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The Pilbara iron ore region in western Australia in red desert 675 miles north of Perth, is where China gets a lot of its iron ore, mainly from mines run by BHP, Rio Tinto and Fortescue. With the Chinese economy slowing Australia's growth rate dependent on commodities exports like iron ore is declining. Australia's central bank has lowered growth forecasts to 1.5% for 2008-2009, and this is considered optimistic by economists. With prices of iron ore jumping Australia's terms of trade had improved by a leap but now it looks like the terms of trade have peaked. The budget surplus of A$22 will be cut by two thirds by this and also from the A$10.4 stimulus package announced by prime minister Kevin Rudd.

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Google's Schmidt on the future for Android phones and the competition with Apple. He sees the future in open Web applications and open applications like the Android, compared to the the Apple model, which he describes as closed.

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China's slowdownand how it is affecting Asian neighbors like S. Korea and Japanfor whom China is a major export market. Demand for raw materials will be slowing and Australia a big exporter of raw materials will be affected.

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The shift to finding new drugs for cancer. Pfizer has a development team of 10000 researchers in one location near San Diego, California, to develop new drugs for cancer even though some experts say the search for cancer drugs is devilishly complicated. The causes of cancer at the molecular level are complicated and vary even from person to person for the same cancer. Says one expert this also raises questions about the benefit to people as a large amount of resources are shifted to areas like cancer that affect fewer people than other diseases, and where the existing drugs have only prolonged life marginally, in some cases even as low as a few months at a huge cost of thousands of dollars. Tarceva for pancreatic cancer for example only prolongs life by 12 days at a cost of $3500 per month. 860 cancer drugs are being tested in clinical trials according to the trade group of the pharmaceutical industry. This is more than twice the number for heart disease and stroke, and nearly twice the number for AIDS and all other infdectious diseases combined, and nearly twice the number for Alzheimier's and all neurological dieases combined....

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Ms. Annegret Kramp-Krarrenbauer, elected leader of the CDU party in 2018 with the support of Angela Merkel, will not run for chancellor in next years election and will resign from her position by the end of the year. She will continue as Germany's defense minister. After losses for the CDU in recent elections and the embarrassment of local CDU leaders in Thuringia supporting the far right AfD, AKK as she is known decided to step down. Angela Merkel has decided not to run for chancellor again. Germany is set to chair the EU in the second half of 2020, and Merkel is no longer seen as a leader of influence. The Nationalist Alternative for Germany AfD has gained votes in recent elections following the 2015-2016 migrant crisis, with large numbers of refugees from North Africa and Arab world landing in Greece and Turkey and walking to Hungary, Austria and Germany. Merkel's handling of the crisis with acceptance of a million refugees in 2015-2016 unsettled European and German politics. Why? One way of looking at it is that in the same way that the U.S. took in Chinese imported goods ending in the Trump tariffs war, at some point it just becomes too big to handle. That ended up at $1 billion a day in imports from China when president Trump called it off and accused Obama Democrats, Bush Republicans, of betraying the country. Putting it into perspective Germany with one fourth of the population of the U.S. took in about twice the number of refugees in just one year 2015-2016 that the U.S. took in 10 years 2005-2015. The U.S. took in 675,000 immigrants between 2005-2015. This is as if the U.S. took in something like 20 million immigrants in a short period of 1 year on an equivalent basis- though the cultural impact is even greater in a nation like Germany that is like Japan an historically immigrant averse nation. All this happened too quickly for Germany to handle for its fragile cultural fabric. Much of the initial outpouring of support and positive sentiment came from the sense of having gone through World War II and the refugees in that and the early post war period, the need to return in the same spirit support Germany had received. Over time it eroded support for the Christian Democratic Union and Merkel. That Merkel could have done this is itself a small miracle. Now the rebuilding has to begin. Adenauer's CDU and the socialist SPD party of Willy Brandt now have less than 50% support, only with the Greens Party do they make up 50%. The question now is can the CDU, and the SPD which has fallen to 14% in elections, make it back and what kind of future makeup political parties will have in Germany, how the social fabric can be restored. AKK's achievement is to mend relations between the liberal Merkel wing of the CDU and conservatives from Bavaria (CSU) over immigration.  Candidates for CDU leadership are Armin Laschet, Jens Spahn, and Friedrich Merz. Laschet premier of North Rhine-Westphalia has Merkel's support. Looking back too much attention was taken up by the euro crisis, and too little was done in the areas of infrastructure, inequality gaps, education, child care, under Merkel's leadership and of the preceding SPD years, much like what happened under Bush and Obama administrations in the U.S. where wars, economic crises led to neglect on issues that affect lives of ordinary working families. ...

