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Amazon workers in Germany and the U.S. protest low wages. Amazon has about 9000 employees at 9 logistics centers in Germany. The company gets $8.7 billion of global sales of $61 billion from Germany. The retail and mail order sector in Germany has higher wages than the logistics sector. Amazon classifies its employees as being in the logistics sector. Amazon is using 14,000 temporary workers in Germany to cope with the protests and strikes during the Christmas season. It is also using its Europe wide network to cope.

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How do you setup a vaccine business. Consider Mr. Adar Poonavalla in the city of Pune in India. His company Serum Institute of India, remains family owned. Founded in 1966 by Cyrus Poonavalla, it produces billions of doses of vaccines for measles, polio and other diseases. It is expected to be one of the key sources of vaccines because of its expertise and the stocks of vials and other supplies that it has in stock for the next 2 years of vaccine production. It is working on a separate facility for coronavirus production that could turn out 800 million doses of vaccine at a price of about $13 a dose over 2 years. Serum Institute is working with 3 companies that are doing the research on the vaccine for coronavirus in the U.S. and Europe, and will play a key role in the manufacturing of vaccines. To respond to the question how do you setup a company to produce vaccines for the people of the world. This is what Mr. Poonavalla says- he will only work with ethical long term funds and sovereign funds because he does not want to be in the situation where he has to charge high prices to give them returns. Unlike most countries in the world, India is unique in making certain that most of the basic pharmaceutical drugs are available to over a billion people at a low cost. Serum's goal is low cost quality vaccine production so that over a billion people in Asia can be "protected from the birth onwards." As the U.S. and Europe and large parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America, face the second vaccine phase of the coronavirus response following difficulties in PPE, Ventilators, and Masks in the first phase, they can have confidence because of companies such as Serum and the research centers in U.S. and Europe like the one at Oxford University. ...

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Louis Uchitelle talks to Stanley Moses, an economist at Hunter College in New York, and others, to find out if things will work out as expected with the $700 billion or $800 billion that Obama plans to invest in infrastructure, energy, and other things to generate the 3 million jobs and investment. Will this generate private investment like the Interstate Highway program which ocurred during the Eisenhower days and set the economy on fast growth, or will it generate enthusiasm and jobs for a few years, and just as Roosevelt backed off in 1937 to let private investment pick up he found that it was still too weak to make a difference. The point that he hears from some experts like Moses is that the current times are setting up for a deep downturn, so that is not reminscent of the Eisenhower years when the economy was getting on the growth track after the war years. Its not exactly like the Roosevelt years either, because of the many changes that have ocurred in a modern economy, but in terms of the mood, the collapsing investment, consumer spending and credit and the collapsing growth in emerging markets which hits exports, this is a situation that is not easily reversed with a few years of aggressive government spending. Things have to change in the public's mood and in private industry's initiative to invest that would return the economy to a growth pattern, and this may be a long time coming with so much deterioration happening at the same time....

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The Congressional Budget Conference committee meetings offer an alternative to the distrust and failure in negotiations between the White House and the House Republicans. Efforts are underway to make the process of negotiating an agreement work in this Budget Committee chaired by Paul Ryan and Pat Murray. Republicans push for spending cuts as the debt ceiling reaches $16.7 trillion in 2013 compared to $4.9 trillion in 1993, an increase that is triple the increase in the prior 5 decades. Democrats say the cuts would hurt economic growth and the unemployed.

