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FactSet Research Systems shows that of 13,339 ratings of U.S. listed companies 96% were buy, hold or overweight. Only 4% were sell or underweight. Mike Mayo describes the difficulties he faced giving true ratings of banks that reflected loan and other problems- in over 2 decades as a bank analyst- in his book "Exile on Wall Street." A significant culture change is required, says Mayo, for the hundreds of analysts who do the ratings to perform their function of providing proper scrutiny of companies. The clout of banks in the American capitalism of today also works to the severe detriment of the economc system to perform the way it should. He says the U.S. should look to the Financial Services Authority in Britain for the kind of actions that are needed for the financial sector supervisory officials. He points out that the FSA fired many of its existing staff and looked for new talent, at the same time increasing the salaries and benefits so that regulatory supervisors were not looking for opportunities in the private sector....

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 This message from Pope Francis is especially relevant today during coronavirus. Francis says of the mistaken priorities of today away from healthcare, education, infrastructure and "coherence" in society and the pain and hardship this is causing in society, there is much that can give people thought to reflect on. Francis  new book, "Let us Dream: The Path To a Better Future" will be out December 1. "If we are to come out of this crisis less selfish than when we went in, we have to let ourselves be touched by others’ pain." He cites a line in Friedrich Hölderlin’s “Hyperion” that speaks to him, about how the danger that threatens in a crisis is never total; there’s always a way out, that where the danger is, also God plants the saving power, a way out. And not simply a way out, God also gives human beings a chance to grasp for and hold onto renewal if only one makes the endeavour. As it says in the Bhagavad Gita God gives man a chance to warm himself near the fire, only those who make the effort to go to the fire can feel the warmth, it is a choice man has to make. And again God says in the Bhagavad Gita that he is not partial to any man. Ever since the global financial crisis hurt working families in the middle and lower classes hard in 2009 because of banks misbehaviour and greed, Pope Francis has called for countries in the western world to heed his warnings about the dangers of greed and corruption to us all. Even George Washington warned of this in his inaugural address, so the warnings are not new. Reminding people once again he says "we cannot return to the false securities of the political and economic systems we had before the pandemic. We need economies that give to all access to the fruits of creation, to the basic needs of life: to land, lodging and labor. We need a politics that can integrate and dialogue with the poor, the excluded and the vulnerable, that gives people a say in the decisions that affect their lives. We need to slow down, take stock and design better ways of living together on this earth." The pandemic has exposed the paradox that while we are more connected, we are also more divided. Francis is never tired of warning that the present political and economic structures and people who staff them have not felt others pain, so he reminds us it is hard to build a culture of encounter in which we meet as people with a shared dignity, within a throwaway culture that regards the well-being of the elderly, the unemployed, the disabled and the unborn as peripheral to our own well-being. Where only self preservation counts. Francis reminds us of the Christian concept that no one is saved alone. This is not just an abstract concept. When Francis was only 18 years and a second year student he was admitted to a Buenos Aires hospital for a severe respiratory disease, so severe that he lost a part of his lungs. He remembers the day August 13, 1957. He understands this pandemic from personal experience. He knows what it is like to be on a ventilator. Surgeons removed the upper right lobe of his lung. Francis struggled to breathe. He was  saved Francis says not even by the doctors, but by a Dominican sister, a senior ward matron, who had been a teacher in Athens before being sent to Buenos Aires. She understood that Francis was dying and after the doctors left asked the nurse to double the prescription dose of penicillin and streptomycin. Sister Cornelia Caraglio, knew better than the doctors from her regular contacts with sick people what they needed, and she had the courage to act on that knowledge.      ...

