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Important to distinguish in GNP, GDP and GDP per capita. The official rate of 10-11% growth is questioned by Thurow by noting that 70% of China in the rural area is seeing slow growth and if the urban economy has to grow at 33 % if the whole of China is to grow by 11%. He also brings up electricity consumption historicaly growing much faster than the growth rate of GNP or GDP. At breakneck growth rates gorwth has still been 60% of the gorwth in electricity consumption because some of it is wasted or is not used productively.He does not give his electricity consumption growth for China numbers, but we can extrapolate from the 6% growth in China analogous to Japanese growth rates in the 1970's that he comes up with, to see that electricity growth rates he assumes in his math are 10% a year in China. That is based on 6% growth he gives for China constituting 60% of the growth in electricity consumption for China. Given the validity of this math China and India are growing at much slower rates than official math states. This also means productivity of capital remains a major issue and does not simply go away when seeing the countries as a whole not just coastal and other well developed regions of India and China. So the message that is being projected about Chinese growth may be misleading as urbanization in China will still have to proceed for many decades for the growth to even out geographically. Another fact that immigration has been a source of additional people for the USA and so a significant population increase will be seen in the US in the next few decades even as China's population declines, supporting much larger economic activity in the USA. Europe also is seeing no increase in population. Europe's per capita income fell from 85% of that of the US in 1990, to 66% in 2007 according to the IMF statistics quoted here. Validation of these numbers would provide a different assessment of overenthusiasm for the kind of haphazard growth which also wastes resources and sacrifices the environment and shortchanges health, education and other goals, and instead promotes a different view that constantly looks for better ways of meeting the difficult challenges facing China and India. With these...

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Coordinated action by the governments of France, Britain and Germany each with its own package depending on its own circumstances but committing over a trillion dollars to rescue plans for financial institutions. In Britain the government moved to take majority stakes in 2 of its largest banks, the Royal Bank of Scotland, and the newly combied bank of Lloyds TSB and HBOS in exchange for a $64 billion capital infusion. In Berlin the German government setup a 480 billion euros package consisting mostly of loan guarantees, with 400 billon euros in guarantees for inter-bank loans and another $80 billion euros for direct injections of capital to help weak balance sheets and purchase toxic or illiquid assets of German banks that are at the brink of collapse. The French have setup their own 360 billion euros package. The French government will create a fund to raise money to guarantee debt for upto 5 years in a bid to make cash available to banks. The banks can access these funds in exchange for putting up their own collateral, including debt not currently accepted by the ECB. And a state sponsored company will provide upto 40 billion euros in direct capital injections to banks that request it in exchange for equity stakes. In addition Netherlands made $220 billion euros available for capital injection into banks and other efforts and Spain will insure upto 100 billion euros in bank debt. Britain's step are the boldest ones yet and Britain's crisis is also likely to be one of the worst because of years of leveraging and overborrowing. But the German financial system is also under heavy strain and strong swift action was necessary to keep its banking system functioning. While other countries have setup the funds for capital injection like other European countries and the USA, Britain has also take the lead in taking majority stakes in two of its largest banks by Monday, October 13, with the departure of the executives who got these banks into such a mess. Gordon Brown has shown cosiderable leadership in this crisis and has been at the forefront in proposing and acting on workable solutions and swift response while Germany and the USA lagged behind. France's Sarkozy's contribution has been in the area of global coordination which he has argued and worked for and successfully achieved during the last 2 weeks....

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The home ownership rate for the U.S. in March 2012, is 65.4%, the same rate as in 1997 before the housing bubble, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The irony of this is that the housing bubble was inflated by politicians in Congress and mortgage lenders and purchasers of mortgage securities. Fannie Mae and Countryside worked together ostensibly to promote home ownership while pursuing profits. In the case of politicians they pursued goals of raising employment and growth without understanding the risks of artificially inflating home ownership, and without consideration for incomes of subprime borrowers. A less benign view of the interests and goals of politicians comes from reflections on the impact of political lobbying by Fannie Mae and other housing lenders in the U.S. Congress. The consequences in terms of foreclosures have been devastating for minorities as well as other middle class homeowners. It has also damaged the U.S. banking system, credit growth in the economy and prospects for recovery, which will take years to correct. The federal government is also saddled with large losses at Fannie Mae because of its quasi government agency role. That role led to inflation of the bubble. Most of the consequences will be borne by middle and lower income households in the U.S. The pass-through effects in a global economy affect Europe, and emerging market countries. ...

