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Suggested books for retirement to help understand better how to lead the life you want to live in your 60's and beyond are shown here.  The Big Shift: Navigating the New Stage Beyond Midlife, by Marc Freedman 65 Things to Do When You Retire, edited by Mark Evan Chimsky (a collection of 65 essays by achievers in their 60's with unusual and fulfilling activities during retirement) Second-Act Careers, by Nancy Collamer The Encore Career Handbook, by Marci Alboher Don't Retire, Rewire, by Jeri Sedlar and Rick Miners (these do just what they say with examples) Transition to retirement can be arduous- and here is where these books come into draw on the experience of hundreds of people between 50 and eighty years to shape a healthy and rewarding life in retirement. The Couple's Retirement Puzzle, by Roberta K. Taylor Retirement for Two, by Maryanne Vandervelde       ...

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As jobs grow even with repeated increases in interest rates in 2023, inflation slows to 2.6%, unemployment rate at 3.7%, consumer sentiment is up 29% in 2 months in a UMich survey highest since 1991.US jobs growth of 353,000 in January 2024 the best in a year, twice what experts had predicted. The December figures were also revised upward by the Labor Department from 216,000 to 333,000. Unemployment rate held steady at 3.7%. Wages increased by 4.5%. Job gains in 2023 were mostly in government, healthcare, hotels and restaurants. In January growth was healthy across all private sector industries. The Fed's preferred inflation rate guage was 2.6% in December. Even with repeated increases in the interest rate by the Fed, growth is strong. Much of it could be attributed to the strong investment in infrastructure, and in manufacturing, US technologies by the Biden administration with help of bipartisan support in Congress.

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Feldstein says that the $700 billion plan to buy impaired assets will not prevent an overshooting downward in house prices, as more people have negative equity in their homes, rising to 40% of all mortgages at some point; and leading to a cycle of foreclosure and further price declines. This will only decrease the value of the mortgage securities that Treasury seeks to take off the hands of banks. And without direct government help in form of lowcost loans, say 2%, the cost of capital for the government, for 20% of the loan upto $80,000; more and more homeowners will have negative equity in their homes. This will lead to more foreclosures as housing loans are not full recourse, so that only the house is lost and the homeowner can move to an apartment and carry on from there. Thw size of this program would be $1 trillion but it gives the government income from the loans made and these would be full recourse loans so the taxpayer is protected. In Feldstein's view the current plan does not address declining house prices which is the root of the problem. ...

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"There is'nt another planet to export to," is what Paul Krugman of the New York Times says, when referring to the impossibility of all countries keeping up exports and reducing imports at the same time. In crises similiar to what the US faces today, countries have increased exports as a way to stage an economic recovery. But this time countries are depressing their currencies to gain or preserve a large share of global demand achieved through high exports. China has resisted demands for a significant revaluation of the yuan, and persists in efforts in currrency markets to keep the value of the yuan low. This cuts off one avenue of recovery. Bloomberg Business Week and Bloomberg News interviewed Edmund Phelps, Jan Hatzius, Krugman, and other economists, with the idea of figuring out how the US could stage an economic recovery. Krugman is not optimistic, considering the effects of the financial crisis being really protracted. Krugman points out that when comparing the US currently to the eaarly stages of Japan's lost decade, the US is doing worse. Unemployment is worse, and overall he says, a weaker policy response. And he says Japan is still a depressed fragile economy 18 years after its financial crisis. Jan Hatzius of Goldman Sachs, predicts that the unemployment rate will rise back to 10% in early 2011, with a 30% chance that the economy will fall back into a recession. He says that in the postwar economy, there has never been an increase in the unemployment rate of one third of one percentage point that did not result in a recession. Phelps and Hatzius see one way the US could stage a recovery is with replacement old structures and equipmet as wear and tear and obsolescence takes place. Phelps sees the possibility of technological innovation resultig in a new burst of activity. Robert Gordon of Northwestern University, is less optimistic about this, and predicts a lower growth rate of 1.5% over the next 20 years. ...