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Mr Obama meets Mr Putin at his residence for breakfast which lasted 2 hours. Mr Obama said that he recognized "the extraordinary work that you've done on behalf of the RUssian people." And Mr Putin said, "with you we link all our hopes for the furtherance of relations between our two countries." Pavel Palazhchenko an interpreter for Mikhail Gorbachev, who met with Obama, put it this way about Medvedev and Obama- "they represent a different generation, many of the dogs in the old fights are really not their dogs. And they will be willing to take afresh look at some issues." As the head of one of the investment funds put it to a CNBC reporter about U.S. -Russian relations, the left does not like Russia, and the right does not like Russia. When asked about corruption in Russia, this businessmen said that he had worked in India, and sure he knew about corruption , "I'm from New Jersey." So with all the hopes and good intentions, and new leaders, Obama can get stuck on issues like Georgia, and political freedom, still agree on reduction of nuclear weapons stockpiles. He attended aconference on civil society and while stressing importance of freedom of expresssion and assembly, the rule of law, he brought ameasure of humility. He said" Icome before you with humility. I think in the past there has ben atendency for the United States to lecture rather than to listen. And we obviously still have much work to do with our own democracy in the United States. But nevertheless share common values and interest in building a strong democratic culture in Russia as well as the United States." ...

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IBM is using Peace Corps type programs to give managers and other employees exposure to foreign countries and cultures. They do small projects in groups to help people in Asian and other developing countries to gain exposure and learn how to work in other cultures and languages. Its anew way to do management training in alive setting for a business like IBM's that is now truly internationalized with a majority of sales coming from foreign countries. In 2009 500 people will participate and it will do small projects in 9 countries including Brazil, India, Malaysia and South Africa. The group spends 3 months before going overseas reading about their host countries, studying the problems they are assigned to work on, and getting to know their group members. Once in the host country they work with local governments, universities and business groups to do projects from upgrading water quality in alocal area to upgrading technology for a government agency. ays Kevin Thompson who conceived of this Corporate Service Corps and manges it. He says the goal is to create a transformative experience in a foreign culture. One IT manager says she has learned to work closely with tam members in India and China as aresult of this experience. Before this she would tend to assign something and leave it to them....

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Commander David Adams shows how with 250 paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne division, he was able to achieve greater success than 2500 American troops are able to do today in Khost province of Afghanistan. He says he did this by building roads, a spring water system for 12,000 villagers, and other ways to befriend the tribals and villagers, and letting the tribals do the watching and keeping order. Insurgents who operated in the area, or the IED's placed by them, were then reported by the tribals. By working with and befriending the tribals, a smaller number of troops were able to do much more. Adams quotes Mohammed Aiaz, a Khosti advising the Provincial Reconstruction team which Adams headed who says: "If troops don't understand Afghan culture and fail to work within the tribal system, they will only fuel the insurgency. When we get tribes on our side, that will change. When a tribe says no, it means no. IED's will be reported and no insurgent fighters will be allowed to operate in or across the area." This is a very significant observation. To repeat Aiaz: if troops don't understand the Afghan culture and fail to work within the tribal system they will only fuel the insurgency. And adding what Adams say is needed, it means roads built and irrigation canals built or old ones repaired, visible evidence for the Afghan villagers to see of progress, something reporters like Dexter Filkins are saying in their reports, and which is also being told to McChrystal in Filkins recent NYT magazine artice on McChrystal. When told this- McChrystal -whose whole training is as a Special Forces commander who flies in by helicopter to Afghan villages- has only this reply "it takes time" and again at the next stop "it takes time." See the groups for -Commander Adams, and for Dexter Filkins which touch on similiar development issues....

