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Indian PM Modi will take part in the swearing in of a new government in Maharashtra on December 5, 2024. Maharashtra and Gujarat with cities Mumbai and Ahmedabad were part of Bombay state in 1947 after independence. It was also the largest trade and industrial region of India. Today it is poised under the Modi government to deliver industrialization on a scale that matches that of China for a modern Vikshit Bharat over the next decade and to 2040. This is the real significance of this event which in some ways surpasses the US election in significance and the scale of transformation of the largest nation in the world.

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India's Modi government is introducing a new plan to reduce rural poverty. It is implementing Universal Basic Income by depositing Rs 6000 or $84 directly to bank accounts of farmers with less than 5 acres. This helps 120 million poor farming families meet basic living needs in India, where rural poor often make less than a dollar a day. The cost of the program is $10.5 billion a year. The opposition Congress Party also has a plan for Guaranteed Minimum Income. India has national elections in May, and the government plan is also designed to fulfill promises of improving quality of living of Indians with the programs for Clean India, toilets and electricity for all Indians, bank accounts for all Indians, and series of other programs.  The advantage of the program as shown in a government paper in 2017 is that money goes directly to bank accounts avoiding corrupt middlemen or bureaucrats, and that it is possible in India to accomplish a lot by spending a relatively small amount to realize immense benefits. The Budget deficit for the year ending March 2019 will go up from 3.3% to 3.4%, and for year ending March 2020 go up from 3.1% to 3.4%- small increases relative to the immense difference in the lives of rural Indian families as a result. A series of programs for universal access to electricity, health care, toilets and clean sanitation, bank accounts and basic income, are designed to bring forth a New India different from the past. These programs are being implemented or put forward in the first term, with the Modi government looking for voter approval to push forward further development in a second term. The government paper on UBI in 2017 showed that in a country like India a small amount goes a long way in reducing poverty. By providing income of just above $100 a year to around 75%  of Indians, poverty can be cut from 15% to 1%. The paper shows cost at 5% of GDP which can be partially offset by reducing other government  subsidies. ...

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Toyota revised its profit forecast downward for the current fiscal year ending March 2012, by 54%. The revised forecast is for net profit of 180 billion yen ($2.32 billion), down 54% from a prior estimate made in August, and half the 408 billion yen earned the prior year. The strength of the yen has impacted the price competitiveness of Japanese exports. It has also affected the value of overseas profits on Japanese financial statements. Toyota makes half of its global production in Japan compared to a third for Honda and Nissan, leaving it more vulnerable to the value of the yen. Also affecting Toyota are the severe floods in Thailand which led to shortage of parts from component suppliers in Thailand. The new forecast uses an exchange rate of 77 yen to the dollar and 105 yen to the euro. That compares with the exchange rate for the prior fiscal year of 86 yen to the dollar and 113 yen to the euro.

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Mr Iksil, a trader in Chase's CIO London office made such massive bullish bets on CDX-IG-9 index of 121 companies by selling credit default swaps, to the point where it cost less for protection on the index than for the individual components of the index. This worked in Jan-Feb 2012 with hedge funds on the other side having paper losses. In subsequent months hedge funds realized that Iksil would have to unwind some of these bets to avoid large losses. As a trader at Bank of America put it in a memo, at that point "Fast money smelled blood." The result is that hedge funds accelerated their bets against Mr Iksil's bullish positions, leading to the large $2 billion losses at CIO unit of Chase- losses on depositors money from aggressive bets in a volatile market. Mr Iksil is a French born trader, who has worked for Chase since March 2007. He has earned $100 million each year for Chase. He travels to London from his Paris home each week, and works from home Fridays. Two junior traders work with Iksil, primarily placing bets for complex trades in credit markets....

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The EU has pushed the date for France to reduce its deficit to 3% once before -to 2015 giving France 2 more years. French president Hollande faced with unemployment at 11% in March 2014, has set the task of convincing Brussels to allow more time after losing badly in local elections and facing opposition to continued austerity in his own party. France is expected to come up with a plan to present to the EU for cutting public spending by 50 billion euros over 3 years 2015-2017. In the televised address on March 31, Hollande put the priority on growth, saying "Its not a question of cutting spending for the sake of it." After election in May 2012, Hollande and prime minister Rajoy of Spain went to Brussels together to push for a growth oriented policy in the eurozone. This time he has support from Socialist Party leader in Italy, Matteo Renzi, who is also introducing growth oriented policies to reduce unemployment and boost the economy. The two leaders faceoff with Angela Merkel on the need to relax austerity policies in the eurozone....

