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Unemployment is over 25% on Chicago's South Side black neighborhoods. Conditions have deteriorated with the higher unemployment since the economic crisis. Residents see little improvement since the days of Obama as a community activist in this part of the city.

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President George Bush said in 2005, that if someone wanted to get a glimpse of how he thinks on foreign policy, he should read Nathan Sharansky's book "The Case for Democracy." Sharansky was an aide to soviet physicist and human rights advocate Andrei Sakharov. Here he is interviewed by David Feith of the Wall Street Journal. His outspoken activism in favor of the right of Soviet Jews to emigrate got him 9 years in the Soviet Gulag. He was released from prison in 1986, with the strong support of President Reagan. He emigrated to Israel and served in ministerial posts and in the Israeli parliament. Sharansky says the recent protests in Egypt prove his fundamental points. That there are limits to how much you can control people through the use of fear, and that all people, regardless of religion and culture, desire and want freedom. This is a very human message, it showed its power when the Berlin Wall fell, and it is true today in the Arab world. He says the fear that this endangers the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty is not well founded. Over the last 30 years the border with Syria has been quiet, because it is really Israeli deterrance that is responsible for this and the quiet border with Egypt. He adds there is no justification for Mubarak remaining, as it only creates hostility in the Arab world against the US and Israel. And he says that Mubarak was no friend of the Jewish people, because even as he made peace with Israel, he continued to let anti-Semitism thrive and used Jews as the enemy to enhance his control. Sharansky says Gaza and Hamas control after the election was an unusual situation because of the corruption of the people around Arafat, so that even Christian villages supported Hamas. And he says the longer a dictatorship is in place the worse the situation becomes in creating more hostility to all those who support the dictatorship, including the US and Israel. For Sharansky, the Obama adminstration's response to the Iranian protests after what is seen as a stolen election in Iran, were one of the greatest betrayals of freedom in modern history. To prevent a one time, one person, one vote, Sharansky says the democratic institutions have to take root and this will take more than 8 months, so guarantees need to be put in place that this is not allowed to happen. Safeguards put in place to ensure that whoever is elected cannot survive if democratic institutions and reforms and democracy building does not occur. Dissidents like Mr Ibrahim and others should enjoy the ability to build trade unions and women's organizations. Sharansky says this is a real chance, a chance for the US and the free world to become a partner in change. In change that will help Egypt pass the town square test. Can people freely protest and express their grievances in the town square. And move from this fundamental change to establishing democratic processes and institutions. ...

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A wonderful mindset and and a philosophy of life and the game from Spanish coach Luis de la Fuente. Sid Lowe of The Guardian's interview with Luis de la Fuente, the coach from humble beginnings who has taken the Spanish team to the Nations League title. Spain defends its title this season. La Fuente has watched the young Spanish players come up through the junior leagues, Rodri, Carvajal, Yamal and Olmo, long before anyone heard of them. He is a former full back for Athletic and Sevilla with little coaching experience mostly in 11 third tier games.  Here is what he thinks of coaching today- "Obnoxious, rude, disrespectful, arrogant … it seems like the only way they take you into consideration is this thing they call ‘charisma’,” he says. “I don’t know what that is but if you’re those things they say: ‘He’s got charisma!’ Well, then, I don’t want charisma. We’ve shown that being normal can work, too. You don’t have to be winding people up all day.” Of his young players Olmo, Rodri, Carvajal, Yamal, Nico, Fabian, he says "it is the symbol of a new Spain that strengthens society, culture, and it is the future." Of the style of coaching it is to be simple- "A structure put in place in the late 90s by Iñaki Sáez, and a culture that brought success. “It is not chance but a process going back many years, based around an idea, controlled." “But we’re very simplistic. That phrase people think was invented recently – game by game – is as old as walking forwards and we went one obstacle at a time, in order. We have to take the drama out of the concepts win and lose; sometimes it’s destiny’s whim. But our conviction was we were there to win, to reach our limits.   ...

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This editorial in the WSJ tells readers not to confuse the spirit of a pro-growth initiative in the CEO statement of Oct. 2012 with a simple tax increase. The CEO's are doing this as a part of a larger effort for a strong recovery in the U.S. economy and not simply to increase taxes. For the first time CEO's are backing tax increases to break the influence of what the Journal calls Republican deadenders who flatly oppose any tax increases period leading to unacceptable deadlock and uncertainty that prevents business from investing and hiring. This is part of a broader set of tax reforms to lower rates overall, reduce tax expenditures and support the Simpson-Bowles commission recommendations framework to reduce the deficit.

