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Not very convincing efforts to prevent corruption in China. Party officials do not have to declare their income or assets in China. The Corruption Bureau has not been set up and its unclear whether its being seriously considered. All corruption investigations are handled by CDIC (Central Disciplinary Inspection Commission) which gets its directions from the very top. A small change has been made by sending to the provinces CDIC officials from Beijing or from other provinces to ensure a proper investigation. In the past this was done thru provincial officials themselves. But provoncial officials still have to be informedbefore an investigation is begun. And the press cannot report corruption cases without official approval. All this and the temptations of corruption in a rapidly industrializing and fast growing economy without transparency and the education and institutional safeguards, and lacking a free press, make corruption a significant problem in China. How much this is costing China in the medium to long run, as well as how much environmental damage is costing China can only be underestimated as its covered up by the huge savings rate, investment and rapid growth today and in the immediate future....

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What actions can one expect from Murdoch's buying of Dow Jones? Murdoch is likely to focus on increasing general news coverage in the journal so as to compete better for advertising dollars with the New York Times. He will invest in the European edition of the Journal to compete headon with the Financial Times of London. And he will try to get leadership on the web for the digital version of the Journal as a source for financial news for a larger audience.

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How the Delta Pan Am merger is still a mess at JFK Terminal. Not a good sign for future mergers. Describes the results of prior mergers and shows a rather mixed record at best. Cites difficulties such as meshing computer reservation systems and facilities. Of major importance is the pride in their work and energy of the people involved, and how it be best tapped into, considering the experience of Continental and Gordon Bethune. America West's Doug Parker is trying to do this at US Airways, and Brazilian airline TAM is working with Varig assets.

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Like the rest of the restaurant industry British pubs are affected by staffing shortages, inflation, higher energy bills, and supply chain problems. The UK lost around 3250 pubs and bars between March 2020 and September of this year. During lockdowns most were closed, as they reopen they face higher costs and are struggling to survive. New hires that earned 27,000 pounds now are offered 32,000 pounds, with few applications as people look for better work and working conditions than offered in the restaurant industry.

Fewer people are going to pubs for lunch as they work from home more. Older people are staying at home from virus related hesitancy. Pubs are passing on price increases of food of 20%. Once seen as part of Britain's cultural fabric this also is changing as people look for other sensible options.

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China's farms are becoming larger as more farmers rent out their land and live on the resulting income. This shift is leading to the development of larger firms that use modern equipment requiring less labor. Typical is a farmer who decided to live in retirement after renting out his land for about $500, income on which he lives comfortably in a well manicured courtyard home in the village.  These farmers do not want to join their children who now live in the cities. As one farmer says "fallen leaves go back to their roots."  China's agriculture is not dominated by large commercial farms as it is in the U.S. This process is now beginning in China as more farmers prefer to rent out their land and live off the resulting income, resulting in larger farms and automated operations as in the U.S.  and Europe. Farmers now feel more confident about land rights to rent out their land. China first went through the communes under Mao, followed by return of land in small plots to farmers in the 90's. The changes today start a new phase which will change the look of Chinese agriculture. ...

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Stade Francais cancels all training and puts coaching staff and playing squads into isolation after 25 persons are found to test positive for coronavirus. It is not clear how this happened for French rugby sports after premier league in Britain and the French soccer league games are being played in empty stadiums for a television audience without any reports of difficulties.

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Brooks points out that the best way to arrive at workable solutions is to take the best ideas from all sides of the political spectrum. The Republicans and the Democrats are too ideologically and politically driven and lack the imagination to come up with good solutions.

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This Editorial Board opinion in the WSJ says the covid test requirement for travelers from China is inadequate because it does not apply to travellers from Europe. In the early part of the pandemic travelers from Europe brought the virus to the US. The virus first spread to Europe from China before entering the US. It does not go into effect for another week. WSJ cites reports that show the surge in cases in China is already accelerating in cities like Shanghai.

