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Irin Carmon, author of "Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg," says Ginsburg and Scalia showed that working together at the U.S. Supreme Court was possible, even with very different opinions in interpreting the law. Ginsburg and Scalia were friends, and shared similiar background, coming from boroughs of New York, both law professors, and both judges at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Both loved Opera performances. On issues such as women's rights, rights of minorities, gay rights, Scalia and Ginsburg were on opposite sides. Yet both enjoyed a long friendship. Scalia went so far as to say that if one disagreed with a colleague on interpretation of the law but could not be a friend, one should get another job. This kind of spirit of working together is now missing in Congress, says Ginsburg, and hopes someday that will happen. At the nation's highest court Ginsburg says Scalia was nice enough to provide her with his dissenting opinion, so that Ginsburg would have more time in preparing her rebuttal....

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Antonis Samaras, leader of Greece's New Democracy Party, opposes the tax increases mandated by the E.U.'s June 2011 program for Greece. He supports the spending cuts. The shrinking economy with no hope for recovery under the current plan will only worsen the situation. The Greek economy declined by 4.5% in 2010 and will decline 3% to 4% in 2011, and unemployment is already at 16%, with much higher unemployment among young people. Many experts, and editorials in the Wall Street Journal and the Economist, share this opinion. With the austerity program's cuts and tax increases deeply unpopular among ordinary Greeks Samaras's party is moving ahead of Prime Minister Papandreou's socialist party in public opinion polls. Papandreou is not expectd to complete his term of office which ends in 2013, and a change of government may come by the end of 2011. At that point the E.U. leaders will have to negotiate with Samaras. Samaras says he told German chancellor Merkel- if your plan works I will say I was wrong, but if it doesn't you will need a new plan....

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Medvedev set up athink tank last year with Igor Yurgens as head , which was to come with new ideas for Rusian economy and foreign relations. He called for Russia to change course and work with the US and Europe t o work its way out of the crisis. T do this he told a seminar organized by the American Chamber of Commerce in Moscow, that Russia should create dialogue with the people, and experts should be brought into the discussions, and the government guys need to dialogue with both the people and these experts inside Russia and abroad. The suggestion is that policy should come out of vigorous discussion, and the government guys should consult, listen and they should win honestly in the discussions in this policy debate or change course as necessary. On Georgia and Ukrainian gas supplies cutoff, these wounds he says should be healed by making symbolic gestures to Europe and the USA, like the one that Vice President Biden made, in saying in Munich that the US needed to press the reset button in its relations with Russia. The Russian government says that the economy will contract by 2.2% in 2009....

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One can say DJT's warning to US retailers not to increase prices have worked overall. Overall retailers have increased prices only slightly, about 2% since March when DJT announced tariffs. So called old fashioned jawboning did work, as it has with Walmart shown below when DJT admonished Walmart on price increasing strategies. Harvard Pricing Lab experts say retailers have acted cautiously and incrementally because of a lack of clarity on what the tariffs would eventually be, and what impact it would have if it was a negotiating strategy. Here are price increases shown in WSJ Analysis on less expensive items from March 2025 when the DJT tariffs were put in place to July 2025, some of them on basic canned foods made in the US by Campbell Foods and others. Amazon  5% Target      3% Walmart   -2% On less expensive items the prices were reduced slightly- Amazon  cut prices 2% Walmart cut prices   4% Target cut prices       6% Amazon and Target, Walmart operate in slightly different environments. One third of Amazon revenue comes from inexpensive products and it costs more as a percentage of price to ship these products. Walmart and Target operate as brick stores so that some of the lower priced items can get compensated by sales of higher priced items when a shopper makes a trip to the store. Amazon has higher margins on more expensive items so that it is easier to cut prices on these items.    ...

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That is before Wengfeng branched out into AI and his venture DeepSeek to do at a tiny fraction of the cost what these chaps at OpenAI had been openly propagandizing to take not billions, even trillions out of capital markets to leave us all worse of without funds for essential needs in education, schools, healthcare, childcare, transportation. Liang Wengfeng, who founded a $8 billion hedge fund and  invested in AI research fo Deppseek that does in $5.6 million what it takes OpenAI $100 million to do. It started with quant models to predict share prices. He wrote the introduction to the Chinese edition of Zuckerman's book on hedge fund manager Jan Simmons who was into advanced work on quantified modelling for share prices. It says-   “Whenever I encounter difficulties at work, I recall Simons’s words: ‘There must be a way to model prices.' " Liang also says “The publication of this book unravels many previously unresolved mysteries and brings us a wealth of experiences to learn from.” That is before Wengfeng branched out into AI an his venture DeepSeek to do at a tiny fraction of the cost what this chaps at OpenAI had been openly propagandizing to take not billions, even trillions out of capital markets to leave us all worse of without funds for essential needs in education, schools, healthcare, childcare, transportation. ...