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Krugman cites Apple as the largest company in the U.S. in terms of its valuation but having only 43,000 employees in the U.S. He asks the question- why does Apple get most of its manufacturing done in China? Apple indirectly employs about 700,000 people at its suppliers, with most of them in China. Companies contribute to a country's economy by creating successful clusters of research, innovation and manufacturing. In Apple's case, to the great detriment of the U.S. economy, the manufacturing part is being done entirely overseas. If cost is the only factor for this, then the question remains how German manufacturing has managed to surivive and grow with wages that are higher than in the U.S.

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Mario Monti, the new prime minister of Italy, is taking on one of Italy's toughest problems, a pervasive culture of tax evasion. The loss to the economy is not measured ony in terms of the loss of money to the Treasury, which one estimate puts at $340 billion a year. This burdens companies and the manufacturing sector with higher taxes and reduces investment in new plants, research and development, capital equipment, which would increase jobs. By encouraging this culture of tax evasion Berlusconi undercut and jeopardized his own plans to bring new economic growth to Italy. Berlusconi prevented allegations of false accounting against his companies by passing a law through parliament that made reduced penalties for false accounting. In Italy one saying goes that "only fools pay." In a country of 60 millon people only 394,000 people earn an income of more than $135,000 a year. "Evasion totale," referred to in newspapers in Italy is about total evasion by some owners of large property. One effort in parliament is to introduce legislation that would require the use of debit or credit cards, electronic transfer or other similiar methods of payment for amounts above a certain amount- with one of the amounts proposed being 100 euros. A recent poll by Demopolis showed that 73% of Italians polled want to see strong action to prevent tax evasion. This is also a strong reason why Monti, Draghi at the ECB, Bundesbank officials at Germany's central bank, and German chancellor Merkel, do not see the ECB's large scale buying of eurobonds by essentially printing money as a solution to eurozone debt problems- it puts off taking the neccessary and essential steps for reviving eurozone economies....

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Feldstein, adviser to the Romney campaign, refutes the assertion based on computer models that the Romney Tax Plan of a 20% across the board cut in taxes cannot be paid for by limiting the deductions of high income tax earners. His own analysis based on IRS data, shows taxpayers with adjusted gross incomes of over $100,000 made itemized deductions of $636 billion in 2009. By taxing these deductions at a 30% marginal rate, additional revenue of $191 billion can be raised to pay for the Romney Tax Plan's static revenue loss of $181 billion. A smaller revenue loss of $148 billion is predicted based on increased incomes and taxes from the behavioural effects of lower taxes on earners. He says this was the thinking behind the Reagan tax cuts of 1986 and the Simpson-Bowles commission plan that would generate economic growth by reforming the tax system's distortions.

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The president of the Pew Research Center, Andrew Kohut, says Romney was an especially weak candidate for Republicans and this has to be taken into account in understanding the results of the 2012 U.S. presidential election. Romney failed when it came to establishing empathy with voters compared with Obama and this was a significant factor- 53% to 43% for Romney in exit polls. Even on the economy which should have been a Republican strong point Romney failed to get an advantage over the president with both tied at 48% to 49% for Romney. Republicans were favored in their approach to government- only 43% favored activist government in 2012 compared to 52% in 2008, and 49% disapproved of the Obama health care law and only 44% approving in 2012. On social issues exit polls showed 59% believe abortion should be made legal, and on immigration 65% support a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Early in the primaries some commentators said the Republicans were not fielding strong candidates for president who could relate to voters and this has turned out to be true. This also explains the Republicans retaining a majority in the House of Representatives and continuing the hold on governorships. ...

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Bruni on the view that Obama has squandered his advantages of oratorical transcendence, poetry, serious thoughtfulness, in the U.S. presidential election of 2012. He does not mention the lack of a serious plan to turn the economy around, high rate of joblessness and declining incomes that are a basic issue in the 2012 election, and how oratorical transcendence has little correlation with getting the right policies implemented. The Des Moines Register's support in 2008 put Obama on the road to the presidency in 2008 with a victory in the Iowa primary. In 2012 it gave its endorsement to Romney to give him a chance to correct the problems with the economy and to do this with a new effort to forge the bipartisan consensus missing in the Obama first term.