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A complete reversal of the Monroe Doctrine (US president Monroe 1817-1825) policies -that kept the American continent north and south free of colonial European powers- is an affront to the US and has cost the US in Latin America. With fentanyl deaths and drug trafficking, migrant trafficking, interference by foreign powers in the Americas In Cuba, Venezuela and other countries, and ports owned by China in South America.  Hong Kong magnate Li Ka-Shing's Hutchison Holdings sale of Panama Canal ports to Black Rock for $23 billion takes place on March 4, 2025. The two ports on both sides of the Panama Canal will now be in American hands. Li Ka Shing started out fleeing from the devastated China of the Sino Japanese war to the British colony of Hong Kong, left school at 15 to work and started out with a small plastics factory in 60's Hong Kong. He then branched out into real estate as Hong Kong's economy expanded, and in the 2000-2020 period with rapid growth of China with US assistance (Clinton and Bush administrations) moved to acquire most of the ports and container terminals in the world. It is these ports that are now being bought back by the US. 23 ports and container terminals in 43 countries will now be sold back by Li Ka-Shing's Hutchison Holdings back to Black Rock under an agreement. None of this could have happened under the lackadiasical policies of previous administrations that led to first affront and then disastrous effects of migrant trafficking and drug trafficking in this hemisphere.   ...

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Unemployment in Spain among people ages 16-24 is 42.9%. This is the highest rate in Europe, and it is double the overall rate of 19.3% for Spain. By comparison the overall jobless rate in the USA for workers ages 16-24 is up to 19.1%. Why this high an unemployment rate for young workers? Greece has youth unemployment rate of 25%, while Ireland has a youth unemployment rate of 28.%, and Italy 26.9%. The rate in Poland is 21.2%, down from 35% a few years ago. In Eastern Europe overall the rate is 27.9%. This puts Spain at a level higher than Eastern European countries where youth unemployment has traditionally been higher. Worse, this is a result of a spike in unemployment from 17% at the height of the boom three years ago, to the currrent 43%. Alfonso Prieto, deputy secretary general of employment studies at the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, says this high rate in Spain is a result of a disproportionate share of Spanish youth employed on temporary contracts. During the boom years a large number of young workers joined a culture of temporary work, with the term "mil euristas," used for workers on 1000 euros a month. With the economy in trouble these were the first people laid off. Low skilled and immigrant workers who lost jobs are also reflected in the statistics, as Spain witnessed an influx of millions of immigrants during the boom. Still worse the government is under tremendous pressure from the EU and bond markets because its budget deficit reached 11% of GDP in 2011, and austerity measures are being adopted. Spain is spending 30 billion euros in unemployment benefits, but the money is not doing much to prepare workers for jobs in new industries or new vocations for the future. ...

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The difficulties Microsoft is having in integrating Skype into its products even as the use of Skype increases by 26%. This is similiar to the situation EBay faced when Microsoft acquired Skype from EBay in 2011. Skype users are now estimated at 250 million Microsoft has given Skype management special autonomy with its head offices and president Bates located in Silicon Valley. Microsoft CEO Ballmer say it is importaant that Skype work well on all platforms and devices.

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Migrants cross the border freely wading through murky thigh high water of the Rio Grande in the Del Rio sector of the US Border Patrol. WSJ shows migrants crossing the river. About 13,000 migrants are in Del Rio mostly from Haiti after a natural disaster. Flights from Texas will now take most of them back to Haiti . US Border Protection is expected to have 600 added personnel in the area today. US Border Patrol has made 215,000 arrests in the Del Rio sector, the second busiest of the Border Patrol's nine southern sectors. Word had spread in community of Haitians looking for job opportunities that this was a safe place to cross.

The Biden administration is moving to tackle this mistaken perception that US is likely to let migrants in. Haiti says it will take the migrants back into the country. Other migrants are from Guatemala, Cuba and Honduras.

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Tution fees in the UK are 9450 pounds. The cost of housing about 7500 pounds in 2024, up 15% over the last 2 years. In addition to the over charges on student loans for Plan 2 Loans in Britain that take it from 4.3% with a surcharge of 3%, there is the 15% inflation in housing costs in Britain that households and student have to contend with. This situation is true today for Britain, the US and Germany, and other countries in the EU leaving less for food and transportation costs. This is why there is an added level of worry and anxiety for young people in Britain the EU and in the US, and for their parents.

Others one with a business economics degree and a solicitor apprentice in a law firm face the same situation. He works in finance and just sees it as he says a tax on having gone to university.  Similar stories across the US. It doesn't have to be this way for advanced nations education is FIRST PRIORITY.

