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Several quotes from Bloomberg that have a lot of value. Reward people for trying new things, if they take risks to try new things reward them and encourage them even if it doesn't work out the first time. Remember the recent interview with the South Korean infrastructure building companytop manage and how it decided to take up the challenge of building the first highway between Seoul and the second largest city in S. Korea entirely using Korean knowhow in the early years of development. 311 was a very good idea especially when Bloomberg goes through the weekly reports. His office in glass in rooms without walls is another good idea to get things done quickly and be on top of things. Getting Katherine Oliver to boost NYC with the movie industry is another one. The reporter who interviewed Bloomberg describes as one of his strengths getting people who are better than him on board and getting them to do important jobs. That plus a can do attitude willingness to face up to difficulties and not shrinking from the task make for a winning combination, as it says in this article his way is to take a big task piece by piece and tackle each piece at a time.Then add to this his openness in communication and eagerness to listen makes for effectivness in execution. In fact the reporter could not even find Bloomberg in the NYC mayoral offices as his cubicle sat smack in the middle of the large room surrounded by his other staff' cubicles. Intel's Andy Grove also used a similiar ofice and so do top managers at Honda Motor Company, its merit is that it speeds up communication and helps in execution. ...

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Troops who served in Konar province near the Pakistan border saw some of the heaviest fighting in Afghanistan. Here they give their account of what they saw and why there is a big gap in what they saw and what military officers and President Obama are telling Americans. Fort Campbell is spread out over 100,000 acres on the Kentucky-Tennessee border. Tweny thousand troops from this base served in Afghanistan. Brigades of the 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell fought some of the toughest battles in the eastern part of Afghanistan even while the surge concentrated troops in the southern part near populated centers. What the troops remember is battles fought in remote valleys where troops came out of nowhere like "ghosts," in areas which were held only for a few months and abandoned with no idea what they had accomplished. This description also fits with the reality of the Taliban being both Pakistani and Afghan in the sense that the borders were defined by the British during colonial times, but the tribes of the Pashtun region are on both sides, in Pakistan and Afghanistan. To subdue the region would be to subdue the Pakistani side and the support they enjoy in large parts of Pakistan, with the large and mountainous terrain making movement difficult. Which is why these troops talk about "ghosts" turning up from nowhere and find the fighting to have lost meaning in terms of purposes it is supposed to accomplish and how this is to be done. The reality of the valleys and hills over a vast mountainous terrain of Afghanistan and Pakistan and the people and fighting there does not fit the speeches made by President Obama on Afghanistan, and say soldiers this gap is widening every day....

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The MIT Economics Department helped shape the thinking of influential central bank governors, Mervyn King of the Bank of England, Ben Bernanke of the U.S. Federal Reserve, and Mario Draghi of the European Central Bank. Bernanke (1979) and Draghi (1977) received their Ph.D.s in economics from MIT in the late 1970's, with Prof. Stanley Fischer (1973-94) as their advisor. Charles Bean, deputy governor of the Bank of England followed them a few years later. Mervyn King was a visiting professor at MIT (1983-84). King and Bernanke shared an office as professors at MIT. The MIT school came up with a pragmatic and activist approach which argued there was a role for government when markets and the economy stumbled. This followed a period when economists from the universities at Chicago, Minnesota and Rochester were influential, making the case for efficient markets and businesses holding rational future expectations which were ahead of government planners; saying government should play a minimal role. The MIT trained central bankers have made shaping public and market expectations an important part of policy actions. Draghi's July 23, 2012 remark- "Believe me this will be enough," was an effort to shape expectations after the European Central Bank's July 2012 bond buying actions in the eurozone. Germany has a competing version based in Bonn. Germany's former Bundesbank president, Axel Weber, was the tutor at Bonn University for current Bundesbank president, Jens Weidmann. Both Weber and Weidmann supported austerity measures, inflation fighting efforts of former ECB head Claude Trichet, and opposed Draghi's monetary easing and bond buying efforts to reduce excessive yields of Italy and Spain....

