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India has opted out of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership because of concerns that it would be providing relatively unrestricted access to its markets, particularly to China, without being able to capitalize on opportunities for market access in RCEP countries. Indian manufacturing and export capacity is only beginning to be established in a big way. Under Atman Nirbhar initiative India has the potential to increase the manufacturing capabilities of its own firms in all industries using the local market. This could generate a virtuous cycle of capital accumulation, more investment and modernization with acquisition and development of new technologies in the same way as Japan, South Korea and recently China have setup advanced manufacturing capabilities. To do this the government has to work together with private industry for a modernizing drive, and a parallel effort at building advanced infrastructure. 

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A 2011 film "Contagion" with Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude West, showed vaccine supplies so inadequate in a pandemic that the limited supply had to be given out in lottery system.

This idea of prioritization stuck in the minds of planners in Britain including Health minister Matt Hancock. The idea of prioritization after the vaccine was manufactured and distributed caused British health authorites to seek the advice of Britain's best health scientists and clinicians. Hancock says "we ask the clinicians and we do it on the basis of how we can save the most lives most quickly." Britain concentrated on ensuring the most supplies to vaccinate every British citizen with two doses very early during the time when the vaccine was being developed.

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The Biden administration policy is similar to the Trump administration. The response is to send migrants back to their home countries. One of the lessons for the European Union and for the US of the last few years is that the US and EU cannot have migrants issue create discord within public opinion, when so much needs to be done for infrastructure, competition with Asian countries such as China, and the needs for recovery from the pandemic. With wars, natural disasters, smuggling of migrants, new waves of migrants required a different approach. Promoting development and providing help to the economies of these countries is seen as a more effective approach, and the best way to do this is to help strengthen America and the European Union by building a consensus on development and infrastructure investment.

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With a general election approaching in Britain the question about a progressive alliance is brought up in the Guardian. A big block is the Labour party with its obsession for vote share, and not seeking alliances of any kind. The Liberal Democrats are creating their own barriers with hostility towards Labour party. This report cites Best for Britain data and says 457 seats are immune to alliances. Of 150 marginals 111 seats the numbers show if SNP, Lib Democrats, Greens swung behind Labour party  it would make a big difference. as in 30 seats even a 5% swing from Labour to the Lib Democrats would give the seat to the Conservatives. The other approach is to have informal alliances at the grassroots level so that progressive candidates can do well.

 

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Walmart is going to require employees to use certain hospitals for costly spine surgeries, an effort to weed out unnecessary procedures and lower healthcare costs. The retailer earlier used a voluntary scheme to get employees to use the hospitals offering lower cost quality care, but found that half of the people needing spine surgery who volunteered to travel decided not to undergo expensive spine surgery. A spinal fusion surgery costs $77,000 at Mayo Clinic which tries to first see if other options of physical therapy can do the job. Walmart has insurance coverage for 1 million people.

Costs are going up and up. The average cost of family health plans from employers is up 5% this year to $20,000, with workers paying one third of cost, a survey by Kaiser Family Foundation shows. 

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French parliamentary elections on June 11 and June 18 for 577 seats follow the May 7, 2017 presidential election. The Republican Party plans to contest all the seats, and its representatives say that its ideas are well accepted in France, that only the candidacy of Fillon was not successful. The Socialist Party also plans to contest the election. Analyst Krumbmuller of OpenCitiz consultancy says local connections matter, that the two mainstream parties have established local connections and should do better than candidates put up by Macron's En Marche movement. Macron has little time to prepare effectively for the parliamentary election, making it likely that in the end a cohabitation agreement between a prime minister from the Republican or Socialist parties and a president from outside these parties would take place. 

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As England and Australia prepare for Ashes cricket Test series, Mike Atherton looks at the two captains, Tim Paine for Australia and Joe Root for England. Tim Paine is an unlikely captain because of not playing in enough matches after hand injuries and surgeries. He is a Tasmanian and played on and off for Australia. He also came in unusual circumstances as a captain after failures of the Australian team, with his close relationship with coach Justin Langer. Joe Root by comparison is a top batsman and has made it to the top after playing well for England in many matches. 

The result is a contrast in the two sides. Yet in cricket as in any sport anything can happen. And the Australian side will do its best to upset any predictions.

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President Trump has taken a careful response to events in Hong Kong so that the situation does not affect U.S. China trade talks and tariffs negotiations. For the first time he tweeted that China's restraint would be reciprocated by the U.S.