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When experts say corporate earnings and balance sheets are healthy this is because they are speaking of the situation in aggregate. Companies that benefitted from the commodities boom like the oil companies and companies like Microsoft and Apple have hundreds of billions of dollars, but this is very deceptive and misleading. About two thirds of nonfinancial companies, 1600 companies, carry a junk rating according to S&P. How does this compare with earlier periods? Its up 50% from the beginning of the last bust in 2000 and 40% higher than in 1990. Also Wall Street hugely expanded the market for speculative floating rate loans with $1.2 trillion raised like this in the last 4 years to 2007, according to Thomson Reuters. And the junk bonds are much junkier. Between 2003 and 2007 lenders financed $194 billion worth of bonds in the bottom tier of non investment grades with B- or below. And that was twice the amount of the previous 4 years. Histoically it should be noted 23% of bonds in this group default within 3 yearsafter they are issued vs just 3% in the top 3% of junk. Which companies are likely to default? Amusement park operator Six Flags, construction products maker Georgia Gulf, trucking company Swift Transportation, and sports equipment maker Easton-Bell Sports. Private Equity owners who have loaded the companies they own with debt also could default. This includes real estate brokerage operator Realogy, newspaper company Tribune and pizza chain Uno Holdings. S&P's estimate that the default rate among US junk rated borrowers will jump from 1% last year to 4% this year but other experts estimate it at around 8%. And if history is any guide it will probably be in double digits. After the 2 lending booms the one in late 1980's for LBO's and commercial real estate and for telcom and tech in the late 1990's default rates reached double digits. And with a recession one expert Fridson of research service FridsonVision estimates default rates of upto 16% for two consecutive years considering the huge amount of debt that has built up....

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Will reminds readers about what King wrote in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail," about being labeled an extremist, the same words that he sees Democrats saying about Ryan's plans as being extreme for Medicare and Social Security, now that he is Romney's running mate in the U.S. presidential race. "But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction...Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need for creative extremists." Will's point is that Ryan is unfairly being labeled an extremist for coming up with creative solutions because "ending Medicare as we know it" will happen though the laws of arithmetic for the U.S. deficit with runaway health care spending and uncontrollable medical care price inflation. This would produce more drastic results than through the kinds of creative changes that Ryan is proposing. Will's other point is that the entitlement spending increases cannot be solved by simply raising taxes on the rich especially at a time when costs are out of control. This is especially true because the U.S. economy depends on private sector confidence and investment for growth, and even more so now that the stimulus has had limited results and served its purpose in crisis management. Ryan has also modified some of his ideas in discussions with other voices in his party, a process which will continue to evolve with the infusion of ideas from Dave Camp, Romney, and others in his party....

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Karen Elliott House, a former publisher of the Wall Street Journal, who won a Pulitzer prize for reporting on the Middle East, is now researching Saudi society. She now writes this scathing report from Saudi Arabia. She says that just as in Egypt, an old corrupt leadership continues in power for several decades, an old corrupt leadership in the form of 7000 princes in a vast royal family. King Abdullah is in his eighties and the ruling princes have an average age of 83, and have illnesses for which they are under medical treatment. They continue to lead a nation where 60% of the people are young people under the age of 18! Itself an astounding fact. Karen House points out that the internet and social media have also made the young very knowledgeable about the conditions in the country- where 40% of Saudis live in poverty and 70% cannot afford a home. Bad managemet by the princes has affected basic services including the sewage and drainage problems in Jeddah after the floods. It is astounding that far less wealthy Gulf sheikdoms are doing a better job of providing education, jobs and health care. Thirty years of visiting Saudi Arabia, and the last four years of intensive reporting, has persuaded Karen House that this situation is at an impasse that might end up resolving itself through some sort of upheaval. To Karen House this looks like the last days of the aging leadership under Brezhnev before the Soviet Union collapsed....

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A couple of things have taken Obama ahead given he is a candidate who the electorate is not so familiar with and his relative lack of experience, and they relate to McCain as candidate and Obama as candidate. McCain comes across as impulsive and casual, Obama has more composure and steadiness and is thorough. In the selection of candidate Obama filled in for experience, and McCain's selection handicapped his experience argument. McCain campaign's higher taxes from Obama argument is also blunted by his poorly thought out plan to tax health insurance benefits, which neutralized his claims of higher taxes from Demmocrats. And Obama's grassroots organization and fundraising maakes it possible to run a stronger better campaign and his focus has been consistent and steady on the economy, all of which add up to another advantage. And all this is happening against the background of 8 years of Republicans and unpopularity of Bush. To that is added the sudden deterioration of the economy in September 2008 and a global financial crisis, in which McCain's impulsiveness in going to Washington which led to Republicans voting down the first bailout plan in the House was set against steadiness of Obama on these economic issues, with advice from an experienced man like Paul Volcker, former Fed chairman. The worst hit economically are midwest states where the auto industry is near collapse needing its own bailout, and this has led to an astonishing lead in some polls of 25 points for Obama, quite unheard of for a fresh candidate....

