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This essay in the Economist magazine describes the voter rejection of ruling parties and their candidates in France. Two presidents and two former prime ministers from the Socialist party and the Republican Party, Hollande and Sarkozy, Valls and Fillon face rejection. And another candidate from the Republican party Juppe also has fared poorly. This leaves two outsiders LePen of the National Front, and Macron a former Economy minister in the Hollande government who launched En Marche as his own movement for moderate change alternative in 2016. The rural-urban and less educated-more educated divide which was evident in voting in the U.S. election and the Brexit referendum is now seen in France, says this essay. Research from the Economist shows National Front support highest in outlying areas of major cities. The fears of immigration, terrorism, and globalization leaving parts of the working class behind are factors in this election. Support for the European Union is also a factor as it has suffered in recent years.     ...

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Advice on walking away from a home loan when you are way under water, and it makes no sense to keep writing checks, and when government help is not there as you are way under water. Martin Feldstein had warned abut this as a major cause of rising foreclosures from early last year. Now without government help this looks like a rising tide for many homeowners under water. This financial planner says its feasible, and may make sense. He talks to the Mortgage Bankers Association, and a spokesman there tells him that its cost prohibitive for a bank to chase down a borrower in financial difficulty. And some states have laws that prohibit banks from going after borrowers for the remainder after foreclosure, including California and Arizona, two of the worst affected. And a lawyer arranging the foreclosure, can put in writing a waiver for this. For the tax impact, he says recent laws eliminate a federal tax through 2012 on most primary resident debt that a lender has reduced through loan restructuring, or forgiven through foreclosure. And states like California and Arizona have passed laws echoing these federal rules. Then there is the question of credit. Yes, its impaired for about 7 years. But with so many in foreclosure there may be an effort by credit unions and financial institutions to destigmatize borrowers who have foreclosed. A law Professor at George Mason University says credit scores will have to be adjusted to lessen the impact of a foreclosure, as this does not carry the information value in 2009 that it would say in 2005. And with so many people in foreclosure there is an emerging market here, according to credit union lender BECU in Washington state. If other than foreclosure you have good credit, its not going to be a big issue, says the director of the Rental Property Owners of Michigan, especially as good tenants are not that easy to find in this difficult economic environment anyway. What this suggests is that many will take this option and foreclosures will rise for the rest of 2009, especially if the job losses go on for longer in the range of 400,000 to 600,000 that we have seen for the last 4 months. Changes in the bankruptcy laws and restructuring the loans on that basis, or government help to those under water in some future plan that lowers payments to something in the range of 30-40%, are ways in which this can be averted. But with job losses of this magnitude a lot of people would end up in serious difficulty, and consider the foreclosure option....

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Feldstein says its important to raise taxes, and this does not mean raising tax rates. He says a lot of revenue is lost through deductions and exclusions, or tax expenditures as they are called. Recovering a large part of this lost revenue was recommended by the President's Bowles-Simpson Deficit Commission. He has a definite proposal that he and his colleagues have studied carefully- limit the reduction in taxes from deductions and exclusions or tax expenditures to 2% of a taxpayers AGI or Adjusted Gross Income. Feldstein says the impact of this proposal would be that taxpayers with incomes between $25,000 and $50,000 would pay an additional $1000 in taxes, and the taxpayers with incomes above $500,000 would pay $40,000 more in taxes. He says the 2% cap is about the reduction in an individual's taxes, not the size of the tax deduction or exclusion.

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Andy Cuomo benefits from the reputation of Mario Cuomo, the lack of serious opposition, but lacks enthusiastic support from voters. Voters don't feel inspired the way they were with his father Mario Cuomo. With a relatively unknown Republican candidate, Mr. Astorino, Democrat Andy Cuomo expects to win easily.

