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On the first days of her campaign Kamala Harris addresses the American Federation of Teachers. One of the big issues is learning loss for children during the pandemic. How to address reading loss, learning loss of children who are falling behind? Harris supports teachers in many ways. She wants to see the hard work of teachers respected and compensated by increasing teacher pay. Lyrarc's Movement for Global Literacy is focused on this same issue how to address reading comprehension loss among children in the US, that was weak to begin with and is now in trouble with the pandemic learning loss. Lyrarc is a useful tool and essential tool following serious learning loss from the pandemic, for increasing literacy and reading comprehension of children and young people in the US, UK, India and other countries. With NAEP test scores showing two thirds of children in 8th grade failing Reading Comprehension, and 75% failing Civics comprehension Lyrarc is an essential tool for addressing this problem. ...

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HBO may be capitalizing on cultural portrayals of unethical world of finance for successful television shows that do little to change the culture in America. During the 2009 financial crisis decade many such shows were seen, yet after Big Pharma and Finance, a new player Tech monopolies joined the list of unethical behavior, new technologies continue to operate without government setting the rules for fair play and level playing field essential for capital and labor to function in a modern economy- rules for capital and rules for labor set by "serious" public servants not revolving door public servants who finish their careers in the same banks, pharma or tech company monopolies. Bothe houses of Congress are then captured by the Big Pharma, Finance, and Tech monopolies, resulting in "Capture Capitalism" that has existed in different forms and yet cleaned up every 50-75 years since 1750, Adam Smith's fight against the monopolies of the East India Companies of Britain, Holland and Denmark. ...

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Cheap fixed rate mortgages make up two thirds of home mortgages in the US. Most are at 4% or lower interest rate. A new 30 year home mortgage in 2024 would be about 7%. About 660,000 job offers that required moving and selling the home were turned down. This means fewer homes left for people to buy leading to higher home prices. The additional equity people have in their home on average is $119,000 over 4 years and this means consumer spending is resilient in the face of higher interest rates and keeps inflation at 3%. How does this affect the economy? Fewer homes on the market means there is a loss to the economy of 3% to 5% of output, according to NAHB. The smaller supply of homes means there is less home inventory to search from- instead of 62% in more normal times affordability for someone with a $100,000 in income is now 37% of the listings. This is not expected to change in the next 2 years.

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California has lots of water after record breaking rains in 2024 but this is not the situation in the Central Valley leading agricultural region of California and the nation. Farmers in the San Joaquin Valley in California say they are getting a reduced allottment of water because of concern about endangered fish species. Farmers in the Central Valley the fruit and vegetable basket of California will get just 40% of their usual alottment of water this year and will plant less crops. Some ranches planting only 60% instead of 80% of their land. In 2014, 2015 and 2022 droughts the farmers lost about $7 billion and it cost 40,000 jobs, say University of California researchers. This area is a top producer of almonds, pistachios, and tomatoes. Westland Water District, which covers this area and is largest irrigator in the US, has a study that shows correlation between water and poverty in this part of California. Just when it is recovering the water supply is being cut. ...

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Drugs affecting Montevideo capital of the small country of 3.3 million people in the Rio de la Plata estuary in southern Uruguay. Container traffic has increased by 62% since 2019 Le Monde reports, coupled with Bolivia becoming a new area for drugs, has disturbed the relative tranquillity of this region near Argentina that existed for most of the 20th century. The dire need for a comprehensive solution. Cali, Columbia is now the place for the Biodiversity Climate Change COP29, and this shows how the problem keeps shifting from country to country- that it is beyond the scope of one party, and requires an all party solution in the US, 100% bipartisan, as Mexico was also a place of relative tranquillity for most of the 20th century. The Biden Lankford legislation was a huge path making move with Republican Lankford and Biden-Harris together on one page on the issue. Harris has promised she will get this legislation to her desk again and sign it into law.    ...

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Presenting the ReARM package in Brussels the European Union president Von der Leyen says- “This is a moment for Europe and we are ready to step up.” The proposals Leyen said “could mobilise close to €800bn of defence expenditures for a safe and resilient Europe." About $650 billion comes from increasing the European spending on defense by 1.5% of GDP from numbers below 2% that reflected underspending on defense. The EU will loosen strict deficit rules. The CDU coalition government in Germany with SPD under Merz that is being setup will remove the debt brake in the German Constitution that limits defense spending to 1%.  Another $150 billion in loans can be generated from joint EU borrowing that could be given to countries. That will Leyen says- “It will help member states to pool demand and to buy together. This will reduce costs, reduce fragmentation, increase interoperability and strengthen our defence industrial base.” The European Investment Bank will participate in the lending. ...

