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Greg Ip tells India's story, piped water for hundreds of millions of Indians, massive increases in road and rail, rapid development of infrastructure, aviation, ports logistics. WSJ graph shows country growth of economies for Japan, China, India, Germany in 2000 and 2020. By 2000 Japan had grown its economy to become about half the size of the US economy with two decades of rapid growth since 1980. China repeated this process with two decades of hyper growth since 2000 to become about 75% of the US economy by 2020. The graphs also show Japanese growth tailing off so rapidly after 2000 in relation to the US economy that it is now only about 25% of the US economy. China is likely to follow the same path as growth slows and with an aging population to become about 35-40% of the US economy by 2040 from 75%. India following the process that happened in Japan and in China is likely to become close to 35-40% of the US economy by 2040 from about 18% today, with the fastest growth over the next two decades for the most populous country in the world. Greg Ip points out what has been achieved since 2014 with the Modi government. Good governance without leakages of public funds dedicated to infrastructure, ease of living, GST one India one tax so that growing pool of funds from taxes fund rapid development with no leakages to corrupt officials,  Swacch Bharat or Clean India, clean water from taps, electricity and cooking gas for the whole population of India with dates for completion. All this Ip calls removal of the shackles that existed for far too long even past 2000 and 2010 when China had vastly surpassed India from its low point in 1980 after Mao and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. India today is in as much a pace of development as China in the 1990's and Japan in the 1960's, except that it now has the benefit of grasping how development can be done in a way that does not affect climate and health in adverse ways as happened with China's hyper growth -which also led to the tragic loss of manufacturing for workers and communities in the US and Europe due to the economic theories of laissez faire of the Reagan era. Reagan theory for governments not working with industry that were applied indiscriminately during the Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump presidencies for three decades led to shipping manufacturing overseas with no regard for the risks and dangers. What Greg Ip fails to mention is the uniqueness of India that is united by Vedanta, Hinduism and Buddhism for thousands of years, and which keeps the fabric of society together when it is divided by 13 language groups. These 13 language groups are: Hindi 43% of the population, Bengali 8%, Marathi 7%, Telugu 7%, Tamil 6%, Gujarati 5%, Urdu 4%, Kannada 4%, Odia 3%, Malayalam 3%, Punjabi 3%, Assamese 1%, English 1%. It was the vision of the early leaders Vivekananda, Gokhale, Mohandas Gandhi, Nehru, Sardar Patel, that united a diverse country with many languages and cultural variation. And it is this vision of Vivekananda that is creating the Good Governance under Sab ka Vikas, Sab ka Viswas, Sab ke Saath, Sab ka Prayas of today- development for all, with the confidence of all, with the support of all, the efforts of all. Without a disciplined direction based on hard work India could not make it this far or fulfill the aspirations of its youthful population by 2040. ...

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According to the General Accountability Office inquiry, 28 drug products had price increases over 100% in 2000, in 2008 71 drug products had such large increases. Medicines like Adderall for attention deficit disorder, Inderal for chest pain, Sumycin for infections were in the list of 416 brand name drug products where makers or distributors raised prices at least once by 100% or more for period 2000-2008. As large pharmaceutical companies sold their marginally profitable drug products or small selling products to smaller companies, these smaller companies would immediately increase prices to recover the money they paid to the large pharmaceutical companies. 26 of the brand name products saw prices raised 10 fold. A third of the drugs with large price increases treat depression and disorders of the central nervous system.

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A number of issues came up at the Women20 Summit in Berlin. Annette Niederfranke, Director of the International Labor Organization, brought up the issue of family reconciliation as "one of the toughest challenges for working women worldwide," that in order to meet obligations women tended to work in "non standard forms of employment and in part time work linked to lower wages, lower social security, lower benefits, and fewer training possibilities." Childcare was also an issue that was prominent considering the lack of adequate childcare in many countries including in the European Union. With responsibilities for the elderly, babies, and small children women tend to be in the workforce for shorter periods leading to men taking up many of the higher positions. Angela Merkel pointed out that Gemany tended to take a narrow view of professions available to girls, saying- "So it is very very important that we take a broader view of things while girls are still at school." Merkel also supports a Africa compact that would help women set up small and middle size businesses in poor countries. The "Digital" aspects of this and other efforts for women were a major topic being discussed. One idea that came up was that more cooperation from men was needed to make things happen. This is the third Women20 Summit after ones in Turkey and China, and a sense of momentum was felt by women. ...