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Ariel Mckenzie is the daughter of  Boeing machinist who told his daughter to join Boeing as generations of Boeing workers in the Seattle area have done. Not anymore. Airel says she can't tell her 15 year old daughter that it can provide a good life today with wages falling behind soaring costs in the Seattle area. Note that the new contract states the 437 billion dollars of planes backlog Boeing has will not be made in non union plants in the South, most will be made in the Seattle area home to Boeing since it's founding. How does Boeing see this happening without a wage deal that workers are not happy with, when since 1997 the workers were being treated as a transaction and losing out. Boeing workers say the new contract has no bonus program and does not restore fixed benefit pensions which were replaced by 401 K's . The housing prices index in the Seattle area for last decade rose 128% and average price of a home in Seattle is $835,000. Average worker pay in 2024 is $75,000 and fallen far behind costs of living. It's all been downhill say veteran Boeing workers after the 1997 merger with McDonnell Douglas and the shift of corporate offices to Chicago. ...

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Community Aging in Place: Advancing Better Living for Elders, has been here since 2009, it is offered in about 65 places across 26 states. in the US. It helps people 60 and up stay in their homes such as Chikao Tsubaki 87 years shown here in the Washington Post. It brings a repair worker into the home to figure out how to make it safer for falls, in addition to an occupational therapist and a nurse. Center for Disease Control and Prevention says these falls contribute to deaths of 41,000 older Americans each year and cost Medicare $50 billion. Yet this report in The Washington Post shows Medicare does not cover it, and most private insurance plans do not grasp the idea of keeping people healthy in good settings, paying only when people fall, doing little to prevent the falls. Sarah Szanton is a nurse practitioner who worked with older Americans in home settings in West Baltimore and started CAPABLE in 2009, and is now Dean of the John Hopkins University School of Nursing. In it the client and care team work together to do problem solving and brainstorming. One study shows $20,000 in savings a year for Medicare continuing for 2 years person after one CAPABLE intervention. ...

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Most Senators of both parties have worked with Senator Marco Rubio of Florida on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and have a very positive view of Rubio. Shaheen of New Hampshire, Kaine of Virgina, Duckworth of Illinois, Cornyn of Texas, Cruz of Texas, all welcomed Rubio's appointment as Secretary of State. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois even thanked Rubio for changing House rules so she could bring her new born daughter to the Senate for votes- Rubio had told her "What's the big deal?" This may be the best and most important appointment DJT has made considering how down to earth, courteous yet frank spoken Rubio has been in his work in the Senate and in talking to the public. Rubio told Cornyn about his concerns for US outbound investment hurting America. “At a minimum we should have insight into whether American investment dollars" are used for funding "activities designed to undermine the United States of America." In 2020 Rubio had poointed out how easily "Luckin Coffee" had raised money in US capital markets- it later went bankrupt. In other situations national security was involved but not considered in the proper way for outbound investment for two decades on Wall Street.   ...

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The major part of 4.5 million deaths have been saved in the US just by the decline in smoking. About 4.5 times the losses during Covid pandemic 4.5 million American saved lives just from the efforts to cut smoking of the last 2 decades, and better cancer screening and treatments. Stopping cigarette advertising saved millions of lives. It means letting processed food companies advertise freely, the FDA not doing its job by letting  companies use Red Dyes in food, and lobbyists for plastics companies not stopping PFAS contamination are all costing American lives in the hundreds of thousands. Cancer rate for women keeps increasing as men cancer rate drops. Men took up smoking in large numbers and the decline in smoking had a bigger impact for men's cancer rate. The overall cancer rate has dropped by 34% since 1991 largely because of the decline in smoking. Men's cancer is now almost even with women in 2021 compared to men having 1.6 times the rate of women in 1992. For women increase in breast feeding and having children at a younger age reduced some kinds of breast cancers, as women had children later, and higher use of alcohol, physical inactivity, obesity added to increase in cancer rates. ...