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A Wall Street Journal Survey of how the credit ratings firms have performed in prediciting looming defaults. The Journal's Matt Wirz looked at 35 years of data. He found the ratings firms did not do an effective job with predicting defaults in the 12 month period before an actual default. Of the 15 government defaults since 1975 tracked by S&P, S&P's sovereign ratings division rated 12 of the countries single B or higher in the 12 months preceding the default. S&P says a single-B rating on sovereign debt signifies that the government has only a 2% average default rate in the next 12 months. For Moody's Investors Service the figures show that of the 13 governments rated by Moody's, 11 were rated B or higher one year before an actual default. By contrast the investment grade ratings of the credit ratings firms have worked better- as no government defaulted within 15 years of having a tripe-A, double-A, or a single-A rating. Ratings firms say that the ratings indicate a relative default risk for countries and not an actual default probability, a rank ordering for different countries and their relative risk. Research chiefs at investment management firms point out that once a crisis develops the ratings firms are not much help. They also say the ratings firms use static indicators like current account balances and other critical indicators for countries in emerging markets such as political sentiment and bank deposit flows get less attention. Historically bond yields have priced in higher risk premiums into government bonds before a default and investors look at the bond yields in assessing risk conditions, and not at the ratings which change only slowly. Brazil and Argentina both had a double B-minus rating in Jan. 2001. A year later Argentina had defaulted....

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Chozick and Parker of the NYT show how Donald Trump's frequent sexist comments on women and references to Hillary Clinton in similiar terms are likely to influence the outcome of the general election of 2016. The women's vote has played a significant part in the recent elections of 2008 and 2012 helping Democratic candidate Obama. Trump has a astonishingly high disapproval rating with women, unprecedented in U.S. election history, cited by the WSJ as 75%. Cruz's choice of Carly Fiorina as a running mate shows an awareness of the importance of the women's vote. Some of the comments cited here include the Trump comment that "if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don't think she would get 5% of the vote." It is not clear if this will help the Republican party, as such comments could alienate the mass base of women voters, including the base of young women voters who supported Sanders, women who are independents and moderate Republican women. Hillary Clinton is carefully planning a fall campaign in which such Trump attacks are expected, and the response will be handled not directly by Hillary but by Super PAC's, as Hillary sticks to calling them sexist and energizing her base from the attacks. CBS polls show Trump has the support of 39 percent of white women, compared to 50% for Hillary Clinton. Trump's attacks on women are strangely enough targeted at getting the support of white women- and men - in another wild twist of the 2016 campaign....

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President Biden tells an audience of workers that he sees the world through the eyes of Scranton and the working people he grew up with, and through the eyes of workers like those in the audience. He tells a audience of union workers that he is bringing manufacturing back, and doing this with investments of billions of dollars that never happened under previous administrations for a generation of Americans. Some highlights from his speech- Biden is investing trillions of dollars in American infrastructure, manufacturing and advanced technology and at the same time cutting the deficit by 1.4 trillion dollars The Republican plan of spending cuts being voted in by the House of Representatives will according to Moody's lead to a loss of 780,000 jobs in the US. Forty of the 500 largest corporations in the US paid zero taxes. About $200 billion dollars in profits of corporations are to be taxed at just 15%- lower than what working families pay- to fund much needed investment in America. There are 1000 billionaires in America compared to 700 before the pandemic, and they pay 8% in taxes. President Biden says under his watch no corporation or billionaire should pay less in percentage of income taxes than union workers in the audience.    ...

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A Kyodo News poll shows about 60% of Japanese want the Olympic games cancelled. Japan faces another wave of the pandemic with a surge in Osaka and other cities. The government's handling of the pandemic is disapproved by 71% of Japanese in a Kyodo News poll. Over 80% are unhappy with the slow vaccine rollout.   India faces a surge in cases public dissatisfaction that is similar to Japan and other countries in Europe. France and Germany have a slow vaccine rollout. In India vaccination drive is affected by a lack of supplies as in France and Germany with shortages of vaccine. The European Union in April signed contracts for over a billion doses with Pfizer and India has plans for ramped up supply of its Covishield and Covaxin vaccines to 2 billion doses by December 2021. This shows how difficult it is for advanced countries and major pharmaceutical producing countries such as as India to vaccinate their populations quickly in the initial stages of the vaccination effort. In July the vaccine effort would be in its 7th month and vaccine supply constraints are expected to ease as a result of aggressive action by governments in EU, France, Germany and India. This will also enable addressing needs in Latin America, Africa and South East Asia. ...

