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On his first day Jan 18, 2023, Josh Shapiro, Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania, signed an executive order that eliminated the requirement of a college degree for 92% of jobs in the state government, 62,000 jobs. Utah and Maryland made similar changes last year with Republican Governors. The Editorial Board of NYT says- for far too long, too many Americans see  society and economy as unfairly skewed to serve the needs of well connected elites, and people with a college education, looking down and excluding the rest.

 

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 A look up close at US Foreign Trade Representative Katherine Tai, focused on a trade policy that is fair to American workers and workers families. She says "I'm a bicultural kid." One of two children of immigrants in the Biden cabinet, the other Kamala Harris.  With Jake Sullivan and Biden doing everything so that American trade and supply chains are based on pillars of resilience, fairness, respect for American workers and families, to support climate change action and build infrastructure. She has been with the US Office of the Trade Representative and in trade related positions in US Congress since 2007. Tai says what helps is bringing a very disciplined approach, as she deals with the PRC to stay on the message, on what the problem is. As she goes about her work the spirit from her dad carries her everyday- "to go out and win it" for America, for the common people of America. ...

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US trade deficit of $46 billion with India and DJT call to buy oil and gas from the US, to shift away from purchases of $50 billion of oil from Russia, of 2 million barrels a day. India only imported $1 billion of oil from Russia in 2020 and this is a call from the US to India to stop financing Russia's increasing air attacks on Ukraine in August 2025. For India this oil came at $70 a barrel when prices were around $90-$100 a barrel in 2022-2024. In 2025 oil prices are at $60 a barrel, and even if prices increase to $70 a barrel India can make the shift. US and Germany, the EU, Britain which seek negotiated end to the war in Ukraine will continue to pressure India in 2025. Russia could shift some of the oil to other places but the huge demand from a country India's size will not then be seen as a factor in prolonging the war. India needs to think ahead for the next 20 years and its goal of modernization by 2047 like China has done in 2000-2020. And not get into a nationalistic mode that may not be in the best interests of the Indian people seeing that this may serve the interests of all nations including Russia to phase out this European war. ...

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Arvind Panagriya, Prof. of Economics at Columbia University, points out the key initiatives of the Modi government in its first four years which will show results in future years for development of the country.  He mentions the Swachh Bharat Mission and cites results that show rural households with toilets are now 84% up from 38%.  By 2019 the whole country will be defecation zone free on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi. The Dhan Jan Yojana DJY accounts opened for rural households are up to 316 million. Aadhar cards for identification are up from 650 million to 1.2 billion. The Aadhar and DJY work together to enable direct transfer of benefits to poor households, eliminating the leaks in benefits transfer and ghost accounts of the period since independence in 1947. Not mentioned by Panagriya is the Health Insurance scheme for lower income households that enable families to survive a sudden medical expense that could put them in dire straits.  These efforts work in a way to change India from the ground up from its villages and rural areas as envisioned by Mahatma Gandhi in the struggle for independence. The land acquisition law amendments were put on hold till farmers concerns could be better accomodated, an area of concern for industrial development cited in an editorial in the Hindu newspaper. Fiscal consolidation and inflation targeting have resulted in an average inflation rate of 4.3% for the 4 years of the Modi government. Inflation was over 9% in the last 2 years of the previous Congress UPA government with GDP growth dropping to 5.9% for the last two years. Average GDP growth for four years for the Modi government is 7.3%, even after the changes to implement GST taxation for one national tax eliminating state barriers in interstate commerce and demonetization to fight corruption and black money. Rate of GDP growth should be higher after the gains from the initiatives and the new GST integration of the country are felt, with increase in investment and FDI, after infrastructure improvements and land acquisition arrangements are made. Transportation infrastructure modernization initiative pushes ahead with the first bullet train in the pilot project for Ahmedabad- Mumbai set to start in 2022. This is a $17 billion project financed for $13 billion by the Japanese government at 0.1% loan for 50 years, moratorium on repayments for 20 years, using E5 Shinkansen series technology. Implementation of this project on a sound financial basis should lead to transformation of the Indian rail network, raising the level of technology implementation across the entire Indian rail system. Such an achievement would rival the first introduction of railways into India in the nineteenth century under the British. A new bankruptcy law is intended to free up capital for investment by putting behind the large number of non performing loans in the Indian banking system. Changes made by the central bank RBI are designed to speed up this process so that loss making enterprises are absorbed, consolidated or shut down, a legacy from the earlier period.     ...

