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Biden has put forward a new initiative to strengthen democracy by getting increased commitments to key features for democratic processes in the world. The idea is not to limit partnerships with other countries says Anthony Blinken, Mr. Biden's main adviser and secretary of state. This means India a key partner in both democracy and the Indo-Pacific can for defending its thousands of miles of border in the high Himalayas with enroachment of China into border areas such as Tibet, maintain its good legacy relationships with Russia as happened in last weeks Modi-Putin meeting.  The idea says Blinken is- "The US does not want to limit your partnerships with other countries. We want to make your partnerships with us even stronger." This means the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, can maintain economic and development related ties with China which contribute to their economy, and build stronger relationships of culture and democratic processes with the US, India, European Union and Japan. For this reason the White House has emphasized that this is not about the US giving stamp of approval or disapproval of which country is a democracy and which is not. Too much of that happened under previous governments including Reagan, Carter, Bush, Obama.  The situation of Turkey relates to independence of judiciary and the unwillingness to take another look at problems. There is also the issue of technology is to be used so that citizens are protected from undue surveillance. Mistakes can be made but judiciary acts as an independent branch under the arrangements of checks and balances in American, British and now European frameworks of democracy built over centuries of struggle between monarchies and the people dating back to the Magna Carta in Britain. Neglect of workers and families also is an issue for democracies as for instance the effort now taking place in Germany under Scholz to "respect" workers and families. Lack of this led to the movements in US and European democracies giving room to vent that could ultimately lead to subverting democracies in the homeplace of democracies in the US or Britain. Why such a large gathering of 100 countries? Biden understands that the processes of democracy are always being improved and are a work for each new generation. For this reason there is no perfect scorecard- an ever renewing effort to make the process work in the best interests of the people of the country one generation at a time, to improve the quality of life and do this by preserving the right of peoples to choose their governments.  Why exclude China and Russia, till recently China had a consultative arrangement to run the country and Russia has elections? On this question the response of the Biden administration is that countries commit to the process and back initiatives to "counter authoritarianism. combat corruption, and promote respect for human rights."   Pakistan because it struggles with a long legacy of shortfall in the area of education after the collapse of Mughal rule that was seen under the British, and the general poverty of the Indian subcontinent that is striving to preserve the practice of elections, judiciary, and other democratic processes that were introduced in the Punjab and Sind provinces, and elsewhere since 1900. This is true for much of Africa, and also in parts of India, where aspirations of the people are for democratic process but faced with difficulties, corruption and poverty. In India the efforts of Naoroji, Gokhale, Gandhi, Nehru and Rajagopachari, Govind Pant, almost all leaders of the period since the 1850's, and able well meaning administrators since Lord Mayo in 1868 were to let democratic processes gradually find deep roots. Biden see aspirational in the face of difficulties as acceptable, even truly remarkable, with a willingness to learn from other countries to strengthen its own processes for democracy. It is no longer an Anglo-Saxon model alone as Germany and Europe are part of this process to be renewed by each generation. So are India and Japan. India after a century of elections since 1900 gradually expanding voters from one million to 5 million in the 1930's and to 900 million in 2019, with independent judiciary in a system of checks and balances as in the US.    ...

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New offices, making them less awful, (NO-LA) this is the trend says this report in WSJ. Reopened offices are opening on a voluntary basis. How will they attract employees back?  Try sweeping views, new yoga and wellness areas, "tech-free reflection zones,"  more conference rooms. This report looks at spaces by Accenture and other companies. Accenture adds sweeping views of the Hudson river, access to an outdoor terrace. The idea is to act as a pull, rather than a push. Unilever is changing offices into destination spaces where employees will come and work in 40% of the time. Salesforce is moving out desks to add more couches, TV's and whiteboards for teams. More offices are building spaces for 60% collaboration, up from 40% previously. Sanofi in Paris is adding options for breakfast, early dinner.  Other ideas are engagement days if workers are coming in only a few days a month. At Hightower this means one set day in the office a week, two engagement days a month for collaborative work. And workers are allowed to not coming one month a year and work from anywhere they choose.  ...

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Changes in the management board at  VW that will lead to an accelerated investment in electric vehicles. Labor leaders had sought to oust CEO Herbert Diess. Mr. Diess will no longer oversee the VW brand or the company's business in China. The management board is expanded to 11 from seven previously. Three new board positions were created two filled by women. The result is that Mr. Diess will now be working with overall guidance from the board and other members that seeks to accelerate VW's conversion into an electric car company. About $180 billion in investment was approved half of this going into digitization and electric cars.

