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"No amount of misrepresentation or statistical contortion can conceal or blur or smear that record. Neither the attacks of unscrupulous enemies nor the exaggerations of over-zealous friends will serve to mislead the American people." FDR said this  on October 31, 1936, it could also be president Biden.The current Media and Hollywood efforts to choose presidential candidates of their choice runs contrary to "We the People," contrary to views of ordinary Americans, of voters, workers and families. President Kennedy was told he should not take the nomination because he was too young. Kennedys' response was that it was he not Humphrey that went to state after state and won the votes in the primaries, no one else made the effort to run in the primaries in each state. President Biden has the support of 14 million in the primaries. George Chidi from Atlanta reports that undecided voters number about 1 million in the swing states and most are much older than the average. Most may feel insulted by talk about age when they are in the same category.  A 102 years old Lockheed engineer in Atlanta suburbs says he is a Republican but will not vote for Trump. There is also the women's vote in Georgia and Atlanta suburbs with abortion ban as the issue as it was in Kentucky and Kansas. How many vote will also be a factor, making energizing the base a key factor. The idea that one party is doing better than the other is refuted clearly by some of the people in Georgia shown here, and the age factor does not get the prominence the Media have given it, as long as the government is functioning well. Media has failed to look at the policy details of each candidate in a colossal failure that calls for alternatives. Older voters who are the major part of the 1 million or so voters in swing states that are undecided also say that the fact is that with both the candidates- as it is with administrations that are led by young presidents seen as too young to lead (JFK) the opposite of today- many of the decisions are made with an experienced group of advisers around the president. Many if not all also realize that the vast experience of an older president is also an asset. Much of Biden's legislation for chips science, infrastructure, the Inflation Reduction Act have not happened in Germany, France or the UK, and would not have happened in the US without the ability of president Biden to get the bipartisan support from being the one with the most experience in Congress in a long time. The result is the hundreds of thousands of jobs created each month and a growing economy, inflation down from 9 to 3% as the first step to further cost of living action to support ordinary workers and families. Only LBJ comes close and he signed landmark legislation for Medicare and Medicaid, and for civil rights into law 60 years back. By removing America from the wars that Reagan and Bush started and Obama and Trump failed to end president Biden has given the US an opportunity to inspire and lead the free world in a way that has not happened in many decades and build a growing economy, a bright future for the Nation. ...

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The U.S. economy added an average of 284,000 jobs each month for October, November and December 2015. In December 292,000 new jobs were added. The monthly rate for the first 9 months was an average of 200,000 jobs. This shows the pace accelerated by Dec. 2015. In all 2.65 million jobs were added in 2015. The unemployment rate is now at 5%. Yet the wage gains are modest, at 2.5% for 2015. The average hourly wage is at $25.24. The labor force participation rate has declined for many years and stands at 62.6%, as many people are too discouraged to look for work- this is the share of Americans having jobs or looking for work. Experts say this is like a huge shadow work force existing on the side that could explain the lack of wage gains, as the official figure of unemployment is not reflecting the discouraged workers who have dropped out of the labor market.

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Weymouth interviews Colombian President, Juan Manuel Santos. Santos was finance minister, foreign trade minister, and defense minister under former president Alvaro Uribe. The U.S. is negotiating a free trade agreement with Colombia. Santos has improved relations with neighboring Venezuela, which under Uribe were strained upto the breaking point. He is also improving relations with Ecuador, and working to strengthen the Andean Development Council. Santos says Colombia has a smaller drug problem after defeating the major cartels, though mini-cartels still operate in the country. On fiscal responsibility Colombia has introduced a rule in the constitution to limit deficits to 1% of GDP. Santos expects 5% growth in 2011. He hopes to protect Colombia's growth in a global financial crisis by strengthening regional reserve funds, multilateral cooperation of Andean countries, and central bank monetary policies. Santos plans to abolish the DAS intelligence agency in 3-4 months. He plans to create a new intelligence agency and transfer functions such as immigration that were under DAS to other agencies. He has also launched investigations and action against corruption in the government and against public officials working with local mafias. To do this he is working with the attorney general, prosecutor general, the controller general, and police. This has led to criticism from Uribe who sees the changes in policy pointing to deficiencies in the Uribe administration. Colombia is a country with a population of 46 million and plays a significant role in the northern part of Latin America. Santos assumed office in 2010 and was the choice of Alvaro Uribe. His policies have won him a 71% approval rating....

