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Treasury Secretary Yellen says on her second trip to China that she will make this the top issue in discussions, the danger that Chinese overproduction in green energy products will lead to the kind of overspill that happened for steel and aluminium where subsidized products drove American companies out of the market. Speaking at a solar energy factory in Norcross, Georgia, that was itself closed in 2017 and is back up again with the assistance in the Inflation Reduction Act for promoting American green energy manufacturing, Yellen said: "It is important to me and the president that American firms and workers can compete on a level playing field." Yellen's remarks on supply chain resilience- "China's overcapacity distorts global prices and production patterns and hurts American firms and workers, as well as firms and workers around the world. Challenges for individual firms can lead to concentrated supply chains, negatively impacting global economic resilience.”   ...

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Vietnam's efforts to boost solar energy in 2018 by offering 9 cents per kilowatt hour to owners of solar farms is leading to unexpected surge in solar energy. Instead of the 850 MW of solar energy the production increased to 5 gigawatts by 2019. Investments had be done in 2 years for the offer by the state owned electricity company and electricity purchases would depend on daily needs. The huge increase has brightened the prospects for solar energy in this part of Asia.    Most of the solar energy comes from the southern part of Vietnam and the government is expanding the capacity of the power grid to handle the solar energy production. Vietnam is growing at 5-7% a year for two decades and power capacity is expected to double by 2030. The share of coal in the enrgy mix planned is 43%. The unexpected surge in solar energy production means the 10% fo solar energy in the energy mix was achieved ten years ahead of the schedule. This means fewer coal plants will be needed. In five years solar energy is expected to become cheaper to produce than energy from coal, according to energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie. Coal plants are also meeting public resistance, and regulatory hurdles. Coal plants take ten years to become operation. Solar energy projects can be completed in 2 years. This means solar can take a much larger share of energy production in the future .  ...

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Most people would not guess or recognize that this place where elderly people in society were treated shabbily is a country in northern Europe, and a country where citizens pay high taxes for precisely better healthcare across different age groups. Sweden is where about half of the 6000 people dead from coronavirus were elderly people.  Over the last two decades Sweden has cut hospital capacity and discouraged elderly people from entering hospitals during the early period of the pandemic, says this report in the NYT. The for profit nursing homes in the centre of Stockholm were unable to cope. Having turned the work in these homes to low wage workers, it put these workers and the elderly at risk with lack of staff, lack of adequate PPE oreven  basic masks, says this report in NYT.  One of the lessons of this pandemic is the failure not just in turning over manufacturing of health care equipment and pharmaceuticals to China, but also turning over the basic care of elderly to for profit institutions that were totally unprepared and could not give elderly the dignity and care they deserve. Year of cuts to public services and health services now showed in a glaring way what can happen when this is done. It has lessons for countries from Europe to North America, and to Latin America, India and other Asian countries as they redesign policy and allocate resources to public services in the next 10-20 years. ...

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India is storing as much oil as it can at today's low oil prices of about $20-$30 per barrel in May 2020. With India asking the U.S. to store oil from U.S. shale producers at its strategic petroleum reserve storage facilities in the U.S. Already its existing storage facilities of 5.3 million tonnes (39 million barrels) are full, and the storage capacity will be more than doubled with an additional 6.5 million tonnes (48 million barrels) to be built quickly. About 8.5 million tonnes (62 million barrrels)  are in ships on oceans around the world. Demand is only 20% during the lockdown but is expected to reach levels of 2019 by June 2020. Only about 20% of oil consumption comes from existing storage.   That Indian oil capacity is 39 million barrels of storage shows how little was done over succeeding administrations without national aspirations for a growing country with hundreds of million of young people, when the oil storage capacity today of 39 million barrels compares with over 500 million barrels for Japan and for China. A huge Indian government aid package of $280 billion for the economy can be offset by gains in other areas such as low oil price oil storage, and gains in supply chain manufacturing, increasing the size of the domestic market for local manufacturers with incentives and loans, and new rules for stressing local manufacturing for a self-reliant economy. ...