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Defense Secretary Gates does not see Russia as the threat it was in the Cold War, first because Russia's conventional forces are a "shadow" of what they were during the Cold War, and Russia has adverse demographic trends that will diminish Russia's ability in conventional forces. He sees the Georgian war in the context of Russia's seeking to exorcize, as he puts it, past humiliations. And Gates sees opportunities in the relationship with Russia. Such things as Russia's willingness to work with the US on Afghanistan. Evidence of this is Russia supporting the renwal of the UN resolution on Afghanistan. Another indication is that Russia he says is very worried about the drugs coming out of Afghanistan, and has been supportive to provide alternative routes for Europeans to get equipment and supplies into Afghanistan. These views come across in an interview on December 17, with Charlie Rose, a five time elected Congressman, for the PBS Charlie Rose show. They are also reflected in an article in Foreign Affairs journal's current issue. Gates was a CIA analyst and has some insightful observations. Gates told Charlie Rose that he does not see the Islamic radicals and violent Islamic extremists as a threat in the same way as the threat in the Cold War years. This threat is not as big as the threat to freedom during the Cold War. He says the failure in strategic communications was huge as agencies of the US government engaged in activities in other countries, like the Agency for International Development and the US Information Agency, were neglected starting in the in the 1990's. Communications in other countries of what the US represented and stands for was left to the Pentagon, a role the Pentagon was ill-suited for. He sees the Islamic terrorism as more of an ideological conflict. Speaking at a town hall meeting at the Balad Air Force base in Iraq, in December, Gates pointed to these communications failures as a real challenge for the new administration. But he now sees a huge opportunity in this past failure, and ways of addressing it creatively, in addition to commiting resources and people to this effort. Walter Pincus wrote this article, and its part of the fineprint analysis effort at the Washington Post in which speeches, reports, and other documents are examined by people like Pincus, to catch the really important things, uncovering the fine print that really makes the headlines. Another aspect of this fineprint effort is that there are a huge number of reports, and speeches and documents that had a tone reminiscent of the Cold War during the Georgia war and yet they do not correctly reflect the real situation about Russia, as Gates sees it from his analysis of what is actually happening. Gates has used Foreign Affairs, the Dec 17 Charlie Rose Show on PBS in which he was interviewed, and the speech at the Balad Air Force base in Iraq, to communicate his views and analysis. They are important to underline and emphasize precisely because they show that all that cold war hysteria reporting and speeches may be misleading and lead to improper conclusions and mistakes in policy, wasted effort, wasted resources, and lost lives. And just as the US strategic communications was starved of resources and effort, so also this necessary work to retrieve and give emphasis to the important things is neglected. One additional link to this is the speech, discussion, and QA session in Washington DC at the time of the G20 summit in which President Medvedev and the new administration's elder statesman and diplomat Marilyn Albright, former secretary of state, expressed their hopes and plans for a new era in Russian-American relations. ...

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This is an highly important interview by the BBC with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer. We have followed the path breaking work of Mr. Lighthizer at Lyrarc.com over 10 years, and have great respect for his effort on behalf of the American people and American workers. Here are some of the remarks he made at the end of the term of the Trump administration. Lighthizer says the objective of trade is not just efficiency, it must be working men and women. This is the shift that Mr. Trump has made. It will be a lasting change as leaders in both parties see this as important, says Lighthizer. There are companies that immediately want to go back to the way things were but Lighthizer says members of both parties will prevent this. This will be a lasting change. Democrats in particular could soon face strident criticism that they have let down the working class from within their party, increasing the risks of the party to represent large parts of the American population. Lighthizer says its not accurate that we started a lot of trade wars, we have simply enforced our laws and insisted on fairness for American workers. There was really no trade war in the improved NAFTA deal in the interests of American workers, which also enhanced worker protections in Mexico, for a win-win on both sides of two neighbors. "We want strong communities in the U.S. and if that means T-shirts will cost another nickel, they will cost another nickel," sums up the way Lighthizer sees it, and the way all of America would see it if one regained the idea of government for the people, of the people and with the people. "We are proud of what we have done to reorient American trade towards working people in the U.S. and less towards outsourcing and corporations," says Lighthizer. And he says that was important to do. Lighthizer only highly underestimates what he has done for America and American workers.  A lot remains to be done. The about $800 billion in overall trade deficit the U.S. has with China, Germany and the rest of the world is not sustainable, he says. The job only gets harder now that the direction is clear.    ...

