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Princes MBZ of the UAE and MBS of Saudi Arabia were seen as close with MBZ the mentor of Prince Salman of Saudi Arabia (MBS). Saudis and UAE differ on how high oil prices should go. Both MBZ MBS wider mindsets are close based on modernization of the Arab world. Oil price increases mean hardship for most of the world's population, a shift of wealth from more populous countries such as Turkey and India to countries with very small numbers of people as the UAE (9 million) and Saudi Arabia 35 million). It poses hardship in cost of living for people in Asia, Africa and in EU, the US. This calls for a vigorous effort to make the switch to solar energy to reduce inequality and wide disparities of wealth in Asia and the Middle East.

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The WTO setimates that global merchandise trade will decline by 9% in 2009. Betweeen 1990 and 2006 these trade flows increased by 6% a year, outstripping the growth of world output which remained at 3%. See the chart showing GDP and world trade growth year over year. Because of vertical supply chains products were shipped across borders and imported back into the country that exported a product, till the product was finally assembled in some third country like Mexico, in the case of automobiles. This interlinking of countries worsens the effect in adownturn, by bringing output down in many countries at once in any particular industry with these supply chains. And conversely positive effects are exaggerated in a upturn or boom cycle like that which was witnessed in recent decades. It makes a 1930's like situation less likely, where trade dropped by over 25%, because now all countries are affected, America's car industry exports as well as imports the same item as it is processed in several countries, and imported to the USA as a semifinished product and then assembeled in Mexico, as one example. Leaders of the G-20 agreed to fight protectionism athe the London meeting in April 2009. Is this enough? Should the Doha Round of talks be resumed? Arvind Subramanium of the Peterson Institute, and Aaditya Mattoo of the World Bank, argue that the Doha Round is too ambiious, as it tries to open markets for rich countries manufactured goods just when the crisis has hit developing countries making this ahard sell. At the same time DOha Round does not exclude Buy AMerica provisions and subsidies to fialing industries like the auto industry support measures taken by both the EU countries and the USA. So they sugggest anew "crisis round" of talks to replace Doha, and this makes sense as the items on the agenda can now be tailored to the pressing needs of a different time from when Doha round was conceived, and thus more realistic in its approach. And in the meantime all WTO members would commit to astandstill and take no measures that are protectionist. The Economist says the new "crisis round" would not do any better as there may not be the same level of interest in another round. It suggests that agood start would be for the leaders of the G-20 to be specificabout what protectionist measures it sees as unproductive and unhelpful in containing this crisis. Draw up a comprehensive list of protectionist measures that go beyond tariffs and export subsidies. The WTO would then be asked to monitor the countries based on this list and publish alist of offending countries, letting embarassment of these countries act as a kind of policing. And in addition an agreement should be reached on coordinating fiscal policy, so that it would reduce fears of leakages abroad. ...

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For the first time deaths in Britain from coronavirus exceed 100,000. Deaths reached 103,602 on January 27, 2021, with all of the UK in lockdown again. Britain now has the highest coronavirus deaths per million population in the world. Analysis in The Times looks at what went wrong.

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Massive floods in Germany and Belgium on July 15, 2021. This video repot in FR24 shows scenes of the floods with whole houses swept away, and residents describing it as like the second world war bombings. Whole bridges were also swept away. It happened quickly without warning, say survivors.

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19 percent of China's exports went to the US in 2017, in 2024 this is 15%, but wait, the difference of 4 percent it is simply coming back to the US but through Southeast Asia. As a result some of the same issues that puzzled Trump negotiators exist today. China's exports surged 12.7% in October 2024 over the prior year. Biden was facing this situation and had yet to respond to the surge in exports to US. These exports were sent to Mexico and to Southeast Asia to circumvent the tariffs. It is the same situation revisited in 2024 with two other aspects of the Chinese economy-economic stimulus gets smaller and the housing and construction industry has imploded, the economy has slower growth. The overall price level in the US with a 60% tariff plus 10% for all countries would be 0.72 addition to the price level of 1.10 percent today- that is when including the depreciation of China's yuan by 10%. as it did last time. The result would be price level in the US at 1.82%, according to J.P. Morgan. Drag on China's GDP of the Trump tariffs in first term was 0.65% according to one investment bank GS, with 60% tariffs it would be 2%. Trump secured a return of $116 billion or 58% of the $200 billion China said it would buy of US exports. The other 42%- the deal was not completed in the end. ...