Mr. Trump has described the Hong situation as "a tricky situation," and has called for the protests to be handled "humanely." He tweeted- "I know President Xi of China very well. He is a great leader who very much has the respect of his people. He is also a good man in a 'tough business.' I have ZERO doublt that if President Xi wants to quickly and humanely solve the Hong Kong problem he can do it." Concluding "Personal meeting?"

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Venki Ramakrishnan, head of the Royal Society and a Nobel laureate in Chemistry says that even with all the growing evidence of the importance of mask use Britain is way behind in mask use. Only one fourth of Britain's use masks compared to two thirds in the U.S. On public transport many people do not use masks in Britain.

The Royal Society has put together a scientific advisory group to look at the evidence on pandemics.

Ramakrishnan says it was once normal to have a few drinks and drive home, and normal to not wear seatbelts. Today this is considered not socially acceptable behaviour, the same has to happen for use of masks. It is as important as handwashing and social distancing, says the Royal Society.  

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"Turnoff your phone for a bit. I take time early in the day for reflection, for when hard things come."

Melinda Gates likes the following poets, who are also Colbert's favorites. Mary Oliver, John O'Donohue who brings ancient wisdom to modern day lives, imagination as the path of the Spirit.

She reads David White, Pablo Neruda, Mia

One verse of poetry she likes says- when you come back to yourself, something Melinda Gates has done, when you do this see the flowers that were in your earlier years. This is all about having self care, self compassion and self acceptance, that are key to healthy living. As the Buddha says- only by taking care of yourself can you take care of others.

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Patricia Kowsmann provides this picture of life in a town on Portugal's northern coast, Viana do Castelo, with a population of 87,000, as Portugal struggles to make a recovery. Viana do Castelo has shipyards and companies making metal bridges for highways. The money losing state owned shipyard was privatized and sold to Martifer SGPS SA to run till 2031. 600 workers at the shipyard were laid off. The new company plans to rehire 400 workers by 2016 but jobs will not be permanent. Companies making the bridges now sell to former Portuguese colonies of Angola, Mozambique, Brazil. 200,000 people have left the country to look for jobs or higer education, including the mayor's daughter in London. Exports are up and now make up 40% of Portugal's GDP, up from 27% in 2009. The economic growth is 0.9% in 2014, after declining 6% 2011-2013. Portugal accepted the last instalment of the bailout loan of 78 billion euros in 2014. It will auction 1.25 billion euros of bonds on July 22, 2015. Unemployment is now declining dropping to 14% from a high of 17%, and higher than the pre crisis level of 11%. Here in this coastal town the mayor Jose Maria Costa cut public employee salaries 15%, and also cut sports and cultural programs. Two food centers provide free lunch and dinner, and half of the 4000 children in school get subsidies for food and transport. A shipyard worker Antonio Gomes Barbosa 64, is one of the laid off workers. His son's architecture company closed and he left Portugal for Angola. Some of his co-workers now work at a shipyard in neighboring Spain....

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Carol Bartz of Yahoo! talks about her experience as CEO with Autodesk for 14 years. She had no plans to take another CEO job in 2006, when she left Autodesk. She describes the job at Yahoo!, which she accepted, and the kinds of skills and experience that were most valuable. One was listening, as she had no idea what she would do in the new job. She did not have a plan for Yahoo! when she joined. Her philosophy is: its OK to fail, just do it fast and then move forward. This for her means making a decision, and not being afraid to do it because it may turn out to be the wrong one. She says its OK to learn on the job as she did at Autodesk. At Yahoo! she realized the value of experience - experience where her career was like a pyramid, not a ladder, the years of experience at Autodesk! serving as a foundation to build on. About her job at Yahoo! she says a lot of the people wern't talking to each other, and she saw her job as releasing some of the energies that were locked up.

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Shiller says policy is captured and communicated by metaphors, the most effective being belt tightening for a family. However what works for a family does not work for a country in the same way, especially if not accompanied by other measures and implemented in a strict manner without looking at the real situation. Better suggests Shiller, and more real is the metaphor of "winter on the family farm," where people work to do other chores than planting and harvesting, because a lot of other things need to be done and this is a good time to do it. This would include cleaning up the place, fixing the farm and the barn, fixing machinery, building fences. The farm's members pay a tax in terms of donated labor which goes to do all the work needed and helps the farm's productiveness as the weather changes. Similiarly the Salant-Paul Samuelson balanced budget theorem from the FDR days shows an increase in national output by the amount of a tax, such as the one proposed in France by president Hollande; that would then be invested in hiring more teachers (the labor) and investing in education infrastructure....

