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This exceptional report on Hillary Clinton shows how difficult it has become to know Hillary Clinton through media accounts because it has been so distorted. Part of the distortion is from bits and pieces of her life being known, not the complete person. This comes from election campaigns dating back to Bill Clinton's second campaign for governor against Gay White, in which the fact that she had not changed her name and did not mix well with Arkansas's conservative society and manners, made this aspiring Northerner not looked at positively. Bill Clinton lost that election and came back to win in the next election for Governor. For that to happen Hillary had to change her name and the way she dressed to fit into Arkansas culture. Continually throughout Bill's career including the presidential campaigns Hillary Clinton had to change or adapt her persona as "Hillary" the person in politics as a candidate's wife, to fit in with what the public wanted to see.  Another facet of Hillary is her strong sense of privacy, not to reveal too much of herself, partly from her mother's ordeal as a child, partly from her Methodist upbringing not to speak too much about oneself. Her bookish nature as a person who studied policy, made this more evident. Political campaigns use some details about how a candidate or his wife is perceived, and Hillary herself said in 1995, telling the Washington Post that "I don't think you can know anybody else," because of what she called the crude mechanisms that only take bits and pieces of a person's life, not the whole person. Her own campaign for president suffered from this distortion as Mark Penn, her campaign strategist, pushed for her experience and hard work to be the basis of her campaign against Obama. Obama had his own focus groups in New Hampshire and Iowa show him that he could could do well as a story teller for change and a movement. It was not till the second presidential run in 2016 that the idea of a woman's movement was what Hillary was clearly put forward as. Throughout all this and all the years the woman Hillary Clinton has been essentially the same, adaption does not mean that you are less of what you are, however great the belittling in the media's version of life and events. And this is the Hillary Clinton, not the "Hillary," America is facing in October 2016, as the country ponders its on future, following some of the most denigration of women in any presidential campaign of the last two hundred years. ...

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WSJ looks at the changes in the way medicine should be practiced in the light of what we have learned from the pandemic.  Medicine practiced before the pandemic and still today relies mainly on a visit to the doctor or specialist who is short of time. There is a shortage of doctors. Patients have many illnesses as a result of decades of neglect of proper nutrition, and exercize habits. Obesity is at about 40% in the U.S. about 30% in the UK and 17% in France, and high also in other parts of the world. These high rates were unknown throughout history and result in many illnesses and increase by four times the vulnerability to the coronavirus. One authority in medicine calls obesity pouring gasoline on a fire for effects of the virus.  A doctor's appointment with doctors short of time with no coordination around a whole range of factors related to obesity, illnesses, health checkups, mental health, is now seen as a heavily handicapped way to practice medicine or for patient healthcare and wellbeing. The alternative is discussed here as the way forward. A  team will be responsible for a patient's care not just an individual doctor. The team would care for general health after a patient's checkup, cover individual illnesses, weight issues, mental health, exercize nutritional needs and other good healthcare habits. Instead of relying on doctors at a time of shortages of doctors the team would be led by nurse practitioners.  A nurse practitioner is someone with a bachelors degree and a masters degree or doctoral degree in nursing with 1000 hours of clinical training. Studies have shown that they are effective and even more effective than individual doctors. Today particularly with the problem of doctors with limited time compounded by the built up problems of decades of bad habits in nutrition and exercize and poor "cultural" habits getting entrenched, there has never been a greater need for a better way to practice real healthcare for a person's wellbeing. Particularly in rural areas with an even larger shortage of doctors the health practitioner led team will play a big role. Patients will under this setting receive more care virtually and get more followup care by phone and video messaging. The numbers tell the story- there are shortages of doctors in USA, Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia. In the U.S. shortage of doctors is 55,000 projected to 2033 by Association of American Medical Colleges. There are 290,000 nurse practitioners licensed in the U.S. and 131,0000 physician assistants. The goal will be to get an adequate number of nurse practitioners licensed in this decade to take care of these teams. The pandemic has made virtual visits to doctors and nurse practitioners popular. Medicine reimbursement should and would be practiced on the basis of how well a patient is doing not on a fee for each micro service that is delivered. For this to happen the teams led by the nurse practitioner have to commit to patient education of the benefits from good practices and good habits for nutrition, exercize, caring for oneself. A doctor short of time is hardly the person to carry on this patient education which is where the major opportunities for a new system arise. The virtual care also provides a new medium for patient education and awareness of the risks of getting illnesses, preventive actions to be taken in advance. One approach being tested in California and Texas is for a monthly fee for patients more payments by health plans to doctors or healthcare teams if the patient is healthier. Additional health professionals are added to the team including health coaches, dietitians and medical assistants to increase its effectiveness in counseling and education and monitoring.  The nurse practitioner team approach is already being practiced in parts of the U.S. including the example of New Hampshire shown here, and is predicted to be the approach for primary care in the next decade. ...

