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This behind the scenes account  shows how the NATO communique with policy declaration was prepared by July 6 before European leaders and Mr. Trump set foot in Brussels on July 11. It shows to what lengths key members in the Trump administration will go to achieve American objectives in preserving the NATO alliance. Particularly now that Russia is taking an aggressive stance to NATO near its borders.  General Mattis at Defense Department pushed for the 4 30's initiative which is about preparing a rapid deployment force to be ready by 2020. This is in the communique. Also in the communique is the setup of a command post in Norfolk, Virginia, ready to act to deploy forces in Europe. U.S. ambassador to NATO, Kailey Hutchinson, received the demand from National Security Adviser Bolton to have ambassadors from all countries work overtime to get the declaration done by July 6. Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary General supported this effort. All were concerned that there should be no repeat of the mess that happened for the G-7 communique when at the last minute president Trump refused to sign on, leading to derisive comments about Canada's Justin Trudeau. It was seen as critical to preserve the sense of unity in the U.S. alliance with Europe. This time there was no disruption even though Mr. Trump acted unpredictably in Brussels. ...

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Greece's New Democracy party and Mr. Mitsotakis wins about 41% of the vote in Greece's elections. Syriza come is second with 21% and Pasok left party at 12%. Mitsotakis has increased Greece's growth to twice the eurozone rate, and cut migrants by 90% in line with EU policy. New Democracy party gets 145 seats in a 300 member parliament. The first round was conducted under proportional representation, only 60% of voters cast their vote. Mitsotakis will go for another election by July because in a second round the winner gets additional seats and this could let it form its own government. It sees this as needed to maintain policies of economic growth that have led to GDP growth at twice the rate of the eurozone. A surveillance scandal appears not to have affected the election results as Greeks opted for stability and growth. Mitsokatis himself put it this way- "This is not the time for experiments that lead nowhere." Greece was almost out of the eurozone when Syriza conducted referendums on the debt repayment that led to a chaotic situation, and then moved in the opposite direction in callous implementation when the Eurozone held firm. Mitsotakis said Greece needs to achieve an investment grade rating to lower borrowing costs. Worldwide the policy of delivering on growth is key to success in elections in democracies and in countries that are catching up after the colonialist phase. This is true for delivery of infrastructure and public services such as water and electricity, modern rail in India. It is true also for winning enough public support in countries like China that run parliamentary representation under one party the CCP. Strict immigration controls since 2015 reflect a similar policy pursued recently by Italy. Migrants have dropped by 90%. This is popular among Greeks. Looking back Merkel made a serious error in letting in migrants coming in from Hungary and Austria at the beginning of the migration inflows into the EU in 2015. Merkel came from former East Germany, the communist led GDR, and had no understanding of how harmful this would be for the European Union. In just one year by 2016 the misguided open migration policies of Merkel had led to her CDU party getting less votes than an anti immigration AfD party in her home state of Meckenburg. It led to anti-immigration movements in Europe that were used by parties in a self-serving way including in Britain that led to exit of Britain from the EU. It also led to a decade of austerity and a lost decade for the European Union as it permanently sidelined parties to the left such as Social Democrats that unknowingly or unwittingly ended up with the blame for the public's discomfort with lack of borders and migrants upsetting borders. In balance the right way to tackle this was to build stronger economies that supported workers and families in the EU, that then invested significantly in developing countries of Africa and Asia to help them catch up with modernization. Another failure in policy was the Bush-Obama Merkel policies in failed states such as Iraq and Afghanistan. There it was fundamentally important not to get involved in any way that committed US or EU's precious resources.  ...

