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Spencer Jakab points out reasons why interest rates will remain low for some time to come- inflation of around 2%, even lower interest rates in Europe and Japan, foreign buying of U.S. bonds keeping the dollar strong, and sluggish economic growth in the U.S.

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The trade deficit with China has led to loss of 3.8 million jobs, 75% of them or 2.9 million in manufacturing. Go back to 1990 and Beijing was a city of bicycles not cars. If Beijing shifted to a open economy and simply imported products from the US and Europe as it had done since 1700 it would have remained a backward agricultural economy. It took 20 years of focused effort after 2000 for China with US technological assistance to excel in manufacturing, as the US had done after 1920. Can or cannot the US excel in Manufacturing with its own focused effort and restore jobs and decent wages to the American people, that is the question. That a $1 trillion deficit that has already destroyed the US manufacturing and its capacity to defend itself by rapidly building up the US Navy, is that not an emergency, then what is, is also the question, and the role, the duty, of the president of the US in such a situation. The federal appeals court has allowed the DJT Tariffs to remain in place till it goes to the US Supreme Court. Today May 30 the WSJ in a front page article shown here says the one California shipyard could assemble a supply ship in 5 days in 1942. China's independence in the fight against Imperial Japan and the Kwantung Army's adventures, and the independence of Europe in the 1940's depended on this vital US capacity. Is this forgotten? FDR acted step by step by 1938 to restore the US lost capacity at that time, what is the role of the president today? ...

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WSJ's Leubsdorf looks at the job market in 2015, and the March 2015 employment figures from the Labor Department. March 2015 figures shows seasonally adjusted 126,000 jobs added for the month. The average for each month in the 1st quarter of 2015 based on revised figures is 197,000 jobs added. This is down from the average of 324,000 jobs added each month for the 4th quarter of 2014, and similiar to the 1st quarter of 2014 when economic activity contracted. Economic growth has slowed from the 5% pace in the 3rd quarter of 2014, 2.2% in the 4th quarter, to a projected 1.2% by Macroeconomic Advisers for 1st quarter 2015. Economists see the gains from lower oil prices already having taken place for consumers, but layoffs still taking place in the oil and mining industries. The mining sector lost 30,000 jobs in the 1st quarter 2015, with 11,000 in March 2015. Manufacturing job losses as a result of the strong dollar and lower exports also lie ahead in the next 3 quarters of 2015, suggesting a weaker job picture than earlier anticipated based on 4th quarter 2014 job creation. The unemployment rate remains at 5.5% for March, but the true picture of the labor market is reflected in the unemployment rate that includes people working parttime who want full time jobs, which is at 10.9% for March. The labor force participation rate remains at its low level, going down slightly to 67.8%, and Americans out of work for over 6 months remains high at 29.8% of 8.6 million unemployed for March 2015....

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U.S. GDP growth is 1.5% for the second quarter after 2% growth in the first quarter. The slower growth shows that much of the productive capacity of the U.S. economy is not being utilized. See the graph showing the growth during the recovery after the recession of 2009 compared to the recessions in 2001, 1991, 1980, 1975, 1970. The curve is much flatter this time. Every recovery except the recovery in 1980 shows a faster rebound. Economic recoveries have taken longer over time since the postwar boom period.

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Federal Reserve chairman Bernanke says he plans to keep interest rates low till the end of 2014. Bernanke told a news conference after a two day policy meeting of the Fed April 23-24: "It's a little premature to declare victory. Keeping interest rates low is still appropriate for our economy."

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In January 2020 employees met at a local Maryland bar to find out how they might salvage their careers in a 33 year old company that had failed to develop an approved vaccine, says this story in WSJ. Only months later following the coronavirus pandemic everything changed as in a miracle for Novavax. The company had to sell manufacturing assets at one point, and had enough cash for another 6 months just months before. By Feb. 2021 shares which had dropped to $4 were up to $229 and valuation which had declined to $127 million went up to 15 billion. Coronavirus has turned things upside down where newcomers are using previously unproven technologies and making them work in this pandemic. The persistence, perseverance and confidence of Novavax even in the most difficult situations shows how the right attitude can lead to remarkable results. Novavax vaccine can be kept in refrigerators for 3 months, and do not require very low freezing temperatures like Moderna and Pfizer vaccines. This is considered a potent weapon in the fight against coronavirus. Novavax says it can produce a couple of billion doses over the next 12 months beginning in April. Novavax has released data showing its vaccine is effective for protection against coronavirus. Results of late stage US trials are expected in March. ...

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Kimberly Clark will raise prices on Huggies diapers and wipes by 3-7%. Procter & Gamble said it will raise prices on Pampers diapers 7% and wipes by 3%. Consumers tend to switch brands for bleach, bottled water and soap, but recent surveys have shown only 10% will do so for baby products.

