vikram Pandit of Old Lane which Citigroup acquired to bring Vikram Pandit to Citigroup, has spent 20 years working side by side with Pandit going back to his Morgan Stanley days. Now Pandit has made him head of the investment banking and alternative investments group at Citigroup.

LyrArc Article Gist
By July 2011, when Solar Frontier KK's new solar panel factory is in full scale production, it will become the world's largest plant for photovoltaic cells. The parent company is Showa Shell Sekiyu KK, a Japanese oil refiner. The $1.25 billion solar-panel factory in Miyazaki prefecture is expected to open in a few months. The annual output will be 900 megawatts of photovoltaic cells. For Showa Shell the move makes sense as oil demand is declining in Japan, given a shift to cleaner burning natural gas for power generation, and adoption of hybrid cars. Showa plans to cut its oil refining capacity by 20% in 2011. And the solar business will account for 50% of the company earnings by 2014. Mr Kameda, head of the Showa Shell solar business, says his company is focussing on the market segment that is growing fast- thin-film CIS cells, made from copper, indium and selenium. These cells cost less to make and to buy, than thicker silicon based crystalline cells. The thin-film have a potential for increasing efficiency and reducing cost because they are relatively new. Showa's technology converts about 13% of sunlight into energy. Showa is also working with partners. It plans to supply panels to GE's solar energy projects, and is working with IBM to develop next-generation solar-cell material that is based on readily available materials....

LyrArc Article Gist
Of the 10 parties expected to win seats in the Greek parliamentary elections, 7 oppose the IMF program for Greece and 2 call for exit from the euro. A Pasok-New Democracy coalition government is by no means certain. Pasok and New Democracy largely supported the IMF program before the elections. Greece has to make 3 billion euros of spending cuts right after the elections and 12 billion euros in 2013-2014 under the IMF program. Poor showing by Pasok and New Democracy could lead to calls for changes to the IMF program. About 73% of Greece's debt is now in official hands- 23% with the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), 21% bilateral government loans, 21% ECB, 8% IMF. Only 27% is now in the hands of private investors after the debt restructuring. The election of Socialist candidate Hollande in France who has declared the handling of Greece by the EU deplorable and a failure of governance not only in Greece but in Europe, would also add support to calls for changes in the IMF program to include growth measures. Hollande predicts a large public contribution by governments, the EFSF and the ECB, the IMF, to match the 70% contribution of private investors. The IMF appears to have anticipated this by recently enlarging its rescue fund....

LyrArc Article Gist
Wages in U.S. manufacturing are declining as the U.S. regains competitivness with Mexico, China and other emerging market countries in manufacturing, through a combination of productivity from new machinery and lower wages. At the same time as this revives U.S. manufacturing this is lowering wages in manufacturing based economies in the midwest and other parts of the country. This can be seen in cities like Dayton, Ohio, where in the past good paying jobs could be found in manufacturing without a college diploma. Many of these jobs paying $15-$20 an hour are being replaced by lower paying jobs paying $10 an hour. With the cost of college education already spiralling beyond the reach of ordinary incomes, and college debt reaching $1 trillion and harder to payoff, the move to lower wages increases the probabilities that college will remain elusive to children in these families. The automated plants and lower number of workers needed to operate machinery in new and modernized plants means unemployment in manufacturing will see slow growth. This is likely to lead to continued high unemployment in cities that lag behind in college education for opportunties outside of manufacturing and in manufacturing jobs. This is also why more experts are calling for government, college and private sector support for vocational training to improve job and income opportunties....