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Any idea that herd immunity is the way out is dispelled by a simple look at these pictures from the NYT showing what the level of infections are today and what they would have to be for "herd immunity." No Asian nation has even mentioned the word. Most Asian nations have the most experience with virus of all sorts. The only government that supported the idea without saying so openly is Sweden as indicated in a report in FR24 on the amplification of coronavirus in Sweden compared to neighboring Denmark, Norway, Finland. Imagine with a threshhold of 60% of people having antibodies provided by experts for herd immunity, the current New York level of about 20% would have to triple, and Sweden's 7% would have to grow seven fold. It is hard to imagine New York going through something of these proportions. Looking at what works now that other countries handling it have set examples of what works provides a better way- low tech contract tracing the German way, and one used in Asian countries, and the cluster isolation through testing and contact tracing adopted in many Asian countries as well as Germany. Strengthening public health systems, and working one's way out of the crisis where there are no easy answers offers real and realistic hope. ...

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Total sales of Truth Social are $5 million over 3 years, it cost $40 million raised through convertible notes to finance losses, says this WSJ report. By using financial dealmaking methods this could create $300 million for Truth Social and $6 billion for Trump Media, says WSJ in the report. DWAC shares were set at $10 and are now at $144 with its connections to Trump Media & Technology Group, going up 150% in the last year. Digital World Acquisition is a SPAC meaning that it is a shell company- or special purpose acquisition company in financial jargon- that lists shares on an exchange with the sole purpose of buying a private company and taking it public. Investors buy and shell shares on the expectation of which company it buys and how that company will perform. Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent of Mr. Trump's Truth Social social media company will merge with Digital World Acquisition SPAC and the new company will replace the old with the sticker changing DWAC to DJT. This could happen next week if the majority of DWAC shareholders approve it. This could get Truth Social $300 million says WSJ and Trump Media main shareholder with 60% holding about $3.5 billion in this deal making, says WSJ. ...

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For Democrats to represent the working class their leaders have to come from these working class communities. This is not going to happens say people in this NYT Edsall report. Working class voters are about 60% of voters mostly not college educated, to 40% for non working class voters who are college educated. Biden was one of thse working class people who headed the Democrat party and stood on picket lines fro the UAW. Not Harris or Clinton. Democrats rail about billionaires but much of the multi billionaire community is in the Democrat party, much opf Silicon Valley and New York financial interests. Bush was not working class either yet there has been a unexpected transformation of the Republican party as trade, immigration, drug and migrant trafficking required non nonsense law and order, and strong action, based on common sense and stable values from the previous generation of Americans. This also applied to social issues such as LGBTQ and Transgender. This leaves one with the question will the Democrats be able to get rid of the Califonria Silicon Valley Techies, and New York financial interests, lobbying class,  within its ranks? Will it be able to transform itself by drawing from the working class communities working class leaders? ...

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Obama wins South Carolina Edwards home base by 55% to Clinton's 27%, and Edward's 18%. Obama wins 24% of the white vote. What happens when the white men who voted for Edwards choose between Clinton and Obama ? As many white men voted for Obama as for Clinton. And 70% of white voters in exit poll by Edison/Mitofsky for the National Election Pool of television networks say they would be satisfied if Obama wins the Democratic nomination. When asked if the country was definitely ready for a black President 25% of white voters said yes. Obama's coalition of young people, black people, and white male voters, alienated by the Clintons and working through the internet and other media outside of the establishment, may resemble the one put together in South Korea by young people to put an outsider in the President's position a few years ago.