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Two divergent approaches to the coronavirus are shown in this report in the WSJ. One in Italy which relies on quarantine and lockdown and mandatory social distancing, and the other on keeping borders open and aggressively tracking down the infected using data and testing. In South Korea infections have stabilized at 8000, and in Italy the are rising at 15,000. The divergent approaches and the results vary with the people's history, culture and recent experience. The cultural difference in Asian societies with people willing to cooperate and work together with health authorites for the social stability and good of the country is different from the more individualistic nature of western societies. In addition Italy has a long period of foreign rule of Hapsburgs nd French that has created an attitude of working around authority, the tendency to being furbo which prime minister Conte referred to in a nationwide address.  South Korea and Taiwan also have experience with the SARS and MERS virus during which public health regulations were instituted and comprehensive databases setup that are now being used to combat the new health crisis by tracking down people with health needs. The precedents have taught people in South Korea and Taiwan of how serious this kind of crisis can become, which was absent in Italy in the early stages. Both South Korea and Italy are democracies. The difference being that one has experience with public health crises from experience with SARS, MERS, H1N1, and has developed policy tools, broadened public support and increased state powers in anticipation of such crises. In South Korea there were fines of $8300 for those not willing to be treated and the government aggressively tracked down people. Public support and awareness also helped in controlling the situation. Taiwan has done better than South Korea as covered in a separate article in the WSJ, and shown here, controlling the situation from the beginning including shutting down flights from China early because of its close proximity to China.  ...

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Apple's sales in India are insignificant because of the lack of 3G networks. RIM's Blackberry and apps work well on the existing 2G networks. Prices are higher with the cheapest iPhone costing $705 at a Reliance iStore. The cheapest iPad 2 goes for $603. Blackberry phones cost less than $200. As a result Apple's iPhone sales are only 2.6% of India's smartphone shipments for the 2nd quarter 2011. RIM's is 15%, Samsung Electronic's is 21%, and Nokia's 46%, according to IDC. RIM is extending its distribution in India from 15 cities in 2010 to 80 cities in 2011. IDC estimates that smartphone shipments in India will grow by 68% a year, reaching 81.5 million units by 2015.

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In the earlier history of Japan when Japan was still a poor agricultural country, these Japanese left for Brazil to work in the coffee plantations there. Because Japan's aging population meant foreign workers were helpful to ease shortages, especially for the hard and difficult jobs left for for foreigh workers, special work visas were issued to the descendents of these emigrants. Now an estimated 366,000 Brazilians and Peruvians live in Japan. Jiro Kawasaki, an LDP leader and lawmaker, has set up an emergency program of cash payments -$3000 for airfares and $2000 per recipient- to send these South Americans of Japanese descent home, on the condition that they sign papers never to return. Many of these people are agonizing over the decision especially the one that makes return impossible. The idea is to relieve pressure on labor markets as exports have dropped by 46% and unemployment is rising. However Japan has faced labor shortages in thepast, and these people have aJapanese heritage, which makes this policy in immigration averse Japan controversial. In Britain there have been protests as companies hired foreign workers when British workers were unemployed. It appears that this trend is happening even in immigration friendly countries....