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Scholz loses a no confidence vote in parliament that he called so that new elections are held in 60 days according to federal German law.  He says it is a fundamental choice that German people need to make between pensions and investments for the future with support for the armed forces vs the policy that doe not plan to invest in the future with a debt brake limiting investment. The Free Democrats opposed SPD and Greens efforts to invest for 4 years. Why did Scholz continue. in this way with FDP CDU's Merz asks directly, was Scholz on another planet.  This has happened three times before- in 1972 when Wily Brandt got support for his Ostpolitik policy of better relations with Soviet Union and GDR and new mandate after planning a no confidence vote for a new election. He won with 46% of the vote and 91% of eligible voters voted. In 2005 Kohl was reelected after a no confidence vote he planned on his government to get a new mandate. Kohl of CDU won. In 2005 Gerhard Schroeder's social and economic reforms affected working class Germans- he called a no confidence vote to get a new mandate. This one Schroeder of SPD lost and it started Angela Merkel of CDU's 16 years in office. ...

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O'Malley, Sanders and Clinton agree that the media has spent much too much time on the Hillary Clinton email controversy. The first Democratic party debate also puts Sanders on the defensive on issues such as using force as commander in chief, gun control, and foreign policy including a no fly zone over Syria. Clinton defended her positions as consistent and having the same values throughout her political career, on the Patriot Act which she supported, and on other issues such as the Keystone pipeline, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership which she opposes because it does not do enough to protect U.S. jobs. Clinton emphasized her flexibility by saying that- "But like most human beings, including those of us who run for office, I do absorb new information. I do look at what's happening in the world." The debate was a win for Hillary Clinton because it helps to put the email controversy behind her, puts the focus back on her story and work as Senator and Secretary of State, and showed her ability to take on the many questions about her credibility....

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Antonis Samaras, leader of Greece's New Democracy Party, opposes the tax increases mandated by the E.U.'s June 2011 program for Greece. He supports the spending cuts. The shrinking economy with no hope for recovery under the current plan will only worsen the situation. The Greek economy declined by 4.5% in 2010 and will decline 3% to 4% in 2011, and unemployment is already at 16%, with much higher unemployment among young people. Many experts, and editorials in the Wall Street Journal and the Economist, share this opinion. With the austerity program's cuts and tax increases deeply unpopular among ordinary Greeks Samaras's party is moving ahead of Prime Minister Papandreou's socialist party in public opinion polls. Papandreou is not expectd to complete his term of office which ends in 2013, and a change of government may come by the end of 2011. At that point the E.U. leaders will have to negotiate with Samaras. Samaras says he told German chancellor Merkel- if your plan works I will say I was wrong, but if it doesn't you will need a new plan....

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The new head of U.S. President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors, is Princeton economics professor, Alan Krueger. Kueger is known as the academic's academic, whose office is located with other labor scholars in the Princeton library. His work has focussed on what he calls "Rockenomics" (research about which bands do well and the reasons for this), on commuting, on studies such as the one with a suggestive title, "Sorting in the Labor Market: Do Gregarious Workers Flock to Interactive Jobs?" His appointment suggests the Obama administration is looking at no new policy initiatives, focussing on an incrementalist approach in policy actions, with the hope that he can get both political parties behind smaller changes. Putting a micro-specialist in charge at a time of huge volatility in financial markets shows an administration that is likely to continue the status quo with small changes till the presidential elections in 2012- the opposite of strong action because the Obama adminstration has no idea how to turn this economy around and only hopes things will change....

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Britain's chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, tells parliament it will be difficult for Britain to avoid a recession if Europe goes into a recession in 2012-2013. He also told parliament that British debt reduction will take longer than planned because of the economic slowdown. This means the British public will have to go through two more years of austerity than previously planned, now upto 2017. Britain will need to borrow an additional 111 billion British pounds through 2015. Britain's Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts economic growth at 0.9% in 2011, and 0.7% in 2012. Debt as a share of GDP will peak at 78% in 2015, instead of the 71% expected earlier. With strong opposition from the unions and a major strike planned by about 2 million workers on Nov. 30, 2011, the Cameron government plans to go ahead with its austerity measures. This includes eliminating 600,000 public sector jobs, and limiting pay increases for public sector workers to 1% for two years after the end of the current pay freeze....

