LyrArc Article Gist
Chinese pharmaceuticals makers are getting ready to launch generics products in the US market and have obtained FDA approval of an AIDS drug once its patent expires.

LyrArc Article Gist
11 Pacific Rim nations form the Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2018. The Obama administration supported the trade pact alienating supporters in its union base particularly in the midwestern states. Mr. Trump opposed the TPP in his election campaign and made it a significant issue for swing voters in midwestern states after job losses in the auto industry. With the opposition of president Trump the U.S. decided to withdraw from TPP.  The 11 nations agreeing to join a revised agreement are Japan, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. So far six countries have formally approved the deal, Australia, Canada, Mexico, Singapore, New Zealand and Japan, setting the stage for two rounds of tariff reductions starting December 30, 2018. Agricultural products duties will be duty free within 3 to 7 years including for Japan and Mexico. Australia, New Zealand, Canada are major agricultural exporters. Japan supported the deal as a way to counter China's influence in the region. In the U.S. the gains would be in intellectual property rights but losses for workers in the auto and manufacturing industries, a point Mr. Trump recognized in his election campaign as he campaigned in the midwestern states. Mr. Obama pursued TPP over objections of workers organizations and unions including auto workers union, with his advisors suggesting this as a way to counter China's influence in the region. By 2018 the Democratic party support base fractured on this as one of the major issues.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Karishma Vaswani of the BBC points out that most of China's economic growth came with the shift to a market economy made by Deng Xiaoping in 1979, when he announced that China would follow a program of "socialism with Chinese characteristics." By comparison the 19th Party Congress is more about stabilization, preserving the gains made so far after Deng's opening up of the economy to foreign investment and technological collaboration. The placing of thought of Xi Jinping into the Chinese Constitution is more about setting a path of stable direction by the Communist Party than of major changes. The gains in the economy have come with some costs that will have to be addressed by an aging society. Particularly the problems of air and water pollution that other economies in Asia and Latin America following their own development paths would now strive to avoid. An anti-corruption drive was part of this effort for stable direction as the problems of debt to GDP ratio of close to 270% with an aging society remain to be tackled. There is still a large gap between the upper middle class and the rest of China as a result of the rapid growth. In this sense Jinping's effort at the 19th Party Congress is more about restoring the credibility of the Chinese Communist Party as China tackles the next stage of growth needed to catch up with Japan or South Korea. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Xiaomi is China's leading brand. It is very different from other companies in China and America. It is tightly controlled by its founder Lei Jun who has built a loyal following for the brand  through fan clubs and creating an enthusiastic following. Because the firm is run by founder Lei Jun it can make quick decisions to enter a market. Lei Jun was a computer science student in Wuhan in 1987 as China opened up to the world.  By 2017- in three years from being zero in the Indian market place in 2014- Xiaomi had become the largest smartphone company in India. The company was launched in 2010. Profit margins are thin about 1% in a very competitive pricing market.  Metrics are based on revenue per user of $9 per user from an installed base of 190 million smartphone users, spending 54 minutes a day using Xiaomi's app, game and other services, or 20% of the phone use time. Revenue per user comes from advertising, and from commissions on the apps and games it sells to its user base. In 2015 Xiaomi had a loss, in 2016 sales dropped, in 2017 new products led to a resurgence in the market with sales increasing 68%. As Xiaomi goes into its IPO, experts say much of the $10 billion from the IPO could go into reinvestment as Xiaomi reinvents itself and moves into other internet business. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
This Wall Street Journal editorial comes out in favor of higher capital reserve requirements similiar to that suggested by Federal Reserve Board governor Daniel Tarullo. The Journal says that if regulators are serious in the U.S. about controlling systemic risk, then the 14% rule or a 15% rule for assets held in reserve by banks should be adopted. Daniel Tarullo had suggested a 14% capital reserve requirement. These requirements would be phased in gradually over several years. Basel III requirements require only a 7% requirement and is phased in over many years. Capital standards are likely to be gamed. For this reason the requirement for only Tier 1 capital to be eligible is essential. What about the Basel III standards and the European banks? Would this put them in a better position to earn higher returns. This should be a problem left for European taxpayers to tackle says the Journal. As long as U.S. taxpayers are supporting U.S. banks with an implicit subsidy to take on larger amounts of risk -because they will be saved in a crisis with taxpayer dollars- the Journal says it makes sense to require 10-14% in capital reserves. It cites the Japanese banks which were highly overleveraged with lower capital reserves compared to American banks, and fared poorly. The Dodd-Frank bill imposes a complicated set of regulatory requirements with regulators required to write new sets of rules. The editorial concludes that it is far better to tackle the problems in the banking system with a sufficiently high requirement for capital reserves to manage risks than to have the detailed rule making on every subject that Dodd-Frank suggests....

