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Laurent Berger, head of the French Confederation of Labor, C.F.D.T., is a moderating force in France as president Macron leads an effort to make a revision to France's labor code. With a large parliamentary majority president Macron is expected to push for a shift to a Scandinavian version of "flexible security," that allows companies and the economy to adjust the work force, introduce retraining and create flexibility so that new jobs can be created. His union is now the largest, after surpassing the militant General Confederation of Labor. Issues in labor changes proposed by president Macron are- direct negotiations between management and employees bypassing unions, and a cap to compensation in unfair dismissal cases. Berger's view is that though the interests of labor and management conflict, there has to be dialogue instead of constant confrontation. He is willing to see some jobs lost if business creates new jobs with improvement in the economy. Macron has summoned labor leaders for marathon talks. ...

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The Gallois Report commissioned by the new government in France to restore France's manufacturing competitiveness. Louis Gallois is the former head of aerospace firm EADS. It calls for a 30 billion euro cut in payroll taxes to help French companies compete in global markets. Gallois proposes 22 main measures to "stop the slide and support the economy." He called this a "competitiveness shock." Gallois points to France's 70 billion euro trade deficit in contrast to booming German exports. The cost to the economy was 2 million French jobs over 3 decades, says the report. Unemployment today is around 10%. Measures suggested include the payroll tax cuts of 1.5% of GDP for salaries upto 4900 euros a month, and employee representatives to sit on board of directors of French companies similiar to Germany.

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The COE-Rexecode study warns about the loss of French competitiveness in manufacturing.

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Nobel laureate Michael Spence says the structural problems in the U.S. economy will require structural solutions where government, business and labor come up with collective efforts to restore economic growth. This might take some time says Spence. Short term fiscal spending alone is not the answer for jobs growth. And it will take a joint concerted effort of government, business and labor. Part of the effort might include a period in which there is lower income growth to regain competitiveness. This would be similiar to what Germany accomplished in the last decade in which it faced high unemployment. The German government, labor unions and business forged a consensus which included wage restraint, changes in the labor market. This would have to be combined with government-business partnership to make investments in advanced manufacturing technology and other innovations to improve competitive position. Educational standards and productive skill development issues would have to be addressed to create new advantage for the U.S., just as emerging market economies are making new strides of their own....

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The new generation of Communist party leaders that takes over from Hu Jintao and Wen Biao. Chongqing region's party chief, Bo Xilai is one of the leaders expected to be part of the senior communist leadership, along with Li Keqiang as prime minister and Xi Jinping as president. Xi and Bo are sons of communist party veterans from the Long March. Chongqing was the main base of the Communist party in the 1930's and 1940's, as Mao and the communists fought the Nationalists and then the Japanese. Bo has suppressed the influence of Mafia elements in the region, and is campaigning for a place on the Politburo's Standing Committee with a call for a return to Maoist values of "conscientiousness." Chongqing's state companies are supporting a project launched by Bo in 2010 to build 800,0000 subsidized apartments in 3 years, with an investment of $18.5 billion. This comes as income and wealth gaps in the country are widening and housing is becoming increasingly unaffordable for ordinary wage earners....

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This New York Times editorial says a smaller Wall Street and growing jobs in other fields will be good for New York as well as good for the country. It says New York politicians should focus on finding new ways for New York to broaden its tax base and get new businesses and new opportunites in fields such as media, advertising, entertainment, health care and tourism. Especially welcome are initiatives such as the science and tech campus of Cornell University promoted by Mayor Bloomberg. Tighter financial rules and higher capital requirements are good for the country and for New York the editorial emphasizes, because they help control reckless banking practices that destroy capital and opportunities for growth elsewhere in the economy. It points to Kevin Rose's Nov. 21, 2011 account in the Times showing a healthy culture shift in New York and the country with the status jobs being seen not at Goldman Sachs but at Google, Apple and Facebook. Rose's account shows that in the last 3 years the number of Wall Street employees of ages 20-34 declined by 25%....