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Moderna has made the initial batches of doses of the vaccine for the variant of coronavirus including South African variant, and shipped these to the National Institutes of Health in the US. If the test results are positive the vaccine for variant could be given authorization by the third quarter of 2021. It is becoming crucial to stay ahead of variants developing from the coronavirus and pharmaceutical companies Pfizer, J&J, Astra Zeneca are working on the technology to tackle this.

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Michigan is almost another plantet when it comes to replacement sales for clunkers. Analystspoint out that 81.1 % of michiganians traded in their domestic clunkers for domestic replacements, but only 42.8% in the rest of the country did so.

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It is now not just an issue of migrants, a much broader issue of how the people of Britain can have democratic processes and action on the economy work without disruptions and distractions such as migrants. The interests of 69 million Britons and hundreds of million in war ridden countries vs 40,000 migrants put on boats here because of economic conditions in their home countries. The best course of action for Labour is direct targeted assistance to rural schools and rural health care, farmers, in affected countries as they recover from years of war. 20,000 crossed the English Channel in boats in 6 months January to June 2025. Eritrea, Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, areas of war in Middle East are source of migrants crossing the English Channel in boats.  Britain offering weekly allowance of 50 pounds a person and free National Health Service services encourages migrants to make the journey in boats and pay migrant trafficking operators with their life savings. Without a clear goal on migrants and necessary action Britain under Labour sees further destabilization of the social and political fabric of the country by reducing confidence in the two main political parties.  ...

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Krugman says the the higher population growth in Texas has led to higher job growth there relative to the rest of the country. Other factors mitigating the effects of the recession in Texas- the housing and mortgage lending laws in Texas prevented the building up of home equity debt and foreclosures that hit other states, and the oil industry in Texas helped with higher oil prices. Lower wages in Texas, lower living costs, and lower housing costs have attracted jobs to the state. In June 2011, the Texas unemployment rate was 8.2%, lower than California and close to that of New York.

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Edison's learning mindset and his persistence has lessons in work today.

These lessons apply to individuals as well as countries and groups, to create a thinking mindset. Will this plan work, what are the assumptions and what is it based on, test it out. If it fails try changing it. Test again. Does it work. What were the assumptions and what is it based on, what if we change this part. Try again. In this way Edison found answers to difficult problems in his inventions. 

The search for a vaccine, other problem solving at the individual, small group, and national level, can be done in this way. For the vaccine there is the added factor of time- how quickly can we do this? The Oxford vaccine works with an approach that has worked for other types of coronavirus in the past research efforts, what component can be changed or inserted so that a tested approach can be used instead of starting from scratch in this case.

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Pemex's new CEO, Emilio Lozoya, and his plans for improving the oil company's operations. He sees the opportunity to create efficiency and savings for Pemex as large because of the way the company has been run upto now. In this interview by Jose De Cordoba and Laurence Iliff, the new CEO cites as one example that only one airport in Mexico receives jet fuel by pipeline, the airport of Mexico City, the rest receive it by trucks. Lozoya is the son of a former energy minister. He is 38, has a Masters degree in economic development from Harvard and worked as an investment banker in New York. Lozoya says he will draw from the experience of other countries, including Brazil and Colombia which have sharply increased oil production after making their oil companies more competitive and transparent. In this interview he announced plans to setup a separate company to explore and produce shale gas and deep water oil in the U.S.

