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International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief, Yukiya Amano, answers questions in a closed door 90 minute meeting with the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The IAEA chief says he cannot disclose details of his investigation into Iran's earlier weapons activities, or the agency's agreement with Iran for the inspection of nuclear facilities. Senator Corker who heads the committee said most senators left the meeting with greater concerns about the inspection process. The IAEA chief cited as reasons for the secrecy, independence of the agency, and what he called "a legal obligation" to protect confidential information. Senator Barroso described the process as one in which an NFL player or athlete is asked to mail in his own urine sample. Of particular concern to senators is the Parchin site where testing ocurred in the early 2000's, which Amano has said Iran is trying to sanitize, and which is not part of this agreement. Iran has not agreed to IAEA requests to interview a Iranian scientist Mr. Fakhrizadeh or other top Iranian military officers and nuclear scientists as part of its probe into past Iranian nuclear activities, Yukiya Amano told the WSJ in an intervew. ...

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With a low voter turnout estimated at 25% the United Russia Party which supports President Putin wins regional elections in Russia.

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Experts say CEO's have constituencies in the form of employees, shareholders and customers. This has affected CEO's as they responded to president Trump's comments on the Charlottesville attack.  Even the cautious optimism that CEO's maintained during the early months of the Trump administration- as they sought not to miss out on representation on advisory councils- has now faded. Most CEO's have decided that it is not worth having this voice in advisory councils when they have to be seen as supporting positions on racism and culture they cannot support. One by one the actions by Trump on the travel ban, climate change agreement withdrawal, Charlottesville attack,  has led to a shrinking of support. From non-involvement in Trump's campaign but cautious optimism, to a sense that it is not possible to work with the president without violating deeply held beliefs. Gini Rometty of IBM told employees that dialogue was critical to progress, but that " this group can no longer serve the purpose for which it was formed."  A sense that not much would be accomplished, and the reputational cost for business was too high to make it worth the effort. In the span of 3 days three advisory councils to the president were disbanded. ...

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Former Defense Secretary in the second term of the Obama administration, Chuck Hagel, says U.S. president Obama hurt his credibility when he failed to act on his own comments of a "red line" being crossed following the chemical attacks in Syria by the Assad government. Hagel was critical in an article in Foreign Policy magazine of the way the national security advisor, Susan E. Rice, ran discussions on foreign policy issues, with too many meetings and discussion followed up with deferring difficult decisions.

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Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post points out that after the faltering campaign of Republican Party nominee Fillon, the only serious candidates remaining in the presidential election in France are Marie LePen of the National Front, and the former Economy minister in the Hollande government, Emmanuel Macron. Macron is now the only person with enough popularity to win over LePen's nationalist movement. Macron launched his En Marche movement in 2016 and his strategy is to bring together the centre right and the centre left moderate voters, and voters who favor remaining in the European Union. Older voters in France unlike that in the U.S. and the UK are favoring candidates other than LePen because they fear the impact on the French economy and their pensions from leaving the European Union. LePen favors holding a referendum to decide whether France should remain in the EU. Macron takes an opposite view fully supporting France's role in the European Union. He has not advocated the huge cuts that Fillon has for job cuts in the public sector, and is able to draw moderate centre left voters to his side. A look at the French presidential election in another piece in the Economist magazine shows that further out one goes from major cities in France there is a surge in the support for the National Front. Moderate parties other than the National Front draw support in most of the major cities and urban areas. Another similarity with the UK and U.S> is that more educated voters support moderate parties other than the National Front. As polls have been proven wrong in other elections it is difficult to know what is likely to happen in this election. Unemployment is high in France at 10% with little change since the election of the Socialist Hollande government. Other issues such as terrorism have unsettled French voters, making this election difficult to predict. Voter dissatisfaction is especially high among younger voters who face a high unemployment rate and stagnant economy. Neither candidate Macron or LePen offers a way out of the low economic growth and lack of new jobs. A lot depends on whether French voters are willing to take the risks of a LePen administration and the further uncertainty from a referendum for leaving the EU which cannot enhance the economic prospects of France.     ...

