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Weakness in the U.S. and Russian market for Adidas and criticism of CEO Herbert Hainer by shareholders. Adidas share price is down about 25% compared to Feb. 2014 even after a 11% increase in 2015. In the U.S. market Adidas has fallen behind Under Armour Inc. to No.3 spot in U.S. sports brands, and North American sales decreased 10% in euro terms for the first 9 months of 2014. The largest competitor Nike has seen a 30% increase in its share price in the last 12 months. Hainer is CEO since 2001, a period in which Adidas earnings quadrupled. Adidas is preparing a new 5 year strategy.

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Parallels between the Taft, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson election campaigns of 1910 and 1912, and the campaigns of 2010 and 2012, drawn by a T.R. biographer. He points to a tumultuous period ahead as lobbyists, outside interests, and the political parties and their supporters battle it out to set the direction of the country.

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The cutting of import tariffs for cars to 4% for S. Korea under free trade agreements is leading to a rise in share for imports. Imports reached 10% market share in 2012. Hyundai and Kia lost 2.3% market share in 2012. About half of imports are diesel cars from Germany, with 64% of imports from Germany.

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A plan appears to have been put in place by the U.S. and the European Union countries to strengthen the American position in negotiations with Iran underway in Istanbul. The impact on oil prices and on U.S. and E.U. growth as a consequence of higher oil prices, especially when the eurozone countries faced lowed growth, was one of the ways Iran hope to blunt the tightening of sanctions against Iran's nuclear program. It now appears from information released by the International Energy Agency that a plan was implemented by the Saudis in recent months to build up reserve supplies. At the same time a similiar effort was being implemented to increase production in Iraq and Libya so that it would add to reserves added by the Saudis. Daily output from OPEC countries increased by about 1.4 millon barrels in the Sept 2011- March 2012 period, as the confrontation with Iran took shape with increasing pressure using sanctions on Iranian oil, according to the IEA. Of this 1.4 million barrels a day increase, one third is from the Saudis and the rest from Iraq and Libya, according to IEA. In March 2012, OPEC oil production increased by 135,000 barrels a day to 31.4 million barrels, mostly from higher output in Iraq. The Saudis have filled up domestic oil inventories and placed an additional 10 million barrels of oil in storage close to markets in Europe and Japan. This suggests that this was part of a quietly implemented plan in cooperation with the U.S. and the EU countries to increase the effectiveness of sanctions and protect global oil supplies from disruptions; even as the U.S. pressured Japan, S. Korea, India and other countries to reduce purchases of Iranian oil. The economies of India, the EU and other countries were already beginning to feel the impact of higher oil prices in the 1st quarter of 2012....

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Bernie Sanders tells his supporters at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia that "immediately right now, we have got to defeat Donald Trump, and we have got to elect Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine." He says this campaign was not about just electing a president but about transforming the country. And for this he was planning to back about 100 candidates with similiar thinking across the U.S. He called on supporters to continue the campaign for social, economic, racial and environmental justice. Voters for Sanders were offended by the information shown in DNC email leaks of the bias against Sanders shown by DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who has since resigned.

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Toyota revised its profit forecast downward for the current fiscal year ending March 2012, by 54%. The revised forecast is for net profit of 180 billion yen ($2.32 billion), down 54% from a prior estimate made in August, and half the 408 billion yen earned the prior year. The strength of the yen has impacted the price competitiveness of Japanese exports. It has also affected the value of overseas profits on Japanese financial statements. Toyota makes half of its global production in Japan compared to a third for Honda and Nissan, leaving it more vulnerable to the value of the yen. Also affecting Toyota are the severe floods in Thailand which led to shortage of parts from component suppliers in Thailand. The new forecast uses an exchange rate of 77 yen to the dollar and 105 yen to the euro. That compares with the exchange rate for the prior fiscal year of 86 yen to the dollar and 113 yen to the euro.

