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President Biden addressed the Nation from the Rose garden today November 7, 2024. His remarks were conciliatory. "You can't love your neighbor only when you agree."  "Something I hope we can do, no matter who you voted for, is see each other not as adversaries, but as fellow Americans. Bring down the temperature." It is a remarkable end to a remarkable presidency which history will judge as perhaps a single term in which more was done than in any other 4 year term of a presidency, except for FDR in 1932 and Lincoln in 1861, tackling a once in a century pandemic, and rebuilding the economy, manufacturing, and infrastructure. And even correcting missteps on immigration by getting the legislation to fix it. It is a tall order for anyone who succeeds Biden though in the current post election situation there will be the typical euphoria on one side and losing on the other.  During the Republican sweep by Herbert Hoover in 1928 Franklin Roosevelt was elected governor of New York and he used the intervening years to 1932 to prepare for the monumental task ahead by testing his plan for economic recovery using New York and a couple of states from Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Maine and New Hampshire, setting up the first unemployment insurance, shorter week, annual employment and other ideas to stabilize employment for one third of the US economy. Biden says he has asked his administration to work with Trump's team for the peaceful transition to a newly elected president. None of the fears about the transition came true with the new president getting a clear mandate to tackle the cost of living crisis for Americans. ...

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Who is Nandalal Weerasinghe? This report in The Daily News gives some idea about the man chosen to help Sri Lanka negotiate a deal with the IMF.  Dr. Nandalal Weerasinghe was an alternate executive director at the International Monetary Fund before being appointed deputy governor of the Ceylon Central Bank in 2012. Before this he managed several macroeconomic departments at the central bank and was assistant governor of the central bank from 2007 to 2009, He has spent the large part of his career in economic positions at the Central Bank of Ceylon after getting his PhD in economics from the Australian National University. Weerasinghe is the leading expert in macroeconomics from Sri Lanka who has IMF experience. He says "things will get worse before they get better." He retired early from the central bank with a change in government in 2019. He was reappointed as Sri Lanka faced a debt crisis in March 2022 following the two year long pandemic, and the Ukraine war in 2022 that was bad for emerging market economies. Weerasinghe says about the crisis facing Sri Lanka- Recent decisons followed Modern Monetary Theory. This has dire consequences. In recent times the savings brought about by the low tax and interest rate regime passed savings on to the corporate sector and took away spending power from savers and pensioners. Surging inflation made things even worse for the lower income middle class and older parts of society. Years of accumulated debt have brought Ceylon to this point. In Ceylon one is seeing the effects of savings being passed on to the corporate sector in an economy dependent on tourism and remittances from overseas workers, both hit by the two year long pandemic. This is part of  a trend that has hurt emerging market economies from Argentina and Pakistan which also turned to the IMF to Turkey.  In other countries in the European Union savings also passed on to the corporate sector with low tax and low interest rate regime. With high inflation resulting in the cost of living crisis seen today in France and Germany. This type of policy that Weerasinghe calls 'Modern Monetary Theory' is not healthy for the European Union and the US, as these policies led to the neglect of much needed and vital investments in infrastructure, health and education. Only now are these effects being corrected by new administrations of Biden in the US and Scholz in Germany, with Biden's 2 trillion plan for workers and families, and a similar plan from chancellor Scholz. With this come needed investments to tackle climate change, all of which was neglected before. India has taken a different approach. By following good governance, managing vaccination effectively during the pandemic, social emphasis for food, water, electricity, cooking gas, medicine for the vast population of 1.2 billion, and a Master plan for building Made in India manufacturing,  India has avoided such crises and maintained strong economic growth. In this sense it is a model for South Asian, South East Asian, African, and Latin American emerging market economies that face a difficult situation today. Good governance is critical.   ...

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During a public dialogue during the federal government's open day German Chancellor Scholz takes time to go over the origins of the war in Europe as he understands it. Of Russia acting "clearly with the intention of conquering its neighboring country," in an imperialist manner. Here is what he said- On Nato During talks before the war started in February when he met Putin in Moscow Scholz assured Putin that Ukraine would not join NATO "in the next 30 years." NATO was never a threat to Russia even though Putin says NATO's increasing eastward expansion was to the detriment of Russia's interests. On the origins of the war in Europe- Scholz says Putin launched the war for "completely absurd reasons." During his talks with Putin for example he says Putin told him that Belarus and Ukraine should not be independent states. "This is a war that Putin, Russia, started, clearly with the intention of conquering its neighboring country. I think that was the original goal." "Putin actually had the idea of swiping a felt-tip pen across the European landscape and then saying, 'This is mine and this is yours.' " Something Germany could not accept. Scholz condemns Putin's imperialism. He compares Russia's actions to the early days of imperialism. Scholz was reported to be reading Cambridge historian Brendan Simms book Europe- The Struggle for Supremacy in Europe from 1453 to the Present, before the war started. Simms shows a Europe that fought intermittent wars for supremacy between European powers Spain, Britain, Dutch, French, Germany, Austria- Hungary, Russia, Sweden over most of the period 1450 to 1950. The last part of the period was marked from 1850 to 1900 by an openly imperialist land grab for territory in Africa and Asia between Britain, France, Japan and Germany.  The period 1950 to 2000 marked by the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union and China.    On planning for the war in advance- DW.com reports that Olaf Scholz is convinced that Putin planned this war long before the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. On the future of the war- Scholz says he will not end the dialogue with Putin. Scholz and Germany, Biden and the US want to show that the imperialist type of expansion into neighboring states is no longer accepted, not for Russia or China. Scholz says Russia is currently engaged in gaining territory in eastern Ukraine, but it is not certain that it will stay that way, so giving in is not a sensible strategy.  Ukraine needs the Black Sea ports and the area around Kherson on the Dnieper river to maintain its economy through exports of foodgrains. There is international consensus that these exports are essential to most of Africa and other parts of the world. The war in the remaining part of 2022 into the winter is being fought in this area. Another area of international consensus is that of the refugees mostly women and children in other parts of eastern Europe, and the displaced people within Ukraine moving from the east and south to the west. For the first time the US and Germany are providing Ukraine with the air defense systems that it needs to protect refugees, something that was missing for the many early months of the war leading to millions of refugees inside and outside Ukraine.       ...