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The US Federal Reserve Report on Economic Wellbeing of US Households 2024-May 2025 gives some insights into the well being of American households. It shows food insufficiency households the same in 2023-2025 at 7%. The situation for cost of living remains a concern in 2024 as well as 2025. Retirement savings have improved for many middle class Americans, as confirmed by reports from Fidelity and Vanguard. The people earning less than 25,000 are 19% and about the same in 2024 under Biden as under DJT in 2025. 39% make $100,000 or more and 26% make $50,000 -$100,000. Combining the 19% making less than $25,000 and the 16% making between $25,000 and $50,000 shows about one third of the population under $50,000 living paycheck to paycheck. It would appear that $2000 DJT rebate putting $160 billion out of $550 billion of tariff revenues for 2025-2026  in the hands of 79 million households that make less than $100,000 would go a long way to keep the situation stable with optimism and hope arising from the restructuring of world trade that would bring trillions of dollars of investment into the US from Europe and Asia. A this investment plus domestic investment should bring back jobs and higher incomes to US manufacturing in small towns across America. The rest of $550 billion tariff revenue of $390 billion would go to reducing the deficit which would improve prospects for the economy in 2027 and produce a more resilient economy in 2027-2028. As shown on this page the popular Democratic Governor of Michigan in her op-ed in Washington Post supports strategic tariffs, and supports using the revenue for a check to American workers of $2000 per worker or per worker household and offers to work with the opposite party to get a WIN-WIN for the American People.  In the whole process of trade tariffs it must be remembered when seeing the inconsistent cases of tariff use by this Republican administration that these were special reason situations not aberrations or whimsical. First, it should be borne in mind that behind the appearance of DJT making tariff decisions is a carefully thought out process that took ten years to form under Reagan era Trade Representative Lighthizer who negotiated with Japan, and his deputy Jamieson for 2016-2024, and the economic and capital markets experience of Scott Bessent as Treasury Secretary. The two cases of inconsistent application of tariffs relate to the 50% tariff on India and the reduction of tariffs on China agreement on rare earths, and the imposition of a large tarif on Japan and the EU. In the first instance with India it was intended to give Ukraine breathing room from Russian attacks as Germany steps up its military preparedness and assistance to Ukraine. With both countries it was about saving face important in Asian or any societies and it has achieved it's purpose. Reports show both Indian and Chinese refiners have quietly cut purchases of oil from Russia leading to Russian oil selling at about $20 discount to Brent crude oil. In the case of Japan the quick action to raise tariffs was intended not to get into long drawn negotiations and show serious intent- Japan is known for dragging out negotiations for years if not decades. The same is true for the European Union. With the Swiss it was about a certain disrespect of the US coming from attitudes that Swiss products were somehow superior. Not just in the long run, in 2026-2028 history will show that the effort done right - and it takes effort to get this right- to restructure world trade so that other nations are not siphoning off the benefits and leaving the US to lose its manufacturing and factories is the right one. And taken with courage and sincere desire to create a fair distribution of the benefits of world trade for too long distorted by egregious practices of competitors. It has nothing to do with 2 senators from the 1930's who were from places like the Mountain West in the US, having no concept of world trade, Smoot and Hawley, who under a irresponsible president Hoover got everything wrong. This is a carefully set out plan to evenly balance the benefits of world trade to all nations.   ...

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After the loss of a crucial UK byelection by Labour under Keir Starmer (May 2021 Hartlepool) Shabana Mahmood says she brought out her inner-Kashmiri and steadied the party with wins in other byelections over the Tories. Shabana is the daughter of a teenager from Kashmir who came to Britain in the sixties, studied to be an engineer and settled in Birmingham. She is the Shadow Secretary of Justice and as a Oxford trained barrister she wants to put Britain's justice system on a good footing by remaking prisons and making the system work.  Shabana is a special kind of person simply because she has kept her values and religious beliefs and still taken the best of British thought and culture and the scieintific mind even as Britain faces real challenges. One is struck by the sheer broadness of her mind-  “I don’t like anything that smells of fundamentalism in any way, religious or political or ideological, it doesn’t really matter what it is, in the end. “It’s quite authoritarian in nature, and in my own life experience of people that are most intransigent and the most prescriptive about what everyone else can say and think and do tend not to be the best of people themselves.” ...

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Only about one in three private equity firms may survive the shakeout that is looming, the rest are likely to fail, according to astudy by a Professor at IESE Business School in Spain and a partner at Boston Consulting Group.