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Nour Malas and Joe Parkinson report from the town of Makhmour, retaken by Kurdish Peshmerga forces following airstrikes on ISIS militant positions. The crisis situation 20 miles from Erbil, capital of the Iraqi Kurdistan region and the coordination between Iranian advisors, U.S. military advisors, and the Peshmerga to push back the ISIS. Peshmerga say young Sunnis in the town joined the ISIS in droves, something never seen before. It also reveals the situation after the failure of the Maliki administration to build a state with support from all parts of the Iraqi population- Shiite, Sunni, Kurds and tribes- leading to the radical alienation of Sunnis. The late awakening of Iran, the U.S., and moderate Iraqis both Sunni and Shiite, to the dangers of the Maliki policies. The unraveling of the decade of Iraq rebuilding by the U.S. in such rapid manner leads to the stepping down of Maliki and beginning of a new non-sectarian approach and policies. The vacillating in the Obama adminstration's policies towards Syria and Iraq leads to a lack of direction in the region. ...

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It makes for good political rhetoric, but in reality the flow of money goes both ways. A lot of investments are made by American companies overseas. This time the flow of oil money because of high oil prices, from the USA and Europe to the Middle East is being recycled back to the USA in the form of investments in the US through small equity stakes in companies and more so through purchases of capital equipment and services to build Saudi infrastructure projects. The $500 billion investment plan over several years in Saudi Arabia is to build everything from new cities, aluminium plants, electricity generation plants and chemicals and plastics plants. The fears and rhetoric are overblown, as the USA also invests overseas with holdings according to the Treasury department of $6 trillion of foreign stock and debt. The acceleration of foreign investment in the US is to be seen in the numbers, as the dollar gets weaker, and its more advantageous for Canadians and Euuropeans to invest here. Last year $414 billion of foreign investors money went into buying stakes in American companies and building factories and purchasing stock, according to Thomson Financial. Thats up 90% from 2006 and represented one fourth of all announced deals. This year in just 2 weeks foreign investors poured $22.6 billion in just the first 2 weeks of January, and that represents one half of all deals. Shows how quickly the picture is changing. One way of looking at it is that Americans buy a lot of foreign goods and the money Americans use to pay for a lot of imports is now being returned to the USA in the form of foreign investments. Note that foreign investment is desirable because it brings new ideas and technology and new management methods to the host country from other countries. These foreign investors in many cases are able to make these investments overseas because they are good at what they do, having them in the host country benefits the host country and shakes up competition in the particular industry in the host country that is receiving the investment. This is why economies once relatively unfavorable to foreign investors like Japan and S. Korea are now passionately seeking foreign investment to make their economies thrive through the exchange and inflow of new ideas and ways of doing things. The same can be and is true for the USA. The other aspect is that most of the investment is still from countries like Canada, Germany, Japan, S. Korea which are big free trade partners of the USA. Manufacturing investment is heavily skewed to European and Japanese companies. Foreign multinational investment (Sony, Toyota etc) grew to $43.3 billion in 2007 from $39.2 billion in 2006 according to OCO Monitor, and will accelerate significantly as companies like VW and other German companies find it cheaper to build in the USA and shift more manufacturing here. To get an idea why the rhetoric is overblown Canada spent the most in buying American companies, $65 billion in 2007, according to Thomson Financial. Russia spent $572 million and India $3.3 billion. How will this improve the chances of the USA making it out of this recession? Five million American work for foreign companies in the USA. Of these one third are manufacturing jobs. These jobs pay about 30% more than jobs in American owned companies. Figures from Treasury Department. There will be more of these jobs as companies like VW build plants here. Roubini Economics estimates that an infusion of about $300-400 billion is needed for the USA to overcome the effects of the current mortgage and credit crisis. $414 billion was invested in the USA by foreign investors according to Thomson Financial in 2007, going up from something like $200 billion in 2006. If this pace continues becasue of some of the same underlying reasons as the weaker dollar, stronger economies overseas, then $200 billion additional investments this year would add that much to a stimulus package of $150 billion by one estimate, to provide a boost of somewhere around $350 billion. In the range of the needed boost. Companies like IBM and GE which have significant investments in India and China and investments in software or infrastructure industries that are growing rapidly or Caterpillar with growth in construction overseas, may keep growing through this downturn. This recession may hit selectively and differently, not be a complete hit to the USA economy, and could prevent it from going beyond 2009 with recovery in 2010. ...