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Polls before the election show the SPD Social Demcorats, Greens and the Die Linke combined have a small majority of votes in German elections. Die Linke is the left party from the days of the party that ruled the GDR German Democratic Republic or East Germany under communist rule. In Berlin, Bremen, and the east German state of Thuringia the Social Democrats SPD, Greens and De Linke have formed coalition governments. With the emergence of right wing AfD in East Germany, the De Linke has emerged as an alternative to the established parties and the AfD in eastern Germany. Federal governments are difficult to form with the De Linke because of historical opposition to NATO. This may change as two younger leaders are now leading the party and in other policies there is similarity between the democratic socialist views of De Linke, SPD and the environmental policies of the Greens. FDP policy has generally not favored policies that favor working class, infrastructure investment, childcare and other issues important to voters in this election. This leaves the De Linke as a more likely alternative for a Greens SPD coalition partner if it can change to be flexible about its views on NATO. Today policies of president Biden in the US are also friendly to workers and families. This makes such a coalition possible if the socialist parties of the De Linke change to get things done instead of staying on the fringes of government. ...

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Advice from David Walker on the role of a chairman of a large bank and good bank governance. This is part of a 184 page report prepared for UK bank governance practices following the financial crisis. David Walker is now the new chairman of Barclays and considered an excellent choice with the experience and wisdom to correct the problems facing the financial industry. He calls for putting corporate governance at the centre of things in the current environment- this applies to banks in Europe and the U.S.- in the following passage from the report which deserves careful reading: "The need now is to bring corporate governance issues closer to centre stage. Better financial regulation has much to accomplish, but cannot alone satisfactorily assure performance of the major banks at the heart of the free market economy. These entities must also be better governed... The behavioural changes that may be needed are unlikely to be fostered by regulatory fiat, which in any event risks provoking unintended consequences. Behavioural improvement is more likely to be achieved through clearer identification of best practice and more effective but, in most areas, non-statutory routes to implementation so that boards and their major owners feel "ownership" of good corporate governance." Walker calls the role of the chairman paramount in doing this, requiring "exceptional leadership skills and the ability to get confidently and competently to grips with major strategic issues." This means that if done right there will be little time for a chairman to do any other activity....

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It is not clear why the British furlough scheme already cost about 35 million pounds when the German furlough scheme for 12 months cost is 9 million pounds. The British scheme set the amount at 80% of earnings up to 2500 pounds per month, higher than the German furlough scheme which started at 60% and went up to 70-80% if 50% of working hours were lost.  As a result of the cost difference of the two schemes Germany is able to extend its scheme to 24 months while the British scheme ends in October having cost more in a short period 35 million pounds than the 2 year German furlough scheme's cost of 18 million pounds. This means German workers are better protected than British workers. Schemes for furlough in Anglo-Saxon countries Britain and the U.S. have traditionally lagged behind ones in other countries in Europe with resulting job losses and hardships for workers. Could the schemes in Britain and the U.S. be better designed to get more done at similar cost as in Germany with joint worker, company and government cooperation? France is extending its furlough scheme to 24 months. The National Institute for Economic and Social Research says extending the British furlough scheme till July 2021 would cost 10 billion pounds and could pay for itself. A estimated loss of 2 million jobs in Britain from the ending of the furlough scheme in October 2020 maybe be too high a price to pay. ...

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The smaller containment design of the Mark 1 Nuclear Reactor used at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan makes it more prone to explosion and rupture from a buildup of hydrogen, according to some experts in the U.S. Nuclear Safety Program at the Union for Concerned Scientists. This design is smaller and cheaper to build but is less robust than other designs. In the U.S. there are 23 Mark 1 reactors at 16 locations, including the Oyster Creek plant in New Jersey, Dresden plant near Chicago, and Monticello plant near Minneapolis. Worldwide there are 32 such reactors in operation. The design was first developed in the 1960's by General Electric. Since then various modifications have been developed including venting systems to help reduce pressure in overheating situations.