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Tunku Varadarajan's interview with comedian Bill Maher. Democrats are now the upper class country club sort they were not during the FDR period with all the Silicon Valley and elite schools wanting to be a part of it, leaving the uncouth less literate to the formerly country club Republicans.  Maher cites Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat who says he has two little girls and is worried about transgender in sports, and yet was afraid to say it. That cost Democrats the election, said Moulton. On of these problems with the younger generation is that they have been indoctrinated into believing the worst, and this is true he says more about elite university graduates educated in factories that show America with emphasis on it's flaws. Maher says he gets critical messages just for talking to people who have different views. He dislikes this failure to reach out and talk to everybody- he calls this using a special term "people who hate me for who I won't hate." Maher says Democrats are giving him too much material these days. He calls himself an old fashioned liberals which is what some conservatives are today.     ...

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Apple to ship 25 million iphones made in India to the US for the June quarter 2025, meeting 50% of US demand. This will reduce iphone tariff from 20% for China to 10% for India. Apple will take $900 million in added costs for the tariffs for the June quarter and higher costs for future quarters. Apple made 24.8 billion on $95 billion in sales for the 1st quarter of 2025.  Apple will not get the $20 billion payment it gets from Google for making Google search the default search engine on Safari web browser. This is 25% of Apple profit. A federal judge declared this payment illegal on antitrust grounds. Another federal judge has referred Apple's App policies for criminal contempt investigation. Apple has been late to recognize the dangers of concentrating production in one country. Eight years after the 2016 election won by DJT Apple has not corrected this concentration in one country. Apple has focused on proift alone ignoring the potential for education for it's products such as the iPad. The public perception of Tech companies is that Tech is all about profit alone without regard for the Nation, education, investment in American communities and jobs, and other needs. ...

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People and parties of Kashmir on the attack on tourists at Pahalgam, Kashmir on April 22, 2025. The economy of Kashmir after the pandemic was recovering with a surge in tourism, new investment in agriculture, and the region benefitting from investments for Vikshit Bharat 2047.  Most of the Kashmir region remain closed in memory of tourists killed in the attack.  Kashmir region has a long history that has been lost in the coverage since 1947 as the colonial rule ended in the region with intermittent peace and conflict. For 7 centuries there was Hinduism from the Vedic period, Buddhism, followed by 7 centuries of Shiva religion till the 15th century when Islam entered the region for 3 centuries till the Sikhs and Sikhism a religion around deity Ram around 1819 and the British after 1850. The British set up a protectorate in Kashmir under the British Empire ruled by a Sikh king from 1850 to 1948. What this says is that after a unsettled period till 1948 to 2020, the region is likely to return to its history of tolerance for different people from South Asia, with one huge difference, the rapid modernization of the region in the 21st century replacing the feudal poverty and backwardness of a overtaxed and underdeveloped farmers communities. ...

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WSJ Editorial Board on 2025 DJT version of Eisenhower's 1954 Operation Wetback to curb foreign born employment. After the Biden years when foreign born employment surged the decrease by 773,000 shown by Trend Macro in foreign born employment for Jan- April 2025 in the WSJ, is an adjustment from the effects of Biden open border policies. This also prevents downward pressure on wages for American workers in construction, hospitality and retail- the story of the last 20 years. This is similar to what would have been seen in the Eisenhower years after Operation Wetback led by Gen. Swing and AG Brownell in 1954. Just as by 1956 the foreign born employment declined after years of uninhibited illegal migrant growth and open borders in the years of World War II. Note that Mexico's agribusiness owners were against open borders in that period and the Mexican government was also against open borders and the loss of labor from Mexico needed in agribusiness. Today the situation is somewhat different but in the sense of an adjustment it may be very similar. Just as in 1956 Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956 had a mandate for making this adjustment DJT has won a mandate for a similar adjustment in 2024. ...