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Anat Admati, is a professor of finance and economics at Stanford University School of Business. He says banks should depend on generating 30% of their assets from equity, something the banking industry of today in the U.S. and Europe considers heretical. More of the bank's assets should come from equity and much less from borrowed funds. Outside of banking healthy corporations in the U.S. carry debt at about 70% of assets and there is no reason banks should not do the same. In 2013 says Admati, the situation is not much different from that after the 2008 global financial crisis- large banks carry liabilities and debt at over 90% of their assets. The $2.2 trillion in debt at JP Morgan Chase bank is about 91% of assets of $2.4 trillion. Basel III regulations allow banks to borrow upto 95% of assets, and proposed banking regulations in the U.S. put this at 95%, with the way this is measured still being debated. At such high levels of debt the margin of error is small, and systemic risk which is high in a globally interconnected banking system means the whole banking system can freeze from one large bank going into failure such as Lehman Brothers. This happened in 2008 and the margin of error is still small, which is why global banking is such a high wire act with the U.S. Federal Reserve, the ECB and other central banks issuing regular warnings and regulators faced with the task of keeping the banking system in check through vigilance and investigations of banks violating laws. How much difference has Dodd-Frank legislation in the U.S. made after 2008? Jason from Atlanta says in response to Admati's article, that the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 was 37 pages and the banking system did not freeze up in the way it did in 2008 for the rest of the twentieth century until its repeal. The 879 page Dodd-Frank legislation of 2011 is overly voluminous and still leaves 243 rules to be written by regulators in consultation with the financial industry. Banks are larger now than they were in 2008 and have an outsized influence in shaping the rules, leaving the U.S. Federal Reserve's supervisory committee and Fed Governor Daniel Tarullo with the job of somehow keeping banks out of trouble. JP Morgan Chase, Admati reminds readers, has $2.4 trillion in assets as of June 30, 2013, and debts of $2.2 trillion, with $1.2 trillon in deposits and $ 1 trillion in other debt owed to money market funds, other banks, bondholders and the like. ...

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Lipton, Austin and LaFraniere of the NYT tell the story of how the serious differences between the prime contractor for the federal healthcare website, CGI Federal, and the Obama administration officials handling the website, evolved into conflicts that could not be resolved. This led to the flawed website being rolled out on schedule ignoring serious problems with the website. The detailed report comes after interviews with Obama administration officials and specialists who worked on the project and looking into government and contractor documents. A month ago in October 2013 the healthcare website for the Obama healthcare law was up only 42% of the time with 10 hour failures happening frequently. Basic steps for the functioning of website backup systems in case there is a failure, testing to ensure negligible or no outages, were not secured. The government officials responsible for the rollout did not have the capabilities to handle such a project. Henry Chao, who worked in the Medicare agency for 19 years was left to oversee day to day questions for the website HealthCare.gov, but lacked a formal background in software engineering and no authority to make the decisions needed. The $630 million project was setup inside the Medicare Agency, instead of a separate agency specially setup for this project and staffed with the appropriate skills as originally proposed. Five different lower level government officials made decisions without the authority needed and no one person with the necessary skills was given overall responsibility and decisionmaking. A series of missteps were allowed to take place- settting many added requirements that made it difficult for contractors to focus on basic steps and get them right, use of the MarkLogic database system instead of systems from IBM or Oracle against the advice of contractors, multiple contractors without a way to control the overall project, shifting requirements from the government and bureaucratic delays for resolving basic issues such as use of social security numbers, all worked to create delays. With the delays came a deterioration of relations between Obama administration officials and the contractors. The government officials response was to stick to the deadline of Oct. 1 rollout, with Michelle Snyder, chief operating officer of Medicare agency telling people she would fire the contractor if possible. In the end no one took responsibility for a safe reliable rollout, even though the system failed a test of 500 users in late September and was down half the time in mid-October. President Obama or his advisors were either not kept fully informed, or did not grasp the significance of the collapse in relations between contractors and the government and a project out of control. His aloof distanced approach was not an asset in such matters- saying about the rollout and use of the website: "this is real simple" like using the Kayak website for travel bookings- and he saw no need to take action leading to the major failure for the administration that followed....