LyrArc Article Gist
Adam Bryant talks to 4 women executives about the problems women face in taking up higher management positions. One of the problems addressed directly and at length by the head of Pfizer Nutrition, Amy Schulman, is what she calls "the dutiful daughter," doing what is expected of you. This is also described as a serious problem for women executives in Asia by Riva Gold, where women not having 100% of the skills for a higher management job will step back, whereas men with only 50% of the skills step forward. Schulman says women have to be well prepared and have a good grasp of the subject matter, have acquired experience, and having done that they need to make their voice heard. Any anxieties about not getting it just right, or asking the question about whether "she belongs" need to be left behind. The leaders of companies need to create the environment in which biases and assumptions about women in the workplace do not hinder getting a mix of different voices in the corporation, which can only benefit from that diversity of people and styles. Another point she makes is that women have to spend their political capital, to stand up for colleagues and the team where appropriate, for principles that are significant, to be build credibility and win credit. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The global auto industry has capacity for producing 92 million vehicles in 2009, but only 60 million cars will be sold next year, according to CSM Worldwide. And CSM forecasts capacity utilizations will not return to the 2007 rate of 80% till 2014. And because of their better product mix, more new models, and better fuel efficiency, the Japanese, Korean and European carmakers have a better capacity utilization than the Detroit Big Three, even though they are also hurting badly as credit collapses and and an overextended American buyer is wary of new purchases. Robinet, the head of global vehicle forecasting at CSM Worldwide, estimates that the Big Three Detroit automakers will only need half their current production capacity in 2009, something he says is not sustainable for any industry. If these estimates hold true then there is a major earth shaking experience ahead for Detroit automakers that is not reflected in the attitudes and the bargaining about who benefits and who concedes what from unions, management, workers, bondholders, dealers and suppliers, even after the near miss for the bridge loans. It is a situation in which even globally and among the strongest automakers like Toyota and Honda there is going to be a lot of misery in 2009 and beyond. Only some automakers around the world will survive this shakeout. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
HP CEO in aplanned reorganization will merge the printer business with the PC business. It is ameasure of how far the PC business has come since Mr Hurd was made CEO 4 years ago, and after he hired Mr Bradley a former Palm CEO to shake up the PC business. Mr. Bradley has made the PC division supply chain more efficinet especially in the fast growing consumer netbook PC business, and has cut costs. Meantime the printer business under Joshi has stagnated. The PC business was merged into printer business by Fiorina in the hope that Joshi could make a difference. Hurd separated the two and put Bradley at the PC division.Now its the PC business that is taking off and its head who will try to improve the printer business. Bradley has run alean business and improved PC margins even as prices of PC's have tumbled. HP also passed Dell in PC's sold. In the quarter ending July 31,2009 HP PC sales were$8.43 billion and $386 million in earnings, accounting for 12% of profits, printer and ink were $5.66 billion and $960 million in earnings for 30% of overall profit. Hurd told analysts in aconference call that he was disappointed in how the printer unit inventory was managed, and that HP had to get some internal stuff right. The ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The OECD says in its biannual publication on trends in financial markets, that the failure to clean the bad loans on the books of banks is one step that has not taken place and will prolong the current crisis. Treasury started out with just that intention, before following Gordon Brown's lead in the UK to recapitalize banks here in the USA. The difficulty then was that the auction process for these bad loans was a difficult and complex one, and would take too much time when the crisis was hitting on a daily and weekly basis. Something had to be done, and done quickly, and recapitalizing the banks was the only step that could be executed immediately. One of the problems that created this situation was the inscrutable nature of these mortgage securities, which were packaged in away that made it difficult to sort out and hard to value. This remains one of the intractable problems that has complictaed the situation in a way, that for instance, the Swedish banking crisis was not complicated. Another aspect is the way in which as Sweden struggled to sort out and fix its banking system, the banking system and economies of other countries were operating normally. Now another complication is the way this crisis has worldwide connections making a recovery still more difficult and protracted....

LyrArc Article Gist
The company that only a couple of years ago was coming up with new models and among the top names in the cell phone business, is now gasping for air as it struggles to keep its cellphone business alive. It is an example of how vigilant and on ones toes (how paranoid in Andy Grove's words), one has to be in the fast moving tech businesses. Losing its leadership position to Nokia and other rivals like Samsung and LG from South Korea, who had better strategies and newer models, Motorola has never recovered, and the way down has been steep and precipitious. Motorola's cellphone sales fell a huge 51% in the fourth quarter, matching in its magnitude the kind of breathtaking sales drops that have hit GM and Chrysler for January 2009. And things cannot get better when the loss of $595 million for the cellphone division (or $31 for each cellphone shipped), mean cuts in design and other needed staff. Motorola has been closing design centers and has laid off 25% of design staff. In total Motorola posted a loss of $3.58 billion for the 4th quarter 2008. The rest of the losses include writedowns and charges for layoffs of 7000 workers announced since October 2008. Motorola shares trade at $4.04 on the NYSE and Moody's has downgraded it to Baa3, the lowest investment grade rating. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Not much in any meaningful way is being done so far for homeowners facing loss of their homes. The bailout plan has wording that encourages the government to help but no concrete measures beyond that. At this point loan modifications by banks are doing little meaningful to help homeowners. Some critical measures of what is happening. According to Sheila Barr of FDIC troubled loan portfolios have yielded about 32% of book value compared with 87% for loans in which the borrower is current, in her statement in Congress. But with fear gripping the credit markets the banks are reluctant to take any immediate losses by writing down principal balances unless the government steps in, because their capital is under huge strain and some banks are going under. Deutsche Bank estimates 40% of homeowners or about 20 million households will owe more than their home is worth by the time the housing market stabilizes. This suggests he scale of the problem as Martin Ferldstein pointed out in the WSJ someof these homeowners may simply walk away from their home as a rational decision. It also suggests how this combined with rising unemployment could lead to significant drops in consumption spending making the situation in the economy much worse, and allowing rising unemployment to play an additional role in increasing home foreclosures for the first time....