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This New York Times editorial after the Senate passed a bill in October 2011 calling for action on the misaligned Chinese currency, points to ways a misaligned currrency is damaging for China. It cites the Peterson Institute for International Economics estimate that this is costing China $240 billion a year. This is a result of accumulating huge dollar reserves that have a declining value against the renminbi. Higher import prices lead to higher inflation. And low interest rates on savings, to the point that they are lower than the inflation rate, hurt the vast majority of Chinese and reduce domestic consumption. And perversely this leads to money pouring into speculative uses such as real estate, creating unsustainable bubbles in housing. The Times editorial says China is not generating jobs from this strategy, as the export strategy is relying on use of advanced technology in manufacturing and not creating many jobs. It cites a statistic showing employment has increased by only 1 percent a year from 2004 even with GDP growth above 10%. China is beginning to realize the cost of this strategy, and is planning a shift in its five year economic plan. But this rebalancing has many obstacles. The current system dominated by state run companies, banks, local and federal government, is biassed in favor of the old export led strategy, and experts are pessimistic about the possibilities for change. The Times suggests China may be falling back on the export led strategy as the global economy is slowing. The whole system would have to change after three decades of this kind of development, and would require new leadership and major changes....

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German chancellor Angela Merkel arrived for a meeting of eurozone leaders in Brussels on October 23, 2011. She said: "I believe that now we have reached a more realistic view of the situation in Greece and that we will provide the necessary means to be able to protect the euro." Germany has insisted that bondholders take writeoffs of between 50-60% of Greek debt so that Greece would have sustainable debt. A review of Greece's debt by the European Commission in coordination with the ECB and the IMF shows that Greece's debt situation is totally unsustainable and will require a bondholder writeoff of around 60%. according to that report a 60% writeoff for bondholders would be required to bring Greece's debt below 110 percent of GDP by 2020. This has supported the German "realistic" view and Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg, who heads the euro group of finance ministers stated that "we agreed yesterday (Friday, Oct. 21) that we have to have a significant increase in the banks' contribution." France also backed away from the plan it was supporting for the European Financial Stability Facility (the fund established to lend to troubled countries) to borrow from the European Central Bank, something Germany opposes. French finance minister Francois Baroin, said the issue was "not a definitive point of discussion for us,... what matters is what works." The Dutch support the Germans on these issues and Dutch finance minister, Jan Kees de Jager, said the use of the European central bank was "no longer an option." Options being considered are for the European Financial Stability Facility to offer insurance against a portion of losses on Italian and Spanish bonds....

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With Britain not willing to join an EU wide agreement for all 27 countries in the region, Sweden and the Czech Republic asking for time to consult its parliament, and Hungary declining, only 23 EU countries are now on board for new EU wide treaty changes for fiscal discipline. This makes new EU treaty changes unlikely, and means France and Germany will move ahead with a eurozone agreement for the 17 nation group. This can be done much faster than the cumbersome process for EU treaty revisions. The details of the new agreement will be worked out in the coming weeks and should restore confidence in financial markets. The problem now most experts say is that a new agreement might move too quickly to reduce deficits, worsening the economic prospects in the European Union countries. Fernando Fernandez, an economist at IE Business School in Madrid, says the critical question is how much time countries will be given to meet new rules. If for instance debt is to be reduced by 20 percentage points of GDP in 3 years under new rules, this would impact eurozone growth severely with sharp contractions in already fragile economies. Peter Morici, business professor at the University of Maryland, underscores this, saying Germany is close to zero growth and economies of countries like Spain, Portugal and Italy are contracting. Higher unemployment will result with smaller tax bases, making the situation appear to improve as borrowing rates for Italy drop now, but worsening the situation in 2012-2013 as deficit projections are not attainable. This is already true in Britain where earlier deficit projections are being pushed into future years as economic growth is declining....