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A series of voicemails and emails in court documents now disclosed, show that AstraZeneca tried to suppress findings about diabetes after effects in taking its psychiatric drug Seroquel. In an August 15, 2005, voicemail sent to company salespeople an employee Christine Ney, followed up on a"weight and diabetes sell sheet" they had recently sent. It said that the salespeople should assuage doctors' fears about their patients' weight gains, telling them that the data did not show any causal link between diabetes and the drug. "Our objective is to neutralize customer objections to Seroquel's weight and diabetes profile", Ms Ney said in the voice mail message. She instructed representatives to "refocus the call" away from diabetes to the drug's tolerability. While all this was going on and years before this, Astra Zeneca concealed a drug safety expert's own assessment of Seroquel's relation to diabetes. In a 2000 position paper about the safety of Seroquel sent to Dutch regulatory authorites, an AstraZeneca doctor named Wayne Geller wote that there was a relationship between the drug and diabetes. He wrote " there is reasonable evidence to suggest that Seroquel therapy can cause impaired glucose regulation including diabetes melliutus in certain individuals."...

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Turner and Travis get ideas of what a better prison system would look like in German prisons- showing a different way to treat and rehabilitate prisoners, a system with a human face.

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Case-Shiller home price index shows 18.5 % drop year over year for December 2009, for single family homes in 20 major metropolitan areas. The Conference Board Index for consumer confidence dropped from 37.4 in January 2009 to 25 in February 2009. Of the 5000 households surveyed more 90% said they expected conditions would be the same or worse in the next 6 months. The Obama $275 billion plan for homeowners does not address the weakest cities in the market which are in places like Phoenix, Las Vegas, and much of Florida and Southern California, where prices have fallen 40% or more from their peak. This is because mortgages that are under water are not included, these are mortgages where more is owed on the house than the house is worth, and is ocurring faster in places where price declines are the steepest. One expert Martin Feldstein who is also on the Obama advisory panel has insisted since early 2008 that these homeowners under water have no rational incentive to continue making payments. What this does is to make consumers to postpone purchases like autos and hold back or cut back on all kinds of spending. In this global economy this means places like China's coastal regions which export to the US get hit hard and in turn exporters to china like Germany also get hit hard as what starts in the USA gets passed on theough the global economy from one region to another. Which also means US exports to Asian and other emerging market countries of tech goods and aircraft are in turn hit hard. As Republicans and Democrats follow their ideological leanings they cancel each other out in the debate, as Prof. Potter at Harvard an expert on economic strategy points out in a link, resulting in necessary actions not being taken and no clear direction. ...

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A striking change is coming over US airlines as they turn their focus from operating costs to taking out unprofitable routes, reducing the size of their plane fleets, and increase the number of seats filled on a flight. The numbers bear this out. According to ATA the airlines reduced fleets from 3469 aircraft to 2747 aircraft from 2000 to 2005. American Airlines is typical in discontinuing 27 MD-80 aircraft which are older and gas guzzling. Delta and Northwest used the bankruptcy period to to get court approval to return many planes to leaseholders by breaking the leases- before breaking the lease parking the planes was more expensive than flying them at a loss. As a result according to ATA US airlines filled an average of 77.6% up from 75.4% in 2004. With this strategy airlines recovered some of their pricing power. US Dept of Transportation statistics show prices are higher than at any time since Sept 11, 2001 and the Air Travel Price Index, increased by 9.1% in 4th quarter 2005 over 4th quarter 2004. And airlines are being more restrained in getting into new routes just because some other airline has eliminated that route. Airlines however have to be careful to increase prices just enough but not too much that demand starts falling, and this is possible with fewer seats on more popular routes. Other methods the airlines are using are sophisticated O&D origin and destination revenue management systems which reduce the number of inexpensive, and unprofitable seats available on the internet. Larger airlines have tried to get back corporate customers by reducing the extremely high fares they used to charge and instead raising last minute fares because corporate customers see this as a price burden they are willing to shoulder. Larger airlines are doing better in relation to the price discounters like Southwest and JetBlue. With Southwest's hedging strategy against fuel price increases not as useful as in prior years it too faces need to raise fares....

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Property sales are estimated to fall by 28-33% in China, twice as earlier forecast by S&P Global Ratings. This is a steep decline that will affect the Chinese economy so dependent on construction. This week there were reports of property buyers in 100 cities getting together to withhold payments on unfinished apartments. Property developers depend on these payments as they have severe liquidity problems and need cash for operations.

