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U.S. exports reached $2.34 trillion in 2014, increasing by $760 billion over the figure in 2009, according to the Commerce Department. Exports accounted for one third of the U.S. economic growth since 2009, say Pritzker and McNerney. Goods and services for exports supported 11.7 million U.S. jobs in 2014, and a Commerce Department 2010 paper shows these jobs pay 18% higher than jobs unrelated to exports. Commerce Department Secretary Pritzker, and McNerney, chairman of the President's Export Council, say free trade agreements and investment by private business is critical to supporting export promotion, but make no mention of the effect of the stronger dollar on future exports. In a period of a few months in 2015 the euro is approaching parity with the dollar and the yen is now 120 to the dollar, giving European and Japanese business a significant advantage, and raising questions about the strength of the U.S. recovery going forward.

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The Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit group, (POGO), put out its report in Feb 2013 on the performance of the S.E.C. in enforcement actions. The report is critical of the revolving door whereby the same lawyers who worked at large banks and financial corporations later join the enforcement agency for short periods, only to rejoin the financial companies after their work at the S.E.C. This weakens the enforcement at the S.E.C. Robert Khuzami worked at Deutsche Bank during the period when some of the problems resulting in charges against Deutsche Bank being filed happened. He was the chief of enforcement at the S.E. C. during a critical period following the 2008 financial crisis, and supported action that let companies "neither admit or deny" in legal settlements. This practice reduced the deterrent effect of enforcement actions to protect the public.

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Krugman points out that some depreciation in the value of the dollar is welcome because it would make US exports more competitive and reduce our trade deficit. He says China's policy of keeping the yuan pegged to the dollar actually devalues the Chinese currency and makes it possible for China to siphon off growth from other countries. So what should America do. By putting pressure on China to revalue the yuan upward would America be risking China responding by selling some f its $2.1 trillion in dollar assets. This would not be such abad thing if the Chinese sold some of their dollar assets says Krugman, as lowering the value of the dollar at this time is not such abad thing. Malpass and Alan Meltzer of Carnegie Mellon, point out the importance of maintaining the value of the dollar in a separate piece. There the idea is not to have sharp fall in the value of the dollar that could economic disruption because of loss of confidence in the currency as opposed to a gradual decline.

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Tourists from China went up by 20% in 2015, going over 1 million. Foreign enrollment at Australian educational institutions was up significantly in 2015, going up to 645,000, up 25% over 2012 with the weaker Australian dollar. Australia's services sector including inbound education and tourism exceeded in value the minerals and metal ores exports in the last two months of 2015. This enabled the Australian economy to grow by 3% in the 4th quarter of 2015 over the prior year.

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Keith Bradsher visits Guangzhou, China, just as prime minister Wen Jiabao tells the National People's Congress that China is changing its priorities from high growth to sustainable development. As recently as 2007 GDP growth reached 14%! The minimum wage is expected to rise 13% each year under the five year plan. Even with the increase in wages owning an apartment is unaffordable in Guangzhou- a 1000 square feet apartment costs upward of $300,000, showing the extent to which the bubble in real estate prices affects young people who cannot afford to own an apartment. A new graduate with marketable skills such as computer engineering makes about $6000 a year, putting owning an apartmet beyond reach. Another change he notices today is that during visits to construction sites he does not see flood lit sites at night. This used to be the case because builders were scrambling to build. With government policies discouraging the property bubble there is no longer a need for work at night. The focus now has shifted to build low income housing....

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Judge Jeremy Cook at Southwark Crown Court in London, England, hands out a 14 year jail sentence to Tom Hayes for Libor benchmark rate manipulation while working at UBS and Citigroup. He says the sentence is meant "to send a signal" to the banking industry. Cook's message to the UK banking industry- "Probity and honesty are essential, as is trust."

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In the 2008 financial crisis Libor went up from 2.81% to 4.82% in a six week period. By contrast during the current eurozone crisis Libor has failed to reflect the problems in credit markets. Three month Libor was 0.24975% on July 14, 2011.