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Some of the statements on the IMF Blog on Inclusive Growth raises the question-Does the IMF, the International Monetary Fund, as an American institution funding developing countries, and economists, grasp what people find troubling in 2022? One of the lessons of the economic crises for families and workers in the US and other countries is that wisdom, a grasp of the soul of a country and its people through the thinking of its founders, and common sense, should drive managing of economies, with a knowledge of how economies work- not economists. Some of that is already happening. America's central bank is headed by Jerome Powell who has wide experience and has knowledge of how the economy runs, is not an economist. He was chosen by president Trump and continues to have the confidence of president Biden for this very reason. Some of the statements on the IMF economic blog are- "Why jobs are plentiful and workers are scarce" Jan 2022 "In the US and UK recent labor market the puzzle, can be partly explained by mismatch, the pandemic's effect on women and older workers leaving the work force." The Reality Wages for teachers are depressed compared to workers in the financial and economics industries, in a frighteningly disproportionate way. When it comes to logistics, hospitality, leisure and restaurants industries workers were paid poorly for what is hard work and long days. In case the IMF economists, and economists at companies, missed this it was called the Great Resignation, people simply choosing to reject the conditions that were handed down to them by the financial industry and economists who built the economic structures of recent decades. Women leaving the workforce are faced with issues of mental health coping with added responsibilities of children at home for the two years, loss of income and widespread mental health problems. The word mental health may be beyond the grasp of economists and the financial industry, yet it is the one of the biggest problems for people. Another pernicious effect noted on the pages of the WSJ is that young white men are dropping out after school because they cannot afford college in alarming numbers. Leading to the kind of discontent for workers and families that president Biden is struggling to address. On IMF Blog- "IMF Podcasts: The Year in Review" Dec. 2021 "The past year has brought us new challenges even as the old ones persist. If anything, the ongoing pandemic has taught us to think differently abut tackling the challenges and questions when it comes to thinking about big issues such as climate change, gender equality, inflation and economic measurement." The Reality Climate change lumped in with economic measurement and inflation. The floods, fires, river and reservoir water levels affecting access to basic life supporting water, drought, all over the world are of a magnitude that is missed entirely.The response to a challenge of this type requires the kind of leadership that president Biden has provided for the world with his $360 billion climate change bill as just the first step of many, and  comprehensive policies covering all aspects of the climate crisis. ON IMF bog- "How Domestic Violence is a Threat to Economic Development." "Stopping violence against women is not only a moral imperative, new evidence shows it can help the economy." The Reality Domestic violence hurts children growing up in such households. It is not so much a moral imperative as it is bad for men, women and children. So many things are wrong about it and it is made worse in conditions of low wages and poor working conditions in poor neighborhoods lacking education. These neighborhoods are also affected by lack of healthcare and the opioid crisis and mental health issues. Not investing in education and healthcare in these communities is what is simply wrong, and which the founders of America as a nation, particularly Lincoln, would find appalling.   Relationship between Capital (the Financial Industry) and Labor (Workers and Families) On the basic issue of the relationship between capital and labor, the IMF and the financial industry, economists, and the economic structure they built in recent decades, have simply got it wrong. It violates both common sense and wisdom, and violates the spirit of the founders particularly Abraham Lincoln. This is what Abraham Lincoln had to say on Upward Mobility, the ease with which each generation can do better than the one before it, as critical in the fight to save the Union. This is from the Annual Message to Congress Dec. 3, 1861, at the start of the Civil War. That upward mobility has been lost in the US with ideas that "place capital on an equal if not above labor, in the structure of government," for the last three decades in the US after the early post war period of Truman and Eisenhower, Kennedy-Johnson.  And Lincoln says this about a hired laborer being fixed in that condition for life, or of future generations of that hired laborer facing disabilities and burdens, similar to the loss of upward mobility for the people today. "Now there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences based on them are groundless." "Labor is prior to, and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed, if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are worthy of protection as any other rights." "Again: there is not, of necessity, any such thing as the free hired laborer being fixed to that condition for life. Many independent men everywhere in these states, a few years back in their lives, were hired laborers. The prudent penniless beginner in the world, labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land for himself, then labors on his own account another while, and at length hires another new beginner to help him. This is the just, and generous, and prosperous system, which opens the way to all- gives hope to all, and consequent energy, and progress, and improvement of condition to all." Lincoln even offers this warning- No men living are more worthy to be trusted than those who toil up from poverty- none less inclined to take, or touch, aught which they have not honestly earned. Let them beware of surrendering a political power which they already possess, and which if surrendered, will surely be used to close the door of advancement against such as they, and to fix new disabilities and burdens upon them, till all of liberty shall be lost." US president Biden has these ideas in mind as he struggles with one piece of legislation after another to restore what once was, to open the door of advancement, to remove these disabilities and burdens that Lincoln speaks of, and in so doing restoring liberty.   ...

