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Questions remain about how the U.S. budget battle and possible shutdown of government will affect the political support for the Democrats and Republicans.

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After the huge crisis the debate about capitalism. What went wrong, and importantly what did not go wrong. Not in the sense of more punditry to place the blame but to ask questions to have a better grasp of the fact and better understanding of the twists and turns of the last decade, the complexities, the frailties, the errors of judgement, and the failings, and the outright falsehoods and ethical breaks. So that the good things are not lost for instance the individual initiative and the bad things are corrected and measures put in place to prevent recurrence and minimize damage. Has the model of anglo-saxon capitalism failed? Actually some specific things failed, deregulation at a time when banks and markets were behaving irresponsibly and without any restraint internal or external, credit ratings agencies failed, financial institutions failed in performing their first line of business which is to finance investment in the economy not in housing and mortgages, and American consumerism failed in that value of saving disappeared and abundance of debt brought American savings to zero, leaving little for investment in the economy and infrastructure except by borrowing from other countries. And living on illusions and not on sound basics the leadership failed thinking that free enterprise and technology and productivity improvements somehow allowed a country or group of countries to live way beyond their means, and a tendency to excess in the popular mood of the country, excesssive consumption, excessive and profligate use of energy which sent trillions of dollars overseas over decades, and excessive expectations of the lower classes for housing and goods beyond their means, all played a part. What did not fail is the freedom to trade, the fall of "barriers to intercourse" between nations, that produced gains on a big scale so that computer and cell phone technology developed in one part of the world quickly spread around the world and the innovations and technology developed in one country spread producing benefits all over the world. It created amood of optimism in developing countries whose incomes rose especially where countries encouraged growth as in China, India, Russia, Brazil, Eastern Europe and pulled hundreds of millons out of poverty. With China, America and Germany in effect shipped technology goods in return for lower value added goods like textiles and shoes, to help China industrialize, and American consumption played a useful part until things reached an extreme and the system was abused by forgetting the basics and allowing excesses and failing to respect ethical responsibilities. Regarding regulation excessive regulation and red tape has proved to be bad as in the license Raj in India which stifled private initiative and new enterprise till it was abandoned in 1990, and no one in India is calling for more regulation. What is bad is to abandon good common sense and to rely on the illusion that no regulation is needed to run a complex financial system like we have today, a laissez fairre libertarian philosophy that was rampant in the Bush administration and in the country's leadership in the Bush years. As a result an underfunded SEC failed to deliver on its basic mission and responsibility, and the lack of a centralized regulatory authority with powers and funding to meet the challenges of modern finance as for instance ineffective derivative regulation under the CFTC, simply aggravated things further. ...

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According to analysts about 3.1 million workers across the USA work in auto manufacturers or related businesses. And every direct job at an automaker in the USA creates 5 other jobs according to the Center for Automotive Research, 2 of the 5 are related to suppliers or dealers and three are related to jobs a businesses where industry workers spend their paychecks. About 355,000 workers are directly employed by automakers, and the USA has 783,000 who make parts for automakers or the aftermarket including repair parts, says Debbie Menk project manager for CAR. Each of those supplier jobs has its own substantial trickle down effect. Another 1.97 million workers produce the steel, rubber and other materials to make the parts, or provide engineering, distribution and other support services, bringing the total to 2.78 million employees with jobs tied to suppliers. The spinoff effects spills into stores and restaurants relying on the incomes of those workers. Menk says that there are 1.7 million people who owe their jobs to the fact that the 2.7 million have jobs, getting the figure up to 4.4 million just on the supplier side. Factoring in some overlap in the retail spinoff from each supplier and automaker job, she estimates total employment in the auto industry at a minimum of 5 million jobs. She describes CAR's figures which are based on a study from earlier this year that used 2006 data, the most recent available, as conservative. Other experts like Anderson Economic Group using 2006 data come up with a higher figure of 8.7 million jobs. The auto industry spends spends more on R&D than any other industry except the government, $18.5 billlion a year says McAlinden, chief economist for CAR, with 85% of this done in Michigan. They also spend $15 billion in advertising. So why is this not registering in the minds of leaders around the country and in the minds of the public? Its possible that most people see only the 355,000 jobs at the automakers and not realize that the 355,000 direct jobs are assembly jobs which is what the automakers do and design and R&D, but there thousands of parts that go into this assembly, and the steel, rubber and aluminium that goes into the metal. And then there are the jobs to feed, clothe, and provide services to these workers. And its possible the arrogance and mismanagement at Detroit automakers, and failure to come up with innovative fuel efficient technologies at a time when the country was sending hundreds of billlions of dollars to the volatile middle east, and failure to come up with really appealing passenger cars, have soured the public mind and image of the Detroit automakers. Resulting in a public perception that the Japanese, Korean and other automakers could pickup where Detroit failed. In the process what is being missed is that the Detroit portion of the USA auto industry is a very significant part of the jobs and economy of certain states, and a big part of the economy of the midwestern states. And as CAR mentions most people do not realize that in the financial services industry one Wall Street job creates only 2.5 jobs elsewhere including spinoff jobs. Only high-tech comes close with 4 jobs including spinoffs for every direct job in Silicon Valley. ...