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Considering the fines and sanctions by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, during the time Mary Schapiro headed the organization from 2007 -2008, it did not take a serious watchdog role over the brokerage business that it was expected to supervise. NASD which she formerly headed, and FINRA, did several examinations of the brokerage business of Mr Madoff who ran a$50 billion Ponzi scheme, but failed to find anything wrong. Her agency in 2007 concluded that Madoff's firm had only violated some technical rules. Also fines and sanctions assessed by FINRA declined during the time she headed it. Fines levied by FINRA declined from $148 million in 2005, the year of her predecessor, to $40 million in 2008. Ms. Schapiro headed NASD regulatory arm in 1996, NASD itself in 2006, and FINRA after its creation in 2007. FINRA is a private agency set up by Wall Street to regulate itself. As the prevailing opinion at the time, with the SEC severely understaffed, was that Wall Street could regulate itself, agencies like FINRA had a bigger responsibility than was realized by Ms Schapiro and others. One securities lawyer who represented firms examined by FINRA, says FINRA should at least have asked more questions about the Madoff operation. In a November 2006 speech to the Securites Industry and Financial Markets Association, Mary Schapiro says, "we remain utterly committed to our regulatory mission but we should be also committed to doing no unnecessary harm or restriction to innovation in the industry and markets". Some of the stuff that went on in the name of innovation went against some basics and commonsense, and the failure to follow tested old good financial practices to separate sound innovation from unsound innovation, was a failure of that period. Schapiro's statement seemed to be a contradiction of a severe nature when examined closely, because how could she remain committed 100% to the regulatory mission if she made strong exceptions for innovations whose true logic and effectiveness only time could tell. The element of caution that should be a key part of the regulator's temperament and mental build was entirely missing. See the link to financial regulators in India, and of how this task was handled with that element of caution and skepticism of prevailing opinion. Other failure of FINRA is that it lagged behind state regulators in catching upto the mess resulting in afreeze up of auction rate securites markets. In June and July 2008, Massachusetts and New York securities regulators filed fraud charges against big firms in that matter. Another failure was the failure to look into the mortgage securites that were held in brokerage accounts and see that the valuations of these securites are sound. Finra only filed small cases against Lehman Brothers, with a fine of only $125,000 for failing to keep accurate books and records. As late as May 7, 2008 in speaking at the Financial Services Institute meeting, Schapiro was asked about what FINRA was doing to regulate complex packaged products like mortgage securites. And even though credit rating agencies had by this time been exposed as having failed, Ms Schapiro would only say, according to a financial advisor who asked the question, that "we have credit rating agencies that rate them." A pretty hands off view for a regulator when the cracks in the system were already exposed in mid 2008. Another facet of this is the high levels of compensation especially for a regulator. For her job at FINRA she received pay of $3.1 million a year including $2.5 million in compensation and $615,000 in benefits and deferred pay. In 2007 she also earned $449,000 in cash and stock grants as director of Duke Energy and Kraft Foods. All of which means that it is straining credulity for Obama to suggest that Mary Schapiro is the best person the Democrats could find for this critical job, in which the record has been severely impaired....

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The yuan is up 5.5% since the peg to the dollar ended in 2010, reaching 6.469 to the dollar. But this is not helping the U.S. trade deficit. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows the price of imports from China are up 2.8% in May over the same month prior year. And the trade surplus for China in the first four months of 2011 is higher than the same period in 2010. What is happening? The improvements in productivity of Chinese manufacturers and the acceptance of lower margins is reducing the effects on trade balance of a small appreciation of the yuan, so that only a fraction of that appreciation is showing up in higher prices for Chinese goods. Also significant is that the yuan's small appreciation against the dollar is not enough to make up for the dollar's fall against other currencies. The yuan is down 8.3% against the euro and has actually declined 3.7% on a trade weighted basis in the last year.

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Glenn Hubbard is Columbia University's Business School dean. He is also a former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors. Hubbard came under criticism in "Inside Job," a 2010 documentary about the financial crisis for reported connections with financial services firms. Here he talks to the Wall Street Journal's Melissa Korn on the ways in which Columbia is changing its business school programs to ensure interdisciplinary learning. Hubbard thinks a broader education is needed, not just expertise in a particular area, for today's students turning into the business leaders of tomorrow. One of the big changes today is that a student today may have significant responsibilities and leadership position in a shorter period 5-10 years. Earlier generations of business leaders had a much longer period before they assumed such responsibilities. This makes it even more important for a business student to have a broader education and have broader perspective. In the next ten years Hubbard sees two major changes- continued globalization, and the reshaping of major industries such as financial services. This will require students to have a broader grasp of the changes that will be taking place, which cannot come from merely having expertise in a particular field. He says this kind of education will be needed for business decisionmakers to be capable of preventing a broader economic meltdown. Hubbard believes ethics courses simply marginalize the subject, when in reality ethics and doing the right thing is woven into everything that happens, decisions that take place in so many ways and places, and often over many years. For this reason Columbia seeks to cover this ground in case discussions in different subject areas across the breath of the curriculum. Some of the developments and decisions occur over 25 years as in a GM auto industry case taught at Columbia. ...

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Young people in India express their rising expectations for the next government- for better infrastructure, for jobs and better incomes and a better vision for the future. Narendra Modi, leader of the BJP party and chief minister of Gujarat state, gives the development and high growth rates in his state as an example for what can be achieved in the the rest of India.