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Many of the companies from the dot com tech bubble of 1999-2000 which were given $1 billion valuations went out of business, including names like Webvan and eToys. The same buble behaviour is evident in 2012 as many companies such as Facebook, Pinterest, Evernote, have $1 billion valuations, similiar to 2000. This is asignal that valuations may have spun out of control. It takes a few deep pocketed investors to raise the valuation of startup internet companies to these untested companies.

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Rich calls Obama's speech for all its apparent thoughfulness and logic, a failure in its mission of coming up with a way to tackle Afghanistan and Pakistan. It did not grapple with the real issue and complexity of these places. He says the rigorous analysis failed and what Obama is ending up with is a too clever by half holding action which lacks credibility becuase the Karzai regime lacks credibility, and the American people have serious doubts of the wisdom of increased involvement. Worse it lacks acredible exit strategy for all the emphasis on early withdrawal. Making some calculations with Petraeus's field manual Rich comes up with a force of 586,000 that would be needed for a proper counterinsurgency in Afghnistan for its population of 28.4 million. But America still would have only less than one fourth of this number in the vast mountainous terrain of Afghnistan, especially when the government it is backing has seriously alienated its own people. So isn't it just as possible that McChrystal and Gates have made a serious error, that the surge that worked in Iraq was based on apeculiar topography that is absent here, which means even more troops not awithdrawal is likely a year from now? He points out that, as Fred Kaplan had pointed out in Slate, that the idea that the coaltiion partners are increasing their share of the burden is an illusion, as America's new share of allied troops with the surge will be 70% compared to 50% when the Bush administration left office. But what he finds most disingenuous is the idea that there will be no sacrifices in economic terms for America, that life can just go on like before, even as the cost of the war will shortchange urgent economic priorities at home and even gut alot of the domestic needs. This was missing in the Obama presentation....

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Consumer spending boom is over and when you look at the detail in the government numbers on spending consumer spending is already declining. So the idea that consumer stocks like P&G, J&J and Coca Cola and Kimberly Clark will hold up better than other stocks is a mirage. Just this week the idea that stocks of companies doing a lot of business overseas and in infrastructure will hold up better turned out to be an illusion as GE fell by 12% in one day, April 11, 2008, because of earnings shortfalls in its finance units as a result of the new climate in the credit and financial markets. Consumers spent heavily. If consumer spending had continued the trends from the 1990's then it would have gone up $3 trillion less today. It would have been 70% ratio of household debt to GDP, right now its close to 97% of GDP. Some of this $3 trillion estimate of Business Week economist Mandel using Fed data will be what the American consumer will be dealing with as he reduces spending in the years ahead. According to OECD data the ratio of household liabilities to disposable income (charts P11 of BW, April 21, 2008) is close to 1.0 in France and Germany which is contrary to what one would expect considering the more conservative spending there especially Germany, exceeds 1.0 in Japan, and far exceeds 1.0 in the US, and in Canada aabout 1.3, with the highest ratio in Britain at a whopping 1.7, using a ballpark view of the charts. This suggests that Britain is way off the charts in spending, see the link to this so expect spending to be hit hardest in Britain and with financial services being a bigger part of the GDP and the economy in Britain expect higher unemployment in Britain than the rest of Europe....