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Meet Victor Brown, one of the remaining 450 workers at Buick City, GM's sprawling plants in Flint, where in the 1980's 27,000 workers built GM cars. Victor Brown of Clio, Michigan, and O.C. Cooper do not want to leave, and have repeatedly turned down buyout offers from GM preferring to stay with GM even if it enters bankruptcy, and take their chances. Since 2006, GM has persuaded 60,000 of its hourly employees- about half of the total hourly workforce at GM in the USA- to take cash buyouts and leave. Cooper says, this is the only life he knows, he is 64, a machine operator at Flint North, a run down engine plant in Flint, Michigan. Every day for the 42 years he has worked here, he gets up, washes up, and drives to the plant. He can't imagine anything else. If he leaves he will give up $60,000, for apension half that amount, with no guarantee that its secure after a GM bankruptcy. Victor Brown is 55, a repairman with 36 years at GM, he is divorced and putting a son through college. A year ago he and others turned down a buyout offer for $62,500 to retire with all benefits, now this is down to $20,000, and a car voucher for $25,000. GM needs an additional 21,000 jobs to be cut and closing of 13 plants in its latest restructuring under help and supervision from the Obama administration. ...

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The Congressional Budget Office's Elmendorf says without spending cuts in payments to doctors and hospitals and other providers, providing coverage to the unisured will put the nation deeper into debt. Popular measures such as increasing preventative care, expanding medical records and rewarding doctors for choosing treatments that improve cost and quality have potential but its not proven how much the savings from this would be. The administration and the White House Budget Director, Peter Orszag, say they are in agreement with the CBO that something needs to be done to seriously reduce costs, reducing payments for Medicare and Medicaid to doctors and hospitals, and making other changes.

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Morgenson says that the lobbying by the financial inudstry to weaken reform efforts for derivatives trading and resisting other reforms will only lead to taxpayers paying for more rescues later on.

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Business Week's Chad Terhune points out that the health reform bill that passed Congress will do little to restrain the overbilling by pharmaceutical companies, medical device and equipment makers. Chad cites numbers from the U.S. Health and Human Services Department that shows $47 billion in Medicare spending went to dubious claims in the year ending Sept 30, 2009. This is 10% of the $440 billion Medicare program. And 10% of the Medicaid program also goes to dubious claims. Consider then that Congres allocated $10 million annual increase to fight fraud. A suit filed by a former Siemens manager at the federal court in Philadelphia states that Siemens routinely overbilled the Veterans Affairs Department and other governmental agencies by humndreds of millions of dollars for MRI and CT scan machines.

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The US is facing a new pattern of demographic changes and their impact on Medicare and Social Security programs. The number of people on Medicare will grow in 2 decades, 2010- 2030, from 47 million to 80 million for Medicare, and from 44 million to 73 million for Social Security, according to this estimate. The workforce will grow more slowly and the tax base wiill shrink accordingly during this period. This pending worker-pensioner imbalance and the jump in the cost of the bill for Medicare and Medicaid, as well as the federal health benefit for poor people, create a major problem for the US. At the same time the group of people over 65 will rise in these 2 decades from 17% of the voting age population to 26%. This group and the people who expect to soon join this group will resist any changes to Medicare or Social Security programs, making it that much harder for the political process to tackle these issues to make the programs sustainable in the long run.

