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US Business has considerable apprehension about the former president in 2024 compared to its willingness to consider Trump in 2016. At the time executives from investment bank Goldman Sachs and heads of oil companies joined the Trump administration. This time US business and corporate interests are apprehensive about becoming the target of a tweet they might find the next morning under a Trump administration. They are not supportive of student loan forgiveness, but when it comes to the CHIPS and Science Act they see president Biden as effective and helping industry. Business leaders have a negative view on the Trump effort through appointment of 3 Supreme Court Justices of overturning decades old rights of women on abortion, and on this issue alone many will support Harris-Walz, overriding other concerns they might have. The visions of Harris and Trump are so vastly different with one calling climate change a hoax and hyping up social issues and infrastructure needs without any record of delivery when in office, and the other a strong position on climate change, wages and income, delivering on infrastructure and CHIPS that US Business. The result is that it leaves US Business with no better option in 2024 than to support the vision  that takes America forward. There are different sections of the business community which have different priorities.  Silicon Valley, and oil, pharmaceuticals because it profits most from light regulation which brings with it social costs is a special issue not addressed here. Other business, banking, automobiles, and a range of other industries have other priorities yet also see the need for the economy and the US to move forward with a different vision than one that simply ignores climate change, and fails to address child care, child poverty, wide disparities in wealth, and other issues facing of wages, cost of living facing most Americans.  ...

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The difficulties in making a merger of equals work. The 50-50 merger of ad agency groups Publicis of France and Omnicom of the U.S. The problems at EADS with co-CEO arrangement and Daimler-Chrysler with different cultures. The problem of cultures may be less acute than appears because each group has ad agencies with different cultures, and the nature of the ad business with clients from different regions of the world. The problem of tackling the digital revolution in the ad business is common to both companies and the industry, which caused the merger to take place. Finding the best solutions for the agencies to tackle digital should be the focus of management.

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Obama proposes a 90 day moratorium on foreclosures and a moratorium on foreclosures by banks that get government help. He has also proposed that people should be able to take out money from their 401 K retirement plans upto $10,000 or 15% of retirement savings withot penalty. And he has proposed dobling the government loan guarantees to auto companies from $25 billion to $50 billion. These steps he proposes could be taken before January through current laws or by the Democratic controlled Congress acting in a lame duck session. Obama outlied these plans before an audience in Toledo, a struggling city in Ohio where working class Americans are facing the hardships of the current crisis.

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In 2015 the new government of Antonio Costa took a U turn from austerity policies followed in return for a bailout from the European Union. This has helped Portugal achieve the highest growth in a decade coming back from a severe slump. Unemployment is cut in half with growth in the tourist industry, and investment in agriculture, construction, aerospace.  Traditional industries such as paper mills and textiles have invested in new technology resulting in a boom in exports. German companies Bosch, Mercedes Benz, and others have also invested in the country. Portugal has a good relationship with Germany and the European Union which has also helped attract foreign investment. Prime minister Antonio Costa says "too much austerity deepens a recession and leads to a vicious circle." Antonio Costa came to power in 2015 on promises to reverse cuts in income made by the previous government to reduce the deficit in exchange for a 78 billion euro international bailout. The government backed by left parties left out of government since 1974 with the collapse of the dictatorship, was able to increase public sector salaries, the minimum wage and pensions, over objections of the IMF and the German government. Incentives were given to small business in the form of tax incentives, development subsidies and funding. Budget balancing was achieved by cutting expenditure on infrastructure and other spending, cutting the budget deficit from 4.4% when Costa took office to 1%. A surplus is planned for 2020, ending a quarter century of budget deficits. ...

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How much room is there to raise interest rates. Patrick Minford of the University of Cardiff says a lot more. At the rate of 9-10% inflation in Britain more interest rate increases are likely. Minford is advising Liz Truss who is candidate for prime minister. Minford's main ideas are- Get interest rates back up to what was considered normal in previous decades- 5-7% for mortgage rates is what it used to be. At that rate it protects people's savings something that did not happen in the last 2 decades of ultra low rates worsening the wealth gap for Britons in different classes. Cutting taxes is about providing the economy a boost as rates go up. It is not about huge cuts, just modest cuts like the 30 billion pound cuts proposed by Truss. Minford is not talking about low taxes. He is simply talking about having taxes at levels that will promote growth- "the key to growth is not having high taxes. We're not talking about cutting them, just talking about not having them at catastrophic levels." Here is what Liz Truss is proposing- Reverse the recent rise in national insurance. Scrap the increase in corporation tax. About this plan Minford says- "If we raise corporation tax we will kill off growth." Minford dismisses concerns about borrowing. " It's crazy to begin to try to drop the debt to GDP ratio 5 minutes after Covid." With higher rates Minford also think there will be fewer "zombie" companies eating up the nation's capital, while protecting the savings of hard working ordinary people in Britain which hasn't happened in the last two decades of ridiculously low rates, worsening wealth gaps in British society. Minford calls Sunak's policies "puerile" and too much beholden to Treasury thinking. Liz Truss says Sunak's policies are for Brexit in name only, not taking advantage of Brexit to rid Britain of cautious policy that does not capitalize fully on cutting the bureaucratic and regulatory burden to get growth, and trade that favors Britain. ...