LyrArc Article Gist
Rupee has risen by 9% so far this year in 2007, to 40.58 to the US dollar. The Reserve Bank of India, India's central bank has so far not intervened in the markets to slow its rise. Will it affect exports? Its not expected to have much impact on outsourcing of tech and IT work as competition from Vietnam, Philippines and rest of Asia is still weak. Manufacturing exports could be affected. Merchandise exports went up by about 9% in March 2007. The RBI has not intervened because of efforts to restrain inflation, and bring it down from over 5% to drop below 5% as imports become cheaper.

LyrArc Article Gist
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....

LyrArc Article Gist
Amgen is seeing slower growth. Worldwide sales of anemia drug Aranesp declined 10% after FDA required stronger warning labels. Aranesp was its best selling drug for 2006 at $4.12 billion sales.

LyrArc Article Gist
The loss of 75 million J&J vaccine doses with failure at a manufacturing plant in Baltimore. The FDA is looking at what to do with 170 million doses produced by Emergent Biosolutions, a contractor, that made vaccines for J&J and Astra Zeneca. Contamination at the Baltimore plant makes the vaccines made there unusable.

LyrArc Article Gist
US antiship missiles Nmesis are placed in the Philippines islands to protect parts of the Pacific region in 2025. During the period of US engaged in wars in the Middle East under Bush and then Obama, the US Navy lost time and China built up its Navy. The lack of foresight of US business and focus on profits of firms like Apple shipping manufacturing to China meant loss of the manufacturing knowhow as other companies followed Apple for 2 decades. The result is that it takes long lead times for the US to build the ships the US Navy needs, a repeat of the situation the US faced with Japan by 1935 when the US was focused on tackling the Great Depression under FDR. At that time at a Naval Conference in London in 1934 the Japanese walked out rejecting the Washington Naval Agreement of 1924-25 that limited Japan to 60% of the US and British Navies ships tonnage. By 1941 the Japanese Navy was its main reason for its efforts to control Asia. FDR who had been Secretary of the Navy was not far behind so that America launched its own efforts in 1937- in an 18 month period 1942-1943 the US destroyed the Japanese Navy and protected China, India, from the worst Japanese Kwantung army elements that ran the government leading to 14 million lives lost in China. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
About 7 million people or 10.3% of people living in France in 2021 were immigrants, says national statistics agency INSEE. Compare that with 6.5% in 1968. About one third have acquired French citizenship. What this has done to French society is to shift sentiment away from protecting workers and families struggling with a cost of living crisis by splitting the vote of traditional parties supporting working class families. Shifting some of it to the far right anti-immigration parties that have emerged since 2010. This has added to the fracturing of society that happened from neglect of manufacturing communities across France as more manufacturing was concentrated overseas in  China. Neglect of rural areas and smaller towns, the emergence of tech hubs disconnected from the larger community across France has added to this. This is true of other European countries and a similar situation happened in the US. Denmark's prime minister is very candid about this, saying immigration of this type hurts the working class families in Denmark. Mette Frederiksen of the Social Democrats is the first to have clearly stated this problem and is providing a new way of protecting Danish workers and families from these social and technological changes in society from which they have no protection. President Biden in the US has also grasped clearly the dimensions and magnitude of the problems facing workers and families in the US. The problem is not limited to worker loss of income security, it affects the whole society and the public as a whole in other ways. Opportunistic politicians using anti-immigration appeals without a true commitment to democratic principles and ideas have tendencies that threaten democracy itself. This is the real danger of concentrating manufacturing in one country such as happened with China. And of neglecting rural areas and small towns. For this reason Frederiksen in Denmark, Biden in the US, and other leaders in Europe are looking for ways to send aid and industry promoting assistance to poor countries but restricting illegal immigration. This requires handling cultural issues which have further hit society with care- "with malice towards none, with charity for all," so that the focus can be kept on the real issues affecting workers and families of the cost of living crisis and a better life, better education, health care and public services for all, to improve the quality of living. It requires a new state of mindfulness from leaders in North America and Europe, as well as from allied countries of Asia, Latin America and Africa.  ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Queen Elizabeth shakes hands with an IRA leader now in the Northern Ireland government. This happens in June 2012, showing how far British-Irish relations have improved since peace treaties were signed.