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The issues China faces as it plans the next phase of massive urbanization. Urbanization is a major priority of prime minister Li Keqiang, which was also the focus of his postgraduate work in his student days. In the early 1980's about 20% of China was urbanized, this has changed over three decades to where the figure is 47%, plus 17% for workers working in the cities but classified as rural, a total of 64%. China's plan is to fully integrate 70% of the population or 900 millon into cities by 2025. In 2013 only 35% of the population has a urban residency permit, or hukou. The permit is needed for residents to register their children in local schools or qualify for medical programs in urban locations. One of the problems is the huge cost of doing this which it is feared could lead to inflation and higher debt levels. Currently local governments bear these costs using land sales, and central government transfer payments, but without added financing and unable to issue their own bonds, the local governments strictly limit the use of local school and health services to their own residents keeping out rural newcomers. Local government taking over farmer plots, often without enough compensation is highly unpopular in China. Other problems are- providing a steady stream of earnings for new urban residents from farms, if no employment can be found. So they can sustain themselves- especially as they get past 40 years of age when factory employment is harder to find. The government planners see the larger urban population as a way to shift from a largely export based economy and slowing growth, to a consumption based economy. But critics say the risk is that for this to happen new residents from the farming villages have to find jobs, something the government will have difficulty accomplishing. A permanent underclass of unemployed and other financially strapped citydwellers living around major cities, as has happened with the progress of urbanization in Brazil and Mexico, is something the government would want to avoid. ...

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There is a sense of cognitive dissonance in the states of former East Germany, known as the GDR or German Democratic Republic in the Soviet Union period from 1950's to 1990. The 5 states that formed the GDR continued to build close ties with Russia after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in the perception that this would build good long term relations. The crisis in Ukraine with border states of the Soviet Union opting in favor of close ties with the European Union and not Russia have disrupted the economic relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and Russia. As long as Russia needed the economic ties to build its economy and standard of living the political issues posed by NATO expansion and EU expansion were set aside by Putin and political parties within Russia. The very ties that were supposed to usher in an era of peace in Europe helped strengthen the Russian and Chinese economies. Leading to a point where these two economies were strong enough by 2021 in the midst of the waning pandemic to  assert themselves on political issues where serious differences existed such as expansion of NATO and Taiwan. When the economic relations such as making China a manufacturing powerhouse  was the path taken by American and European business in 1990's, business interests were focused on the declining quality and high wages demanded by unions and workers in the US and Germany. This could be personally witnessed at Apple's factory in Colorado Springs where quality was failing badly in the 1990's. Apple when Steve Jobs returned in 1997 adopted a China manufacturing strategy when its manufacturing operations in the US failed to deliver the quality and cost structure needed for it to expand. The high margins with low costs of manufacturing in China was the strategy adopted by Steve Jobs to compete with Microsoft and turbocharge its expansion. Soon other companies followed. A similar process happened in economic ties with Russia on a smaller scale. Two decades of such expansion whittled down American manufacturing, hurt American workers, hurt European manufacturing and European workers.  This process could not continue- yellow vest protests in France, the protest vote in US midwestern states in recent elections, the protest votes in German elections and fragmentation of parties, made this clear. The US imposed trade tariffs on Chinese products and moved to restrict flow of technologies to China under the Trump administration, accelerated by the Biden administration. President Xi was once of the view that China's ties with the US were important "thousand fold" in the period as late as 2010. Yet this lopsided trade relationship was not beneficial to American workers or American interests as a technologically advanced leader. It is true that American workers and engineers at Apple had failed to ensure American quality competitiveness in the 1980's into 1990's, yet no advanced country or its business can come up with a false narrative that cedes its manufacturing leadership and jobs for the working class of its country. That false narrative is being challenged today by Mr. Biden, Mr. Scholz, and all American and German political parties, and by Mr. Modi with Atman Nirbhar Bharat for local manufacturing. The integration one sees of the port of Hamburg as Chinese export hub with China's economy is one aspect of what has happened. A new leadership is taking its place in Europe and in America that sees clearly the false narrative. The visit of the new Danish prime minister to India is the beginning of the effort to set up a new logistics relationship with South and South East Asia, as Denmark's Maersk is a world leader in shipping logistics for exports and manufacturing. The planned Noida logistics center outside of New Delhi under Gati Shakti integrated development is part of the change happening today as a new supply chain is being built. The unwinding of the one sided trade relationship with China, and its related relationship on energy with Russia, led to the changing perception in Russia and China of the value of the relationship. Political relations superseded economic and cultural relations during Putin's second phase and Xi's second phase with assertive attitudes on NATO, and on Hong Kong, Taiwan under Xi and Putin 2.0. As could be expected Germany and the US were caught flat footed as leaders who were cast in the mold of Putin as a Soviet representative in Dresden, and Xi with his father leading the Communist struggle in the 1930's and 1940's against Chiangkaishek, acted in ways that reflected the Soviet period. Chiang left for Taiwan in 1948 when Mao-tse-tung setup the People's Republic of China. Taiwan and Hong Kong remained important in the perceptions of Xi 2.0, in the effort to build "China Dream" and erase last vestiges of what in Soviet times were seen as western colonialism. US and EU particularly Business and the new IT telecom Business failed to grasp these matters, and historical events such as the opium wars of the 1850's. Business and cultural interests lacked both the inclination to learn and the knowledge of these events in Chinese history and its relations with colonial powers Britain and Japan, and also Russia. In 1900 the Boxer rebellion against ceding Chinese ports to colonial powers Britain, Japan, Russia, ended with permanent colonial settlements in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tsingtao, other Chinese ports. Chinese rejuvenation in the mind of leaders such as Xi from the second generation of Communist leadership, means putting this behind, leading to the action taken in Hong Kong. In some ways as some observers have commented it is as much a problem of the sluggishness of American and European thinking, particularly business interests including in Taiwan, post British Hong Kong, and ignorance of recent Chinese history which was mistakenly thought not to exist or forgotten. This is as much of a problem as the action taken by Putin and moves by Xi Jinping. The great democracies such as India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, were ignored as American and European business interests integrated the American and German economies with China's. In terms of population the population of these regions and related parts of South East Asia such as Malaysia and Vietnam which have a shared cultural history is about 1.5 times the population of China. Travelling through the parts of India's largest state Uttar Pradesh, an Madhya Pradesh one finds how much American and European business interests have failed both their own interests, their own workers and failed the great democracies of the world, by not only not investing in the democracies of Asia, and also of Africa and Latin America and bought into a narrative of China which no longer holds true and may never have been true all along. This is starkly evident in a once in a century pandemic in these great democracies of the world. These democracies have been left to fend for themselves during the pandemic and their leaders facing false narratives in the media such as the BBC and American media outlets even on issues such as vaccination of the largest part of the world's people.           ...

