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Delocalisation for Airbus as most of its production is in the euro area and its sales are in dollars. This policy is gradually taking hold to outsource manufacturing without making some of the errors that Boeing made with the Dreamliner.

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How Nokia designs its phones. It uses teams of anthropologists, and psychologists in its design group to understand the ways people around the world behave and communicate. The designers go into the field and look for changes in behaviour new patterns , and look for new ideas , so new phones van be designed based on what they se anfd understand in the field. A research group looks atmacro societal trends and short term micro trends based on colors textures fashions. It looks for local country specific trends and at regional similiarities. Nokia is looking for something it did not realize before also, a learning process. Thats how it stumbled on the idea of a phone that would be shared by a group of people in poor rural areas. And this had to be designed differently to make it easy to use but also not look like a cheap phone. There would be a shared address book, protection from dust on the keypad, and a demo mode making it easy to use, and a call tracker to allow people to track cost. With this kinds of phones Nokia expects to sell to 2 billion of these phones to new customers in the next 10 years in China India Brazil and Africa. Nokia is also setting up a design studio with a design school Shrishti in Bangalore....

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The Indian approach to acquisitions is to leave things alone and learn from the way things are done by western companies. This is the approach taken by Tata Motors to its acquisition of LandRover and Jaguar. Its also the approach of Infosys, Wipro, and other Indian companies.

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How Airbus is learning from the mistakes made in Boeing's Dreamliner, which will be out in late 2009. Airbus's competing plane the A350 will come out in 2013. Use of outside contractors and puttting all that work together is a critical issue once again, especially with production spread out around the world, including Russia and China.

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Japan has accomplished a remarkable transformation of its workforce and its economy even as the working age population is declining. For years Japan was seen as a stagnant economy with a rapidly aging population. In recent years Japan has shown how a change in policy can work. Since 2012 working age population declined by 4.7 million, yet the number of people working increased by 4.4 million. The proportion of the population in the workforce rose sharply since 2012. To do this Japan turned to three underutilized parts of its workforce and population- the elderly, women and new immigrants. Japan has pursued an active policy of reviving the economy by bringing women into the workforce and breaking taboos on new immigrants. In 2004 Japan raised retirement age from 60 to 65, and then made it mandatory for companies to raise or abolish the retirement age, or introduce a system for re-employing workers who retire. This has changed Japan a lot with Japanese men working well into their 60's and 70's. In the west coast city of Kanagawa which now has a bullet train to Tokyo, out migration was a big problem that added to a declining workforce. The head of Ohara, a family owned company that makes desserts tried a novel method of advertising to seniors in apartment blocks and starting attracting seniors to fill worker shortages. It found that seniors came to work on time, performed even tedious tasks, and brought a great deal of experience. Since then the regional government has started programs to get more retirees and women into the workforce. The special programs teach small companies to adapt to the needs of retiree workers who can work in shorter shifts of few hours and do less physical jobs. Women need predictable hours to pickup children from school and shorter work weeks, for which the regional government program helps companies adapt by sending in specialists to guide the companies. As a result female participation in the workforce, for very long a big handicap is no longer so. Female participation has jumped to 63%, higher even than that in the OECD where the average is 62 years.  Japanese women had a M curve that meant they worked most in their 20's. less in the 30's with children, and more in the 50's. First the government tried to correct this with extended parental leave, increased childcare, and rewarding companies with good work-life balance. Then in 2009 the effort accelerated with employers required to offer 6 hour days if a worker asked for this. Under prime minister Abe's "womenomics" effort child care was significantly expanded- by 2015 Tokyo went from 28 to 38 spots open for every 100 two year olds. Alongside these efforts the Abe government tried to get companies to rethink their assumptions about quantity of work and overtime as productive effort. One could work shorter hours and be productive, and the old notions were seen as resulting in lower productivity. As fathers with parental leave took on more responsibility the changes transformed the attitudes for women at work. Most remarkable is the quiet change in immigration policy. The government allowed foreign construction workers to address shortages for work on the 2020 Olympics. It introduced a 3-5 year visas program for nursing care workers. Two new categories of visas will add 340,000 additional blue collar workers over next 5 years. The total foreign born workers in Japan doubled from 2012 to 2017 to 1.3 million. ...