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Bartiromo talks to Mark Hurd of HP. He sees the services part of the business and the integration of EDS, as part of astep by step buildup of first infrastucture in hardware, PC's, servers, storage, networking, then software on top of that and services on top of the software. The idea is align all these capabilities and work them together. This way he thinks HP is well positioned to provide customer with infrastructure from the cloud, from a data center and let the customer choose. He sees HP in as strong a position in r&d now as before the global crisis, so that it can drive innovation to automate processes.

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Investigators cited in Congressional hearings say the blowout preventor, a 450 ton set of valves, in the BP oil rig explosion and leak, had a dead battery and was leaking hydraulic fluid. It was the last recourse to prevent an accident. The "deadman switch" that is a device used to trigger the preventor if it loses communication with the rig, as it woud in the event of an explosion, did not work because at least one of its two batteries was dead. The leak in the hydraulics that control the valves could have made the valves not able to function as required to shut the well down.

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Michael Gordon of the NYT points out that the nuclear deal with Iran reached in Geneva on Nov. 23, 2013, is largely a holding action and a way to put some constraints on the nuclear program till Iran and the U.S. can work out some major differences. The Obama administration looks to be willing to concede Iran's rights to enrich uranium- it is the strict limits that are needed that are the points of negotiation. The agreement is given in the 4 page document- the Joint Plan of Action which leaves most of the core sanctions in place and lets Iran keep most of its nuclear infrastructure.

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German unemployment is falling since 2005 when it peaked at 5 million unemployed. Its down by 711,000 in 2007. The unemployment rate is now down to 8.4% and should continue falling. Causes are several trends, a strong external economy means higher exports to Asia, Russia and the Middle East. And demographics with aging population and fewer working age people means jobs created fill the ranks of fewer people available to work. But this trend may be slowed by a further strengthening of the euro, a global slowdown, or a minimum wage that is on the high side 7-8 euros instead of 5-6 euros.

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This may be one of the best responses at the confirmation hearings on an important topic of climate. Watch Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in confirmation hearings with Le Zeldin for EPA Administrator. Lee Zeldin said "climate change is real," and DJT was talking in "the context of the economic cost of some policies where there is a debate and a difference of opinion among parties."

In responding to Senators Lee Zeldin promised cooperation with a bipartisan spirit to tackle climate change, talk to other countries including China about climate change action, and work with individual states including Alaska and Utah which have clean water and air concerns. His demeanor and responses were calm and collected and expressed a desire to fulfill the hopes of most of the Committee Democrats and Republicans through actions of the EPA on climate and the environment.

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The WSJ's Juan Montes, in an exceptional report from Mexico City, tells the story behind a landmark achievement for Mexico- Pacto Por Mexico of Dec. 2, 2012. The major political parties of the right, centre and left forge an agreement for the way forward for Mexico- beyond monopolistic pricing and industry structures in Mexico that hurt consumers, to increase foreign investment and new technlogies to modernize the national oil company Pemex operations, change labor laws, and create a climate for higher growth. The pact is broad ranging, shows a grasp of the problems facing modern Mexico, and ranges from anti-monopoly laws to getting junk food out of schools considering Mexico's high obesity and diabetes rate. It covers 95 goals. It is hard to overstate the significance of this achievement for modern Mexico. Montes describes the initiative of the PRD leader Zambrones in rebranding his PRD party as a moderate left wing party open to new ideas. This happened after the departure of Lopez Obrador from the PRD to form his own party in September. Zambrano and PRD moderates brought up the idea based on what happened in a landmark deal in Spain in 1977, that helped transform Spain after decades of stagnation under the Franco dictatorship. Around July after the presidential election, PRD president Zambrano, and the PRD's Jesus Ortega, held meetings in Mexico City with Jose Murat, a senior PRI politician, and PRI president elect Nieto's top advisor, economist Luis Videgaray. The decision was made by president Nieto and economist Luis Videgaray to pursue the discussions for joint agreement on vital issues facing Mexico. The PAN party was brought into the discussions. By mid-September nine people from the PRD, PRI and PAN started work on a draft agreement at Murat's home. The ground rules were set for discussions to be private, to have agreement on all points or assume nothing had been agreed, and not let current events disturb the talks. The nine participants set up the broad principles, and then a group of three, one from each party was given the task of coming up with the right language for the pact. By the end of November a 34 page draft was put together. A night of intense work to 2 a.m. followed the inauguaration of president Nieto on Dec. 1, with the Pact ready for announcement on Dec. 2, 2012. The Pact is a landmark achievement in its potential for changing Mexico and creating decades of economic progress similiar to that envisioned by the Spanish parties for Spain in 1977. ...