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The Economist quotes experts saying that drug innovations would not be affected by price controls on drugs. Pricing reforms can accomplish the reverse, spur innovation by doing as Britain and Germany are doing- pioneering comparitive reviews of drugs effectiveness and cost-benefit analyses aimed at reimbursing firms for new drugs based on their performance. Sanford Bernstein, a financial advisory firm, says in its study that a 20% reduction in what Medicare pays for drugs would not kill off innovation, it would reduce earnings per share of big pharma firms by 3-8%. As drug research is now done in many countries, and its a globalized industry, innovation is not likely to be automatically affected by price reductions in one country like the USA, according to Alna Garber of Stanford University and Patricia Danzon of Wharton Business School.

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A ban on TikTok in 270 days is plausible, with credit going to Republican senators in Congress, as they insisted on it being incuded in the Ukraine aid bill package. Not only because of security and democratic process concerns- then one asks why what other real even larger concerns?  A ban on TikTok by restricting its use that does not affect education is already in place in China, yet such a ban is easier implemented in state power centralized government for the benefit of China's young generation and not in the US system of government. Excessive time spent on social media apps in the US including TikTok as the largest are a serious problem in America today -for young people's educational activity such as reading, studies, and for mental health. Taking a large part of the young generation in a direction that is not beneficial for the US, for democratic process to function with young people taking time to be better informed and for the health of the younger generation.  People assume that TikTok audiences will shift to other social media apps such as Facebook, but a large part of the TikTok population may engage in other activities that promote health as the consciousness for food and its preparation increases, for the value of exercise, engagement in sports and viewing sports or music, engagement in Nature and hobbies, and in time spent on travel, all happening as the Nation shifts its attention and consciousness after these troubled decades from financial crisis of 2009 to the pandemic, a period of dismal failure to deliver public services with funding diverted and misallocation in capital markets collapsing or near collapsing infrastructure around us sapping the Nation's spirit and its energies.  A new spirit is emerging in the Nation and a shift in the attention of the younger generation as it feels the fatigue that is now felt for music idols such as Taylor Swift is entirely plausible so that TikTok would have risen and faded away both in the US, India, and even in China as it shifts its attention in a different world. ...

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Any Asian conflict involving China would in a few months destroy Apple's value, CEO's would change quickly, and Apple policies change to shift entire production to India and the US in a rapid shift. Tim Cook would be seen as having gambled against America's interests, unresponsive and failing after repeated warnings.  Apple's goal of sourcing from India by 2027 a mere 26% of its iphones, means that a decade after USTR Lighthizer and DJT started the task of reshoring manufacturing to US and allies in 2016, the No. 1 outshoring company would still be making 75% of its dollar value iphones in China. A degree of overconcentration that would make no sense considering that Apple's 75% of manufacturing would be entirely at risk in 2027 after repeated warnings and inaction. The only option for Tim Cook in 2025 is to come up with new goals of shifting a minimum of 50-60% of its dollar value product manufacturing for iphones to India by 2027. . Tim Cook as Apple CEO has done little to prevent the overconcentration of manufacturing in China since 2016. About 10 years after DJT was elected to bring manufacturing back to India or close allies the simple idea of diversification was not implemented. Why? Having set up this system starting in 1998, a system that did not exist before that tiem when Steve Jobs hired Tim Cook with a winning formula to Make in China, a country just emerging from its Communist phase of failed state economy. By 2008 in 10 years the infrastructure was built in a backward largely agricultural economy that was rapidly modernizing under a market economy with state run capitalism under the Communist Party experiment. The Bush Obama 16 years were ones with America not responding to the challenge posed by this new system which could create huge surges in production capacity with focus on key technologies and flood markets. The next decade after 1998-2008 was one of rapid growth of this experiment which combined with design and engineering in the US generated few jobs in manufacturng in the US, but huge profits with huge margins fro a low cost base with a high image and technology innovation product. Lighthizer, Navarro, Jamieson had already sounded the alarm for American manufacturing and loss of jobs in 2016.  America's deindustrialization was becoming a bigger challenge by 2020 so that president Biden continued the policy of reindustrializing. In 2025 China 2025 Plan that was a warning in 2016 is already a reality with China flooding the world in solar panels, and ready to flood the markets overseas with electric cars. Apple may only get a reprieve, this exemption is not the same as the last one. National security is an issue, key technologies need to be protected. There is only one more opportunity to rebuild American manufacturing and keep promises.     ...

