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This report overlooks the fact that there was extensive fatigue in China with the covid lockdowns and the lifting of the lockdowns actually improves the economy, creates jobs for the unemployed. In this sense the U turn may have helped China and Mr. Xi's leadership. It also showed that Xi is listening to the protests and to other different voices within the leadership.

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The Netherlands is negotiating with Google, Microsoft and Amazon to make certain privacy rules are being honored.

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UK sends tanks to Ukraine. Poland seeks to send tanks to Ukraine as German chancellor Scholz responds to pressures to send Leopard tanks to Ukraine.

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Core consumer price inflation in Japan was up by 4% in December over a year earlier. Food prices were also up by 4%. This is the largest price increase since 1991. Services price inflation was up by only 0.8% compared to 7% in the US. The inflation target of the Bank of Japan is 2%.

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Rohan Premkumar in The Hindu provides this report of Chinese prisoners from the Opium wars of the 1850's sent to this "ancient sub-jail"in the Nilgiris hills Tamilnadu by the British.  These POW camps provided cheap indentured labor to establish tea plantations in the Nilgiri hills. It helped to bring in revenue for the Empire through tea cultivation. About $1 million was spent to renovate this building so that future generations know what happened here since the arrival of the British by 1800. By contrast Yuen Yuen Ang at John Hopkins University from Singapore is interviewed for the NYT by Ezra Klein on China's Xi Jinping and the autocracy with democracy characteristics that prevailed under Deng, without an awareness of this period. For Zhongxun and Qi Xin, Jinping's parents this period of the Opium Wars, Taiping Rebellion, Boxer Uprising from 1850's and British, European invasion, must have been very real in the 1930's. And added to this the Japanese invasion of China. This has deeply influenced Xi Jinping.  ...

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UK government tax authority, HMRC has 42 billion in unpaid taxes from business and individuals under the Tory government, says this report in The Guardian. This would be more than what all local authorites in England will spend on social care, environment and planning, culture, it says. Another 4.5 billion pounds were lost in fraud and error. The Guardian calls Tory prime minister Sunak "the billionaires prime minister" and says "the little people" are us.

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Pressure on Scholz and Germany from European allies to allow sending of Leopard tanks to Ukraine before spring offensives begin. 

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Jacinda Ardern quits as New Zealand's leader citing burnout. She loses the support of provincial New Zealand after two years of lockdowns created strong sentiment against her. Ardern was prime minister for 5 years yet failed to implement many of the progressive reforms of the Labour party.  

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Microsoft will be taking a $1.2 billion charge to earnings related to severance costs for 10,000 layoffs, as it prepares to do with fewer workers in a slowing economy. Tech took a larger part of US investments than warranted leaving public investments in infrastructure unfunded or underfunded. This is reversing as the US makes a push in infrastructure spending and in new factory investments in manufacturing.

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One more reason inflation is slowingin the US- the public is spending less and resisting price increases.

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A second estimate by the OECD increases the revenues generated from the global minimum tax of 15% on corporations by as much as $150 billion. The original estimate was of $150 billion, so the real amount generate could be twice that. It means it will help countries build the infrastructure they need to revive their economies.The international tax agreement of 2021 sets the rate based on where companies sell to consumers rather than where they are based. It is the most important tax agreement in a century with 137 countries participating. 

The original estimate estimated revenues to be $150 billion- it raised this to $200 billion. It sees $200 billion in existing revenues that will be reallocated up from $125 billion. Taxing rights will generate additional $36 billion.

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Very little of the heavy rain and storm runoff from floods is being captured in California which has experienced many dry seasons and shortages of water, says this opinion in the WSJ. California has experienced 2 seven year droughts in the 20's and the 40's. The problem very little investment in public works in a state that was extravagantly spending on tech, starving essential infrastructure of spending. Economic textbooks talked of crowding out of private spending and investment, now we have crowding out of public spending on infrastructure.

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After the jump in unemployment in the the first year of the pandemic came the reversal as people retired or left some sectors of the economy leading to worker shortages. This is now reverting to something more normal as the US central bank the Fed acts to fight inflation, with both unemployment and inflation beginning to return to normal levels, says the WSJ.

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A project of the Japan International Cooperation Agency with the Himachal Pradesh Forest Department in India provides employment for women, increases upward mobility, and conserves biodiversity. Pine needles from the chir pine tree are converted into baskets, pen stands, serving trays. About 1.2 tons of chir pine needles are shed per hectare in Himachal's 124,000 hectares of chir pine forests.

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India was the first to offer financing assurances on behalf of Sri Lanka for a loan of $2.9 billion from the IMF. Written financing assurance from Japan will follow soon. A similar assurance from China will help Sri Lanka get the IMF loan of $2.9 billion. India's External Affairs Minister Jaishankar will visit Colombo on Jan. 19 and 20.