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After 13 years of Labor government, the new Liberal-Conservative coalition is seen as good for both the parties and good for Britain A good deal of optimism about the prospects for this government. The optimism rests on the pragmatic sensible nature of Cameron and Clegg, on the fact that the 2 parties combined have 59% of the vote in the elections for making some tough decisions- on spending cuts, a sensible fiscal program to generate $9 billion in savings through spending cuts in 2010, and generally agreement between the two parties on the significant issues of state finances. The Tories holding to their position on immigration but giving in on the idea of proportional representation. The election changes would have Parliament members in office for 5 years and the manner of election changed to remove a growing distortion of the popular vote. Labor and Conservatives share of the vote has dropped from 81% in 1979 to 65% in 2010, and still Tory and Labor MP's have 565 of the 650 seats in Parliament or 87%....

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The U.S. Government Accountability Office says only $179.5 millon of the first $1.5 billion- in a five year aid program to Pakistan worth $7.5 billion- has been spent. USAID's director for Pakistan, Andrew Sisson, says the $1 billion from prior ununsed funds was spent in Pakistan in 2010. This includes $500 million for aid during the disastrous floods last year. Projects include the Gomal Zam Dam in South Waziristan, at a cost of $20 million. That project helped build a spillway to apower plant bringing electricity to a remote region in Pakistan. That dam was built by Chinese engineers from the Sinohydro Corporation. The Obama administration wants to see large signature projects to which it can point to as signs of success. With a failing economy, corruption and a weak civilian bureaucracy- especially with a weak and ineffective civilian government- getting projects implemented has proven extremely difficult. The U.S. government has committed to spending 50% of the aid money through the Pakistan government and not through civilian contractors with large overhead expenses....

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Trust bank is rescued with a $530 million injection by Russia's central bank in Dec. 2014. The bank was taken over by the Deposit Insurance Agency which guaranteed the deposits of customers. As Russia raises interests by 17%, the ruble stabilizes with a 5% gain on Dec. 22, 2014. Alexei Kudrin, former finance minister and the architect of Russia's improved finances during Putin's previous terms in office, told a news conference that Russia now faces a full fledged economic crisis that will be painful in 2015. He expects a drop of 40% in imports, inflation at 12 to 15%, and decline in living standards. He also said Russia's credit rating could fall to junk status making it difficult to obtain financing. Kudrin was critical of the way the Russian government handled the crisis, saying action was slow and the government did not act as one team. He called for improved relations with western partners- "For a way out of the crisis, it is of high importance to regulate relations with our foreign partners- first of all with Europe, the U.S. and other partners."...

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A four year U.S. Environmental Protection Agency study is put out in June 2015. It confirms that fracking can be carried out safely without contamination of drinking water. The EPA says there are a small number of contaminated drinking water wells and describes the vulnerabilities. Thomas Burke, deputy assistant administrator of the EPA's office of research and development says: "The hydraulic fracking activities in the U.S. are carried out in a way that have not led to widespread, systematic impact on drinking water resources. In fact, the number of the documented impacts to drinking water is relatively low compared to the number of fractured wells." Rob Jackson, an earth sciences professor at Stanford University, who has studied the environmental impact of fracking, says he agrees with this conclusion of no widespread impact, but says the report needed to be more comprehensive. Burke said in a conference call that the main issue was "understanding the vulnerabilities so we can address the vulnerabilities and practice hydraulic fracking in the safest possible way."...

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This WSJ editorial describes the errors of the Obama administration in its policies for Syria and Iraq. The failure to maintain a troop presence in Iraq, a premature withdrawal which has led to the fall of Mosul to Islamic extremist ISIS. WSJ describes the significant improvement in Iraq at the time the Obama administration assumed office, and the deterioration since with withdrawal and increasing sectarianism. Obama administration policies and failure to actively support moderates of the Free Syrian Army in Syria have led to the return to extremism and terrorist control of large parts of Syria and Iraq. It has also led to worsening of relations with allies Saudis and Turkey who called for a more active U.S. support of moderates in Syria. In the process what was supposed to be an Arab Spring has turned into a return of extremism and dampening of the hopes of the people in the Middle East for economic progress. After a trillion dollars spent in Afghanistan and Iraq and large sacrifices by the military letting the situation unravel in this manner is incomprehensible....