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Adam Bryant interviews Barry Salzberg, new CEO of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu. Salzberg pays attention to tried and tested ideas and this adds to the value of what he has to say about managing and leadership. He emphasizes being prepared, being a little proactive and forward looking, thinking ahead. Its about being transparent and having people reporting to you being comfortable with being open and direct, sharing everything they know. He talks about the importance of being open to feedback, even as in his own personal experience when it takes effort, and takes some maturing to learn from what one hears and what people are saying. Questions he says that reveal more about a person are asking- was there something in the last few years that did not go well, why didn't it go well, and what did you do about it. In work his advice is cascade the things you learn through the organization by sharing it with others. Be yourself not what what someone wants you to be, find that thing which makes you unique, find ways to express this and make your contribution this way. And he says get out of your comfort zone to widen your horizons and see and experience new things. As Salzberg says these things were true in 1980 in his early years and are just as true today in 2011....

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This indepth report from the Economist looks at the damage done in 9 years of rule under Jacob Zuma, and the prospects of the African National Congress under the new leadership of Cyril Ramaphosa. The South African economy suffered under Jacob Zuma. The Zuma government hurt the government's finances, and suffered from corruption and mismanagement. Only 21% of South Africans trust their government in one poll. This indepth report also asks the question- how much has changed since the days of Apartheid South Africa? Mandela's release from prison in 1990, and the ANC party winning elections in 1994 changed South Africa into a multi cultural and multi ethnic society with democracy. A liberal constitution protects the rights of all of South Africa's communities and citizens. Share of households without electricity fell from 42% in 1996 to 10% in 2016. Black people make up 50% of the middle class. Blacks now make up more buyers of suburban homes than whites. Race relations are better today. The problem is that progress and improvement in living and economic conditions stalled after 2009 when Jacob Zuma as head of the African National Congress became president. GDP per person declined after 2013. Half of South Africans were born after the end of Apartheid in 1994. Nearly 40% of people of age 15-34 are not in work, training or education. To get into the middle class one needs a job. About 62% of South Africans would trade democracy for an unelected leader who could deliver on housing and jobs and the economy. Cyril Ramaphosa was made president and head of the ANC after a bruising struggle to oust Jacob Zuma in 2017 ANC conference. He now faces elections in May 2019. In the 1980's he led the National Union of Mineworkers. He later became secretary general of the ANC in the 1990's and led talks for democracy. Ramphosa was passed over by Mandela because of pressure within ANC to select Thabo Mbeki. Mbeki was followed by Zuma, also from ANC. Ramaphosa then joined business, as a small number of well connected black South Africans and made $450 million through preferential access to equity in large firms for a few black South Africans. Then went back to the ANC as deputy president,  then deputy president of the country. The Economist says after Zuma South Africa is running out of time, and Mr. Ramaphosa expected to win, faces many challenges, particularly youth unemployment. ...

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Mitt Romney states the case for supporting free trade both in principles and practice. Acceptance of the staus quo allows China to game the world trading system, says Romney. In the end accepting the status quo may do more damage to the world's trading system than any efforts to correct the misalignment in currencies and failure to rebalance the world economy. He questions the passive approach of some members of Congress and the Obama administration on the grounds that starting a trade war makes them nervous. China with $273 billion more in exports than imports to the U.S. has reason to see this issue objectively, even with all the noise it is making about trade retaliation, suggests Romney. Other experts have pointed to the problems the misalignment creates for China's economy. A New York Times editorial on October 15, 2011, cites figures from the Peterson Institute of Economics showing this costs China $240 billion a year through trade surpluses in dollars that are declining in value. For years China's fears are that this would lead to higher unemployment. This New York Times editorial points out that jobs have increased by about 1% a year since 2004, even with 10%+growth, because many of the manufacturing jobs use advanced manufacturing technologies. A firm response today also makes it possible to avoid the kind of sudden response that could take place later on if public opinion overwhelmingly shifts away from trade with China under status quo conditions. ...