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The Independence Hall Philadelphia, speech by Joe Biden was in retrospect a turning point in America from the chaotic politics of the last 5 years, following a decades long fracturing of the social fabric of America. That fracturing had many causes, all of which have been identified by president Biden and leaders in Congress such as Mr. Schumer and Senators Coon, Hickenlooper, and others, who are working nonstop on legislation and funding of America's new priorities. These are priorities of protecting working class families, building their savings, supporting education and healthcare for working class families, building back better America's crumbling infrastructure, tackling climate change, financing renewable energy, rebuilding America as a manufacturing leader for the world. It is because of this effort that candidates who support this effort prevailed in Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Arizona for Democrats to retain the Senate and be competitive in the House of Representatives. Only complacency led to unexpected losses in New York state for the House of Representatives leading to loss of the House by a small margin. This NYT report looks at what happened in 2022 and what this means for securing the country's key priorities to build hope for the future of America and of the free world.  ...

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The Deficit Commission setup by US President Obama recommended changes in the tax codes including elimination of the deduction for mortgage interest. It calls for limiting spending on health care, gradually raising the retirement age, and lowering the tax rate. The commission identified $200 billion in discretionary spending cuts, with half coming from defense spending. The federal gasoline tax rate would increase from 2013, increasing by 15 cents a gallon at that point. It would gradually increase the retirement age to 68 by 2050. And combine a reduction in benefits with an increase in taxes on wealthier senior's benefits. It seeks to slow Medicare growth to control health care spending. Other proposals. A freeze on salaries and bonuses of federal employees for three years, to save $15 billion by 2015. And proposes cutting the federal work force by 10% to save additional $13 billion by 2015.

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Problems in graduate education, too many people taking on lstudent loans that are burdensome, over $100,000, to do research under faculty who are working on more and micrto detail fields that have less and less relevance, so that few jobs exist when they graduate. And faculty jobs are available in small numbers as tenured professors have to retire before their are new openings. Which is why in the situation where faculty work in small cloistered fields doing thier own thing, even important subjects as the role of religion in international relations happen to have been left out. It all suggests that we have asystem of graudate education out of synch with whats required.

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With coronavirus spread out over wide parts of each country and with so many people infected it is very difficult to do the contact tracing and isolation that was tried during the first wave. In Germany during the first wave efforts for contact tracing and isolation worked reasonably well. During the second wave in November things have changed. In Germany authorites do not know in November where 75% of the people testing positive for coronavirus got it. In Spain this figure is 93% for the last week of October. In France and Italy it is at 80%. In New York it is over 50%. Other problems are the increasing number of cases where the coronavirus is spread in an home setting, the lack of restaurant data collected on who visits, and the delay in getting test results. In Germany frequently people say they cannot remember where they were. Researchers from the German version of the FBI, the Pasteur Institute in France and the Koch Institute in Germany are getting involved in November to understand in what settings the virus spreads most. ...

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Vindu Goel of the NYT gives this report on IBM's expansion in India including an interview with Vanitha Narayanan, chairman of IBM India. In 2017 IBM had 130,000 employees in India, at operations in Pune, Calcutta, Chennai and Bangalore and other cities, double that in 2007. The U.S. operations have about 100,000 employees. As IBM's revenues have declined with technology disruptions, it has concentrated on expansion in India with its vast base of knowledge workers and costs of about one half to one fifth of what it would cost in the U.S. IBM has 380,000 employees worldwide, with 26% in the U.S. and 34% in India, and 40% in other countries. Microsoft employs 8000 employees in India and 124,000 total worldwide, Google has 1800 in India and 72,000 worldwide.  IBM removed operations in India in 1978 after a dispute with the Indian government. In 1993 it started operations in India in a joint venture with Tata. By 2004 the operations had expanded and IBM took full control. A $750 million 10 year contract was signed in 2004 with an Indian phone company Bharti Airtel. As Goel points out the shift is happening towards expansion in India with the growing demand from industry and government in India. The Watson venture has expanded in healthcare in India with contracts including one with Maniphal Hospitals. In 2016 this had reached $38 billion in hardware and software, services, to Indian industry and the government agencies. IBM's work is not simply in offsourced work from American companies. High tech and cutting edge research is also taking place and expanding. IBM is now uniquely positioned to get an expanding share of the business as more tech services are provided to the hundreds of millions of people in India who did not have access to tech and tech services before. Research concentrates on doing this at a fraction of the cost and in new ways suited to the local region, so that services can be delivered with a wider reach. This report provides a new perspective on how the next decade could see American companies with a long term focus take advantage of the rapid growth in the fastest growing large economy in the world, with advantages for both the U.S. and India. ...