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Feldstein's thoughts in April 2009, on Treasury's Public-Private Investment Plan. First, he says this plan will only remove $500 billion of impaired assets. The banks he says now own $3 billion of residential mortgages, $1.5 trillion of corporate real-estate loans, and $1 trillion of consumer debt. Not all of this is impaired but the banks will have to sell much more than $500 billion to regain confidence in their solvency. And with one third of all residential mortgages exceeding the value of the houses, and thie many homeowners under water, likely to default, the negative feedback loop of foreclosures begetting falling prices begetting foreclosures, threatens the whole effort to shore up the defences. If no workable solution is executed quickly to prevent this then even larger pools of mortgage debt will be impaired irretrievably. Feldstein suggests that the Obama administration seriously look at his plan suggested in March 2008 to provide government loans at low rates of interest like 1- 2% for 20% of the principal amount of the mortgage and then reduce the mortgage principal by 20%, thus keeping millions of homeowners above water. But this needs to be done quickly. All voluntary efforts have failed and have become asmokescreen for banks and lobbying groups with support from Congress to make it appear that this problem is being addressed. Thirdly Feldstein says that if banks sell these impaired mortgage assets at a loss- say 40-60 cents on the dollar on the upside with government and the FDIC picking up alot of the risk and financing for private investors under the new plan- they will now have to show the loss whereas they could have previously shown these assets at unrealistic price levels but still not taking losses. This might push banks into insolvency, so banks will need more injection of capital by the government to make this possible. What are the risks in this situation? Without an effective plan to prevent the negative feedback loop of foreclosure waves and falling houseprices, the quantity of impaired assets will simply grow larger. In effect even if some private investors take out some of the impaired assets from the banking system, it is possible that a new set of assets equal to or larger than these assets that are taken out are added to impaired assets in the banking system as house prices fall steeply from new foreclosures. That only means the economy is in the same hole as before, or in a slightly larger one, even with all the well intentioned steps. At some point the private enterprise argument has to be seen in the correct light. It is not that there is any argument that private enterprise can function better or far superior, it is only that the banks as private enterprises are in such an enormously stressed situation that the bank executive's cannot execute a way out of this mess. ...

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PM Modi's win in Maharashtra, India's second largest state, and commercial center Mumbai with Ahmedabad, puts Vikshit Bharat plan to modernize India like China and Japan, on a firm footing. Some observers such as this one were of the view that the Chief Minister during Covid had done a good job, and that splitting his party with defections was not the right thing to do. Yet this view does not look at the infrastructure needs of the state and the nation which require effective government and government that can concentrate on delivery. It overlooks India's need to do what China and Japan have done to modernize their country in the last century. Vikshit Bharat is real, it is within reach, and Maharashtra senses this like the rest of the Indian nation. It is similar to Bumrah like Modi telling the Indian team that it had prepared well, now one should trust the process- which leads to Vikshit Bharat modernizing the nation - and give one's best. This led to Jasprit Bumrah taking the Indian team to a 297 run win over Australia at Perth after losing 3 Tests in New Zealand. A 14% vote margin for the NDA alliance called Mahayuti that is PM Modi's effort in Maharashtra, one of India's largest states which includes the city of Mumbai. This report says waves such as 2019 or ones in which Rajiv Gandhi won in 1985 were felt on the ground. This one was not anticipated. Yadav says in just 5 months after PM Modi's party lost in the Maharashtra Lok Sabha elections by 1-2% the shift is 15-16%. He says there is an additional 5 % deficit when a party contests a state election after a national election, widening the vote margin to 20 percent.  Of this he says the welfare schemes for women account for only 2-3%. The rest he can't understand.     ...

