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David Enrich of the NYT looks at the collapse of Signature bank and SVB Bank and the role of lobbying that led to president Trump setting up new legislation raising size of banks facing Fed regulatory scrutiny from $50 billion to $250 billion. Signature Bank and the author of the regulatory law after the financial crisis of 2008 caused by faulty bank practices -who in one of the anomalies of Congress joined the bank's board for 7 years and resigned this week-  lobbied with SVB bank for less regulation and government oversight. President Biden has learned from the mistakes of this Obama period, as shown by Jim Tankersley in his reporting in the NYT. this week. And made clear from Biden's State of the Union address in 2023, his effort to focus on cutting the deficit by $3 trillion over 10 years by getting everyone to pay their fair share of taxes.

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It was not till 1.39 am in the early hours of the morning of January 7, 2023, that the just elected Speaker of the US House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy swore in all the new members of the 118th House. This ended a week of voting that went into 15 rounds before five Republican member holdouts of 20 rebels voted "present" to make it possible to elect Kevin McCarthy as the new Speaker. A bitter fight led to concessions being made to Freedom Caucus members who wanted to limit spending and cut spending on infrastructure and defense. McCarthy opted for the route of repeated ballots to avoid making concessions on who controls key committees and to limit concessions to ab out 20 rebel members of the Republican Congress. The vast majority of remaining members do not share these views including Democrats who make up about half of the House and many Republican members of Congress.

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Potash a potassium based fertilizer mined from the earth is environmentally friendly unlike nitrogen and phosporous based fertilizers. When Belarus and Russia which make 40% of world supply of potash could not supply the world market because of the war in Ukraine, Canadian producers which make 30% of potash stepped in to increase market share. Two Canadian producers will increase production to meet demand after a 28% increase in the price of potash. Potash has the added advantage of being good for the environment and for climate change action. The use of potash needs to double to meet climate change action goals. Nutrien, the world's largest producer of potash in Saskatchewan, Canada will increase production by 2026 from 15 million tons to 18 million tons a year. BHP has a new plant coming up in Saskatchewan in 2026 for 4.35 million metric tons of potash. 

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A sense that president Putin may have seriously "miscalculated" the scale of Ukrainian resistance and that he may not be getting the right information from subordinates. The conflict does not appear to be in Russia's long term interest, making it weaker with western sanctions.

For EU the shift away from Russian oil supplies shifts to supplies from Qatar and other nations and use of LNG terminals. The US and EU will likely see a more effective shift to renewable energy after the Ukraine war. Increased funding for defense in US and EU and the funding for social goals with a wealth tax planned in the US.

China also sees an impact on its economy and long term growth with sharply reduced access to western technology and research, and restructuring of supply chains to be shorter and focus more on South and Southeast Asia, less on China.

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As the push for biodiversity increases the idea of passive rewilding or letting nature and its chaotic way take its course is getting increased acceptance. It allows natural processes to restore themselves and do the work. A certain amount of chaos is accepted as forests reclaim territory, different species come back and fires, floods return. This is seen in the Peneda-Geres National Park in the northern mountains of Portugal. Here Mr. Pereira at the University of Leipzig Center for Biodiversity Research says it is about letting wildlife return, letting fires, floods return and most importantly letting plants and animals move around.

The issues of biodiversity and restoring landscapes to the ways of nature are the topic of discussion at the UN COP 15 summit this week in Kunming, China. Pereira's idea is that if you love something, just set it free, for a biodiversity setting to take shape.

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Costs of climate change include food insecurity and drought, floods and fires. FR24 pictures show 10 figures from the 2021 Report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: code red for humanity.

Shorter growing seasons lead to declines of 6% for corn and soy, and winter wheat 3%, rice 2% relative to 1980-2010.  2 billion people face food insecurity. Costs from extreme weather events in 2020 was $278 billion. 4 million deaths attributable to air pollution in 2019.

Drought leads to migration in Africa and Asia as crops and cattle wither in the heat from lack of rain. The estimated share of global surface area affected by extreme drought for any given month in 2020 is a shocking 19% according to this FR24 report. Also shocking is that until 2010 this figure was rarely above 5%.

