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Judge Engoron of the New York State Supreme Court is the rarest of judges in his style, demeanor and use of everyday expressions. He was a cabdriver and a music teacher and more like everyday people in America.  NYT shows the 92 page legal decision in which Judge Engoron sets a fine of $355 million in the civil fraud trial of Donald Trump. Engoron cites a poet and uses rare language in his everyman style, saying: "The English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744) first declared, “To err is human, to forgive is divine.” Defendants apparently are of a different mind. After some four years of investigation and litigation, the only error (“inadvertent,” of course) that they acknowledge is the tripling of the size of the Trump Tower Penthouse, which cannot be gainsaid. Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological. They are accused only of inflating asset values to make more money. The documents prove this over and over again. This is a venial sin, not a mortal sin. Defendants did not commit murder or arson. They did not rob a bank at gunpoint. Donald Trump is not Bernard Madoff. Yet, defendants are incapable of admitting the error of their ways. Instead, they adopt a “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” posture that the evidence belies." And calling it "this is not the defendent's first rodeo"- "In considering the need for ongoing injunctive relief, this court is mindful that this action is not the first time the Trump Organization or its related entities has been found to have engaged in corporate malfeasance. Of course, the more evidence there is of defendants’ ongoing propensity to engage in fraud, the more need there is for the court to impose stricter injunctive relief. This is not defendants’ first rodeo."     ...

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Henri Specht, Director of the Olympic Village, walks along newly installed boardwalk along the river Seine and sees how the Olympics will turn an industrial bank into a pedestrian walk area.This approach  has not been taken before and shows the French have taken the courage to try something new. The French government and organizers have built the Olympic Village in one of France's poorest suburbs along the river Seine in northeast of Paris to give it a jolt and revitalize the area. Carbon emissions will be cut in half using new technologies and it will be kept cool without airconditioning. Each of the 40 low rise tower blocks will provide housing for 14,000 people for Olympics and another 9000 for Paralympics. This a 52 acre project with housing for athletes to provide housing for residents, a new Aquatic Center, and other facilities to increase its potential for regeneration. Training facilities for employment are added in with high unemployment of about 20%.   Will it work? It was home to car and steel factories that have now closed as manufacturing went overseas. In 1998 the Stade de France stadium was built here to revive the area. Institut Montaigne says poverty will not disappear. The mayor says new housing is being delivered to change our image and improve the social balance in the city. In the neighboring town of St Oen the mayor has attracted $400 million euro investment for new housing. Tesla is putting its French headquarters in St. Oen. For the village about two thirds of the budget of 2 billion euros ($2.2 billion) comes from private real estate companies and one third from the French  government 646 million euros. After the games a third of the 2800 apartments in the Olympic Village will be sold to private owners, one third to go to public housing, and one third for rentals to students and others. ...

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After winning the Nation's League final over Netherlands next we will see her playing soccer in the Olympics. Aitana Bonmati talks about her life and experiences. Bonmati has given a boost to women's soccer with her talents, hard work and resilience, and by reaching out to fans all over Europe and the world. Alex Ibaceta interviews Spain's Bonmati in The Guardian. She started out playing with the boys because there were no girls to play with. She signs up for the town's football team Club Depotiu Ribes and Club de Football Cubelles playing with boys. As a cadete (14-15 years) she had to switch to playing on women's teams. This was a change at first as she had to learn to interact with girls. She says we had worse general conditions in life simply for being girls and even more in football. These were years when there was no professional women's soccer. She thought she wold play for a few years and then go to the US for studies, considering the University of Oregon. This is when she gets called to the women's first team. Bonmati talks about her mentality, not just the talent and hard work, but the mentality of sacrifice, resilience, fight and want to be better every day. To every young girl trying out a new sport, she describes this- it is a journey that is not pretty at times, there are bad moments, but these bad moments are what make you better as you learn to keep improving and know how to keep getting better. And to take on difficulties as opportunities. When she was goinghome from training with her father, they would use public transport and get home at 1 am. Looking back to where she is now idolized by young girls , what she has been able to accomplish she says it was not down to luck but all the hard work throughout the years. ...

