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Berlin based China studies center MERICS experts say China's weak spot is domestic consumption, as it is too reliant on export demand. These experts say overseas demand from Europe and US has held up in recent months, but where would China pick up manufacturing production when this demand slows down? Stimulus is seen as risky by experts and contradictory to efforts by the Chinese government to reduce debt based financial risks, with the debt built up in hypergrowth of two decades since 2000. Much of this hypergrowth itself has resulted in trade tensions with US and today puts China in what MERICS calls this "tricky situation." This situation resulted from growth since 2000 that was was unleashed from local governments in China with failure to control it from the central government in Beijing to reduce its impact on deindustrialization of towns and communities in the US and Europe. A lesson that China's planners may be looking at as they look to the future for more balance and quality of life,  and dignity of life for rural, town and city communities across China. Politburo CCP's standing committee has put forward the idea of a "dual circulation economy" to reduce dependence on foreign demand, and balance it with growing domestic demand, yet experts at Berlin base MERICS say this has not happened. A report from the Atlantic Council says without domestic demand picking up the pace of China's growth, China would have difficulty growing beyond 3% annually by 2025.  ...

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A plan appears to have been put in place by the U.S. and the European Union countries to strengthen the American position in negotiations with Iran underway in Istanbul. The impact on oil prices and on U.S. and E.U. growth as a consequence of higher oil prices, especially when the eurozone countries faced lowed growth, was one of the ways Iran hope to blunt the tightening of sanctions against Iran's nuclear program. It now appears from information released by the International Energy Agency that a plan was implemented by the Saudis in recent months to build up reserve supplies. At the same time a similiar effort was being implemented to increase production in Iraq and Libya so that it would add to reserves added by the Saudis. Daily output from OPEC countries increased by about 1.4 millon barrels in the Sept 2011- March 2012 period, as the confrontation with Iran took shape with increasing pressure using sanctions on Iranian oil, according to the IEA. Of this 1.4 million barrels a day increase, one third is from the Saudis and the rest from Iraq and Libya, according to IEA. In March 2012, OPEC oil production increased by 135,000 barrels a day to 31.4 million barrels, mostly from higher output in Iraq. The Saudis have filled up domestic oil inventories and placed an additional 10 million barrels of oil in storage close to markets in Europe and Japan. This suggests that this was part of a quietly implemented plan in cooperation with the U.S. and the EU countries to increase the effectiveness of sanctions and protect global oil supplies from disruptions; even as the U.S. pressured Japan, S. Korea, India and other countries to reduce purchases of Iranian oil. The economies of India, the EU and other countries were already beginning to feel the impact of higher oil prices in the 1st quarter of 2012....