These changes are happening as Germany goes in a new direction under the leadership of Mr Scholz of the SPD and the Greens vice chancellor, Mr Habeck, who is also in charge of an expanded economy ministry including climate change, with large investments planned to combat climate change.

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This report in FR24 cites the director of research at France's National Institute of Health and Medical Research, Inserm, about the damaging effects of an insecticide used in the French West Indies. The result is that there are violent protests against the vaccine mandate being implemented in the French West Indies. 

The FR24 report says that about a third of the marine coastline, and a third of agricultural land and land for breeding, in the West Indies islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique is polluted by the insecticide chlordecone. The insecticide was first used in banana plantations in the French West Indies against banana insects. The insecticide has now contaminated the soil and groundwater. 

 

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This inflation is different from anything that happened before as it is driven by both demand and supply side situation. Seeing it as only demand side and acting on that would only damage the economy, says Greg Ip in the WSJ. On supply chain shortages there is little the government or the central bank can do to fix this in the short term. This is also why the Families and Workers Plan and Infrastructure plan of president Biden with about $2 trillion dollars in spending is not expected to cause much impact on inflation. The Fed is carefully looking at the situation because of the unique nature of the problem in 2021 to avoid any missteps that hurt the US economy and US growth for the coming decade, on which so much of the hope of America and the world rests.

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The head of the Germany Program at Institut Montaigne in Paris, France, Robinet Borgomano looks at the renewal of German society under the ideas of "respect" put forward by Olaf Scholz of the SPD party. What does Olaf Scholz see as the main issue of our time? - Borgomano says it is the disintegration of European and American societies under the combined effects of technological progress and globalization. Where does Scholz get his ideas of "respect" for workers and families? Isn't Mr. Biden sharing the same ideas in the US? The SPD party got its start at the Bad Godesberg Convention in 1959 when it embraced the idea of a social market economy as a party of the people. Wily Brandt as chancellor from 1969 to 1974, whose personal struggle against the Germany of World War II was based in the Nordic countries, embodies best this renewal aspect of the SPD. Scholz sees his role as renewal of Germany, Europe, hand in hand with Mr. Biden's renewal efforts in the US on the same basic ideas of respect of the dignity of the worker and families that in Germany were seen with Wily Brandt and in the US with Harry Truman who followed FDR. Scholz rejects the overemphasis on the of merit in German society, European society, or American society, in the way it has taken shape in the last fifty years. Scholz cites Michael Sandel's Essay "The Tyranny of Merit" rejcting it because it makes a case for inequality based on merit, on capital allocation on an implied idea of merit of free markets managed in damaging ways for personal interest. It is wrong because it robs the worker and families of the basic dignity that is the right of every individual and of every person. It is wrong because it makes a false justification for growing inequality, and makes those who do not succeed feel that it is their fault. Meritocratic elites have made the idea that those who work hard and play by the rules get all the benefits and wealth even if the rules were first set in a way that benefits them alone. When these rules become implicit they are rarely questioned as happened in the period after 2000. It is not just in Europe and America that this happens, and not just in the 20th century.  Strange but true- During the 1850's in the heyday of industrialization in Britain the Ethnological Society of Britain justified the inequality between the British and Indians in the British Empire by saying Indians were inferior in exams and did not have the motivation or the aptitude and energy to excel in the way British students did. Dadabhai Naoroji, the first Indian member of the British parliament in Mr. Gladstone's Liberals singlehandedly took up the job Sandel and Scholz and Mr. Biden are taking on today to restore the respect of workers, farmers, and families in America and Europe and in all parts of the world. Sandel goes on to say what Scholz has heard clearly- "the parties that made the offer of upward mobility to workers and families have missed the insult implicit in it to a large number of working people." In a way it is going back to the roots, to the founding fathers in America who said in the 18th century that "all men are created equal and they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," -nothing less.   ...

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The Times offers insights into what sort of man Scholz is and how he went on from mayor of Hamburg to lead Germany as chancellor and head of a coalition government with the Greens and the FDP. Scholz made a pitch in his campaign for "respect" as a way to unify German society, with respect for the less well off and people left behind. Scholz is an avid reader, most recently of Brendan Simms Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy, on Germany's and Europe's role in the period since the 15th century and the Reconquista of Spain. He is a lover of jazz, Mahler, the poetry of Mario Vargas Llosa and Heinrich Heine, the novels of Thomas Mann and Gunter Grass. He also loves rowing, which he says can get him out of bed before 7 am in the morning. He once told the Frankfurter Allgemeine - "The greatest mistake in my private life was that it took me until I was 40 to find out I like sport." He is married to Britta Ernst, who is a SPD politician and minister of education in the state of Brandenburg that is next to Berlin. Asked what qualities he prized in a person Scholz has said - "Self-reflection and self-evaluation."   ...

