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Coal India, is a state run monopoly which is a huge stumbling block for India's economic development. India lags behind Brazil, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia in the percentage of the population having electricity. Production methods do not use modern technology similiar to mines in other countries, and the average age of the 333,000 employees is 45-50 years. An eight hour shift at some mines produces as much coal as a mine in the U.S. does in 5 minutes, because of the lack of modern technology. About 300 million Indians lack electricity. The Modi administration's focus is on improving efficiency, introducing competition, and bringing major technological changes to the coal industry. Piyush Goyal, India's Coal minister faces one of the biggest challenges in the Modi administration. His focus is on efficiency, and the Modi administration has set a target of 1 billion tons for 2020, a 15% increase in production each year for the next 5 years.

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India is piuoneering and innovating in the field of lowcost health care. The Indians say state of the art is not what they aspire to but world class, which means coming up with solutions in tech and health care that are affordable in a poor country.

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FDA questions quality of life improvement claims for drugs known as ESA's or erythropoiesis-stimulating agents, which are the drugs Epogen and Aranesp of Amgen and procrit by J&J.

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Prince Mohammed bin Salman, son of the Saudi king Salman, oversees economic policy. He says stock sales of 5% of Saudi Aramco will be used to create a sovereign wealth fund of about $2 trillion that would help create the jobs with income from overseas investments and projects at home. About three times the jobs created in 2003-2013 will be needed with the demographic changes, according to McKinsey consultants. This will act as a diversification away from oil income dependence.

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The New York Times editorial says the constitutional option looks better than the recession option, now that huge cuts in spending including Medicare and Social Security are planned in the budget talks between the Republicans and the Obama White House. The Times points to $4 trillion in defict reduction in 10 years, that is being discussed as part of a grand agreement in White House talks. It reminds the Obama White House that it is not likely to win independent voters if unemployment increases as a result. The constitutional option is for the President to to point to the 14th Amendment that the public debt cannot be questioned, in effect saying the debt limit cannot be controlled by Congress as it is today. See the piece by Krugman on the same subject in today's New York Times. Krugman asks why Obama's economic advisors have not cautioned him about the size of the cuts and the potential impact on unemployment in a fragile economy. And he points out that most of the senior economic advisors have left and it may be Obama's political team that is looking for a way to win points with independent voters for next years election....

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Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's "Worthy Fights" provides a better perspective on the Syria-Iraq conflict- about a conflict in Syria that was the result of president Obama not acting when a "red line" of the use of chemical weapons was crossed. A similiar point is made by U.S. Secretary of State Clinton. Both advisors to Obama were ignored in favor of Mr. Donilon and other White House adviosrs who lacked the experience of Panetta and Clinton. On the Iraq conflict Maliki's misguided sectarian policies were not sufficiently constrained by U.S. effort to preserve earlier hard won gains under the Bush administration. At the end of the Bush administration Iraq was returning to a peaceful period and the war had largely been won against old Saddam loyalists in Anbar province. Ultimately Obama's lack of experience in foreign policy and his failure to heed the advice of people with that experience such as Panetta and Clinton, was the basis of the crisis inadvertently created in Syria by a tendency of inaction. The Syrian situation was not fully grasped as leaving Sunnis to suffer Assad regime air attacks creating 2 million refugees, something that should have prompted action by the international community. With Sarkozy gone in France and Cameron unable to convince the U.S. alone, or move forward with the French unilaterally, the inaction phenomenon of the Obama White House left the entire Sunni communty throughout the Middle East without any support as they watched the destruction in Syria. ...

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Said, Kent and Faucon describe the meetings and maneouvring between oil producers that led to the decision to not cut production at the November 2014 OPEC meetings in Vienna. This led to a drop in Brent crude down to below $70 by Dec. 2014, with Russia, Iran and Venezuela losing, countries such as India, and motorists benefitting from lower oil prices.

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Amar Bhide touches on the unpredictable consequences of devaluations while commenting on the supposed benefit of a country having its own currency vs a currency such as the euro. The euro takes away the advatantage of devaluing the national currency as a way to regain competitiveness. Bhide points out that devaluations hurt the elderly on fixed incomes and low wage workers. Protections have to be put in place for the sections of the population that are badly affected. Large union negotiated wage increases can also reduce the benefits of devaluation in terms of regaining competitiveness.