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India's 267 million farmers 44% of the workforce that make it difficult to reduce 39% tariff on imported dairy and grain. Older Americans have lost the memories of famines in India including one in Bihar in the 1960's, not to mention the Bengal famine during the British rule in 1944 in which Britannica says 3 million people lost their lives. By 1965 India depended on US grain. Dhume reminds readers that in as recent as 1966 9 million tons, a quarter of US wheat crop, was sent to India to prevent famine. China had a similar situation of famine and starvation in the 20th century. This is why India and China have focused effort on achieving self sufficiency in food, and  agricultural productivity is one of the great achievements of the 20th century ranking with electricity and other inventions. When it comes to other upscale agricultural products such as walnuts, blueberrries, and almonds, and other, India's middle class would benefit from nutritional benefits of US agriculture in these fields at low or no tariffs. This suggests there is room for opening some sectors other than dairy and grain that are staple to the Indian diet of the vast population. US 50% tariff is motivated by India going from 2% Russian oil imports in 2019, to shifting importing from Saudis and UAE to Russia so that Russia now makes up a third of it's oil imports by 2024. In May it reached 4 million barrels a day dropping to 2 million barrels a day by July 2024.   ...

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Angie's List provides information on home improvement contractors and on health care companies. It was started by Angie Hicks after she graduated from Depauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. It has 400 employees and is based in Indianapolis. Sales reached $60 million in 2010, with revenues from membership fees and select advertising by highly rated service providers. It started with Mr Oesterle, a former boss of Angie's in a college internship, and his moving to Columbus, Ohio. Oestlerle had difficulty finding good contractors to renovate a 1920's home, and suggested they work together on this idea of a list of reliable contractors based on personal interviews. The company still relies only on personally obtained information.

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Gilead Sciences contracts with seven Indian generics drug makers to provide Hepatitis drug Sovaldi at $10 a pill for a 24 week course. These Indian companies will pay royalties to Gilead Sciences and supply the market in poor countries. There are about 350,000 deaths from Hepatitis C each year, most of them in middle income or poor countries. Worldwide about 180 million people are infected with Hepatitis C. There is intense criticism for the $1000 a pill charged for Sovaldi in the U.S., with $10 billion in sales for 2014 already set for the new drug's 12 week regimen that costs about $84,000. Gilead spends about 19% of sales on R&D.

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Mark Fields, takes over from Mulally in 2014, as CEO of Ford Motor Company. Fields headed Ford's Argentina operations and Mazda in Japan, before heading the luxury car division and North American Operations. He made it through a dfficult period in 2008-2010 when it was not clear whether he would survive the turmoil that was shaking Detroit car companies. He is respected for supporting CEO Mulally's effort to change the deteriorated culture at Ford by bringing a new humility and honesty to tackle problems upfront, and for supporting better relations with the plant workers through wide bonus sharing. He is a New Jersey native who attended Rutgers University and Harvard B-School before joining Ford.

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A detailed account of how it happened and the hard work of Secretary Paulson from meetings at 7am to 11pm, with one banker saying it was harder than prison where you get 3 full meals a day. While Treasury reviewed its options, it asked Morgan Stanley bankers and Fed officials to go over the books at Fannie and Freddie. Treasury also handled calls from foreign cenral banks holding Fannie and Freddie bonds. The long meetings at Treasury, those involved, and the final meeting with the CEO's of the 2 companies where Paulson told them "Accept, or it will happen," they could go willingly or FHFA would declare them undercapitalized and take them over involuntarily.

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Lou Jiwei chairman of China Investment Corporation met with Treasury officials in Washington to give reassurances that China's sovereign wealth fund would invest as a portfolio investor and be a good citizen when it comes to investing in the USA. He reiterated the pledge by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao that the Chinese government would not interfere in the operations of the fund, and that the fund would have its own corporate governance structure. He also met with officials of the IMF who are drawing up a code of "best practices" for sovereign wealth funds. Following the Chinese experience with the Unocal deal and the experience of Dubai in a deal to buy a company that manages USA ports, both deals falling apart on concerns in the media and Congress, the Chinese and the Persian Gulf sovereign funds have become more savy and aware of these concerns and tried to handle them better. They also point out that in the case of the financial institutions caught in the US mortgage securities crisis, it is these companies like Morgan Stanley and Citigroup that have come to them, to China, to Persian Gulf countries and to Singapore and other countries, asking them to invest for small stakes in the companies. Their line goes like this- if you have second thoughts about our investment we will invest elsewhere in other countries. Another facet of this is that these portfolio investments are spread out between many different countries sovereign wealth funds, and the possible influence is small in management decisions. China Investment Corporation has $200 billion in assets. Lou says that only a third would be invested to buy foreign assets, about $70 billion. The other two thirds would be used to support China's three large commercial bank balance sheets. ...