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Romania, one of the poorest nations in the EU, has per capita GDP half the EU average. Years of large spending before the financial crisis hit in 2008 have led to high debt levels and turning to the IMF for assistance. The IMF and the EU arranged a loan of $26 billion in 2009 with conditions for spending cuts. GDP declined by 7% in 2009. In 2011 GDP increased by 2.5% and in 2012 about 1.5-2% growth is expected. The spending cuts included cutting 200,000 government jobs since 2009, with another 100,000 jobs to be cut in 2012. Wage cuts of 25% were made. Other actions include raising the retirement age, removing special pensions for the military and police, raising the value added tax and cuttting subsidies including heating help. The result is that polls now show the centre right government of Emil Bloc has support from only 20% of people polled compared to 50% for the main opposition party. Emil Bloc resigned after weeks of protest on February 7, 2012.

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Greece's new Syriza government plans to put a bill through parliament on the minimum wage as one of its first steps. It will reverse plans to sell the government's 67% stake in the port of Piraeus, and a planned sale of the state controlled utility will be held back. Sigmar Gabriel, the Social Democratic leader in the coalition government in Germany says Germany is ready to show solidarity with the Greek people, and says the new government has the opportunity to take better action against corruption and tax evasion in Greece than previous governments. Previous governments including governments of the Pasok and New Democracy parties which make up the ruling political elite in Greece failed to make the serious changes in tax collection needed in Greece whereby the upper class in Greece pay the fair amount of taxes due. The IMF's Lagarde also emphasized the tax collection, and separated it from austerity issues where most of European and American opinion believes growth oriented policies are the right path....

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Jorg Asmussen, Germany's representative on the ECB'S Executive Board, will take the position of deputy secretary in the Labor Ministry in the new coalition government of Angela Merkel with the SDP. He moves to Berlin from Frankfurt to be close to his two small children and family, who continued to live in Berlin after Asmussen moved to Frankurt ECB headquarters. Germany is likely to nominate Sabine Lautenschlager, member of the executive board of the Bundesbank, to Asmussen's position on the executive board of the ECB. The ECB Governing Council, including the six member executive board and the heads of 17 central banks, will now have the first female member. Ms. Lautenschlager's expertise is in banking regulation, which is relevant today because of the ECB's new role as regulator of banks in the eurozone. Asmussen, who is from the SDP, assumes a position under Labor minister Andrea Nahles. He will be responsible for introduction of the national minimum wage, which was a key demand of the SDP for joining the coalition with Merkel....

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Kimberly Clark will raise prices on Huggies diapers and wipes by 3-7%. Procter & Gamble said it will raise prices on Pampers diapers 7% and wipes by 3%. Consumers tend to switch brands for bleach, bottled water and soap, but recent surveys have shown only 10% will do so for baby products.

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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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You don't have to do anything except get up and go out for a walk, says Dr. Sollis, about getting that basic exercise that will reduce the severity of covid symptoms and protect your health. At all ages, across all demographics, this is the basic fact. 

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John Cochrane of the University of Chicago points out that slight deflation of 1-2% may not be pernicious in 2014-2015.

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Hassett and Baker suggest learning from the German experience of the last decade in reducing unemployment, including "kurzarbeit" programs, work sharing, and cooperation between industry, unions and government to reduce unemployment. France is already taking action to learn from the German experience.

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As only 8 out of 90 banks fail in E.U. stress tests, there is considerable skepticism about the rigor of the stress tests in July 2011. All the banks are relatively smaller banks, with five in Spain, two in Greece and one in Austria. The failed banks have a total capital shortage of 2.5 billion euros. Analysts had expected over 20 banks to fail and requiring tens of billions of euros of capital injections. The 2010 tests had experienced the same criticism, with seven lenders failing and a capital deficit of 3.5 billion euros. European Banking Authority officials concede the lack of sufficient rigor in the tests and attribute this to conflicting political pressures from regulators and banks. EBA officials say their main usefulness is in the added transparency and information it brings. In the 2010 stress tests each bank had to show 149 pieces of data. In the 2011 tests this went up to 3200 points of data about exposures from government debt to derivatives. EBA Chairman Andrea Enria put it this way: "There is this perception that there are things hidden under the carpet, this will help the market to make up its own mind." About 1000 pages of documents were released by EBA to analysts, investment bankers, and investors after the tests....