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The Guardian shows pictures in both black and white and in color from the last 50 years of US president Joe Biden. The first picture is a black and white picture from 20 November 1972 showing him cutting his 30th birthday cake with his wife Nelia, sons Beau, and Hunter. He is shown taking the oath of office for the Senate as he turned 30 the youngest senator and now the oldest former senator to be president. On the Metroliner Amtrak in 1988. He spent decades riding Amtrak to Washington D.C. He campaigned with Jill Biden for president in 1988. Not till the extraordinary situation of the pandemic in 2020 did Americans who largely ignored him give him the opportunity to lead- and at what a time when the Nation desperately needed his vision and his leadership through the largest vaccination program in history with the exception of that in India. And following this with his skills in Congress to get the legislation passed with Republicans for trillions of dollars to go into aiding families recover, and the economy to recover, investing in chips and science, and in infrastructure in ways that have happened only three times in American history, first in the early days of rail transforming a largely agricultural country during Lincoln and Grant's years as president in 1860's and 1870's, and again during the TR, Woodrow Wilson years in the 1900, 1910 period, and in the period under FDR, Truman and Ike 1940's, 1950's. No other country recovered better and stronger, and yet because of the lingering effects of the pandemic with 1 million dead from the Covid virus, and increases in the cost of living even as inflation was brought down from 9% to 3% for reasons stemming from unwise decision of American business to concentrate the supply chain in China, from housing and automobile price increases, the Nation did not immediately grasp the sheer magnitude of what had been achieved. ...

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Boris Johnson was never for austerity and says this in his new book, yet he failed to make the major investments in the British economy in the way Biden has done in the US, and in some ways has left Labor's Starmer with difficult decisions with the strained budget finances of Britain. Of the investments he protected from John Osborne and his austerity plans as chancellor under Cameron Boris Johnson says- “Those big investments – Crossrail, the Olympic site, the Westfield Centre at Shepherd’s Bush – were fortuitously timed for London: vast counter-cyclical programmes that kept the spades going into the ground and people in work.” This was as Mayor of London in 2016. Of Osborne and Cameron so little is left, and so little came out of the period of austerity other than the failed investments Britain failed to make, simply a lost decade for Britain. And the diversion of Brexit under Johnson not taking Britain to a good place for the standard of living of the British people. Of the intraparty conflicts in the Tories he says Sunak's resignation as chancellor should never have happened calling it "worse than a crime," and a mistake for Sunak, the party, and the country. Johnson says that many days as PM he would come back to No.10 flat, exhausted and working into the evening when he should have been talking to colleagues, MP's to keep them all together. After Sunak's resignation from Boris Johnson's cabinet the Tory Conservatives split further apart, this time in the Boris Johnson faction of the party. Sunak's elevation to prime minister was short lived ending up with the Tories going downhill from there.  On the singular goal that led to the splits- that of Brexit- Johnson has little more to say than that in his travels he had found people wanted more Britain. ...

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Scientists worry that microplastics are linked to growing rates of cancer, heart disease, and other diseases. One study says people inhale or ingest 74,000 to 124,000 microplastic particles per year through breathing, eating and drinking. The plastic particles are everywhere around us. Of 10,000 chemicals used in making plastic a fourth of these are toxic. Consider in 1950 2 million metric tons of plastic were made, now 400 million metric tons. Of 8 billion tons produced only 10% recycled so the rest are in oceans, landfills, and around us. Ingested or inhaled they cause inflammation in our bodies that lead to cancer or other diseases.

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Volcker says that even with all the fuss about the length of the Volcker Rule, its important to remember that the regulation itself is only 35 pages. And he says that lawyers for the banks are not honest when it comes to this, because they spent a lot of time finding holes in the rule and were working to add complications to it, and now they are turning around and saying that the Volcker Rule is too complicated. Asked about Dodd-Frank, Volcker says that it does make the U.S safer in a financial crisis because of the crisis resolution process set up under Dodd-Frank legislation. A bank fails and the resolution is clearly laid out- the government takes over and liquidates it, or merges it or sells it. Stockholders don't get a bail out, management is fired, and creditors have to take losses. A lot still depends on having vigorous and alert regulators. He sees two large problems, the Euro crisis and the U.S. deficit, which need strong action. Volcker remains perplexed by why the situation of huge disparities in income growth has not been expressed to a greater extent- on one side the lack of growth in income for the average family in 10-15 years and the other side having the huge increase in incomes at the top end. He does not know of any years when this was as big as it is now- except 1928, 1929....