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Turner Adair, head of Britain's Financial Regulatory Authority thinks that banks have assumed an outsize role in the British and world economy, and are coopting their regulators. He sees the need to check many of the excesses. Why not use profits to build up reserves rather than give out huge bonuses and paychecks, he asks. He sees the need to challenge the accepted thinking on Wall Street and in the City of London, where the ideology of efficient markets became embedded, as it did also in the regulatory community. He came in the week Lehman Brothers collapsed as chairman of the FSA. And he wants to shake up the existing thinking. In March, the Turner Review. a 126 page report was published. A lot of attention was paid to his suggesting atax on financial transactions, called the Tobin tax, but its designed more to get people thinking and questionning the existing way of running banking as Turner said in an interview, "we have begun to accept this idea of liquidity as the new God." Can British or American society and the financial industry in both countries work to the benefit of both? Nobel prize winning economists and other experts have advised ashift to productive investments that grow the economy using technology, science and brainpower and new ideas, as opposed to the investment in mortgages and other speculative investments. As the regulators -including former and current heads of the SEC, and other regulatory bodies in the US, Cox, Schapiro and others- once held on to the same theory of uninhibited operation of free markets as best for generating increased wealth for society as the banking community, they tended to get co-opted in letting bad practices flourish. Went to sleep on the job as it were. See the links in Intelilinks. Adair Turner's admonitions are designed to get people thinking. He says, "banks need to be willing, like the regulator, to recognize that there are some profitable activities so unlikely to have a social benefit, direct or indirect, that they should voluntarily walk away from them." Investments in science, technology and new products, as in the 60's that generated a revolution in living standards, than the mortgages and consumer lending of the last decade, is what he may be saying, as do these Nobel prize winning economists....

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Bill Gates resigned his seat on Microsoft Board on March 13, 2020. This report in the WSJ looks at the situation at Microsoft in late 2019 when members of the Microsoft Board hired a law firm to conduct an investigation in late 2019 after a Microsoft female engineer's letter. This was a company that Gates founded and which expanded through acquisitions of other smaller companies.  The same day he resigned his seat on Berkshire's Board led by Warren Buffett. Mr. Gates started Microsoft in 1975, was CEO till 2000, and chairman till 2014. He then turned to work with his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.   Microsoft has market value of $1.8 trillion, Apple a value of $2.1 trillion.  The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has assets of $37 billion income of $53 billion, and the personal assets of Bill and Melinda Gates have an estimated value of $130 billion. One of the mistaken assumptions is that any one foundation such as the Bill Gates foundation has the resources, knowledge, technologies, expertise and leadership to tackle problems that confront large countries such as the US, India, or a bloc such as European Union. Imagine some billionaire taking on the role of a Franklin Delano Roosevelt in tackling the Depression or a billionaire tackling the problem India faces today in public health. It is only governments of the US, India and large nations such as the UK that can pull together the resources needed and the cooperation needed between its industrial base companies to achieve goals for public health. This type of effort can pull together resources of trillions of dollars that no one company or billionaire or group of billionaires can put together, and pull together massive resources of engineers, scientists, and other people across hundreds of companies that cannot even be measured. This is one of the lessons of this pandemic because the WHO was left with the job of handling the pandemic and governments of US, France, UK, Germany, India, Russia and leading nations had retreated from their essential role as guardians of the public interest in people's health and left much of the task to others. As they reassume this role this needs to be given a firm and solid footing and lessons learned. ...

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The view from Qureshi, Foreign Minister ofr Pakistan at the Journal's offices in New York of a sudden withdrawal when the Pakistani Taliban are threatening Pakistan and so close to Islamabad. He fears "more misery, more suicide bombings, and adramatic loss of confidence in the economy as investors fear that an emboldened Taliban , no longer pressed by coalition forces in Afghanistan, would soon turn its sights on Islamabad. Pakistan faced with a withdrawal would lessen cooperation against AlQuaeda and the intelligence that made drone attacks so precise in targeting Taliban leaders may be withdrawn. Pakistan may then strike adeal with the jihadists.

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The US risks going into a deeper hole by not taking account of the Deficit Commission's recommendations, says the New York Times editorial. In the words of the commission's report: " The problem is real and the solution is painful. No easy way out. Everything must be on the table." Everything needs to be on the table- Medicare, Social Security, defense spending.