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Bill Ford answers some very pertinent and good questions with confidence and clarity in a meeting with Maria Bartiromo of CNBC and Business Week. His answers are direct and show his thinking today and throughout his difficult experience of the last few years struggling to establish his presence at Ford Motor and then struggling to get the right person to run the company. "It hurts us to see the employees of the company suffer," and this has made this experience at Ford have a personal impact as Ford traumatized over the layoffs of employees with many years of service. And he himself was not easily accepted in the prevailing culture of the time at Ford, and asked to drop his contacts with environmentalists when he joined the Board, which he says he told them he had no intention of doing. He knows his managers had foresight in borrowing a "ton of money" just before the credit crisis struck, and which will be a key to going through any further deterioration of the market in the next 2-3 years. Much clearer than any of the other manufacturers is Ford's new vision under, Bill Ford, Mullaly and Farley, with the finance guys in the background, of Ford as a car company and focused on smaller fuel efficient automobiles. And Bill Ford's vision and aspiration has a lot do with it, who he helped bring in and what he supported and pushed for in the old Ford culture helped Ford to grasp a vision of its future with clarity and purpose like a new beginning. Ford will continue to make trucks but it believes as Bill Ford does that the market will never go back to its old ways, that the absolute price of oil will have less to do with it than the psychology which will push for smaller more fuel efficient cars. And as he points out its European cars are" extremely well appointed and very, very succesful and extremely profitable"....

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Susan Carey interviews the new CEO of United Continental Holdings Inc, Jeff Smisek. Mr Smisek is a lawyer for the law firm Vinson & Elkins LLP. He brings to this job, which involves negotiating labor contracts and bringing together reservation systems of the two merged airlines, prior experience in the 1995 turnaround of Continental. Smisek was part of the management team that helped turn the airline around. The important things for Smisek is getting the people in the merged airline embrace a positive culture, and this he says begins with honest communications. He is heavily focussed on this part, as he says this is a service business, and employees won't give the best service unless they really want to. Next he is focussed on execution of the integration aspects. And third, what he calls the day to day tackling and blocking of operating the airline. His management style is to get a lot done by walking around and using an informal style, by being direct. He would like to see the airline make money in the tough times and do even better in good times, and invest in people, product and technology....

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Milan will host the World Cities Culture Summit in 2020, and the Winter Olympics in 2026 shared with the Alpine town of Cortina. The international book fair of Turin is moving to Milan. The left of centre Mayor Giuseppe Sala has promoted the city to increase tourism by 50%. And foreign investment is increasing for new construction projects with $21 billion to be taken up in the next 15 years. Experts are asking if this is coming at a price as the rest of Italy has stagnated for 20 years, and the rural large city gap is increasing throughout Europe. The flow of professionals to cities such as Milan, Paris, Munich, Berlin, from other towns and cities is creating a huge shift that experts at the Centre of European Reform see as a problem because of the political turmoil, and rising inequality with ever widening gaps between smaller cities and towns and rural areas with the big cities. This is compounded by ageing and demographics such as seen in the eastern part of Germany, and parts of France. Experts call it The Big European Sort, where a sifting or sorting process is increasingly transforming the demographics of European countries and driving polarisation. This process is also happening in the U.S. Experts say the big cities benefitted from the change with the European single market and the European Union. Places where working class people live are not seeing and increase in wealth which is disproportionately going to professionals clustered in big cities. Deindustrialisation has turned places like Mezio only 20 miles from Milan into industrial ruins. Towns that once voted socialist are now voting far right in these hollowed out industrial places. In the U.S. and in Europe the process was exacerbated by the flow of cheap imports from Asia hollowing out factories in regions around big cities, and by the growth of services industry in big cities with globalization in finance, legal, and other professional services. Fro 1980 to 1995 Paris region lost about $5.5 billion in industrial output and gained $20 billion in services output that also aligns with globalization in areas such as finance, according to CER, Eurostat. The process had accelerated in 1995-2020. By telling this story about Milan and the Lombard region around it like Mezio, The Guardian is saying it is time to look at how everything works together rather than breaking apart- citing the Finnish architect Saarinen about how a chair fits into a room, a room into a house, and a house into its environment, an environment in a city. So the question is how can we build the future by seeing that the city fits into a region, and a region fits into a country. As a young professional described this on BBC television interview recently this is a difficult period with the ability to design the future seemingly snatched away by the times, but also an opportunity to rethink and take the actions today for a better tomorrow for all. This is part of the coverage on Cities in The Guardian looking at how cities can work, and how cities can become part of healthy regions, for organic growth. ...