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A former U.S. Treasury Secretary reflects on the backlash against free trade in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and calls for a shift towards putting more emphasis on how trade affects individual workers who are laid off or work part time. In the light of tax evasion following the Panama Papers Scandal he says the time has come for the emphasis to shift in trade policy and capital movements to tax havens, so that ordinary workers do not feel their interests are being ignored as elites frame policies for elites. He says the period when it was enough to defend global integration has been exhausted, and this is unlikely to succeed without a nation like the U.S. supporting it and global institutions. A new approach is needed, and this means shifting from international trade agreements to international harmonization agreements, where labor rights, environmental protection move to the top of the list, and enabling foreign producers becomes secondary. The whole overall emphasis must shift, says Summers, to creating hope and opportunity for middle class parents that their children can live better lives....

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Only 5.8 billion of the $39 billion in the stimulus package of $787 billion assigned to the Department of Energy for creating jobs in the field of "green" energy has been allocated as of June 19th. THe Department of Energy is structurally still making the shift o its new role as funder of green energy projects for energyefficiency and green fuels. It was understaffed as an agency with abudget of $26 billion. With the additional $39 billion a lot has to catch up for it to meet its new role. Besides awarding new contracts and grants the Department of Energy has pre-existing loan guarantee and direct loan programmes for energy projects that are boosted by stimulus money. And as this was moving very slowly, taking 3 months just to appoint an analyst to to look at an application, the staff for this is being boosted from 35 to 95. Because of the shortage of people the Department has asked Universities and trade associations for help for volunteer experts to look at loan applications. About 2000 experts have offered their help....

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The cash for clunkers program in turning in excellent results bothy in terms of promoting sales and in terms of the mileage improvement for the new cars put on the road. For Motor saw sales up 2.4% over same month 2008 and Hyundai 11% increase. In the light of this and the speed with wihich the initial $1 billion was used up and the $2 billion that was aded by Congress, and the success of the program in Europe, its hard to understand so little money has been allocated to this program as a part of stimulus spending. Senators Feinstein, Collins and Schumer are encouraged by the customer reaction to choose higher mileage vehicles. According to the Transportation Department, the average fuel efficiency of trade ins was 15.8 mpg, and the average fuel efficiency of vehicles traded in 25.4 mpg. Equally significant was that 83% of the trade-ins were trucks and 60% of new purchases were cars. The Ford Focus was the top selling vehicle. Dealers estimate they sold 250,000 cars with the rebate money....

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Conventional monetary policy is ineffective in a liquidity trap. At that point short term interest rates are at zero, and conventional monetary policy is ineffective at this zero bound. Unconventional policies such as buying long term Treasury bonds by the Federal Reserve may be adopted, but their effectiveness has not been proven. This is something the Fed is attempting to do in the U.S. after the 2008 financial crisis. This was tried in Japan in a deflationary situation and the results did not show conclusively that it works, because Japan remained at a borderline deflationary situation for years while this policy was implemented by the Bank of Japan. The $600 billion bond buying program of the U.S. Fed in late 2010, known as QE II, was implemented to reduce the chance of deflation taking hold and to stimulate growth. Krugman and others argue for the need of fiscal policy and government spending to step in to support the unconventional monetary policy. This becomes more difficult to do with the increasing budget deficit the U.S. is facing in 2011....

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The process leading to the credit rating downgrade for the U.S., including S&P's $2 trillion error in estimating the total U.S. deficit in the next ten years, is causing both Republicans and Democrats to agree on the need for greater public scrutiny of the agencies. Congressmen from both parties in Congress now agree that ratings firms need to play a smaller role in the financial system than they have in the past. It now appears certain that there is no chance that Congress will allow a change in the Dodd-Frank legislation provision that requires regulators to take out references to ratings from their rules. Banking trade groups had been pushing for a change in the provision. Karen Petrou of advisory firm Federal Financial Analytics says this event will also make U.S. regulators look for ways in which changes can be made to international financial agreements that require credit ratings. This includes the capital and liquidity requirements laid out by the Basel Committee. The credit ratings firms say they support efforts to decrease reliance on their ratings in the rules....