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No man steps into the same river twice, says Jack Shafer in Politico. Mr. Trump is not the same person, and Twitter under Musk is not the same site. Much has changed since 2016. Many of the debates of 2016 are a thing of the past, as the nation has learned from that period and is moving ahead in a new direction under the Biden economic plan- for an economy that works for working people and families. This is critical for the task of building an America that reduces the huge disparities in America that have built up after decades of outshoring factories and jobs. The task that Mr. Biden has taken up with federal investment with business in key industries, cost of living actions, building a modern infrastructure for the US, and efforts to raise income and wages of workers and their families. 

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The total government expenditure of the US including the individual states spending is 37% of US GDP (IMF). Musk $2 trillion cuts is 92% of the 2.17 trillion excluding defense, veterans benefits, interest on debt, Social Security, Medicare. The simple math means he plans to shut down the government. US  37.5%  Germany 48% France 57% UK and Canada 43% Japan 42% This shows that the US that has no universal health insurance and  subsidized public transportation, spends less than the developed OECD countries as a percentage of its GDP. Of the Budget of $6.75 trillion in 2024 Social Security $1.46 trillion   22% Medicare            $874 billion   13% Interest on Debt  $880 billion    13% Trump plans to remove tax on Social Security which would take this from 48% to over 50% meaning half of the Budget is off limits. If defense spending goes up not down then $874 and $325 for Veterans benefits are $1.2 trillion also off limits.  This means cuts of $2 trillion on $2.17 trillion or 92%. Do the simple math and this would shut down the government. ...

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Here are the 10 drugs with their negotiated prices for one-month supply: Januvia treats diabetes. The negotiated price is $113 (£103), down 79%. Fiasp, Fiasp FlexTouch, Fiasp PenFill, NovoLog, NovoLog FlexPen, NovoLog PenFill: These are insulin medications, treat diabetes. The negotiated price is $119, down 76%. Farxiga treats diabetes, heart failure and chronic kidney disease. The negotiated price is $178.50, down 68 %. Enbrel treats rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis. The negotiated price is $2,355, down 67%. Jardiance treats diabetes, heart failure and chronic kidney disease. The negotiated price is $197, down 66%. Stelara treats psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. The negotiated price is $4,695, down 66%. Xarelto prevents and treats blood clots and reduces risk of coronary or peripheral artery disease. The negotiated price is $197, down 62%. Eliquis prevents and treats blood clots. The negotiated price is $23, down 56%. Entresto treats heart failure. The negotiated price is $628, down 53%. Imbruvica treats blood cancers. The negotiated price is $9,319, down 38%. ...

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Australia has mandatory voting which most Australians support. Voter turnout is over 90%. Compare with France where voter discontent with choices leads to low voter turnout. Voter abstention in 2022 presidential election in France was 28%. 

