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David Barboza tells the story of Tan Guocheng in a continuation of exceptional journalism following workers like Yuan Yangdong on a production line at Foxconn and now Guocheng on a production line at Honda. Young migrant workers caught up in the first wave of urbanization in China and in the middle of sweeping change. Guocheng stops a production line and leads a strike at a Honda plant in China which is followed by Honda increasing wages by 32%.

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The cleanup at Barclays under new chairman David Walker, following the resignation of CEO Diamond over the LIBOR probe, is continuing. The old CFO Lucas and general counsel Harding departed in Jan. 2013. Hector Sants, who headed Britain's FSA, was hired to run the compliance division at Barclays bank. The poor record of dealing with regulators and the financial management of the departed executives hurt Barclays credibility with regulators. David Walker is one of the widely respected names in British finance, and the efforts to put Barclays on the right path will go a long way to show British finance can restore itself.

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David Brooks brings up the views of different people who see the importance of the little things in life that add up to make a difference, and build quality of life.

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A new book about a century of the BBC- The BBC A Century on Air, by David Hendy, shows how the BBC has become a symbol of Britain to the outside world and part of the British psyche. 

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David Beers, John Chambers and the Committee that made the U.S. credit ratings downgrade. Earlier calls on Iceland, Argentina and Italy by David Beers and his willingness to make a tough call and defend it. The committee is called the sovereign ratings division, with David Beers as head, and John Chambers as his deputy. A report from the IMF gives good marks to S&P on making timely sovereign ratings revisions where approporate and on being ahead of Moody's and Fitch in this regard. S&P spokesperson says that the sovereign ratings group is quite different from the corporate ratings group.

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China's Liu He's meetings with Janet Yellen in Jan 2023 at Davos and other locations are helping to stabilize economic ties between China and the US. Liu He is economic adviser to president Xi of China.

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Trump's economic advisory team includes many from the finance industry, including Feinberg and Paulson. It also includes several real estate industry executives. Only David Malpass has served in previous Republican administrations.

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David Brooks on a government captured by rent seekers. He says liberals have failed to take action against the rent seeking groups who have obtained special privileges through their influence on government, tarnishing the image of government in the minds of the American people.

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David Autor at MIT authored some of the first detailed studies about the severe disruption in U.S. communities from the trade with China following China's entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001. The sheer size of the impact now appears to have been underestimated by economists and other experts. It was believed says Hilsenrath and Davis, that the U.S. having absorbed the impact of trade with Japan in the seventies and eighties, and with Mexico following NAFTA, could do the same with China. That turns out to be false. Much of 2016 election season has been spent seeing the rise of anti-trade movements led by Trump and Sanders, and reveals a deep discontent with job shifting overseas, and disruption of communities across America by trade patterns. What happened? In 2015 China's exports to the U.S. reached 2.7% of U.S. GDP. Hilsenrath and Davis say it was about 1% less with Japan and Mexico when their exports surged. The rapidity of the impact is another problem. It took 12 years following Japan's emergence as a major supplier, to reach the same level of impact that China had only 4 years after China's entry into the WTO in 2001. A similiar situation of 12 years happened with Mexico after NAFTA. Another problem is that Japan's exports impacted mostly steel and autos, China's exports impacted a whole range of industries. The speed with which China's planners sought to change and modernize their manufacturing  base is unprecedented in history, and has an impact not only on the U.S. as a recipient of low cost exports, but also on China as it struggles with bad debts and job losses today, that are a legacy of that too rapid move. This was part of the drive to urbanize China rapidly by shifting agricultural workers to factories in the cities, at a pace unprecedented in history. Another factor not mentioned is the global financial crisis of 2008-2009 that hurt U.S. manufacturing in the auto and other industries, and the wide impact this had in loss of jobs and decline in wages. By 2010 the tide of public opinion had shifted. The WSJ/NBC poll of September 2010, cited in detail in WSJ 10/2/2010 under "Americans Sour on Foreign Trade" shows over 80% consistently for all levels of income, over $75,000 and under $75,000, Republicans and Democrats, working class Americans or well educated Americans, saying that Americans were struggling and there was less hiring, because of how trade had impacted their communities. Lyrarc covered this in considerable detail since 2006. All political parties, business leaders, ignored the implications of this huge change, the media covered it but assumed it would take care of itself as trade with Japan had done previously, and it was left to Trump and Sanders as outsiders to call it like they saw it 5 years later.  Economic inequality has widened in China to the point of it becoming unrecognizable as a former socialist economy. Now both countries are faced with the job of picking up, chastened by the experience, and hoping to limit the political fallout to achieve economic recovery. The very open trading system that had generated prosperity since World War II was being put at risk by a lack of awareness that trade brings with it changes, winners and losers, and manufacturing jobs moving overseas on a scale and speed unprecedented in history, was something that no one could cope with. ...

