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Closing the plant at Genk in Belgium cost Ford an estimated $750 million and years of difficulty with workers and the community. The plant employs 4300 workers and the cost comes to about $190,000 per worker. Many auto plants in Europe are operating at about 60% of capacity in 2013, and about 7-8 million units of car and light truck capacity remains idle, by some estimates. Ford was compelled to take this action because of billions of dollars of losses for Ford Europe as sales declined because of the eurozone financial crisis and austerity measures.

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Michael Birnbaum, the Post, Moscow bureau chief talks to experts and politicians in Moscow about the economic situation as the ruble declines by 36% since July, with the fall in oil prices accelerating its fall and reducing the impact of central bank intervention in slowing the decline. He cites a Putin interview with Tass news agency in Nov. which he says a tieup is possible between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia to bring down oil prices as a way to strengthen the effect of sanctions in changing Russian policy. Russian Finance minister Anton Siluanov says lost oil revenue impact is about $90 to $100 billion a year, added to the cost of sanctions at $40 billion. Significant capital flight also adds to the overall cost. Russian companies borrowing in dollars have large debt payments due that will need to be supported by the Russian government, an added cost. This will put the Russian economy in recession in 2015. The central bank expects inflaion at 10% in 2015. Large losses of this magnitude will be harder to sustain and deplete international reserves of $429 billion as of Oct. 2014. The thinking of ordinary Russians is reflected in an independent Levada Center opinion poll showing 61% of Russians expecting a decline in living standards and economic crisis in the near future. The man most responsible for stabilizing Russia's finances, former finance minister Alexei Kudrin, who had profound public disagreements with president Medvedev over increases in the military budget, warned of an economic crisis following the parliamentary and presidential elections. A major weakness of the Putin-Medvedev second and third terms is the failure to use higher oil revenues to expand the tech sector and other industries to diversify Russian exports away from oil. ...

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Angela Merkel's call to the Greek president calling for a referendum vote on Greece's wishes to remain in the eurozone. This is denounced by Syriza and the centre left parties. Merkel denies she made the call, but Greece's president says the call was made.

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The new bipartisan sanctions on Russia agreement in the U.S. Congress has the support of key senators, McConnell and Corker on the Republican side, Schumer and Cardin on the Democratic side. The agreement would impose new sanctions on Russia and provide for a mandated congressional review. This follows Russian meddling in the U.S. 2016 election and cyberattacks. This measure is being considered as a sanctions bill on Iran is being passed.

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The IMF report on Italy in July 2012 says Italy faces another year of recession. Debt as a percentage of GDP is expected to reach 126% in 2013. One bright spot is that Italy is expected to post a primary surplus by 2013- that is government revenues will cover promised services, excluding interest payments on oustanding bonds of $2 trillion. Because of the recession small shocks could change the outlook says the IMF, and it emphasized the importance of the changes being made to the labor market and for improving competitiveness. These changes need to be implemented early because of elections expected in spring 2013. A key concern is borrowing rates which are near 7% for Italy and Spain. The European Stability Mechanism, the rescue fund, was authorized to make purchases of Italian and Spanish bonds in the June 2012 summit. The ESM becomes operational in the summer of 2012, after the German Constitutional Court makes its ruling about it being legal and after ratification by national governments....

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Wealth for top 7% of U.S. households averaged $3.2 million in 2011, compared to $133,817 for the other 93% of the population. Third quarter 2013 household net worth is 615% of after tax income, up from 570% in 2012. The uneven distribution of household wealth and the gains from the stock market recovery going disproportionately to wealthier investors, does not provide strong enough underpinnings for robust consumer spending.

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Daimler's operating margins trail badly behind BMW and other competitors. Operating margins for 4th quarter 2012 were 5.3%, about half of margins at BMW in recent quarters. Mercedes sales have slowed in Europe and China. Growth in China has rapidly lost momentum after a strong 2011.