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There may be psychological hurdles in China's growth with the effects on mental health from lockdowns in major cities, the revolt in the property sector with home buyers losing confidence in developers, the loss of confidence of foreign investors from US and EU. The dependence on the property sector to carry so large a burden of growth for the last 2 decades in China may now look like an error. The dependence on foreign investment may also be an error as the loss of confidence could mean some withdrawal and a lack of sustained investment.  It could even be said that restraints on both sectors property and foreign investors could have created alternative paths to growth, and reduced the shift of factories from the US and Europe to China that have now caused trade friction and and a reverse shift of investment back to home countries of US and EU. Trade friction has it appears backfired in a way that extends to the overall relationship which could have been prevented by preventing the hyper growth that happened. Greg Ip of the WSJ has argued that compared to Japan's growth in the sixties and seventies from a country of 100 million the hyper growth for a country of 1 billion for 2 decades created a massive impact on communities in US and EU that were dependent on factories that were lost to China. This has alienated large sectors of the public in the US and EU which could have been prevented by restraints on hyper growth in China. Ip says the growth was too large and too fast for the US to cope. It may have permanently damaged the relations between the two countries showing that trade and globalization had unintended effects when left to business and governments staying away from keeping an eye on how it was happening. ...

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This report in WSJ says China's government faces severely strained government finances. Local government entities sale of land financed 40% of local government revenues in China, and most of these have dried up with the very real loss of confidence in property sector. Government now faces $900 billion in shortfall in revenues says this report. There may be psychological hurdles in China's growth with the effects on mental health from lockdowns in major cities, the revolt in the property sector with home buyers losing confidence in developers, the loss of confidence of foreign investors from US and EU. The dependence on the property sector to carry so large a burden of growth for the last 2 decades in China may now look like an error. The dependence on foreign investment may also be an error as the loss of confidence could mean some withdrawal and a lack of sustained investment.  It could even be said that restraints on both sectors property and foreign investors could have created alternative paths to growth, and reduced the shift of factories from the US and Europe to China that have now caused trade friction and and a reverse shift of investment back to home countries of US and EU. Trade friction has it appears backfired in a way that extends to the overall relationship which could have been prevented by preventing the hyper growth that happened. Greg Ip of the WSJ has argued that compared to Japan's growth in the sixties and seventies from a country of 100 million the hyper growth for a country of 1 billion for 2 decades created a massive impact on communities in US and EU that were dependent on factories that were lost to China. This has alienated large sectors of the public in the US and EU which could have been prevented by restraints on hyper growth in China. Ip says the growth was too large and too fast for the US to cope. It may have permanently damaged the relations between the two countries showing that trade and globalization had unintended effects when left to business which has no comprehension of how the macro developments can affect the relations between the peoples if the other effects in the relationship such as community impacts are ignored which business says is not its role,  and governments staying away from keeping an eye on how it was happening and adjusting for ill effects with restraint and redirection of business policies. ...

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China's manufacturing sector contracts in June with the PMI index dropping below 50 - to 49.0.  Exports were also coming in lower. Experts say the increase in interest rates by the US is reducing imports of Chinese goods into the US. This comes as local governments are strained in their finances by $900 billion, and a budding revolt is taking place from property buyers with developers in financial trouble, as reported in the WSJ. Psychological hurdles now loom in the loss of confidence in the public in the property sector, loss of confidence of foreign investors with many constraints in operating, mental health issues for the population in many cities with the covid lockdowns.   The growth has slowed to 0.4% and there is now a realization dawning that there was overdependence both on property sector and foreign investment that set up new factories offshored from the US and Europe that alienated the public in these countries. Unlike wih the situation of Japan in the sixties and seventies for modernizing its economy growth of the scale China was pushed into by misguided and self interested  business interests in the US including its investment banks and local government officials in China without restraint by the central government in Beijing, ultimately led to trade friction and permanent damage to US China friendly relations. Communities in the US and the EU simply could not cope with the hyper growth from hyper shift of factories from the home countries to China that pushed this hyper growth. The property sector played the same role in the domestic front with too big a burden carried by it resulting in hyper growth. This did not have to happen. It happened because of a lack of understanding that this would have consequences in the longer run which is now showing up. ...