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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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The reasons for pessimism are the effect of the global credit decline which makes it harder for Indian business to get access to credit, and the impact of shrinking export markets overseas. The lower inflation and less need for oil subsidies with the fall in the oil price are positive factors. The biggest positive factors though are the fact that exports amount to a much smaller amount of GDP, about 22%, smaller than other Asian exporting countries, as the export markets shrink. The resilience of its democracy and the energy and dynamism of its young people, added to the demographics that show about half the population is below the age of 25, and 40% under the age of 18, so there will be more wage earners and savings to support growth for decades to come. What experts including at the Economist see as the major advantage is the high savings rate which has risen from 28% in 2003-2004 to 35.5% in 2007 according to the Economist statistics. With this the investment rate in India has grown from 25% in the 1990's to 35% in the last five years since 2003 with Indian manufacturing growing at arate of 12% in 2007. And the Indian investment rate has been covered mostly by domestic savings. The two areas that hobble growth are the education levels and the state of the infrastructure which are challenges for organizations inside and outside the government and for business and will remain so for many years. With the global financial crisis the Indian growth rate is expected to fall to somehwere in the range of 5-6% for 2009 by experts. ...

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EU leaders meeting in Brussels agreed on Dec. 12 for a single banking supervisor for large banks in the eurozone. The European Central Bank will act as the supervisor with powers to force banks to raise capital buffers and close banks it considers unsafe. The Federal Reserve, U.S.'s central bank, has similiar powers in the U.S. Germany's finance minister Schauble says the national parliaments would be able to ratify the new supervisor by Feb. 2013, and the new supervisor should be in place by March 2013. Differences between Germany and France on which banks should come under the supervision of the ECB were resolved by giving the ECB resposibility for banks that have over 30 billion euros in assets, are over 20% of a country's GDP, or operate in at least two countries. At least 3 banks in each country in the eurozone would come under ECB supervision. The remaining smaller banks would remain under national supervision as Germany had insisted earlier. The focus now is on coming up with a common resolution authority for winding down failing banks, a function performed by the FDIC in the U.S. These are two of the three major parts of the new European financial architecture to support the euro currency. The third is deposit insurance, which is provided by the FDIC in the U.S. system. It is a major step forward and clears the way for direct recapitalization of banks in Spain and Ireland, two countries affected by having to take on responsibility for failing banks. By breaking the link between sovereign debt and failing banks the new agreements makes it possible for these countries to return to economic growth....

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Lee Myung-Bak says Korea's experience with its banks and troubled assets in 1998 can provide useful guide to solving the problems at American banks. First take strong decisive action rather take incremental steps. Korea raised money from various sources for a fund of $127 billion, or 32% of GDP between 1997-2002, to resolve impaired assets and recapitalize its banks. Second, recapitalization and bad bank solution were both applied simultaneously. Korea setup the Korea Asset Mnagement Corporation (Kamco) as its bad bank. And the Korea Deposit Insurance Corporation helped recapitalize the banks. Kamco also did things in a unique way which may have lessons for the USA. Kamco purchased the bad assets and settled the gains or losses with the banks once their assets recovered in value. It acquired assets at $30.9 billion, the book value which was $85.1 billion by 2002, and recovered $33.9 billion by 2008 by reselling to private investors through various methods including public auctions, direct sales, international tenders, securitization and debt-equity swaps. Lee points out that its useful fro government to purchase the impaired assets at a price agreed to with the banks , and make the final settlement of gains and losses with the banks after reselling. Another useful lesson for the US is to have a clear exit strategy with a clear time frame. This makes nationalization a temporary measure only and with a time frame by which shares held by the government in banks or nationalized failed banks, should be turned over to the private sector. This is Korea's contribution to the G-20 summit in London in early April 2009....