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Kasman of J.P. Morgan Chase only sees a small upturn in activity, that as he sees it in a world where activity is so depressed that modest changes by business and households give a lift, with unemployment coming down to 9%. Hatzius of Goldman sees unemployment rising in an economy where capacity utilization is extremely low, with unemployment rising to 10.5% even with the best efforts of the government. Hatzius sees a painful defaltion as a serious risk and he points out that the Fed can do less about deflation than it can do about inflation. The one point that both agree on is exports have to give alift to the economy, and both welcome a depreciatipon of the dollar to lift the economy through exports. Hatzius makes the point that the lift to exports is still limited- not enough in exchage rate depreciation of the dollar to help the American economy. And Kasman actually says it now Asia's turn to do their share. We lifted them out of the slump after the 1997 Asian crisis, when their currencies depreciated and exports to the US lifted their economies....

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Chancellor Merkel tells the newspaper "Sachsische Zeitung," that she sees a follow through on policies on refugees after reestablishing control over EU borders as one of the lessons learned from last years refugee crisis. This has reduced the flow of refugees and Merkel says the process of deportation of non-German nationals who had no residency permit had to be done rigorously and speeded up.  Having said this Merkel defended her policy on refugees as "coherent," and was clear about it- "I do not see a change of course, but coherent work over many, many months." Responding to Pegida and anti-immigrant sentiment in Dresden, Merkel said it is important to remember the lessons of history, that "we are the people" slogan used by the far-right is misplaced, that in a free society "we all are the people."

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Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, in meetings with bankers and business leaders says Britain should remain in the single market 2 years after exit from the European Union, according to the Sunday Times. Theresa May plans for Britain to exit the EU in 2019. The reason is that this would protect business as it adjusts to leaving the single market, a kind of transition or Brexit buffer period. This period "really informs what businesses need to do because you transition and restructure during that window," Carney told a House of Commons Treasury Committee. About the changes in the politics in the U.S. and Europe Carney has said about basic fairness in bankers language- "market fundamentalism can devour the social capital needed for capitalism" to work, referring to the moral failures in operations of the banks by 2009 and how it hit the middle and working class incomes and wealth.

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Wyson Lungu returned to Zambia after studying in the US and joined a telecommunications company in Lusaka. On one of his trips to a remote part of Zambia his car broke down and needed repairs. It took 24 hours before a man with a bicycle helped get him to a place 8 hours away by bicycle. This was one of the few bicycles in that village. Most women simply walked 4 hours carrying farm produce for sale on roadsides starting at 2 or 3 in the morning. This is when Lungu started a bicycle business for farming villages, and so far has sold 3000 bicycles to women in farming villages, with bicycle repair places set up in the villages for bicycle repair and maintenance. This is changing lives in these remote farming villages of Zambia and helping women who do agricultural work in small farms. Lungu relies on cooperative associations he sets up in the villages to organize the sales including payment in instalments and through barter of commodities such as crops or maize. ...

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In this New Yorker essay after Biden's Soul of the Nation speech at Independence Hall Philadelphia, Jelani Cobb stated in the New Yorker that it was a speech made not just for the midterms in 2022, but for setting the country back on the path it has followed since Washington and Jefferson, Lincoln and FDR, to once more as in the times past through civil war, through depression, through world wars, to restore the ideas of equality and democracy when they were under assault. Biden said- This is where we set in motion the most extraordinary experiment with self-government the world has ever known with three simple words, "We the People." "We the People." These two documents and the ideas they embody- Equality and Democracy- are the rock on which this nation is built. They are why for two centuries America has been a beacon tho the world." As I stand here tonight, equality and democracy are under assault. We do ourselves no favor to pretend otherwise." ...

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A You.Gov poll taken for The Times in the last 5 days says 9 out of 10 Tory voters have decided who they will vote for as ballot papers went out this week. And 60% will vote for Liz Truss who has widened her lead to 34 points over Rishi Sunak. Tory party voters for the leadership by a majority or 53% say Boris Johnson should not have resigned. Only 41% say Boris Johnson should resign. Mr. Johnson supported Liz Truss, as do most of the cabinet.

When asked who can get Tories a majority in the next election Truss at 39% has a 20 percentage point lead over Sunak. From this it appears that if Tories themselves and not the cabinet had decided Boris Johnson would still be prime minister, and Liz Truss takes on the premiers role with the same style and spirit of Brexit that Johnson brought to the role and would consider Mr. Johnson as part of the close advisers.

