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Class and the divide between rich and poor, educated and uneducated, urban and rural, in China. Even with rapid industrialization in the urban mostly coastal regions, a large number of China's people live in rural areas and in the hinterland away from the big cities. October 1, is the 60th anniversary of communist rule. With the internet and more communication of all types, incidents in which the rich and powerful are treated differently by the judicial system- and can get away with light sentences for wrongdoing or crimes- cause a great deal of anger among the people. In this traffic accident in Hangzhou, one of the rich people's kids- the young emperors is how they are referred to in Chinese- runs over and kills on the pavement a 25 year old telecom engineer from a rural area near Changsha. He had to work hard to get to college and become a engineer, and his parents struggled to pay his tution in college. The 20 year old racing car driver gets away with a light sentence of 3 years, and is suspected to have used a stand-in for the trial, who would also serve the sentence. The public in Hangzhou was upset about this and blogs all over China began to talk about this. The police initially covered up the incident, saying the speed was 43 mph. Only after public pressure did the police say it was double that, and that the Mitsubishi racer used by the rich kid was retrofitted for speed....

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Turkish decision to conduct operations against Iraqi Kurdistan led to fears in the markets that it would cut off supplies of Iraqi oil. However Turkish premier Erdogan says it would limit its operation to PKK guerillas and its not certain whether this was a way to please public opinion in Turkey that the Government was strong enough to respond to attacks on Turkey or Turkish soldiers and not a real decision to go to war and find itself in difficulties with the US and Iraq. This article shows that Turkey is the largest foreign investor in Iraqi Kurdistan with many projects and a thriving foreign trade there with Turkey. Erdogan, Prime Minister of Turkey in questions and answers at the National Press Club in Washington DC during the week of November 4th broadcast on CSPAN emphasized that its Iraq move was an "operation" only, no desire on Turkey's part for a war. When asked how it would affect Turkey's south east part he emphasized that many members of Parliament from his party were Kurdish Turks and Turkey had helped large numbers of peshmerga Kurds during Saddam's period and could not understand the Kurdish response. He also emphasized Turkey did not want to touch civilians in Iraqi Kurdistan, which is what the Iraqi Kurds say would lead to their involvement. He emphasized also Turkey's desire to seek a "middle road" in all matters which he described as the best. Have oil prices overreacted to the move by Turkey, or since there is always considerable uncertainty about events in that region (and clarifications come much later after some striking announcement that Turkey would make a strong response), are markets already very sensitive to political volatility especially with stocks lower than usual and rising demand for oil, simply responding to the worst possible outcome....

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The plant in Tychy, Poland where Fiat turns out 500,000 small cars a year, one every 55 seconds. Chrysler engineers are now visiting this plant to see what can be done with small car production. The Fiat 500 is turned out here. Its Fiat's best effort in terms of quality. Zdzislaw Arlet, is director of the Tychy (pronounced TICK-ee) plant. He says the right combination of robots to individual workers was critical to achieve efficiencies and to have the flexibility to switch to different Fiat small car models depending on which is selling more. This enables the Tichy plant to operate round the clock six days a week. About three years ago workers were assigned an individual ID that is stamped on the sections of the car that they assemble so any problems at the end of the line can be traced to the source. As a result of these efforts defects have fallen from 20% in 1996 to just 4% now, and the time to have a car roll out of the assembly line has been halved.

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Oxfam reports that about half of the people showing up at soup kitchens in the U.S. are people with one person in the family working at a minimum or low wage job. About 3.3 million American are affected at the $7 federal minimum wage. The White House proposes a $10 minimum wage that it say would affect 28 million Americans. For most of these people working mostly in low wage retail jobs this can mean having more food and often having the money to take a bus instead of having to walk to work.

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A report by the World Bank is cited showing that in many industries the gap between the leaders in that industry and the companies trailing it is so wide that its as much as 5 times the value added per worker. Based on this the World bank estimates that India can increase its national output rapidly simply using existing knowhow of the best firms in the industry fort those firms that are trailing. This sounds fine on paper but in practice a lot goes into best practice with leadership being hard to replicate easily, and the technology of the leading firms may not be available to the other firms. However its possible for the other companies to increase their productivity if the efffort and determination was present.