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Senators opposed to renomination of Bernanke to Fed chairman position include Boxer, Feingold, Sanders, and a non-commital Reid. Growing crtiticism of the Fed and the cozy relationship between Bernanke, Geithner, Summers, and the bankers. The role of Bernanke in the Greenspan years of low interest rates and high liquidity both in Congress and in the country as the national mood changes.

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Christina Zander provides an exceptionally good report on what holds women back in work and managing positions in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Even in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, with a more enlightened outlook in gender relations, the number of women who are CEO's for 145 Nordic companies is only 3%. For the U.S. Fortune 500 this is about 5%. Good child care benefits and parental leave laws that promote a fair distribution of child raising responsibilities between men and women are part of the enlightened outlook in Nordic countries. Yet the number of women being promoted to senior positions is limited. Interestingly rules requiring quota for women on Boards of Directors have led to a different situation on Boards- in 2013 41% of the boards at Norway's public companies were women compared to 18% at private limited companies. About 5.8% of general managers at publicly listed companies were women in 2013, 15.1% in private companies. Sandvik's Ms. Einarsson was promoted to a senior position recently. She says the opposite is true, one needs to start not at the top but at the entry level to ensure women are fairly represented. Culture is part of the problem as even in companies with equal male and female employees, the managers are mostly men. Men are seen as more eager to take responsibilities and risks, and are more integrated into networks. Even childcare and paid parental leave can be deceptive. One researcher shows that Swedish women still take the major part of responsibility for children, with 75% of the 480 available days. Women managers and researchers point to the difficulties women face with a full time career or working over 60 hours a week in a management position, and combining this with picking up children from daycare. Sofia Falk is the founder of Wiminvest, which helps companies invest in geting talented women. Her suggestions are that companies offer other incentives instead of more money- an assistant, private child care, grocery shopping, shared management positions, technical solutions to be able to work at home. The CEO of Sandvik, Olof Faxander, is persistent in changing company attitudes- he has raised the proportion of women in management positions to 21% from 9% in 3 years, eventually hoping to reach 33%....

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Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama campaign together in swing states such as North Carolina. Hillary Clinton capitalizes on the surging popularity of Michelle Obama, who has a 64%  approval rating, according to Gallup, 10 points more than president Obama, and above Hillary's 43 percent. Both women show a mutual admiration and sisterhood as they campaign together with rising crowd enthusiasm. For Michelle her unprecedented effort as First Lady is a result of the dirty campaign fought by Donald Trump to turn off voters to the political process, and her effort is meant to counter this. She says about this demeaning of women, "Enough is enough." Both women are drawn together with a campaign for a woman as president. And the slogan coined by Michelle has taken off  "When they go low, we go high." It has energized the very African American and millenial voters that have played an effective role in previous Democratic campaigns.

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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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Alexandra Stevenson provides this exceptional account of how the debt deal between Argentina and the hedge funds was negotiated. A decade long deadlock was broken for the first time when Argentina's finance secretary in the newly elected government of Mauricio Macri met Jonathan Pollock and Jay Newman of Elliott Management on Dec. 7, 2015, at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York. It is based on 8 intervews with the participants in the negotiations, court filings and emails. Critical to the settlement was the work of Dan Pollack, a trial lawyer with the McCarter & English law firm who acted as the mediator and made some rules including no pen and paper allowed, building trust through open discussion. Back channels helped including one setup through Marcos Mindlin of energy firm Pampa Energia in Argentina, who helped the hedge funds communicate with the Argentine negotiators. Mindlin met the hedge fund representatives at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Argentine president Macri insisted on making the terms he offered public on Feb. 1, 2016 of $6.5 billion because this is a sensitive issue in Argentina. Pollack pushed for a simple business transaction to close the issue and not the complex debt structuring the hedge funds favored. On Feb. 19, Judge Griesa of Federal District Court in Manhattan, who presided over the legal settlement, agreed to lift an injunction that would prevent Argentina from making bond payments and raising new money, and set a deadline of Feb. 29 for the settlement. On Feb. 28 the deal was signed by all the hedge funds. Argentina paid all holdout hedgefunds $9.3 billion, according to the Economy ministry, Elliott getting $2.4 billion....