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Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda, grandson of founder Kiichiro Toyoda, assumes new role just as net revenue is down 38% for the second quarter 2009, and a loss of $819 million. Akio says he is extremely frustrated with the situtaion and wants to start again from the ground up. With the restructurings at GM and Chrysler and focussed effort at Ford, efforts of Korean carmakers, and new competition from China and India looming, Toyota expects severe competition in the American and global markets. About 40% of Toyota's senior management has been retired or reassigned.Four of five executive vice presidents are new to their jobs, and only one Takeshi Uchiyamada, the product development chief is left from former CEO Watanabe's team. The outward looking Akio, whose background includes an MBA from Babson college in Massachusetts, and overseas experience including America, is likely to give the relatively insular culture at Toyota, a jolt. Under the new arrangement each of the executive vice presidents has been put in charge of a global region. One of the biggest problems Toyota will face say experts is the mundane looking lineup of vehicles bought mainly for reliability, just as competitors are making big strides in quality and new design, with new technology reshaping what the automobile might look like. The focus on the Tundra truck and SUV's like FJ Cruiser now looks misplaced. Yoshimi Inaba, a Toyota executive with experience overseas, will take charge of the American operations. Inaba says that without N. America, Toyota is unlikely to come back to global proficiency....

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The Washington Post survey of 1200 readers on how the Republican healthcare plan of Speaker Ryan and the House of Representatives looks to them, how it affects them in their lives. Here Somasekhar of the Post gives the stories of 5 Americans. Some see the prospect of losing their insurance under the Republican plan even as they reach an older age, others a smaller segment says the Post, whose premiums jumped under the Affordable Care Act say they faced high premiums and high deductibles. The Post says the large majority of opinions have expressed anxiety over the proposed Republican Ryan House plan for healthcare. One of them is an uninsured poor farmer, Mr. Woosley,  income about $18000 who gained benefit from expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act,  one Mr. Smith, 32 years, a personal injury attorney who faces paying $10,000 if he did not take insurance and $10,000 if he took insurance because of high premiums so a wash either way deciding to do without it, one a tech worker Mrs. Powers, 62 years, income $22,000 on year and $4000 the next, from middle class during the tech boom but facing fewer opportunities and uncertain income from part time work, hit by the deep recession facing fewer opportunities as she gets older and now the prospect of losing insurance without government subsidies, one who is from the middle class who sees little benefit from the Affordable Care Act and is forgoing insurance because of the high premiums yet faces a penalty for not being insured under the ACA, another Mr. Blanchard, 52 years, is from the middle class, a computer programmer who lost his job in downsizing, earns $100,000 as a consultant self-employed, pays $767 in premium a month and relies on the Affordable Care Act which helps him gain freedom from working at a company that could downsize,  another is a middle class programmer Mr Riffle,age 44, and his wife, who does not qualify for a subsidy with a $71,000 family salary from working 4 jobs between himself and his wife- this person finds it too expensive for his salary to buy insurance $900 a month and $14,000 deductible under the Affordable Care Act. His views are worth listening to as they go to the crux of the problem- he says he may not be any better with the Republican plan. He sees the real problem as the high cost of health care in the U.S. and the only way this can be fixed is for members of Congress to be asked to use the insurance exchanges they create. If this sample is representative it shows that there are real problems with both the Affordable Care Act and the Republican plan, that the high cost of health care the problem lurking behind every plan that does not squarely address this, and till that happens and members of Congress experience what ordinary people face, this problem can never by fully solved.   Woosley, Smith, Powers, Blanchard, Riffle, and their personal experience is at the crux of what is right and wrong  with the Affordable Care Act, and also with the new Republican plan of Speaker Ryan and the House of Representatives. For every Woosley, Powers and Blanchard who benefit, there is a Smith and a Riffle who are indifferent or are affected by the high cost under Affordable Care Act and the current system of medical care with its high cost. The Affordable Care Act does not  tackle high cost, for that to happen the culture in America that makes it possible and acceptable to charge high prices must change. Another problem apart from bringing health care costs is that any solution needs to have the whole country behind it. If the notion that all people are entitled to basic health care is to stand, the whole country needs to believe it as they do in countries like France, Britain, Germany and Japan. If this has to be made a workable proposition health care has to be offered at a price that makes this possible to achieve, and that idea also needs the deep and broad sense of support from the culture in America similar to that in these other countries. Until that happens politicians in America will get elected and turned out of office in turns on issues such as health care, based on which side they take and which problems they choose not to face squarely and responsibly. ...