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The Indian prime minister reviewed progress of the vaccination drive. On July 26, in the last 6 days about 38 million doses of vaccine have been adminstered in India. In a separate affidavit to the Supreme Court the government laid out its plan for making enough vaccine supplies to vaccinate the entire population over 18 by December 31, 2021, over 940 million people requiring over 1880 million doses.  "Out of this requirement for 1880 million doses 516 million doses will be made available by July 31, 2021, in about 34 days. The remaining 1350 million doses for complete vaccination to the eligible population" says the government information provided to the Supreme Court. The breakdown of vaccine supplies manufacturing is also given to SC. Of the total of 1350 million vaccine doses the following is how it will be manufactured in India in the next 6 months. Covishield  vaccine     500 million Covaxin vaccine          400 million Bio E Subunit vaccine  300 million Zydus Cadila DNA vaccine  50 million Sputnik V  vaccine          100 million The government told the Supreme Court that the procurement of Bio E Subunit vaccine and Zydus Cadila DNA vaccine will be subject to approval that is expected in the near future. From this new vaccine supplies picture it is clear that Covaxin and Bio E Unit will play a major part in the second half of 2021 in vaccinating India's entire population with 2 doses. This would be a historic achievement for the federal government after the lessons learned and the action taken with a new vaccine supplies policy for India in June 2021. There is also the challenge to be overcome of maintaining the vaccination drive at 6-8 million doses a day which would be another historic achievement for the federal and state, and local governments in India working with community education and logistical setup, medical staff.  ...

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DJT fires BLS labor statistics Commissioner, Erika McEntarfer, following 258,000 downward revision of jobs added, 90% of the jobs shown earlier in  June-July 2028 disappearing. This BBC report and others say that revisions are common. What it does not say is that revision of this size is rare, almost 90% of the jobs created shown earlier are now shown to be non existent, without any serious effort to give an explanation in the statistical data gathering and how it could have overreported the jobs created by 90%. Imagine Jay Powell at the Fed putting this out and not laboring to explain this as he does so often on inflation. Department of Labor owes an explanation of how it is doing the statistics when- BLS revision 144,000 jobs to 19,000 for May 2025- 87% of jobs reported disappeared. BLS revision 147,000 jobs to 14,000 for June 2025- 90% of jobs reported disappeared.   ...

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India and the race in Himalayas road buildup on both sides with China and India responding to each other's efforts on ground that is 11,000 to 14,000 feet high. In the latest buildup India in 2026-2028 is building the Zojila Tunnel in Ladakh to cut travel to 20 minutes across mountainous terrain for supplies to frontier outposts in some of the most forbidding terrain on earth. Much of this region of Ladakh and Kashmir is tens of thousands of miles from Shanghai and Beijing, Tibet is far far from China proper, yet the experience of the Sino-Japanese war in the 1930's and the attempted colonization of China by Japan is alive in the minds of the PRC's leaders, see Tibet as a buffer region. Who see India not as as the land of Gandhi and the Buddha Land that has remained that way since the year 1000, see instead a legacy regime of the British Empire of the 1800's that attempted partial colonization of China.

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Varghese George of The Hindu provides this analysis of the elctions in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhatisgarh.  He points out that primeminister Modi's own popularity may have prevented a worse result. There are questions about how much Hindutva politics will play a part in 2019 elections and the role Yogi Adityanath plays after campaigning in this election. There is alo a question of how the opposition can unite if the Congress party becomes an alternative to the BJP, and the lack of any particular leader in the non-Congress opposition. How will the campaign take shape in the 2019 election in which a national election without the local incumbency politics and local issues makes a national focus emerge between competing visions for the future- that of the Congress and the BJP. And how these visions are articulated and not lost in the clamour and din of political wrangling particularly in the case of the BJP's focus on development that pushed it forward in the last election. ...

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50 Economists are surveyed by WSJ from banks and universities to small consulting firms. The consensus is that unemployment will remain the same and inflation a bit higher (2.9% instead of 2.6%) if the war is temporary. At what price point and for how long does it cause problems of a recession? The price point is in the region of $138 and in the region of 14 weeks. Inflation predicted at 2.6% is now estimated to increase to 2.9% in this survey March 16-March 18. The attack on gas and oil fields in Qatar, UAE, Saudi and Iran may pose a different kind of problem making it harder to repair than the Straits of Hormuz closure which could be opened at any time and allow tanker traffic to resume supplies.