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"Progressive" is a misused word, people are just interested in the words "decent," "fairness," and "Christian" from the color of the heart.  It is just how Republicans see the contest for the US Senate  that reveals their sense of priorities for the Nation.The main concerns of Republicans, old traditional Republicans shown here in this WSJ Editorial are that somehow gains on the US Supreme Court could be reversed with retirement of Alito and Thomas in their seventies, and fears of the same policies that set up Medicare and Social Security- following the changes of the Industrial Revolution and dismal factory conditions and wages at the turn of the century- under Republican Teddy Roosevelt  (the incipient changes), Woodrow Wilson an academic from Princeton, and Franklin Roosevelt. A new version of old Tory politics still exists in the US. It is these industrial conditions rewritten with work safety laws, workmen's compensation, first 54 in 1918 after the Triangle Factory Fire,  then 40 hour week, unemployment insurance, worker union rights for fair negotiations on wages, that made the US a strong manufacturing nation and Industrial power, creating the synergies for worker contributions combining with technologies, managerial skills for a decent standard of living that surpassed all other nations. It is this achievement that was put at risk in the 21st century by shipping factories overseas and thoughtlessly sending the technologies with it, which happened under a series of administrations since the 1980's Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama and Trump. Done thoughtlessly and recklessly. And the wars that started with president Reagan in Iraq/Iran/Afghanistan that diverted the two trillion dollars that would have rebuilt America's aging infrastructure. Biden was the first president to have a clear focus on the changes needed to rebuild infrastructure and manufacturing, technologies and science, and rural America, in a concerted push that has made gains that surpass any that exist in Europe or China. Restoring the US economy to No. 1. Harris in her own way offers the pieces of the puzzle to reverse the pandemic induced cost of living increases that complement the work of president Biden in 2024, continuing the work of rebuilding infrastructure and manufacturing for leadership in the world.     ...

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With his dwindling popularity and failure to support the socialist parties alliance Macron has made the party En Marche his own creation, a failed project. Macron started out in the Socialist Party in Amiens, France, was a minister in the Socialist government of Francois Hollande 2012-2017. Socialist voters twice voted for Macron in 2017 and 2022 elections to keep the Le Pen National Rally out. After the last election 2022 Macron faced union protests on pension age changes and on issues related to fairness for workers as he failed to take cost of living action and protect workers. He now faces a divided parliament and becomes a lame duck president till the next presidential election in 2027. He called the party he created during the last year of socialist Hollande's term as president initially En Marche, later En Marche El Republique and Renaissance, initially tapping into support for reviving France with younger people in political life. Yet he failed to live up to this instead put himself at odds with working class people and families and the problems they face across rural and urban areas of France. He has run out of support after the yellow vest protests, union protests, and protests over the pension age during his first and second terms. By calling the socialist parties of which he was a member in derogatory terms Macron increased his isolation and created a situation in which the RN of Le Pen is vying to be the leading party in the National Assembly. Only by making large investments in the French economy of $140 billion that the Socialist parties alliance proposes can France's economy and infrastructure be revived, not by the programs of either the RN or En Marche which make no effort to increase investment in the French infrastructure and economic strength. A modest tax on the top 1-4% of the wealthy finances this investment of $140 billion which RN, En Marche and Macron seek to avoid calling this program in derogatory terms to protect a tiny minority of the affluent who in the right way would want to contribute a fair share to the growth and revival of France. ...