LyrArc Article Gist
Collapse of the easten european economies says the Economist would raise questions about the idea of a united Europe, the idea of the EU itself, and destabilize the euro - as countries in the EU like Ireland and Greece are in just as bad a shape. And in talk of enlargement of the EU will be doomed, and this is true of the western Balkans, TUrkey, and some countries int he former Soviet Union. Politically letting these countries derift could mean they fall for populists and nationalists of the bad type. And there is the serious economic consideration for banks in Austria, Italy and Sweden, which are heavily involved in lending to Eastern Europe. They could see catastrophic losses and put the banking systems of these countries at risk. Sweden has already chosen to help the Baltic Countries, and sees it has its political responsibility, and the whole Baltic region as its home, see link. The Economist suggests a differentiated approach depending on which group of countries in Eastern and Central Europe something that Angela Merkel of Germany also supports. For Ukraine the Economist says its best to let the IMF provide assistance. For the Baltic countries, plus Bulgaria, the Economist advocates an accelerated path to the euro, on the grounds that they are tiny and shouln't affect confidence in the euro. The Baltic countries have a population of 7 million. This approach is not supported by the European Commission or the European Central Bank. For the 4 larger countries, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, and Romania, the Economist says the priority should be to prevent further currency collapse, and to rescue the banks responsible for the foreign currency loans that are going bad, with the pain being shared between debtors and the banks, governments of lending and borrowing countries. Financial institutions like the ECB, the IMF, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Developemnt, and the European Investment Bank should help support the rescue effort. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Motorola considers selling its handset business, or some other arrangement to separate it from its other businesses. It has fallen behind as competitors launched phones with new features and sleeker designs like the iPhone from Apple and Nokia's new line of phones, with a whole set of new features and careful attention to customers future needs, constantly staying ahead of the curve. Motorola has had one shot hits like the recent Razr phone but has not had the management vision, leadership and structure to keep ahead of the changing customer needs and development of new technologies- which together have created new kinds of phones and new designs for different market segments in different countries. The companies successful in such an industry have to have mangement direction, capabilities and drive and speed to keep coming up with new features and combinations of features for different sets of customers in different countries. New technologies mean faster internet access, iPhone type features, exchanging pictures, being able to see internet information on their phones and changes every year or two years. The nature of this industry requires companies to stay ahead of technologies and customers, and have good people on the field who can help you understand the changing markets in each region. This includes designers and technology access, with execution abilities and people to do it who can put it all together, again and again each time the customers needs change and the market takes a new turn. Nokia has in contrast to Motorola stayed ahead of the game. Even if it has missed a step it has regained the momentum quickly, and set up a structure of people that can generate the new phones customers want before other companies. Here Motorola is having a free fall in market share and no product to meet the competition at least not till the end of this year, a long time in this fast paced industry....