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There are some major problems in the American jobs market which suggest a long drawn out effort to reduce the high unemployment rate. One is the divergence between the vacancies that are developing and the rate at which firms are filling these vacancies. With vacancies remaining, unfilled and firms remaining cautious about the economic outlook and leery of hiring, the increase in economic output or GDP growth of 3% expected on the optimistic side in 2011 is not translating into lower unemployment. Structural problems are causing a great deal of difficulty in reducing the jobless rate. The recession hit manufacturing and construction very hard. And those who worked in these industries are not those with the skills and training to take up jobs in health care and education or other similiar fields- here skill mismatches are the problem. Geographic factors and the property prices drop are creating additional barriers. About 25% of mortgage borrowers owe more than their property is worth, and their are fewer buyers in regions with depressed job prospects like Michigan. There is a large increase in long term unemployment- over 27 weeks. Those out of work for more than 6 months see their skiils, job connections and confidence erode. A Brookings Institution paper estimates that this rise in long term unemployment by itself can cause labor market recovery to take twice as long as after the 1982 recession under Reagan, when unemployment reached a high of 10.8% and took 2 years to get back to 7.5%. Add to this the fact that a lot of jobs were lost in 2008 and 2009, with a six percentage increase in unemployment in a short period unmatched by anything since the Great Depression, with long term unemployed reaching 6.5 millon or nearly half of the total. And the 3% growth rate estimated by the government is anything but certain. It is questioned by the IMF as a stretch. This does not take into account the problems in the banking sector, as home equity loans gone bad show up on their balance sheets in latter part of 2010. According to a CreditSights report (see the US economy in 2010 in Group search for more information on this) with estimated losses of $33 billion. A struggling banking sector and tighter credit will add a structural dimension from the banking sector to the wobbly hiring. The "muddle through" approach to banking problems of the Obama administration in tackling bank's bad debt will continue to pose risks....

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What Krugman makes of the $1.089 trillion dollar U.S. deficit for fiscal year ending in Sept. 2012. He points out that the U.S. can have a stable to declining debt to GDP ratio with $400 billion debt. He cites the Clinton years (1992-2000) when the debt to GDP ratio declined from 49% to 33% with steady growth. What about the remaining $600 billion. He attributes this mostly to temporary factors which are reversible as growth picks up. Of this remaining excess deficit he says $400 billion is from lower tax payments to Treasury because of the 2008 economic crisis and the recession that followed. This includes the payroll tax cut which is also temporary to keep up consumer spending in the recession. The $150 billion is from unemployment insurance, food stamps, and other aid which is also reversed once growth picks up. He places emphasis on restoring economic growth as early as possible and reducing unemployment and using the recession for business to continue to invest in R&D, productivity, and government to preserve the social fabric, invest in education, and provide incentives for growth. S&P Nov. 8 report says the net government debt to GDP ratio is estimated to be over 80% in 2013. It will have to stabilize at current levels for S&P to preserve the U.S. credit rating, says S&P executive Chambers. The higher debt to GDP ratio in 2013 and lower growth rates expected makes the situation different from the lower debt to GDP ratios during the Clinton period. Britain, France and other major industrialized nations with political parties at either end of the political specrum have also chosen to stabilize or reduce debt to GDP ratios rather than take on the risks of them going much higher. The U.S. has the added problem of health care costs out of control with an aging population and about 17.9% of GDP going to healthcare costs in 2010 expected to increase significantly, as Medicare actuaries estimate enrollee numbers jump to 80 million in 2030 from 50 million in 2012. Democrats and Republicans have largely sidestepped this underlying problem in fiscal cliff negotiations....

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Social unrest grows in Russia as oil falls to $36 a barrrel and Russian growth slows from 8% to the point where its entering arecession and layoffs and salary cuts are taking place at many companies. In the Siberian town of Barnaul large protests took place when the authorites cancelled subsidized public transportation tickets for 200,000 pensioners. The government has adraft law that requires companies to inform the government about impending layoffs and salary cuts. And there is agradual devaluation of the ruble so that there is less adverse reaction in the economy. THe ruble has lost 111% of its value since it reached its peak in August. The government has required restraint in covering the crisis and no mention of the word crisis or reference to social unrest as there is considerable fear in the government and public's mind from the previous crisis days when the ruble collapsed under President Yeltsin causing wwidespread poverty and social disruption and economic failures. Strikes by migrant workers in the Urals city of Yektarinburg. The governments approach is to provide some kind of ressure outlet and let things cool off by reversing actions like the decision to let pensioners use their discounted public transit tickets. As a result of the downturn 7500 firms have informed the government they intend to layoff people and 207,000 workers have had working hours reduced since October 2008. And the government is drawing up alist of significant enterprises needing a bailout....

