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The US Department of Agriclture reported that the number of Americans who lacked consistent access to adequate food jumped to 49 million in 2008. This was an increase of 13 million. Researchers track "food insecurity." This figure is at 2008 rate of unemplooyment. With 2009's unemployment exceeding 10%, things are much worse going into 2010 when jobless rates will be even higher. The way this breaks down is that one third of these Americans in struggling households have "very low food security," which means that they may skip meals, cut portions at some point during the year. The other two thirds eat cheaper foods, relying on food stamps, and visit food pantries and soup kitchens. The scary part is that 506,000 children faced "very low food security" in 2008 compared to 233,000 in 2007. See the story link to young unemployed immigrants here from Mexico who are getting money from parents in Mexico to put fod on the table.

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This Times report looks at the management style of Jeff Bezos who started Amazon as a online store selling books and the extraordinary growth of the company. Bezos is stepping down from the day to day role of CEO to focus on new growth opportunities. His role as CEO will be taken by the head of the cloud computing business, Andy Jassy. He joined in 1997. Amazon was started in 1994.  Amazon's growth comes from carefully focussing on specific growth fields, first retail, then cloud computing, and changing the way business is run with innovative ways of conducting business. One click and Prime in retail, Kindle e reader in books, and massive investments in logistics, warehousing, cloud computing to run its business efficiently. During the pandemic criticism of low wages for warehouse workers was met with an increase in wages to $15 an hour.  Management style discourages meetings. Most meetings are held in the morning, and after 10 am. The person presenting is asked to hand out a six page memo which is read in silence before the meeting. The idea is that writing it out helps make the ideas clear. Decisions are made in this way. Employees are asked to think in innovative ways to run the business. Thrift is practiced as part of the Bezos way. Bezos is relatively young, only 57 years. Bezos was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1964 when his mother was in high school. His mother married a Cuban immigrant, Miguel Bezos 4 years later and the boy took the name Bezos. He spent much time at his grandparents ranch in South Texas working on the farm, and went to school at Princeton University, graduating in 1987. In 1993 he married Mackenzie Tuttle, a novelist, then started an online bookstore called Amazon from Seattle. Before this he worked at a telecom company and at a hedge fund, which helped him finance his new online bookstore. Bezos turned Amazon into a retail store selling a wide variety of merchandise, an built up a strong warehousing and delivery network. ...

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Rockwell Collins CEO, Clay Jones, talks to the Journal's David Kesmodel, about Rockwell's strategy as the U.S. Defense Department faces large cutbacks. Rockwell supplies the cockpit electronics on military aircraft. With the growth in sales of Boeing's 787 Dreamliner and Airbus's jumbo jet, Jones is shifting resources, capital investments and engineers to the commercial aircraft business. He tells Kesmodel that his No.1 problem is to position Rockwell in the international area to benefit from sales to India, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Turkey, South Korea, Australia, countries which he says will have to build their own aircraft capabilities as the U.S. pulls back from overseas bases. He sees international sales going up from 33% to 40%. Only small acquisitions are planned, of between $50-100 million, as Rockwell prefers organic growth.

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Tesla is building its new factory in Texas, and Elon Musk is movin to Austin, Texas. There is a sense that Silicon Valley is out of touch with American principles and societal needs, says CEO Alex Karp of Palantir Technologies that moved from the Bay area to Denver, Colorado. Mr. Musk also sees that the San Francisco area "has too much influence in the world."  Worse it has distorted the priorities for capital investment in America by focussing too much on needs of the San Francisco region, and not of the nation. During the last 2 decades America's investment in its people, on education, healthcare and infrastructure has declined.

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King Charles brings Americans together on his 4 Day trip to the US, April 2026

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China's consumer price index went up by 2.1% in March 2013, slower inflation than the 3.2% for February 2013. Food prices are growing at a slower rate, increasing by 2.7% in March over the prior year month, compared to a 6% increase over the prior year month in February.

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How Morgan Stanley's CEO, James Gorman, persuaded Moody's Investors Service to cut its credit ratings by only two notches instead of the three notches that was planned. Gorman showed the changes he is making at the bank to reduce risks including its shift from proprietary trading to its wealth management business.

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Oil prices went up by 16.8% in the 1st quarter 2011. The increase in oil prices for all of 2010 was 15.1% With the decline in inventories and and fears of a disruption in oil supplies, oil price has become a significant concern at the end of the 1st quarter 2011.

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Indian prime minister Modi tells RE Invest 2020, that India has almost tripled renewable energy production including solar and wind energy in 6 years, and is now the 4th largest renewable energy producer in the world. India is also now the fastest growing renewable energy producer in the world. He says India made investments in renewable energy early even when it was not the most cost effective source of energy. Through its scale and new technology, manufacturing advances, India is now in a position to show that renewable energy is sound economics. Since 2017 renewables exceed coal as a source of energy, making up 36% of energy production today.

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The incredible story of Beate Gordon of Mills College, California. As a 22 year old she joined the staff of General MacArthur in Tokyo. She was assigned the task of writing the section on women's rights in one week in 1946. She searched libraries in Tokyo for constitutions of other countries. Mills had lived in Japan for 10 years with her parents, and knew the situation for women in Japan, with the lack of basic rights. She took up the task as the only woman on the constitutional committee.

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J.C. Penney sales decreased by 23% to $3.02 billion in the quarter ending July 28, 2012. Internet sales declined by 33%. New CEO Ron Johnson's strategies have failed to produce results so far.