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The BBC looks at some of the claims made by president Trump about India's rapid progress in delivering services to the people in electricity, sanitation, roads infrastructure, cooking gas, internet connections. BBC confirms that the economy size is now 6 times that in 2000, as Mr. Trump stated on his visit to Ahmedabad. It was in terms of the total value of all goods and services in the economy or GDP at $477 billion (IMF figures) in 2000. In 2019  it is $2,940 billion.  270 million fewer people were living in poverty in 2016, this is confirmed in a UN report. Here is the list for services as checked by The BBC. 1. Providing electricity to every one of the 600,000 villages in India. By 2014 most of the villages were electrified- at 96%. It is defined as having schools, health centres and 10% of households having electricity in each village. 2. About 600 million people having access to toilets under the Clean India mission launched in 2014. 100 million new toilets were built. 3. 70 million women were given access to cooking gas. 80 million new connections were built. 4.  320 million new internet subscribers. The figure is low about 600 million total internet subscribers. 5. It is true that infrastructure building is moving quickly says the BBC. About 10,000 kms were built in 2018-19 double that in 2013-2014 under a previous administration. The Mumbai Metro is mentioned in the WSJ as a project that has made remarkable progress. A bullet train project is moving ahead with Japanese financing and technological help from Mumbai to Ahmedabad.  Access to banking accounts and direct deposit of government transfer payments to all Indians is another project. Healthcare access through health care payments directly for health care costs incurred for low income families is another more recent project to reduce the uncertainty and improve finances of poorer citizens. ...

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Another useful piece giving insights to the way China has approached the economic development tasks and what this means for the future. China's development is very capital intensive because the cost of capital is really low. Inputs like land and energy costs are also kept low by the government. Cost of labor is low and this has resulted in the share of wages as a percentage of GDP to drop from 53% in 1998 to 41% in 2005 and it is dropping further. In America wages to GDP is 56% and includes investment income which in China is lessthan 2% but much larger in the USA. The pool of surplus labor in China does work to depress wages. The percentage of consumption to GDP in China has fallen from 47% in early 1990's to 36% in 2006, the lowest of the large economies. But this does not reflect a higher savings rate. In fact the household savings rate also has fallen as a percentage of GDP. According to World Bank's Beijing office this has fallen from 21% in mid 1990's to 15% in 2006, relative to personal disposable income it has fallen from 30% to 25%. This is lower than India's household savings rate. So what is going on. The Economist points to the lower share of wages as a percentage of GDP because the large pool of surplus labor has depressed wages from where they might otherwise be so that consumption is not where it could or should be for China to move away from manufacturing led export driven economy to one that depends on the domestic market for growth. Higher consumption and a bigger domestic market would make it easier to sustain strengthening of its currency, a key demand of western countries. This would also provide a fair deal to millions of migrant workers and reduce labor unrest. It would also reduce pollution as the economy would not be focussed on production at all costs. It appears that the existing model has worked well for China in bringing millions of people from the villages into cities and growing manufacturing industries, and in urbanizing China. But China is so large that there are millions another 200 million who would migrate from villages and rural areas into cities as migrant labor to 2020 according to what the Government envisions ( see article in this issue of the Economist "Barefoot Doctors"). But this model needs fixing or changing as the pollution costs are already severe and can prove catastrophic if continued, and the western countries are demanding strengthening of the yuan to correct imbalances in the trade deficits as a result of this model of development focussed on manufacturing and export industries and short on consumption in the domestic market enough to drive the economy. ...

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A new West Coast Model is emerging with ballot measures in the states of Washington, California and Oregon. The model is to make up for decades of faulty income distribution which favored tech communities in west coast states leaving behind people from minority communities and the working class outside tech hubs such as San Francisco, San Jose and Seattle. During this period budgets for education and healthcare, social services and essential infrastructure suffered as budgets were squeezed for local governments. Minimum wage also lagged behind and communities struggled to keep up. Washington votes for a ballot measure that raises the minimum wage to $13.25 statewide and mandate paid sick leave for workers. In California a ballot measure makes permanent an income tax surcharge on millionaires to use these funds for education. In Oregon measure 97 places a gross receipts tax on corporations with annual sales in Oregon over $25 million, raising $3 billion a year for schools, health care and other programs. The California and Washington measures are likely to pass, Oregon uncertain, say experts. And even in Oregon supporters have learned from the experience to put forward new proposals on the ballot. The Washington measure is supported by Nick Hanauer, and Zach Silk, president of Civic Ventures in Seattle, who say it is essential to put more money in workers wages to increase growth and to bring better lives outside the tech hub areas. Most of the tech booms of the last two decades have not touched the areas outside tech hub metropolitan areas. The conservative approach adopted in Louisiana and Kansas of reducing taxes first and then when holes in state budgets developed to cut education, health and other service expenditures has not worked, and it has led to the backlash in the form of the new West Coast Model, which is expected to be brought up in other states in the east and midwest. The tech hub areas have grown with the boom in tech but this has largely ignored the rural areas, communities just outside of the tech cities, and led to uneven and distorted growth shortchanging the working class and the middle class, and hurting investment in education and healthcare across each state. Bill Whalen, a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution conservative think tank ,says that its hard to deny that the balanced growth for all communities across the state has lagged far behind as the tech booms boosted growth in the economies of California, Oregon and Washington. An article in the German online site Zeit on Silicon Valley described this vividly showing how this can happen in communities sitting side by side in the San Jose area, with minority Hispanic communities and working class communties seeing very little of the benefits of growth. ...

