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India's demographics show one startling fact. By 2020, the average age of Indians will be 29. This is happening just as the rest of the world is aging very fast. In the next 15 years India will have 130 million more people in the 20 to 49 age group. This compares with a shrinking in population of 100 million in that age group in developed countries and China, according to the U.N. Population Division. The problem facing India is malnutrition that runs as high as 43% for children with half the mothers anemic, weak educational system at the primary and secondary school levels especially in the government run schools, lack of good governance in the most populated states such as Uttar Pradesh in the Ganges plains which has 200 million people, the consequent overburdening of cities which have no plans to manage the migration of the rural poor to the cities. India has to find ways to fill the huge gaps in getting better nutrition, education, dignity and sense of opportunity, and work for the growing numbers....

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The Bank of Mexico, Mexico's central bank, cuts interest rates by half a percentage point to 3% in June 2014. The consumer price index is at 3.4% for 12 months through mid-May, and the central bank sees the inflation target of 3% by early 2015 as achievable. The central bank's estimate for GDP growth in 2014 was lowered to 2.8% from 3.5%. GDP growth was annualized 1.1% for the 1st quarter of 2014. Mexico has failed to live up to the growth expectations after the new Nieto administration's efforts to jumpstart the economy and opening up of the state oil industry to foreign investment. The policy changes of the Nieto administration set the future course of the economy and will take time to deliver results in economic growth. More effective administration and execution is needed for economic growth.

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Arvind Panagriya, Prof. of Economics at Columbia University, points out the key initiatives of the Modi government in its first four years which will show results in future years for development of the country.  He mentions the Swachh Bharat Mission and cites results that show rural households with toilets are now 84% up from 38%.  By 2019 the whole country will be defecation zone free on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi. The Dhan Jan Yojana DJY accounts opened for rural households are up to 316 million. Aadhar cards for identification are up from 650 million to 1.2 billion. The Aadhar and DJY work together to enable direct transfer of benefits to poor households, eliminating the leaks in benefits transfer and ghost accounts of the period since independence in 1947. Not mentioned by Panagriya is the Health Insurance scheme for lower income households that enable families to survive a sudden medical expense that could put them in dire straits.  These efforts work in a way to change India from the ground up from its villages and rural areas as envisioned by Mahatma Gandhi in the struggle for independence. The land acquisition law amendments were put on hold till farmers concerns could be better accomodated, an area of concern for industrial development cited in an editorial in the Hindu newspaper. Fiscal consolidation and inflation targeting have resulted in an average inflation rate of 4.3% for the 4 years of the Modi government. Inflation was over 9% in the last 2 years of the previous Congress UPA government with GDP growth dropping to 5.9% for the last two years. Average GDP growth for four years for the Modi government is 7.3%, even after the changes to implement GST taxation for one national tax eliminating state barriers in interstate commerce and demonetization to fight corruption and black money. Rate of GDP growth should be higher after the gains from the initiatives and the new GST integration of the country are felt, with increase in investment and FDI, after infrastructure improvements and land acquisition arrangements are made. Transportation infrastructure modernization initiative pushes ahead with the first bullet train in the pilot project for Ahmedabad- Mumbai set to start in 2022. This is a $17 billion project financed for $13 billion by the Japanese government at 0.1% loan for 50 years, moratorium on repayments for 20 years, using E5 Shinkansen series technology. Implementation of this project on a sound financial basis should lead to transformation of the Indian rail network, raising the level of technology implementation across the entire Indian rail system. Such an achievement would rival the first introduction of railways into India in the nineteenth century under the British. A new bankruptcy law is intended to free up capital for investment by putting behind the large number of non performing loans in the Indian banking system. Changes made by the central bank RBI are designed to speed up this process so that loss making enterprises are absorbed, consolidated or shut down, a legacy from the earlier period.     ...

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Difficulties facing China from an overheating economy, a property bubble in many cities,, and a 22.5% jump in March in the broadest measure of money supply being the latest signs of trouble. The government announcement will show the economy growth at 12% rate in the 1st quarter of 2010 vs. 8.7% in 2009. The problem is that China may have acted too aggressively when the central bank increased money supply and state-owned banks in China's centralized banking system were ordered to jack up the lending. The $586 billion stimulus sent even more money to construction and energy companies. Without effective steps and fast the Chinese economy could run into serious problems.

