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June unemployment numbers will jump say experts at IHS Insight as GM and Chrysler downsize even more to become smaller companies with even less market share. This will reflect closing Pontiac and sale or closing of the other GM brands Saturn, Saab, and Hummer. It will reflect closing of more dealerships of GM and Chrysler. THis might be offset by a pickup in sales if something like the European trading clunkers for new cars program takes off in the USA. But with the US customers more in debt and with rising job losses, the pattern may be different in the US. It may only offer a small boost in sales. Manufacturing still matters in a recovery. In 1980 manufacturing was 20% of America's output, now it is 11.5% says Mark Zandl of Moody's Economy.com. Manufacturing, he says, has a bigger impact than its size suggests, because it responds quickly. As sales resume workers are called back to their jobs. The sharp V shaped recoveries in the early 80's reflected the rapid response of manufacturing. After the 1980's both the declines and the recoveries were shallow in 1990-1991 and 2001. Now with GM and Chrysler shrinking further under the government plan to fix these companies, and taking the supplier impact, the rebound leg of the V is missing. The kick from the Big Three and their suppliers is missing, says Nigel Gault of IHS Insight. Of the 5.7 million jobs lost from Jan 2008 to June 2009, 1.6 million were in manufacturing and 289,000 were in motor vehicles, split almost evenly between assemblers and supplier networks....

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Chen and Goelfeb provide insights into the life and experiences that led Ukrainian immigrant Jan Koum to found startup WhatsApp. After taking a break from work at Yahoo he decided to travel places including Argentina, where he found it especially difficult to communicate with friends in other countries by phone and messaging. The messaging service was a response to this desperately felt need on his own travels, leading to the conviction that it was best to offer it free and make it easy and convenient to use. A similiar situation on travels to Mexico, with little adequate information on hotels, led to another startup Trip Advisor.

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Medtronic's former CEO, Bill George, says Medtronic's plan to reincorporate in Ireland as part of the merger with Covidien is intended to make it possible to use cash piled up overseas. The cash overseas if repatriated to the U.S. would incur corporate taxes of 35%. Medtronic can use its overseas cash resources to finance the acquisition of Covidien. The combination of the two companies will enhance cash flow, says Medtronic's CEO, Omar Ishak. Covidien's overseas cash and future earning from its businesses is not subject to U.S. repatriation taxes. As a result the combined company following merger will have only 40% of total cash "trapped" overseas, compared to 60% before a merger.

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Yale's Robert Shiller, founder of the of the Shiller-Case survey, says that he does not see a turning point in the housing market at this time, based on the 5000 mailed questionnaires he sends out each year. He says this is not visible and hard to conclude from the responses. He also describes the bubble thinking and behaviours he sees from the responses, especially how people extrapolate into the long term the short term gains being made. Nowhere in these responses does he see the term bubble being used by respondents, as if it never existed.

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With firms cautious about hiring the number of temporary workers is increasing. About one fourth of new jobs created in the second quarter of 2012 in the U.S. were for temporary workers. In June 2012 of the 80,000 jobs created a third were for temporary workers. About 8 million Americans work part-time. This is an increase of half a million since March 2012 for people unable to find a full time job. The number of full time workers has declined by 700,000 since March 2012, and self employed workers have increased by 381,000 since March 2012. This gives the picture of a labor market with employers unwilling to commit and hiring temps, using overtime to meet demand.

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Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri says-

"We intend to be able to cooperate in co-designing the reactors, co-developing them and co-producing them, we feel this will allow us to tackle complications faced in other conventional projects," he said. This approach to build smaller modular reactors because it comes with less cost and which can be reassembled at the usage site is a new field. 

India is putting $1.2 billion in nuclear research.

India sets goal for 100GW of nuclear energy 2047.

Five Indian built nuclear reactors by 2033.

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Foreign capital in India's nuclear sector-100 Gigawatt target at $226 billion cost by 2047. An important component of plan to be carbon neutral by 2070. Changes in legislation passed to get US and French companies into the Indian nuclear sector.

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New rules from the Biden administration make it easier for people ages 60-63 years to make up for putting less into workplace savings in earlier years with the impact of the 2009 financial crisis, loss of jobs or working parttime for a period, and smaller savings during the pandemic. People in these ages can now put in a 14% higher amount. And a maximum of $34,750 into their workplace retirement plans. This is one of the many actions taken by Biden-Harris, including increasing the amounts for Social Security, that combined with a stronger economy and job growth, lower inflation, is correcting many of the problems of the past that left seniors without enough money to retire in dignity and safety. Small steps taken in the context of bigger steps on infrastructure and chips, science, rebuilding manufacturing by investing in old unused plants and reviving them with new products- all this is creating anew future for America and the ordinary Americans. Higher wages also pushed by Biden- Harris will enable many Americans put away more in savings that the were not able to do over the decades when government policy neglected the needs of ordinary Americans. ...

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This WSJ report shows that inflation and inflation expectations in the US may have peaked by July 2022. Gasoline prices have fallen from a mid May high of $5.02 a gallon by 10% and wheat futures prices are down 37%.

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Blinken flies to Saudi Arabia as US strikes Houthi rebel missile systems targeting the shipping lanes in the Red Sea along Yemen (formerly Aden). The US seeks to bring the Gaza war to a close and negotiate a settlement.

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The Biden administration informs the WHO that it no longer supports the approach taken by previous administrations from Bush through Obama and Trump of not regulating Tech companies. Tech companies Google, Facebook and Apple have through heavy lobbying written the regulatory framework of no regulations. This has resulted in monopolistic behaviours, suppressing competition, ignoring customer needs, not considering privacy of information and other problems. Farah Stockman of the NYT traces how this happened and why the Biden administration is taking action.