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This report on Germany's view of US DJT Tariffs does not cite any German economists or experts. It simply rehashes the views of American economists who are the source of the problems America has on world trade because they supported textbook ideas about trade that have no connection to reality onthe ground - the experience in towns and communities dependent on factories across America for two decades. It says nothing, prefers to ignore and present a false narrative that has been around for so long in America that has led to it's deindustrialization with loss of 5 million jobs and tens of thousands of factories. It is destroying America's industrial base, while Germany sends its millions of cars Made in Germany into the US.  This is the kind of approach taken by Germany and China because they benefit from a system that American companies and economists, and three previous presidents have allowed or tolerated from Clinton, Bush, Obama for 25 years. ...

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German automobile companies have made some bad bets on China sales. Sales in China have collapsed for Porsche as Chinese are buying local Chinese products and local Chinese autos are competitive. NYT reports on Porsche and the bad bet on China sales, then as tariffs hit serious problems.

Oliver Blume Porsche CEO says-

"Our market in China has literally collapsed. U.S. import tariffs are weighing on our business.”

“We already faced massive headwinds last year — now we are experiencing a violent storm."

Audi, Mercedes and BMW have been caught in a storm by making most of their US sold cars in Germany. The warnings from the first DJT term were ignores as they were by Apple in the US which continued to make in China. These companies are now facing problems of acting within a short time to take action to build in America to avoid tariffs.

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Iraq is Iran's most promising market for gas exports. Iraq needs the gas for its power stations now that Islamic State has been decisively cleared from Iraq. Yet Iraq is having difficulty making payments to Iran for gas supplies because banks are not ready to handle the payments with the reimposed tighter U.S. sanctions and restrictions. The deputy head of media at the Electricity ministry in Iraq, Sadoun Shehan, told WSJ that transfer of money by Iraqi banks is prevented because of U.S. sanctions. U.S. sanctions were reimposed by the Trump administration after they were lifted in January 2016. The new sanctions prohibit gas exports from Iran. Iran had hoped to make the sales and also export to the European Union when sanctions were lifted. Iranian exports of gas that started in 2017 were itself delayed for 4 years by the war from Islamic State.  Iran has the second largest reserves of natural gas in the world. The Trump administration's sanctions have led to a drop of Iranian crude shipments by 29% in 3 months and added to upward pressure on oil prices to take prices to $80 a barrel. This issue has implications for India and China, particularly India as it faces both higher prices for oil and the tight restrictions in purchase of Iranian oil. ...

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Inflation in Cairo and other parts of Egypt hit annual rate of 16.4% in April 2008. On April 30, Mubarak announced a 30% wage increase for public sector employees. The government has increased prices of diesel by 47% and of some grades of high octane gasoline used by affluent Egyptians by 57%. The central bank has raised interest rates three times in 2008 but with little impact on inflation. There have been riots in Egypt because of the increase in prices of bread and basic food.

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After a severe financial crisis that could have snowballed into a Depression type situation and the credit rating agencies playing their critic-for-hire role in causing the crisis, there has been very little done to reform or correct the basic way in which credit ratings are made. Other than small patches to the system that failed the country badly by 2008, it has been left alone by Congress, the Obama administration, and regulatory agencies. The Attorney General of Ohio, Richard Cordray, says the "rating agencies total disregard for the life's work of ordinary Ohioans caused the collapse of our housing and credit markets and is at he heart of what's wrong with Wall Street today." Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut's Attorney General says he plans to join the suit against the credit rating agencies, Fitch, Standard and Poors and Moody's. Cordrays suit was filed Nov. 20, on behalf of Ohio's pension funds. It seeks billions of dollars in damages from these ratings agencies and accuses the agencies of negligence and fraud. About the failure of Congress to make even the basic change to the system of ratings, Joseph Grundfest, a professor of securities law at Stanford says ; "What you see in these bills are Botox shots, for a little while everyone is going to be frozen into a grin, and then the shots are going to wear off.'' A deputy dean at Yale Law School, Jonathan Macey, was a member of a bipartisan task force on credit ratings reform and met with lawmakers in Congress on this issue. He says its mortifying to see that this problem which is different from other complicated issues like water shortages around the world has been left unsolved, as it could be easily solved if there was even a basic degree of political will to do so. Congress looked at the option of creating an independent fee financed credit rating agency along the lines of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, established after the Enron, but did nothing with this idea. Rep. Kanjorski and Senator Reed have led the efforts to look at the credit ratings agencies in Congress and have basically decided this to leave the system very much the same as before the crisis, with the conflict of interest problem and incentives to improve profitability at the expense of the integrity of the ratings process still intact. Bills in Congress give more oversight powers to the S.E.C. and require companies to strengthen their compliance teams. In the period leading to the 2008 crisis the internal compliance teams did not get top management support at the credit rating agencies and there is skepticism about the effectiveness of compliance teams. S.E.C. regulatory efforts face push-back from the credit ratings agencies and the effectiveness of S.E.C. regulatory supervision is uncertain given the critical role that is given to credit ratings in bond and securties issuance....