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Skeptical reception of the Administration's plan as Senators on the Banking Committee question, Paulson, Bernanke, Cox and Lockhart. The plan is only a few pages long and has no details wich alarms Senators as letting Treasury act with absolute impunity. The Senators are concerned about accountability, transparency and strict oversight. They are also concerned about protecting taxpayers money and taking equity in return for funds as on way to ensure that the taxpayers benefit from the upside in this as with the Swedish example in 1992. And Senators are concerned about the high rate of foreclosures and the need to help homeowners avoid foreclosure about which this plan is silent leaving in the words of one senator " a gaping hole" in the plan as home prices will continue to deteriorate as long as nothing serious and comprehensive is done about the foreclosure rate. Neither Bernanke or Paulson had anything to say about addressing foreclosures with broad comprehensive steps. And reflecting the outrage across the country the Senators want to see a cap on executive compensation of CEO's or some way in which CEO's of these financial institutions benefit while the taxpayers bear the burden. Summing up for the committee the head of the Senate Banking committee said that the Administrations plan was "unacceptable." ...

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What is theaverage income of a Ohio plumber and how many have health insurance? Is he a working class man? Well it turns out that Joe the Plumber Republican candidate for President 2008 refers to could be an exception but the average plumber makes $47,930 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics occupational earnings report for May 2007 for plumbers in Ohio. And the Ohio plumbers income was only 15% higher than in the 2000 report when the consumer prices in midwest rose by 17%. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation in 2007 only 45% of companies with fewer than 10 employees offered health benefits, down from 57% in 2000. And 2007 was a good year, the statistics for 2008 and 2009 would look much worse as the downturn takes shape. As Chapman another Nobel prize winning economist wrote in the WSJ oped pages the stimulus checks were spent on more purchase of consumer goods merely continuing a high debt low savings spendthrift pattern of consumer behaviour and delayed the economic crisis for 6-12 months. Underlying incomepatterns like the one above where working class Americans were actually more and more worse off in an accelerating pattern may have become glossed over in consumer debt and housing boom behaviour....

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The cost is $117 million the number of students estimated at 20,000 who can be educated in this way who cannot afford the high tution fees at the universities in Minnesota including the University of Minnesota system. In opposing access to higher education the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board also reflects the views of billionaire owners out of touch with the people of America and the Nation. The WSJ Editorial Board says nothing about the egregious situation today shown on its pages of capital allocation that has gone upside down and scary. For example it showed in one week : $110 million capital allocated to invent a better golf ball $700 million lost in capital allocated by investment funds in a facial lotion brand that uses natural ingredients. This is just to cite 2 of thousands of such capital allocations many of them shown on Lyrarc.com as examples of poor and egregious scary capital allocation for a nation built on fairness and building opportunities for workers and families through the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. The very investment that differentiated America and Europe from the feudal societies of China and India that self destructed in the 20th century after enormous suffering for hundreds of millions of the Chinese and Indian people. Isn't this like turning ones back on the Advantages that accrued to Europe and America from its wise investments and turning one's back on the Enlightenment in Europe and America itself? This is the statement to be found on the Minnesota Office of Higher Education- "Beginning in fall 2024, the North Star Promise (NSP) Scholarship program will create a tuition and fee-free pathway to higher education for eligible at eligible Minnesota residents at eligible institutions as a "last-dollar" program by covering the balance of tuition and fees remaining after other scholarships, grants, stipends and tuition waivers have been applied. By making college accessible and affordable, NSP is intended to have a positive impact on multiple fronts: Help stabilize enrollment at Minnesota public institutions of higher education; Serve as an economic driver for Minnesota by educating qualified workers who are much needed to fill vacancies in the state's labor force; Create a viable higher education path for Minnesota residents who may have previously thought education was not a possibility for them. We estimate this program will impact 15,000-20,000 students in the first academic year." The cost estimate at $117 million a year . ...

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The failure of the Jacob Zuma government of the ANC to imorove economic and living conditions for black people in South Africa. The gap between incomes of black and white South Africans is wider now than when Apartheid ended in 1994. It is also wider now than when Zuma took office three years ago.