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What Handan Iron and Steel in Hebei Province 300 miles south of Beijing and ThyssenKrupp in Dortmund, Germany, have in common. The transplanting of Germany's aging defunct iron and steel furnaces and plant to Handan, boxed and crated away- its unreal that in 1998 Handan Iron and Steel bought and transferred an aging polluting plant to a city where the steel works are located in China which has 8.5 million residents. When years later the steel works were debated to be moved to a distance away from the city with Baoshan Steel, the decision was made to instead put a new plant there instead. The solution was to make pollution payments to residents of Handan. It was Mao's dream to build a steel industry in Hebei province ,which has large deposits of iron ore and coal and a rail line. Couple of questions come up to mind- one why did the first steel works go up right in Handan, and same is true of Dortmund, labor supply perhaps but couldn't homes be built nearby instead and these plants located away from cities. Second the deal for bringing the ThyssenKrupp plants was as recent as 1998, by this time China was already a big steel producer (producing more than the US by one estimate) and in a few years Chinese steel production was to exceed the US, Europe and Japan combined. With steel production already on the rise why didn't China move more carefully. Some of the Thyssen Krupp assets were built only a few years before 2000 and met stringent environmental control. China bought these.. Why didn't China pick out the best assets instead of old aging blast furnaces. The possible answers are that they were available at cut rate prices, but were they worth it. The second is that Hebei must be competing with other parts of China, and there wasn't a rational allocation of capital as would happen if a sophiticated company like a Mittal or a Tata Steel is involved. Is China operating on a outmoded concept- nationalism, competition between provinces with local government officials running the show? The other question is that in the case of the automobile industry a different pattern is seen, the most modern technology was selected , and in the case of Cherry, the most recent technology was selected for manufacturing cars, then why was this same pattern not adopted in the case of steel. In the end China has a surplus of steel mills, which makes this rush into steel production without carefully thinking through this appear to have been a mistake. The visual picture if one flies into Dortmund of manmade lakes, green park areas and residential housing and shopping from the $22 billion the EU and Germany are investing to turn the Ruhr valley region of Dortmund into a centre of education, technology and tourism now contrasts sharply with Handan in Hebei province. Can emerging countries do better, build manufacturing for jobs but keep living conditions in mind, be patient and work to achieve the best overall results, and build education, technology, appropriate for their own situation. ...

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Simply put the party that makes the best case for the economy and for a better future consistently and constantly will prevail as at the end of the day white, black, rural and urban voters will be listening carefully. The cost of living, immigration, the economy, are major issues in 2024. Nate Cohn of the NYT looks at the 2020 election, the 2022 midterms and polling for 2024. He says Republicans are doing better in states they did well in the midterms in 2022. Nationally they are doing as well as in the midterms making gains in noncompetitive blue states such as New York and California where there is less impact of Roe vs Wade abortion rights and voters can show discontent with Democrats for the way they have governed. Trump can also gain with black and Hispanic voters but more in California and New York and Texas noncompetitive states.  Harris does well in Florida, and Texas, and in some red states for the same reason as voters look for alternatives from being tied down to the Republican party or the Trump Republicans.  In the key Electoral College states in midwest Harris is holding up well in polling- in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. In these states Black and Hispanics are not in the same population numbers as in other states. ...