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Ford and GM employ 120,000 workers in Europe and sell roughly 4 million cars there. GM sold nearly a fourth of the 9.37 million cars it made worldwide in Europe in 2007. And 60% of these cars are small cars like theFocus and Fiesta in Europe for Ford and the Corsa and Astra in Europe for GM. The presence of a gas tax may be what makes Europeans choose smaller cars as gasoline is expensive in Europe. What makes them profitable in Europe is they are generally sold with all the features of bigger quality cars and command higher prices so that small does not mean cheap. But is there any reason that given the experience of Americans with gas prices, and a culture of energy conservation among younger and newer customers. apossible gas tax that funds public transportation projects, and the poor state of household finances, that the better appointed smaller cars that are popular in Europe cannot make their way into American homes. With all the experience with small cars in Europe are GM and Ford simply lacking both the vision and the courage to try something new with these cars when their bets with larger cars have failed....

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The Trader Monthly embodied a certain Wall Street trader culture that was unlike anything that the national values we as anation have valued and handed down for generations. It was not only about extravagant outrageously large earnings and flamboyant spending but a sense that these people were a special breed of winners. A $300,000 turntable was not the only thing that characterized this culture. In 2006 Trader Monthly took into its hall of Fame a Chicago mercantile Trader and described him admiringly as " aconqueror, physically imposing, and at times, verbally abusive. Clad in his signature white jacket, he would crush anyone who dared to cross him or tried to pick his pocket." And the justification for all this was that traders delivered. Except that many of these gamblers and overaggressive complex people who had somehow lost the Christian ethic of their forefathers, had helped messed up the delicate gears that work the capitalist economy in positive ways, and caused a massive misallocation of capital that would bring grief for years to come through high unemployment, closing small businesses, and dislocations of the nation's economy. ...

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A brief history of Xinjiang which translates as New Frontier in Chinese. Its the western frontier of China and a vast area that comprises the desert region of the Tarim basin. It has 13 sizeable ethnic minority groups and borders eight countries. Because of the lack of irrigation technologies these arid expanses were settled very late in history, says Victor Mair, a Professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania. Even the Uighurs were tribes from the Mongolian steppes who settled Xinjiang in the 10th century. For China it was mostly aplace for havin border military garrisons. Around the 10th century and the Tang dynasty in China, trade on the Silk Road- with places like Kashgar oasis towns on the fringes of the desert as hubs- was at its height. It was not until 1760 under the Quing dynasty of ethnic Manchus, that this area was annexed by CHina and serious effort made to settle it with demobilized troops. A civil and military administration encouraged immigration, say scholars Millward and Perdue in a 2004 book of essays by 16 scholars, "Xinjiang: China's Muslim Borderland." About 50,000 demobilized troops were offered benefits, seeds and land if they stayed. A similiar situation seems to have been repeated after Mao annexed Xinjiang in 1949. In the early 1950's the Chinese government established the Xinjiang Province Production and COnstruction Corps, which was setup to manage large farms and construction projects called bingtuan and provide jobs for demobilized troops. The bingtuan are profitable enterprises and an estimated one of every six people in Xinjiang are employed in bingtuan, or 1.3 million people. THe HAn who were 6% of the population in 1949, now comprise 40% of the 20 million population of Xinjiang. Another source of employment is in the oil and gas industry, with the Communist party secretary of Xinjiang for the last 15 years being aprotege of President Hu Jintao, from his days in the Communist Youth League, coming from the oil industry province of of Shandong. These jobs are mostly all reserved for Chinese which causes resentment among the local Uighurs. Wong quotes a Uighur university student as saying, who is the foreigner here and whose culture, language and way of life should be protected. This may be the crux of the grievances of the Uighurs, as their use of the language and religious practice is restricted, and they feel they are second class citizens in their own land. Other articles in the NYT and Economist go to point out that the links with international terrrism are not a source of the problem, and the unrest among the Uighurs is more about a feeling of loss of culture, language, religion and identity, and jobs. And the idea that the best way to work with minorities, or regions with different language, religion and culture, just as the British did in South Asia and India is doing now is through tolerance. See the links to NYT and Michael Wines on 7/11/2009 about the Communist party secretary for Xinjiang, Wang Lequang, whose policies in Xinjiang and now in Tibet through a protege, may be worsening this situation. ...