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How electric utilities and the oil industry are backing California's fight with the EPA to regulate auto emissions, cutting them by 30% by 2016 for new cars and trucks in the state. Its a fight endorsed by 14 states in the Northeast and Northwest. California sued the EPA, and in effect the Bush Administration which controls the EPA, in federal district court and federal appeals court. THe EPA has taken two years to respond to California's request for a waiver so that it can regulate auto emissions in its state. California's auto emissions rules are part of a broad effort to reduce all emissions in the state by 25% by 2020, including by manufacturing, electric utilities and the oil industry. Utilities and the oil industry share the opinion that all sectors of the economy should be required to take on this responsibility, including the transportation sector. In the past oil companies and the auto industry have been at loggerheads about who is responsible for the worsening dependence of the USA on foreign oil and the worsening impact of the oil consumption on the environment and their advertising campaign have often shifted the blame on each other. Is this part of the continuing debate about oil as oil prices rise and consciousness about global warming rises as it has already done so in Europe. See the links to the Frankfurt Auto Show. BMW known for gas guzzling machines has done an aboutface in the face of public opinion in Germany and is advertising its image as environment friendly and investing in new technologies to curb emissions and increase fuel economy. ...

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China faces three main challenges and how well it handles them will determine if China does well in the future because the things that helped China in the last 30 years of development are now gradually coming to a close. The three main challenges are a changing work force and the gradual phasing out of the demographic dividend thats responsible according to some experts for a third of the progress this far, the gap between the rich and the poor, and severely constrained resources and supplies of energy and environmental resources. On the first its not something China can do to much about, on the second its going to have to have a more balanced development and repair the network of social services and redirect resources to the poorer sections (see the link to the conference at Lindau, Germany and Nobel Prize Winning economists opinions on this issue). This will bring more discussion and challenges about how to proceed as a lot of actions to build new infrastructure and new construction has been done by taking over land where needed. And on the third challenge has not been done so well so far as the amount of energy required to each yuan of economic output has not changed much, seeing a 3.7% improvement over 2006 in 2007 and only a 2.9% improvement in the first half of 2008 over 2007. All this is why Secretary Paulson cautions that many American might be worrying about the wrong thing, China overtaking the USA, what really is the worry he says is whether serious troubles in China will affect the stability of the USA and global economies....

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Gary Yonge provides this exceptional report after spending a month in Muncie, Indiana, before the U.S. presidential election of 2016. He talks to different women in the town that is known as Middletown, representing midwestern America. Linda Hanson of the League of Women Voters in Muncie, says that just as the election of a black president brought out the latent prejudice of people towards blacks, in the same way the latent misogyny of people has been brought out by this election towards women. Part of the difference in how Hillary Clinton is viewed comes from partisan views such as coming from women in Republican organizations. A college professor at Ball State University who supported Sanders is ambivalent, hesitant about Clinton as representing the working class. A young college student who is progressive says she is voting for Jill Stein of the Green Party. In Whitely a black part of town, a young woman who works with children and in after school education says she is for Hillary. Sousa, 75, former spokesperson of the League of Women Voters say Hillary is being held upto a higher standard, and there is no perfect candidate among women as there is no perfect candidate among blacks, and sometimes this is used to deny rights or opportunities to women. Also prevalent is the divide among women of older age who have experienced gender discrimination and were denied rights from a younger generation of women who have not experienced this and have no idea about that time. Muncie elected a female Mayor in 2008. Others including a counselor at a women's shelter see a lot remaining to be done, that she hasn't seen women being treated with respect. Sousa of the LWV says its a lot about what the candidate will bring to the country and what she is able to do, not just being a woman, which is the way to tackle the country's problems. ...

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This editorial page opinion in The Economist says the increasing concentration in business is a real problem today. It says tech companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon are entrenching through acquisitions of smaller companies and startups leading to an unhealthy level of concentration, and control of entire markets. More competition is needed so that startups and smaller companies can grow, and new ideas or ways of doing things get a chance. A big problem is tax avoidance with individuals paying taxes like everybody else, and large tech companies like Google and Apple having the option to not have to pay just like everybody else. It calls for a "tough-but-considered" approach to tax avoidance. Its not that the money saved in taxes goes back to support millions of people hired by the industry through workers wages and future investment that builds a future for workers and the company. It cites figures showing 1.2 million employed in the top 3 carmakers in the U.S. auto industry in 1990, and only 137,000 employed by the top 3 companies in Silicon Valley including Apple and Google with capitalization of about $1 trillion.This contributes to a sense of unfairness that is being expressed in voter sentiment in the 2016 elections, especially with the wide divergence in the way that the top 45 percent has done in net worth of over $400,000 in 2013, after the 5% which is in the millions, and the bottom 50 percent at average overall net worth of $25,000 in 2013. A huge disparity that  U.S. Federal Reserve chairwoman Yellen, who cited these figures at a Boston Fed conference in Oct. 2014, says is "near their highest levels in the last one hundred years and probably much higher than for much of American history before then."  ...