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The WSJ's Paul Sonne gives this exceptional account of how Russians are coping in the economic crisis of 2015-2016, with the twin shocks of the collapse in the ruble and the collapse in oil prices. He does this by looking at the Kaluga region, a provincial city 110 miles south of Moscow that has benefitted from large foreign investment to meet the needs of 20 million consumers in the Moscow region. The governor of Kaluga since 2000, Anatoly Artamonov, worked hard to attract foreign investment that includes VW, Volvo AG, Continental AG, Lafarge, Samsung Electronics, General Electric, and other companies. He ran a collective in the Brezhnev era, and now is energetic in meeting needs of foreign investors. Karmanov says it is stupidity to not say he is talking to business people in other parts of the world because of the political climate in the country. About 42% of the industrial output in Kaluga comes from the foreign automobile plants, including VW. The automobile and light commercial vehicle production in Feb. 2015 dropped by about 39% compared to Feb. 2014, according to the Association of European Business estimate. Only 40% of autombile production cost from assembly lines is sourced locally, the rest is imported at the new value of the ruble which has fallen about 50%, leading to higher prices and slumping demand. Ordinary Russians are feeling the effects of the crisis with higher prices. Consumer price inflation in Feb. 2015 was at 16.7%, with 23.3% increase in food prices. High interest rates to prop up the ruble meant cutting off access to credit to finance consumer purchases. An 8% drop in real wages in Jan. 2015, according to Capital Economics, added to pressures on consumers. With the political and economic crisis following Russia's Ukraine intervention foreign investment in 2014 declined to $18.6 billion in 2014 compared to $61.5 billion in 2013, and the EBRD bank cut financing with the sanctions....

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Krugman points out the gains on three fronts evident from the Census Bureau report of 5.2% gain in median income of households in the U.S. He says the first is the growth in incomes of ordinary working class and middle class families, second the large decline in the poverty rate, and third the further rise in insurance coverage in 2015 for people without health insurance. He points to the steady efforts of the Obama administration to improve lives of ordinary families as working based on the Census report though results have taken time, and could have been better. The Stimulus, says Krugman could have been larger following the blow of the 2009 financial crisis and increased unemployment at the time. Janet Yellen at the inequality conference of the Boston Fed in 2014 pointed out the problems of 62 million households having net worth of about $10,000, and why this was running against the American idea of a better life for all Americans. In that sense the Census report is a movement in the right direction but a lot remains to be done.   ...

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Neil Irwin of NYT provides some counter intuitive ideas on U.S. Fed interest rate policy. He says it can't be take as a given that the Fed will raise rates in 2017-2018. This depends on how much punch there is in the Trump economic policies for stimulus, and for infrastructure spending, tax cuts. He cites Senate Majority Leader McConnell who said he would like to keep "tax reform revenue neutral." Getting large spending and pushing up the deficit is likely to run up against Republicans in Congress who have for 8 years opposed large spending increases and large deficits. Trump has given few details about his stimulus or infrastructure spending plans. He says the scale of the spending might not match the talk. Irwin cites JP Morgan Chase economists who have kept their forecasts for GDP growth just under 2% for 2017 and 2018. And he points out that even Trump appointees at the Fed might act independently. The Fed might look at being cautious considering that increased trade tensions with China, and the unpredictability of a Trump administration could hurt growth. Irwin does not mention the uncertainty in other areas such as policy towards Russia on which the Republican party and Congress have very different views than Trump, tensions over Taiwan, that can also affect growth. ...

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The Trump administration's early proposal for NAFTA moves away from campaign pledges to completely renegotiate the treaty, instead taking the approach of working to improve the U.S. trade position in relation to Mexico and Canada. It includes seven objectives for tougher rules for labor and the environment favored by Democrats in Congress, and it also has support from Republicans with its effort to update NAFTA for changes in technology and in other areas since the accord was signed during the Clinton administration. The area in which U.S. and Mexican business are wary is one in which the Trump administration still seeks to keep the option of imposing protective tariffs, and a border-adjusted tax to level playing field for differences in taxes, as well as other measures to protect American jobs and interests. Because any renegotiated NAFTA also has to pass both houses of Congress this proposal took into account the different constituencies and interests for this issue. Robert Lighthizer, trade representative under president Reagan is likely to become the next U.S. Trade Representative and lead negotiator. We first profiled Lighthizer in a group in Lyrarc for pointing to the need for a level playing field in trade. As early as 2010 Lighthizer argued in op-ed articles that globalization and trade practices should ensure a level playing field for the U.S., and was covered in Lyrarc. ...

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Binyamin Applebaum cites different experts on how U.S. Fed policy could play out in 2017-2019. He cites Fed governor Dudley that there is increased uncertainty under the Trump administration, and other economists who say that aging population, lack of innovation, and steady growth under the Obama administration with falling unemployment, make it unlikely that growth will jump well above 2%. The Fed's own forecasts are for for under 2% growth in 2017 and 2018, and Applebaum says this is not expected to change by much. Janet Yellen does not see a huge stimulus as a positive, says Applebaum, because it would increase the deficit at the wrong time. He cites Yellen who prefers to see more fiscal space now that unemployment is down to 4.6%. Steady growth in the view of Fed officials has taken up much of the backlog of people looking for work since the 2008 crisis. Yellen sees some fiscal space as desirable with high debt to GDP ratio at 77 percent, so that the government could respond to some adverse event in the future. A Republican Congress is also averse to sudden increases in the deficit. See the link to views about the uncertainty of how things can play out in a separate article by Neil Irwin of NYT. ...