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Trade between South Korea and India is growing rapidly and will have exceeded $30 billion by 2022. Samsung and Hyundai have expanded investments in India. India has strong cultural and Buddhist connections to South Korea. Cultural connections should be stronger than what they are considering the historical roots of Buddhism in India and Asian Buddhist regions such as Korea, Vietnam and China rediscovering their roots in Buddhism and the Ancient Path historical sites in India after the pandemic. This will happen now that India is like South Korea and Japan a rapidly modernizing country that has not lost its connections with Vedanta and Buddhism. South Korea has close ties to Japan. During the first phase of modernization it expanded its ties to Japan. During this phase of modernization both Japan and South Korea can increase exchanges of students and visits by tourists, and business exchanges between the countries, as there is great potential for this and the time has come to do this. ...

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A supply chain crisis with shortages of goods is affecting all economies in the world. The price of oil has increased to $80 and supply chain shortages are affecting most industries. Power shortages in China lead to cutbacks in consumption for industry and some large cities not having essential  electricity for traffic lights. Coronavirus pandemic has disrupted supply chain factories in Vietnam and Malaysia because of lockdowns. Once a product is manufactured it still has to be shipped from far flung places in today's cumbersome and costly supply chain. Cost of shipping is up 3 times according to one shipping index in one year. Prices to ship from China to Rotterdam in Netherlands is up 6 times in one year. Global supply chains at such high cost of shipping means that companies will look to invest in manufacturing at home so that they do not pay high shipping costs and also create jobs at home, and are able to build critical experience in manufacturing technology. ...

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President Biden passed same sex marraige legislation. Twelve Republican Senators from southern, midwestern and western states including North and South Carolina, Utah, Alaska, Iowa, Ohio, Wyoming and Maine supported the legislation. Some had relatives or children in that situation. Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming who is a member of the Trinity Lutheran Church gave her reason- "For the sake of our nation we do well by taking this step", giving an emotional speech on the floor of the Senate about the need for more tolerance "during turbulent times for our nation." By putting divisive issues aside America can bring opinion together around the issues central to our future- the need for strengthening democracy, rebuilding the nation's aging infrastructure, investing in manufacturing in America, investing in education, health and rebuilding communities across this vast nation, and in the culture that sees this as vital to our future and the future of the world. ...

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The 7.1 million Venezuelan refugees who have settled in other Latin American nations puts a great burden on the region and its resources. This NYT report shows how it is affecting Mexico today. Shown are migrants who are by the rail tracks trying to board a freight train north in Mexico. It is an endless dilemma for Americans, for Democrat states facing Republican opposition, and has been a problem for both Republican and Democratic administrations. How do you deport Venezuelans as US has no diplomatic relations with Venezuela? The Biden administration is pursuing legal immigration channels by taking in a specified number and cutting the dangerous migrant flow over the Mexican border, the only policy open to Republicans also in this situation. At some future date the Venezuelans absorbed into the US can fill worker shortages, in the present it is creating some chaos for many nations including Mexico and the US and other latin American nations, and neither party Democrat or Republican has easy answers. As the Democrats are deporting nearly as many as the Republicans. ...

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This astounding story in WSJ by Jiyoung Sohn in Seoul and Yang Jie from Tokyo, shows how South Korea stopped the illegal transfer to China of entire  computer chip factory setup information of Samsung by a South Korean engineer in Singapore. This shows president Biden has accomplished what no other president has been able to do in the last 40 years. Biden brought Japan and South Korea together reminding them that their differences over wartime occupation can be overcome, leading to the US, Japan and South Korea forming  close cooperation in 2023. After all it was the US that helped setup the democratic framework in the two Asian neighbors after 1945. This story shows how the problem of South Korean and Japanese technologies illegally transferred is being tackled by both countries in 2023. This is part of overall cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region that includes India and Australia, for an open Indo-Pacific region based on the rule of law. ...

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Trump asked him to put him above the Constitution of the United States of America. He refused, making clear his overriding commitment to the Constitution of the United States, says former vice president Mike Pence. More clearly one sees a different understanding and grasp of the meaning of the Constitution of the US by the two individuals. This is what is at stake in what Peter Baker in the NYT calls an issue that will decide the future of America as a strong democracy. Deeper still are the questions of education and culture that this has raised that will not go away even then. How do you build a democracy when as a people, as a political class, or as groups of people one is not jolted by the fact that two thirds of American fourth graders fail the reading comprehension test, an indication of the deep lack of knowledge of the basic history, geography and political structure of the Untied States of America across broad sections of the people.