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Of the over 400 cases of rickets in Scotland most are in the Greater Glasgow area. Rickets is a disease of poverty and malnutrition.

Dr Chris Williams, joint chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners Scotland, says: “Generally preventable conditions such as these are indicative of Scotland having the lowest life expectancy in the UK, while other environmental factors such as a colder climate may contribute to these outcomes, as well.

“As a society, more needs to be done to protect individuals on low incomes from products that have low nutritional value or that are likely to lead to malnutrition if relied upon instead of healthier alternatives.”

Similar problems exist in parts of the US and other parts of Europe with a general decline in health, and rising cases of malnutrition or poor nutrition, bad choices, use of packaged food, in the population.

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Already Japan, Vietnam and Taiwan are negotiating. India will join South Korea. Britain will follow. Only Canada and China are holding back because of the imbalance in trade heavily in their favor and a failure to see that it is about fairness. In the EU only Germany has a surplus many nations have a deficit, it seeks to start negotiating at the first opportunity. Contrary to what most of the American and British media says Lighhizer and Jamieson have thought this thing through for many years before arriving at the Tariffs advice they gave the US president as his 2 USTR. It is these two not the president acting on his own whim as the media like to show. And Lighthizer has done this before- as Deputy USTR in the 1980 with Japan on the opposite side and come out of it with winning solutions for the US and for the world.

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The Times correspondent in Beijing says he sees two Chinas one that is showing technological advancement in 5G, in space technologies, in information technologies, infrastructure building in big cities. The other China is in rural areas away from the big cities, in smaller towns in regions away from Beijing and Shanghai. These areas have suffered neglect and have changed little over decades, with the focus during industrialization on larger cities and the coastal areas. This is evident in the manner health services infrastructure and development of medical personnel and doctors were neglected in the rush towards building manufacturing and infrastructure of road and rail. There is a shortage of doctors and hospitals, health services are costly, and waiting lists for beds at hospitals is huge. Doctors are also not held in high esteem because the focus is on profit in the market economy that has taken over the health sector.  Education of citizenry on respecting the common welfare which is expected and normal in Europe and America has also suffered during the rush to industrialization. Efforts to ban and eliminate use of certain wild animal foods not being respected by fellow citizens can be seen in this context. This caused the SARS virus epidemic and the epidemic today from the coronavirus. Seen from this angle a slowdown in construction, infrastructure building, and a slowdown in the economy, can even be healthy, so that focus can be shifted to better health, better sanitation, and better medical infrastructure including medical human resource capabilities. Investment in public education on health and self enforcement of rules by citizenry for a better society is indispensable for progress. It is in these conditions that the challenge of the national and international emergency of the coronavirus can be seen today. It also provides an opportunity to reflect on progress so far and the needs of the future. These challenges are even tougher than repeating what one has done before such as building more and more infrastructure, as they involve building a better society through public discipline along with investment in health and education services. This provides a lesson for many Asian, Latin American and African countries in the rush to industrialization. Turning over the health sector to a market economy making services costly and distributed unevenly in the population has not worked in the U.S. for the betterment of all citizens and a healthy society. Carrying this over from U.S. to China and not learning from Europe in what Europe has done well in the less costly and broad distribution of health services for the people, is one of the poorer lessons learned. This is also true for India and South Asia, South East Asian countries in their rush towards industrialization.  ...