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David Wessel says there are three hypotheses about the slow recovery with growth of 1.9% in the first quarter of 2011, estimated growth of 1.4-1.5% for the second quarter. The first, is that this is transitory, with gas prices, Japan's tsunami disrupting supply chians, and Europe's poor handling of the financial crisis. This he scores as wishful thinking. The second, that the stimulus was too small, the need for a second stimulus, or the related hypothesis of the large uncertainty hanging over business, including the debt ceiling negotiations, deficit etc. This he scores as more convincing, but one is not sure different policies would have led to a different situation. The third hypothesis is that the underlying diagnosis of the economy itself was hopeful but flawed and wrong. Hope about the housing market- which has been proved wrong. The same for exports, or consumer spending. Wessel cites Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhardt's new book on the afterperiod of financial crises and asset bubbles, with data going back to many historical periods showing that the periods following crises are difficult having protracted periods of slow or marginal economic growth....

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Prime minister Mario Monti responded with humor to the remark of former prime minister Berlusconi before the June 2012 summit of European leaders that he could unplug the Monti government, by saying that his government was not a home appliance. In August Monti's long intervew with the Wall Street Journal is published in which he says the Italian bond spreads with German bonds would be 1200 or something if Berlusconi was still running the government. Angelinia Alfano, of Berlusconi's party, the People of Freedom party, calls this "nonsensical" and the parliamentary whip calls this a "stupid provocation." WSJ's Alessandra Galloni intervewed the Italian premier. Monti's office says he called Berlusconi saying he regretted the "banal and abstract extrapolation of a trend in spread values, which was included in a wide ranging interview with the WSJ, was taken as a political consideration, which was not at all the intention."

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British fashion designer Anya Hindmarch tells NYT reporter Aimee Farrell how to de-clutter one's life- how to organize everything from the closet to the mailbox so that it becomes easy to live. She says about cleaning up her email box every day- a clean box is a clean head. Amazon delivery for example goes into its own folder, and one can pull up the folders when needed. She separates the clothes she uses frequently from clothes she will use in 6 months, and puts away stuff she may never use in years. Separating whats important from the less important is basic to her method.  She says her best ideas come from a clean table. A scrambled bunch of post-it notes are out.  Methods she uses are digitizing photos into a small key chip, labeling everything, having pre-packaged kits she can take when needed in a hurry as for a trip. She uses a page to put down a list of what needs to be done, and a separate list if some things need to be done urgently in a few hours, putting things in a category such as calls to make, location specific such as things to do at the desk or outside. At the end of the day she also sits down to write in a diary note to reflect on what she has done during the day. ...

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WSJ describes interviews on 60 Minutes and on Fox News with Tom Homan, who will run Border Security.  Homan says targeted arrests for public safety threats and worksite enforcement operations, migrants who had due process and their federal judge said you must go home and they did'nt are the priorities, not mass sweep of neighborhoods.  WSJ cites the new president DJT as saying - "We have a lot of good people in this country, and we have to do something about it." “This has been going on for a long time. It’s a complicated subject.”  “I don’t want to go too much into clarification, because the nicer I become, the more people that come over illegally.” Yet after strict talk about deterrence, DJT concluded at the time he visited the Journal: “There are some human questions that get in the way of being perfect, and we have to have the heart, too.” WSJ says when it comes to children 64% of Republicans and includes the WSJ feel that new solutions have to be found. And getting Democrats to join in passing legislation to build a new immigration structure is a way forward that should be the goal building on the work of Senator Lankford. ...