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Kramer, McIntire, and Meier of the NYT, provides this indepth account of Trump top campaign aide Paul Manafort's consulting work in Ukraine for Ukraine's president Yakunovych, ousted after protests in Kiev. Ukraine's newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau is looking into corruption in Ukraine's system, including corruption in the Yakunovych years. It is this corruption that has hurt Ukraine and other Eastern European countries in their move towards becoming properly functioning democratic states inside the EU or neighboring the EU. Much aid has been sent to Ukraine by Germany and the EU to help Ukraine develop a democratic and economic framework free of cronyism and corruption. Manafort's involvement with interests in Ukraine and Russia during a period of long and persistent protests in Kiev, followed by the ouster of Yakunovych and the war with Russia, when the policy of the U.S. and Europe was to protect Eastern European  member states of the European Union including Poland and the Baltic States, and reach some form of settlement in Ukraine, are controversial. Andrew Kramer of the NYT describes Manafort's consulting company's activities in Ukraine during this tense period, and how it may have have been counterproductive to the constructive efforts of the U.S. and the European Union. ...

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The Bretton Woods conference in New Hampshire in 1944 which setup the present financial system and the calls by the European leaders like Britain's prime minister Brown for a new Bretton Woods conference. It was a model of multilateral coordinaton wih many nations represented. However Japan, China and India and South Korea were not present because of the war and India being part of the British Empire so the representation was still incomplete.

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About a quarter of Michigan counties are among the top 20% of counties in America for increase in unemployment and deaths per 1000 residents from the coronavirus. Only Massachusetts and New Jersey have fared worse. This WSJ analysis was based on federal government county level unemployment data. In May Michigan's 21.2% unemployment rate was the third highest in America after Nevada and Hawaii, two states where tourism drop hit hard. In a place like Muskegon the loss of about a million tourists and loss of jobs at Howmet Aerospace hit hard. Recovery of tourism could bring down the rate quickly, yet manufacturing will take longer.

Other states with many counties in the top 20% for deaths from virus and unemployment are Indiana, Ohio, New Hampshire, Alabama, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, New York.

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Shiller, Kashyap, Mishkin, Slaughter, Stein, Stulz, Rajan and others are part of a 15 academic economists group called the Squam Lake Group. They first met at a conference in November 2008 at Squam Lake in New Hampshire. The group has come up with a report that they hope gets the prominence of the 9/11 report. It is called the Squam Lake Report. The book will be introduced in a conference at Columbia University by Fed chairman Ben Bernanke. Some of the economists have little faith in regulators and a new Financial Stability oversight Council led by Treasury Secretary Geithner. (Stulz, Kashyap). The group sees need for better disclosure of risks of financial products, especially retirement savings products.The editor Seth Itchik sees the book as today's version of the 1938 book by Harvard and Tufts economists called "An Economic Program for American Democracy." The motivation for this effort in a field where economists have different opinions, is to build a consensus for decisive action by Congress and the government of the U.S. Two new suggestions that are not in the Congressional bills for financial reform. One is issuance of contingent convertible bonds or CoCo bonds. Banks would be encouraged or required to issue such debt which would convert into equity in a crisis. These funds would help recapitalize a bank in a crisis with no taxpayer liability. Another new proposal is to have a fraction of each year's bonus pool for banking executives to be held separately- if the bank ran into trouble, that portion of pay would be withheld from senior managers. And the group sees political aspects and lobbying making sound plans less implementable in Congress. Congress lets regulators curb pay practices and coordinate other actions which has not worked in the past and during the crisis. Congress has even in its best effort acted on only some of the things needed in its bills- this includes higher capital requirements, and compulsory "living wills" for the largest financial institutions, and the Volcker Rule. The rules for derivatives are still being negotiated by Blance Lincoln who introduced this provision, with the result being more transparency. If it is watered down it would not ensure the strict separation of derivatives trading on the capital accounts of banks that Blanche Lincoln envisaged. ...