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A NYT report on Donald Trump's long standing relationship with his lawyer Roy Cohn,  who was also an advisor to Senator Joseph McCarthy. The report says Roy Cohn used aggressive legal tactics in lawsuits and influenced Trump's style of doing business in his real estate dealings. It is a detailed report of Roy Cohn's influence on Trump, which the reporters say has influenced the way  Trump ran his 2016 election campaign. It shows Cohn as protecting Trump in lawsuits, and Cohn's sense that Trump would someday play a big role in New York's real estate business, as Cohn's first meeting with Trump started when Trump was beginning his career in the early 70's. 

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Roben Farzad of Bloomberg BW meets with Goldman Sach's Harvey M. Schwartz, co-head of the global securities division, to get Goldman's account of the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, the AIG rescue, and John Paulson.

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A decade after the 2004 speech at the Democratic National Convention, Obama's message of change and hope as seen by American voters in 2014.

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A advisor to U.S. president Obama lists the gains in U.S. healthcare made by March 2014, after the passing of the Affordable Care Act or Obama healthcare law. He cites on access to care the reduction of the percentage of uninsured Americans from 18% in the middle of 2013 to 15.9% in the first quarter of 2014, according to a Gallup poll.

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The Romney story says this editorial is one of a turnaround- of a kind patiently nurtured from his days turning around businesses as a management consultant. This one was different and probably required a lot of soul searching and courage to take up new positions. As a technocrat, says the Journal, Romney would have been more comfortable with a room full of IQ's going over spreadsheets of numbers. He tried to do this by not taking up specific positions till the need to convince voters, first in the GOP base and then centrists and independents after the convention, forced Romney to make the reassessment and turnaround he needed to make. In November 2011 he accepted the Ryan position that Medicare needed changes, and in Feb 2012 he took up the case for lower tax rates and cutting deductions. In October 2012 came the first debate, with it Romney abandoned his reluctance to put forward a plan for the economic recovery and put forward his five point plan. That was the turning point in the campaign but all the other steps including the selection of Ryan, a Congressman from a working class district in Wisconsin, agianst the advice of advisors, were leading up to this turnaround. This was likely the most difficult of turnarounds, even searing in its soul searching as Romney scribbled "Dad" on paper at the lectern before the first debate- turning back to beginnings he had doubted for so long....

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In Bagour, Egypt, in the crowded Nile delta, the old order was represented by Kamal-al-Shazli, a member of Parliament from the ruling party for 46 years. This means he entered Parliament in 1964, eight years after the Suez Crisis of 1956, when Egypt under a young military officer Gamal Abdel Nasser confronted the British and the French over the Suez Canal. Everything here in this town was done through Mr Shazli, the ultimate system of paronage was in place, and everything was named after him. Only the slogans of the anti-colonialism days, the days of hope of improving the living conditions of the people, remain. Everything else has stayed much the same for the vast majority of people. Now the task of changing things requires people to think for themselves and learn to work together to guide their own affairs under a democratic system of government and free expression. And this is quite different from the system in place for over 50 years, just as happened in the old Soviet Union. The old system was held together through a patronage system, bribes, enforced by the ruling party and its state security, and one in which individuals had to trust in the state to do their thinking for them about running the country....

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Nocera looks at the lack of efforts to help homeowners under water in the Obama administration. Sheila Bair comments on Geithner's role, as Geithner's book "Stress Test" provides little detail on how the Obama administration addressed the issue. A story by Dougherty in the WSJ on April 20, 2014, points out that about 10 million households in America are underwater in 2014, and another 10 million households have only 20% equity in their homes. Unemployment statistics in the same issue of the WSJ show 7 million people taking parttime jobs because they cannot find work. These households are critical for consumer spending to support growth. The weak economic recovery could very well be one of the results of poor policy decisions by the Obama administration including this one, when other alternatives proposed by Sheila Bair and Martin Feldstein were offered repeatedly in 2009-2010. Here Nocera documents the efforts by Senator Durbin to give homeowners rights to go to bankruptcy court to provide ways to negotiate ways out of foreclosure....

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This leader in The Economist reviews an essay in the magazine's October 8-14th, 2016 edition by U.S. president Obama. In it Obama points to the unfinished tasks of his presidency and what comes next as tasks to be done for the U.S. economy. The Economist points out the problems in the 2016 election campaign where there is a lack of discussion of economic issues as a serious problem. Obama lists as priorities efforts to improve conditions of people left out in the recovery, reducing inequality, offering more job opportunities, and increasing productivity.