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After energy shortages in 2021 the Chinese government decided to increase coal power projects. In 2023 these coal power projects are increasingly seen as backup sources of power with rapid increases in the production of renewable solar, wind and nuclear energy. China has nearly reached the point where half its energy is coming from renewable energy sources. Coal power companies are not profitable compared to renewable power companies. The result is that China's total emissions of carbon are declined in 2022 by 1.5%. China's power demand is growing by 6% each year, yet more of the increase in demand is being met through renewable energy expansion with coal being set as a backup source. Soon many of the power projects started after 2021 may be cancelled because they are losing money.

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John Taylor on the dual mandate for inflation and unemployment and discretionary policies by the U.S. Federal Reserve that ended up creating booms and busts in the U.S. economy. He advocates replacing the dual mandate of "maximum employment" and "stable prices," which was inserted into the Federal Reserve Act in the 1970's, with a single mandate for "long-run price stability." Taylor points out that this will still give the Fed flexibility, as it is focussed on long run price stability. The Fed does not have to overreact to short run increases in inflation. And he points out that this actually will work well for unemployment as the booms caused by an overextended period of low interest rates such as that in 2003-2005, have led to booms followed by busts with high unemployment.

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How distressed debt investors are being fended off by mutual funds and loan funds so that companies such as Cirque de Soleil, Serta in mattresses, and Revlon are not taken over by distressed debt investors. This is being done with additional loans and loans converted into stock, and other protection for the companies in this unusual period of coronavirus related losses. Loan funds are bigger today owning 70% of the 1.2 trillion dollar leveraged loan market. A new strategy is to band together and act quickly to keep out the distressed debt investors efforts to gain control of companies. This marks the end of a period like the nineteen twenties and early thirties of the excesses of capitalism and the culture that drives it and investors. That loan funds to companies are voicing the idea after the coronavirus that there are companies in debt situations for no fault of their own, and much less way less than banks who overleveraged with debt to make large profits and got away with it during the 2009 financial crisis, is itself a sign of the changes taking place. This is also the same argument made by the U.S. president for protecting Boeing and the airlines. ...

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The new labor law of prime minister Mario Monti's administration was passed in the Italian parliament by a vote of 393-74 on June 27, 2012. Passage of the major labor law reform was an important piece of legislation for Italy to regain cometitiveness in the eurozone and increase growth. It was seen as a confidence vote in the Monti administration.

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The last days and the last hours for Wachovia, as Robert Steel- formerly at the Treasury, who became CEO at Wachovia in July 2008- tried to save Wachovia as its share price plummeted. The immediate cause of the crisis was an imminent downgrade of ratings of Wachovia by the credit ratings agencies just as as the bank had billions of dollars in debt coming due this week, and the collapse of WaMu that created crisis conditions for Wachovia with its large holdings of so called toxic assets. Steel tried to negotiate a deal with Wells Fargo's Kovacevich, who initially offered a price in the tens of billions (about $20 billion), and said he could do it on his own without FDIC help. Then on the last day he backed off saying he had concerns for some of Wachovia loan portfolios. At this point Fed, FDIC and Treasury officials were huddled together in meetings to figure out what should be done. Steel was in conversations with Citigroup's Pandit at this point, and FDIC offered to guarantee losses on bad loan portfolios of Wachovia above $42 billion, in exchange Citi would give the FDIC warrants on Citi stock and preferred shares worth $12 billion as an insurance payment. The price at which Citigroup acquired Wachovia at this point was nearly $2 billion. One thing remained. What about the bondholders. WaMu's bondholders were wiped out, so this time Treasury did not want to rattle the credit markets further. It needed someone to shoulder Wachovia's $54 billion debt, which Citigroup at this point agreed to do. Citi gets a large number of Wachovia branches and depositors with this deal, combining the $393 billion of deposits of Wachovia with its $208 billion in deposits, making it the 3rd largest bank in the USA in terms of deposits after Bank of America and Chase. See graphs....