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American manufacturers are importing more of the parts that go into each product. According to Susan Houseman, a senior economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the imported portion for these parts is up to 25% from 17%. Even the Bureau of Economic Analysis figure of the share of GDP coming from manufacturing is overstated, says Houseman. That figure was 11.2% for 2009, but is closer to 10.5% if all the imported components are included instead of being counted as domestically made. This is down from 14.2% ten years ago, and about 30% in the 1950's. There is deep concern that the manufacturing decline has weakened America. Houseman says that one cannot separate manufacturing from innovation, and she asks if America can continue to be strong in R&D with a shrunken manufacturing base. James Jordan of the Interstate Maglev project, says Maglev- which uses special magnets to levitate and propel high-speed trains- was invented in the United States. Today equipment for that technology is manufactured and used in Japan, and innovation in high speed trains is taking place in Japan and Germany. The decline in manufacturing is shockingly large. From 1979 employment in manufacturing went down by 8.1 million to 11.6 million, with the largest drop occurring in the last ten years. With it America is losing something significant- all the knowhow and skills that go into making things. Today the airplane wings for several Boeing airliners are made in Japan and shipped here. In a not too distant past these wings would have been built here, and workers with the knowhow and skills for these critical components were part of Boeing's workforce....

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Under a new agreement reached between the new Iraqi government of prime minister Haider al-Abadi and the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan, Kurdistan will export 250,000 barrels of oil a day in 2015, and the province of Kirkuk will export 300,000 barrels a day. Exports will be made under the Iraq national oil company, SOMO (State Organization for Marketing of Oil). Kurdistan will get 17% of Iraq's budget expenditure, Kurds will sit on the SOMO board, and Kurdish Peshmerga army will get direct monthly payments from Iraq's budget. Earlier in 2014 talks had broken down under the Maliki government- Kurdistan began exports using a pipeline to Turkey and the Iraqi government cut off budget payments to the Kurdistan Regional Government. Iraq's oil minister Abdul-Mehdi said in Vienna after an OPEC meeting in November that Iraq has set a production target of 3.8 million barrels a day for 2015. This is an increase of 500,000 barrels a day compared to production in Oct. 2014.

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Efforts by BNP Paribas to get bondholders to take a 50% loss on Greek bonds, and exchange their old bonds for new ones that mature in 50 years. BNP Paribas is working for the Greek government to get other banks and bondholders to accept this exchange so that Greece can tackle its debt load and interest payments on debt. Some arm twisting by BNP Paribas to get bondholders who have insurance through CDS to accept the exchange. This is being done on the grounds that the I.S.D.A. committe would declare the restructuring in Greece as being "voluntary" and not a default, so that bondholders who do not accept this deal would not get paid through CDS insurance.

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Julie Creswell and Graham Bowley look at the history of setting ratings for Greece at Moody's credit rating agency. Greece always had a history of problems with its credit standing including two defaults in its history. In 2004 Greece admitted to providing false statistics to enter the eurozone, saying that it had run deficits for each year since 1997. Before joining the eurozone Greece was assessed an interest rate of 15% on Greek bonds, after joining the eurozone borrowing rates dropped to 5%. Was such a large differential justified purely on the basis of the assumption that the eurozone would back Greece. Moody's held onto its A rating on Greek debt right upto December 2009, two years before the country faced certain default. Pierre Cailletau, Moody's head of sovereign debt ratings till the spring of 2010 admits that Moody's assessment was "mediocre" and that this is a very, very steep fall to see in a ratings- something had gone very, very wrong. The ratings agencies say bankers were selling the idea that the Greek growth story was real. This suggests bankers did not read Greece's financial history of defaults, did not understand the lessons of the recurring Latin American debt crises that countries such as Argentina could only absorb capital upto the point of productive capabilities. And the euro currency founders had left a weak gap - the perception through an implied guarantee that the whole eurozone would ante up the money for the failings of individual countries- into which bankers and Greece's political class rushed in. ...