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Slavery was banned by the 19th century in Britain and its Empire, it took the US till 1861 to do this and till 1961 to end racial segregation. By contrast Britain followed a policy in China throughout the nineteenth century that brought enormous pain and suffering to the Chinese people through the Opium wars and opening up of ports for opium trade in China. And the US under presidents Wilson, Coolidge, Franklin Roosevelt, and the American people followed a policy of respect for the Chinese people during this period with the idea fervently America believed of a modern nation emerging from the chaotic period of Manchu monarchy's decline by 1900 and warlords civil war + Japanese invasion from 1900-1945. For Britain and the European colonizers Chinese and Indian people were for the most part "coolies." Joe Stilwell, FDR's Supreme Commander of American Forces in China was the ultimate free of racism. A order from the Republican Coolidge administration in the 1920's was for any American soldier to be courtmartialed for so much as laying a hand on a Chinese coolie. A modern nation did emerge as the American people hoped and fought for in China, and in India over the 25 year period in the 21st century, with Britain having failed to bring the same level of understanding that America had for the Asian people.  Britain's monarch Charles tells Commonwealth leaders his government is not paying reparations for slavery yet is determined to create anew understanding to work with other nations in the future, to discuss issues with openness and respect. There are 56 nations in the British led Commonwealth, the largest of which is India. It includes South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania in East Africa and Nigeria, Ghana in West Africa.    ...

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Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, a senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, leads the EuroFuture Project. Here he offers his ideas of the dilemmas facing German leaders in agreeing to letting the European Central Bank take a larger role of supporting the bonds of Italy, Portugal and Spain. He says Germans are seeing a contradiction between European demands for German leadership and not wanting to be led by Germany or perceiving Germany as a hegemon. Brockhoff says Germans have never in the postwar period wanted to or learned to exercize continental leadership. He recounts the postwar period when Germans were content with the deutsche mark, and limited their expression of national pride to the deutsche mark. Giving up the deutsche mark was part of the deal for reunification of the two Germanys, a surrender of economic sovereignty for the sake of a larger integration into Europe. He says that even though the arguments are framed in terms of orthodox economics, economic nationalists who never really wanted to give up the deutsche mark are the core of the opposition to the common issue of eurozone bonds. The German position is to go back to the framework of principles for economic and monetary union and tighten the rules for spending and taxes, something that is good in the long run, but does not work in the short run with shrinking economies from austerity programs and nervous markets. The Merkel government's resolution of this crisis is to set new fiscal rules for the eurozone, and either move in the direction of letting the ECB play a larger role, or support such a move. What is not clear is whether the government will survive the next election taking on this leadership role in Europe, or a revolt in the Christian Democratic party....

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Cochrane says the best option today is for Europe to accept a sovereign default for Greece. He says the European Central Bank which stands behind the euro, should not be used for buying bonds of troubled countries with shaky "collateral." This would only lead to a situation where EU countries would have to recapitalize the ECB. He emphasizes the fact that Greece will not pay back this debt. And the only way out is to have a situation similiar to Argentina where it needs to start over, and it would at some point be able to borrow again. Austerity is deeply unpopular in Greece and with higher unemployment Greece's financial situation is rapidly deteriorating. Making austerity something that was tried to buy time but will not work. Cochrane also makes the point that the euro itself acts like the euro bonds that EU countries are reluctant to support, it means the ECB backs the currency and supports it- which makes it vital to keep the ECB whole and prevent the dilution of its financial strength. Axel Weber, former head of the Bundesbank, resigned to express his opposition to the ECB buying the bonds of troubled eurozone countries, which he said was outside the ECB's mandate to conduct monetary policy....

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The expectations persist that men are supposed to be the breadwinners in a marraige even today. The situation for marraiges is better for marraiges after 1990 compared to marraiges in 1960-1970, with more recent marraiges having higher gender role adjustment.

Today many women earn more than their husbands. More women graduate from college than men. In situations where the lower earning spouse helps his partner with housework and other responsibilities there is a healthier marraige. Where the male partner is not working or has temporary work the situation can involve higher stress on the marraige because of the attitude than men should be breadwinners that has persisted. The woman may be embarrassed in such situations or feel the husband should be contributing more.