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The NYT's Jonathan Kandell offers an indepth look at former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who succeeded SPD leader Willy Brandt. Schmidt was from a working class neigborhood in Hamburg. Schmidt fought in the Germany army on the eastern front and the western front. He was a prisoner of war in a British camp in 1945. From 1946 to 1949 he studied politics and economics at the University of Hamburg. Both his father and wife were schoolteachers. He joined the SPD party during this period and worked for the Hamburg city government in various positions before being elected to the Bundestag, the German parliament in 1953. He returned to city government and supervised the response to a flood from the overflowing Elbe river in 1961 with extraordinary vigor. When Brandt was elected chancellor in the Social Democrat government in 1969, Schmidt was made defense minister, making improved relations with the Soviet Union and East Germany (German Democratic Republic or GDR) a priority, at the same time supporting the stationing of American nuclear missiles in Germany. In 1972 Schmidt became finance minister, and in 1974 he succeeded Brandt as chancellor. Schmidt and Giscard D'Estaing, the French president helped setup the European Council, and made the early efforts that led to the common Euro currency of the European Union, Schmidt's main achievement. By 1982 the Social Democrats party was divided following Schmidt's support for stationing nuclear missiles in Germany, and a parliamentary vote led to the fall of the Schmidt government. Kandell describes Schmidt as overconfident, not willing to listen to criticism. Some of Schmidt's popularity in Germany he attributes to Schmidt's wife Loki, a botanist with a likable personality. Later assessments of Schmidt in the media make references to Schmidt's frequent cigarette smoking right up to the end....

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Mr. Chatzis is being forced to choose between paying a $372 real estate tax bill to keep his lights on, and paying for his wife's medicines on a $720 a month pension. Under new laws Greece now incorporates new property tax bills in the electricity bills ordinary Greeks receive. He says he cannot pay this. This was added as part of conditions agreed to by Greece for aid from the EU. Ordinary Greeks have paid real estate taxes in the past when they bought or sold property, and paid much lower taxes yearly to municipalities- about $133 yearly for Mr. Chatzis. The new tax means he will have to pay an additional $372 for the next two years. The new tax is added to electricity bills from the government owned electricity company to ensure payment. The tax makes no exceptions for the elderly or the unemployed. It is based on square footage, age of the building, and average value of the neighborhood, and has no relation to income. The feeling in Athens is that of growing resentment. Union workers have occupied the electric company's billing center, and the power company is holding off on electricity cutoff notices till the government decides. ...

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The Venezuelan government provides gasoline to people in the country at a few cents a gallon- almost free. Even Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Kuwait which have way better financial balances and dollar reserves do not provide gasoline at such prices. The result is chronic shortages of basic parts and other imports because the government does not have enough dollar reserves for imports. Venezuela devalued its currency by 32% recently, making imports more expensive and pushing inflation up even higher to 28%. The problems it creates are excessive and wasteful use of gasoline, and free gasoline that then provides consumers money to pay for surging cost of everyday imported products. Nullifying any real benefits when shortages, inflation, dilapidated infrastructure and lack of development and jobs, are taken into account. The lack of capital to invest in the oil industry has led to declining production making the situation unsustainable. Yet neither party of Maduro or Capriles in the upcoming April 14, 2013 election, following the death of Chavez, supports ending this subsidy. Efforts to end the subsidy by president Carlos Andres Perez in 1986 led to riots and about hundred deaths in police response, and a coup by Chavez, then a military officer, a few years later. Under Chavez the subsidy was extended to the level at which gasoline is about 4 cents a gallon. Compare this with the price in neighboring Colombia at $4.72 a gallon, and Brazil at $5.40 per gallon. Consumption per capita in Venezuela is excessively high, about seven times per capita than neighboring Columbia. The investment in infrastucture is hobbled by lack of capital, the capital Caracas dilapidated, and no major infrastructure projects taken up by the government. It costs Venezuela 8.6% of GDP or $27 billion to pay for the excessively high subsidy, compared to 3.2% of GDP going to healthcare spending and 5.1% for education. In comparison Indonesia, another developing country, uses 2.5% of GDP or 21 billion for its subsidy for a population of over 200 million. It is not that a fuel subsidy is provided, but the entitlement to free gasoline that makes Venezuela the lone exception. There is a reason why prices in Brazil and China, large developing countries, price gasoline to motorists at over $4 a gallon- to discourage excessive and wasteful use, and release scarce capital for infrastructure development, building dollar reserves for imports of machinery and equipment, and other uses in industrializing economies. Compare Venezuela with Bolivia under the socialist government of Evo Morales. In 2010 Bolivia increased its price of gasoline by 80%. The price in 2013 is about $2.00 per gallon. Morales cushioned the increase by increasing salaries in the health and education sectors, armed forces and police by 20%, and increasing prices of locally produced wheat, corn and rice by 10%. Morales said he did this to reduce state subsidies of $380 million for $660 million in gasoline imports, of which $150 million was siphoned off by smuggling gasoline to neigboring countries. Incentives were provided to oil companies to produce gasoline in Bolivia to reduce imports. ...

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For decades Gulf Coast refineries efficiently process heavy crudes like Venezuelan oil or Canadian oil sands oil. US oil is a lighter crude. This is why the heavier crude from Venezuela can now be taken for processing to Gulf Coast refineries in the US. This should lower gas prices in the US further.