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The 1985 hit "Small Town" by John Mellencamp is about Seymour, Indiana. Republican State Representative Jim Lucas says the city of Seymour welcomes immigrants legally here who are properly vetted. The concern is about migrants not vetted and not legally here. At a recent city council meeting Lucas attended it was decided not to go ahead with an economic development agenda. Says Lucas- “However, Seymour has changed drastically in just the past few years, and many of us are obviously concerned about the direction we are headed,” he added. New immigrant cases or migrant arrivals for Jackson county, Indiana, where Seymour is located went up to 435 in 2024 from 66 in 2021. It is at that point that the welcome center idea ran into opposition in this small town in Indiana, an hour from Indianapolis population 21,000 in Jackson County. As the town's population mix changes - it was 1% Hispanic in 1990, then 5% Hispanic in 2000- jumping in two decades of Bush-Obama-Trump-Biden to 25% Hispanic, questions besides economic about the sense of uneasiness of resident came up. Also of cultural literacy of the state of Indiana, and of the history of the state within the Union forged by Washington and Lincoln, FDR and Eisenhower, and of Wendell Wilkie of Elwood, Indiana. Unemployment rate for Jackson County is 3.3%, median income $63,000, home ownership 57%. Issues were not about the economy alone, and about how many immigrants could be absorbed and the cultural and language literacy of arriving migrants. There were issues about the perceived crime rate (metrics show traffic related offenses were up), and about drawing too much of the school's resources as English learning went up slowing learning in the schools. Republican State Representative Jim Lucas says it is crowding the health care clinic downtown with immigrants. ...

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Fears of nervous investors is now touching the bond markets. AIG's insurance subsidiaries traded their bonds at prices ranging from 38 cents on the dollar to around 81 cents, from more than 50 cents on the dollar a month ago, according to MarketAxess. Investors are worried that future restructurings will cause cash generated by AIG's units to go to the government before its bondholders, as the government has already chalked up a huge bill of $177 billion for AIG. Long term bonds of triple rated General Electric Company, which with GE Capital is the largest US corporate debt issuer, dropped last week to 63 cents on the dollar. Again investors are worried that they may not get all their money back. And again GE's CFO Sherin had to reassure investors that GE's capital position was strong. The bonds of Citigroup are trading at 70 cents on the dollar. Sales of blocks of securities called "bid lists" are not a good sign, as big groups of sales are an indication investors are desperate to unload investments quickly. Bonds issued by Goldman Sachs and General Electric without the government's backing have dropped to 96 cents on the dollar and 73 cents on the dollar, respectively in the last few days. Their government backed debt trades at close to full value or 100 cents on the dollar. ...

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Analysis by Sentier Research of U.S. census data shows U.S. median household income declined from $54,983 in Jan. 2009 to $50,964 in June 2012, adjusted for inflation. This is $4019 in lost real income. The decline is 8% from $55,470 in 2000 before the burst of the dot come bubble. Some of this is because of trends of smaller family, lower fertility rates and more Americans living alone. But as a look at the figures in this research by Catherine Rampell of the NYT, 8/23/2012 shows, the losses in income affects all demographics, hit blacks and people with some education like a high school diploma but no degree the hardest, and also reflects the persistence of long tem unemployment which lowers income.

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Samuelson looks at patterns of investing in stocks in the U.S. since 1982. He cites S&P's Howard Silverblatt that the P/E for the S&P 500 averaged 16.9 since 1935 and the current P/E for the U.S. is at 17.6.

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Mr. Rodrigo Maia, the 49 year old son of the former Mayor of Rio De Janeiro, Cesar Maia, is uniting Congressmen from all parties in Brazil's parliament to get things done and restore lost confidence, such as the recently passed pension reform. Brazil's pension system sucks up most of the money in the budget with overly generous benefits, leaving little to pay for essential public services such as sanitation and transportation. Shockingly sanitation has suffered as only 50% of the sewage is treated in Brazil.  Polls show confidence in parliament after corruption scandals and lack of work to help the people of Brazil with essential public services has fallen to an abysmal low of 7%. Only 50% of Brazil's sanitation is treated and the rest flows as untreated sewage and rubbish into the rivers. To bring some sanity to pensions the Brazilian parliament, with the organizing skills of Mr. Maia to bring parties together around the reform, has cut $240 billion over 10 years from pensions and introduced 65 years for men and 62 years for women as minimum retirement age.  Brazil has 33 parties and Mr. Maia's is with the centre right DEM party. How did this happen. This WSJ story says Rodrigo Maia, 49 years, was born in Santiago, Chile in 1970 during the days of Brazilian military dictatorship. His father was in exile in Chile. The election of a  far right figure Jair Bolsonaro who supported the military dictatorships record as president in the recent election was a warning sign for the different parties in Brazil on the centre right and the centre left that corruption scandals and a do-little spirit was wiping out their influence and destoroying their credibility with ordinary Brazilians. The pension cut reform was their response to gain some of the lost goodwill from the Brazilian people. In the past Brazil's members of the Chambers of Deputies were people of power and influence who held positions for long periods and passed on these positions to people in their families or in their close circle. The elections and democratic governments following years of dictatorship brought in a new class from centre right and centre left that mismanaged public finances and excluded new ideas. The Car Wash scandal and scandals at the state petroleum company under Da Silva's Workers Party led to loss of confidence not only in the centre left party government of Da Silva and the Workers Party, but also in a do-little parliament. The large state spending from the government was possible during the commodities boom from China with Brazilian iron ore and other products getting high prices. WIth the collapse of the commodities boom and lower prices the entire system of state spending has unraveled revealing how much generous pension system is damaging the financing of  basic public services.  Corruption is prevalent in many countries in Asia including India but nowhere has the spending on essential public services such as sanitation suffered as in Brazil. And nowhere was parliament and the government able to get away with staging Olympics, World Cup and building many stadiums, handing out generous benefits to gain public support as in Brazil when basic sanitation and health services were neglected in a shocking way. The health system was weakened to a great extent when it lacked the resources to tackle an outbreak of yellow fever in 2018 as it moved south from the Amazon region towards Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Protests against the lack of investment in public services such as transportation and bus systems resulted in the public protests in big cities that led to the rise of Jair Bolsonaro in an effort to bring new administration to tackle the problem of financing for infrastructure, public services, health and education.    ...