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How the work ethic has changed in Japan through the last two decades as the country never really recovered from the low growth and deflationary situation since the early nineties. Places like the Tokyo Metropolitan government a destination for the city's elite say only 14% of eligible employees took the higher level exams for management positionsin 2007, down from 40% three decades ago. And information technology companies and electronics companies and other companies are finding that people are looking to switch jobs to get out of positions that are too demanding. A comic book series called "Otaryman"has become this year's hit. The new salaryman worries about his collleagues files spilling on his desk rather than trying to impress bosses. He is content and not ambitious, something the author 28 year old Yoshitani says "people my age find comforting," Another popular book is titled "Slow Career: Job Survival for People Not Rushing Career Advancement", with chapters like, "Forget goals, just stay true to yourself" and " Not everybody needs to become a leader." Dr Arai who has written about this says this situation has arisen because of the long slump in the nineties and early 2000's when younger workers saw older generations throw themselves at work only to face job and pay cuts in company restructuring. Also in Japan a promotion does not mean a big pay raise, so there isn't any real incentive to put off time witha girlfriend to put in late hours at work, or not have family time with kids to put in these long hours. The wage difference between managerial and rank and filepositions has actually shrunk over the past decade as companies cut compensation amid restructuring. In 2005 division mangers were paid 2.2 times the rank and file worker, down from 2.7 times in 1985. So younger Japanese have figured out that it makes sense to get more free time, and in fact to retain good employees companies are increasing wages without promotions, so that those not looking for bigger workloads can carry on at the company. In this story a office employee Nishikido looks with disapproval on a 31 year old female manager Ms Matsumoto, who leaves her sick baby with her husband at home, so she can be at work. Says 24 year old Nishikido, " thats definitely not the life I want, no way." For the younger generation the thinking goes like this: my job is important but its not what makes me tick. ...

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To see the changes in East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall one has to go beyond the larger cities like Dresden, Leipzig, and Berlin. One has to go to the smaller towns, which are rapidly losing population as young people leave for jobs in the western part of Germany. The government says the gap is closing between the western and eastern parts of Germany. It says $60 billion was spent on infrastructure and to support businesses in 2006-2008. ANd economic activity per person is now up to 71% of western part of Germany from 67% in this last decade. But look at the smaller towns in the east and you see young people leaving, the average of the people going way up, the population dropping, and with this unneeded or abandoned apartment buildings have to be bulldozed. Unemployment is double that in the west. In some areas the number of women between 20and 30 has dropped 30%. About 1.7 million people or 12% of the population has left East Germany since the fall of the Berlin Wall. About 2000 schools have closed because of ascarcity of children. The demographics were such in the early years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, that for a number of years East Germans stopped having children, says the Director of the Berlin Institute for Population and Development....

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Loukas Tsoukalis, professor of European Integration at the University of Athens and the president of the Hellenic Foundation of European and Foreign Policy, provides a view of the debt crisis from inside Greece. A default on Greece's debt of $500 billion would seriously affect other European countries and also affect the U.S. Tsoukalis says a national unity government is needed to take the bold steps that are needed to privatize state assets, cut public sector jobs and increase tax collection. Growth is critical, as an austerity program that fails to do this will fail to pull Greece out of the debt crisis. He calls for agreement on the question of who should bear how much of the cost for the mistakes of the past, taxpayers and private creditors. Discussions on this question are being undertaken by governments and private creditors as the crisis enters a new and dangerous phase. And for the countries involved in this crisis - Ireland, Portugal, Spain - there is the question of what will happen after two decades of European integration, whether these achievements will be undermined by excessive borrowing, consumption and poor financial management....

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Rapidly increasing credit to GDP ratios between 2008 and 2012 in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Taiwan.