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Each year malaria kills 500,000 people mostly in Africa, including 260,000 children. A vaccine jab for malaria has finally been developed. It took 34 years for Dr. Ripley Ballou, 70 years, to refine the technology while working at GSK in Britain to get this done. Ballou himself had malaria and could experience its debilitating effect. This made him resolve to find a solution. The vaccine jab is the first for a parasite and the first developed from scratch for African children. Its effectiveness wanes over months so that its use is intended for the rainy season. By giving 3 shots just before the rainy season when malaria is at its peak it can reach 70% effectiveness, say British experts. It is cost effective as other prevention measures as nets over beds- it will cost about $2 -$10. When combined with other anti-malarial medicines it is about 90% effective. Its safety is proven after having given 2.3 million jabs of the vaccine in African countries. Experts estimate it will prevent 5.4 million cases of malaria, from Mali to Kenya, and from India to Indonesia where malaria is still a danger. Malaria can repeat itself many times for the same person over a lifetime, increasing the health risks and damage to health. The vaccine was developed using technology that produces a protein that is also found on the outside of the malaria parasites in the early stages of its lifecycle. It exposes the immune system of a person to this protein to build up immune defenses. This British discovery will help African  Asian, and Latin American countries build confidence in their health systems ability to cope with dangerous diseases. In doing this it will improve the quality of life and combined with other health actions provide a better life in the poorest countries.   ...

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It seems like good common sense -surely studies come later that masks can cut coronavirus cases by 40%- as Texas is learning the hard way. As coronavirus cases jump in Texas the governor makes wearing face coverings or masks mandatory in the state. Texas recorded over 8000 cases in a single day on July 3, 2020. "wearing a face covering will help us to keep Texas open for business." As a grim warning to Texans he said "we are now at a point where the virus is spreading so fast there is little margin for error." As the virus cases surged Mr. Abbott, the governor of Texas, ordered all bars shut and cut restaurant capacity by 75% last week and reversed step taken to open the economy. Another lesson learned the hard way when it seems like common sense- consider that on June 20 as reported in the WSJ a staggering 500,000 people went to bars in Los Angeles county the day after bars reopened. It is this type of activity that makes Dr. Fauci, say cases could reach 100,000 a day in the U.S. Infection rates are now increasing in 40 of 50 states with the southern states, western states doing badly.  A lot of it was plain common sense. A German study shows a 40% reduction of coronavirus cases when masks or face coverings are worn. For those arguing for the reopening so that economic hurt is mitigated there is even more reason to wear masks as it makes it possible to get back to work by following strict social distancing and mask guidelines. Everything in life is about adapting and making small changes for the larger good. Younger people have badly failed to show fellow feeling with lack of following social distancing guidelines on beaches and gatherings leading to the numbers now showing that people 18-34 are now equally at risk. ...

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The real author of a favorite quote of Martin Luther King Jr. was from Theodore Parker, an abolitionist, Unitarian preacher, who died in 1860 on the eve of the civil war. It was the work of people like Parker which made it possible for Lincoln to sign the Emancipation proclamation. Parker wrote in 1853: "I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one.... But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice." He also wrote, says researcher and author Jamie Stiehm, the words: "A democracy-- that is a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people." Dr King loved to paraphrase Parker by saying- "How long? Not long. Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is a long one, but it bends towards justice." Stiehm says Obama attributes it to King, but King made it clear that he was borrowing from a fellow preacher, and Lincoln's contemporary, named Theodore Parker.

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Reserve bank of India's Governor Dr. V.Y. Reddy, who was a strong regulaor and did not allow mortgage securitizations, derivatives, and increased the reserves banks had to hold in case things went wrong. He had strict rules for bank lending in the real estate industry even as a real estate bubble developed in India, all of which is keeping India's banking system in good shape as it faces the global credit crisis. Criticized at the time by bank executives for his strict no nonsense rules, he is now regarded highly by Bank CEO's in India. One of this no nonsense rules was that banks had to hold on to loans they made on their books as banks all over the world have always done in the past, because it made good sense as banks were likely to police themselves for loans they were responsible for. Vague and possibly dangerous experimentation in the name of productive change was frowned upon and the tried and tested rules were followed.

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Signs that Turkey's economy is growing and consuming beyond its capacity. The current account deficit is now at 8%, and foreign credit is helping finance the boom. General purpose consumer loans are growing rapidly- at 42% in 2010, and at 61% on average from 2005 to 2008- according to Standard Unlu, an Istanbul based investment bank. Banks are known to send text messages to borrowers if they qualify, so that the money can be picked up at the bank branch. Turkey has gone through two boom bust cycles- in 1994 and in 2001. The central bank of Turkey has increased the level of interest free deposits banks must keep at the central bank, a move designed to reduce lending. However Turkey's younger generation of consumers are on a spending binge, and access to personal loans is easy. Signs of an asset bubble are easy to find. A 24 acre plot in Istanbul's city center sold for $33.3 million.

