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Without government aid about 12 million more people would have fallen into poverty in the US during the pandemic in 2020-2021. This is evident from census figures analyzed in the WSJ and NYT. The Supplemental Poverty Measure -which takes into account a broader range of income and expenses including hundreds of billions of dollars of pandemic aid -shows that poverty actually declined, dropping by 2.9% to 9.1%, as a result of government taking action in the US under the Trump and Biden administrations. The $400 billion  dollars of stimulus checks and aid during the Trump and Biden administrations in 2021 have made a real difference in the lives of not just poor Americans but Americans in the middle class and all sections of society. Similar aid was delivered in the European Union and Britain. In India government aid was distributed by depositing money directly into hundreds of millions of bank accounts of poor and marginal income people. Aid included food aid in grains, lentils and vegetables directly provided at subsidized prices or free by the government. Right wing or left wing government designations were meaningless as governments of different persuasions acted decisively to provide direct and timely help in US, Europe, and India. ...

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With British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss present during a visit to New Delhi, India's Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar says the western talk of sanctions "looks like a campaign." 

"If you look at the major buyers of Russian oil and gas you will find most of them are in Europe. We ourselves get the bulk of our energy supplies from the Middle East, about 8% of our oil from the US in the past, maybe less than 1 percent from Russia,"  said Jaishankar. He said in March Europe had bought 15% more oil from Russia than the month before. And he does not see this changing in coming months.

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S. Gurumurthy of the Hindu points out the dangers of economic growth without job creation in a country like India. He points out that demonetization- removal of high denomination currency notes- came at a critical time when the economic growth was not creating enough jobs. He points to the five year period till 2010 as having created 2.7 million jobs with 8.5% growth. Even though with lower growth of 5.4% in the period 1999-2004 the job growth was for 60 million jobs created. Had demonetization not happened he says, the economy could have seen the problems the U.S. faced in 2008 with a bubble developing in the real estate market. The fundamental shift of the economy to digitization of payments, increase in tax receipts brings more of the informal economy- with a size of 50% of the economy generating 128 million jobs ten times the formal sector - into the formal economy. A step that is key for India to see rapid growth in the decade ahead. The slackening of the economy for a year is part of  a needed long term plan, says Prof. Gurumurthy, visiting IIT faculty in Bombay, just as liberalization was in the 1990's.  Some errors were made in implementation and flow of credit to the informal economy, including by the RBI, yet the fundamental shift through demonetization served a good purpose. Gurumurthy says, sadly this is missing in the current politicized debate.  ...

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This op-ed in the WSJ calls for increased trade and investment and closer U.S. ties with Sri Lanka, an Indian Ocean island nation of 21 million people at the southernmost tip of India. This follows the election of Maithripala Sirisena as the new president in the recent election. Formerly called Ceylon, this nation and India share a long tradition of democratic processes and free press since independence for almost 7 decades. These are the only 6 nations with British influence that have preserved democratic processes and mutiparty systems, including a vibrant free press, gradually established during the period of British rule- the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and Ceylon or Sri Lanka as it is now called. These institutions were transferred to 2 nations during a short period of American rule- Japan and Germany. Western Europe, and Eastern European countries since the fall of the Berlin Wall have joined this core group of countries. All these countries have a common bond and interest in building and strengthening democratic institutions and shared prosperity in a larger global neighborhood. Other countries in the British Commonwealth have struggled to develop multiparty systems and free press such as Malaysia, Ghana and Kenya, or had periods of military rule as Nigeria. Indonesia and South Korea have emerged from periods of military rule and are developing effective democratic processes to join what is now a large community of nations with a common interest in democratic process, truly functioning democracy, respect for the opposition, and freedom of people to express their views to participate in the working of government....