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The IMF extends $100 billion in loans to countries that have healthy economies but need temporary help, such as S.Korea, Brazil, Mexco and Singapore. Some of these countries have borrowed heavily in other currencies and the drop in the value of their own currencies makes repayment difficult. No strings such as requirements to raise interest rates and to cut public spending are attached to this program. Under this program countries could borrow five times the amount they are normally entitled to, $25 billion in Brazil's case, without the strict conditions that normally accompany such loans. Nobel Prize winner Stiglitz was chief economist at the World Bank. He said the funds use of the words restore confidence itself could make a lot of countries nervous. That is because in the Asian and Latin American crises in the past, the IMF set strict conditions to increase interest rates and cut public spending and food subsidies at a time when the poor especially and the rest of the people, all needed help, thereby increasing public distress. In the developed countries stimulus packages and infrastructure spending goes up to support employment and incomes, but the IMF has advocated quite the reverse in the case of the developing countries, with the US Treasury a key factor in IMF support and ideology. Which is why countries in Asia like South Korea see a stigma attached to the IMF and are refusing IMF help. In Pakistan also the IMF support is a last resort or Plan C. Iceland for instance raised rates in return for IMF help from 6% to 18% to try to stabilize the currency. The IMF was created as part of the Bretton Woods agreement of 1944 when the Allied Powers USA and Britain and other countries that sent representatives met in New Hampshire for a postwar economic system. Japan, S. Korea, India and China and many other countries were not part of it because of the war or colonial empires....

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This editorial in the WSJ says one of the mysteries of the Republican campaign primaries of 2016 is why each candidate, Cruz, Rubio, Kasich, Christie, and Carson, all took on each other and not Trump- in the process leaving Trump to be "winning, winning, winning."

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Nimsdal Purja leads a team of Nepalese climbers to the top of K2 the world's second largest mountain. Purja's equipment and supplies were blown away January 12 on the mountain. Yet the team put together a second effort  and successfully reached the top.

Purja first learned to climb at age 29. He is now at 38 years a climber with the unique achievement of climbing all the world's mountains 5 miles long. K2 was the toughest because unlike Mt. Everest it has no flat sections, a pyramid that goes straight up. Unlike Sherpa climbers Purja was born in the lowlands of Nepal, born in a Gurkha family and settled in Hampshire, England.

For Nepal this is a singular achievement as Tenzing aspired to climb K2 after making it to the top of Everest in 1953 with Edmund Hillary.

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This article is about neighbors in the Tennessee countryside. Robert Frost, America's poet in the 1960's was from New Hampshire, and celebrated the countryside in the state in poems such as Birches, Mending Wall, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.  Neighbors one with pines and and the other with an apple orchard, Frost sees no need for a wall, then has second thoughts. Coming back to old truths was something Frost grew accustomed to. With walls for trade and walls for international borders there is a return to the truths of old- "He will not go behind his father's saying And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors." When we take down barriers to trade one has to do it in a way where both sides are following the rules, till then both sides live with some barriers.     ...

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Koch describes Trump's statement about Muslims with the notion that 'We'll have them all register' as "monstrous" and "reminiscent of Nazi Germany," in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC News weekly program. Trump is reported to have been open to a database tracking Muslims in the U.S. before backing off, according to WP, which is what Koch referrred to. About Cruz's statement about "carpet bombing" the ISIS group, Koch says he finds it "frightening." He calls both candidates "terrible role models" and agrees with George Stephanopoulos that Hillary could be a better presidential candidate than the two Republicans.

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Donald Trump in the week before the Republican caucuses in Iowa. Trump says he will be the winner in Iowa. He is introduced at an event in Pella, Iowa, by Senator Chuck Grassley, who has not formally endorsed Trump. He stays at an Holiday Inn Express in Sioux Center, Iowa, and attends church sunday service at Muscatine, Iowa.