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China made a prolific use of oil during its rapid economic growth phase. China is adapting to  3 million missing barrels of oil from Hormuz by drawing down reserves, cutting use of crude oil converted into plastics, and other measures. This is an opportunity for China to reduce the amount of oil it consumes by copying the example of more efficient use of oil per unit of GDP that is seen in the last decade in Germany and Japan. This would be better for China and for the world economy as it adapts to the uncertainty and wars of the last 3 decades of the Middle East. The US could also take the example of Germany and Japan in more efficient use of oil for the same degree of growth.

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The $2.3 billion pounds (2.6 billion euros) the UK paid to the EU for not collecting legitimate customs duties for imports from China, could finance a UK travel pass like the popular 9 euro travel pass in Germany. That 9 euro pass was a sixth of the cost to travel in Berlin, one way the German government helped people face the cost of living crisis. It cost the German government 2.5 billion euros. One more missed opportunity in Britain by the Tory government to help people with the cost of living crisis. The UK gets hit first with a loss of the customs duties revenue that would have been collected as well as any penalties for fraud from importers. Add to this the $2.3 billion pounds in settlement with the European Union for not collecting legitimate customs duties from imported textiles and shoes into Britain from China. Blunders and missed opportunities to help people  with cost of living crisis is a mark of the Conservative government in Britain. The Guardian reports that the case goes back to 2017 when the EU anti-fraud office said British authorites had allowed criminals to evade customs duties by making false claims about imports of clothes and shoes from China. It says that the EU found over half of all textiles and footwear imported from China were below the lowest acceptable prices.  ...

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Saving for child at 30 years when she is 7 years the situation for young family finances in 2025, with outrageous college tution up 40% in 10 years, and other costs such as child care. Colleges seem to be impervious to increasing college costs so called  "upper tier" college leagues intent on taking advantage of the disproportionate increases in upper class incomes exacerbating class divisions, and trying to perpetuate their brands with the notion that they offer a better education for undergraduates at $50,000 to $100,000 a year at a Northwestern or Brown when state universities in Michigan, California and Arizona among many in the whole Nation at $15,000 a year instate tution offer the same education as long as the student puts in the necessary effort to study hard.

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Three factors make up risk in diversification and risk reduction through bonds in 2025 with the estimated 1.5 -3 trillion in spending planned by 2030 with $400 billion in 2025 alone. AI in corporate bond indexes up to 15% and reach 20% by 2030 vs 40% of stock indexes (JP Morgan),  AI risk in bonds diversification from over issuance and downgrades is something to look at. One cannot assume bonds will reduce risk in the same way as before with overissuance of corporate bonds to power AI spending by Tech companies. There is also the risk to the Nation in the massive capital misallocation of funds that will crowd out essential spending in the crumbling infrastructure of the Nation, in education and healthcare, that degrade American leadership in industry, science and technology.

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Climate change study from Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany published in Nature magazine retracted in December 2025. The study is an example of how such research when not done right can misrepresent situations leading to policy errors. Policy error under such misrepresentation can lead to errors such as a policy that excludes adjustments and a dual response to climate change and cost of living crisis attacking both on two fronts necessary today so soon after a disastrous pandemic and people living in scarcity not able to meet heating bills. What happened is that the study made predictions for 2100- which is impossible to do. Studied 1600 regions in the world. Showed decline of economic output by 62% in 2100. Did not mention that excluding Uzbekistan would make the reduction in growth 23%. It shows how overzealous work in one direction or the other can actually hurt the fight to address climate change and also tackle everday concerns like cost of living crisis. Recent reports in WSJ show how the approach of single focus has hurt economic growth in Germany and hobbled its industries. Other reports show how deprived and less deprived areas in the UK (also in the US) sit by side showing how decades of neglect of manufacturing and outshoring of factories have destroyed jobs and destroyed communities across Europe and the US, making them open to scourge such as fentanyl in the Nation's neighborhoods, and creating a climate of despair that feeds into other fears. Such as the fears of the surge of illegal migration promoted by traffickers and the influx of drug trafficking gangs in the Nation's neighborhoods. Such reports are then used by the World Bank and the Congressional Budget Office and central banks of 90 counties in the coalition Network for Greening of the Financial System, leading to distortions in policy actions, destroying the social consensus needed among wide sectors of the population in democracies in the EU and US and worldwide to address climate change and cost of living crises.  Leonie Wenz, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany says-“We broadly agree with the issues raised, and have made corrections to the underlying economic data and to our methodology to address them. These changes are too substantial for a correction of the original article in Nature.”   ...