 

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The US state of Nebraska has 69,000 job openings and only a third of that in persons looking for work. After Nebraska at 1.3%, the unemployment rate is lowest in Utah at 2.2%, and in Idaho, South Dakota, Oklahoma, all with unemployment rates of below 3%. The US unemployment rate is 4.6% in October 2021.

Factors deterring people from looking for work in the US are fear of coronavirus, child care responsibilities especially for mothers, a desire for work-life balance, desire for stable employment with decent incomes, retiring early, and people moving away from restaurant, hotel, travel and entertainment industries that are hard hit during this pandemic. A sign of how this mismatch between demand for workers and the supply is happening is the national "quits rate,"  a measure of workers leaving jobs as a share of total employment, which is at a record rate of 3%. 

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The American saving rate is up to 7.8% after dropping to 3.2% by 2009 and the financial crisis. This is a good thing as Americans save for retirement and avoid extravagant expenses to build a safety net. The collapse of traditional pensions means much of the burden for retirement falls on individual families. The student debt burden means families share in high education costs, and the lack of a cost efficient health system means more money is needed for health expenses than in other advanced European countries. The savings rate is still nowhere near what it used to be in the 1970's. 

Higher savings also builds up the funds that are in banks as savings that can be a pool of funds for use in building national infrastructure and other value adding investments for the country. China has used a high savings rate and savings pool of funds for its extensive infrastructure investments that modernized the country.

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Clearly New Yorkers can as a community do better. As Paris gets ready for the Olympics the efforts of City Hall and the French local and federal governments can be something for New York to learn from. Clearly as home to Wall Street New Yorkers should get their priorities straight and invest in the subway system taking a page from Tokyo and other cities that are doing infinitely better in their subway systems with modernization and attractive subway facilities. Surely this takes investment in people and facilities on a scale with tens of billions of dollars in investment which can be diverted from wasteful spending in many startups, and tax dollars going into what comes first for New Yorkers using the subway system every day. Today New Yorkers are like the people of Mumbai who until the efforts of the Modi government to invest in the complete modernization of subway and trains had given up hope so entrenched were old systems and old ideas.

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A small rise in interest rates of 1% can add about $7 billion to revenues for Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and JP Morgan Chase banks, according to estimates cited in WSJ. This is because short term loans which predominate today can reprice quickly for banks and rates for depositors at banks do not change much. This is a more reliable source of revenue and one on which the banks have depended for much of the past 100 years. The use of complex instruments and shady instruments such as the mortgages devised in the 2009 mortgage financial crisis did little for banks and instead caused a major financial crisis in the shape of economic depression with income and job losses for families and workers in the US and in the rest of the world. Complexity meant less transparency in this context, more chances of messing up finances, and bad news for America and the world.

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The idea here of promoting biodioversity by turning backyard lawns into places of biodiversity. Bringing back natural backyards where biodiversity takes root. A movement to encourage private owners of backyard plots and lawns to corporate campuses to create homegrown national parks. It envisions turning over 40 million acres of lawns in the US to imperiled native plants and trees. The idea is that of a land ethic- we abuse land because we think of it as something we own, not something we share with the rest of humanity just for a while. This way we treat it with the love and respect the land deserves. One way to do this is to design native landscapes as formal gardens so that they do not look so biodiversity plots not look messy. Intentionaly designed elements delineate larger messy wilderness in such biodiversity inclined garden spaces. Do this one small patch of land at a time.

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Farmers protests asking for minimum support price to be extended to other products beyond rice and wheat. About 260 million people are employed in agriculture in India with many farmers on small plots, and large farms depleting water supplies. Efforts to introduce market pricing that would increase farm incomes and to shift more agricultural labor to the industrial sectors that build modern infrastructure and to factories are designed to improve standards of living. The pandemic and the years of slow growth before 2014 and lack of infrastructure building in earlier decades means the kind of shift of agricultural workers to factories that happened in China will be the task of the next ten years. The next budget for 2024-2025 shown in adjoining powerpoint shows the increase of capital expenditures of 11.1% in the coming year for infrastructure that is meant to catch up to the advanced industrial economies of the world with sustained investment at scale over the next decade. ...