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A Whirlpool appliance factory in Amiens in the Somme region is slated for closure and relocation to Poland. Emmanual Macron made a surprise visit to the factory to talk to worker representatives. He says he cannot prevent the closure but can work to arrange for good terms for the closure. Marine Le Pen the far right candidate also visited the site at the factory gates where workers were on strike. Afterwards Macron said "I try to fix problems, not to exploit them."  Macron has come under criticism in the French press for taking too much for granted in the second round and not fighting for support the way he had earlier. Le Pen has appealed to workers facing factory closure and areas that have been neglected as factories closed in previous years. In the north and northeast smaller towns and areas neglected in the tech boom and facing deindustrialization have turned to Le Pen. Macron's effort to go into these areas is part of his style and his conviction that the problems have to be tackled in the deindustrialized areas, and to break the image that the National Front is striving to create of a candidate from investment banking that does not understand workers. ...

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The government of China increased allocation of funds to build low-income housing from 780 billion yuan in 2010 to 1.3 trillion yuan ($198 billion) for 2011. The target is to build 10 million units of subsidized housing in 2011, up from the 5.9 million units started in 2010.

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Slower growth expected for VW in 2012-2013.

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Under the rules for the European currency and the European Union there is no mechanism or process of fines or other sanctions to promote compliance to debt and deficit rules. In the case of Greece, an examination of budget reports shows that Greece never met the deficit rule of 3% for any year except 2006 and it has never been within 30 percentage points of the debt ceiling. Greece's statistics are faulty and deficit figures are continually being revised upwards. Several times the figures were quadruple what was initially reported in late 2009, for instance the deficit figure was 3.7% of GDP, then revised to 13% of GDP, setting off the current crisis for the Euro and the European Union. In 2001 Greece failed to reflect $2.2 billon in military expenses. According to Eurostat, the EU statistics authority this was 10 times what was saved from the derivatives swap arranged by Goldman Sachs to trim Greece's deficit. That transaction trimmed the deficit by one tenth of a percentage point.

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About 171,000 refugees tried to cross the 250 mile stretch of ocean in rickety boats from Libyan ports into Italy in 2014, according to Frontex, the EU border agency . Refugees from Syria, Libya, Tunisia, and Eritrea are fleeing their homelands. A smuggling trade is carried out by tribes in Libya for these refugees, with one tribe making $60,000 a week. The tribes then use the money to buy weapons in the Libyan civil war. Migrant deaths at sea and inadequate rescue efforts are leading to a humanitarian crisis for Italy and the EU.

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About 900 Arab refugees are crammed into a boat which capsizes 60 miles off the Libyan coast in April 2015, killing about 850 people. This is the worst single incident in an increasing influx of refugees from boats leaving the Libyan coast for Italy. About 171,000 refugees from North Africa made this journey in 2014, and increasing numbers are doing it in 2015 to flee the civil wars in Syria and Libya, and hardship conditions in Tunisia, Eritrea and other sub-Saharan countries.

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A number of issues came up at the Women20 Summit in Berlin. Annette Niederfranke, Director of the International Labor Organization, brought up the issue of family reconciliation as "one of the toughest challenges for working women worldwide," that in order to meet obligations women tended to work in "non standard forms of employment and in part time work linked to lower wages, lower social security, lower benefits, and fewer training possibilities." Childcare was also an issue that was prominent considering the lack of adequate childcare in many countries including in the European Union. With responsibilities for the elderly, babies, and small children women tend to be in the workforce for shorter periods leading to men taking up many of the higher positions. Angela Merkel pointed out that Gemany tended to take a narrow view of professions available to girls, saying- "So it is very very important that we take a broader view of things while girls are still at school." Merkel also supports a Africa compact that would help women set up small and middle size businesses in poor countries. The "Digital" aspects of this and other efforts for women were a major topic being discussed. One idea that came up was that more cooperation from men was needed to make things happen. This is the third Women20 Summit after ones in Turkey and China, and a sense of momentum was felt by women. ...