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The way Mr. Partovi's idea of mixing keyword search with ads met with resistance at Microsoft, after Microsoft spent $265 million to acquire his company LinkExchage. Some of Partovi's bosses warmed to his idea of auctioning keywords but their eyes were glued to the prospects of display banner ads and did not think much of the search and ads combined together, like searching for a term and seeing the vendors of all kinds of related services who pay a fee every time someone clicks on their name. Bosses changed and the Keywords group was shifted to other parts of the Microsoft business ending up in software. A small trial was made but price of auctioning keywords was not set appropriately. Partovi's insistence was seen as resistance to the ordered way of doing things at Microsoft, and Ballmer in 2003 talked about "discordant and dissident directions" in the company, tendencies which he derided. Partovi's passion was seen as insubordination and finally in May 2000 with $1 million in revenue from Keywords comparing poorly with Microsoft's other online ad revenue, Keywords was shutdown. Partovi left Microsoft in July 2000. He shopped his idea around. Yahoo said it did not fit in with its plans, later buying Overture for $1.8 billion in summer 2003. Google talked to Partovi but declined, instead quietly building its own service. And Google launched its own service AdWords combining search and ads in October 2000. It was under pressure to come up with arevenue generating method.By 2002 Google was stealing advertisers from Goto.com that had pioneered the business of ads and search but lacked the advantage of having its own search engine. Microsoft also faced the same problem. In May 2002 AOL dropped Goto.com and teamed up with Google for paid search. By late 2002 Microsoft executive Yusuf Mehdi was visiting Goto.com and launched an effort to buy Overture the new name for Goto.com. But when in Spring 2003 Mehdi pitched buying Overture for $1 billion to Gates and Ballmer, both tore into the proposal saying that they could do it for less than the $1-2 billion price tag by doing it inhouse. By this time Google was already the dominant company in search ads and Overture was losing out. But even with hundreds of programmers Microsoft did not get its search engine ready till late 2004 and the search ad system in May 2006, about 3 years from the meeting with Mehdi. The resistance of founders to development of new products, is seen at HP for the personal computer which was later embraced, and at Honda where a new kind of engine had to be developed secretly without Soichiro Honda's knowledge. In both cases the product was developed successfully after initial resistance, but in the case of Microsoft the new ideas and people may have been smothered and development done to Microsoft's founders own inclinations for order, and treated the same way as its other products till it was too late. A factor not present to the same degree in HP and Honda's situation was the speed with which the internet developed and search engines like Google developed. So that in 8 years since its launch Google is firmly entrenched, and has 73% of search ad spending, with Yahoo at 13.3% and Microsoft a distant third. Google generated $5 billion in profits from this in 2008. By 2009 search ad spending is estimated to reach $12.3 billion....

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Krugman says the kind of spending on helping the US economy never happened. That is relative to the size of the US economy, not much happened uder the Obama administration. As evidence, he cites the figures that total government payrolls have declined by 350,000 since January 2009. And he says government purchases of goods and services increased only by 3% in the last 2 years.

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Growing the banking business right into the 2008 financial crisis - with the effects of the crisis playing out over the next decade- is one decision GE CEO Immelt has described as one he didn't do right. Moves in 2014 and 2015 were designed to focus GE on areas of its historic strengths. GE plans to sell $26.5 billion of office buildings and commercial real estate debt to Blackstone Group and Wells Fargo. This is after moves to spin off the private label credit cards and retail finance business as a separate company called Synchrony Financial. Most of GE Capital's $500 billion business will be sold off or spun off in 2015-2016, except for aircraft leasing and financing for energy and health care, which are related businesses. GE shares were up to $28.38, up 10%, in trading on April 9, 2015. GE Capital's shares were down to $6 in the 2008 financial crisis requiring an injection of government funds. Immelt's 13 years as CEO would end on a positive note with this move, as the role of GE Capital in contributing to the crisis is considered a blemish on his record....

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Is there a lesson in this for the Detroit automakers who have too many dealerships. See related article on the dealership numbers for the Big Three vs. the like of Toyota and Honda. Deere has gone from 3400 dealerships to 2984 dealerships, down 12% in ten years since 1996, so it appears to be a gradual decline, and dealerships are consolidating with stronger partners, or selling out to stronger partners. The number of owners has shrunk at a much faster pace. (Why are auto dealerships able to take this to the courts and not Deere dealerships, as is mentioned in the related auto dealership article? ) Much of this reflects search for improved profitability and stability in a very cyclical industry. Fewer distribution outlets owners and better management of inventory, better parts service with better techically trained staff, and bringing new technology and designs to improve the revenue generating capacity of each machine by reducing demand for expensive labor, is a shrewd way of managing this business. A $100 million dealer organization can better service what is becoming a high tech product, a better hire technically trained people, and better manage inventory. With this setup Deere probably can better manage production to match demand and not let inventory clutter the dealer lots for discounted clearence. ...

