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Commodities prices hit a low in June before the second Greece election on June 16, with lower unemployment numbers in the U.S. and growth of 6-7% in India and China. Still average prices of oil in 2012 of $115 a barrel are higher than the level in 2011. And corn prices dropping to $5.25 a bushel are still high compared with prices earler. Corn farmers in the U.S. are adding to acreage. The relatively lower prices also give more room for smaller stimulus by central banks to stimulate growth. Freeport-Mining CEO, Richard Atkinson said in a presentation that the growth is coming on top of a bigger baseline for China, India and Brazil. China's copper consumption went up by about 6 million tons a year, averaging 13% growth a year in the period 1995-2010. Now even with slower growth at 6% a year, by 2025 he estimates China's copper consumption at 9 million tons per year. This is a structural change that is supporting commodity prices, says Amrita Sen, analyst at Barclays Capital.

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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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House Majority Leader Eric Cantor talks with Joseph Rago of the Wall Street Journal. There is a fundamentally different world view between Obama and Cantor. Cantor does not hesitate to present his view and says President Obama did not like to be challenged on policy grounds in debt negotiations, leading to the famous "I'll call your bluff Eric" remark by Obama. Cantor sees no chance of reaching an agreement with Obama that would go towards solving the fiscal crisis and feels it would be best to focus on incremental wins. He says of the Obama-Boehner deal that it did not address the problems with Social Security and Medicare. Without the transformational changes that are needed in those programs he did not think it was worth the cost. Cantor is mainly responsible for the Republicans not agreeing to include revenue increases in the negotiations or the final deal. Cantor says the super-committee part of the deal which has to come up with savings, will only lead to incremental progress- considering the huge divide that separates their world view and that of President Obama. The real fight says Cantor is to prevent President Obama from getting re-elected....

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Research by Matthew Slaughter of Dartmouth shows that only 4% of all American firms and 15% of American manufacturers export. Overall 80% of America's trade is conducted by just 1% of the firms that export or import. Exports as a share of GDP are 10.9% in 2009, much lower than other exporting countries. These numbers will increase as America focusses on exports to rebalance the economy.

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Mexico's growth rate has averaged annual growth of below 2% for 2013-2015 under the Pena adminstration. Predictions were for growth of 5-6%. The investment in the oil industry is low with decline in demand for oil. The peso has dropped in value to 16 to the U.S. dollar in August 2015 compared to 13 in 2014. The popularity rating of the Pena administration dropped to 34% in August 2015.

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Former Louisiana fovernor Bobby Jindal comes under severe criticism from the Washington Post for policies it says hurt the poor by turning down federal Medicaid funds under Obamacare, for using rainy day funds, and cutting spending on education and other needed programs in the state. It says Jindal pursued Grover Norquist's no tax pledge leading to spending cuts in the state and budget gaps, merely to appeal to voters in the GOP presidential primaries. Jindal's appeal to Republican voters actually fell sharply because of unpopular policies and he did not qualify for participation in the presidential televised Republican debates. Republican voters turned to outside candidates such as Trump, Carson and others.

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Doug Parker, CEO of US Airways, will lead the new management team after the merger with American Airlines (AMR). He completed an earlier merger with America West.

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Whites are aging faster in the U.S., census figures show, and white deaths are higher than white births as the birthrate for whites declines. This is also leading to anxiety among whites about uncontrolled immigration, and behind the Republican party's moves on immigration. The effects of world trade and the hollowing out of some industries with the effect on local communities in the U.S. has exacerbated the anxiety. Signs of this were evident in the last decade leading to the Trump campaign based on immigration issues and trade in the 2016 election, which resonate more in the mid sections of the U.S. with the lack of the tech industry and financial industry of the two coasts.

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Jeb Bush opens his election campaign in Florida where he was two term governor, and addresses the crowd in Spanish. Jeb Bush met Columba Garnica de Gallo, a Mexican girl when he studied in a foreign exchange program in Leon, Mexico in 1970, when he was 17 and she was 16. Jeb Bush was assisting in the building of a school in a small village outside Leon, as part of a program at Andover called Man and Society. They were married in 1974 in Austin, Texas. Jeb Bush received his BA in Latin American Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. His earlier schooling was at Andover, Massachusetts. He is the only candidate with deep personal and educational connections to Latin America coming from the traditional political elite. Columba's personal story as the daughter of a migrant worker who left the family when she was three, and her championing of causes related to women and domestic violence add a different aspect to the Bush story, seen as a privileged family. This makes Jeb Bush unique in the Republican Party- unlike Marc Rubio and other candidates of Cuban ancestry from the Miami area- with deep roots on both sides of the American story, and spanning generations from Columbus, Ohio to small towns in Texas and Mexico. Rubio's parents immigrated from Cuba in 1956 under the Batista regime later overthrown by Fidel Castro. The election campaign gives Jeb Bush an opportunity to create a consensus on issues relating to minorities, immigration and the struggling middle class. In a Republican debate in 1980, Reagan said "Rather than put up a fence (between Mexico and the U.S.) why don't we work out a recognition of our mutual problems." To which George Bush Sr. said: "They are good... strong people. Part of my family is Mexican." It is an opportunity to build connections to Latinos in the U.S., and rebuild the Republican party's connections to Hispanic Americans, closing the gap with the Democratic Party. This will be good for the country to move forward....

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Ben Inker of Grantham Mayo sees profitability at U.S. companies at a high because of savings in labor costs while consumption has not declined because of government transfer payments and fiscal policy. He sees profits of U.S. companies declining in 2012-2013. This makes the U.S. stocks less likely to perform well in the future, especially the stocks outside of the blue chips which he sees as highly overvalued. A better choice in his view is in Europe and Japan which are undervalued. His funds have 39% in U.S. stocks and most of it in blue chip stocks. His view is that interest rate policy will not have a large effect as the changes will be very gradual, and going from zero percent interest rates to one percent interest rates will not lead to much change in economic activity. From his point of view the largest risk is in shrinking of profits at U.S. companies as the deficit comes down, because today workers are able to maintain consumption because of fiscal policy and companies are able to cut costs. In Europe the austerity cuts are being taken seriously and this will impact profits, so the U.S. will look better in 2012. But value will prevail in the long run as European and Japanese stocks are undervalued and the U.S runup leaves stocks overvalued in terms of future stream of profits....

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Sardesai gives reasons for the collapse of the BJP alliance with PDP in Kashmir. He says the differences were too great between Jammu and Kashmir regions of the state and they were never bridged at the local level. The hope created by the 2014 election in Kashmir have diminished from a lack of effort on both sides. As the violence escalated in the state and with approaching elections nationwide in India in 2019, the BJP decided it would be better positioned for the election not being part of a failing government in Kashmir.