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Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim will provide $250 million to New York Times in return for warrants that can be converted into 15.9 million common shares at a strike price of $6.36, close to where the price was last week. The notes carry a interest rate of 14% and are due in 2015. The Sulzbergers control 19% of the company's equity and control the company through super-voting shares. If Slim exercizes the warrants he would control 18% of the company's equity. Times faces a liquidity crisis and the $250 million may not be enough for it to survive as an independent company. The New York Times borrowed heavily in the boom years and it had $1.1 billion of debt at the end of September 2008, and only $46 million in cash. Much of that debt is coming due in the next couple of years. It has a $400 million credit facility that expires in May 2009, $250 million in notes due in 2010, and a $400 million credit facility expiring in 2011. Its stock has fallen 50% already and its debt is rated "junk" by S&P....

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Honda will run a CR-V commercial during the Super Bowl broadcast by NBC on Feb. 5, 2012. This is part of its effort to spruce up its image with a younger demographic. The ad will show a woman who is proposed to and says she wants to do some other things first before getting married such as the fun things - going on some amazing hiking trip, going sailing, mountain cycling, finish my short film and so on.

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The Italian government sold 5 billion euros of three year bonds in Jan 2013 at an interest rate of 1.85%, the lowest since 2010. This is a remarkable change from 2012.

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The Brazilian economy is growing too fast, and this pace not only won't be sustained, but it has signs of serious trouble ahead. The Brazilian economy grew at an estimated annualized pace of 10% in the last 6 months and generated 962,000 jobs between Jan-April of 2010. Growth in 2010 is expected to be 7%. The jump in growth is partly the result of the stimulus measures of the Lula government. But a consensus of experts is that Brazil still saves too little, has not invested enough in infrastructure,and its economy has the potential of 5% sustainable growth each year. The central bank has increased interest rates - increase of 0.75% in April 2010, and economists in Brazil think the rate will go up to 13% in 2011. About $10 billion in cuts in spending have been announced but they are cuts to an already growing budget approved by Congress, so in reality it will only slow the increase in spending. Public debt is at 42.7% of GDP. Real interest rates have fallen from close to 20% in 2003 to between 5-10%. Costs per unit of labor are increasing at about half the rate of real wages according to a finance official. The National Development Bank or BNDES played a role in helping the economy with subsidized loans when the financial markets ran into trouble. It has expanded lending by 50%, with money from the Treasury of 180 billion reais. Some of the measures of the Lula government has reduced the skewed income distribution Brazil, and in doing so has increased consumer demand. Meeting high consumer demand, and meeting the need for commodities like soyabeans and metals from China, has boosted growth in Brazil to twice the sustainable rate and it is now at a par with China and India. But this places Brazil too dependent on the boom in Chinese demand, especially as the stimulus in China slows and the property bubble threatens China's economy. See links to China. A new President after the upcoming Presidential election will have to tackle the high interest rates in 2011, lower commodity prices, and the need for better infrastructure, and make the adjustment to a sustainable pace of growth....

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With China's automobile market declining for the fifth month in a row, and trade tensions rising, it now appears that carmakers such as Ford expanded too quickly in the Chinese market. Ford, Peugeot, and Hyundai appear to have poorly times their expansion in China, expanding at the tail end of the Chinese boom just ahead of the new Trump administration's efforts to challenge China's lopsided trade balance.  It has become so bad that this report shows workers at a Peugeot factory in China spending their days washing floors and attending Communist political study sessions at work. At a Ford plant workers shifts are reduced to a couple of days a month. Sales grew 3% in 2017 and declined 2% in the first 11 months of 2018, after increases of 14% in previous years taking the market to 28 million in a dizzying ride as it surpassed the U.S. sales of 17.5 million. Overcapacity is a problem in China with the aggressive expansion. There is capacity to make 43 million cars, but will produce 29 million in 2018, according to PwC, consulting firm. Ford meanwhile put in a new plant in Harbin in 2017, expanding its capacity to 1.6 million a year, but sales peaked at 1.27 million in 2016, and are down 6% in 2017, and 34% in 2018 to about 700,000. While there are no layoffs some workers are making only $220 monthly, forcing them to take second jobs as cab drivers or couriers. Suzuki decided to quit in 2018 exiting China entirely just so it would not pile up losses in what is now a market that is way overblown from the boom years. Electric vehicle production in the pipeline of about 7.5 million vehicles will compound this problem further with 32 new plants planned by 26 firms.   ...