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McDonalds Russia opens under a new name and logo in Moscow. The chain was bought by a Siberian businessman Alexander Govor, who previously owned a McDonald's franchise in Siberia. The rebranded restaurant will keep the same menu, staff and standards. About 62,000 employees work for McDonald's and the company had local suppliers that employed tens of thousands of people. All of the restaurants will remain open and Mr. Govor plans to increase the number to 1000. This ensures employment for about somewhere in the range of 100,000 people in Russia and maintains a degree of normalcy in life for cities across Russia. McDonald's owned 84% of the restaurants a high number and this made the transfer of ownership easier. McDonald's has an option to buy back the chain in 15 years.  There is some symbolism in this as McDonald's had a line of 30,000 people in Pushkin Square during the first opening in Moscow in 1990 following the collapse of Communism. ...

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Out of the rubble of failed policies, lack of far sighted leadership, and the failure of Middle Eastern elites and leaders, must arise the right way forward.

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Refugees now favor Sweden over Denmark.

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Eventually China's stimulus efforts and efforts to build up its reserves of commodities like its Strategic Petroleum Reserve, may not boost demand for oil, iron ore and other commodities enough to offset the recessionary impact on the industrialized economies. And China's demand is large but not that large that it can tilt prices one way or the other. In the first quarter China accounted for 9% of global oil demand, compared with 55% for the largely recession impacted industrialized world. Stockpiling of resources is a temporary factor. Sanford Bernstein estimates the first phase of China's Strategic Petroleum Reserve may have boosted imports by 400,000 barrels a day in March and April. Another factor is consumption. Stimulus dollars pushed fixed asset investment by one third in the first quarter, yet consumer spending went up less than 10%. Consumption will remain weak. Ultimately China's stimulus efforts may act as a brake on sudden falls in commodities prices, and not support continual upward pressure on commodities prices right smack in the face of a deep recession and large underutilization of manufacturing capacity in the industrialized world....

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Jane Spencer interviews Lenovo CEO, Bill Amelio. Amelio throws light into how a company can best operate in China and reach out to a global market. Consider the way Amelio recruits Chinese talent working in the local language, and how he works with Chinese managers who tend to be more reticent on issues and opinion. Amelio is unique in his approach to hiring Chinese managers and building a bench with deep talent. He has abandoned what he calls the "colonial approach" of hiring with expat executives interviewing in English for managers in emerging markets. He says its a good idea to leave the English filter out to get more talent. Instead he has English language classes for the hired managers to help them improve language skills. Amelio talks about Lenovo's approach to the U.S. and other international markets as it competes with the likes of Acer and Dell. Amelio headed Dell's Asian operations prior to this position. Lenovo is testing ideas for giving low cost access at $100-$150 to people in India and China. The way this works is for Lenovo working with Intel and Microsoft to reduce the cost by 50%. For the bank to have half the ownership and the customer paying for the rest. Customers would buy cards for 10 hours of computing, and buy the computer back from the bank through regular use. Lenovo's strategy is to go after small and medium size businesses and consumers to increase market share in the U.S. and Europe. To do this it is using soccer star Ronaldinho and basketball stars to give Lenovo visibility as a brand. In other areas, Amelio has brought Dell managers to Lenovo to improve the supply chain management, an area Lenovo needed to improve....

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Russian oil production at 10 million barrels a day esentially remained flat this year and there are no new supplies coming in from the areas outside of OPEC. The wells in western Siberia are aging and like Prudhoe Bay in Alaska this is leading to declining production. Most of the increase in production was in the project in Sakhalin, in which Exxon is working with Russian oil companies. Russia has announced a $4.2 billion tax cut for the oil sector. Large investments will be needed for Russia to continue to produce 10 million barrels a day.Some of the investments would go into Eastern Siberia which is also a more difficult terrain to drill in. Demand within Russia is growing rapidly leaving less available for export. Right now Brazil is the only bright spot in new supplies with new offshore finds in deepwater areas where Brazil has a lot of experience drilling.