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Kessler in the WP corrects Obama's claim that he created 800,000 jobs. He says this is clever arithmetic as it takes a low point in Feb. 2010 following the financial crisis. Kessler points out that according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. manufacturing jobs were 12.56 million in Jan. 2009 when Obama became president. In Nov. 2016, early estimates show there were 12.26 million manufacturing jobs, a loss of 300,000. This loss does not reflect the problems in the U.S. auto industry and older industries in the midwestern states as a result of trade and globalization that speeded up with the rapid industrialization of China. And led as Greg Ip pointed out in a recent WSJ report to a rapid acceleration of job losses in a decade that did not happen in the same scale during Japan's industrialization and urbanization in the sixties. This aggravated the situation in Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, and was met with a feeble response from Democrats. Even a economist like Krugman favoring the Obama administration's efforts came to the conclusion that TPP did not add much to gains from trade as most of the gains had already been realized. More of the gains went to tech and IT in California, at the expense of the auto industry based in the midwest. A report in WP show a president too close to IT in California and failing to grasp the situation in the midwest. Voters punish whoever is in power, regardless of being Conservative or Liberal, in Canada the hollowing out of manufacturing under Harper in Ontario and Quebec led to the win by Trudeau's Liberals.  ...

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Hillary Clinton attacks Trump's policies in an address in Warren, Michigan, saying this was another version of failed trickle down economics. She called Trump's idea of taxing pass through entities such as small business reporting business income on individual tax returns at 15%, as a "Trump loophole." On trade policy Hillary Clinton said she would oppose the TPP or Trans- Pacific Partnership Trade Agreement that president Obama has supported. She put it flatly- " I oppose it now. I'll oppose it after the election, and I'll oppose it as president." And pointed out that too many companies have moved jobs overseas and "moved operations overseas and sold back into the U.S." after pushing for trade deals. The answer she said 'is not to rant and rave- or to cut us off from the world," in reference to protectionist policies Trump has supported. 

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Friedman reviews Acemoglu and Robinson's new book, "Why Nations Fail." Acemoglu says that nations fail when wealth and opportunities are concentrated in the hands of few people, that a condition for societies to succeed is to create opportunities for more people. For this to happen it is important to create inclusive political and economic institutions. This is an important insight, but for Western society this is an insight as old as Adam Smith when he pointed out the importance of this aspect of western societies after the feudal period in his "Wealth of Nations." For Smith it was the failure to create inclusive societies that led to the gradual unravelling of societies in the river valleys of the Yangste and the Ganges, in China and India, of increasing poverty and the gradual disappearance of what constituted the middle class in India and China. Chapter 8 titled "Of Wages and Labor" in the "Wealth of Nations" makes specific reference to this.