LyrArc Article Gist
Andrew Rosenfeld, a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, and chief executive of an investment advisory firm, says the Public-Private Investment Program proposed by Secretary Geithner has serious flaws. It risks government money, and expects too little from private investors. The government will essentially finance the private investor's purchase of these toxic assets at an auction, with the private investors putting some money of their own, to buy these assets at prices emerging from the auction. It runs right smack into the problem that Secretary Paulson under President Bush faced when he suggested the auction plan as a way for these toxic assets to be sold off to buyers. It was never clear how shuch an auction would work, and whether it would work at all. Meantime the worsening credit crisis required direct injection of capital into banks. Now Secretary Paulson's abandoned effort has been essentially revived in the Geithner program, with the same problems but with the carrot of government taking up most of the risk with its financing. Rosenfeld argues that under this plan the government assumes all the risk of losses, and if private investors make too much money off of it it will create a public outcry and the risk of an AIG type situation. This might lead to lower bids and the money generated for the banks might end up being too small to make a difference. There is a better way he says, and this is for the government using existing authority to seize banks that look insolvent. Its fairer because the government will own the toxic asets, and the bank, and the proceeds for the sale of the bank, and these would be offsetting the cash that it would inject to recapitalize the bank. The way it would do it is to inject cash in the form of Treasury notes as equity in the bank, and at the same time remove the bank's toxic assets and place them in the basement of the Treasury building, while it waits to see what they turn out to be worth. Bank regulators would swap Treasury securties for the toxic assets "at par," which is at the amount of the original purchase price of assets removed. Within a short time, a month or a few months, the bank could be sold to private investors. This is sounder because it takes away the pricing problem which looks like its never going to be resolved, as banks and investors are never going to agree on toxic asset price. And the new bank could start clean and start lending flowing in the economy. If the bank turns out to be so badly managed and with so many bad bets that it cannnot be sold, its essentially insolvent and irrecoverable, so it should be liquidated. Nobel winner Krugman says some of the same things in his columns in the NYT. He has a sense of despair seeing the return of the failed Paulson solution of auctions with a new twist, even as the economy is flailing in the wind, with job loss numbers over 600,000 and jumping each month....

LyrArc Article Gist
Morse's reasoning and figures for a fall in oil prices by the end of this year and eventually settling down in the $90 price range? On the supply side he sees the OPEC decision to last year withhold oil production increases and this year's decision to put more oil on the market putting an additional 1.2 million barrels a day on the supply side. About 500,000 barrels a day are added to this from Iraq as security improves in Iraq to make this 1.7 million barrels a day. And refined product with refining capacity for the heavier crude has increased creating more competition among refiners leading to refined product increases lagging behind crude price increases. Add to this the large investments in the middle east and especially in Saudi Arabia to increase production, also in places like Nigeria and Angola, says Morse. On ther demand side he sees an astonishing decline of as much as 900,000 barrels a day year over year from 2008 over 2007 in the USA as fuel conservation is kicking in. On this score he sees a decline in oil price even if this decline had not happened in the USA. (From the video interview). This underscores the importance of everything else that is happening. He sees demand in China declining after the Olympics. The Chinese economy will slow as the Indian economy is already doing and oil imports will decline for China. At this point demand from India, China and other developing countries says Morse is increasing at 1 million barrels a day year over year and will now head downward. A couple of points are relevant in this context. One is that credit contraction in one study by University of Chicago economist Anil Kashyap is expected to be $1 trillion, in recent BW report on the economic situation and banks lending. With such a big impact industrial production by the end of this year and into 2009 will be severely impacted, especially as other countries in the EU and Asia are affected. This plus the dramatic nature of the shift to smaller cars as companies like Ford and its CEO Alan Mulaly vow to transform their production by 2009 to smaller cars is sure to bring further declines in demand. See recent statements by Mulaly and Ford. Morse's credentials show that he brings experience un teaching monetary policy at Princeton, as well as experience going back to being Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for international energy policy in the Carter administration , cofounder of consultants PFC Energy and publisher of Petroleum Intelligence Weekly, following the petroleum industry for many years. He has in the past predicted the emergence of Russia as a dominant oil supplier rivalling Saudi Arabia, and predicted the oil price increases based on fundamentals. So as he says the oil price has always been affected by fundamentals, that being the reason for the oil price increases in the last few years and now the moderating influences that reverse someof these oil price increases in the coming year and continue to exercize that moderating effect in coming years. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