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As the pandemic continues to spread and numbers grow with reopening of the economy the question remains -what can we learn from other countries positive experience in controlling spread? Here the Times provides the example of German contact tracing- chancellor Merkel has emphasized that a lot depends on "total" contact tracing, and contact tracing "above all else." Germany's experience is that even if you don't get everything right, you make an honest effort with everything you've got and do it early it makes a real difference. Some of the offices across Germany are stretched and short of staff but they have been working since the beginning of March, sometimes in the early days 7 days a week. Only 33% or one third of the offices throughout Germany for contact tracing have the required 5 person team for every 20,000 people, and 35% are overstretched or at their limit, according to one survey. No apps, just a low tech effort with people from the state administrations who were not working during lockdown trying doing something else, or volunteers. Mainly using the phone, talking to people and tracing the contact chain of people testing positive. Putting this information on the computer with a central database.  The Berlin office has 115 workers and has tracked down every one of 666 virus cases it was given. Because of privacy concerns at the Munich office sometimes even the patient's name is not given and office staff have to locate the name and the person. It requires dedication, flexibility and above all resilience, says Harold Rau, the deputy Mayor of the Cologne office, cited in this Times report. The doctor alerts the local office with a test result. The office calls the person and finds out who he has been in contact with for the last 14 days. Then the people who were in contact with are grouped based on the directness of contact, face to face, so on. These people are asked to quarantine for 14 days, sometimes with the rest of their household. They get daily call to find out how their doing for symptoms. The effort goes back to Robert Koch in the 1892 cholera epidemic in Hamburg. Robert Koch, microbe hunter in Germany, was called in after the epidemic spread from Moscow. It devastated Moscow and Tokyo, but Hamburg suffered far less about 8605 deaths as a result of the contact tracing and strict closing off quarantining of affected chains after isolating them, closing off affected parts of the city. Bit by bit the cholera epidemics sparks were put out before turning into flames, says Koch. In the current pandemic Germany has suffered 8241 deaths and 178,000 confirmed cases. So far this is in line with the cholera epidemic in Hamburg 1892, and this for all of Germany. And it is not just affluent nations that can do this. where there is a will there is a way. In Kerala state in southwestern India, similar efforts have worked to limit spread  with even better results than Germany. ...

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India like China is more interested in modernization that brings equality with Europe and America so that the period of misfortunes that struck India and China- as a result of the vastly superior technology and force of Europe as it found a passage to the East around the Cape of Good Hope- is over.  Think about this. If anything happened to democracy and pluralism in the US Indian democracy and pluralism would still be standing a hundred years down the road or the next hundred years after that. What does that say about India? Why? Because India has learnt its lessons under Vivekananda, Tilak, Gandhiji, Modiji, and understands the need for technology, trade and modernization, which is what Modi as a Gujarati with the trading mentality like the British is really after. The so called Hinduism as it is really about the Upanishads and the Gita and the Buddha, and Communism, are really not the driving force in India or China.The Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita like the Bible offer a way an ethos to resolutely fight the corruption and leakages of funds that take the investments out of modernization leaving everyone poor. And India also benefits when democracy works and acts as an enabling force for a modern economy that creates "a rising tide that lifts all boats" (people). Democracy is the tool for development and to tackle diversity of 1.4 billion people. Adam Smith was right writing then in the 1780's around the French revolutionary period and American independence - "Hereafter perhaps the natives of these countries (India, China, Indonesia) may grow stronger, or those of Europe grow weaker, and the inhabitants of all the different quarters of the world may arrive at the equality of courage and force, which by inspiring mutual fear, can alone overawe the injustice of independent nations into respect for one another." India's leaders fought hard after the 1700's for preserving independence from the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British, only they were divided. Ranjit Singh in the north fought the Mughals and the British in the Punjab. The Marathas on the western front fought the Mughals and the British. The result as Gandhi points out in Hind Swaraj in his question "who made the British Company Bahadur?" It was Indian princely kingdoms vying for support from the armies of the British East India Company interested in profits from seizing Indian princely treasuries and trade. Note that Sri Lanka or Ceylon fell to the Portuguese in 1505. The technology gap between Europe and Asia had opened up even that early by 1500's in ship building, in warships and use of maritime navigation technologies. Consider that in 1534 Jacques Cartier was out on his first trips from St Malo, France across Atlantic to explore past Newfoundland to the mouth of the St Lawrence river. The Portuguese and then the Dutch had already beaten the British and the French by 100 years- Britain's exploration of India through East India settlements in Bengal began much later in the 1600's. India like China built around river based civilizations as Adam Smith points out in his Wealth of Nations, Chapter 7, Part 3, America and East Indies-of the natives of India and China Smith says their struck "a dreadful misfortune" that arisen more by accident, that "the superiority of force seemed to be so great on the side of the Europeans, that they were able to commit with impunity every sort of injustice in these remote countries." Every Indian or Chinese will agree with this so great was the misfortune for India and China from the injustice of European nations in the 19th century so much so that Cordell Hull speaking for Franklin Roosevelt and all Americans broadcast to the world in the throes of World War II in 1942 America's call to the world for a new world order based on freedom and development for all nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America. America's Secretary of State Cordell Hull said: "In this vast struggle, we, Americans, stand united with those who, like ourselves, are fighting for the preservation of their freedom; with those who are fighting to regain the freedom of which they have been brutally deprived; with those who are fighting for the opportunity to achieve freedom."     ...