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President Biden called for corporations to pay their fair share of taxes so that investments can be made in vital needs of the nation-US infrastructure, education and health, transport, public services. The NYT looks at companies where profits are shifted overseas to reduce taxes. In this case NYT looks into an investigation into shifting of profits to a Swiss subsidiary to avoid billions of dollars in income taxes. 

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Ted Cruz, US Senator from Texas makes a pitch for $1000 accounts for every newborn American child set up by the American government to which parents and relatives can contribute $5000 a year, invested in accounts based on S&P 500 index growth, which would create enough money by the age of 18 to create citizens with a share of the wealth in society. It would create $170,000 by the age of 18 for each child 18 years from now when invested at a historical average of 7% in mutual funds that are based on the S&P 500. It would give them a sense of participation in society that the current system fails to do when it puts most of the advantages on one side which is higher educated and with higher income parents vs the other side of less educated and lower income parents with additional burdens from social ills.

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In this Agenda column Simon Nixon takes on the U.S. Treasury's criticism of Germany for its current account surplus of 7% of GDP in 2012, and not doing enough for the economies of southern Europe. The German government called it "incomprehensible." Nixon says it is better for the German economy to remain strong and to boost competitiveness and consumer spending in Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. He says the low eurozone inflation of annualized 0.7% for September 2013, which prompted the ECB to cut rates by 0.25%, is healthy to the extent that consumer prices are declining to adjust to a decline in wages. The reduction in labor costs is a way to restore lost competitiveness, just as Germany did in the last decade. The criticism is considered by many economists to be misdirected, and seen as "incomprehensible" by Germans, as Germans ask what would the U.S. have them do- provide stimulus when the government debt to GDP ratio is currently 82%, increase wages and how would this help Southern Europeans. Focussing on Germany's current account surplus says Nixon, is obscuring the larger issues of increasing consumer and business confidence and spending in the eurozone, and increasing bank lending. The new ECB bank resolution arrangements and other changes including deposit insurance if done right should help the recapitalization and restructuring needed for restoring bank lending to support recovery. Spain is furthest along in regaining competitiveness, with changes in Portugal, Italy and Greece also supporting a gradual return to growth....

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Friedman describes the development of a tablet computer by a team led by Prof. Kalra and two professors of electrical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Jodhpur, which costs less than $50 to produce. The new price point is needed to reach over 200 millon students in India who need such a device to escape poverty and poor teaching. The new tablet computer enables them to reach out to knowledge in language, sciences and math, and the humanities in the world outside them. This is an I-Pad like, internet enabled, wirlessly connected tablet. The average Indian family in rural areas saves $2.50 a month, and government support for its educational benefit could subsidize a portion of the cost. The tablet would bring distance learning, teach English, to students and help track commodity prices for farmers. The invented device uses the Android 2.2 operating system, a 7 inch touch screen, 3 hours battery life, and can download YouTube videos, PDFs and educational software. The governmment is expected to subsidize wireless connections to students. The name of the tablet is Aakash, Hindi for sky....

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Tyler Cowen, Professor of Economics at George Mason University, points out some basic truths about health care as it is practiced today in the USA, and healthcare spending as it stands today. He questions whether starting out with extra spending plans to provide coverage to all will help solve the basic problems facing American health care. Too many tests and diagnostic procedures used by doctors is not aproblem that will be solved by spending more money to cover everyone. And government taking on more spending to cover all will not address all the other major shortcomings of the American way of practicing medicine, like prescribing a battery of tests, that tend to drive up costs, to just mention one of the problems. And it will not address any of the shortcomings in the way Americans take care of their health, diet, exercize and healthy lifestyles. THese are critical to get good health outcomes for the people, and which combined with careful spending of dollars where it will provide the greatest benefit, is the only way the health care solutions can be found....