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In August 2008 Russia invaded Georgia and established the independence of the 2 breakaway countries of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Georgia tried to enter NATO that year but the French and the Germans objected, and the U.S. did not want to commit deep in the Caucasus region. In the 2012 election the anti-Moscow government of Mr. Saakashvili was replaced by a government that sought friendly relations with the West and with Russia. There are still no embassies between Russia and Georgia. A special representative to Russia was appointed in the new government of Mr. Bidzina Ivanishvili, a billionaire who made his money in metals and banking in Russia. Saakashvili is now a Ukrainian citizen and is a governor of Odessa province, on the Black Sea, with separatist influence. Russia's trade ties with Georgia, a destination for Georgia's exports including wine, are gradually being restored after a trade embargo imposed in 2006. The trade embargo was lifted in 2013. The representative to Russia says its no use keeping the illusion of NATO membership even though it is an objective, as Georgia has to defend itself, the consequence of being in a difficult region. The strident anti-Russian rhetoric is now muted, as Georgia rethinks its relationship with Russia and the West to live in a difficult neighborhood. Ukraine went through some wild swings with the Orange Revolution, and the change in government to a pro-Russian government that jailed the earlier leader for corruption, leading to the protest movement calling for close relations to the West, the collapse of the elected pro-Russian government followed by the election of Mr. Poroshenko, and the Russian intervention in Ukraine in 2014-2015, leading to western sanctions on Russia. The sanctions end in Jan 31, 2016. The situation in Ukraine may stabilize where the NATO readiness force and German chancellor Merkel's call for "a persistent NATO presence in the Baltic states," lead to a situation where Russia determines the best course is cooperation with its neighbors, and trade, economic relations....

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Two weeks after his election Donald Trump says the U.S. will not join the Trans Pacific Trade Agreement during his term in office. Barack Obama took seven years to negotiate the trade agreement which was opposed by trade unions, the auto industry and was unpopular in the midwestern U.S. because of the impact of trade in hollowing out the manufacturing sector. Here Frank Sieren of the DW.com points out that the agreement was not really about trade, as most of the gains of trade had already been realized according to experts. It was part of the "pivot to Asia" to maintain American dominance in the region, says Sieren. After China pulled together some Asian and European countries into its trade agreement, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the U.S. pushed for TPP as a counterweight to the China sponsored trade zone. China says it will try to integrate the countries in TPP into the trade zone it has sponsored. President Trump has said that the U.S. is better off negotiating agreements with each country and not getting into multilateral trade agreements. He fought the election campaign on the basis of the opposition to TPP and trade agreements that unfairly hurt American workers. This could have provided the 110,000 margin of victory in the states suffering from the hollowing out in manufacturing such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania. A similar hollowing out in Ontario favored Justin Trudeau's Liberals against the Conservatives in Canada's election. ...

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Problems Russia faces in gaining entry into the WTO. This includes high import tariffs in Russia, arbitrary interpretation of rules, the customs union with Belarus and Kazakhstan, and corruption. Russia is the only major economy that is not part of the WTO. China was admitted in 2001. The WTO rules limit import tariffs and provides a legal system of dispute resolution for trade disputes. According to Business Europe, Russia increased tariffs for a range of factory products after the 2008 crisis. These tariffs alone cost EU companies $820 million a year. Russia's deputy prime minister Igor Shuvalov, says that without WTO access modernization and innovation for Russia will be very difficult. Companies like Boeing would be big winners with WTO entry for Russia. Tariffs on wide-body aircraft would then drop from 20% to 7.5%, and Russia expects to buy 1,000 new commercial aircraft in the next 20 years.