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WSJ looks at the 75 years of the US Saudi Arabia relationship that started when US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt met Saudi king Ibn Saud at Bitter Creek, Egypt, on a US Navy destroyer ship in 1945. It has gone through many phases over this period and mainly involved the Saudi kingdom maintaining its supply of oil to the US and Western Europe. This relationship went through an oil embargo during tense periods of Israeli Palestine conflict as in 1983 with an oil embargo that pushed up oil prices. What is different this time is the situation in Yemen where Iranian supported Houthi rebels near the border with Saudi Arabia are engaged in a conflict with the Saudis. Democratic administrations under first Obama and Biden today support reaching a deal with Iran on nuclear weapons development and limit US military support for the war in Yemen. The Saudis for their part are not keen on a regional war and turned down efforts by president Trump to respond to attacks from Yemen. Mr. Biden's envoy has arranged for a deal to reduce tensions between the Houthis in Yemen and Saudis. The diplomatic impasse in relations stems from the Kashoggi incident and president Biden's concern for the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia. Other factors making relations difficult are the economic interests of the two countries diverging. The relationship Roosevelt started in 1945 has changed in its fundamental character. Oil supplies for imports into the US is no longer a factor for the US which was the original interest of president Roosevelt in Saudi Arabia. This changed by 2015 as the US fracking industry enabled US to become self sufficient in oil and able to supply LNG to western Europe. Instead of the US Saudi oil now goes to China. Russian oil also goes to China as its industry expanded with American investment. This has led to a new Saudi relationship with China which has changed the dynamic of the American Saudi relationship. Some of the new aspects of this can also be seen in Saudi relationship with South Asia. Saudi ties have increased with India and India in 2021 was the first country to provide vaccine supplies to Saudi Arabia. Saudis, Qatar, United Arab Emirates are building relationships with India as a close neighbor in the region. Relationships are in some ways improving in the Asian region compared to the period when oil was simply exchanged as a commodity for defense supplies from the US without regard to cultural, educational and other changes in Saudi society. In a sense US and Western Europe paid little attention to the huge democracy of over 1 billion people right in the middle of Asia and followed policies that led to major investments in China and little or no investment in India, and without realizing it followed a policy that the British had pursued in the British Empire of treating different communities and religions as separate as opposed to one community of people in South Asia that were engaged in modernizing, building infrastructure and changing centuries old ways of living. The British Empire was sustained by this kind of thinking, and as long as Indians were complacent and lacked the will to make their aspirations for a better life and infrastructure for modernization this kind of thinking prevailed. The economic crises in Asia have reinforced the idea that there is one community entirely focused on development and modernization in South Asia. The people in South Asia care most about the cost of living and the infrastructure and services for the quality of life they live and their children can aspire for- same in European Union that chose the Greens and chancellor Scholz, and same in the US that chose president Biden to invest infrastructure and people, the same in China and the same in India and the rest of Asia. This is the situation that the US and Britain, and the European Union are now beginning to learn and adapt to that is a constructive aspect of these changes to rebuild the connections and supply chains that were sorely neglected before now. ...

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Alexander Freund of DW.com looks at the BRICs conference in Xiamen, China, and says its members are all facing serious problems at home. China's growth has slowed, and it faces problems with large debt, need to reorient the economy away from dependence on exports, and a bubble in real estate markets. Russia and Brazil are both hit by drop in oil and commodities prices, and Brazil's ruling elite faces corruption charges. South Africa's economy under president Zuma faces problems of mismanagement of the economy and corruption. Only India says Freund, is the bright light in this group. The Modi government in India is working on removing barriers to growth such as bureaucratic hurdles, unification of tax scheme through the new unified GST for the whole country, and efforts to attract foreign investment. In many ways the BRICs has become a thing of the past as China focusses on its own Belt and Road Initiative and tackles its internal problems. The border dispute between India and China at the time of the BRICs conference in Xiamen shows a lack of policy agreement on economic and development priorities between the two major countries in that group. This had the effect of reducing whatever impact BRICs had in the past. The term originated at an American investment bank and it appears to be an odd grouping of countries today. ...

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The Hindustan Times provides this look at the construction of a new 1000 bed hospital in Bandra Kurla complex exhibition area of Mumbai  that will be used for isolation of coronavirus cases. The hospital will be ready in time to tackle an expected further surge in cases in Mumbai by the end of May. The hospital will be equipped to handle another 5000 beds says the Mumbai municipal authority, MMRDA. Several hospitals are being built such as this one to tackle the surge in cases as Mumbai has about 25% of cases in India of coronavirus.