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U.S. President Obama's speech at the General Assembly of the United Nations, Sept. 25, 2012, in which he praised the work of Ambassador Stevens in Libya. He defended First Amendment rights in the U.S. of free speech to an audience that was not fully convinced that the "anti-Muslim video" designed from the start as a provocation, produced as a violation of probation rulings by the individual, and being given the distribution channel of a vast internet audience by Google owned YouTube, falls neatly into free speech. The German government is reported to be looking into banning the video from distribution in Germany, and Germany also protects free speech under its constitution. He cited the "voices that rally against bigotry and blasphemy," as the way a First Amendment democracy protects against this type of abuse; which would suggest that Google as one of these voices has the responsibility to treat such content similiar to other extreme content of a pornographic nature or other such provocative material inducing violence, which it routinely excludes from distribution. The ultimate protection of First Amendment rights comes not from the U.S. constitution itself, but from the responsible exericize of wisdom, vigilance and common sense. During the long years of drafting of the Constitution when Madison, Jefferson and others who drafted the document took pains to include every protection so that basic rights would be preserved, George Washington pointed out that one could do this only upto a point, because it was upto the wisdom of future generations to preserve these rights, and this could never be done completely....

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Hurt looks at the study of the impact of changes at Boeing between 1996-2006, by Greenberg, Grunberg, Moore and Sikora, in a book titled: "Turbulence: the Pain of Change at Boeing." Boeing is an iconic American company, a pioneer in aviation manufacturing, and one of only two such companies in the world. How have workers and managers felt about the changes from teams (concept imported from Toyota), outsourcing of manufacturing to different locations around the world, and other changes, and how has this impacted the company that is Boeing. The authors tracked 525 workers and managers at Boeing in 4 separate surveys. Many workers worry that outsourcing will lead to giving away the farm, as one engineer with 27 years of experience put it. Eventually Boeing would put work out to 135 sites in two dozen countries to cut costs and gain access to foreign markets. It ends up pushing the Dreamliner 2 years behind schedule. Many managers worry about the loss of engineering and jobs to global partner companies, which would hurt the US in the long run. Even the team model imported from Toyota has a negative effect, by affecting employee morale. The career ladder becomes compressed and opportunties for advancement are no longer there. Employees expressed a sadness that the old feeling of the value of contributions, as a source of the company's competitive advantage was missing....

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DW.com's Becker looks at how much an iPhone would cost if made in the USA. Jason Dedrick of Syracuse University says it would add $20-$30 if final assembly was done in the U.S.. If components and parts were also made in the U.S. this would go up to $80-$90. Other factors are that the production clusters set up by Foxconn have taken three decades to set up and would take time to replicate. President Trump has said Apple should make the iPhones in the U.S. to create jobs. As Foxconn is rapidly adding robots and automation the number of jobs are shrinking in the production process.