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German perceptions of Mikhail Gorbachev are shown here in DW.com. He is revered in Germany because of Gorbachev's efforts to end Soviet rule in East German state called the GDR, leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Gorbachev supported German reunification but did not do this is in a way that ensured that ordinary Russians and citizens of the GDR could make the transition to democratic processes in a smooth way. He also failed to grasp that economic transition could be difficult and would require extensive aid and grants from the west, and that safeguards and protections for retired pensioners and vulnerable sections of society needed to be in place. The following is a reflection of the background in political government and economy of the events in Europe leading to the war in Ukraine.  As a result Gorbachev's instincts were right by first 1956 as a student, and then 1979 as government official about the need for democratic processes to realize the real potential of Russia, just as has happened in many countries that lacked these processes for change in government- Japan, Germany, South Korea, India, Brazil and many countries in Asia and Latin America. But not realizing that these countries made the transition with considerable American and British assistance. Even where there was no direct assistance indirectly the British setup the first limited Swaraj or free rule in India, with elections and elected assemblies in Indian states in the 1930's, following the pattern in Dominion states Australia and Canada. Mohandas Gandhi negotiated within these processes for rights of South African Indians and Colored people, gaining experience, including study of British law.  A son of poor farmers in the agricultural region of North Caucasus, in Stavropol, it is relevant today that his maternal grand parents were from Chernihiv in Ukraine. He came to power in 1980 after entering the Politburo that year. These were the waning years of Leonid Brezhnev, president of the Soviet Union who followed Nikita Khrushchev (1953- 1964). Khrushchev was from eastern Ukrainian region near Donetsk. Leonid Brezhnev was a protege of Krushchev since 1931, from Kamianske, Ukraine.   Gorbachev was influenced by Khrushchev's speech that denounced Stalin in 1956 in favor of a freer and more open society. Khrushchev, became first secretary of the Communist party in 1953 after the death of Stalin and set the pace of post war Soviet society from 1950 to 1964. He removed the fear of the dictatorship of the proleteriat working class, increasingly dictatorial under Lenin, and blatantly arbitrary under his successor to make Soviet Union a freer society.  Yet his tendency to make decisions on his own without consulting others, and the failure of agriculture in the Soviet Union including food shortages led to his replacement by his protege Brezhnev. Brezhnev's whole career was built under Krushchev in Ukraine, in the army in Ukraine, and as a political leader in the Soviet 18th Army that entered Prague in 1945 defeating the Nazis. Why is this relevant? Gorbachev was educated at Moscow State University when the Soviet Union was in the Sputnik era, and felt at the time that it could reach the 1950's standard of living in the US- very different from the earlier leaders. Yet he may have been too much of an optimist and not hands on in understanding the working of a modern economy as large as Russia and the interests of different groups of society that had to be be balanced and protected. His understanding of the US and of how the US and British economies had evolved was limited or nonexistent. The isolation of the Soviet period may have compounded this. The Russian state in the Soviet Union could not simply unwind the power of the state and its intervention and everything would come out right of its own accord.   Leonid Brezhnev, the Ukrainian Russian who succeeded Krushchev from 1964 to 1979 let the system of Soviet rule remain as it was, in the Great Stagnation, leading to lethargy, lack of innovation, and a weak economy with military expansion. Gorbachev tried to regenerate the system by opening it up, but failed to see that there was a risk that it could come apart quickly as it did in just 4 years after he became president in 1985. Only the centralized power of the state had kept the Russian state together from the Tsarist period through the Communist period. The risks of this Gorbachev failed to grasp. What if it happened too quickly without a safety net for the people who could not make the transition. What lawlessness and failure of the rule of law could happen. The US and Britain had evolved their democracies over centuries. Wars were fought in the US and Britain over rights and responsibilities of kings and parliaments. In the US Lincoln fought the civil war not just for emancipation but to ensure safeguards for free white men on the farms so that Labor did not get disabilities placed on them by Capital (entrenched forces of Capital of which the southern plantation economy was only one aspect.)  Japan and Germany were set up as democratic states through American power and constitutional frameworks with Marshall Plans or agreement to take in unlimited imports from Japan. This bad scenario happened in Russia because Gorbachev failed to set the conditions first and work patiently to achieve them including introducing limited  elections and parliamentary processes first in Russia.  Leaders such as Yeltsin who succeeded Gorbachev in 1989, winning the elections that followed, failed to provide a safety net for the vulnerable in the 1980's. Unemployment increased rapidly, life expectancy dropped in Russia, and the economy failed in the early years after 1980. A Marshall Plan like that offered to Germany could have helped but Gorbachev's failure may have been his failure to provide this transition by arranging for West Germany and the US to support a planned transition, a kind of Marshall Plan of Aid, and maintaining a gradual move to democracy as the country was given time to learn institutions of American and British parliamentary democracy. No such Marshall Plan was negotiated for a smooth transition over inevitable obstacles, no safeguards were put in place for illegal efforts to control the state by rogue elements and to seize assets of state companies, no efforts to first introduce limited elections and parliamentary processes for learning democratic process in Russia, and the people of Russia were left with a memory of the this period as a bad lawless period from 1989 to 2005.  Leading to the situation today under Putin of aspiring to the Soviet period as a kind of period that had offered Russia the world recognition it had lost. And this had happened even though the Russian economy had recovered and the standard of living had risen under Putin. Putin's career spanned the period as a Russian official in Dresden, Germany Democratic Republic or Soviet period East Germany to working in the St Petersburg City Council under Yeltsin. He personally witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the German Democratic Republic from Dresden and Gorbachev's refusal to build a transition period for the changes so that it would not be traumatic for the GDR. Even after reunification these traumas remain in some segments of the older population in East Germany that saw themselves as neglected and support extreme right wing parties in eastern German states by 2020- considering the Soviet period as one in which their lives were less neglected.  After three terms as president Putin with his own traumas from that period in Dresden, and with a mother lost in the period after the Nazi invasion of Russia, a father who survived the Battle of Stalingrad, saw the period of lawless behaviour in the collapse of the Soviet Union as the"greatest geopolitical disaster of the century."  Putin and people around him made missteps and miscalculations launching a war in Ukraine, leading to the situation today- jeopardizing hard won gains for the Russian economy. By 2022 Russian standards of living had risen and the economy was in the best shape it had been in the modern period since the Industrial Revolution. Yet largely exposed because of the dependence on oil and gas during a period of climate change and focus on building future economies free of fossil fuels.  Putin in his own peculiar logic may have seen this as the only opportunity in 2022 before deliinking from fossil fuel reduced the importance of the Russian fuel dependent economy to make some territorial readjusments in Ukraine with a quick war taking Kviv. That turned into a massive miscalculation with the emergence of nationalist fervor in western Ukraine spreading to the whole country of 40 million people. In the future to 2030 with phasing out of the fossil fuel economy, Russia without the connections to the US and European Union's technology and resources it had during Putin's three terms, and facing strict sanctions from US and EU, faces a difficult future. This has cautionary lessons for all countries- the US that read too much into the fall of the Berlin wall and indulged in a losing proposition with free markets that damaged its infrastructure and manufacturing with shifts to China, China understanding of how it to was dependent on the world economy for its future development, India that had to navigate a difficult period and what lessons to draw for building a bigger economy, the EU realizing the failure of its policies of depending on Russia for energy and China for manufacturing with fragile supply chains,  and Russia that there were twists and turns and the need for safeguards and experience building democratic processes before these processes would work for the economy, its people and for Russia as a nation. ...

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Hon Hai has about 800,000 workers. About 400,000 are employed in the southern industrial town of Shenzhen. After a number of worker suicides (13 people have committed or attempted to commit suicide in 2010 so far), the company has announced that it will give 20% raise to its workers. Workers at one plant in Longhua are paid 900 yuan or $132, the legal minimum wage in Guangdong province, though many workers work overtime at 1.5 times the standard rate. The company is secretive about its activities and uses the trade name of Foxconn. It makes personal computers and other products for Apple, HP and other companies. The company uses a military style discipline and it is reported that there is excessive stress in working conditions.