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PM Modi's win in Maharashtra, India's second largest state, and commercial center Mumbai with Ahmedabad, puts Vikshit Bharat plan to modernize India like China and Japan, on a firm footing. Some observers such as this one were of the view that the Chief Minister during Covid had done a good job, and that splitting his party with defections was not the right thing to do. Yet this view does not look at the infrastructure needs of the state and the nation which require effective government and government that can concentrate on delivery. It overlooks India's need to do what China and Japan have done to modernize their country in the last century. Vikshit Bharat is real, it is within reach, and Maharashtra senses this like the rest of the Indian nation. It is similar to Bumrah like Modi telling the Indian team that it had prepared well, now one should trust the process- which leads to Vikshit Bharat modernizing the nation - and give one's best. This led to Jasprit Bumrah taking the Indian team to a 297 run win over Australia at Perth after losing 3 Tests in New Zealand. A 14% vote margin for the NDA alliance called Mahayuti that is PM Modi's effort in Maharashtra, one of India's largest states which includes the city of Mumbai. This report says waves such as 2019 or ones in which Rajiv Gandhi won in 1985 were felt on the ground. This one was not anticipated. Yadav says in just 5 months after PM Modi's party lost in the Maharashtra Lok Sabha elections by 1-2% the shift is 15-16%. He says there is an additional 5 % deficit when a party contests a state election after a national election, widening the vote margin to 20 percent.  Of this he says the welfare schemes for women account for only 2-3%. The rest he can't understand.     ...

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Arvind Subramanium, outgoing Chief Economic Adviser to the prime minister in an interview with the Hindu newspaper, shares some of the knowledge he gained from failures and successes. The key lesson he gained is that it is important to have independent advisers in government who can speak their mind. Finance minister Jaitley has embraced this point, that such an adviser is not just one more part in the technocratic machinery of government. The success in getting GST he says shows that cooperative federalism is needed going forward as a kind of technology for many changes, including agriculture, DBT.  Subramanium calls the Economic Survey a success with 350,000 unique visitors. He likes the independence and distance of the CEA job to propagate the big ideas combined with closeness to decisionmakers. He counts as a failure not being able to create an office of CEA to the states, a request from 7 chief ministers and state finance ministers. Subramanium sees the need for more people in government with specific expertise in different areas as opposed to generalists as the work of government is becoming much more sophisticated. There is much need for talent and the flow of lateral talent into government.  Responding to economic issues such as the impact of oil prices on the economy Subramanium sees CAD at 2%, inflation at 4.5% much better compared to 2013 levels of double digits and not in unhealthy territory and very manageable. He sees risks in the impact of a combination of oil prices, dollar appreciation, and currency trade wars that are happening. On Iranian oil imports and strict U.S. sanctions on importers Subramanium sees the cost of not complying as stiff once you are in the dollar trading system. On demonetisation he sees there are short term costs and potential long term gains that requires an assessment every 2-3 years provisionally, what happened to tax and formalization, and the costs. Including costs in inconvenience and hardship for informal cash intensive sectors noted in the Economic Survey. For GST he says the revenue growth rate is 16-17% in aggregate for next year, growing 12% in the first year after a difficult implementation. The poorer states have seen an expansion of tax base and revenue performance is unprecedented.    ...

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Anthony Faiola provides this exceptional look at the thinking of Chancellor Merkel and German experts, about the refugees creating more opportunities than risks for Germany. Germany is an aging society, with low birth rates. How to reverse this, so that there will be more young workers to meet future needs long term ten or twenty years from now, is a problem facing Japan and Germany. Germany is also fortunate with the timing, with Germany's unemployment rate at a low of 6.2%, and years of growth ahead from a eurozone recovery. A fortunate circumstance in the nature of refugees from Syria, is that many of them are young, well educated, skilled workers, doctors, engineers and architects, from a relatively moderate Arab country. This is a better immigrant pool than the one Germany took in from Turkey in early postwar years, in terms of education, youthfulness and skills, and one in which the lessons learned from that pool's inadequate integration could be applied here. This is why Germany is not only willing to take in 800,000, but German leaders are saying they could take in 500,000 a year for several years. Just as Germany has taken a long term view, and has the strength to execute it in its shift to renewable energy, Germany's centre right Christian Democrats and centre left Social Democrats in the coalition government see the issue long term around which they can bring a cohesive understanding and consensus in their country. Merkel addressing parliament said on September 9, 2015- "The refugees need help to learn German, and they should find a job quickly. Many of them will become new citizens of our country. If we do it well, this will bring more opportunities than risks." The decision to shift to renewable required a whole new mindset and leadership, in the same way German leaders are articulating the position based on a careful understanding of the situation and Germany's long term interests in reversing Germany's population decline and lower working age people. There are about 3 million Turkish people in the country, adding about 1.8 million Syrian and other refugees would still bring the percentage of people of foreign origin to less than 6% of the 81 million population, just a little bit less Christian and just a little bit less German in origin, which is in keeping with changes in a globalized world and no different than its neigbor France. What looked like a problem, if handled and managed well could be an opportunity knocking at Germany's door. Merkel's genuine convictions about universal civil rights make the "wilkommen refugees" very real in other ways....