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The 129 page internal report on what caused the trading losses of $6 billion at the London based investment unit of JP Morgan Chase bank. The report shows the trading was intended to offset losses of $100 million. Instead the trading assumed large proportions and supervisors ignored the risks, management showed lax oversight. This type of situation occurs in other industries. The costcutting at BP and suppliers resulting in the Gulf Oil Spill and the Toyota costcutting saved small amounts by creating large risks that threatened the companies, with bankruptcy in BP's case and loss of confidence of the customer base in Toyota's case. They also reflected years of costcutting that were showing up in smaller problems that remained unrecognized. BP refinery fires occurred for lack of adequate maintenance. Problems were already developing at JP Morgan Chase with managment changes at the London unit leading to poor oversight and complacency of top management, a culture that took undue risks even as management remained confident in its strategies....

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Did you know 7% of all carbon emissions today come from cement production. In the cement production process 90% of the carbon emissions come from using fossil fuels to heat up the limestone and clay to 2700 degrees to produce clinker. Cemex is workoing with Swiss company Synhelion to use solar energy to do this by 20230.  Heidelberg Materials is working to  add carbon capture to the process at its Brevik, Norway plant, then store it in the seabed near Bergen in liquefied CO2 form. This will absorb the carbon emissions to meet a goal of 8% of carbon emissions to be stored globally by 2030. 

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Focus on billionaires and remote parts of the world distract from the vital issues of infrastructure renewal, cost of living and incomes growth that affect everyday lives of Americans. In an economy the size of the US the $5 trillion of billionaires out of a $31 trillion US GDP, is about 15% of the nation's wealth. Many of the billionaires such as at Amazon lead product and service companies that generated new products and services. Five of the top 25 in the US are from Walmart a large retailer in the US, 2 from Amazon, three from Microsoft in personal computers, 3 from chemical industries.This accounts for 13 of 25 or half. Removing these billionaires would take out $2.5 trillion leaving the billionaires controlling 7-8% of the country's wealth. The focus by Bernie Sanders in the US and Jeremy Corbyn in the UK on remote spots in the world and on billionaires distracts from the real issues of cost of living, of incomes of ordinary families, of everyday issues of health and quality of life faced by all. It also does not help in the discussion because of the need to move away from the poor leadership of the Blair-Brown, Cameron- Johnson years and the Bush-Obama years in the UK and the US. Here no ideologies are needed just common sense solutions to common problems that affect lives of all the people, with the cooperation of all the people. ...