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David Leonhardt talks to Raghuram Rajan, Mr Obama, and other experts on how the government should act after the stress test results are announced. Has the government toned down the results of the stress tests, and is it paying too much deference to Wall Street. Leonhardt put this question to Obama, why he asked his advisers were key figures of Mr Rubin's inner circle, Mr Geithner and Mr Summers, who like Rubin are inclined to have too much deference to Wall Street. Obama's answer was that he had other advisers outside of Summers and Geithner. Which wasn not convincing for Leonhardt considering the key positions Geithner and Summers hold. Rajan of the University of Chicago who anticipated the crisis, was not too reticent to criticize Greenspan policies and was in turn criticized for that by Summers, told Leonhardt that certain things may be presented as holy cows not to be touched for fear of something bad happening, but until you find out you cannot be sure. This applies to the bank rescue plans. Should the creditors of banks be asked to take haircuts or swap debt for equity. This may be necessary as there just isn't enough money in TARP - $130 billion left in TARP funds versus the $1 trillion that the IMF thinks American banks may need for solvency in the next 2 years- to do the bank rescue operations. Should the administration consider this a holy cow as Wall Street is suggesting, or come to its own conclusions independently of what Wall Street is saying. Wall Street has to look at it from its vantage point out of sheer necessity, not from what is the best option for someone in the administration's position, considering all the facts without any preconceived ideas or notions....

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The 6 km Congee to Bondi walk along the coast, and the 10 km Manly Scenic Walk, Sydney Harbour National Park trails, and  the Greater Blue Mountains Heritage Area, are shown here in BBC Travel, parts of Sydney that can be explored on foot.

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Target date funds for young people put money in stocks at 92% in 2024 instead of 85% in 2014,  for people in their late 30's 88% instead of 82%, for people over 60 allocation in stocks is up to 60% in 2024 from 57% in 2014. Investment allocations are higher today as the S&P 500 is up 10% so far in Jan-July 7 month period in 2025.

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Former Russian finance minister, Alexei Kudrin, tells a news confrence at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, that Russia should brace itself for an extended period when oil prices drop from $90 in June to $60. Russian finances are based on oil prices at $117 per barrel. He cautioned against the high military and social spending planned by the Putin administration.

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Toyota is reducing senior management positions to 60 from 77. The board of directors will also be smaller, with 11 members instead of the current 27 members. It was felt that the large board did not enable discussion of important issues and slowed down decisionmaking. This is part of the new Business Plan and the new global vision for Toyota. The thrust is on sales in emerging markets which Toyota will target for increasing sales to 50% of the total sales by 2015, up from 40% currently. Sales in developed markets are set to decline to 50% of the total sales by 2015, down from 60% currently. The other push is in the hybrid sales area. Toyota will roll out 10 more hybrid vehicles by 2015, in addition to all electric cars, plug-in hybrids. Toyota will continue to have an all-Japanese board, and will use a committee of outside advisors to stay abreast of opinion in other countries. Akio Toyoda announced these plans recently and did this by himself, as he puts his own ideas to work for setting Toyota's direction....

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A telecom price war in India leaves Vodafone and Reliance Communications with huge losses. This is the result of an offer of free internet for 6 months by Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Jio. Jio has extended this offer for another 3 months. With this offer Jio a new entrant to telecom has gained 100 million subscribers in a short period.

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The Indian economy showed strong growth in the second quarter of 2021 and economic growth for the whole year 2021 is expected to exceed 10%.