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The Panic of 1907, the run on the bank for the Knickerbocker Trust Company, and its collapse. The intervention of JP Morgan that year came too late for Charles Barney, the President of Knickerbocker Trust, who shot himself and died after 4 hours. In the preceding years Knickerbocker went through rapid growth in deposits, and in 1903 Barney even had a huge Corinthian columned structure of Vermont marble, and a lavish banking room inside built at Fifth Avenue and 34th Street. See the pictures of that structure. It shows how things end up with rampant expansion. Growth, rampant expansion, flamboyant display, excess, crisis, panic, disaster and rescue. A cycle that repeats itself as new generations have no recollection of what had happened before, and no sense of history. With the expansion a sense of exhilaration and selfcongratulation makes way for abandonment of caution, excess, paving the way for disaster. And this hits those involved in the excess as the AIG's and the Citigroups, but also those who have gone to sleep like the GM's, and those who have some exposure like GE with its GE Capital business. What is different in today's economy, and true of the 1930's, is the global nature of this when the excesses are of a global nature, and the countries are intertwined. In this sense the current period involves Asian economies also, in addition to the European and American economies that was true in 1930's. The contrast with today is that a year later by October 1908 the panic had ended, and depositors of the Knickerbocker and other banks had received their money in full. A recovery was on the way. This was isolated to the US economy and to the banks. The global crisis of the 1930's was 23 years away. In 1997 the Asian economies like S. Korea, Thailand and Indonesia suffered a banking crisis, before this there was a finacial crisis in Mexico, and around this time a financial crisis in Russia. There were smaller crises like the LTCM crisis in the US but most were localized like the 1907 Panic. Now 11 years after the 1997 crisis in Asia, we have a global crisis and it is multifaceted, affecting banks, but also consumers and export driven economies in Europe and Asia with spillover effects. ...

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By taking action in Venezuela in a way that benefits the Venezuelan people (and similar action in the long run interests of the Iranian people to dedicate most of the resources for development and increase share of oil revenues without discounting and removing sanctions ill effects on economy and quality of life) major new changes can improve quality of life in the world.  Venezuelan production which was 3 million barrels a day has declined to 900,000 without US investment and technological upgrades. With US investment this can be increased to put additional oil supplies on the market lost in the war with Iran and smaller traffic through the Straits of Hormuz. Venezuelan crude is best suited to US refineries which frees up shale oil for export to meet needs of India and Europe. China which had hyper growth through massive oil consumption would reduce its growth rate and its impact on climate change as it adjusts to the loss of 3 million barrels a day it no longer gets from Iran. Slower growth rate in China is good for the climate as it is the hyper growth of China that put the most pressure on climate even as Europe and the US had cut  fossil fuels consumption over the last decade. China made 2 coal plants a week and 95% of all new global coal construction in 2023. India needs additional oil supplies as it increases its growth rate from a much lower point of development (and electricity poverty) than China. By simply settling for normal development compared to hyper development targets( China has reached a point of Oil Fairness Percentage where each country gets to use the same percentage of oil as its population is as a percentage of world population- the number being about 17% for China for both, with the number being 18% for India and it having a shortfall of 12% based on its oil consumption being only 6% of the world total). China can reduce oil and coal consumption reducing pressure on oil prices and absorbing most of the impact from the loss of Iranian oil. China and Russia + (old Soviet territory) Canada, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, make up about 40% of the world's territorial landmass, would be large beneficiaries with improved climatic conditions from burning less coal. They are now highly developed countries and do not need hyper growth which requires China to build 2 coal plants a week and consume excessive amounts of crude oil and coal based on artificially set targets that make no sense by destroying the climate when no child in China lacks electricity to read. Marathon Philipps Valero with over half a million barrels of refining capacity for heavy Venezuelan crude can now put this to use using the imports by US of lower priced (by $9 to Brent crude) Venezuelan crude oil. In a few months of 2025 US has imported 280,000 barrels a day of Venezuelan crude in February 2026 alone some of it going to the large Valero refinery in Port Arthur, Texas. American oil refiners make larger margins using the Venezuelan crude than they make on light crude from shale oil producers in the US. What this does is to increase the supply of crude and refined oil products on the market as the light crude get shipped overseas to India and Europe- including countries like Spain which took in 100,000 barrels a day of shale crude from US in February 2026. ...