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Israel's ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, describes Iran's efforts to make weapons grade nuclear material, escalating the enrichment process from 3.5% to 20%. He says Iran now has 225 pounds of 20% uranium and 11,000 pounds of 3.5%, enough for 5 nuclear bombs, and points out that 20% uranium can be enhanced to weapons grade in weeks. During the initial negotiations the P5+1 nations demanded suspension of enrichment acitivites at a time when the enrichment process was at 3.5%, and transfer of stockpiles abroad. As negotiations dragged on Iran escalated to 20% enrichment. current demands of the P5+1 are for cessation of 20% enrichment and removal of the 20% stockpile, and closing the facility at Qom, as a first step. This has been rejected by Iran. In this op-ed Oren says Israel alerted the world about the Iranian nuclear program 20 years ago, and as this has continued to what it is today, Israel's view is that much of that time was wasted and the window for international efforts to cease and dismantle Iran's nuclear program is almost shut. ...

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The failure of the MF Global Board of Directors to question the huge bets on European sovereign bonds taken by Jon Corzine. This board had members with sophisticated knowledge of financial markets. Then why did it act passively, asks Davidoff. Boards have some of the same blinkers that the CEO has, and may have been led to believe that this was a good course of action. Failure of boards of directors in recent times include a long list- Lehman Brothers, GM, H-P, Toyota, most recently Olympus, and others. In some cases as with Corzine and the head of Lehman, one sees a headstrong executive with a history of success, in others as at GM and Toyota the Board is stacked with members selected by or favorable to voting with the CEO. And at H-P or Olympus, an inside group that runs things the way they see fit. Most boards of this type are highly insulated from outside opinion, and highly confirmed in the correctness of their own opinion even when the situation has dangerously deteriorated.

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The European bank stress tests could trigger the restructuring of the troubled landesbank sector in Germany say German experts. The landesbanks do about 25% of the lending in Germany and are in severe financial stress. The landesbanks suffered hundreds of billions of losses in the US subprime mortgage securities. There has been no serious reform of the landesbanks. Even though the management of one of the landesbanks Bayerische Landesbank in Munich was under criminal investigation- the management made bad decisions that led to the losses in bad investments totalling 25% of the Bavarian state's yearly budget. A similiar problem is unfolding in Spain where the Spanish government has initiated action for the troubled cajas bank sector, the regional savings banks in Spain. In Spain the government and opposition came together to reach an agreemet to consolidate the cajas from 45 to about 20 and set aside a fund of 99 billion euros for this task. In Germany the landesbanks are controlled by German states and regional savings banks, so the German government has no direct control over this failing banking sector....

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Unemployment in Germay has dropped from 12% 5 years ago to 7% in 2010. The largest union IG Metall (with 3.4 million members) and other worker unions showed wage restraint. IG Metall agreed to keep wages the same in 2010 except for a one time payment of 320 euros. This empasis on job preservation may change as wages have been restrained since reforms in 2005. At that time unemployment benefits were cut and people with less skills were induced to take up lower paying jobs. German recovery is also helped by the short week Kurzarbeit program with companies retaining workers, the government paying upto 67% of the wages lost from the shorter week and workers agreeing to a reduction in wages. Companies like BMW are hiring and BMW has 1000 jobs to fill in its R&D, purchasing and sales. And Germany has benefited in sales from stimulus in China and the growing demand for automobiles and equipment from China, a situation that auto executives believe may not last.