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To reduce its reliance on China for nickel supplies and secure the supply chain LG Energy Solution has signed a $9 billion deal in Indonesia that sources nickel supplies in Indonesia and produces the EV batteries in Indonesia. The deal was signed with Indonesia's mining company Antam and Indonesia Battery Corporation. Indonesia is the largest producer of nickel with 21 million tonnes of reserves according to US Geological Survey data. The entire process will now be done in Indonesia- smelting and refining nickel, manufacturing precursors, cathode materials and cells, and assembling finished products. LG Energy Solutions is also working with Hyundai Group to build a $1.1 billion battery manufacturing plant 65 kilometres southeast of Jakarta. At this time most of the materials for EV batteries are processed in China and about 11% of the world's production of Nickel comes from Russia.  China's Amperex the world's top battery maker also has signed up with Indonesia's Antam mining company for a similar $6 billion project. For LG Energy Solutions the second largest battery maker the stable supply of raw materials and reduced dependence on China and Russia is becoming important with the situation in Ukraine.     ...

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Deep in the jungles of Indonesian Borneo one finds Bayan Resources coal complex. In 2025 Indonesia is the world's largest coal producer. Bayan Resources was founded by Low Tuck Kwong a Indonesian businessman who started out with his father's construction business in Singapore and switched to start his own business in mining in Indonesia in 1972. Bayan is now one of the largest coal producers in Indonesia and ships the coal to India, Vietnam and Philippines which depend on coal for electricity and modernization.  Coal demand will actually increase instead of decrease from 8 billion metric tons in 2013 to 9 billion metric tons in 2027. India and Vietnam are taking on the role of manufacturing that once belonged to China in the supply chain. The combined population of India, Indonesia, Vietnam and Philippines is about 2 billion people with a huge need for 100% electrification of rail and transport, and for homes and industry. India is accelerating it's renewable energy production, yet coal will be needed in the interim transition to renewable energy. Coal production is about 1 billion metric tons in 2024. About 20% of coal is imported from Indonesia and Australia. India depends on coal for 75% of electricity needs says Anil Kumar Jha former head of Coal India Limited. He predicts coal to increase to 1.3 million metric tons produced in India by 2031.   ...

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Nagourney and Dougherty of the NYT give this report on the housing crisis in California by 2017 with the median cost of a home skyrocketing to twice the figure for the U.S. This price is now $500,000. The result is longer commutes even for people with incomes over $150,000 a year, stretching to as much as 2 hours one way. It means people lacking housing stay in vans with improvised kitchens and other sleeping arrangements. Not enough homes are being built because of strict zoning and planning regulations that are kept in place by neighborhood groups, effectively excluding outsiders. Now its not just the coastal areas that are affected but the whole state. Governor Brown of California tried to pass a measure in 2016 that would push communities to build more affordable housing, and ran into opposition from local officials and environmentalists. Now the opinion in the state is changing with younger people denied a chance at decent housing at the forefront and some elected officials such as the Mayor of Los Angeles, Mr. Eric Garcetti. A new bill in the state legislature would make it harder for cities that are falling behind in building housing to lose the right for City Council to hold back on approval of new construction, effectively bypassing it. California's law capping property taxes after Proposition 13 was passed in 1978 has also held back construction. Other factors are the building of new offices for  companies in the tech boom around San Francisco without a corresponding effort to build new homes for these new office workers. California was slow to respond to housing needs for young people, with only 311,000 housing units built since 2006. ...

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2.9 million Americans live in vans for most of the year down 6% in 2023, according to one estimate. It is'nt easy as it means finding places to park for the night and doing this day for long periods. Many as shown in this report are young people, some leave their state for travel, some are photographers, some have decided to explore the world outside after being stuck in one place. Others are people who have difficulty finding housing with costs beyond their reach as this engineer in Brooklyn, NY. 