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China's top trade negotiator is Liu he, Chinese Vice Premier. He is negotiating with Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. Trade Representative who heads the U.S. side in talks. Liu He says China is planning to reduce auto tariffs on U.S. imports to 15%. U.S. exported 266,000 cars to China in 2017. A number of other issues are coming up between the two countries including cyber hacking as federal prosecutors are expected to unseal charges against hackers linked to the Chinese government, according to this report in WSJ. Canada's arrest of Huawei executive was met with China's arrest of a Chinese diplomat.

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In this interview with Herndon of the NYT Bernie Sanders refutes the labels "progressive" or "left" and says it is simply about policy that benefits the workers and families that make up the vast majority of this Nation. Sanders says 60% of workers are living from paycheck to paycheck. The vast majority of people 60-70% support Medicare for All, improvements in Social Security, cutting pharmaceutical costs, and tution support to make higher education accessible to all. Why he asks do workers support Trump? He says it is because the truth is that the Democratic party has abandoned its roots. He does not go into this, yet it can be said that the rise of the Tech industry in the last two decades has led to tech billionaires and business people coopting the Democratic party for their agenda. In the last year of the Obama administration it was evident that Rural America and people who represent rural America such as Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack of Iowa felt ignored while Obama spent more time with tech and internet business people. Former president Trump simply stepped into this void as Democrats failed to turn up for rural America. President Biden has turned things around by making Tom Vilsack an important part of his administrations with the president listening to  him and others speaking for rural America. The passion with which Senator Pat Schumer talked recently on CBS Face the Nation about bringing broadband to rural America shows how Biden and Harris, Harris and Walz see Rural America. This Democratic ticket is fighting for Rural America every step of the way to bring hope and a better life to Rural America. Sanders reminds people of FDR in 1936 after four years of fighting the Depression and improving lives there was so much that needed to be done. It is the same today and Sanders is wading into this fight with Harris and Walz in the same way as FDR did in 1936. ...

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The benchmark price of U.S. crude oil dropped to $31.41 a barrel on January 11, 2016, as oil prices continued to drop sharply following a slowdown in China, appreciation in the U.S. dollar and no cuts in production from Saudi Arabia. Analysts expect a crisis for energy producers that is deeper than ones in 1986, and five plunges in oil price all the way back to 1970. With the oil prices at $30 and expected to drop below $30, the companies that took on a lot of debt have no choice but to keep up production. In the process many may find themselves in bankruptcy. Private equity with capital of $100 billion is likely to come in at this point to buy cheap assets without the debt, say analysts. U.S. banks energy portfolios are small, with Wells Fargo energy exposure only 2% for oil and gas loans in the third quarter of 2015, or about $17 billion. Loans that are rated "sub-standard. doubtful or loss," are projected at 15% of loans to energy producers, about $34.2 billion, in a biannaual review by banking regulators. The unusual aspect of this energy price slump is that production is not declining with falling prices- oil production in the U.S. was estimated by the government at 9.2 million barrels a day in Jan 2016- 1% higher than at the beginning of 2015 when prices were over $40 a barrel....

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Guardian Bikes in Indiana factory was shifted in reshoring to the US in 2022. By 2026 it hopes to change the situation from 90% Chinese parts to 60% of the parts made in the US and prices still within reach for American buyers of $199-$399 for childrens bikes. Other bike makers are hesitating, and some have moved to Taiwan from China.