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NYT looks at Judge Tanya Chutkan, the judge in the January 6 trial in the US, the first federal trial of Mr. Trump beginning March 4, 2024. She is a former public defender and civil litigator. Her strong presence in the courtroom reflects her extensive trial experience and her upbringing in a prominent Jamaican family, says NYT. Her great grand parents came to Jamaica from India to work on the sugar plantations during the British colonial rule and her father was selected to go to college on a scholarship. She no longer rides the 5 miles to the federal courthouse in Washington DC on her bicycle, she jogs different routes with US marshals and they drive her to work. On some days she can be seen toting a bottle in Lycra shorts and tennis shoes after a jog entering the courthouse with US marshals at her side.

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Indian prime minister Modi is the guest of honor on France's national holiday, the Bastille Day July 14, 2023. On this day French revolutionaries freed prisoners of King Louis XVI at the Bastille in Paris. By October this led to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen the first formal document of rights of the people before the American document on these same rights a few years later.

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Sri Lankan High Commissioner Milinda Moragoda, is interviewed in Indian Express in Idea Exchange, with Shubhajit Roy, moderating the questions. Moragoda explains what happened over the last three decades and how Sri Lanka got to this point. About politicians he says Sri Lanka has too many politicians, and the violence of the JVP in the south and LTTE in the north and northeast set the country back by decades. Leaders from J Jayawardene, Kumaratunga to the Rajapaksas all failed to understand the spiral downwards of the economy, says Moragoda. Debt increased and 80% of the government revenues goes to pay pensions and government employees, leaving only 20% for debt service and little for investment in the economy. He says there are 1.5 million government employees and 500,000 pensioners, for a country of 22 million people. Of the population of 22 million about one million Tamils left the country during the civil war, and another 1 million people are in West Asia. Moragoda says most of the borrowing came after 2009 as the civil war ended with $12.5 billion borrowed or 40% of the total debt. About 80% of government revenues goes to pay pensions and government employees and another 70% goes to pay interest on debt, but he does not elaborate or explain this. What one can say from the experience of other countries in debt spiral is that at some point the interest accumulates to create a vicious cycle of interest on the cumulative total which includes interest from earlier years. Argentina is a recent example. And he makes no effort to say how he sees Sri Lanka is finding a path out this situation with a $2.9 billion IMF loan on debt of $51 billion.  Of the $12.5 billion borrowed since 2009 Moragoda says "that's  40% of our debt." Yet the total debt on which Sri Lanka defaulted is shown at $51 billion. $12.5 billion is 25% of the $51 billion. He does not provide any details about the financing terms on which Sri Lanka borrowed. It is clear that the interest rates were high over 6% in many cases which can be very burdensome for poor countries dependent on commodity exports. Countries such as Greece with debt crises had very large numbers of pensioners and government employees in Europe during the eurozone crisis, but nowhere does it show that it took up 80% of the government revenues in Greece. The number of government employees range from 1 to 1.2 to 1.5 million according to different figures for Sri Lanka. Even in Greece the number of public sector workers in government were 616,000 by some estimates during the severe eurozone debt crisis years around 2015. They are now estimated at about 369,000 in 2020.  Without a clear idea of these figures and transparency it is hard for any economy to be managed in a prudent way. See the related report "Fallacies of Sri Lankan Debt Patterns," a report by the Observer Research Foundation, on this same page today which say that Sri Lanka borrowed at exorbitant interest rates for a poor country.  Moragoda has worked for administrations in different portfolios including in economic affairs. He says Sri Lanka's economy is too small to get attention and investment it needs from India, and that the Adani investment shows that this can still be made to happen. India remains Sri Lanka's key partner as it grapples with this crisis. ...

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The nuclear trade deal with India and approval by the Nuclear Suppliers Group. If passed by Congresas in September the deal goes into effect. At the NSG, New Zealand, Austria and China were the holdouts and had to be persuaded by the United States. Under the deal India cannot conduct nuclear weapons tests and if it does its upto the USA to decide if it will continue to supply India with nuclear materials and technologies. India is running short of uranium and other nuclear materials it needs for its civilian andnuclear weapons programs since it was refused access by the NSG after earlier tests decades before. It also depends on how the US sees China and Pakistan in relation to India and its nuclear programs. One thing is certain India will push forward aggressively with new nuclear energy programs and setup its own nuclear energy reactors to provide its growing energy needs and to reduce existing shortages and also lower its oil bill. So in the next couple of years or the next decade the world will certainly see the peaceful development of nuclear energy and development of new technologies in the nuclear energy field as India becomes a key user and developer of nuclear energy technologies. At that point India may become a part of the fabric of peaceful nuclear energy development in the world as it meets asignificant part of its energy needs through nuclear reactors. It will be a welcome development as it will ease the burden on oil supplies that in the case of China became a key part of the upward pressure on oil prices as China relied mostly on oil and gas for energy needs. This is probably the thinking in the current Republican administration as it pushed hard for this nuclear deal to supply India....