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The situation in the U.S. for unemployment by state in Dec. 2011 as seen through statistics from the Labor Department. Losses in jobs at the local government level offset gains in Georgia in the private sector. Texas, Louisiana, Okalahoma, oil producing states have done well. States which suffered from the housing crisis such Florida, Arizona and Nevada, see unemployment lower than at the peak of the housing crisis. Michigan's unemployment rate is lower with the recovery in the automobile industry. North Dakota and Alaska, other oil producing states show jobs growth. For the U.S. private sector employment is up 2.8% since the low point, but job losses in local and federal governmet lead to an overall gain of 1.9%.

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Boeing brings back engineering experts from its past to help bring the Dreamliner project back to shape. The head of the Boeing Commercial Airplane Business, has brought back 8 retired executives back into the fold by forming a Senior Advisory Group. Joe Sutter, 89 years old, is one of the engineeers from Boeing's past that criticized the outsourcing of key parts for the Dreamliner- one of the problems that put Boeing behind schedule by 2 years. Sutter led the design team for the 747 jumbo jet, so he has a legendary reputation. His point- there better be a lot of Boeing people looking at the suppliers to make sure things are done right.

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Krugman points out the risks for the U.S. economy as the U.S. loses export competitiveness with the euro reaching parity with the dollar. The huge shift from $1.50 to the dollar at one point to parity gives Europe a sudden strong boost. Europe needs the boost to escape a deflationary trap, and there is little that can be done for capital flows and exchange rates, says Krugman. He points out that many Federal Reserve governors were clueless of the impact this could have on U.S. growth, sanguinely assuming the U.S. would boost growth in 2015. Better says Krugman for the Fed to be very careful about raising rates at a time when wage growth is sluggish, and inflation low.

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Mr. Zuchowski succeeds John Krafcik as CEO of Hyundai U.S. operations. Krafcik joined Hyundai from Ford Motor in product planning and became the CEO in 2008. Under him sales doubled. Hyundai was seen as delivering better value with a lot of features packed in its base models -a restyled Sonata in 2010 and the Elantra in 2011. From 2008 to 2011 Hyundai U.S. market share increased from 3% to 5.1%. Market share declined to 4.6% through Nov. 2012 partly due to capacity limitiations. In 2012 the EPA said fuel mileage claims were misstated for Hyundai models and testing was done improperly. Zuchowski joined Hyundai from Mazda Motors in 2007 as president of sales.

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Bill Keller of the NYT points out that getting Syria right means getting over the obsession over what went wrong in Iraq and looking objectively at the situation in Syria. He points to the failure of president Obama in grasping what the Assad regime has done to Syria, the refugees in Jordan, the use of artillery and air raids on civilian population, and inviting the support by fundmentalist Islamic countries such as Saudi Arabia in the absence of U.S. and European support, making delay after delay by president Obama leading to a paralysis in response. Leaving the question for the future which was a worse U.S. response- the hasty action in Iraq or the paralysis in Syria?

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A World Food Program report says India is home to over a fourth of the hungry people in the world, about 230 million people. Purnima Menon of the Food Policy Research Institute in Washington D.C., says India ranks below two dozen sub-Saharan countries on a Global Hunger Index. It ranks Madhya Pradesh, a state in central India, as somewhere between Chad and Ethiopia. And serious hunger and malnutrion persists in states that have done better in economic growth, like Gujarat and Maharashtra. The number of children suffering from malnutrition in 2009 is in the range of 42.5% in India compared to about 7% in China, according to figures cited by Rieff.

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Sharing insights into customer relationships from Varian Systems which makes ultra sound scanners that help in detecion and treatment of cancer. The first insight, you exist to solve a customer problem, it does not mean that something is broken. Second insight if you solve the problem even if the customer has been righteously angry with you, you likely have a lifelong relationship. For breakdown of scanner machines in hospital settings, he has another insight- my rule has always been first to fix the machine as quickly as possible and worry about the money later. This must build trust, and likely builds a strong relationship just from the memory of what you have done and the trouble you have taken.

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Glynn gives a vivid account of what driving was like in the old days in Australia, when his dad drove the family in a Holden station wagon from suburban Sydney to the coastal towns in New South Wales. He describes a trip down the Buli Pass.