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The U.S. is keen on rebuilding its manufacturing now that the pandemic has exposed the weakness in depending on outside sources of manufacturing. After decades of job losses that hurt millions of workers and ripped apart the social fabric of America, this also left America bereft of the very ideals of opportunity for all on which the country was founded. This story by Asa Fitch and Luis Santiago in WSJ shows how America which produced 75% of the world's chips in 1990 when China's participation was negligible or non existent, made only 12% of the world's chips and semiconductors that power computers and smartphones in 2020. China's ascent only began as recently  in 2010 under a state model that targeted particular industries as Taiwan and South Korea had done before. America's failure to protect its technology led to the situation today. As this report points out Intel is the major American manufacturer of chips and it has a role to play in bringing back production and technology base to the U.S. ...

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The social media site Twitter frequently loses money and took on $13 billion in debt says this report in the NYT. Musk faces financial challenges a he takes over the company, and this report says the company would be unlikely to invest and simply be paying the bills. Twitter it says, has not made a profit for 8 of its past 10 years. 

Twitter's interest expense alone would grow from $50 million to $1 billion with the new debt. Company operations generated about $630 million in cash flow to fund operations. Twitter had $6 billion in cash before the buyout and a large part of this would have gone to close the acquisition. All the financial resources of the company will now go to service the debt. About $1.2 billion in marketing expenses mostly salaries are likely to be cut. And layoffs of a significant fraction of the total employees may be a way to conserve capital to service the added debt, this report shows.

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Betsy McKay reporting from Harper, Liberia, gives this exceptional report on the shattered health system of Liberia and how the country is coping following the Ebola Virus epidemic. The dilapidated poor state of health facilities in Liberia, and in neighboring Sierra Leone and Guinea, have made these areas especially vulnerable to the spread of Ebola Virus. With pictures and details about the lives of ordinary people McKay brings to life one of the poorest regions in the world, racked by years of war and neglect, showing people struggling to find their way with minimal health care. Tabeh Freeman, a professor of public health at William S. Tubman University in Harper, Liberia, says Liberia cannot cope if another epidemic takes place, with such a poorly equiped and broken health system. Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone estimate the need is for about $1.47 billion in the next 30 months to build and equip a new health system. The World Bank and other donors have come up with $1 billion for Ebola recovery. A particularly urgent problem is to see that adequate funding goes to build the infrastructure for the health system and to train people to provide health services....

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A Tax Policy Center study (joint project of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Insitute) shows $157 billion would be generated in the first year from an increase in taxes on the top 1% of income earners in the U.S., about 1.13 million households earning average $2.1 million, by increasing the federal tax rate from current 33.4% for this group to 40%. This could pay for a program to provide tution free education in America's colleges and universities. Even increasing the federal tax to 40% on the 115,000 households earning over $9.4 million on average, the top 0.1% of American households, would generate $55 billion in the first year, enough to pay for the $47 billion cost of tution free education at all of America's public colleges and universities, according to the Tax Policy Center. Economists including Stiglitz and others, point to significant impact of revenue generated from such a tax when applied to improving educational opportunity for the middle class and lower income groups. Education is a great leveler of income disparities as seen in the U.S. after World War II. During recent decades the highest income groups weren major beneficiaries of tax and economic policy, at the very time the middle class and factory workers were hit hard by global competition which lowered wages and exported jobs. The interest rate policies of the Fed after boom bust cycles also favored large investors in equity markets over smaller income earners with savings account deposits, whose savings experienced little growth under interest rates close to zero. ...

