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This report in the Times looks at president Macron in a holiday setting at the presidential place Bregancon near the military port of Toulon in the south of France. Macron worked hard on the European Recovery Fund and getting a $390 billion non repayable aid fund for southern Europe with chancellor Merkel of Germany through tough long negotiations with the Dutch and the Danes. His work with two provincial mayors as prime ministers, the last current prime minister Castex, in fighting the coronavirus is giving him much needed boost in popularity. Throughout his willingness to learn and to try new approaches without worrying about the risks, and his frank manner with perseverance has helped Macron as he navigated unknown waters. After a drop in the polls to about 30% he is now up to 50%, 18 months before the presidential election. This is good for France as strong leadership is needed after the pandemic both for France, French speaking regions, and in solidarity with former French Africa. ...

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The remarkable story of how a CEO of a $4 billion food company is running the business from a children's bedroom. The founder of the plant based alternative meat maker is a biochemist who lives in Northern California Bay area. His employees are based in Redwood City, California. Mr. Brown, 65, communicates with his employees from here. He is also a marathon runner and a believer in fitness. He sets a 90 minute no meting time for employees when they can take a breather, get some fresh air, and walk around.

He has given employees, including hourly and temporary workers, paid leave so they can stay and work from home. The plant is closed with a third party in Chicago meeting commitments for its products manufacturing.He will reconsider restarting the plant April 7 if demand is higher than the supply. He views this as the right action and right thinking, as by stickling with his employees he believes they will stick with him in the long run.

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Buried in the Pew Trust study in 2017 showing that only 9% of French, 24% of British, 36% of Germans and 37% of Americans feel their children would be better off financially, is the divide between college educated and those with a high school diploma. Only one third of Americans are college graduates, and 69% of them are satisfied with the economy's condition. Of the high school diploma holders or the rest of the population, only 55% think so. This is likely to take a long time to correct, particularly with the loss of good manufacturing jobs and drop in wages in manufacturing of the last two decades,  the need for more technology and skills in the jobs environment, failing schools and families in the social environment.

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Singer songwriter Paul Simon performed in concert recently. He releases his new album "So Beautiful or So What" on April 12. Simon, now 69, seems a generation away to younger audiences. His lyrics are great, but his music reflects the point of view Simon held at the time he wrote the lines. He has explored gospel, reggae, Mexican folk, South African mbaqanga, and Afro-Brazilian music over the years. The reach to younger audiences is not the same as Dylan's. But the range and depth of his talent as a composer is amazing- with 17 studio albums. He was the first recipient of the Library of Congress's Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. He has little time for image, believing it best to lead with his lyrics to get across a profoundly felt view of things. And sometimes the reading of a song like "Peace Like a River," leaves a lasting impression on the mind.

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Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah sign a powersharing agreement brokered by the U.S Secretary of State Kerry and president Karzai after Afghanistan elections in 2014. The question is whether the two can set aside their differences and make it work, and can they negotiate some form of peace agreement with the Taliban to give Afghanistan and the region years of peace after so much conflict. Pakistan and India's elites and military need to step up to the plate to set aside differences by looking to the long term future of the region and the aspirations of the people for better infrastructure, services, education and healthcare, so long denied to the region. The Kashmir floods, and the floods in Pakistan before that, recent elections in India and Pakistan showing the clear aspirations for development of the people, are a reminder of so much that remains to be done and so much that was never done.

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Italy's Eni raises production by 7% year over year for the fourth quarter of 2005, one of the better records in the oil industry for exploration. Paolo Scaroni, Eni's CEO's plan to build a long term supply relationship with Gazprom, considering the supply shortage facing Europe which relies increasingly on gas for electricity generation.

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Mercedes is encountering the problem facing Ford and GM, once consumers are turned off by defects or quality slipups its takes along time to get them back. The defects get fixed quickly but customersremember this for a long time. Here Mercedes launches a barrage of 60 to 90 print ads to set things right.

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The 50 day Shanghai Composite index fell below the 200 day Shanghai Composite index in June 2011. This results in what is called a "death cross," or a long term bearish pattern. The last time this occurred in March 2010, the index went up slightly for a month before going on a 25% drop .

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Yellen tells graduates at NYU that curiosity, grit and perseverance to work hard on long range goals matters a lot. She describes the importance of persevering through setbacks on the path. She tells the story of Eric Kandel of NYU and the path to a Nobel Prize through research on the chemistry of memory.

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Brian Wesbury puts together some math as to the estimated cost of the subprime mess. Agrees on what the Bernanke Fed has done. Sees need not for liquidity in the system but concedes need for it to prevent seizure in credit markets, and sees need for more certainty and confidence in the long run.

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Merck shingles vaccine Zostavax as a long term revenue generating opportunity of $1 billion. Problems in manufacturing and marketing the vaccine.

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Margin trading reaches over 1100 billion yuan by Feb. 2015 in China's stock markets. Action by regulators fails to control the leveraging.