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The $787 million settlement is for defamation damages for Dominion Voting Systems and its owner State Street Capital. On the fundamental issue of free and fair elections and freely elected governments, the settlement does not ask for an explicit statement by Fox News of misconduct. To understand what happened one has to look at the origins of the FNN in the Melbourne Herald of 1920-1950 under Keith Murdoch and the political controversy pursued to increase readership in that period. NYT says it has an implicit plea of "no contest" to several pre trial findings by the presiding judge Eric Davis- "The evidence does not support that Fox News Network television carried good faith disinterested reporting." NYT explains this as the judge saying that spreading a conspiracy theory does not fall under legally protected "news gathering." The presiding judge also decided that - "Evidence developed in this civil proceeding demonstrates that it is CRYSTAL clear none of the statements related to Dominion (by Fox News) are true." As the case is not going to trial readers may ask what happened not just in this case but in Fox News and Trump over the last decade that caused risks to the framework of democracy, of elections and transfer of power setup by the founding fathers. Fox News Network has its origins in the Melbourne Herald of the 1920-1950 period when Keith Murdoch setup the business in Australia that was expanded a generation later by Rupert Murdoch. Keith Murdoch was heavily influenced in his newspaper career by Lord Northcliffe, and by Lord Beaverbrook, a Canadian from New Brunswick, who both created a form of journalism that used political controversy to increase readership between the two world wars and in the period after that to 1957. The readership of these papers ran to 3-4 million which in that period in Britain or Australia was huge. Beaverbook took controversial positions that were built on his idea that the bloc Britain should represent was Canada, Australia and Britain with the British Empire, to have little to do with Europe or even the US. For this reason he did not support Britain's entry into the Second World War, or Britain joining in the Cold War against the Soviets till the Berlin Blockade. British prime minister Macmillan held back announcing Britain joining the European Economic Community (predecessor to the EU), because of the power of the Beaverbrook newspapers who were not interested in Europe. And British prime minister Clement Attlee faced the bitter opposition of Churchill and Beaverbrook/Northcliffe papers in sending Mountbatten to negotiate a transfer of power to India in 1947. The win of Labour's Clement Attlee in the 1951 election was opposed by Beaverbrook using the most sensational language. One can see the origins of what happened in the Trump period in the newspaper origins from the 1900-1957 period of Australian and British television networks. Of Keith Murdoch, National Biography of the Australian National University says- he supported the conservative stances of his time, was a remarkable entrepreneur and organizer of industry. Yet it also says his judgement was faulty. That he had "no real social philosophy"and lacked the originality to make useful contributions to public policy. Of Rupert Murdoch it can be said that he was also a remarkable entrepreneur and organizer of industry who built the newspaper business in Australia from one Adelaide paper left to him by Keith Murdoch. Yet his judgement proved faulty and there was no real concept of public policy or "real social philosophy." There is also the fact that like Beaverbrook from New Brunswick, Murdoch from western Australia was raised in the period of the British Empire and Commonwealth, had no real experience or grasp of the idea that is America set by the founding fathers and renewed by Lincoln, then FDR. An awareness of the origins of Murdoch's FNN is useful because it helps the American public close this chapter in the way democracies functioned in the past, and write better chapters for the future before us, keeping alive the idea that is America.     ...

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This report in The Times shows the need to counter misinformation in parts of the media about vaccines. Inadvertently or through a poor comprehension of the data, German media reports in Handelsblatt and the Bild have stated that vaccine effectiveness for older people is 8%. Here in The Times of London, Oxford University and Astra Zeneca point out that the 8% figure is for the number of people in the trials who were given the vaccine in the age group 56-70 years. This does not refer to how effective the vaccines were in older people.  The first dose increases monoclonal antibodies for people of all ages, say Astra Zeneca and Oxford. We are now beyond trials in a sense today as Israel has vaccinated large parts of the population and the UK, India are vaccinating millions of British and Indian citizens. Israeli reports from one of the major medical centres show that the second dose increases monoclonal antibodies by multiple times and provides effective protection. As British data is available from medical research institutions from the vaccination drive in Britain, and from India, the effectiveness of the vaccines used in Britain and India will be shown more clearly. India today has used a package with near 100% compliance to tackle the virus relatively effectively by combining safety protocols (masks+ social distancing+ hygiene) with nutritional, medicinal protocols, restricted overseas flights. Cases are down to 13,000 for 1.2 billion people, with positivity rate in testing down to 1.66%. One readers comment in The Times says a lot- She says her 79 year old Irish mother was given the vaccine today in Coventry, England. She was given the Astra Zeneca Oxford vaccine jab by a British Asian doctor who took the time to talk to her, and listened to her and thanked her for her service as a midwife for 40 years. That these few minutes were the happiest time in 10 months for her mother. It also showed she says the very best of this country.   ...