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Dow Chemical CEO, Anthony Liveris, is co-chair of the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership, an effort to bring together federal government, industry, universities and other groups to invest in new technologies that would generate good-quality jobs and increase U.S. competitiveness. He writes this letter in the Wall Street Journal to correct two misperceptions. The first, is that government has no significant role in nurturing an environment that is good for business and manufacturing industry. Because other countries, including China, are now operating like companies, it is important not to let the U.S. be in a disadvantageous position. Government has always been involved in its writing of tax and incentive policies, regulations, trade agreements, and creating a climate of certainty. The second, is that the loss of manufacturing capacity and job losses in the last 10 years are different from the job losses in the 1980's. These are not the low tech and less efficient manufacturing job losses of the 1980's, but job losses as a result of moving advanced manufacturing capacity and research and development centers to outside of the U.S. Of the 8 million jobs lost in the last recession, he says two million manufacturing jobs of higher pay and supporting employment in other sectors were lost. His point: its time to focus on expanding manufacturing in the U.S. because manufacturing is the sector with the highest multiplier effect on other sectors. Public-private partnerships are critical to this effort for increasing technology development and increasing investment. This view is supported by other experts....

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China Investment Corp., China's sovereign wealth fund, and its investment strategies. Efforts to separate investments in China's state banks from CIC. Changes made in 2011 resulted in the formation of CIC International, separate from the Central Huijin unit which is focussed on investments inside China. CIC controls both. CIC was started in 2007 to get better returns on China's foreign exchange reserves which upto that point were mostly in U.S. Treasury securities. At the end of 2010 CIC had assets of $410 billion. China's foreign exchange reserves are about $3.2 trillion. CIC initial funding of $200 billion was allocated with half going to investments overseas, and the rest in China's state banks. A new $30 billion in funding for CIC from the People's Bank of China will go to overseas investment.

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Pearlstein quotes Dickens in "Oliver Twist," about the law being an ass, and the constitutional law exercize in the Supreme Court of the U.S. giving a sense of a failure of the so-called best and brightest in reasoning out the issues. He points out that a serious problem is that American business which is burdened with high health care costs for employees is seriously missing in this debate after years of complaining about high costs. The National Federation of Independent Businesses is actually one of the plaintiffs questioning the constitutionality of the Obama health care law. Pearlstein says business wanted an end to the fee-for-service medicine that increases consumption of medical services and pushes up cost relentlessly, and that Obama's health care law does this. This is not the case as both Democrats and Republican administrations have failed to resolve this side of the cost issue, and this is the hidden reason for the loss of credibility for both sides in this debate, leaving health care problems to be resolved in future administrations. ...

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Samuelson discusses the differences between the Bureau of Labor Statistics figures for June 2014 using the Payroll Survey and the Household Survey, each telling a different story. According to the Payroll Survey 288,000 jobs were added. The Payroll Survey is a monthly survey of 554,000 business locations, with firms asked to give the number of people on payrolls, pay and occupations. The Household Survey of the BLS asks households in monthly interviews with 60,000 Americans whether they have a job, is it part time or full time, are they looking for full time work, or jobless and for how long. The Household Survey showed June 2014 job increase at 407,000, using an estimate of 1,115,000 increase in part-time jobs and a loss of 708,000 full time jobs. Of the two the payroll survey is larger and considered by economists to be more representative. Other statistics show the parttime workers at about 3 million higher than 2007 before the 2008 financial crisis, suggesting the shift to part time jobs has been one negative result of the crisis....

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In its May 2011 special report on international banking the Economist points out the need for banking regulators to take stronger action than they have so far. What it calls "pre-emptive insurance" it says is needed - stronger regulation, larger capital cushions, and some form of separation of different kinds of banking. Without this the dangers of excessive risk taking and banks that are "too big to fail" will continue to threaten the world's economy. Banks that are smaller and better capitalized says the Economist can fail more gracefully than the large mega banks that exist at this time. In fact the banks today in the U.S. are larger than at the time of the 2008 crisis. Other analysts also point to the lack of major changes in banking and financial structures today compared to the situation before the 2008 crisis, both in Europe and the U.S.