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The Honda Fit sold in 115 countries shows the concentration and focus Honda placed in samll cars that has achieved such impressive results in a small car. It is a small car that gives a quality vibe that penny pinching rivals like the Toyota Yaris or the Chevy Aveo cannot match according to this test driver. It has a lot of things that you find in a refined quality car so this car would appeal to a lot of people in a fuel efficient culture for driving. It has a surprising amount ofspace for seating and for storage for a car of this size and has a lot of features that make this car small but nice car to be in.

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Not only have directors at companies like Washington Mutual, Countrywide Financial and Fannie Mae not taken responsibility for the crisis. They have simply moved on to other boardrooms says Gretchen Morgenson of the NYT. These direcotrs did little when these companies were leveraged and made dubious loans or risky investments. Says Paul Hodgson of the Corporate Library, "these directors have avoided the corporate limelight as far as blame is concerned." Companies like Sunoco, the oil company, Paccar, a truck manufacturer, and Tetra Tech each have directors from these failed companies. Thomas Gerrity, a professor of managemet at Wharton is one of the outside directors at Fannie Mae who is now at Sunoco. Robert Parry, a former president of the Federal reserve bank of San Francisco, was adirector at Countrywide from 2004 to 2008. Parry is on the board at Paccar. Says Frederick Rowe, president of Invesotrs for Director Accountability, a nonprofit shareholder advocacy group, the board member gets $475,000 a year, he plays golf with the CEO, he is apersonal friend, goes to nice places for board meetings, and he is just not going to one word that would jeopardize his position on the board. In the case of GM the board held together in one voice right up to the bankruptcy with a director who was a former CEO of Eastman Kodak and the lead person on the board, insisting that management had done everything right, all the way up to the end. These directors had to be fired once the government took an ownership interest in GM, and before this they survived just about everything, including tens of thousands of jobs lost in Michigan, and the devastation of communities and people around the state. Gretchen points out that the director dysfunction is because its almost impossible to have adirector fired for sleepwalking through the job or simply rubberstamping the maagement's decisions. Shareholders have to launch an expensive proxy fight to oust a director. Currently proposed changes by the SEC to allow those who have at least a stake of 1% in a big company to put up their own nomiees are not effective steps say shareholder advocates. John Gillespie, co-author of "Money for Nothing," a forthcoming book on board failures with David Zweig, says the problem lies in the culture of the boards which determines how directors behave. Solutions he suggests are instituting term limits for directors and separating the positions of board chairman and chief executive....