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A hard look at the idea of the "Great Moderation" a peiod of stable prosperity that America has enjoyed for 20 or so years with low inflation, stable unemployment and smaller bumps along the road even in recessions such as the one in 1990 and in 2000 which had shorter durations with good rebound. The IMF report on the world economy for September looks at this period of stability and sees a continuation. This report takes a look at the current crises in housing and credit markets and takes a more cautious view wondering if things may be at a turning point where such stable growth cannot be taken as a given. In general the world economy has become more flexible and structural shifts to globalization and the shifts in manufacturing to other parts of the world such as emerging countries have made for a more resilient world economy compared to the economy that faced the oil shocks of the seventies. The three specific causes to which this stable period is attributed are the better handling of monetary policy, the better inventory management with Just in Time and manufacture to order, inventories literally being the shipments that are carried by Fedex or UPS on a particular day, and credit markets securitization of debt packaging it into marketable securities creating a large credit pool so thay companies could have better access to credit. Securtization has suffered because some of the basic rules were broken such as how securities are rated and not because of the basic concept. Have the markets and investors and households taken on more risk in their asset portfolios because of the belief that this period of 'Great Moderation' would simply continue. Its these kinds of behaviour that get tripped up until things get cleared up and return to normal. Is this simply a phase like the prior downturns preceding it that should see a similiar rebound or is it something different. One thing that is noted is that the period of relative prosperity has ocurred as in many countries in Europe and Asia. And the housing markets in many countries in Europe and Asia have also seen rising prices similar to that of the US. Can this turn into a worldwide recessionary situation? Comment made later on April 12, 2008 after the Bear Stearns crisis in March 2008 and the Fed meeting summary describing the downturn as expected to " be protracted and severe", and the emergency measures by the Fed itself made to prevent a possible global financial crisis. In hindsight the 3 reasons for the Great Moderation can be evaluated in this way. The first was the only real one to which researchers attribute about 50% of the Great Moderation, which is the revolution that Just In Time inventories have accomplished for smoothing drops in demand. The second financial innovation proved to be illusory just as mentioned here because it was gamed because the financial houses and other firms were able to get around regulation or the regulations were inadequate and the innovation fell victim to unrestrained greed in the manner mortgage securitization was done. The third wise better monetary policy as mentioned here did not get much credit from researchers and this turns out to be true. Keeping interests rate low was possible because of the disinflationary aspect of globalization specifically manufacturing in China which ended in 2007. Further the success of the US economy made it possible for the US dollar to remain strong and the USA to continue to attract capital for much of this period even while interest rates were low. But its the export of disinflation from China, and no pressures of inflation from globalization through commodities demand for much of this period, that kept inflation low and made it possible for the Fed to keep interest rates low without creating inflationary pressures. Of the three financial innovation and monetary policy may have in them in fact unlike the first Just in Time and information technology, may have in them the seeds of trouble as well as gain if not carefully managed, like fire a good servant but bad master, and this is really what happened in what turns out to be a very human world, greed subverted financial innovation without the necessary appropriate regulation to go with it and the Fed's libertarian instincts and complacency or lack of energetic oversight under a man past eighty years made it lose sight of its need to adjust interest rates to cool off excesses in the market and send appropriate signals to the financial and housing markets. The Economist was slightly ahead of the curve when it makes the observation here that this is likely to be a global housing crisis and a global credit crisis with all the implications of this for global economic growth. ...

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Bob Kocher, special assistant to President Obama for healthcare policy in 2009-2010 describes how hospital mergers with the passage of the Obama Healthcare Law are not doing much to control health care costs in the U.S. This is contrary to what was expected during the policymaking in 2009. In 2015 there were 112 hospital mergers in the U.S.  He says smaller physician led health care organizations do better at taking steps to improve productivity, adopt technological improvements and control costs.

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Elizabeth Duke helped forge consensus and compromise in policy as Governor of the U.S. Federal Reserve in the five year period following the 2008 crisis. She stayed on till July 2013 to help formulate the new capital rules requiring banks to hold more capital to handle any future crisis conditions.

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87% of the American people support sending back to their countries illegal entry migrants who have committed crimes or offenses in the US in a Pew Research poll and similar in a NYTimes poll. How many of these countries in Latin America allow illegal entry without visas? None. WSJ reports Colombia turns back 2 C-17 military flights Mexico 1 in midair on Jan 27, 2025. This led to a diplomatic standoff with DJT imposing 25% tariffs on increasing in a week to 50% on imports from Colombia entering the US. Colombia agreed to take back the immigrants after the US tariffs.  In 2024 Colombia accepted 124 deportation flights into the country from the US. Yet president Petro objected to these flights on military aircraft and responded on X. DJT responded on Truth Social: "I was just informed that two repatriation flights from the United States, with a large number of Illegal Criminals, were not allowed to land in Colombia. This order was given by Colombia's Socialist President Gustavo Petro, who is already very unpopular amongst his people." DJT then instructed for 25% tariff on Colombian imports into the US which would be raised to 50% if Colombia did not accept the flights in 1 week. DJT said this is just the beginning and also imposed a travel ban to the US. DJT stated this was a threat to the national security of the US. Colombia then accepted the military flights.  Trade two way is $54 billion and Colombia exports coffee, sugar and oil. Colombia imports about $25 billion and exports about $29 billion to the US. Oil exports from Colombia to US are $6 billion, flowers $1.2 billion and coffee $1.6 billion.  ...