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Finnish president Niinisto provides a new understanding of Mr. Putin and the thinking that led to the invasion of Ukraine. Mr. Niinisto has an advantage having spoken with Mr. Putin countless times says this report in WSJ, and spoke again to Mr. Putin on May 14 to tell him that Finland was planning to join NATO. Putin simply responded that Russia does not pose a threat and "you made a mistake." He says it was not the Finnish way to not call Putin and tell him directly, and that not doing so would be like sneaking away around the corner. Mr. Niinisto says WSJ, has a rare insight into the thinking that led to the behavior of Mr. Putin in launching the war. Here are some insights from this report by Adam O'Neal of WSJ. On the situation in Ukraine Niinisto says " I would be a lot more worried about Ukrainians than about how Russians feel." Mr. Putin's willingness to see Ukraine's industrial centers, its infrastructure and cities destroyed, turning them into moon craters in the east compares with the relative ease of life in Moscow, St Petersburg and other cities, cushioned by Russian oil and gas exports and financial reserves. As a student of Finland's long and violent history with Russia Mr. Niinisto has some unique insights into Russian thinking. He tells WSJ's Adam O'Neal  that if a Russian is angry, yes, be careful, but if he's calm, be even more careful. The Russian invasion of Finland led to loss of 200,000 lives in 1939-40, and another 250,000 Russian lives in fighting between 1941-1944. Finland has 300,000 men or women in military reserves and men between 18 years and 60 years are called up for military service with the Finnish Constitution requiring every citizen to contribute to national defense. Recently Finland ordered 64 F-35 fighter jets from the US. What led to the invasion of Ukraine by Mr. Putin? Niinisto says that "somehow Mr. Putin has a feeling that Russia was betrayed in the 90's by the West. Over time this thinking continued feeding the negativity says Niinisto and led to the thinking that Russia could be betrayed once more.  Another aspect of Mr. Putin which was covered during the last decade of relations with Ukraine in Lyrarc, was his perception that Ukraine under various leaders before Zelensky was basically led by corrupt leaders including one president he supported but lost power in the last decade. Mr. Putin saw protests in Kviv and Lviv that ousted a president he supported recently as orchestrated from outside. This led to thinking that Ukrainian nationalism did not exist and he believed that Kviv would not be defended and would fall easily within a week or weeks. As his nationalist perceptions and that of a small group that included his partner in office Mr. Medvedev became stronger in the last ten years Mr. Putin made the decision to take the option for invasion in the thinking that the response of the US and Germany would not be to support Ukraine with arms and other aid. The CDU and SPD was perceived as weak in Germany and Scholz not seen as able to cut down oil and gas imports to the EU. Biden was seen as not willing to stop Russia by taking on a difficult conflict because of China allying itself with Russia, considering China's interconnections with the American economy. The timing was seen as good considering that this level of dependence on oil and gas imports of Europe on Russia would never be the case after planned shifts to renewable energy. The Russian economy was cushioned by its $620 billion in reserves and by the world's need for energy even as the shift to renewable was taking place. This window my have induced Mr. Putin to take what appeared to be a rational decision that ignored the common feelings of humanity of risking the destruction of a brotherly people that spoke Russian, prayed in Orthodox churches, and where Russia as a state started in the year 1000. Cambridge historian Brendan Simms in his new book "Europe : The Struggle for Supremacy 1453 to the present," has shown all European powers susceptible of reasoning and calculation of this type in their wars since 1453 in the struggle for supremacy in Europe up to the present- the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Dutch, the British, the French, the Germans, the Russians, the Danes, the Swedes. This also led to British and French empires in Asia and Africa with subjugation of Asian and African people. The Second World War had created the perception that somehow this had changed after the loss of millions of lives- that was the perception of Merkel a pastor's daughter who had grown up in the former communist state of GDR in East Germany, and of SPD leader Steinmeier who felt strongly about the loss of lives from the Nazi invasion. Merkel and Steinmeier built the relationship of Germany with Russia that has collapsed under Germany's new leader Scholz and Habeck-Baerbock of the Greens party. Merkel and Steinmeier also built the trade relationship with China that also faces collapse with China's support of Russia under Mr. Jinping, and the unexpected shifts in Chinese leadership and policies from that pursued by premier Deng and his successors in 1990-2010 of interconnected economic links with US and EU. Mr. Scholz, the new chancellor of Germany has Brendan Simms book on Europe on his reading list for 2022 as he ponders over the lessons of 2022 and the pandemic. Mr. Biden with long experience in the Senate of the US has a memory and understanding of what happened since World War II, how America got to this point, and what it will have to do to bring back the American spirit to the Free World that America has led for most of the last two hundred years. ...

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Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer launched a series of acquisitions after becoming CEO in 2012. Tumblr was acquired for $1 billion. Yahoo has disclosed in a regulatory filing that it plans to write down the entire value of that acquisition. A number of other acquisitions have also failed to deliver value as Yahoo struggles in ad revenues- mobile ad revenues for Yahoo in the 1st quarter of 2016 were $250 million compared to $4.5 billion or 17 times that for Facebook. Yahoo has 200 million visitors each month, but its display ads are not strong on mobile and its mobile apps have not done well with users. As advertising shifted to mobile Yahoo stumbled badly. The failed acquisitions investment could have been better utilized in retaining talented mobile engineers, but Yahoo's CEO resorted to cost cutting when the strategy of looking at consumer trends for news content through digital magazine investments failed. As a result Yahoo suffered from slumping morale and a brain drain.

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Yale University professor Robert Shiller, founded CAPE, the cyclically adjusted and inflation adjusted S&P price earnings ratio. It takes the average of the 10 past years of earnings and the inflation adjusted S&P 500 index to arrive at this CAPE P/E ratio. Here he looks at CAPE in 2000, 2007 and 2013, to get a sense of where the U.S. stock market stands today and investor confidence. In 2000 CAPE reached 46, in 2007 it was at 27 and in 2013 it has reached 23. The historical average for CAPE is 15- this goes back in data to 1871. Zweig in the WSJ March 8, 2013, cites data from the last 50 years showing the historical adjusted P/E at 19.7. The investor confidence in the stock market or "valuation confidence" based on work done by Shiller is at 72% for institutional investors and 62% for individual investors in 2013, it was about 80% for both categories before the market peak in 2007. This data is on the website of the Yale School of Management. Shiller says the levels of optimism can fluctuate and change easily, requiring careful thinking by investors. He confirms Browning's assertion in the WSJ March 6, 2013, that in inflation adjusted terms investors are not ahead in the last 13 years, when compared to 2000, based on the inflation corrected S&P Composite total return index....