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Like hundreds of thousands of other young migrant workers in China's factories, Yuan Yandong is from a rural area and lived on a farm. Better incomes have brought them to the factories in urban areas. In this case travelling long distance by train from Guangdong province to Shenzhen. As living standards improved across China and the government expressed a keen willingness to encourage workers to exercize their rights to fair wages and working conditons- especially by creating increased awareness of new labor laws in the state run media- migrant workers are becoming restless with conditions they accepted a few years ago. The growing use of cellphones and access to the internet have made news travel faster. A visit to a Foxconn factory shows a young worker, age 24, sitting on a stool 6 nights a week, 12 hours a night, with a quota to assemble 1600 hard drives for American computer storage company EMC, with the pressure to work continuously against the clock for each step in the manufacturing process. Foxconn is known for its highly disciplined nature of work, akin to a military style. Behind the scenes factories like Foxconn employ methods once used in the US at a similiar stage of industrialization, with 500 technical people continuously looking for the most efficient way to organize each step in the production process. Each movement and action of the worker is measured for time taken and process efficiency, according to experts at Tsinghua University in China. This means many factories can use less automation- and so less capital intensive manufacturing- and go to extremes where workers perform like machines. Yuan's ambition is to work only for another 2 years and then use his savings to get into hotel management. His wages are 75 cents an hour, and with the overtime premium about $235 a month. Foxconn announced a 33% raise in wages as a result of worker protests. The mind numbing monotony is becoming less acceptable in a changing China, and worker turnover in such factories is rising. After the initial burst of industrialization in which young migrant workers played a signifcant role in manufacturing, a new chapter in China's development is beginning- one less likely to create the large trade deficits with the US and Europe- which is moving in the direction of a larger domestic market with higher worker wages....

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Apple increased shipments of PC's like the Macbook Air by 16% in 2014 by reducing prices. PC sales stabilized with growth of 2-3% in 2014. Lenovo and HP have the highest market share followed by Dell, Acer and Apple.

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After the 2008 election of president Obama rural whites left the Democratic Party, Following the election of president Trump educated suburbanites left the Republican Party. These two trends have accelerated as seen in the 2018 U.S. Congressional elections. Democrats won in and around major cities, and Republicans won in rural and small town America. Democrats won 27 GOP Republican COngressional seats to win the majority. Republicans added 2 seats to their Senate majority.  The electorate is sharply divided in terms of education in a way that is regressive and not good for America, and in a way that has never happened before. Republicans share of of House districts with lowest shares of college education bachelors degrees increased from 44% in 1998 to 60% in 2018. Democrats share of House districts with the highest share of Bachelors degrees went up from 50% in 1998 to 81% in 2018. Much of the Democrats support from educated suburbanites comes from lopsided support from educated women. The result is that the Republican Party is trading faster growing counties for slower growing smaller counties and now has a base of older voters. The Democrats have to find a leader who can rally support from this new combination of educated suburbanites, younger voters, and minorities. And big issues are at stake. About 77% of people in recent polls now support a national health care insurance like than in the UK and Canada. Poor reading skills and reading comprehension in school tests show a need for greater investment  in education. Infrastructure investment is a big priority for a decade that has yet to be tackled directly. Of the 50 new Democrats in the House of Representatives 24 campaigned on a promise for a national health insurance like that in Canada or UK. The focus on economic issues would move the Democratic Party back to where it was in all the post war years till the distractions from cultural issues  in the last decade shifted its focus from its historical base support of working class voters. ...

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Tom Keene of Blomberg BusinessWeek talks to a panel of experts about the future prospects for the US and the global economy. The discussion was spurred by Carmen Reinhart's paper at the central banker's Jackson Hole, Wyoming, conference. This paper forecasts high unemployment, low housing prices and very low growth in the US upto 2017. Shiller, Calomiris, Orszag, Kaufman and Bill Gross are part of this panel. Shiller's to do list main item is to get help to local and state governments by restoring general revenue sharing arrangements. Gross would focus on jobs that can hold up in a competitive economy, and put back some of the production that is taking place in the developing countries back into the developed countries, as part of a rebalancing; through a currency realignment. Kaufman would like to see a capital expenditure program by the US government, including infrastructure and education. Calomiris would like to see a setup of a new Republican Congresss to set the stage for post 2012 efforts. Calomiris favors cutting entitlements, cutting payroll taxes, but is not clear how this would help lower the deficit. Orszag points to feedback from business leaders suggesting a lowering of payroll taxes will not spur hiring, as the real reason for not hiring was low 1-2 % expected growth. Shiller, Kaufman and Gross see government efforts as realistically needed in the current situation....