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Indian prime minister Modi will meet president Biden at the White House for the Quad Summit bringing together the leaders of Australia, US, India and Japan. The Quad will initiate projects for vaccine with a billion vaccines planned to be manufactured in India for distribution in Asia, and for infrastructure projects in Asia.

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China's efforts to promote trade with India. Visit by Premier Wen to New Delhi. Deals made include a loan from China Development Bank to help Reliance ADA group purchase power-producing equipment from Shanghai Electric Group Company. The two companies signed a $10 billion agreement in October 2010 for Reliance to buy power equipment. India sells mostly commodities such as iron ore and imports Chinese power and telecom equipment and manufactured goods at this stage. Trade estimated at $60 billion is tilted in China's favor because of cheaper manufactured goods imported from China. Premier Wen calls for expanding trade emphasizing the advantages of combining China's strengths in engineering and infrastructure with India's strengths in information technology and pharmaceuticals. His point: the 21st century is the Asian century, and both India and China can make great achievements. India sees the advantages of using China's strengths and cost competitiveness in telecom, power and other areas as it seeks to boost its development of infrastructure. Wen's visit follows visits by the UK's Cameron, US's Obama, France's Sarkozy, all pursuing trade and investment with India....

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This report about 996, referring to nine am to nine pm 6 workdays a week, shows it is becoming highly unpopular among tech workers in China, as tech companies slash jobs and workers work longer hours. A campaign on GitHub a code sharing platform is called 996/ICU speaks of such gruelling hours as the way to end up in the ICU. It got 250,000 positive user comments.

This type of work at tech companies is leading to fatigue, chronic illness, stress and lack of any free time to think or even exercize, leading to health problems. Yet some company CEO's push 996 against the mounting evidence that this is not the best for employees and can lead to por producivity. Recent studies about the cities such as Mumbai, India, or Tokyo, Japan, show productivity is a fraction of the productivity in many European countries working normal hours. Mumbai vs. Dublin for example. Dublin has a lot higher productivity.

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Lee says India started fom alower base but has made greater gains for the rural poor.India's urban-rural income gap has steadily declined since the earlier 1990's. And in the last decade economic growth in rural India has outpaced growth in urban areas by almost 40%. Rural India acccounts for almost half of the GDP, up from 46% in 1993. Lee points out that in the period of Deng's reforms right upto the Tiananmen Square massacre China made 80% of th poverty reduction, but since 2000 poverty and illiteracy have doubled in China, while they have been halved in India. DOmestic consumption as apart of GDP has fallen to 35% from around 60% in the 1980's. Lee is a foreign policy fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney, and avisiting scholar at the Hudson Institute.

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The French British collaboration effort will bring a new vaccine to the global effort against coronavirus. This vaccine was expected in February 21. It will be ready by the third quarter of 2021 just as vaccine supplies are being ramped up. The Sanofi Pasteur unit and GSK Glaxo SmithKline are the two companies in this vaccine venture. This vaccine will address the problem of new mutations of the virus in the British and South African versions and can be stored at normal temperatures. 
 

The new vaccines will boost supplies just when the situation is bleak for vaccine supplies in Latin America and Africa, South East Asia, places left out in the vaccine race in advanced countries and in India. Britain has ordered 60 million doses. 

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Unemployment rate in urban areas of India decrease for the fourth consecutive quarter to 7.6% in the April to June quarter of 2022. It is now lower than the pre-pandemic level.  Employment growth continued in July and August, as shown in the Global Purchasing Managers Indices for the Manufacturing and Services sectors. The Finance Ministry say what is at work are the reflection of "increasing effectiveness of income support and targeted subsidies provided by the government, creation of jobs from elevated levels of public sector capital expenditures, and general rise in employment levels."  Added to this are the foreign direct investment flows being the fifth largest among a "defined set of developed and developing economies," and the increase in exports.