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Walt Gillette started at Boeing in 1964. He has been behind major advances in most of Boeing's planes- from the Dreamliner 787, 747, 737, 767. Gillette was the inspiration behind the use of twin engines for long haul flights, with the 767 wide body twin engine aircraft. He also helped solve problems related to putting powerful engines on the wings of a 737, using analytical methods called (CFD) Computational Fluid Dynamics. The studies led to using five parameters in a new combination that remains a trade secret at Boeing. The Dreamliner is his greatest achievement. What amazes Gillette is the huge advances in air travel, with about 600,000 people travelling around the world in Boeing planes on a single day. "I wanted to work on something that benefits the world," says Gillette.

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The peaceful transition in Zambia as Michael Sata wins the election. Sata's party won the election with 43% of the votes compared to Hastings Banda's party's 36%. The outgoing president Hastings Banda's party had been in power for two decades. This is a remarkable peaceful transition of power after disputed elections in the Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe and Nigeria. Sata's support came from the urban young, jobless people and the labor unions. He was critical of mining investments by western companies and China for paying low wages, and campaigned for higher tax revenues from the mining industry. This is a remarkable transition and a good example for future elections in Africa. Recent elections in the Ivory Coast led to a transition that had to be enforced with French support.

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About the family's ownership of the New York Times for many generations, Sulzberger would say that nepotism works. Sulzberger transformed and renewed the Times from what it was in the sixties before turning the paper over to management by his son in the nineties. The Times has been a family operation since being bought by Sulzberger's grandfather Adolph Ochs in 1896. Most of the newspapers in the U.S. are no longer run by the families that once owned them. The merits of a well run family operation are to be seen not just in the newspaper business. One of the most famous global brands is Toyota- which has returned to its family roots after a crisis and was in the postwar years led by Soichiro Toyoda and now by his son Akio Toyoda.

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Changes Republican Governor Sam Brownback is making in the state of Kansas, which focus on conservative values, lower taxes, and major cuts to spending to reduce the footprint of government in the state. Kansas has a large Republican majority in the House of Representatives and strong tea party fervor, giving Brownback an opportunity to remake government in the state. Yet there is some skepticism about how lasting these changes can be with the cuts in government services. Some Republicans say the question is how much in government services do the people of Kansas want- if the cuts are too steep the people of Kansas may find too many services have been cut. Over the the last century Kansas has usually voted for moderate Republican governors, making this a major change.

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Eirini Vourloumis of the New York Times has an extensive 90 minute interview with prime minister Lucas Papademos of Greece. Papademos says he will consider legislation requiring holdouts among bondholders to take losses if no agreement is reached with all bondholders to write down Greece's debt. The IMF, the ECB, and the EU require an agreement before lending more funds to Greece. Papademos is a former vice president of the ECB. His view is that the EU should have acted quickly to tackle the debt problem in Greece in mid 2010, and growth measures should have been taken earlier. He also stated that vested interests with political connections were blocking the changes needed to help the Greek economy recover. He expects elections will be held in Greece in April 2012.

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The Italian government is making changes that would increase competition, provide funds for infrastructure and reduce red tape. Mario Monti, the Ialian prime minister, told a news conference: "Italy's economy has for decades been hindered in its economic and social growth by three big problems: insufficent competition, inadequate infrastructure and too much red tape." There are fears that the $40 billion in tax increases and spending cuts set in December 2011 to cut the deficit would lead to a sharp contraction in the economy. The IMF predicts a 2.2% decline in GDP for 2012, the Bank of Italy's estimate is 1.5%. Changes planned would permit gas stations to choose providers, improve the legal system, add 5,000 pharmacy licenses, and add 500 notaries. Industry minister Passera says the cabinet approved 5.5 billion euros for infrastructure projects.