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Apple to ship 25 million iphones made in India to the US for the June quarter 2025, meeting 50% of US demand. This will reduce iphone tariff from 20% for China to 10% for India. Apple will take $900 million in added costs for the tariffs for the June quarter and higher costs for future quarters. Apple made 24.8 billion on $95 billion in sales for the 1st quarter of 2025.  Apple will not get the $20 billion payment it gets from Google for making Google search the default search engine on Safari web browser. This is 25% of Apple profit. A federal judge declared this payment illegal on antitrust grounds. Another federal judge has referred Apple's App policies for criminal contempt investigation. Apple has been late to recognize the dangers of concentrating production in one country. Eight years after the 2016 election won by DJT Apple has not corrected this concentration in one country. Apple has focused on proift alone ignoring the potential for education for it's products such as the iPad. The public perception of Tech companies is that Tech is all about profit alone without regard for the Nation, education, investment in American communities and jobs, and other needs. ...

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900 million eligible voters in India means this is the largest election ever. The election will take place in 7 phases in April and May from April 11 to May 19. Votes will be counted on May 23. The election is for 543 seats in parliament, the Lok Sabha. Turnouts are high with 66% turning out in the last election that brought Mr. Modi and the BJP to power.  Unlike elections in Britain a lot is spent in each election, about $5 billion in the last election and double that this time. The U.S. elections in 2016 had spending of $6.5 billion as a comparison. Women vote at about the same rate as men and more women than men are expected to vote this time. Prime minister Modi won the last election with promises of development and infrastructure. He is delivering on infrastructure but building manufacturing and generating jobs in the formal sector remains a tougher task for any administration in 4 years. During the first term Mr. Modi made needed changes including introducing the GST tax to integrate India's fragmented market and get rid of a patchwork of regional state taxes. He introduced a whole range of projects and yojanas which are setting the stage for widening the middle class, and improving living conditions. Some of the problems such as the bad loans in the banking system date back to previous administrations and the government has taken steps to clean up this problem by refinancing banks and introducing a bankruptcy law. This has slowed GDP growth to about 7%. However this would have happened under any administration.  The brief war with Pakistan in February 2019 has added another dimension to this election with questions about whether this may help Mr. Modi because of his strong stand against terrorism camps in Pakistan.  In the end it all comes down to whether the public still believes the BJP party under Modi is best qualified to develop the infrastructure to modernize the country and improve services, and whether it can create enough of the manufacturing capabilities to generate jobs needed. It may not be that the BJP under Modi has  not made mistakes in the process of learning how best to tackle development, but whether a patchwork of regional parties led by the opposition Congress party is in a position to provide the strong decisive direction to make quick decisions on development. Getting the agreement of a number of regional parties such as the party in West Bengal state or the Uttar Pradesh state when it was under a previous administration of Mrs Mayawati means an even slower rate of decision making as it leads to lack of speedy decision making. Whether voters have short memories and forget the slow rate of infrastructure development under previous administrations or have a willingness to give the BJP a chance to show what it can do under Modi for development can eventually decide this election. An example of what this means is in how the Mumbai Metro is being pushed through to timely delivery- Metro Rail's head Mrs. Ashwini Bhide simply says she feels for the people of Mumbai who have suffered from delays in development of needed infrastructure for so long, with millions doing appalling rides in a creaky old rail system. In her view it should have been done yesterday. It is this attitude that can make or break the current administration, and whether it can get this message through to voters one more time. Most who have this attitude are aware that China is now laying enough concrete every two years than America did in the whole 20th century, as reported in the Guardian newspaper, and are equally passionate about delivery of services and rapid development of badly needed infrastructure.         ...