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J.P. Morgan Chase announces $2 billion in trading losses in May 2012. The Chief Investment Office unit made a bet with a trading strategy that CEO Jamie Dimon said had grown very complex. These losses could grow or shrink during the rest of the year.

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US-Iran Ceasefire breaks down as US escorts ships through Hormuz clearing 6 Iranian fastboats.

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Mario Monti, Italy's prime minister, tells Alessandra Galloni of the WSJ, "Germany will never let France go." French economist Sorman says Americans do not realize that the EU and the Euro were created for political, not economic reasons, and the idea was to bring peace to Europe and especially between France and Germany. He sees the EU countries staying through this crisis together, and France emerging more competitive from this experience.

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On April 20, 1996 the story of the merger of Ciba Geigy with Sandoz was the first story in notes made that day for Lyrarc from the WSJ Europe. This was during a trip to Europe. Ciba Geigy and Sandoz had become part of the home medical kits in Asia and Latin America by the 1960's, and their story had to be told to millions of people in these countries bringing Basel, Switzerland, to the world. Sandoz was founded in Basel in 1886 as a chemical company in Basel, Switzerland, and entered pharmaceuticals business in 1900. Ciba Geigy was formed in the 1850's as a chemical company for dyeing silk fabrics and entered the pharmaceuticals business in 1930's. The two companies were merged in December 1996 to form Novartis. Today Sandoz is the generics manufacturing part of Novartis. As prices of generics have declined Novartis CEO Narasimhan is planning to sell or spinoff Sandoz. With this move Novartis will focus solely on innovative drugs, says this report in WSJ. CEO's have also shifted fin the 25 years since the merger of Ciba Geigy and Sandoz from one with family connections to one with a professional background from India.   ...

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Why the Arc of Taste, an international catalogue of at risk foods put together by Italian journalists, is a question put to this author of Eating to Extinction, about the lack of biodiversity in foods. Basically it is about the enormous variety in nature that has been taken away from us by supermarkets and large fruit and vegetable companies that have limited everything to a few varieties in a supermarket for the sake of efficiency in commerce. You may find it amazing, as Saladino says, Victorians may have eaten a apple a day for four years and never eaten the same one twice. So the first thing is to increase the awareness of people of how much diversity really exists in nature if it is allowed to reassert itself over simply food that meets the needs of commerce. Looking clearly at what is lost, Saladino tells The Guardian in this interview, he is reminded of his childhood in Ribera, Sicily, where in the 70's there were so many varieties of oranges and so much color in the food compared to the blandness and limited variety of today's commerce based supermarkets. These small farms have disappeared, and now the varieties that came with them are also in danger unless this biodiversity is restored. ...

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Diversity support is dropping among CEO's with the new DJT administration taking office in 2025. Diversity is also losing support nationally. PEW Research shows nationally 52% support it in 2024 compared to 56% in early 2023. Among Republicans the shift is pronounced disapproval of Diversity up to 42% from 20% in the same period. Dhillon's law firm represented a social media activist Starbucks who launched campaigns against corporate Diversity policies during his campaign for Congress from Tennessee. DJT says Dhillon has a history of “suing corporations who use woke policies to discriminate against their workers."

CEO's appear to be saying they were not enthusiastic about such policies in the first place. The shift in sentiment nationally and the US Supreme Court decision against affirmative action in colleges has led to this shift in business CEO thinking.

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Brazil's infrastructure needs include port and road facilities for its agricultural exports and mining industry. Road and rail transport networks for passengers are small considering Brazil's size. The rail network is smaller than that of France and only 12% of the one million mile road network is paved. Brazilian petroleum fund Petrosal will invest in infrastructure needs. Investments are being made to upgrade port facilities by Santos Brazil, and investment in toll roads by CCR, a private-highways company. The government is planning investments in infrastructure to prepare for the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games in 2016.