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The Russian economy gets an exceptional boost with the behaviour of ruble currency separating from the oil prices. Russia benefits from higher oil prices at the same time as it benefits from a weaker ruble. The ruble has declined 15% since April after more sanctions on Russia. The revenue earned in dollars converts into more rubles for imports and other financing for the Russian economy. At the end of 2017 a barrel of oil brought in 3,835 rubles for Russian sellers, when converted into rubles from U.S. dollars. In October 2018 each barrel brings in 5,262 rubles, an increase of 40%.  Russia deftly managed its emerging market crisis with lower ruble following the crisis in Ukraine by adapting its economy to a lower ruble, lowering imports and using import substitution. Initially Russia split with OPEC and Saudis to produce oil all out, but by 2018 with the Saudi economy hurting and Russia feeling the impact of lower oil prices, an OPEC agreement with Russia has pushed prices higher with production limits. Earlier adaptation by 2016 to the lower ruble, further decline of the ruble in 2018 with sanctions by U.S. for Russian interventions in other countries including the U.S. election meddling, have combined with higher oil prices to strengthen the Russian economy. Russian private and government debt held by foreign investors has fallen since 2016 to 32% in the first quarter, according to Societe Generale. This means Russia is less sensitive to foreign investor exit from the country with political and economic winds changing. Russia's current account surplus increased to $18.3 billion in the first quarter of 2018, up from $14.6 billion in the prior quarter. A weaker ruble has translated into more inflation which reached 5.5% at the end of 2017, above 4% target. Russia's central bank made quarter point increase to 7.5% for the interest rate in September 2017. Overall the management of the emerging market crisis since 2016 as Russia responded to NATO expansion and adopted its own policy is remarkable considering the damage from earlier emerging market crises. Countries such as Argentina, Brazil, and even India are feeling the impact of the current emerging market crisis, each with its own version of the crisis- Argentina with dollar denominated debt, Brazil lacking money in the budget after high pensions, and India with higher energy costs and weaker rupee.   ...

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Ali Gomaa, the grand mufti of Egypt, gives his ideas on Articles 2 of the 1971 Constitution (which established Islam as the religion of the state), and Article 7 of the interim Constitution (which guarantees equal citizenship before the law, regardless of religion). As head of Egypt's agency of Islamic jurisprudence, he gives his assurance to the West and to Egyptians, that the religious establishment of Egypt and he personally, is committed to tolerance and popular sovereignty that respects the rights of all citizens. He points to Egypt's tradition of a moderate and tolerant view of Islam. He says that Egypt threw out the heavy hand of authoritarian rule after many years and is not about to replace this with another type of authoritarian rule based on Islam. Islam's place in Egypt he argues, will be similiar to state churches in Denmark, and England, and similiar to Islam as the national religion in secular states like Tunisia and Jordan. The kind of Islam he sees for Egypt, in his words, is that of freedom and tolerance....

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Alan Reynolds of the Cato Institute questions the value of QE II when it pushed up commodity prices, lowered the value of the dollar, and acted as an anti-stimulus by slowing growth in the private economy.

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The lack of funds at the end of the primaries and an extreme position on immigration taken to win close primary contests left Romney with serious problems as he entered the fall presidential elections in the U.S. The Obama campaign sensed the weakness, especially that Romney's new fund raising effort would leave him short of campaigning time in key midwestern states and short of funds to match an attack on his Bain Capital record. The attacks in these states in radio and television advertising created voter unease with Romney compared to Obama about caring for people like themselves. This proved a decisive factor and was hard to overcome say experts.

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Hans-Christian Strabele, the longest serving member of the parliamentary committee overseeing German intelligence meets Edward Snowden in Moscow in late October 2013. He is accompanied by German investigative journalist, Georg Mascolo. Strabel was looking into the possibility of Snowden testifying on the NSA spying in Germany's parliamentary investigation.