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Sergio Marchionne, CEO of Chrysler Group, is known to take personal responsibility for getting it right for the small details of quality of Chrysler cars. When one test showed a defective door handle for a revamped Dodge Charger engineers reported on the status of the fix every couple of hours to Marchionne. He believes that if one wants to run the business right one has to get involved at this level. Marchionne has 23 people reporting to him at Chrysler and 25 more at Fiat in Italy. For Marchionne this has helped the two companies to work closely. Chrysler under Marchionne has spent $1.1 billion on revampig 14 models which are now in production. This was the only way to boost sales, as customers did not want the old models. His way to judge the performance of the revamped 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee was to drive it 3,500 miles through Quebec, New Brunswick and New England.

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Daisuke Wakabayashi's exceptional account of how Steve Jobs directed the project to develop the iPhone starting in 2005 upto to the introduction in 2007. At one point Jobs gives Christie, the engineer leading the very small project team, 2 months to put it together or he would find someone else to do it. This is similiar to the way in which Sony's Morita approached his project team working on the Walkman telling them what he wanted to see and the size of the device. Jobs payed attention to all the details from how the phone names addresses appeared on the screen, dialing from the phone book, the swiping action to start the device, the music, and the colors on the screen. Only in on the project's detail were Bill Campbell, Apple director, and Jony Ive, Apple design chief. Christie was approached by Scott Forestall in late 2004 about this secret project codenamed "Purple." Christie is the engineer who joined Apple in 1996 to work on the Newton, and early touch screen device that failed because the technology was not developed enough at the time, making the device bulky and cumbersome. Christie was working on software for Mac computers in 2004. Greg Joswiak, Apple vice president for iPhone marketing, monitored other phone makers to see if they were coming up with a device that migrated the iPod's music features to the phone. Hence the absolute secrecy for this project. The project team is amazingly small. The practice of small teams can be found at Amazon and Kayak....

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Gurcharan Das on the appalling governance in India and the slowing economic growth.

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Krugman points out that in American history even presidents who did not read much and were not very qualified were able to perform well in office because of very qualified people in the cabinet positions. Reagan was not a avid reader yet he had Shultz at State and James Baker at Treasury. Mnuchin is not anywhere near being qualified as James Baker. Tillerson may be qualified as a CEO of a large energy company, but lacks the experience of Shultz. During the last years of his presidency Reagan may have felt the effects of early Alzheimers. Checks and balances also helped to make the system work under presidents so that they did not overreach their powers.  Krugman is skeptical of the way checks and balances would work under president Trump and sees some second rate appointments in the administration. He points to the departure of Mike Flynn and the controversies surrounding the Russian meddling as very different from the situations faced by other presidents with weak qualifications.     ...

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Germany's export oriented economy and its export oriented companies are struggling in 2021 with broken supply chains and high energy prices. This report in the WSJ looks at how Germany needs to rebuild its economy in a different way. German industrial output was 9% below its 2015 level in August, compared to 2% for the eurozone as a whole, according to EU's statistics agency. Italy's growth was 5% over the same period. There is a redirection underway to bring more production back home after years of outsourcing and outshoring. Other changes taking place are the policies being put in place for net zero emissions by 2050, and the targets for 2030 that would make this possible. This also changes prospects for Germany's large auto industry. By 2030 30-50% of all cars will have to be electric cars. About 30% of Germany's industrial output and exports are tied to overseas demand, 4 times that in the US. From 2003 when competitive overhauls took place under chancellors including Mr. Schroeder, German industrial growth was sustained by demand from China. Now with China looking to internal demand following global tensions on trade, sales of some companies are looking flat instead of sustained year over year growth. What will happen now? Here is what the likely new chancellor from the Social Democrats has to say about the overhaul of the German economy and industry- "It will be the biggest industrial modernization project that Germany has carried out probably for over 100 years, and it will really help our economy." The SDP and Greens that together share the same ideas for rebuilding Germany around infrastructure and climate change and upward mobility, badly neglected in the Merkel years, plan big investments. Big investments are to be made in climate protection, high speed internet, education, research and infrastructure. Germany's net investment rate has been around 0.5% of economic output since 2000, compared to 1% for Italy and 1.5% for the US, according to the World Bank. This WSJ report even says net public investment has fallen below zero as existing assets depreciate. To achieve this transition Germany has identified several problems. One is the delays in investment projects that cost German companies 55 billion euros a year, about half the money invested in research and development, according to Germany's statistics agency. Germany was thought to be an industrial powerhouse but the quality of work in projects and delays so apparent in the Berlin Brandenburg airport infrastructure project clearly shows a decline over the past two decades. This will need to be fixed. Other problems are in getting more workers as Germany faces a shortage of workers for factories to 2030.     ...