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Gordon Brown, former prime minister of Britain from 2007 to 2010, chaired the April 2009 G-20 meeting that came up with ways to tackle the global financial crisis. Brown also led the way by recapitalizing British banks, a step the U.S. followed. He comments on the volatility in financial markets in August 2007 following the S&P credit downgrade of the U.S.. Brown gives an incomplete grade to the tasks the 2009 G-20 set out to accomplish. He points to three goals the G-20 had set in the middle of the financial crisis in April 2009. The first was to prevent a recession from becoming a depression. The other two were to establish a financial stability regime, and a compact for growth. These two became paper promises says Brown. Brown sees the best approach to prevent a lost decade is for U.S. and Europe trading their way out of a downturn as the Asian market absorbs more industrial goods from Europe and the U.S. This includes policies that would keep commodity prices low and ways of coping with currency shocks. Analysts have pointed to an export led recovery as one of the solutions the U.S. was hoping to achieve with a lower value of the dollar. This has had only limited success because of deep structural problems- high consumer indebtedness, bad debt at the banks, weak housing sector following the mortgage crisis, and a rising U.S. deficit- which will take some time to clear. Brown does not come to grips with these underlying imbalances built up during the boom years of the last decade, both in Britain and in the U.S., during which he was the finance minister of Britain....

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A health care practitioner says the real problem is the high cost of medical care in the U.S. when compared to other countries. She points out that the Obama bill in 2008 did not take effective steps to bring down the cost of health care before enacting legislation to cover the uninsured, leading to higher premiums for the middle class. The link between healthcare and profits is seen as the main problem. 

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After years of negotiations Russia and China reached agreement on a memorandum that provides deliveries by Gazprom of 38 billion cubic metres of natural gas to China by 2018, under a 30 year supply deal. The pipeline to deliver gas to China is part of a $50 billion project for a pipeline that takes gas to Vladivostock for liquefaction. A spur from that pipeline would take gas to China. This would make China the largest importer of natural gas from Russia. In 2012 Germany imported 33 billion cubic metres of natural gas from Russia, followed by other large importers Ukraine, Turkey, Belarus and Italy. A new agreement between China and Russia's state owned oil company, Rosneft, doubles the oil imports to 31 million metric tons a year under a 25 year deal. The current level of imports is 15 million tons set by a deal in 2009. The lower price of natural gas going to Europe helped the two countries bridge differences over price. China's National Petroleum Corporation will partner with Rosneft for exploration in new oil fields in the Russian Arctic region....

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Higher inflation in Germany could help rebalance the German economy by increasing imports. German inflation has averaged 1.6% since 1999, compared to 2.0 % for the eurozone. It was 2.3% in December. And after years of wage restraint German unions are increasing the wage demands. IG Metall is looking for a 6.5% wage increase. And interest rates at 1% are quite low for Germany where unemployment is down to 5.5%, according to Eurostat, and employers have to meet higher wage demands. The ECB is aiming at 2% inflation and Germany has a 26% weighting in the calculation of the rate. But as Italy, France and Spain see inflation decline there is room for addditional inflation in Germany before the eurozone goes well above the 2% inflation rate. By freezing wages and improving price competitiveness with German products, other countries could increase exports. Yet the prospects of this making a large difference is limited because German companies are likely to push for wage restraint. The Bundesbank predicts wage increases of 2.4% in 2012. Over time the wage restraint in other eurozone countries and even slightly higher wages in Germany would reverse the trend since 1999 of Germany having much lower inflation, and this could be one of the factors helping in rebalancing....

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The Independence Hall Philadelphia, speech by Joe Biden was in retrospect a turning point in America from the chaotic politics of the last 5 years, following a decades long fracturing of the social fabric of America. That fracturing had many causes, all of which have been identified by president Biden and leaders in Congress such as Mr. Schumer and Senators Coon, Hickenlooper, and others, who are working nonstop on legislation and funding of America's new priorities. These are priorities of protecting working class families, building their savings, supporting education and healthcare for working class families, building back better America's crumbling infrastructure, tackling climate change, financing renewable energy, rebuilding America as a manufacturing leader for the world. It is because of this effort that candidates who support this effort prevailed in Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Arizona for Democrats to retain the Senate and be competitive in the House of Representatives. Only complacency led to unexpected losses in New York state for the House of Representatives leading to loss of the House by a small margin. This NYT report looks at what happened in 2022 and what this means for securing the country's key priorities to build hope for the future of America and of the free world.  ...

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Michelle Obama delivers a rousing speech in Pheonix, Arizona, as she campaigns across the country for Hillary Clinton, saying "they are trying to take away your hope." And by reminding voters Obama lost the state in 2012 by only 208,000 votes or 63 votes per precinct, so voters should not stay home. She tried to revive the 2008 campaign theme of "hope" of the Obama campaign in that year.