LyrArc Article Gist
Macy's story is told by figures showing an increasing share in a shrinking department store business. Macy's increased its share of department store sales to 44% in 2013, from 33% in 2006 by acquiring other department stores. As a result the improvement in recent years disguises some serious weakness in the company's strategies. It took Macy many years before launching an off price chain to carry discounted merchandise- only now getting off the ground under the Backstage chain. The change in consumer buying habits after the 2008 recession continues today, buyers are frugal and waiting for markdowns which take longer at Macy's and come quickly at TJ Maxx. As a result Macy's sales are declining in 2015. This benefits discount retailers carrying name brands at lower prices such as TJ Maxx, which has about the same sales as Macy's and over 3 times the market value. Macy's share price has fallen about 40% so far in 2015. As other stores such as J.C. Penneys have shifted and adopted strategies offering more value and everyday competitive pricing Macy's faces the risk of being too slow to change....

LyrArc Article Gist
A new Nuclear Fuel Bank has private funding of $50 million from Warren Buffett, and additional funding from Kuwait, US, the EU, Norway, and the UAE. The total funding so far is $157 million. With this initial funding the International Atomic Agency has setup a global nuclear fuel bank that countries can turn to for developing nuclear power. At this time more countries are turning to nuclear power as a source of energy supplies. The development of nuclear supplies and purifying uranium also lends itself to the making of nuclear weapons. By providing an independent source the IAE agency provides a way to remove the ambiguity present in the development of nuclear energy. As the idea of atomic fuel banks is gaining hold Rusia also has set up a bank. When enriched at lower levels uranium can be used for nuclear energy. When enriched at higher levels this becomes a fuel for making atomic bombs. Which is why nuclear experts want to see the uranium turned into fuel rods as quickly as possible, because it is hard to turn the rods into weapons. This money will be enough to buy 80 tons of fuel- enough for refueling one reactor....

LyrArc Article Gist
Lt. Gen John Kelly loses his son Robert in Afghanistan and talks about the immense burdens facing military families. Robert is out on patrol duty in a mine filled area of Afghanistan's Sangin district. Only 1% of the population serves in the military. And Kelly says his is only one of 5500 American families that have lost a child in this war. There is a sense among military families that the war and these military families have been forgotten. One Marine Corps general wrote to Kelly that service to and sacrifice for the country has become a legacy affair for a small number of military families. Before the midterm Congressional elections only 2% of the people rated Afghanistan as a top issue and hardly any candidates mentioned this issue. Tom Brokaw, a well known anchor of NBC News, wrote in a major daily that the war and the sacrifices have been forgotten in the election and hardly discussed. Adm. Mike Mullen went so far as to say that he worries that we could wake up one day and that the American people will no longer know us and we won't know them....