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France showed zero GDP growth in the second quarter of 2012 compared to the first quarter, according to the national statistics office Insee. French president Hollande will have to raise 33 billion euros in spending cuts or higher taxes to reach the target for the budget deficit of 3% of GDPin 2013, according to a July report of Cour des Comptes, a body that audits public institutions. This will be harder now that the slowdown globally is leading to expectations of slower growth than the 1% growth forecast used in the audit. French president Hollande has so far received good marks from analysts and financial markets. French borrowing costs have reached new lows especially in short term maturity bonds where bondholders are lending money at zero interest rates, partly because of the flight to safety from Italian and Spanish bonds.

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Jacobs and Richtel of the NYT give this exceptional story of how Mexico changed between 1980 and 2016. Following the joining of NAFTA free trade zone the Mexican diet and food ecosystem began to more closely resemble the food diet system in the U.S. bringing with it severe health consequences. Soda and coke are now more entrenched in Mexico, as are fast food outlets. In 1980 only 7% of Mexicans were obese, compared to 20% in 2016, according to Institute for Health Metrics at the University of Washington. And diabetes kills 80,000 people a year, becoming the top killer according to the World Health Organization. A trade expert at Tufts University, Timothy Wise, says Mexico took on the worst aspects of a first world country like the U.S., with few protections. A similar problem is taking place in India and China as obesity grows, according to the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard, as low nutrient highly processed foods of large food companies with huge advertising budgets take a prominent place in diets. This is a growing problem for countries from Colombia to Ghana and Nigeria. ...

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Krugman points to some striking facts about China in 2011. Consumer spending in China is only 35% of GDP and has declined over the years. There are no signs of rebalancing the economy away from exports by increasing consumer spending. China's dependence on exports for trade surpluses is greater than ever. Beyond this there is another disturbing fact. With weak consumer spending and heavy investment spending at about half of GDP, Kugman raises the question where is all that increase in spending going? Real estate investment takes up about half of the increase in investment spending, as the share of GDP of real estate investment almost doubles compared to figures for 2000. Much of the rest of the increase Krugman attributes to firms selling to the construction industry. The speculative fever, the corruption at the local level, the shadow banking system which is not protected and unsupervised, the poor quality of statistics, suggest a bubble phenomena that may not be under control of policy makers, and risks damaging China economy and the world economy in 2012-2013. After all China's economic and financial planners and banks are no better than America's or Japan's, where asset bubbles burst causing serious damage....

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Thomas Frank describes how things went wrong in America by drawing the contrast between Martha's Vineyard and Decatur, Illinois. In 1946 he says a typical executive's salary was only 2 times that of a worker at a Caterpillar plant in Decatur, Illinois. By 2016 this had changed to where the top executive at Caterpillar was making over 400 times the wage of a typical worker at a Caterpillar plant. Democratic politicians he said had moved away from their working class base towards places like Martha's Vineyard. For Republicans the embrace of tax cutting, the deficit, and cuts in education and healthcare, entitlements, to the exclusion of everything else in a recession environment led to the rise of Trump and the rejection of stands on these issues- including amazingly the embrace of a $5.3 trillion increase in the deficit under the Trump plan estimated by economists and a recession after a temporary boost.  Inserted into this were the culture wars, immigration, with the change to mass deportation as a solution to immigration problems. ...

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William McGurn points out that putting together the Obama coalition will not win the presidential election for Hillary Clinton because of serious discontent in the middle class. The priorities for the middle class he says, citing surveys, are jobs, economic opportunity, upward mobility, accountability, and tax reform, which are unlikely to be accomplished with higher spending in the Clinton or Sanders programs. This opens an opportunity for Republicans, according to McGurn.