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Vikram Pandit's style at Citigroup after 4 months, thoughful, asking lots of questions, fixing the little things that actually matter a lot, like the unwillingness of some heads of divisions to sit together in the same room, some hiring decisions and new lines of reporting and responsibiity and interaction in the organization structure that call for teamwork, discussion and collaboration. The oldtimers like Krawcheck used to clear lines of reporting are now getting used to the new culture of collaborative working. His style is first to come to grips with issues and not to come to snap decisions based on intuition, such as interviewing at length and asking tough questions at length to Ajay Banga, head of Citi's international group about the extensive defaults in Citi's consumer loan business in Japan. One of his views is that only if you get the foundation right can you talk about vision. Regarding pettiness in management and small grudges, its either going to be a partnership or you're not going to be here. some of his colleagues like James Forense say that they would take substance over form, judgement over form, any day of the week. And while he does not shy away from details like expecting lower level employees to pay for sporting event tickets Citigroup earlier gave out free, and he himself rides the subway sometimes, he has made some of the bigger decisions. Among these, getting capital from outside sources by travelling extensively abroad, urging Citigroup's board to slash the dividend for the first time in 20 years, selling off 2 peripheral units that did not belong and a third Primerica on sale also. And urged by his mentor former Treasury secretary Rubin who also used a note pad and a thinking thoughtful style like Pandit's at Treasury during the Asian banking crisis and the Mexican financial crisis, Pandit has been direct and realistic. He tells Wall Street that the fate of Citigroup is going to be decided to some extent by the duration of the environment we are going through, the twin perils of the debt-market crisis and the sluggish US economy. And that for now issues like these are going to overwhelm our actions. Pandit's father was a senior executive of one of India's leading pharmaceutical companies when the family moved to New York, so he has grown up around business, and is able to ask the question quite sincerely and matter of factly of his managers at the beginning of every meeting. "What are you doing with the shareholder's money?" After which come the torrent of well thought out questions, probing deeper each time, especiually where issues are festering for a long time, and remain unresolved. ...

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H-P alleges that Autonomy Inc. misrepresented its revenue before its acquisition for $11.1 billion in Oct. 2011. H-P made a surprise announcement Nov. 20, 2012, about a $9 billion charge it is taking for the Autonomy acquisition. Mike Lynch, founder of Autonomy Inc. says he cannot see how 300 people doing due diligence and Deloitte doing its accounting could have missed such a big elephant. Lynch tells the WSJ that he has not been contacted about this by the Serious Fraud Office. The Autonomy Inc. acquisition is unusual because it reflects a period of high CEO turnover at H-P with the hiring of former SAP CEO Apotheker to run the company, following the resignation of CEO Mark Hurd for relations with a female employee. Apotheker made the highly criticized decision to shift H-P away from its main business of PC's and into software. The Autonomy acqusition was the first step and it was widely observed that he had overpaid for the acquisition. A few months later Apotheker was fired by the H-P Board, with the Board itself coming under severe criticism. Lynch says most of the best Autonomy employees in the company he founded over ten years ago had left the company because of culture conflicts with H-P managers. This had already resulted in destruction of much of the intellectual value of the company....

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Comments by Eric Schmidt CEO of Google in an interview with the NYT's Helft. Important points emerging from the interview. Google he says does not know how long this crisis will last. Response not to waste money means less hiring and more careful expense reviews, and more focus. Managers are very very sensitive to important aspects of its culture, so such perks will continue which make it fun to work at the company for employees. And he says careful investment inthe future. "If you tighten too much, you eliminate future innovation, and then you set yourself up for a really bad outcome five or ten years" down the road. And here is the most important point he makes in advising the Obama administration. Do not take up the economy first, and let energy come in afterwards, deal with all the major problems at once, especially energy, which are part of the problem and the opportunity for the economy. For instance as the auto industry shrinks these job losses can be filled with jobs making parts for renewable energy like wind turbines and blades, like solar energy generation parts. This is actually happening already, government could speed things up by mandates for renewable energy and by help to companies through incentives. See the link to this in the NYT about companies in places like Newton, Iowa where lost jobs at Maytag are being replaced by renewable energy jobs. And several million jobs can be generated in energy to make up losses in auto jobs in the midwest. These parts of the Obama plan may have come up through conversations with Schmidt and other advocates of this, and by seeing what is already happening as reported by the NYT in the link. It makes Obama look like a farsighted genius, but its just sharp observation and careful listening. Pickens is already advertising this on television for his wind farms in Texas. It is not only Google's thinking, as Schmidt says, but good common sense and some ballpark estimates that would tell one that it would save sending 1 trillion dollars to Middle East and other nations that is needed for investment at home in the U.S.. Schmidt's calculations are that this amount could be saved in 22 years through renewable energy, plug-in hybrids and other innovative technologies. ...