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Turkey is reviving its relations with Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Prince Bin Salman will visit Turkey as part of a remake of Turkey Saudi relations. Turkey's economic crisis has revived the relationship as Turkey badly needs aid for its economy. The pressure on emerging markets is increasing with US central bank raising rates reducing inflows of western money into Turkey even further. Prince Salman has already received visits from French and British leaders. He visited Jordan and Egypt this week and will now be in Ankara. In the summer he will visit Greece and Cyprus. Saudis are modernizing their economy changing culture in relationships of men and women, in women's rights and education, and broadening relationships with the world under Salman. There is an astonishing openness to science and technology in a drive to be modern. The old Saudi monarchy and conservative rule with ancient traditions is giving way to what the Saudis in the group under Salman see as the modernization of Europe and America in the 20th century using science and technology as what they would like to see in their own country. There is also a drive to think independently from the dogmatic positions of the past that have turned the Kingdom into an American dependency with no obligation or incentive to modernize its culture and be open to the world outside.  The US fought a war to ostensibly modernize a backward mountainous remote state as Afghanistan, while being perfectly comfortable with the old Saudi monarchies of the past that made little change in the ancient culture and tradition and in women's rights and education. Such were the contradictions in American policy and the failure to think anew. As president Lincoln said "as our case is new we must think anew, and act anew." President Biden will now visit Saudi Arabia to build a new relationship with an independent nation, which along with the UAE is bringing change to the Middle East through infrastructure development and modernization. Salman's modernization comes as the kingdom also faced a need to make a transition out of dependence on fossil fuels. Salman sees trips to Greece and Turkey as opening up to all sides. Saudis have good relations with Israel and Egypt another part of this openness. The US senses this, India has sensed this. India's Modi government  made sending the Oxford vaccines manufactured in India to Saudis a priority during 2021. The Indian example is also changing the way the UAE and Saudis see infrastructure development and modernization in the region. This is also changing the way the region is looking at itself. For decades Egypt lacking the resources to build infrastructure on its own has languished economically. A helping hand from the Saudis is changing Egypt. The entire rail system is being modernized with the latest technology from Siemens. The Saudis have stabilized the Egyptian economy with a $5 billion deposit in the Central Bank of Egypt. On June 21 Egypt and Saudis signed $7.7 billion in investment deals for infrastructure, logistics, port administration, food, industry, medicine, energy and technology. In the investments in Egypt some of the oil money going to Saudis with $100 per barrel oil price is going to an economy in Egypt that can easily absorb and make good use of the investment to modernize.   The influence of Saudi leverage in fossil fuels which drove the US relationship with Saudis since FDR is being replaced with an independent Saudi kingdom making decisions to modernize across the board in all aspects compared to one that favored a few American companies such as Exxon Mobil and ARAMCO or arms makers such as Boeing and Lockheed that helped recycle American money going to pay for Saudi fossil fuels back to America.    ...

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As the growth of coronavirus cases slows in the U.S. and Europe, cases in India surged by 9000 in a biggest single day increase with total cases passing 200,000. Deaths in New York dropped below 50 on June 2. Outdoor dining opens in upstate New York as this part of New York enters second phase of reopening- tables 6 feet apart and staff wearing masks at all times. Customers required to wear masks when not seated. New York City enters Phase 1 of reopening on June 8. New York City will distribute 1 million face masks and it will be mandatory to wear masks on mass transit. Hand sanitizer will be provided at stations. Every other seat will be blocked off on buses. 

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The cost is $117 million the number of students estimated at 20,000 who can be educated in this way who cannot afford the high tution fees at the universities in Minnesota including the University of Minnesota system. In opposing access to higher education the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board also reflects the views of billionaire owners out of touch with the people of America and the Nation. The WSJ Editorial Board says nothing about the egregious situation today shown on its pages of capital allocation that has gone upside down and scary. For example it showed in one week : $110 million capital allocated to invent a better golf ball $700 million lost in capital allocated by investment funds in a facial lotion brand that uses natural ingredients. This is just to cite 2 of thousands of such capital allocations many of them shown on Lyrarc.com as examples of poor and egregious scary capital allocation for a nation built on fairness and building opportunities for workers and families through the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. The very investment that differentiated America and Europe from the feudal societies of China and India that self destructed in the 20th century after enormous suffering for hundreds of millions of the Chinese and Indian people. Isn't this like turning ones back on the Advantages that accrued to Europe and America from its wise investments and turning one's back on the Enlightenment in Europe and America itself? This is the statement to be found on the Minnesota Office of Higher Education- "Beginning in fall 2024, the North Star Promise (NSP) Scholarship program will create a tuition and fee-free pathway to higher education for eligible at eligible Minnesota residents at eligible institutions as a "last-dollar" program by covering the balance of tuition and fees remaining after other scholarships, grants, stipends and tuition waivers have been applied. By making college accessible and affordable, NSP is intended to have a positive impact on multiple fronts: Help stabilize enrollment at Minnesota public institutions of higher education; Serve as an economic driver for Minnesota by educating qualified workers who are much needed to fill vacancies in the state's labor force; Create a viable higher education path for Minnesota residents who may have previously thought education was not a possibility for them. We estimate this program will impact 15,000-20,000 students in the first academic year." The cost estimate at $117 million a year . ...