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This marks the end of an era in which British Empire based journalists and media barons such as Beaverbrook and Murdoch were able to unduly influence events in the world. The period from 1915 to 2020 was one in which the British Empire and the USA  were dominant in the world. News Corporation will be run by Lachlan Murdoch who is the CEO as his father Mr. Rupert Murdoch has resigned his roles at the company. He remains as chairman emeritus at age 92. This marks the end of an era for a son of journalist Keith Murdoch who gained prominence in Australia evading censors and  covering a disastrous campaign in World War I, the invasion of Turkey by British forces in which 8000 Australian soldiers were killed, 20,000 wounded, about half of the Australian force before evacuation on Dec. 20, 1915. It could be said that Rupert's father Keith Murdoch left with his reputation intact in the British Empire after building the Australian newspaper business that his son Rupert inherited. Rupert introduced new technology and set up Sky News in Britain and Fox News television channel in the US. A large legal settlement for improper coverage of election machinery in US 2020 presidential election leaves his media business with a diminished reputation as Lachlan inherits it compared to the reputation left by Keith Murdoch in standing up to British authorites in the First war for staggering losses suffered by Australia. Rupert Murdoch tried to innovate with an aggregation news site for internet news Knewz to achieve some of what Keith Murdoch had achieved. This venture did not get the resources or ideas it deserved and failed. Apple News has started its aggregation site years later in 2020 with human  selection for aggregation following Lyrarc.com which started in 2010.  ...

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For the first time since independence in 1947 India gets a Master Plan for infrastructure development in the whole country.  All federal government ministries are pulled together under one roof. Ministries will coordinate their plans for infrastructure development. Specific investments, specific delivery times, real time monitoring will be done through digital technologies under a single master plan. Railways, highways and roads, waterways transport, energy, telecom broadband and other modal connectivity will now be done in one plan with all federal and state ministries pulled into the master plan. This will produce network effects with today's digital technologies as this has never been tried before in the world. Logistics costs of 14% of product cost will be cut by 6% to 8% under the new logistics frameworks set through this plan and the investments to be made of 100,000 crore rupees. This will boost exports and manufacturing as the new supply chains restructured after the pandemic attract foreign investment to India. For this Indian industry, universities, and federal plus state governments have to act in a coordinated way under a single plan, which will happed for the first time under Gati Shakti.   ...

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Rex Tillerson, U.S. Secretary of State takes a strong stand on North Korean missile testing and nuclear program in a visit to Seoul and Beijing. He said the U.S. would be forced to take pre-emptive action "if they elevate their threat of their weapons program"  to an unacceptable level. Continuing a policy of the Obama administration following missile tests by North Korea, the Trump administration has rejected any talks with North Korea. Tillerson said that "the policy of strategic patience has ended." It was also meant to signal U.S. intentions before Tillerson goes to Beijing from Seoul. President Trump commented on Twitter; "North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been "playing" the United States for years. China has done little to help." Because China sees North Korea as a bargaining chip with the U.S., Japan and South Korea, the situation has ended repeatedly in a impasse with the North Korean nuclear and missile program continuing during the Bush and Obama administrations. This has also meant that North Korea was unlikely to collapse on its own, with China pursuing a policy of using North Korea as part of its defense policies in the region, as pointed out by Sanger in this report. As the North's missile program continues the U.S., and with the North seeing the missile program as the only way to ensure the survival of the regime, the U.S. needed to come up with a new way to tackle the situation.   ...

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On Gandhi Jayanti remembering American president FDR's contribution to Hind Swaraj. FDR rejected Churchill's ideas of retaining the British Empire's colonies while fighting the German Nazis in the name of freedom. FDR said- " India should be made a commonwealth at once. After a certain number of years- 5 perhaps or 10- she should be able to choose whether she wants to remain in the Empire or have complete independence." 

FDR (US president Franklin Roosevelt) said -"I can't believe that we can fight a war against fascist slavery, and at the same time not work to free people all over the world from a backward colonial policy."

 

 

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When planning for retirement look at the combined probability of both spouses of living an extra 10, 20, or 30 years after 65 years of age. The combined probability could be 18% of living an extra 30 years says this expert when you look at the combined probability that one or the other spouse would outlive the other and need to depend on retirement savings. Take all these scenarios into account, and working an extra year or two even 6 months can make a difference for a sound retirement, says this expert.