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The facts that guide one's understanding of what is happening in Greece relate to the size of the public sector for a small country like Greece, and the failure of people from all classes of society from cab drivers and civil servants to small business and the shipping industry, to pay taxes. These two twin facts and a splurge of spending during and after the 2004 Olympics without proper and correct account keeping, has brought Greece to its present situation. One estimate is that every Greek person would owe 27,000 dollars, that is how much the national debt has swollen to- a massive 300 billion euros debt for a small country. This is 115% of its GDP. And the public sector spending simply went unchecked by different governments trying to win votes. Estimates are that the public sector makes up 40% of Greece's GDP, and government workers are 15% of the active workforce. Not paying taxes has become a societal trait in Greece, as a result the government does not collect an estimated 25 billion euros a year in taxes each year. And this does not include the taxes that would be paid if owners in the Greek shipping industry were to not take advantage of an exemption from paying taxes granted by the government. The result- Greece's socialist government of Prime Minister Papandreou has accepted a $110 billion euro bailout from the European Union and the IMF which comes with cuts in public spending and austerity measures designed to reduce the deficit form 13.6% of GDP to 3% in 3 years. Its important to understand what is happening in Greece, because from Prime Minister Cameron in Britain (with his cuts in government department spending of 25% over 5 years), to Prime Minister Naoto Kan of Japan (with a planned doubling of the sales tax), the mood in Europe and Japan is shifting to austerity measures that would correct excessive government spending. In Greece Papandreou and his ministers are making serious efforts to change a culture of not paying taxes. See the groups and links for Papandreou and Greece....

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The Chinese market for mobile phones has seen Chinese companies use their advantages of knowing local requirements and better distribution systems, especially in the rural areas and second tier cities, to establish a presence. By 2004 companies such as Bird and TCL made significant gains. Bird planned to take on overseas markets and take 8% of the global market. Ningbo Bird and TCL then had half the Chinese market. According to analysts this effort fizzled out and these two companies had sales decreasing as larger companies like Nokia started going into the smaller cities and rural areas. Now another company is using its knowledge of the special features desired by Chinese buyers and its distribution system in rural areas and smaller cities to establish a presence. Tianyu, better known by its K-Touch product introduced in 2005, started as a handset contract manufacturing company. Tianyu offers locally desired features not offered by makers like Nokia and Samsung- dual SIM card option popular because it allows keeping second generation phone numbers and accounts while keeping open the option for a 3-G line, bigger text for older users, text messages read aloud, touch screens, receiving phone calls for two numbers, and so on. And Tianyu does this for less than $200, a price that Nokia and Samsung can't match for features like touch screen. Comparison of the K-Touch E62 with a Taiwanese handset called HTC Magic using Android, both touch screen, showed a price for HTC Magic three times the K-Touch E62. The K-Touch E62 cost 798 yuan or $117. Does Tianyu rely too much on the cultural aspect of today's China which is described as "shanzai"? The meaning of this term "mountain stronghold" and has a defiant tone of local culture and tendencies fighting centralized control. It is often used to refer to the cheap knockoffs of imported products that are readily available in China. In the long run analysts believe that the larger Chinese players in telecom, Huawei and ZTE, which have smartphones appealing to Chinese consumers and 3-G technology, are more likely to have a sustained presence. ...