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A new report on American driving habits by Samantha Gross and Aaron Brady of Cambridge Energy Associates shows that finally the gasoline price increases are beginning to bite the consumer and American drivers are changing their habits. After increasing from about2.5 trillion miles of total vehicle miles travelled by Americans in 1998 to about 3.0 trillion miles in 2007 the last 6 months are showing a downward trend for the first time. In the late 1970's and early 1980's something similar happened with a deep recession, rising gasoline prices and improved fuel efficiency standards, during this period gasoline consumption declined by 12 % accordingt o CEA. What is different now? For one thing the environmental issues are a big factor now and they take a new meaning as developing countries like India China Brazil and Rusia as well as other countries with much larger numbers of people than the US and Europe are now part of the car buying and electricity using peoples of the world. Its impossible both for the environment and for resource supplies to meet the needs of billions of new people joining the global economy and western ways of living without doing something radically different. And he problem is immediate as China becomes the second largest car buying country and India is not far behind with an explosion in Nano sales expected in the next few years, and the huge demands on electricity in these countries meaning burning huge amounts of coal to generate this electricity and create global environmental problems. All this makes the 70's and early eighties period remotely relevant. We are looking at something hugely different and 21st century defining now as its clear fuel has to be conserved and resources shared between the western world and the developing world, and technology moved forward quickly to meet the needs of a new world of Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas all bundled into one both by the global ecoomy and the way business operates and by the needs of people everywhere. And the media and public perceptions may be just catching up to these changes which are already taking place on the lands and under the feet of millions of people around the world. Some clues to what might have happened. Americans spent 4.5% of their after tax income on transportation fuels in 1981 according to Global Insight, a forecasting firm, and this went down to 1.9% in 1998, and is back up to 4% now in 2008. In California and more affluent areas of the country where the incomes are higher and gasoline prices are higher over 4% is spent on transportation fuels, whereas in areas of Alabama and Mississippi in the poorest areas where gasoline is less expensive this is over 16% according to the New York Times interactive graphic. During this period 1998 to 2008 demand increased for gasoline, in terms of the number of miles driven went up by 25% from 2.5 trillion miles driven to 3.0 trillion miles driven, and the sales of large pickup trucks and SUV's soared to make them the largest number of vehicles sold each year. At 1.9% of after tax income nationally, transportation fuels were cheap and consumers reacted rationally by splurging on gasoline in the USA. As a sobering note to all this sign of improvement in conservation of fuel the miles driven are still at about 3.0 trillion miles the high reached last year 2007. It will take a lag of a couple of years before a changing fleet to smaller vehicles and more fuel efficient vehicles and better driving habits and conserving fuel habits to make itself felt in transportation fuel usage across the USA and this requires prices at least at these levels to make the change seen as necessary to meet global needs and global environment....

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Van Dam says its not that great being a worker in the U.S. because it is hard for the unemployed resulting from competing with workers in other countries with lower wages, and for those who are unemployed harder because worker collective bargaining is weakened over 3 decades. He cites a 296 page OECD report showing very little government support for unemployed and at risk American workers. It says this has contributed to higher income inequality and larger share of lower income people than almost any other advanced a nation. Only Spain and Greece are shown as having more households earning less than half the median income- showing large numbers of people are poor or close to being poor. In the U.S. an average of 1 in 5 lose their jobs each year, and 23% of workers 15 to 64 are in their job less than a year in 2016. The job churn hurts workers because of firing and layoffs being frequent, more than is healthy for a economy. The U.S. and Mexico are the only two countries not requiring advance notice before firings. And fewer than half of workers find a job within a year in the U.S. Two in three families with a displaced worker fall in poverty for some time. Unemployed workers with typically 26 weeks support get less support than any other country in the study. Only 12% of workers in U.S. are covered by collective bargaining. ...

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Moritz Kramer, a managing director at S&P, says Spain, Italy, France and Portugal cannot depend on austerity measures and cuts in spending alone to resolve the eurozone crisis. This is only one aspect of the problem facing the countries in southern Europe. The major reason for the problem is the lack of competitiveness in their economies. Nobel winner Stiglitz also points this out and adds that its important to note that the human and natural resources of Europe are the same and the potential just as good today as before the eurozone financial crisis. He says southern Europe has failed to utilize its human and capital resources and improve its technologies in ways that would make it more competitive with Asian countries. Experts point to the decade it took Germany to address problems created by inflexible labor markets, wage competitiveness, and investments in technology and human resources to get to where it is today.