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Kudos to Ellen Barry for hands on reporting right from Amethi, Uttar Pradesh state in India. For years UP (Uttar Pradesh) has been seen as one of India's most backward states, even though it is the largest state in India centering around the Ganges valley. Politicians were content to use backward parts of the state as mere vote banks at the time of elections. The elections in 2014 focussed on development are beginning to change this. The Gandhi family based in Allahbad, India, had Amethi in UP as the place where family members stood for parliamentary elections. In recent years as the Gandhi family's grip on UP loosened, the same vote bank policies were employed by caste group parties led first by Ms. Mayawati and then Mr. Mulayam Singh Yadav. The elections of 2014 were about making the shift and sea change in Indian politics in the heart of the country- the north central Ganges valley region- away from vote bank politics and caste groups. The BJP under Gujarat's Modi focussed the election on development and delivery on infrastructure and jobs. For too long reporting on an important part of Asia has been laid back from metropolian centres without the hard work needed to grasp the situation in the countryside and on site. Kudos also to NYT's Bearak's report from Ladakh on the enormous logistics required for an election of this magnitude with about half a billion voters. ...

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An analysis by Credit Suiss analysts shows that borrowers who have their principal reduced are less likely to default. But mortgage companies have been reluctant to take down loan balances. One study shows that47% of loan modifications completed in November 2009 resulted in higher payments for borrowers, typically because unpaid interest and fees were added to the loan balance. It is critical to make loan payments significantly affordable, as many people have other loans such as credit car loans, home equity loans, car loans, and these obligations make even a lower payment unaffordable.

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On October 30, Sheila Bair heading the FDIC, the main advocate for reducing foreclosures by reducing the mortgage payments is in discussions with Treasury officials for a plan whose details are still being worked out. A key part of it is for the government to assume half of the losses on home loans that are incurred if mortgage companies agree to lower monthly payments for at least 5 years. The cost to the government is about $50 billion that would come from the $700 billion bailout fund. Right now loan companies are reluctant to reduce monthly payments because homeowners might defaul again or the owners of mortgage securities might file law suits. The funds would go to shoulder half of any future losses on default. For example if under a loan modification program 40% redefault and losses on loans are 55%, and $500 billion in loans are modified under the program, the total losses government would bear are $55 billion. This scenario is possible in a deep and prolonged housing and economic slump. This would be a gradual program if mortgage companies or companies with home loans or servicers of loans have to decide if they want to take advantage of this program, and time is critical as the foreclosures are accelerating and thisputs downward pressure on prices....

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It took a long time for the banks to understand what is in their best interests is in the best interests of the country's economy and homeowners, something Sheila Bair has been saying since the beginning of this year and implementing at IndyMac. Its just too costly for banks to use the foreclosure process to recover their money and it makes much better financial sense on the bottomline of banks and for the economy to make home payments affordable. Because the worse home prices get the worse the economy and banks do and nothing drives home prices down like foreclosures. The Bank of America settlement for Countrywide with state attorney generals to modify loans for 400,000 homeowners because of predatory lending practices also set the direction. Chase Bank is now using the Bair template to get the monthly payments down to an affordable level which is about 40% of the current payment by reducing interest rates and using a smaller loan balance and keep homeowners in their homes. Chase's plan will help 400,000 homeowners and will also help homeowners who are having difficulty making payments. It will put a 90 day hold on foreclosures till the program is put in place. Yet there is one problem. Only $350 billion of the 1.5 trillion in home mortgage it services are owned by Chase, the rest are owned by investors in the form of mortgage securities. It can do little for homeowners covered by these securites that are owned by hedge funds and other funds as a few of these funds oblivious of the overall interest including their own have threated to sue if loans are modified, and it would take some time to figure out who owns each security and what the terms are for modifying loans for that security. Its this part of mortgage securitiization that has slowed down a rational process of unwinding this problem throughout housing by making homeowners monthly payments affordable. And Fed's Bernanke did not come to grips with this point in his talk about mortgage securitization to UC Berkeley on October 31,2008, that mortgage securitization done in a way that make loan modification difficult is dangerous as it is today, and makes a crisis bigger than it otherwise would be, and turn a USA crisis into a global crisis through ricotcheting effects and a series of bad decisons....

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Civil rights song of Rutha Mae Harris of Albany, Georgia. I'm going to vote like the spirit say vote I'm going to vote like the spirit say vote I'm going to vote like the spirit say vote And if the spirit say vote I'm going to vote Oh Lord, I'm going to vote when the spirit say vote. Says Miss Harris who participated in all the civil rights struggles since 1961 of Obama, "he's of a different time and place, but he knows whose shoulders he's standing on." At the time in 1961 fewer than 100 of Georgia's Dougherty County's 20,000 black residents were registered to vote. Literacy tests made a mockery of due process, one field worker remembers being asked by a registrar how many bubbles are there in a bar of soap. And bosses made it clear to black workers that registration might be incompatible with continued employment. Repeatedly civil rights workers draw connections between their work and the colorblindness of Obama's candidacy. Says 103 year old Daisy Newsome who was in the early civil rights struggles, "it ain't because he's black, because I've voted for the whites. I know he can't be no worse than what there's done been. I think he would be just as good a President as one of those whites ever made."...