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Cummins gets 5 wickets, England's top batsmen out for three ducks, two years of preparation show the tension, the need to throw the "million dollar fast ball" as bowler Harmison did in Brisbane in 2006 sending the ball straight to second slip. This time the first ball by Mitchell Starc dismisses Burns. This is the first day of the Australia England Ashes cricket series.

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This time there is less exposure for foreign investors as the Turkish lira drops because Turkish holdings were reduced. Turkey bondholdings have come down by half and holding of Turkey stocks down by 40%. The decline of the lira also reduced Turkish assets in benchmark emerging market indexes - in MSCI to 0.2%, and in JPMorgan's bond index to 1.1% from 5%. 

So far the situation in Turkey has not spread to other emerging markets such as Russia, Mexico and Brazil. With the Fed looking at raising interest rates earlier than planned, slower growth in China that takes in developing country commodity exports, emerging market assets are under some pressure. The WSJ Dollar Index was at a 15 month high on Nov. 24 and continues to be close to this.

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This WSJ report cites estimates showing 11 job openings in the US, with 6.9 million people looking for work or unemployed. About 5 million more job openings than people seeking work. Low wage sectors are hit hard with people shunning these sectors. People are quitting jobs looking for higher wages, better benefits and working conditions, better work-life balance. In August 4.3 million workers quit their jobs as the American workforce goes through big changes.

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Pfizer says a third dose of Pfizer vaccine neutralized the Omicron variant in lab tests. The two dose was much less effective at blocking the virus. A third dose increased antibodies 25 fold compared two doses for the omicron variant. Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla says- "Although two doses of the vaccine may still offer protection against severe disease caused by Omicron strain, it's clear from these preliminary data that protection is improved with a third dose of our vaccine."

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Abdulrazak Gurnah who left Zanzibar for England in the 1960's was given the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021 for his "compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee caught between cultures and continents." In his acceptance speech Gurnah says in his writings he engaged in a refusal to accept the attitudes, the stereotypes and disdain towards people of British colonies that he met daily. He says that after a prolonged period of poverty and alienation in England it became clear to him that there was something he needed to say. Gurnah says he came to the "deeply unsettling realization that a new simpler history was being constructed, transforming, even obliterating what had happened." Writing he said was to show "what can be otherwise, what it is that the hard domineering eye cannot see, what makes people apparently small in stature feel assured about themselves, regardless of the disdain of others." ...

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Olaf Scholz was elected chancellor by Germany's parliament on December 8. Robert Habeck of the Greens party is vice chancellor and heads a new ministry that combines the economy ministry with ministry for climate. This brings Germany and the European Union new leadership with plans to modernize German and European economies, and build a stronger relationship with the US.

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Italy is investing the $225 billion of EU funds to modernize its economy under Mario Draghi. Draghi has shown in his first year that he can spend the funds wisely and invest in areas of the economy that need investments most. In the past year he has tackled problems including the slowness of the judicial system, modernizing an inefficient bureaucracy, and liberalizing wide parts of of the services sector. Draghi plans to invest EU grants in digital and physical infrastructure, education, environmental protection, and other needs for the long term. Before being chosen to lead the government Draghi was head of the Italian Treasury and central bank. He then headed the European Central Bank helping southern European countries tackle the debt crisis at a difficult time when Germany under Merkel pursued strict austerity policies and insisted on these policies for all eurozone countries. This report in WSJ shows the prevailing opinion in Italy is strongly in favor of Draghi staying on as prime minister till 2023 because of the confidence people inside Italy and in the European Union have in his leadership and discipline for making the investments to modernize Italy. Draghi told school children in Rome that "the most important thing is what you are doing right now," showing he understands the importance of providing Italy with the leadership it needs today.  ...

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On foreign policy the new German government of Olaf Scholz seeks to build a stronger European Union. Scholz will also follow a policy of close ties with the US. On relations with China Scholz has not stated much. Greens party foreign minister Baerbock's views and Scholz's views suggest a close relationship with the US - a call with president Biden will follow visits to Paris and Brussels. Scholz says "It is now clear what binds us together," referring to democratic values.

Video of all members of the new German cabinet is shown in DW.com, individually with each minister's background, part of the new government of SPD's Olaf Scholz. Wolfgang Schmidt is Chief of Staff and Minister for Special Affairs for Mr. Scholz. Vice Chancellor and Economy+ Climate minister is Robert Habeck. Education, Digital and Transportation Infrastructure, Finance, went to the FDP. Other ministries were divided between the Greens and the SPD.