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Apple gets 19% of its sales in China with a manufacturing base that includes 1 million people employed in one Chinese city. In an effort to promote Make in China China is giving Huawei more room to compete with Apple. Huawei is bringing out a new 5G phone as an alternative and has banned use of Aplle iphones in government agencies. This means about 56 million people will have to turn to locally made products. China presents this move as an effort to protect data and cybersecurity. Yet Apple has a share price increase of 46% this year even in an environment in which US and China are restricting the export of key technologies (by US) or critical materials for electric cars (by China). Apple's responses to this have been slow preferring to keep its supply chain the way it is in a strategy based on the short run, with some minor shift to India and Vietnam.

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The Guardian looks at Lachlan Murdoch's career and how he differs from his sisters and from his brother James. He is seen as closer to his father in his thinking than James which is why after leaving Fox News following differences with Roger Ailes his father tried to get him back. This happened with an absence of ten years. The family trust set up for Murdoch's four children shows all jointly share in the family stake. This means the others will also have an influence in the future and the direction prospects of this media business left by Rupert Murdoch. As the world moves to the internet and new ways of learning news this marks the end of an era in which a few people were able to move public opinion- Beaverbrook and Murdoch belong to a different century, the twentieth not the twentyfirst.

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Bidenomics and how it works for America- you don't have to have a college degree and two thirds of the workforce doesn't have one, you don't have to move and most people can't move to costly housing locations like California or New York. America can build here at home in chips, aviation and advanced technologies in scale and discovery that it has in its heritage. And you don't have to move when factories can go up in all parts of America, rural areas, small towns, and in neglected factory towns from a different era of the 50's and 60's. This is what Biden is doing with trillions of dollars in spending with the help of some Republicans sharing his vision for American Renewal. Not just talk- just substance, results. And cost of living- inflation cut in half from 2022 to 4%.

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US economic growth was 2.4% in the second quarter of 2023. Even though the Fed increased rates at 10 consecutive meetings by 5% since March 2022 to tackle inflation the US economy appears strong. Large investments in the trillions of dollars in US manufacturing and infrastructure, tackling climate change is what is different this time compared to the past 2 decades when bad decisions were made with twin wars in the Arab and Muslim world, and the supply chain was transferred to China, investments were neglected in infrastructure, education and health in public goods, and capital markets allocated money with decreasing advantage to the economy. President Biden was in a unique position after the pandemic to take stock of all these mistakes and move the nation forward in positive directions in a decisive way in scale as well as in spirit and determination. That he has done so is more proof of the resilience of America.

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With misinformation and harassment online  during election year 2024 Annalena Baerbock, foreign minister of Germany, says "democracy did'nt fall from the sky. We have to protect it" Elections take place in Mexico, European Union, India, Britain and France, in 2024 as online media spreads misinformation. Baerbock says the yardstick of women's rights is a crucial one. If women are in danger it is a bad omen for society." Peter Limbourg of DW says "Even in dark times optimism is a better way to handle it. Because pessimists normally do not contribute to solutions." Hendrik Wurst stressed "the critical role of promoting media literacy in the digital age," something that is done through the efforts of Lyrarc.com by bringing in the best articles from leading media publications in the world on all topics to create educated informed mindsets that shape better lives and societies, and by keeping it open to all to access.

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Harris will visit United Autoworkers Union Local 652 in Lansing to remind autoworkers of the support of president Joe Biden for the labor movement in the US. And for the efforts for restoring jobs and wages after decades of neglect by both previous Democratic and Republican administrations. Biden was the first US president to stand on a picket line inthe history of the US. Harris-Walz now look to unions and labor support, support of workers and families in the industrial midwestern states. For the first time old rust belt factories are being revived with new infrastructure renewal and new technologies products in a new concept that is tried for the first time at a scale of investments of billions of dollars that was never done before. This is the breakthrough that Biden and now Harris  are putting through as The Way Forward for a new generation and the Renewal of America.