WSJ asks the question how are companies run in America by CEO's during the 9 month old pandemic? To answer that question it looks at Emerson Electric, based in Ferguson, Missouri, with its 90,000 employees in the U.S. and around the world. David Farr is CEO of American conglomerate Emerson Electric that makes products in a number of industries, for longer than most CEO's in America. At 65 years today, he has managed the company since he became CEO at the age of 45. It has 8000 employees in China and 10,000 in Mexico, and plants in the midwest, all hard hit by the pandemic. Add to this racial riots after killing of a black man in Ferguson, Missouri, and you have a challenging situation for any CEO.    As a son of a plant manager at a Corning plant in Corning, New York and growing up in a manufacturing environment in England, his instincts are that customers are what matter the most. That shrinking production could lead to some competitors making it and others shrinking if they did not act quickly to protect their supply chains. His goal is to keep factories running to have parts ready for their customers who made the finished product in the oil and gas industry and in factories where Emerson supplied the automated processes. As a first step he has 7 charter planes fly parts from a Nanjing factory to Shanghai when the trucks stopped moving. He campaigns with the Mexican ambassador to the U.S. to have the company listed as essential business to be kept open in a lockdown but fails. He gets up at 5.30 am and works till 8 pm and spends most nights reading, lounging with 2 spaniels, and going to bed early. He tells his son who works at Caterpillar company to get back to work as soon as he can as he believes being on the job is really really important. Yet he is worried up his daughter working as a pastry chef in New York and wants her to come back home to the midwest. He is a manager in the old style saying he wouldn't hire American workers because the Obama administration was out to destroy American manufacturing with its environmental rules forgetting that he was doing just that in the end-  and what had America and the concept of a free nation and a free people with opportunities for all have anything to do with like or dislike of any president or party. He also has his quirks, keeping 5 baseball bats and swinging a bat while he took walks and did some thinking. Passionate, hard working, and getting it done he keeps Emerson in the game as an industrial competitor from the U.S. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Elliott Abrams quotes former President George Bush from November 2003 when he asked the question: "Are the peoples of the Middle East somehow beyond the reach of liberty? Are millions of men and women and children condemned by history or culture to live in despotism? Are they alone never to know freedom and never even to have a choice in the matter?" Abrams, former deputy natonal security advisor for President Bush, says the autocratic regimes and dictators of the Middle East have offered a false choice to the US- its us or the Islamists. Roger Cohen also points this out in a recent article in the New York Times. For Tunisia he says this was never defensible. It is a largely secular nation with a literacy rate of 75% and per capita GDP of $9,500, and Ben Ali, the dictator of Tunisia, jailed moderates, human rights advocates, editors, anyone who represented hope and change. Abrams says Mubarak has done the same in Egypt. And he warns that if you make moderate politics impossible as Mubarak in Egypt and Ben Ali in Tunisia have done, then you make extremism more likely. Ruling by emergency decree for decades creates a real emergency, as has happened in Egypt. Bush made that speech at the 20th anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy, and he reminded Americans that "sixty years of Western nations excusing and accomodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe- because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty." He admits that the Bush administration did not always conduct US diplomacy in this vein, but the President took the lead and the Obama administration's abandonment of that mindset is nothing short of a tragedy. Obama's policy of "engagement" actually endangers the US position as a supporter of liberty and freedom wherever it is stifled or muffled, because it turned a blind eye to the people themselves as it engaged with the dictatorial regimes in the Arab world and other countries. When the elections in Iran were stolen the Obama administration hesitated, waffled in its committment to liberty, fearing that it would affect nuclear negotiations. Obama did not -as of late Friday night Jan 28, 2011- call for free elections or clearly demand democracy. The law school analytical processes that Obama brings to the presidency and the demands of geopolitical diplomacy are impervious to the loud voices demanding freedom in countries denied liberty. Obama has forgotten the very same voices he passionately heard when he wrote in his first book that in the words "we hold these truths to be self-evident" he could hear the spirit of Douglas and Delaney, as well as Jefferson and Lincoln, the struggles of Martin and Malcolm and unheralded marchers to bring the words to life. He could hear the words of interned Japanese families, the voices of Russian Jews in lower East side sweatshops, of dust bowl farmers during the depression, all these voices clamoring for recognition and asking the question about what is community and how it can be reconciled with freedom. This failure to recognize these voices clamoring for freedom and economic opportunity is all the more striking because it was vision and a bold sense of purpose that energized the Obama campaign and both the vision and the bold sense have eluded the administration. Abrams calls for a clear unequivocal committment by the US government in favor of freedom and peaceful efforts to achieve it in the Middle East, because he says that as the demonstrators are telling the world outside supporting freedom is the best policy of all. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