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The remarkable composition of the most vibrant immigrant filled city in the world, with 47% of the employed being immigrant and foreign born, mostly from developing countries such as Dominican, Chinese, Mexican, Guyanese, Jamaican, Ecuadorean, Haitian, Trinidad and Tobago, and Indian. The city's immigrant population is 3.1 million, 37% of the total population of 8.2 million. The report is written by Joseph Salvo, director of the population division of the City Planning Dept. and Arun Peter Lobo, deputy planning director. Dominicans are 380,000, Chinese 350,000, and Mexicans 186,000. During 2002 to 2011 Chinese population went up 34%, Mexicans 52% and Dominicans 3%. Queens has 1.09 million immigrants, half of that borough, Brooklyn 946,500 or 37% of the borough. The 37% immigrant foreign born population of the city compares to 27% for the New York Metropolitan region. Other interesting details- the growth in the Chinese population of about 89,000 in the city is greater than the entire population of Indians of 76,000, and the large growth in the Ecuadorean population by 22,000. The Indian population went up by 8000 or 12%. Indians in the New York Metropolitan region were in the upper income groups in neighborhood income comparable to people from UK, Germany and Israel, with Chinese being from lesser neighborhood income groups. Median income for Indians in the city was $84,000 compared to Chinese of $43,000, with 28% of Chinese immigrants having a college degree compared to 65% for Indians. This suggests immigrants from China are from poorer areas....

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RFK Jr wrote this op-ed on getting Americans to live healthier lives and eat healthier foods, cut the growth of food processing industries. RFK Jr says that his uncle John F. Kennedy was right in 1960 in writing that-  “The physical vigor of our citizens is one of America’s most precious resources.” The Presidential Fitness Test that President Obama ditched should be reinstated. In this Op-ed in the WSJ on September 5, 2024 RFK Jr. gives a Plan of Action to correct the errors in the way America has acted on the Nation's health that have cost the country its most precious resource. It means removing the influence of money on what is best for our health, and on taking decisive action in a whole range of areas. It means a new focus on healthy foods intake and vigorous exercise. ...

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Stress test performed by the consulting firms of Oliver Wyman and Roland Berger used data as of Dec 31, 2011, and a scenario of a 6.5% decline in GDP and a 26.4% fall in housing prices by 2014. An international panel of experts from the Bank of Spain, the Spanish government, the ECB, the IMF, the European Banking Authority and the EC was formed to oversee the consultancies report. A separate more detailed audit of 14 individual banks will be made by Deloitte Touche, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Ernst & Young, and KPMG International with results by the end of July. The four banks that need capital injections are Bankia, CatalunyaCaixa, NovaCaixaGalicia and Banco de Valencia. The consultancies estimate was for 51-62 billion euros needed according to Oliver Wyman, and 51.8 billion euros needed according to Roland Berger, for recapitalization of Spanish banks by 2014. The issue now is about any remaining questions about additional losses, and whether rescue funds from the EU fund the EFSF should go directly to the banks as favored by the IMF and the government of Spain. This is because of the stress on yields of Spain's 10 year bonds with rescue money going to the Spanish government at the insistence of German chancellor Merkel....

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John Lipsky, a deputy managing director of the IMF from the U.S., gives reasons why the U.S. should support IMF reforms that increase representation of emerging market countries in the G-20. Lipsky was at the IMF 2006-2011.

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Jaguar Land Rover is dropping the Land Rover name and will be called JLR with an all electric line planned by 2036. The holding company JLR will have 4 brands- Range Rover at the high end, the off-road Defender made in Slovakia, the Discovery as a family brand, and the Jaguar now priced at the high end. The strategy is designed to cope with stiff competition from Tesla and other EV brands, by moving it upscale- the average price of JLR going to 77,000 pounds from 44,000 pounds.  Batteries will be sourced from a new gigafactory in Europe built by Tata Motors, the parent company. A new Range Rover all electric will come out in 2024. With the new strategy only 330,000 vehicles would take it to breakeven instead of 660,000. JLR turned profitable in the last financial year generating cash flow of $1.3 billion pounds in last 6 months. It will invest 15 billion pounds over 5 years. 29,000 employees out of 40,000 will be upskilled to support the all new electric line to build, sell and service new EV's. ...

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H-P sales and profits continue to decline in its core printer and PC businesses. Sales in the printer group were down 5% in the third quarter 2012. Sales in the PC business in the third quarter 2012 declined 14% over the prior year quarter. Sales in the services business declined 6%. Add to this the large charge for $8.8 billion for Autonomy Inc. and investor response was "no mas" for H-P shares. CEO Meg Whitman promised to focus on the core businesses and not let the Autonomy business become a distraction, as Autonomy represents less than 1% of the H-P sales.