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Friedman on the ouster of president Morsi after only one year in office following large scale protests. He sees this as the beginning of a fallback of political Islam, with the protests of secularists in Turkey, the shift to a moderate candidate Rouhani in Iran's presidential election, the shift of the Emhada Islamist party in Tunisia to work with center-left parties in writing the constitution, and the election of a western educated political scientist to lead a coalition government in Libya. In each country the secular and liberal leaders and the young people felt the revolution was being stolen from them by Islamist parties and are asserting themselves to gain a voice in government. The Islamist party in Egypt has older leaders, an authoritarian structure and hierarchy, which failed to incorporate liberal and other opinion in writing the constitution and in forming the government. A more tolerant and open Islamist party needs to be part of a broad based government with other parties, which can focus on the economy, unemployment, infrastructure and public services....

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Lower oil prices, higher corporate profits, and restrained spending, lead to improvements in Japan's budget deficit. There is a 24% increase in corporate taxes in Japan's budget estimates for 2015 compared to Dec. 2012 when prime minister Abe assumed office. This will help reduce the budget deficit. The budget assumes an oil price of $69, making the budget plan achievable with prices below $50 in Jan. 2015. For the next fiscal year tax revenue is expected to increase by 5.4% over the prior year, with half of the increase from the sales tax increase and the other half from the higher economic growth. Budget projections assume 3.6% global economic growth, exports up by 5.2% in real terms, and imports up 3.9%. Spending is kept under control increasing by just 0.5% from the current fiscal year budget, and borrowing reduced by 11%. The government plan is to produce a primary budget surplus by 2020, and cut the deficit by half in the primary budget which excludes bond issuance and interest payments, by fiscal 2015....

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With use of the software technologies and cloud computing Athenahealth hopes to revolutionize the medical records of physician practices. Here Joseph Rago of the WSJ talks to Jonathan Bush, CEO of Athenahealth. Bush says the way things are done now in healthcare there is no choice and choosers, and ther is not thing like a market in health care and people in Washington DC don't understand remotely why a market might be remotely useful. The deep problem in American health care he says is that no one knows the actual value of the services doctors give, not even the doctors, and the complexity of the method of payments keeps everything hidden, as doctor's clerical staff bills your treatment to insurance companies picked by your employer, and pays the doctor through money taken from premiums or foregone wages. Athena designed a program to digitize records and automate billing and is moving into clincal record keeping. It now has 15,000 physicians in 43 states using its program as avirtual office and growth at 30%....

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The Pakistan army and its anti India mindset is at the root of the problem Pakistan faces. The army has factions that support the Taliban. Its intelligence agency, the ISI, helped create the Taliban as a way to get strategic depth (as they called it) in Afghanistan, for it sees as a necessary perpetual conflict with India. And the failure in Pakistan, the crisis of Pakistan, lies in the failure of elected politicians, the failure of the army, to provide responsible government and peaceful relations with India and with Afghanistan. By pursuing a Hindu-Muslim conflict agenda, and a anti-foreigner agenda for Afghanistan, Pakistan has ended up undermining its own government, institutions, and sovereignty over tribal areas and the North West Frontier Province. The US by getting involved in the Hindu-Muslim conflict agenda, and the anti-foreigner agenda during the Cold War, by supplying weapons and aid for this to successive Pakistani military governments, now finds itself as the foreigner in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Pakistan army's anti-foreigner agenda, now that the Americans are the foreigners, is not something that even the army or the civilian governments can control. The only thing the army knows, and its raison-de-etre, is the protection of the state of Pakistan and an antiIndian, Hindu-Muslim conflict agenda. After 60 years of doing this since its founding the Pakistan army knows no other way. Failure to do what it is doing would remove it from its critical role as the most important institution in Pakistan, and relegate its officers and the army to a smaller role, with smaller committments of resources, a smaller army, and the loss of its privileged role in Pakistani society. This is the answer to Holbrooke's question to Pakistani businessmen, and civilian leaders, in Lahore recently, what is the crisis of Pakistan? And these businessmen and civilian leaders also touched on the army's role. For America as it sees the need to build a new economic partnership with Asia that would help revive economic growth, there is the need for deep soul searching. The Pakistan military sucks up resources that are so badly needed elsewhere, for the kind of construction the Obama administration sees for America, of roads, bridges, schools, new energy infrastructure. How can what is good and planned for America not be whats good for South Asia, for India, Pakistan, SriLanka and the entire region? The resources that are sucked up by the Pakistan military and its actions to foster aconflict atmosphere merely adds to the way resources are sucked for the military in India, when they are badly needed for development, economic growth, and the same kind of infrastructure building and education that the Obama administration plans for the US. Without correcting this flaw in its policies in South Asia the Obama administration cannot create a partnership with Asian countries that could play a critical role in America's own economic growth....