DJT tariffs are selective and reciprocality makes them fair. This also cushions the impact on consumers and countries. Countries who have blatantly unfair tariffs for decades can then decide as in EU, China, India, Japan, S. Korea, Mexico and Canada, can decide how they will respond by looking at what they need to do for fair trade. Some tariffs are intended also as domestic policy for failure to control of fentanyl into the US as with CMC countries Canada, Mexico and China. US producers will make goods sourced from these countries at home and as DJT says about autos from Mexico this will lead to American producers in Detroit picking up production and bringing manufacturing back home to USA. Most goods Americans use were made in the US in the postwar period from 1950-1980, American manufacturing will get the boost it so badly needs after unfair trade practices from other countries in the EU, Japan, Taiwan and China. By April this policy will be in place, by June in 6 months the policies will be fully operational at entry ports in the US including Los Angeles and Long Beach. All tariffs are selective, carefully evaluated for individual countries and products and regions based on reciprocality a principle that is fair to all countries and the principle on which the world trading system is founded. Individual companies and industries that gain this or that benefit may present it differently saying is good or bad based on their interest and profits- for the US and American people the principle of reciprocality provides a yardstick that is both fair and in the long term interest of bringing jobs and higher wages to the US. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The Third Biennial Update Report at COP26 Glasgow shows where India stands on renewable energy, solar, forest cover enhancement, and improving carbon intensity in its climate change efforts so far.  For instance a 17 times increase in solar in the last 7 years to 45 gigawatts, with target of 450 gigawatts by 2030. In carbon intensity 24% improvement between 2005-2014. Scientist Bhatt presented the report for India's Environment Ministry saying India represented 17% of the world's population and historically 4% of world carbon emissions, today 5%. Improvements of carbon intensity per unit of GDP planned under Mod's plan for 2030 require 45% reduction in carbon intensity by 2030. This suggests the trajectory of China will be avoided where highly polluting parts of industries such as steel and cement were left unregulated and lacking strict supervision leading to rampant pollution in 2000-2021. Mr. Birol, head of the Renewables Energy Agency said on BBC's "Hard Talk" program recently that if you combine all of China's steel and cement factory carbon emissions, that alone would equal the total sum of carbon emissions of the whole European Union today. A quick look at a graph of global carbon emissions trajectories shows three fold increase of China's carbon emissions from about 4 billion tons to 12 billion tons between 2000-2021, the period and the explosion of carbon that is the one activity that singlehandedly created the crisis of climate change today. By comparison US remains at about 6 billion tons of emissions, and EU, US, Britain Japan show flat trajectories. Business, globalization interests, US and European financial interests, and local governments in China that financed this explosion in steel and cement ignored the implications of so much pollution in so short a time through unregulated activities- writing a chapter of failure with most of the world's people left to bear the results of such a failure.  It is this that India plans to correct with a 45% improvement in carbon intensity per unit of GDP by 2030, and nothing could be more important in the government's plan than this. New technologies will be key for this. Modi and India realize how vulnerable India is to floods, drought stricken areas, shortages of water, and climate extremes, and see these plans as critical for healthy growth that benefits all of India's people and regions, It is a long term vision like no other today and sets a new direction for all developing regions of Asia, Latin America and Africa. As India leads the way in new technologies and ambitious programs such as one solar, one world, one grid, these technologies will also break open new paths for the regions of the world that need this most from Brazil to Indonesia.  China too suffers from the impact of so much pollution. Even as early as 2010 reports showed the higher pollution had lowered life expectancy in northern region of China compared to its southern region. Yet the most polluting factories were not removed and only recently is the activity being conducted seriously leading to the shortages of fuel from so much overexpansion in the boom years, and making adjustments done abruptly today more difficult.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
A general strike is planned in Catalonia, Spain to protest police action preventing a referendum vote on independence called by Mr. Puigdemont, head of the state government. The government in Madrid sees the vote as illegal and could take away the regional government's powers under Article 155 of the Constitution. There are varying reports on how many people voted, with this BBC report saying that Mr. Puigdemont's estimate of 90% of people having voted is inaccurate. BBC News says turnout was relatively low at 42%, weakening Mr. Puigdemont's position. Talks are now taking place with Pedro Sanchez of the opposition Socialist party and Albert Rivera of the centrist Ciudadanos party. Mr. Puigdemont now calls for talks with the Spanish government, and mediation by the EU. The European Commission calls this an "internal matter" for Spain, that should be tackled using the Constitution. Other regions of Spain including Galicia where prime minister Rajoy comes from also suffered under the Franco dictatorship following the Civil War, including his family so that Mr. Rajoy does not represent Madrid so much as the new aspirations of the different regions in Spain to try to write a new chapter in Spanish politics. That chapter shown in a book by Mr. Rajoy on Spain's future clearly shows respect for autonomous regions as the direction for Spain. In Valencia and Catalonia one finds the regional languages used and this is respected under the Constitution. Yet the period under General Franco rankles many in Spain, more so in Catalonia and the Basque region, when the regional language could not be used. As in Scotland smaller parties that were not in government for decades now enjoy more support. Yet it is not clear that all the people of these regions want to permanently break the links with Spain or England under separatist parties that have only recently come to power. This is why the European Union is reticent on this issue.  ...