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About 53% of the uninsured Americans disapprove of the Obama health care law, in comparison to 51% of the insured with health care coverage who disapprove of the new law. About 35% of the uninsured say they are likely to pay the penalty for not carrying insurance, and six of ten uninsured say it will make their health better. Overall the approval of the law is at 39% and disapproval at 50% in the Dec. 2013 poll. A striking part of the poll result is that 57% of the uninsured say it will increase their health care costs, compared to 52% of the insured. Only 20% say it will decrease their health care costs. This reflects the lack of serious controls on the surge in healthcare spending in the law. A separate research shows that more of the costs are passed on to users who will pay higher out-of-pocket costs after the law.

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Bayer CEO, Marijn Dekkers, plans to divest its plastics business, called Material Science. The plastics division requires large investments with lower returns than can be made in health care or the agricultural crop science business. Crop Science generated earnings before interest and taxes of 1.81 billion euros in 2014, and Health Care helped by 5 new prescription drugs reported EBIT of 3.58 billion euros, compared to poor returns of 555 million euros on the polyurethane and polymers used for laptops to soccer balls in the Materials Science division. CEO Dekkers is a Dutch born executive who worked for 25 years in the U.S. Since taking over in 2010 he has brought a significant culture change to Bayer, by insisting on speed and agility from executives. Division heads with marketing backgrounds are preferred to science degrees, and the planning orientation of the company is being changed to one where the company executives are not afraid to take risks based on incomplete information. Dekkers prefers an IPO for the $10 billion plastics business to generate more cash and reduce the debt of 20 billion euros. He acquired the over the counter drug business of Merck for $14.2 billion, and has boosted drug sales with the introduction of Xarelto in partnership with J&J, eye treatment Eylea, cancer drugs Stivarga and Xofigo, pulmonary hypertension drug Adempas. Sales of these 5 drugs are expected to go up from 2.9 billion euros in 2014 to 4 billion euros in 2015, contributing significantly to Bayer's profits. Dekker's venture capitalist type focus on profit margins is showing results in share price performance- Bayer's share price has advanced 60% in 2015 mid-March price of 145.85 euros compared to the prior year month. In the small town of Leverkusen, Germany, where Bayer is located, there were initially fears that Dekkers was "too American" and too focussed on shareholder value to understand the need to respect tradition. Since then Germans have realized that Dekkers understands tradition and is only bringing necessary change- the transition to being a life sciences company makes sense to shareholders in Germany, for employee representatives on the supervisory board the guarantee of current level of 17,000 jobs in the plastics division for a few years shows his concern for job protection during the transition period. For Dekkers who left Holland in 1985, and has a U.S. passport with an American wife and kids who speak no Dutch or German, the important thing is to get the right balance- he says the system of 99-1 where 99% of the information had to be in before a decision could be made is making the change to 90-10 where only 90% of the information is now necessary to go ahead, even if he would like to see it at 80-20. Bayer still sponsors the local soccer team known as Bayer Leverkausen, and 26 other clubs. Dekkers steps down at the end of 2016....