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A traffic jam on Highway 110, leading from the border with Inner Mongolia to Beijing for 60 miles, is now passing 10 days, with traffic inching along at 3 miles per hour. With roadwork on a highway from Beijing to Tibet starting August 13, sections of a major road which circles Beijing have been closed. Chinese bought 13.6 million vehicles in 2009, compared to 9.4 million in 2008. China is building roads, but cannot keep up with this surge in automobile use, especially in Beijing. A study by IBM puts China at the top for "commuter pain," the pain suffered by drivers as they stay stuck on roads. In fact China's media reported that average driving speeds for Beijing could go as low as 9 miles per hour, if car sales in Beijing keep growing at the rate of 2000 new cars per day. According to the Beijing Transportation Research Center, Beijing will have 7 million vehicles by 2015. Beijing was once known for bicycles in the Mao era, and this could be the pace that traffic moves says the Center....

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The failure of the Obama administration to negotiate a trade treaty with South Korea during the G-20 talks in Seoul. The lack of efforts to lay the groundwork for such a treaty in the last 2 years. The Journal is critical of Mr. Obama's embrace of Federal Reserve policies to buy $600 billon of Treasury securities, which drew criticism from all sides during the G-20 talks. Failure of Mr. Geithner and Mr. Obama to draw attention to China's sterilization of capital inflows and recycling them into US government debt, instead of allowing capital to flow in and out more freely. Overfocus on the call for limiting each nation's trade surplus to 4% of GDP, when attention could have been drawn to a number of serious concerns about China's policies. Valuable political energy lost in defending the Fed's move and calling for the 4% of GDP limit to surpluses. Result is a loss of American leadership for the first time at a summit conference of world leaders.

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Alan Blinder, former Fed senior official, makes a spirited defense of the Federal Reserve's $600 billion quantitative easing move in November 2010. He says at the most this would lead to 1% to 3% inflation, and not the inflation critics are pointing to that would hurt the US. He is critical of the mercantilist countries, Germany and its Finance Minister Schauble, for calling this currency manipulation. He finds it incomprehensible that aides to Russsian Prime Minister Putin have asked the Fed to consult with Russia before taking such action. His preferred move would have been to purchase private securities and reduce the rate the Fed pays on reserves to negative. This he says would blast reserves out of banks into more productive uses. Yet he sees the Fed's move as better than doing nothing. He says that if buying Treasury's is a weak tool, a view he shares, then this should not be very inflationary. See his earlier op-ed piece in the WSJ when the Fed announced its action.

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Samuelson discusses the differences between the Bureau of Labor Statistics figures for June 2014 using the Payroll Survey and the Household Survey, each telling a different story. According to the Payroll Survey 288,000 jobs were added. The Payroll Survey is a monthly survey of 554,000 business locations, with firms asked to give the number of people on payrolls, pay and occupations. The Household Survey of the BLS asks households in monthly interviews with 60,000 Americans whether they have a job, is it part time or full time, are they looking for full time work, or jobless and for how long. The Household Survey showed June 2014 job increase at 407,000, using an estimate of 1,115,000 increase in part-time jobs and a loss of 708,000 full time jobs. Of the two the payroll survey is larger and considered by economists to be more representative. Other statistics show the parttime workers at about 3 million higher than 2007 before the 2008 financial crisis, suggesting the shift to part time jobs has been one negative result of the crisis....

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Krugman points to the connection between the failure to achieve debt reduction through debt forgiveness and the sluggish economic growth in the eurozone and U.S., five years after the global banking and financial crisis of 2009 and four years after the beginning of the eurozone debt crisis in 2010. In the U.S. debt reduction for homeowners was delayed with a wave of foreclosures, and in Europe austerity budgets were the norm as Germany pushed hard for austerity policies. In 2014 small relaxation of austerity to give relief to voters took place in Greece, France, Italy and Spain, with austerity budgets still in place. Growth also slowed in Germany to slight contraction in the third quarter and no growth in the fourth quarter of 2014. This is leading to the formulation of new policy to address growth challenges in the eurozone. Debt to GDP is growing in eurozone countries and Britain because of lack of growth, even though spending cuts have been made, showing the need for rethinking policy. ...