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European has a completely different perception of events in Europe than the US which has distanced itself. EU president Von der Leyen says- “A new era is upon us. Europe faces a clear and present danger on a scale that none of us has seen in our adult lifetime … We are living in the most momentous and dangerous of times.” And it is has the room in its budgets and the willpower to back it up without US help. $30-$40 billion in EU aid to Ukraine when US aid to Ukraine ended this week by the DJT Trump administration. Part of the $650 billion in new defense spending found in the space left from lower spending for decades of less than 2%, from an increase of 1.5% in spending on defense. And the $150 in loans from joint EU borrowing on capital markets.

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Apple's plans to get a share of revenues and control customer data for digital newspapers and magazines it supports on the I-Pad.

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Google's share of the online ad market falls below 50% for the first time. Changes are made to management. The US federal government seeks a breakup of Google because of its business practices. Major law suits are pending for the US Justice Department investigating Google business practices.

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The Facebook IPO on the first day of trading on May 18, 2012 barely remained above the share price of $38, closing at $38.23

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Huawei moved into third place passing RIM Blackberry and Nokia in smartphones with about 5% market share in the 4th quarter of 2012, according to IDC. Huawei increased market share with its strategy for cheaper smartphones.

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In a factory the size of 5 football fields located in Gurnee, Illinois, Abbott Labs makes its BinaxNow Covid-19 home tests. Abbott turned out 1 billion tests in 2021 and at one point had 80% of the market. Along with Pfizer vaccine, BinaxNow Home covid-19 tests are a dominant product during the pandemic. Abbott generated a fifth of its $43 billion in revenue from these home tests. Abbott faced several hurdles along the way. It gained when the US government authorized it to make the test. Yet after vaccination took off by mid 2021 the demand for tests declined and Abbott nearly idled its giant factory in Gurnee. Delta and Omicron variants led to a sudden reversal and surge in demand. Abbott developed its test based on an existing design it used in the US for flu tests, by a company it inherited by acquisition called Binax. To do that test one sends a swab up the nose, add that sample and a liquid mixture to a rectangular paper card, and close the card shut. The liquid then travels up the paper strip, revealing one or two pink lines, one for negative, two for positive. This is done in 15 minutes and the simple design described as a lollipop shape, put Abbott far ahead of competitors. The US FDA authorized Becton Dickinson and Quidel to make the tests before it authorized Abbott, but these rival companies had a poor and complex design. The Trump administration gave Abbott a $760 million contract to buy 150 million tests for distribution to health departments, long termcare facilities, nursing homes, and schools. And by October 2020 Abbott was already making 50 million tests a month. When it comes to distribution Abbott tapped into its pharmacy connections for baby products such as Similac baby formula. This gave it an advantage over Quidel and others who also lacked the manufacturing knowhow for large scale ramp up. The BinaxNow in pharmacies was sold at $24 for a box of two tests, while government paid $5 for one test. Abbott says it makes $ 7 per single consumer test. Yet there was one problem waiting to hit Abbott in 2021- demand dried up as the vaccination campaign took off. In fact the plant manager, Mr. Rodriguez, planned to move to another job inside Abbott as production declined. Then came the Delta variant and he was asked to ramp up production again. With Omicron demand soared. The Biden administration committed $3 billion to help boost test production and asked Kroger and Walmart to sell over the counter tests at cost for 3 months. Abbott had to lure workers from Amazon at $25 an hour for the Gurnee plant expansion. What was learned by the government and Abbott from this experience? The US government now looks for ideas in meeting demand volatility, supply challenges and production needs,. Sustaining production capacity is important for future virus flareups- a new government-industry partnership is required for maintaining test making infrastructure. With government help Abbott plans now to keep the facility at Gurnee operating indefinitely. ...

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Indian firms in the pharmaceutical industry. Inventing new drugs from scratch through research and development and lab work and testing is only now taking shape.