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The new Senate Majority leader was raised in a two room house in tiny Murdo, South Dakota, in the wind swept prairies of the United States. Another Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield was raised by his aunt and uncle in a tiny town of Great Falls Montana in the period leading to the First World War. Thune brings a unique ability to tackle the situation facing the Senate today.

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Blinder cites the reasons why the stock market declines are showing a disconnect with the economy in the U.S. which benefits from low oil prices, and the small impact of a slowdown in China on the U.S. economy. Yet other reasons may account for nervousness of investors, as Grep Ip points out in the WSJ, the lack of support from the Fed with its gradual rate hike path, and lack of support from the Chinese government with its policy of reducing debt and no significant stimulus.

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A nuclear plant in a war zone with repeated shelling? This is taken up in this debate video of 44 minutes in FR24 which you can click on. The world has not seen this since the start of nuclear energy from plants in the 1950's. Calder Hall the first UK nuclear power station and the first in western Europe started in 1956. Eisenhower opened the first US nuclear power station Shippingport on the Ohio river in Pennsylvania, 50 kilometres from Pittsburgh in 1958 as part of the Atoms for Peace Program. The US built 54 nuclear plants that are operating today in 2022 generating 50% of the renewable energy in use today in the US. The question is what does the unthinkable conducted by the Russians and Ukrainians, by weaponizing a nuclear plant do to public perception of the safety of the Atoms for Peace Program initiated by president Eisenhower in 1954? What does this damaging of public safety perceptions after Fukushima do to the Atoms for Peace type of programs in China India, and European Union that are part of the emissions cutting programs in the world? These are serious questions at a time when climate change is not simply a word but means floods, fires, drought, and declining food production all over the world from Spain to Pakistan, from Germany to China. China and India are affected. China has 53 nuclear plants in 2021 with 50 GW and plans to double this by 2030. India has 22 nuclear plants  with 8 GW in 2021 and plans to triple this to 22 GW by 2030. How will climate change be tackled with public safety perceptions affected with another nuclear accident like that in Fukushima arising from shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. As the president of the UN Security Council Zhang Jun of China clearly stated at the UN SC meeting last week that China opposed use of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant by Russia (or Ukraine) in any way that could lead to damaging nuclear safety leading to an unintended accident. China only gets about 5% of its energy from nuclear, India about 3%, and this will need to increase multiple times to tackle climate change. France gets 70% of its energy from nuclear, the US 20%, by comparison. Nuclear energy safety and clear rules to prevent weaponizing of nuclear plant zones is essential and a solution like that developed for the food grain shipments from Odessa through Black Sea to the Mediterranean has to be arranged quickly. ...

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Spiegel Online's interview with Emmanuel Macron, on the TGV 8434 train from Bordeaux to Paris. He is joined by Mrs. Macron. Macron says he is aware that he does not have a bloc of core support like Ms. Le Pen, yet he says this means he will try that much harder for voters on the right and the left. He says their is no political renewal in the political class in France and that it remains closed. He says particular attention must be paid to rural France outside big cities like Bordeaux, Lyon, Marseille and Paris, where people have had a different encounter with globalization. On the European Union he sees the need to revitalize it by having a closer union focussed on countries that are interested in this. He sees the need for a joint finance minister and permanent head of Euro Group. This might be a smaller EU without countries such as Britain, and others who are not interested in a closer union. He does not agree with the idea that any member state of the EU can stop other member states from proceeding. Macron does not believe in moving to the right as in the Dutch election because he says people are "not idiots" and in France this has not worked for Nicholas Sarkozy, which has some truth to it as authenticity (and humility) matters to French voters. A personal approach worked for Fillon early on till the scandal over payments he received. Macron brings to this personal approach and relative youthfulness, his sense that he must appeal to all segments, rural and urban, educated and less educated, and at the same time be true to core values such as preserving the European Union, and authenticity in terms of views on Algeria. He also says he is aware he faces risks but that this is something he believes in deeply.   Macron has not hesitated to express his views on topics such as Algeria, calling it a crime against humanity, and later elaborating on what he meant. Macron says his movement En Marche is different in style and manner from the closed nature of French politics. He believes in transparency, term limits, and removing conflicts of interest in French politics, as a way to make a fresh start. The first round of voting is on April 23, 2017, followed by a second round of voting between two candidates.  ...