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An internal IMF document that estimates Europe's banks are short of capital by $273 billion. IMF managing director, Christine Lagarde, tries to downplay the report by saying this is not from a stress test that the IMF conducts. In August, Lagarde, called for an "urgent recapitalization" of European banks. As France's finance minister, Lagarde, steadfastly insisted French banks were well capitalized. France worked hard to prevent requirements for significant capital reserves under the Basel III rules. The higher capital requirements were supported by the U.S.. Simon Johnson said in his blog, that as long as European banks had inadequate capital to act as a buffer against losses, European countries had no safe route for restructuring their debts.

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Samuelson discusses the differences between the Bureau of Labor Statistics figures for June 2014 using the Payroll Survey and the Household Survey, each telling a different story. According to the Payroll Survey 288,000 jobs were added. The Payroll Survey is a monthly survey of 554,000 business locations, with firms asked to give the number of people on payrolls, pay and occupations. The Household Survey of the BLS asks households in monthly interviews with 60,000 Americans whether they have a job, is it part time or full time, are they looking for full time work, or jobless and for how long. The Household Survey showed June 2014 job increase at 407,000, using an estimate of 1,115,000 increase in part-time jobs and a loss of 708,000 full time jobs. Of the two the payroll survey is larger and considered by economists to be more representative. Other statistics show the parttime workers at about 3 million higher than 2007 before the 2008 financial crisis, suggesting the shift to part time jobs has been one negative result of the crisis....

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According to the United States Department of Agriculture, 17 million families, or roughly 15% of all households- had difficulty putting enough food on the table at some point in the year. USDA found that 5.6 million households had chronic problems all year long. The number of homes has tripled since 2006, but remain about the same as 2008.

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Charlie Hebdo weekly is part of a long tradition of satirical magazines that poke fun at leaders and organized religion including Catholicism and Islam. This dates back to the days of the French Revolution. The magazine received many threats from Islamists. In January 2015 attacks by 3 young terrorists killed 12 journalists, a policeman and a police woman.

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Sales of Ford's best sellig pickup truck F-150 fell 31% in May, compared to May 2007, and sales of SUV's and pickup trucks dropped 24%. Its sad that it took so long for the American car companies to phase down from the large vehicle business and shift resources in a big way to smaller cars.

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Joshua Rosner of investment bank Graham Fisher thinks the Citi rescue plan still does not go far enough, as the toxic assets still remain on Citi's books, and as long as home prices are declining the losses are increasing. The ultimate level of losses will be higher as they are pushed forward in a world of declining home prices.

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DJT puts a 50% tariff on Brazil on JUly 9, 2025 following the trial of former president Bolsonaro's. In a long letter DJT says the trial of Bolsonaro was similar to the trial he Trump faced in the US in 2024 by zealous prosecutors. Da Silva is president of Brazil and says Brazil is a sovereign country. He was briefly jailed during the Bolsonaro government but won the election in Brazil in 2022.

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Mike Pompeo, U.S. Secretary of State meets with Tory group of MP's that want to see other issues relating to China tackled following exclusion of Huawei from UK 5G networks, and suspension of the extradition treaty with Hong Kong. This includes 120,000 Chinese students attending British universities and many students involved in advanced scientific research. Both Labour party leaders and Conservative party leaders support taking action to protect British interests relating to sharing sensitive technology, and national security. The U.S. is moving forward with a decoupling of economic relations with China on issues of sensitive technology, transfer of technology,  ownership of American tech companies, manufacturing jobs and regaining industrial strength, and on trade that transfers wealth from America to China. Britain is having to restructure its relations with China based on the general trend in U.S. China relations. China is the UK's 6th destination for exports of goods and services, only 3.6%. U.S. is far larger about 14%. The UK also has one third of its investments overseas going to the U.S. The U.S. has total investments in the UK of 758 billion dollars in 2018, showing that Britain's relationship with the U.S. is very close. ...

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India moves ahead with the the purchase of $5 billion S-400 long range surface-to-air missile system from Russia durinf president Putin's visit to New Delhi. Delivery of 5 of the systems will take place over 2 years. India hopes to have a transaction specific waiver for the purchases as the U.S. is placing sanctions on defense purchases by countries from Russia. U.S. sanctioned China in September 2018 for its purchases of 25 Sukhoi jet fighters and S-400 missile systems from Russia.

India has set a goal of diversifying its arms purchases. From 79% of arms purchases sourced from Russia, the figure dropped to 62% in 2013-2017 compared to the preceding 5 year period.

India and Russia have set the goal of expanding bilateral trade from current $10 billion in 2017 to $25 billion  by 2025. 

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The transcript of the call between president Trump and Ukraine president is not  word by word account. It comes from notes taken on the call by key aides. No complete recordings or transcripts exist. The practice is for the National Security Advisor, in this case John Bolton, to be present or in the West Wing, and a few key aides.

After the unauthorized release of calls Trump made to the Mexican president early in his administration in which he said it was OK if Mexico did not pay for a wall as long as it looked like Mexico was paying, the circle of people involved is limited to a few aides. Because of this some of the calls were transferred to a separate server which was considered highly confidential. This is now the subject of an impeachment inquiry in the U.S. Congress.