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About $229 billion, three fourth of Greece's debt, is now held by the European Central Bank, the IMF and the European Commission. This is taxpayer money and the governments are making sure that they get back bailout loans in the form of interest payments. About two thirds of the $177 billion given to Greece as bailout loans since May 2010 actually came back to the ECB, IMF, and the EC, in the form of interest. The ECB is keen on recovering taxpayer money. The money route has been setup with an escrow account in Greece for bailout loans so that interest payments get paid, and this money cannot be used for any other purpose. Banking experts say this is a practice in risk management, and with Greece's poor record in finances the controls have been put in place to recover money the ECB invested in Greek bonds in an effort to calm nervous financial markets and now gets about 10% in annual interest payment. Under earlier debt restructuring for private creditors to Greece a haircut of over 50% on Greek bonds was taken, with the ECB insisting on receiving full payment. If Greece were to repudiate the loans under a new elected government losses would have to be taken by the ECB, IMF, and EC, and by private creditors. The ECB has Greek bonds in the range of $44 billion to $69 billion, and the European Financial Stability Facility $88 billion, by some estimates. Greece's exit from the euro would result in losses on these bonds .for the ECB and the EFSF, ultimately European taxpayers. It would also make the new bonds to private creditors under the restructuring of little value which is why European banks would not favor that outcome. Greece's tax receipts at some point, possibly 2013, would exceed basic operating expenses of the government, at which point a future Greek government might decide to exit the euro and stop interest payments on debt in its best interest....

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Michael Phillips of the WSJ provides a profile of typical Donald Trump supporters, a couple Joey and Tina Elias, driving from Alabama to Pensacola, Florida to attend a Trump rally. Joey, 46 years old, lost his job in 2010, and has since worked at jobs a little above the minimum wage. Tina, 44 years old, is assistant director of a daycare center. They have worked hard to build a house on a 3 acre plot of land, after living for several years in a mobile home. They have 2 children, and Joey says he has to worry about job security before making any purchases. They are against free trade, as its not seen as favoring working Americans. They favor a strong military, because they see president Obama as defunding the military and weakening America overseas. They say they are not racially motivated, believe in God, but not church going. They don't feel strongly about social cultural issues, believing in live and let live. They say they like Trump not because he is saying anything new, only because he has voiced their concerns, they have felt this way for a long time. They want to see America winning- and to win as the country wins. What is striking is that the couple face some of the same job insecurity, and the paycheck to paycheck job insecurity and fear of losing what they have with job loss, that is being felt by average working Americans after the 2009 economic crisis. On the Democratic side Bernie Sanders is gaining support from white working class people who share the same anxieties about economic insecurity following the 2009 economic crisis....

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A failed policy of the Obama administration in Syria leads to a situation in which chemical weapons are used by the Assad government without a response from the U.S. or its allies in Europe.

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ECB president Mario Draghi tells a newsconference on April 14, 2015, that the bond buying program is "proceeding smoothly." He said that he does not see scarcity in the bond market. The ECB plans to continue its purchases of government bonds and other debt at a rate of 60 billion euros a month through September 2016. He said the program of very low interest rates for a very long time "is fertile terrain for financial instability imbalances," but he did not see evidence of systemically large financial imbalances at this time. The ECB approach would be to tackle the risks by using its power as a bank regulator, not by changing monetary policy, said Draghi. He was optimistic about the initial results, saying "more accomodative monetary policy is being translated into better credit conditions, which is something we have not seen before." The euro is down to $1.06 and low oil prices have helped improve economic conditions, as well as ongoing structural reforms pushed by the EU and ECB. Draghi's forecast for economic growth in the eurozone is now up from 1% to 1.5% for 2015....

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Speaking at the annual meeting of Italy's banking association on July 11, 2012, prime minister Mario Monti calls the struggle he is leading to change the economic performance of Italy, and especially against structural vices in the economy, "a very tough war." He added that the plan to reduce Italy's borrowing rates with the agreement to use the ESM or EFSF, the EU's rescue fund, "must be consolidated both in its substance and the way it is communicated." Bank of Italy governor, Ignazio Visco, said the spread between Italian and German bonds and the borrowing rates approaching 7% for Italy compared to about zero for Germany and France, were "far above what would be justified by the fundamentals of our economy." Deputy finance minister, Vittorio Grilli, is taking over the role of finance minister which Monti had assumed earlier. Monti will lead a new economic and financial policy committee which includes Mr. Grilli and development minister Corrado Passera.