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Marketing campaigns in 2011 for the Toyota Siena, Honda Odyssey, Chrysler Dodge Grand Caravan, Ford C-Max. Sales are up 42% for Honda Odyssey since October 2010, when 2011 models and campaign was introduced. The campaign has helped increase sales by 18.5% through November 2010, for Toyota's Siena. This is double the industry average for minivans and is a bright spot for Toyota, whose overall sales have been flat since the recalls. Toyota's Siena campaign shows rapping parents with kids in the back, making it cool to be seen in a minivan. Toyota's national marketing manager says the stories they heard were that people just did'nt want to be seen in a minivan, the soccer-mom joke or feeling playing a part in this. These ads hope to dispel that notion.

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The resignation of Ahmed Shafiq, a former Air Force official who was close to Mubarak, from the prime minister's position. He will be replaced by Essam Sharaf, a former transport minister. Protest leaders had suggested Sharaf's name to the military running the country. ElBaradei former head of the IAEA and Amr Moussa of the Arab League had pushed for Shafiq's resignation. Sharaf is an engineer who studied for his Ph.D. at Purdue University in the U.S. In Egypt the changes demanded by the protests for democracy are still unmet. The emergency laws are still in place, the large internal security services have not been disbanded. One example of this was the arrest just last week of one protestor and sentencing by a military court within 3 days to 5 years in prison.

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In hearings before Congress in the USA, the leaders of Chevron, Shell and ExxonMobil said that they would not drill the well the way BP did (Tillerson-ExxonMobil), that the standards that should have been implemented were not in place (Watson-Chevron), and that its not a well that they would have drilled in that mechanical setup (Odum-Shell). On one issue all the companies came under criticism. All 5 oil major oil companies presented virtually the same plans to government regulators and the Congressional committee on their response plans for a major spill. As the oil spill has dragged on unresolved there is increasing frustration with BP's response and the other oil company leaders are moving away from presenting a common front in this crisis, which they had done upto now.

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David Kostin, Goldman Sach's U.S. equity strategist and his prediction of the S&P 500 at 1250 at the end of 2012. The S&P was at 1421 on April 1, 2012, the highest it has been since May 20, 2008. In his research note Kostin says that over the longer term the stock market will offer opportunities after a more normal growth environment is reestablished. This is similiar to the view held by John Bogle, founder of Vanguard. For the short term- the 2012-2013 time frame Kostin sees tactical risks, and results below average. The reason he gives is low economic growth and the large degree of uncertainty. The situation in Europe shows slowing to no growth and more deficit problems, and the sanctions on Iran pose risks for oil prices.

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Krugman says the Euro was basically flawed when a single currency was established without political or fiscal union. Because of this the problem can only be solved he says, by action in Brussels and Berlin. Greeks he points out work longer hours than Germans and are not lazy, the welfare state is larger in Sweden and Germany, and Greeks were able to finance imports through trade, shipping and tourism before Greece joined the eurozone. After joining the euro foreign money poured into Greece causing inflation and making Greece wages rise with labor productivity 25% below the European average, making Greece uncompetitive. A lot of the foreign money was wasted and should not have been loaned to Greece in the first place, except that foreign banks perceived the eurozone membership as an implicit guarantee.

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The smaller containment design of the Mark 1 Nuclear Reactor used at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan makes it more prone to explosion and rupture from a buildup of hydrogen, according to some experts in the U.S. Nuclear Safety Program at the Union for Concerned Scientists. This design is smaller and cheaper to build but is less robust than other designs. In the U.S. there are 23 Mark 1 reactors at 16 locations, including the Oyster Creek plant in New Jersey, Dresden plant near Chicago, and Monticello plant near Minneapolis. Worldwide there are 32 such reactors in operation. The design was first developed in the 1960's by General Electric. Since then various modifications have been developed including venting systems to help reduce pressure in overheating situations.

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GE's decision to exit the banking business ends a period of aggressively reducing taxes using GE Capital operations. This ended in disaster in the 2008 global fianncial crisis with GE shares down to $6 and GE needing a government rescue. GE reported in its securities filing that its tax rate of 10.3% in 2014 would have been 17% without the use of GE Capital operations to reduce taxes. Experts say GE's tax rate is lower using GE Capital because of doing business in lower tax jurisdictions overseas and global funding base. In 2013 securities filing cited in the Washington Post show GE taxes were an astonishing 4.2%. GE will repatriate $36 billion in overseas earnings as the first step and pay taxes to the U.S. Treasury of $6 billion.