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Adjusted for the 35,000 workers on strike at Verizon counted as unemployed, the 38,000 jobs figure in the government report is still considered quite low. Especially striking even as unemployment drops for May from 5.0% to 4.7% is that the drop is attributed to people dropping out of the work force. The average monthly gain for the March through May is 116,000 jobs well short of the 240,000 jobs added on average in 2014-2015. Average hourly earnings were up 0.2% in May and up 2.5% for the year. A widely accepted measure of unemployment that includes workers too discouraged to look for work or working part time because of a lack of full time job was at 9.7%. The labor force participation rate was at 62.6%.

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Experts in the U.S. say the U.S. made a mistake in not supporting the idea of a new financial institution to meet the urgent needs of development and infrastructure financing of Asia's developing countries. India, Australia, S. Korea, Britain, Germany, France and Italy are joining as founding members in 2015. China has offered leadership in providing resources for the new bank. Jane Perlez says China is looking for the best talent worldwide to help write the charter for the bank and to run it. It is a project pushed forward by China's president Jinping, and was discussed at the 2013 G-20 meeeting in Moscow as a critical part of the agenda. Laurence Brahm, who supported Chinese premier Zhu Rongji in 2001 for entry into the WTO, says it is natural for China to look for ways to use its extra capacity in steel, concrete and pipes to build projects in other parts of Asia, which would mutually benefit China and the region. Paul Haenle of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center in Beijing, says the U.S. lack of support is shortsighted, as the existing U.S. sponsored institutions World Bank and the Asian Development Bank are sorely lacking the resources to deal with the huge infrastructure challenges in Asia. China's Finance Ministry is looking for the best talent worldwide to write the charter and run the bank. Natalie Lichtenstein, a lawyer with 30 years experience working at the World Bank will write the bank's founding charter. ...

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Russia is very close to the US in Alaska which was given to the US in 1867 for $7.2 million by Russia. Diomede islands 2 miles apart separate US and Russia, Bering Strait 57 miles apart separate US and Russia. The first time a Russian president set foot in Alaska is 2025 with president Putin landing there to meet the US president on August 14, 2025. Putin says he is landing there to meet DJT for talks with mutual respect.

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US showed strong job gains of 528,000 in July 2022 showing that labor market is strong.

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June's employment numbers in the U.S. from the Labor Department show only 80,000 jobs were added. Job creation dropped in the second quarter to about 75,000 a month from the average of 226,000 in the first quarter 2012. Part of the reason for the higher figures in the first quarter was unseasonably warm weather during that period. Manufacturing added fewer jobs in June, down to 11,000. Healthcare added 13,000 jobs. Of 12.7 million people unemployed, the number of people unemployed for more than 6 months is 42% of the total or 5.4 million.

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Fiat announced that it will buy all the U.S. government's shares in Chrysler. This comes a few days after Fiat payed back $1.3 billion to buy an additional 16% of Chrysler, increasing ownership to 46%. Fiat will have a 52% ownership stake in Chrysler after the purchase. By the end of the year Fiat says it expects to own 57% of Chrysler. Under the loan agreement Fiat automatically gets 5% of Chrysler if it begins producing a car rated at 40 miles per gallon. Chrysler earned $116 million in the first quarter of 2011.

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Demand from China and the Middle East alone will increase by about 2 million barrels a day this year, with another 2 million barrels a day increase from other growing economies, the U.S., Europe and Japan not changing much. This will drive prices according to the International Energy Agency. Supply is not growing enough, consider Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, Mexico, which have stagnant production levels and increasing demand. Price volatility has been a feature of oil markets with so much uncertainty, including uncertainty of non-OPEC production so that OPEC alone cannot determine oil price levels. Economic crises in the the US and Europe and prospects of a recession have so far not affected oil prices. If demand continues to grow in places like India, China and the Middle East, then prices will continue to remain high.

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The 1953 coup that toppled the elected Mossadegh government was supported and attributed to planning by the CIA. During a cold war with the Soviet Union countries in the middle were considered expendable by either side. Added to this was the interest of big oil companies similiar to the Anglo-French response in the Suez Canal crisis of 1956. This still rankles with Iranians. In response to the election of President Obama and his offer for an open discussion the Iranian President Ahmedinejad calls for an apology for that coup and the toppling of an elected government. This led to replacing it with the Shah's monarchy which was overthrown in 1979 after 26 years.