LyrArc Article Gist
After failing to come to an agreement for early elections with the central government in Madrid, Catalan leader Puigdemont says he will put the matter of secession from Spain to the region's parliament. This makes it certain that the government in Madrid will assume emergency constitutional powers over Catalonia. Mr. Puigdemont is the head of a coalition that has 72 seats of 135 in the Catalan parliament. As this NYT report points out Mr Puigdemont heads a coalition of separatist parties that won about 48% of the vote in parliamentary elections of Catalonia in 2015. He announced a referendum in 2017 which created more uncertainty because Spain made an effort to suppress voting and many Catalans stayed away from the voting booths. Other reports show it is not clear that a majority of Catalans favor all out independence from Spain, though they oppose the way prime minister Rajoy of Spain has handled the crisis. Control of the police and broadcasters under Article 155 of the Constitution is a step Mr Rajoy now plans to take. Mr. Rajoy says it was a decision forced on Spain by the "capricious decisions" of Mr. Puigdemont, and that it endangers Spain's economic recovery from the financial crisis with high unemployment. Puigdemont faces an internal revolt inside his separatist party if he backs down, according to this report in the NYT. As a result of this Spain is likely to move ahead with constitutional backed rule by the central government over Catalonia till a solution can be found. Mr. Puigdemont's action has created the biggest crisis for Spain since it moved to democratic elections in 1978, coming at a time when national elections led to no clear winner and the economic recovery was just beginning. Public perception is that both Mr. Puigdemont and Mr. Rajoy appear to have handled the situation poorly. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
This report from Myamar's capital Naypyidaw, says the capital with six lane highways with hardly any cars is symbolic of Myanmar since independence from the British in 1948. For most of this period it has been ruled by the military which keeps a distance from the prior capital Rangoon because of protests for democracy. He points out that western disillusionment with Aung suu Kyi comes from a failure to understand her position as a counselor not allowed to assume the presidency because her children are British citizens, that most of the key ministries are controlled by the military. She is a symbolic head following the 2015 elections and needs to work with the military in a long term effort to bring Myanmar into the community of nations after decades of isolation. Reporting from Myanmar Cohen of the NYT says it is necessary to understand this to understand Myanmar today and Suu Kyi's reticence in the face of the crisis from Bangladeshi migrants becoming one third of the population of the northern region of Rakhine. Cohen also points out that behind the image of Buddhist Burma in western eyes is a region of tropical jungles in the north with minority communities that came under British rule in Burma, and the fears of losing their identity of Burmese Buddhists in the Rangoon region. Cohen ends with a plea to give Suu Kyi more time and to remember her "letters from Burma" about the need for the rule of law and how the long traumas of military rule have affected a whole generation of Burmese children. It is easy he says for western media who have not faced down guns to de sanctify Kyi's image, but she remains the last hope for Myanmar in what he calls a game that is being played out with military rulers over a long, long period. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The chief political reporter for the German daily The Bild, says Ursula Von der Leyen EU Commission president's performance on ensuring vaccine supplies is a disgrace for the EU and Germany. For once Brexiteers are proved right he says with having negotiated a better deal with vaccine suppliers, not being stingy like the EU officials, paying good money and securing supplies as early as April.  He says the EU's bureaucracy, its sluggish response, miserly attitude is now being confirmed in this health crisis and Germany is not looking good at all. Tiede says Leyen failed at the German Defense ministry and like other ministers in this situation was shifted into the EU Commission bureaucracy,only to fail again. He suggests Merkel and the heads of France, and Italy, Spain take over negotiating directly from now on with pharmaceutical companies. The EU officials are under severe criticism in Europe, shown here for different EU countries. Leyen is shown to have blundered further by creating a spat with Astra Zeneca- either she did not read the contract or was ignorant of what it meant, say critics. The EU's deal with Astra Zeneca was not with binding provisions, making EU officials at fault. Der Tiegesspiegel called EU's failure to admit its mistakes "jaw dropping" and bordered on "shamelessness." Der Spiegel calls it the worst catastrophe of Leyen's career. This now means Germany will have only 70% of its population vaccinated by September 2021, say experts. ...