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Who is Ed Whitacre? What is he like and where is he from? Ed Whitacre headed Southwestern Bell or SBC, which he merged with AT&T. Bored as a retiree in San Antonio after leaving AT&T, he took the job at GM. He golfs, wishes and hunts with his chocolate Labrador retriever at a ranch near his house in San Antonio. He is impatient by nature and likes to see things done. Managers who worked with him at Southwestern Bell say while they were working on day to day business, Whitacre would be the one thinking ahead, trying to figure out how to compete in the future, and the things that were likely to happen in the changing environment. For a smaller Bell he saw that it was simply whether his Bell would be acquired or whether he would acquire other Bell companies. He is a hands-on guy who like to do things himself, like running a bulldozer around his ranch, one of the things Whitacre likes to do. His beginnings are in small town Texas. The place is a sleepy railroad town called Ennis, Texas, where for 50 years his father was a locomotive engineer. Whitacre says his father had never finished high school, and he did not want Whitacre working for the railroad. Both his parents insisted that he get acollege degree. Whitacre went to Texas Tech in Lubbock, Texas, because the tution was only $75, and landed a job at Southwestern Bell in 1963 as a facility engineer. And he stayed with the company all the way- with 19 moves living in Texas, Arkansas, Missouri and Kansas- till it became the new AT&T. Frost, a retired San Antonio banker and a member of Southwestern Bell's Board in 1990 when Whitacre became CEO, says Whitacre started from the bottom, and literally, even climbing telephone poles. So it isn't surprising that this guy walks around the GM Renaissance Center, talks to GM employees, tries out a Taco at the Food Court at the Renn center (says its OK but not like Texas tacos), and uses all elevators like everybody else, unlike GM executives who equiped elevators so they could bypass floors. And he isn't hesitant to wear jeans and a sweat shirt while visiting a factory, which he says is all the clean clothing he had at the hotel. Now he has an apartment. Works 14 hours a day, 5-6 days a week, and has his phone ringing just when he hopes to leave town to escape for a weekend. ...

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Karl Rove, advisor to President George W. Bush, and organizer behind American Crossroads political action committee, says the election will be decided by the higher support for Romney among independents and the high turnout of Republican voters. The prediction for the voter turnout among Republicans is 36% Republican vs. 35% Democratic, according to Gallup. This compares with the 39% Republican and 37% Democratic in 2004, and 39% Democratic 29% Republican in 2008. The early and absente ballot voting advantage has significantly gone down almost by half for Democrats as more Republicans cast early votes in swing states like Ohio. Closing statements and crowds also appear to confirm this trend. Rove sees this as 51% to 48% favoring the Republicans. The addition of swing states - Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania also appears to suggest that a broader movement is underway that is happening right now in the final week before the election on Nov. 6, 2012. Rove focusses on the numbers. A behavioural assessment shows the importance in this campaign of the centrist position adopted by Romney in the closing months of the campaign; the selection of Ryan which gave Romney support from the Republican conservative base so that he could talk freely about his record in the liberal state of Massachusetts to independent voters and women, and most important the clear message to voters focussed on a five point plan to get the economy recovery were critical in shaping these numbers....

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U.S. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell tells the Washington Post in an exclusive interview that the dynamics surrounding the Trans Pacific Agreement pushed by president Obama have changed. He sees little prospect of it passing Congress before president Obama leaves office, and says it will be up to the next president to take it up after Obama leaves office in Jan. 2017. McConnell said that there is a lot of pushback all over the place. The Republican frontrunners Trump and Cruz both oppose the TPP, and all Democratic candidates including Hillary Clinton oppose it. In addition tobacco interests in McConnell's home state of Kentucky and pharmaceutical interests backing Senator Orrin Hatch, the Republican Finance chairman also oppose aspects of the negotiated deal. Labor unions, the automobile industry, environmental groups, and public interest groups, have strongly opposed provisions of the TPP that hurt workers and the public interest from the beginning, making it a risky proposition for Congressmen coming up for reelection in 2016. The divergence between the Republican establishment and the presidential front runners Trump and Cruz also have diluted support in Congress on the Republican side, making it a no win proposition....