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Steinhauser, Walker and Stevis provide an exceptionally good account of the events leading to the March 25, 2013 EU 10 billion euro bailout of Cyprus, with the closing of one bank and the downsizing of another bank. The Cyprus government of president Anastasiades bluffed and lost. That Anastasiades and the Cyprus government would do this in serious negotiations with the finance ministers of Netherlands, Germany, France, the EU, ECB and the IMF at the headquarters in Brussels, in negotiations that ran to midnight on Sunday March 24, 2013, is simply astounding. Charles Dallara representing European bankers tried to do this with German chancellor Merkel at EU headquarters in Brussels during negotiations on Oct. 27, 2011, on an earlier confrontation over bondholder haircuts, bluffed to the last minute and lost. The way Cyprus handled the negotiations surpassed that. Right down to the last hours the Cyprus president waffled- backtracking on earlier agreement to close Cyprus Popular Bank. Calls were made by German finance minister Schauble to Merkel and by French finance minister Muscovici to French president Hollande to give a joint Franco-German response. Finally Anastasiades was told to pack up and leave on Sunday, March 24. The Cyprus government was not defending small depositors as its earlier plan was to tax all deposits at the two largest Cypriot banks 6.875%. Merkel saw this as an error as this would hurt small savers. The final agreement shut down Cyprus Popular Bank but protected insured deposits under 100,000 euros. Another disturbing sign for the ECB and the EU was Cyprus allowing several hundred million dollars to be wired out of the country even though banks were closed and an offical freeze on ouflows existed. A serious mistake in negotiations was when Cyprus finance minister kept EU finance ministers, the IMF and the ECB officials in the dark by not returning calls for 16 hours on Thursday March 25, 2013, while he tried to negotiate a deal in Moscow with Russia's Putin. This destroyed Cyprus's credibility leading to the ECB's warning to cut off liquidity to Cypriot banks which would put the banks into instant bankruptcy. By Friday morning, March 22, 2013, Merkel was angrily briefing her CDU party lawmakers on the negotiations, telling them the Cyprus government and Anastasiades did not get it, that the whole Cyprus model of outsized offshore banking sector- catering mainly to Russian investors - had collapsed. Cyprus unlike any other member of the EU was trying to face down Europe. Negotiations with Greece had been tough and street protests everpresent, yet negotiations went on in a responsible manner and in good faith, something missing here....

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Plan B for US president DJT on Tariffs - Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act to place a 150 day 15% tariff. Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. Trade Investigations under Section 301. Much of this set of laws are already in place and being used by the US. A law passed in 1930 is another avenue for tariffs Section 338 of ther Tariff Act of 1930. The US government and US president DJT could also have Congress enact a new law as it has majority in both the Senate and the House and the president could make acase for the reasonable use of tariffs with the EU and Japan having taken advantage of trade to the disadvantage of the US. There is also broad support for fentanyl action by the president using economic action on tariffs on nations Canada, Mexico, China that continue to let the flow of fentanyl across their borders for use by drug trafficking gangs in Mexico to send over US land border at the 2000 mile long US-Mexico border.

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The use of Chapter 11. or the US bankruptcy code, was astrong point of the American system of free enterprise, because it gave enterprises with problems but otherwise having healthy businesses a chance to reorganize and emerge stronger from the crisis. DUring the time in bankruptcy it could work out its debt load with creditors under court protection. Now this is no longer working in the current economic crisis. Because under current law derivative transactions are given preferred creditor status in a bankruptcy many creditors are designing their loans as derivative transactions. And creditors are creating the empy creditor situation by taking credit default swaps to ensure that they get paid if acompany fails to make apayment. In the process the creditor does not have the same interest in the company staying in business as it did before. This happened with Goldman Sachs buying credit default swaps on its loans to AIG. Complicating the situation further creditors are using the law to seize inventories and in other ways get aclaim on the assets if acompany like Circuit Stores for instance runs into difficulty. As aresult CIrcuit City was gforced into liquidation. So on one hand businesses that have achance if reorganized under Chapter 11 are being forced into liquidation and on the other hand companies that are not going to be the source of innovation or productive gains for the economy like Citigroup are simply tying up huge amounts of government money as there is a fear that a proposed bankruptcy could lead to arepeat of the Lehman collapse, where bankruptcy proceedings are too slow and cumbersome for this situation and things fall apart in days. ...