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H-P CEO Leo Apotheker defends H-P's plan to spin off its PC unit. He says it wasn't possible for H-P to invest enough in the business to be competitive and make the necessary structural changes needed in other parts of H-P's business. The new product development cycles are much faster than what a congomerate like H-P could accomplish in areas such as the tablet PC, as consumers are looking for a stream of new product devices. H-P's PC unit generated $40.1 billion in revenues and $2 billion in operating profit in the recent fiscal year. Analysts say H-P has overpaid for Autonomy, leaving less money available for additional strategic moves. Apotheker defended that decision saying the Autonomy acquisition makes it possible for H-P to skip a generation of technology as it enables businesses to make sense of unstructured data.

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Volvo sales worldwide hit 458,000 in 2007 and nowhere near the 650,000 the company set as a target when it bought Volvo in 1999 for $6.45 billion. The dollar has gone from being on par with the euro to $1.50 per euro in the last couple of years. The Volvo cars are made in Sweden and Belgium so this has hurt sales.In North America Volvo sales dropped from 130,000 to 90,000 in 2007. Volvo has come up with a smaller SUV the XC60 just introduced at the Geneva Auto Show and is according Mr Arp the Swedish head of Volvo the safest Volvo model built. It has sensors on the windshield that help it apply brakes automatically if its likely to get too close to the car in front in city driving.

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Elsa Fornero is an economics professor who is Labor Minister in the government of Mario Monti. After several decades Italy has finally tackled the much needed changes to the 1970 Workers' Charter that forms the basis of Italy's labor laws. The Charter protected workers jobs but was designed during a different period and had long since lost its relevance in a modern economy. The laws led to Italy losing its competitiveness and entrenched small family firms in the economy. The new labor law protects the individual instead of jobs, by increasing the safety net to cover unemployed workers for shorter periods and lower benefits, and makes it possible for firms to layoff employees for economic reasons. Fornero says Italians need to recognize that work is not a right to be enshrined in laws but something that is earned through hard work. Article 18 of the Worker's Charter was originally intended to remove discriminatory practices in the workplace, but was enlarged to provide blanket protections to workers so that companies could not fire workers and avoided hiring. Under the new law discrimination is illegal, but now companies can layoff employees for economc reasons and not face long legal disputes and be forced to rehire the workers. The new law will increase productivity says Marcello Giustiniani, a labor specialist at Milan law firm Nonelli, Erede & Pappalardo. Italy's productivity gap with Germany has widened to over 30% since the introduction of the euro. The ASPI, new unemployment insurance plan, goes into effect in 2013, older programs will be phased out by 2017, giving time for the culture change in Italy for workers and business. Another major change is designed to help 2 million workers earning less than 18,000 euros. Businesses will have to give these workers proper contracts. Fornero's effort to tackle the pension system also includes linking retirement checks to how much is contributed over the lifetime- a practice common in other countries- not the final and highest salary. This simple change was not not implemented by 10 governments since a law was passed in 1995, showing why the Monti government was needed to get things done....