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Manjoo says Mayer's failure at Yahoo comes from making small moves but not acting as a transformational CEO by changing Yahoo's business. He says three years later apart from small acquisitions such as Tumblr Yahoo's business was the same as before. By Nov. 2015 the Board and investors appeared to be saying that Mayer had run out of time to make the changes needed to preserve Yahoo's U.S. internet business.

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Losses at Kabul Bank approaching $900 million in January 2011. According to the New York Times report investigators and Afghan businessmen believe that much of the money has gone into the pockets of a small group of privileged and politically connected Afghans, who prevented earlier inquiry into the bank's dealings. This threatens Afghanistan's nascent banking system. The bank is also used to pay Afghan security forces, which puts the American military in the position of having to look for new banks to process the $1.5 billion payroll.

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Clandestine loans, bribes and other payoffs helped block inquiries into Kabul Bank. Kabul Bank, Afghanistan's largest bank has piled up losses of $900 million. The chairman of the bank has spent $150 million of the bank's money to buy Dubai villas in his and his wife's name. Among those receiving money are the Finance Minister, Education Minister and a former Interior Minister. The bank nearly collapsed in Sept 2010. The situation at Kabul Bank shows a lack of progress in anti-corruption efforts in Afghnistan.

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The director of the Institute of Population and Labor Economics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Cai Fang predicts that by 2009 there would be a widespread shortage of workers, pushing up industrial wages. Figures from the UN Population Division show that China's working age population will decline in the years ahead. There are two things here that matter. The millions of people in a socalled surplus labor force that can be tapped so that industry can hire more people expand and grow without wage inflation, and second the working age population 20-29, younger people being preferred by employers for the long hours, single people who can stay in dorms and can be mobile to move near factories and do not have the restrictions of married people with children. The one child policy has limited the growth of the working age population. After rising by 1.3% a year according to the UN Population Division during the decade to 2005, the population of working age is expected to increase at an annual rate of 0.7% until 2015, and then shrink by 0.1% ayear until 2025. The surplus labor pool figures estimates vary from 150 million people to 200 million people, but the Economist estimates the true figure to be much smaller because government figures for the rural labor force include millios of migrants already in the cities and others working in rural industry not farming. The population of workers in ages 20-29 fell from 233 million in 1990 to 165 million in 2005. Because of this shrinking of supply of eligible labor especially considering the preference of textile and electronics firms to hire young women because they complain less and put up with long hours and for single men preferred by construction firms, Cai Fang believes that this preferred or eligible labor pool is shrinking to the point where it will be a problem in the years ahead. This will have the impact of shrinking the growth rate to around 7% sometime after 2009. Problems that remained under cover because of the Olympics will also become evident as 2008 winds down. Some experts argue that there are other factors that will contine to sustain the pool of available workers, but its this pool of preferred available workers that will be in short supply according to Cai Fang. ...

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Davidoff describes the hype in Silicon Valley that leads to soaring valuations- hype about Nest includes founder Fadell's reference to his vision for home thermostats that would change the world. All the participants benefit says Davidoff, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, venture capital firms and firms acquired such as Nest. Nest was acquired by Google for $3.1 billion, when it would have been valued at about $2 billion before Google showed interest. The hype lets Google present itself as the company of the future, and boost its image, which means a lot in getting investors to support the huge valuations.

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David Brooks of the NYT is critical of the way Google CEO Sundar Pichai handled the Damore email affair. Pichai cut the discussion short and fired a 28 year old engineer who wrote a controversial memo about women and working in the software industry. Brooks says the memo actually makes things harder for women in a male dominated tech world.  Not mentioned here or in the coverage in the media is that Google could have used this as an opportunity to refocus the discussion on how to correct the exaggerated tilt in favor of men in the male dominated tech world- about 80% male. Even with the differences between men and women is such a huge tilt a good idea? How could it be handled by giving women better opportunities and changing the culture itself to ways that can make it good for both sexes. An extremely competitive environment with its corresponding behaviours is not the best environment for all. Most of the male dominated tech world does not walk the talk by actually helping women in tech in multiple ways, including changing their own culture- this itself could have become the focus of the discussion. Google could turn its gaze inward and say this is happening because it was too late or not doing enough, and use this as a wake up call- letting people be heard, yet quietly redoubling its efforts as some contrary voices explain how the current situation happened, is another way to respond effectively that eluded Google.  ...