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David Brooks of the NYT describes the failure of the Iran nuclear deal of July 2015- as having failed to achieve any of the objectives the U.S. set forward over many years under two administrations to limit the development of nuclear weapons. He calls it a defeat for the U.S. similiar to that in Iraq and Vietnam, that did not need to happen.

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David Goodman in the New York Times describes the complacency, political infighting and lack of decisive action that kept New York City's response lagging behind what was needed.

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David Talbot in this NYT guest essay looks at Dianne Feinstein as the mayor of San Francisco, which he calls a tough city to run and the mayor resolute.

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There is serious lack of depth in leadership in the Tory party today. Names proposed in The Guardian for Tory leaders after the July 4 election should Rishi Sunak have to resign are clearly short of what Britain needs in leadership. It depends on which Tory MP can hold on to his seat. Suella Braverman, Priti Patel, Kim Badennoch, James Cleverly, Tom Tugendhat, Penny Mordaunt, all lack what is needed to lead the Conservatives on July 5, 2024. This has been true all through the last two decades.  David Cameron, Boris Johnson, Theresa May, Liz Truss who preceded Sunak for most of the last decade were also lacking in leadership. The decade wasted with Nigel Farage and David Cameron, Boris Johnson trying to get Britain out of the European Union has hurt Britain. Today most Britons want to go back to a Britain that is growing as part of the EU and Europe. 

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Vanguard economists using the work of Stanford Unversity economists Bloom and Baker and University of Chicago economist Davis have developed their own estimates of the cost of overall uncertainty to the U.S. economy. Bloom, Baker and Davis show the level of overall uncertainty in 2011-2013 is about 50% higher than the level seen since 1985. Vanguard's estimates are for a drag on the U.S. economy of about $261 billion in deadweight losses from this uncertainty- uncertainty in monetary policy, uncertainty in deficit reduction, uncertainty in business investment. Their estimates show 1 million jobs not created, job growth per month lower by 45,000 in the last 2 years, and gdp growth of about 3% per year in 2011 and 2012 in place of the 2% average recorded, in the absence of these uncertainty shocks experienced by the U.S. economy. McNabb points out that the market gains of the S&P 500 are based on an unstable foundation as long as this overall uncertainty is not lifted and create a serious disconnect....

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The work of David Malpass at the World Bank in approving $1 billion for India's coronavirus emergency response and health preparedness project. 

This will help India move quickly to setup the contact tracing, isolation centers, treatment facilities, and healthcare preparedness for coronavirus, so that the transmission of coronavirus is strictly limited.

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Chinese premier Li Quang reveals that China's growth was 5.2% in 2023. Growth was 3% in 2023. Li Quang makes an effort to convince foreign investors to stay in China at the Davos meeting. Outflows of capital exceeded inflows by $11.8 billion in third quarter 2023, suggesting an exodus of foreign capital.

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The dimming hopes for the remaining Obama legislative agenda in 2014-2015 after the June 2014 upset win of Prof. David Brat over Cantor in Virgina.

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The defamation lawsuit of Dominion Voting Systems company against Fox News Network is at one level about what is and is not reported on the presidential election and the credibility of the reporting. It is also in a larger sense about the democratic process and the transition between one government to the next in the nation that comes next only to Britain in setting up democratic framework of government in 1787. Without distortions in reporting that may lead people in a direction opposite to what is chosen through the democratic process. 

The case now goes to a jury. Judge Davis says- "The evidence does not support that FNN television network conducted good faith, disinterested reporting."

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Coronavirus testing is taking off in the U.S. for the first time after the U.S. Federal Drug Administration relaxed testing regulations on February 29, and as more universities and hospitals develop their own testing technology and apply it. The FDA has approved more than 15 tests and many more are awaiting approval. 

This includes UC Davis, Washington University School of Medicine, Brigham and Women's, Harvard Medical School, Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, centers that are running the tests limited only by the shortage of reagents supplies.

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The parliamentary elections in Britain have changed the environment in which the first day of Brexit talks took place on June 19, 2017. There is a great deal of uncertainty as the government of Theresa May has only a thin majority in parliament. A debate is now taking place on how much support Brexit has after the parliamentary election, and what kind of Brexit should take place, what are the risks and uncertainties for Britain. As expected the European Union negotiator Michael Barnier emphasized that some issues have to be resolved first- that Britain owes the European Union between 40 to 60 billion euros over 5 years, the rights of EU citizens in Britain, for the beneficiaries of EU policies and for the impact on borders particularly in Ireland.  Only then would the EU discuss access to the EU market for Britain. Mr Barnier handed British negotiator David Davis a hiking stick, a way of saying this will be a long hike up the mountain. In Britain there is a growing sense that the talks cannot be completed by the current deadline in 2019, that it might take 5 years. Another hurdle- Britain cannot have access to the single market if it seeks to control immigration. For the European Union there is the additional problem of how to negotiate with a government that may not be there in a few months, say experts. For the European Union Brexit is now more of a distraction, as there are other issues that rank higher such as relations with the Trump administration, NATO and Russia, refugees and borders.       ...