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Reeves says Reagan ever the imaginative politician seized on the idea of "supply side " economics of a not so well known economist Arthur Laffer. Ideas that were simple and appealing- you reduce marginal tax rates and generate higher revenues. This worked for some time with higher economic growth for a number of years, but the arithmetic of higher spending and borrowing and lower taxes would eventually lead to large deficits at the end of Reagan's term, just as price controls worked for awhile and then led to a surge in prices at the end of Nixon's term. When Reagan became President the deficit was 2.5%, when he left office eight years later the deficit was 5% of the economy. Interest payments on debt jumped to $169 billion in 1988, from $69 billion in 1981. Reeves says American politicians know so little about economics, to which it could be added, winning presidential and congressional elections is always a big part of the picture when it comes to economic policy. Which is why Nixon even with Milton Friedman as an advisor shifted to Keynesian policies of higher fiscal spending in 1971, and why Reagan turns to intuitively appealing and effective in the short term policies of having it all- higher spending, growth, and lower taxes. During the years of the two Bush presidencies and the Clinton administration the success of Reagan policies leads to a general sense as Vice President Cheney put it referring to Reagan and Treasury Secretary Baker's belief, that "deficits don't matter." Which leads us to the current situation where 2012 presidential election politics again frame the terms of the debate on deficits and budgets, only now the deficit is much higher and on a unsustainable path. ...

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 U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, views China's response in trade negotiations as one of conducting extended negotiations that lead to little change. This has continued says Lighthizer for over a decade putting the U.S. at a serious disadvantage in trade. At a White House meeting in August 2017 Lighthizer convinced president Trump that China was in his words "tap, tap, tapping us along."  This confirmed president Trump's own instincts about the U.S. trading relationship with China. Lighthizer is a veteran of trade negotiations, having experience in the Reagan administration as the Deputy Trade Representative in 1983 in negotiations with Japan, when Japan was in a similar situation that China is today. At the time trade negotiations with Japan were getting nowhere. Lighthizer is said to have turned one Japanese response in negotiations into a paper plane and sent it flying right back. Lighthizer does not seek the limelight but is serious about his role having published op-eds in the NYT and WSJ since 2000 about how U.S. trading relationships were putting the U.S. and U.S. workers at an unfair advantage. Many of these op-eds are in the Lyrarc archive and a Search with the term "Lighthizer" would bring up these articles. This report in NYT shows how the role of Lighthizer was not anticipated by China when it sent Liu He to Washington in November 2017 to negotiate with the U.S. President Trump made certain Liu He and other Chinese leaders would have to talk to Lighthizer first. In a session with president Jinping laid out U.S. views that the past negotiations had accomplished little and new negotiations had to be undertaken very differently from negotiations in the past. Earlier in July trade negotiations conducted by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross were "shut down" by president Trump because China continued to repackage earleir offers which meant little to the U.S. As a lawyer at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher LLP Lighhizer represented steel industry clients hurt by subsidized Chinese steel industry imports. Mr. Trump and Lighhizer have bonded well because their instincts have been the same- that the U.S. had not been well represented in earlier negotiations by lawyers who saw themselves as speaking for American exporters.  Lighthizer is also a seasoned trade negotiator and has waited for the right time and situation to tackle the unbalanced trading relationship with China. For 30 years Lighhizer represented American manufacturers as he practiced trade law at the Skadden law firm. His strategy has been to get the administration to unite behind a clear trade strategy. He says "I try to be friendly in trade negotiations. I am not the theatrical type. The art of persuasion is about knowing where the leverage is." At this time the leverage lies in the huge trade surplus of about $300 billion China has with the U.S. The U.S. goal is to bring this down by $100 billion through this new negotiating strategy as earlier negotiations have failed. ...

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Lawrence Katz, professor of economics at Harvard, suggests a government subsidy for companies creating new jobs of 40% of the payroll costs. He also proposes spending of several hundred billon dollars to help state and local governments reduce layoffs and invest in education infrastructure, and for investments in research and development and productivity enhancing infrastructure.