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Some manufacturing towns have done worse than others during this period of a surge in Chinese imports. Dunn, North Carolina is one of these towns. It is 40 miles south of Raleigh. In the 10 counties clustered around Raleigh factory employment declined by 40% between 1990 and 2007. Per capita cost of government payments for benefits such as unemployment insurance, food stamps, increased by 74%. Cleveland by contrast was relatively insulated and adapted to the imports by moving into areas of manufacturing that required more technology and complexity. Autor and Hanson studied 722 county clusters throughout the U.S. to discern the impact of the surge in imports and free trade.

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A study by Charles Elson of the Center for Corporate Governance of the University of Delaware which refutes the idea that excessive compensation is needed to retain good talent in industry.

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Yale Prof. Fair says that evidence from his model shows the yuan appreciation having a positive effect on American jobs looks better than it really is. Two negative effects are in play. The first is that Chinese output decreases will have an effect on Chinese imports that will affect US exports. And the other effect that will come into play is the increase in US prices. His conclusion is that it unlikely we will see a large increase in American jobs from the appreciation of China's currency.

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Denning points out the shift in Mexico to becoming a net oil importer from the U.S. by August 2013, that put new urgency to the passage of the oil law in Mexico for attracting foreign investment. Mexico's exports of crude oil were about 0.9 million barrels a day in August 2013. U.S. refinery products imported by Mexico including gasoline on an oil equivalent basis were 0.8 million barrels a day. Mexico became a net importer of energy in March 2013. Another negative factor in the energy trade between Mexico and the U.S. is increasing U.S. oil production and refineries in the coast of the Gulf of Mexico being full. As this U.S. production increases Mexico would have to offer competitive discounts in the future. Pemex drillled in all 25 deepwater wells in the last decade, according to Sanford Bernstein. The U.S. in the same period drilled 1500 ultra-deep water wells alone, showing the urgent need for foreign investment in the Mexican oil industry.

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The WSJ study reported by Carrick Mollenkamp and Mark Whitehouse in the Journal on May 29, 2008, set off the investigation into the lowballing of the London Interbank Offered Rate or LIBOR by the 16 bank panel reporting the rate daily to the British Bankers Association. The rate is critical in setting the interest rate on trillions of dollars in transactions worldwide for securities, home and auto loans, derivatives and swaps. The apparent motive being to prevent negative perceptions of a bank's health if one bank was borrowing at a higher rate than its peers during the financial crisis of 2008-2009. banks doing the most lowballing for the LIBOR rate such as Citigroup, HBOS, were already perceived in financial markets to have higher risk during the financial crisis, divergence in LIBOR rates would reinforce these perceptions. Investigations later showed other banks such as UBS manipulated the rate they reported and influenced other banks to do so to increase trading profits. UBS settled charges for $1.5 billion and Barlays for $450 million. UBS was seen as an egregious offender as the practice was in the words of the Financial Services Authority, the UK regulator, quite "routine and widespread" at UBS....

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Robert Reich, a former Labor Secretary, says that instead of "rebalancing" with Chinese consumers buying more American goods and China exporting less to the USA, things are headed in the opposite direction. Why? Because at the macroeconomic level China is devoting more of its country's resources to production capacity. Chinese consumers are taking home a smaller proportion of the total economy. In 2008 personal consumption amounted to 35% of the total economy, whereas in 1998 it was 50%. Capital investment in the same 10 years went up 35% to 44%. Chinese continue to save and these savings are going into infrastructure and manufacturing capacity. There is even a social twist to the savings, with fewer young Chinese women than men parents with boys have to compete in the marraige market and save assets for this. Households are also saving to support more elderly people as population is aging quickly with population policies. All this means that with all the talk (see links to Niall Ferguson and Krugman), the situation will likely roll on in this manner till things reach an impasse, or there is a strong political backlash in the USA which leads to stronger trade actions by the government, or there is a crisis. Meanwhile the trade deficit is headed higher and Chinese foreign reserves will go far above the current $2.3 trillion. And the Europeans will also be getting restless with their trade imbalance, as the euro edges higher and the yuan remians pegged to the dollar, leading to trade distortions. ...

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Proposals from the Vickers Commission on banking reforms in the UK that could be adopted in the U.S. to reduce systemic risks from proprietary trading.