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A provision in tax code letting companies expense investments in US including R&D in 5 years expired in 2022. For budget reasons it was not renewed. The DJT Big Beautiful Bill lets US companies expense R&D in 1 year compared to the 15 years in overseas investments. This is leading to a surge in R&D investment and hiring by companies. Fed's Powell sees this as one of the big positive factors for the US economy in 2025-2028.

The change lowers cost of hiring by 20-25% and this means more engineers and other people are going to be hired.

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The move by George Osborne, and the new British government, to eliminate a structural deficit by 2015- the difference between what the government takes in and its spending which is increasing- with large spending cuts and new taxes, was announced with the new budget. It will in total by 2015 amount to about 8% of GDP, and is the largest effort to reverse increases in public spending since the days of Margaret Thatcher. After a decade of Labor governments public spending now adds up to about 50% of the economy. About 77% of the effort to cut the deficit comes from spending cuts, the rest from taxes.

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Baxter State, Park Adirondacks Park and other State Parks in the US. Adirondacks Park in upstate New York is huge 6 million acres with 3.4 million acres of private land and 100 small towns, 2.6 million acres of public land, 3000 lakes and 46 peaks over 4000 feet. It was set up as "forever wild" by the state constitution in 1892. Nearby is Maine's highest peak Mount Katahdin at 5300 feet in Maine Baxter State Park.

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According to preliminary estimates of the UK Office for National Statistics, gross domestic product fell 0.5% in October through December 2010, after expanding 0.7% in the third quarter of 2010. The UK inflation rate increased to 3.7%. At the same time the money the UK needed to borrow in December 2010 came in at 16.8 billion pounds, down from the 21 billion pounds in December 2009, showing an improvement in public finances. The two main drivers of UK growth are now set to slow down. Consumption spending down because of higher unemployment and inflation, and tax increases equivalent to 8% of GDP over 4 years. And government spending cuts leading to a reduction in spending for the 2011 fiscal year of 23 billion pounds. UK economic growth is 2010 is 1.4%, after contractions of 4.9% in 2009 and 0.1% in 2008. The UK Treasury chief George Osborne said the government will "not be blown off course by bad weather." Central bank governor Mervyn King pointed to the choppy recovery. Referring to the austerity policies King said, "the right course has been set and it is important to maintain it."...

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Anderson Clayton 25 years, grew up in a rural part of North Carolina. She won the state leadership election and has clear ideas about what went wrong with the Democratic party. She gets asked not to keep saying "we've left Democrats behind." And responds by saying: "We have, we've left people behind." During the Obama administration the party became more of a metropolitan party and lost sight of rural voters. It also neglected towns that were dependent on factories that moved overseas. Her plan is to reach out to rural voters in North Carolina, and to the hundreds of thousands of students there. Clayton feels that rural and blue collar voters have been forgotten by the Democratic party and she wants to get this right. She won her race against a 73 year old candidate who had the support of the Democratic party establishment. Clayton who studied at Appalachian State University, is an organizer, and wants to be active throughout the year meeting and organizing rural voters and students. ...

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A Russian Kinzhal hypersonic missile attack on Kviv is repelled with all missiles shot down on May 16, 2023. For the first time in the war the missile attacks are causing far less damage than in the early days of the war. A DW.com German reporter in Kviv on German television says the whole attack lasted only 15 minutes before things were back to quiet over Kviv with missiles exploding in the sky not on the ground.

This week Mr. Zelensky visited Berlin, then Aachen for the Charlemagne Prize as a symbolic acceptance of the Ukrainian people into the European community of nations with Zelensky speaking in Aachen in Ukrainian. He then went to Paris and London. Next week the G7 meet in Hiroshima, Japan. The war that followed a pandemic enters its 64th week in 2023.

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A phone call took place between president Biden and pm Modi of India on a closer US- India strategic technology partnership following India's making the largest commercial aircraft deal in history for purchase of 470 planes from Airbus and Boeing. The White House says the sale will support over 1 million jobs in 44 states. It also deepens the ties between India and the US.

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The issues raised on the effectiveness of peacetime militaries such as China after six decades since the Korean war in the fifties are raised in this report in the WSJ. The Ukraine war and the difficulty of transporting supplies except by rail for the Russian army, the lack of a motivated and trained combat force, are showing the problems of peacetime militaries that can lead to major miscalculations by world powers. 

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European businesses are increasing investment in the US because of its relative stability and growth compared to a sharp slowdown with covid lockdowns in China and political risk in China with the war in Ukraine. The US is also more attractive than Europe for investment as Europe face a slowing economy with the war in Ukraine and the embargo on Russian energy supplies.

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US shale oil companies are returning more cash to investors than investing in increasing oil production in 2022. As oil demand increases with an embargo on Russian oil in Europe, production by US shale oil companies in 2022 has increased only slightly. WSJ reports that 9 out of the largest 10 oil companies in the US returned $9.4 billion to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases in the first quarter of 2022, 54% more than they invested in new oil development.