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Paletta, Hilsenrath and Solomon give an exceptional journalism report on the silence and tension in the room at the meeting on Monday, October 13, 2008, at 3.00 pm in the Treasury building. It was an historic meeting between Treasury Secretary Paulson, Fed chairman Bernanke, and FDIC chairwoman Sheila Bair on one side, and the head of America's leading banks on the other side. The situation was explained, the bankers asked questions, bankers were not allowed to negotiate, and at one point Bernanke had to intervene saying there was no need for this meeting to have a confrontational tone. Wells Fargo's Kovacevich asked why banks had to accept a capital injection. Kenneth Lewis of Bank of America softened the tone of the meeting by saying that "any one of us who doesn't have a healthy fear of the unknown isn't paying attention." Even before the meeting an anxious John Mack of Morgan Stanley asked Paulson for the reason for the meeting and Paulson told him, "come on down, you will be pleased." John Mack who had fought so many rumors of the firm's demise, was surely pleased with the $10 billon injection of capital in Morgan Stanley by the government in return for preferred share and a dividend of 5%, which helped assure markets about Morgan Stanley's future. Goldman Sach's also received $10 billion. The meeting was ended at 4.30pm. Before this Timothy Geithner, head of the New York Fed, acting as the point man went around handing each CEO a term sheet with a place to sign. Another meeting was setup for 6.30 pm and at that time all the term sheets were returned - and all were signed. There was no meeting. Treasury officials and Fed officials and others had hoped that the intervening time would give CEO's a time to talk to their boards, to think things over, and clear their heads. In a few hours the government took preferred shares in the nation's leading banks and injected $125 billion into the largest banks. Treasury injected $25 billlion in Bank of America, Citigroup, and JP Morgan Chase, And between $20 and $25 billion in Wells Fargo, and $3 billion in Bank of New York Mellon, and $3 billion in State Street. Another $125 billon would be injected into other smaller banks in coming days. Officials at Treasury, Fed and FDIC and other government officials hoped this would give a "confidence shock" to the nation's banking system. ...

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Greg Ip in the WSJ says president Biden's popularity has not surged because of lack of results in the fight against inflation. Yet inflation has been cut in half as reported in the WSJ recently, with May inflation of 4% in the US being about half of what it was at its peak of 9% in 2022.  Inflation is much worse in Europe. Biden policies that helped fight inflation included the Inflation Reduction Act to control health costs, the policies to keep Russian oil below a certain level that reduced oil prices to $75 a barrel, and the sequential interest rate increases by Jerome Powell at the Fed. The long term benefits of increased investment in manufacturing in the US for jobs growth, and competitive policy to gain US leadership in many technologies also provide for sound growth in the long term. 

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Feldstein emphasizes the need to help homeowners with a plan he suggested back in June.. And suggests spending by the government to build infrastructure, other spending initiatives to stimulate demand, and rebuilding military capacity. Spending he suggests should be large enough to make an impact, as the loss of household wealth from falling home and stock prices could result in a loss in aggregate spending of $300 billion or more. He points to the need for urgent action.

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The BBC looks at some of the claims made by president Trump about India's rapid progress in delivering services to the people in electricity, sanitation, roads infrastructure, cooking gas, internet connections. BBC confirms that the economy size is now 6 times that in 2000, as Mr. Trump stated on his visit to Ahmedabad. It was in terms of the total value of all goods and services in the economy or GDP at $477 billion (IMF figures) in 2000. In 2019  it is $2,940 billion.  270 million fewer people were living in poverty in 2016, this is confirmed in a UN report. Here is the list for services as checked by The BBC. 1. Providing electricity to every one of the 600,000 villages in India. By 2014 most of the villages were electrified- at 96%. It is defined as having schools, health centres and 10% of households having electricity in each village. 2. About 600 million people having access to toilets under the Clean India mission launched in 2014. 100 million new toilets were built. 3. 70 million women were given access to cooking gas. 80 million new connections were built. 4.  320 million new internet subscribers. The figure is low about 600 million total internet subscribers. 5. It is true that infrastructure building is moving quickly says the BBC. About 10,000 kms were built in 2018-19 double that in 2013-2014 under a previous administration. The Mumbai Metro is mentioned in the WSJ as a project that has made remarkable progress. A bullet train project is moving ahead with Japanese financing and technological help from Mumbai to Ahmedabad.  Access to banking accounts and direct deposit of government transfer payments to all Indians is another project. Healthcare access through health care payments directly for health care costs incurred for low income families is another more recent project to reduce the uncertainty and improve finances of poorer citizens. ...

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A range of opinion from concern for the sourcing of products from a country with no environmental or other regulation, concern for Chinese workers exposed to toxic substances, to concern for hundreds of millions of Chinese children exposed to leaded paints from aa Professor of Environmental Health. The Professor states that 5 of 11 brands of paint that he bought in China had 100 times the US limit, and calls for a Chinese ban on lead in paints.

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How does construction industry health or troubles affect industries like auto especially the market segments sensitive to how the construction industry is doing which is the large pickup market. Were builders better prepared or did tey end up taking some of the same risks. They ended up buying too much land and the value of the land dropped it tripped the builders up in the amount of debt they were allowed in their contractual agreements with the banks. And the builders still ended up with a lot of their profits tied up in a few states even though they spread the building to different parts of the country, for example over 50% of their profits estimated to come from 3 states alone, California, Florida and Nevada.