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China faces risk of a surge inthe coronavirus in June 2021. The area in and around Guangzhou appears to be seriously affected. The city tested almost its entire population of 18.7 million between June 6 Sunday and June 8 Tuesday. This report shows pictures of a deserted Beijing airport, strict restrictions on foreign travel. The SinoPharm vaccine effectiveness against the Delta variant in India and UK is unknown. The government is locking down entire neighborhoods rather than entire cities or provinces.  As the risks of the Delta variant and other new variants increases most of the population even in the US and Europe have either no dose or one dose. Researchers at the University of New South Wales in Australia show the Astra Zeneca vaccine effectiveness with one dose at only 30%, only after two weeks following the second dose does the vaccine effectiveness reach about 70%. The population of China and India are so large that much larger parts of the population remain unvaccinated. In China with 1.3 billion people and even if the figure of 800 million doses stated by the government is accepted- it could be an overestimate as the US has only managed 300 million doses with many vaccines- most of the population is unprotected. Vaccine skepticism is high in China making vaccination an uphill task. SinoPharmvaccine is not as effective as Pfizer, Moderna, Astra Zeneca, or Covaxin vaccines, making the task even more of an uphill kind. ...

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For the regions hardest hit by the coronavirus and its variants- the US, Brazil, India, Europe, Russia, China and Africa, the researchers and the frontline workers in South Africa are doing an incredible job. This report by Stephanie Nolan in the NYT shows the work of researchers at KRISPS advanced medical research center and the frontline workers in South Africa, who are making a difference. Shown are researchers and scientists at KwaZulu Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform in Durban, South Africa on whom the world depends for stepping up the fight against the coronavirus- Dr Tulio de Oliveira, principal investigator of the national genetic monitoring network, and Saleem Abdul Karim, epidemiologist. On the frontline workers who visit patients homes to make sure immune compromised patients have access to their medications is Sizakele Mathe, community health worker. Stephanie Nolan has provided a much needed account of what work is being done on the frontlines to keep us all safe. ...

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On the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti here is the podcast of President Franklin Roosevelt's Secretary of State Cordell Hull's speech on July 23, 1942 that you can hear from the US National Archives.  Roosevelt in his letter of reply to Mohandas Gandhi's letter on July 1, 1942 one month before the launch of the Quit India Movement asking for help to achieve Hind Swaraj said- "I am enclosing a copy of an address of July 23 by the Secretary of State, made with my complete approval, which illustrates the attitude of this government.

Roosevelt wrote back to Gandhi that "I am sure that you will agree that the United States has consistently striven for an supported policies of fair dealing, of fair play, and of all related principles looking towards the creation of harmonious relations between nations."

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Oil prices drop below $38 by mid-December 2015, as the Saudis continue to push prices down further by continuing production increases. No change is planned for 2016 and analysts expect low oil prices into 2016. At $38 a barrel it becomes uneconomical for most shale oil producers to operate in the U.S. About 50,000 jobs are lost in Texas and 250,000 jobs worldwide. This is a boost for large oil importers such as India, Japan, and Europe. China also stands to benefit from low oil prices. Nigeria, Venezuela, Iran and Russia have the most to lose from an extended period of low oil prices. Politics in the Middle East also may play a part in decisions as the Saudis oppose intervention in Syria and Iraq by Russia and Iran. Rising shale oil production in the U.S. could also be one of the additional targets of Saudi policy. One consequence is that OPEC is divided with the Saudis going their own way.