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Syracuse's basketball coach, Jim Bonheim, says even iconic college coaches like Duke's Krzyzewski, who follows in the footsteps of names like John Wooden and Bob Knight, are under pressure. Such is the extent to which competitive spirit and the demands made by fans and sportswriters, have remade college sports in the U.S. The introspection follows the firing of Penn State football coach Joe Paterno after sexual misconduct allegations against assistant coach Sandusky were not followed through at Penn State. The support from fans for Paterno and their lack of remorse showed the extent to which Americas heartland has changed, and the extent to which the strong underpinnings that support it have weakened, from spheres of finance and industry that caused the financial crisis to sports where winning has obscured other serious values.

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A movie marketing and distribution strategy developed by Focus Features -using the idea of a platform release-for a specialty film, based on a spy novel by Le Carre called "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy." The idea behind it was to keep costs for marketing and advertising down by targeting groups that would like to see the film. This was done by opening on just 4 screens and obtaining information about the demographics and the groups attending. The next step was to expand this to just 55 screens because most of the theatres were booked with large budget movies like "The Iron Lady" and "The Descendents." The target was set at 800 theatres and Focus Features CEO, James Schamus, decided to wait a few weeks before making the move up to 800 screens.

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Israeli concerns as the democracy protests lead to new elections in Egypt, and democracy protests take place in all parts of the Arab world. Veteran correspondent Ted Koppel talks to Israeli leaders in Jerusalem. They tell him their first concern is Iran, which they see benefitting from the changes in the Middle East. They would like to see a Marshall Plan for Egypt- continuing U.S. aid to Egypt to maintain economic progress there. They are watching the situation in Libya and Syria as it evolves. The Israeli leaders also tell Koppel that they would like to see the U.S. make a commitment to Saudi Arabia, if the survival of the Saudi governmet is at risk. In Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, Israel sees Iranian influence as the larger risk.

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The focus is shifting from the oil majors to the companies in the oil field services sector, companies that supply the oil companies with oil field services. Deepwater oil field drilling rigs some of the most modern computer controlled ones run $650 million are in great demand and one Norwegian supplier of drilling rigs has anticipated the demand for advanced deepwater drilling rigs which the major oil companies had not invested in and is now in a position to charge $600,000 a day for the advanced rigs he has ordered 3 years ago as the deepwater drilling took off in places like offshore Angola. Earlier this Norwegian had anticipated the shift to long haul shipping of oil to places like India and China from Iran and offshore Africa.

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Jean-Marie Le Clezio is hailed as "author of new departures, explorer of humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization," by the Swedish Academy. This Frenchman loved to explore foreign cultures from North African immigrants in France to native Indians in Mexico and islanders in the Indian ocean. He wins the Nobel Prize for Literature for 2008. His novels include "Desert," about a Sahara woman and her encounters with European civilization, the "Prospector," and others. Le Clezio's novel "Onitsha," is based in Nigeria during the British colonial period. His father was a British doctor with connections to Mauritius where he also lived. He was born in Nice and studied at Bristol university in the UK and spent a year in Nigeria. He now spends time between Nice, Mauritius, and Albuquerque.

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On a farm in Texas where farmers have finished planting the winter wheatcrop, it cost $6 a bushel for fuel, seed and fertilizer to plant and not counting the price of renting land, when the price today is $5 a bushel for wheat. Most farmers like this farm in Texas kept a large portion of their wheat even as prices hit $10 a bushel hoping for higher prices, with prices having dropped to $5 a bushel in a short time things don't look so good. In places like Oklahoma which exports two thirds of its wheat farmers planted bigger wheat crops as prices jumped, and the wheat crop harvested in the spring is valued at $1 billion at the higher prices except that not all farmers sold their wheat.