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Liz Whitehurst is one of many young people who are giving up jobs in offices to take to farming. They are not from farm families and bring a new way and exciting way of looking at farming free of the pesticides and other practices common today. Only 2% of U.S. land is being used for growing fruits and vegetables, according to the Union of American Scientists cited in the Guardian newspaper, and this needs to at least double in acreage if American needs are to be met. Only 15% of Americans get the daily requirement for fruits and vegetables- so desperately needed is this  to lower the BMI of the 70% of overweight Americans with BMI over 50. In the light of this crisis the shift of young people to farming is an encouraging sign.  In 2015 Liz, 32 years, decided to buy a 3 acre farm in Upper Marboro, Md, giving up benefits and better pay at nonprofit jobs in Washington state.  Here she is shown picking up Aragula leaves in the November chill. She is not alone. She is joining a movement that is bringing highly educated, former urban first time farmers as the demand for better food, for local and sustainable food, especially fruits and vegetables grows in the U.S. Year on Year there is a 20% increase of farmers in states like California, Nebraska, South Dakota in the 25-34 age group. In the 2014 USDA Census this group is growing at 2-3% just when other groups are shrinking by double digits. These farmers are more likely to connect with the community supported agriculture (CSA) prorams and markets, to grow organically and limit pesticide and fertilizer use. They tend to have farms less than 50 acres. Liz leases the house and the fields from a neighboring couple in the 70's, growing organically certified peppers, cabbages, tomatoes and salad greens kale to aragula, rotating fields. On Tues, Thurs. and Fri. she and two friends are to be seen waking up in the early hours of darkness to kneel in mud and cut the greens. What motivates them is having a positive impact, to do that so it is immediate and you can see it making a difference, says Liz. Still young farmers face many hurdles, including student loan debt, and finding ways to meet the larger needs for online grocery service or the grocery chains. Yet a trend is taking shape for small and middle farms that provides some optimism as the number of farmers shrink significantly overall. Most alarmingly it is the lack of national and local policies to meet the health crisis of rising BMI's right at this level of local farms and community farms for local produce. Lack of any consciousness about this, even though good health in the U.S. as in other countries has always rested on what you are eating, long before processed foods became the norm this is the way the world met nutrition needs.    ...

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Anthony Hopkins is Pope Benedict XVI in November's Netflix Movie The Two Popes. Hopkins, a Welsh actor, is now famous for the way he talks about not taking himself so seriously. His view of life, just be glad you are alive and have fun doing things while you can, all this talk about getting to the top, once you get up there you find there is nothing there, just nonsense, all lies. For Hopkins it has freed up a lot of energy and makes him come alive at 81 years. Another thing he says keep working thats the only way to live, and not go into decline. So what better way to take on the role of Benedict, a German pope who becomes the first to resign his office, and have his chosen successor follow him, cardinal Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, Argentina, (actor Jonathan Pryce) succeed him. Just be laid back and fill the role without thinking too much about it. So no intensity, he does not do research, actually a bit clueless, he says. Life is too short to be overconscious about oneself, he was intense once, now since about ten years he just wants to relax. Benedict he sees as an easy role especially with Pryce as cardinal Bergoglio. Fernando Meirelles directs and he is good with that. In the movie a day long conversation takes place, and two people who are from opposite ends of the world and ideologically too, have a sense of lightness about them, talking the World cup and soccer, and Hopkins playing the piano for Bergoglio. Hopkins just intent on having a lot of fun and doing it that way on the set. He sees the to popes as not walking on water, just human beings, and that make it easy for him. The human touches like going along with Bergoglio to watch football, though he nows nothing about it, and having a beer together. When playing Benedict Hopkins tells himself he is just pretending, just kidding, that makes it easy for him. His wife has encouraged Hopkins to relax by taking on painting and playing music. ...