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The significance of the economic relationship of UAE and India with the visit of prime minister Modi to Abu Dhabhi on June 28 on the way back from the G7 Summit from Germany. Under recent trade agreements trade with UAE will increase to $100 billion in 5 years. 8 million Indians live in the Gulf region with remittances of over $50 billion a year. During Biden's visit to the region there will be a meeting of a new grouping called 2I2U referring to Israel, India, US and UAE.

Mohamed Bin Zayed or MBZ is a clear proponent of a strong leadership by the US in the region and in Asia and maintaining peace in the region after so many disastrous wars.

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EU measure that seeks to curb imports of coffee, cocoa, soy, beef, palm oil and wood when it is determined that it drives deforestation in the source country. To qualify as "deforestation-free" the land on which these food and other products were grown cannot have been deforested or degraded since Dec. 31, 2020. Demand from European Union countries for commodities such as beef and cocoa are strong drivers of deforestation, says Frans Timmermans, vice president of the EU. This comes after COP26 Glasgow conference where over 100 countries signed an agreement to end deforestation. The EU commissioner for the environment says "we can't ask for ambitious policies on the environment from partner countries on the one hand and support deforestation on the other."

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Disagreements on how much to fund an education recovery effort in the Toy government of Mr. Johnson. Sir Kevan Collins resigns after his program designed to help students recover from the loss of study time from coronavirus at a cost of 15 billion pounds is rejected. The government plans to put 1.4 billion pounds, which Sir Collins calls too narrow, and not doing enough, delivering too slowly. Sir Collins had hoped to give 6th Formers and extra 100 hours of schooling and help prepare students for GCSE exams. He would have extended school time by 30 minutes in 2022 and setup a 35 hour week for students.

Netherlands plans to spend 2500 pounds per student, the US 1600 pounds per student, the UK 50 pounds per student. 

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This report in the WSJ shows Pfizer is expected to make $8 billion in profit on its vaccine business, and Astra Zeneca barely breakeven in the vaccine business. The British-Swedish drugmaker Astra Zeneca had offered to distribute the vaccine at no profit during the pandemic. For this reason Astra Zeneca is the only vaccine that is available in 170 countries with 1 billion doses released. One of the main recipients is India with a population of 1.2 billion, which is also a vaccine maker for the Astra Zeneca vaccine that was developed at Oxford University, under Indian brand name Covishield. The Pfizer vaccine by contrast was sold to governments in the US and European Union, and Britain, who could afford the large outlay of funds and signed contracts early.

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The Argentina 2023 elections results show Sergio Massa, the current Economy Minister has 36% of the vote, and Javier Milei with 30%, and 24% for Patricia Bulrich a former security minister. The election rules require a candidate to get 45% of the vote or result in a runoff between the two leading candidates. Massa apologized for mistakes made by his administration. Milei calls for cutting budget for social welfare in a country suffering from steep 140% inflation and for abolition of the central bank, dollarizing the economy when it has $44 billion debt and a IMF program, ideas seen as extreme and risky. It is a sign of how the nation of 46 million is reaching for extreme steps as a result of failing in the fight against inflation and runaway spending.

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Marcellus Shale natural gas prices are monthly average of $2.80 per million BTU compared to benchmark U.S. prices for natural gas of $3.61 in Nov. 2013. The low prices of natural gas are leading to closing of more coal powered plants in the Pennsylvania, and W. Virgina, where a glut of natural gas is developing with few pipelines in the region. For the U.S. coal lost market share down to 37% in 2012 from about 50% of the electricity generated in the U.S. Over 100 coal burning generators were closed in the U.S. since 2011 because of lower natural gas prices and the federal government's stricter pollution limits for power plants.

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Nijmegen, in eastern Netherlands, only 10 miles from Germany is a university city that has made some of the best strides in sustainability in Europe, says this report in the BBC. This report shows this progressive oldest city in the Netherlands, and its green initiatives. 

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The Indian budget for 2024 calls for an investment in infrastructure of $134 billion, an 11% increase from prior year. The economic growth in the last quarter was 8.4%. For fiscal 2024 the growth estimate of government of India is 7.6%, the IMF forecast is 6.7%.