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McGurn of the WSJ looks at the Gallup study on Trump supporters showing that they are older and white, but not more likely to come from communities adversely affected by trade competition. The study shows intergenerational mobility, health prospects, and relative racial isolation, more likely blue collar workers, as being key features, yet more likely to be employed or self-employed. Of this cultural angst, and lack of intergenerational mobility, poor health prospects, are critical findings. McGurn sees them as the people who feel left behind, and says the nation needs to look at them not as "losers" but to address the problems of intergenerational mobility in the U.S. following the election. Theresa May, the new prime minister of Britain has described the "burning injustice" in her first speech when taking office, in a reference to people who suffered under the 7 years of austerity programs in the Cameron years, people from similar groups who face a situation where their children's prospects are no better or worse than their own. ...

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As president Jinping begins a second five year term his focus is on the small communities like Chashan, only a 6 hour drive from Beijing, that were neglected in the rush to industrialization. He has vowed to get rid of poverty in China by 2020. About 43 million people live in rural communities that have mostly older people and live on 95 cents a day. There is another challenge say experts which is the much larger popuation that lives in rural and urban areas- including urban migrants without property and residence rights- who live on less than $5.50 per day, $165 a month, according to the World Bank. This is about 1070 yuan per month, or in Indian rupees for a comparison with India- which was at a similar stage of development in 1990- of Rs 10,000 per month. About 40% of China's population or 560 million people are in this group. With a rapidly aging society as a result of the earlier one child policy, China faces the risk of not advancing from the level of a middle income country, in the way that South Korea and Japan have moved to levels similar to Western Europe and the U.S. As China's growth level slows and with an aging society this remains a major challenge. As this report shows there is great pressure on local officials to eliminate the poverty level of people living below $30 or about 200 yuan a month, as targets are set at local levels and corruption weakens the effort. There is concern at the lack of an effort to improve the living conditions of the 200 million rural migrants living in cities, who under China's "hukou" system are not considered residents and are not getting education and health benefits. ...

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Pakistan's economic delegation meets Christine Lagarde, head of the IMF, at the IMF and World Bank Annual meeting in Bali, Indonesia. Lagarde calls for transparency in accounting and complete understanding of Pakistan's debt. IMF delegation will visit Islamabad to discuss terms for a loan. The previous government of Mr. Sharif came under criticism for not providing transparency on Pakistan's total debt. There is concern about debt trap diplomacy in loans from China, as loans may exceed the country's ability to repay and the interest rate terms are not seen as favorable to Pakistan. The Sharif government is criticized for not negotiating better terms for loans from China. Pakistan faces $8 billion debt load in 2018, with first payments to China under Belt and Road Initiative of $1 billion due in 2019. Pakistan's total foreign exchange reserves fell to a low of $8.4 billion, according to the central bank. Pakistan is seeking $12 billion in IMF assistance, but experts say more will be needed to bridge the financial gap. The Pakistan rupee dropped by 10% during this week in October 2018, down to 137 rupees for a U.S. dollar. The new government of prime minister Imran Khan took office in August 2018 after election promises to bring transparency to Pakistan's debt situation. Promises were also made to improve low income housing and meet needs of poor and low income public. Imran Khan opened a public housing project to build 5 million new homes. IMF terms could restrict the money available for badly needed housing and other social projects.  Pakistan's small tax base with a small percentage of the population paying taxes, also restricts the ability of the government to fund social welfare projects and infrastructure. It makes the country more dependent on outside assistance and loans. India has moved to expand its tax base, and is implementing GST tax reforms to increase the tax revenues available to fund infrastructure, health, education and housing. The war in Yemen has complicated other sources of funding traditionally accessed by Pakistan from Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The financing gap is estimated by experts to be $20 billion, with the IMF assistance sought of $12 billion falling short of the financial needs. ...

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Alan Blinder calls for something better than Social Darwinism to tackle the problem of foreclosures in the U.S. economy. Martin Feldstein has made the same call repeatedly. Homeowners under water need help from the government to avoid foreclosures. Rising foreclosures reduce the chances of a recovery in housing markets and U.S. economic recovery.