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Cracks are appearing in Japan's manufacturing model in recent years. Kobe Steel, Mitsubishi Materials and Subaru Corp have admitted to manipulating quality inspections. Takata Corp, maker of airbags is a case study in what can go wrong, as the company declared bankruptcy after failing to tackle safety problems and supplying defective airbags. The case is all the more astounding as airbags are designed for ensuring the safety of automobile passengers, a key feature of every automobile.  The situation is one of failure of management to take the right actions. This also happened with Toyota as management missteps worsened the issues related to faulty acceleration of vehicles, leading to media focus on Toyota in the U.S. Japan is not unique in this area of management failures as VW's actions in the diesel emissions case have clearly shown. Pressures to cut costs are part of the problem as this report shows. In Japanese companies quality checking staff employees are the targets of cost cutting layoffs resulting in the faulty step of outsourcing quality checks, which is contrary to what the country's pioneers sought to do when they adopted American Total Quality methods in the 1960's. This creates opportunities for China today, and for India in the future if it is able to capitalize on the opportunities in manufacturing desperately needed for job creation.    ...

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The Obama idea is to use the need for investment and the need to create jobs constructively by turning it into an opportunity. The opportunity arises from the need for several things that the government is also best equipped to provide or is uniquely equiped to provide. Such things as first rate broadband access across the country, putting in asmart electric grid, putting in the new energy infrastructure of windmills, solar panels, energy efficient appliances and energy efficient heating and cooling systems. Such things as mass transit, work on schools, sewer systems, dams and public utilities, roads and bridges, in the state of the art infrastructure building that is needed. All these things create jobs and create a sustainable advantage for a 21st century economy in which US companies will compete with companies from other countries. It includes such things as education and making it possible for kids to go to college and investing in education. Two concerns are present from conservative economists about this investment on a large scale from $500 billion upwards. One is the large deficit and public spending which crowds out investment by the private sector. In this case with the danger presented by an economic crisis arises a unique opportunity for government to do the right thing if it grasps it correctly and do as President Eisenhower did in building the interstate highway system at a cost of $128 billion according to governemnt estimates in 1991. Would the private sector be crowded out? In these circumtances faced today many companies including the largest ones are faced with great uncertainties and a precarious existence, and with a climate of fear and disappearing credit are not likely to come forward with these investments, so the danger is not in crowding out but in the risk that no such investments will be made at all. The second concern is that a lot of this money is either wasted or each dollar is not spent efficiently. Obama in response to this concern says he will have new spending rules, and measuring the progress for investments made by the number of jobs created, energy saved and American competitive position in the world. As an indication of the jobs created for each dollar spent the nation's governors have $136 billion in road bridge, water and other projects in which the money can be put to immediate use. Their estimate is that each 1 billion dollars spent would create 40,000 jobs. The estimate is from the nation's governors who met with Obama in the 1st week of December 2008. Local and regional transit systems have $8 billion in additional projects that can begin immediately like buying hybrid buses ans expanding light rail systems. ...

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Over $700 million in aid was provided in 2013 to struggling Chinese automakers from the central and local governments in an overcrowded industry, according to Wind Information Company. Companies receiving aid include Dongfeng Motor, BYD, Geely, Great Wall Motor, Guangzhou Automobile. Both domestic and foreign makers of cars are increasing capacity in an oversupplied market as sales decelerate. Domestic brands market share is declining compared to foreign car makers. Domestic makers market share declined to 37.1% in April 2014 from 39.6% in 2013, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. Ford Motor has added large SUV capacity to increase sales, and VW plans to increase capacity further. By 2015, overcapacity in China's market could reach 8 million cars, according to UBS Securities.

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Faiola points to public opinion in Ireland that shows the recovery in Ireland looks better on paper than it really is. Opinion polls show a large gap between the views of the government and of people in Ireland. EU estimates of growth in GDP of about 1% is inflated by profits of multinational companies such as eBay, Facebook and Google, a large part of which is repatriated. The multinational companies employ only 7% of the workforce. In reality consumer spending, retail sales and bank lending have suffered, and unemployment is at 14%. The feeling in Ireland is that the austerity cuts alone- spending cuts, higher sales and property taxes- with no effort to support growth, will leave the country in this situation for many years. A ruling by Ireland's attorney general that a referendum is required for approval of the new EU agreement on fiscal discipline, means that a referendum wll be held in June 2012. In 2001 and 2008 Ireland rejected EU treaties, only to obtain concessions and approve the treaty in second referendums. This time the referendum is expected to be seen as a vote on the three year agreement reached by Ireland with the EU, the IMF, and ECB in 2010, as its banks were on the verge of collapse in a property bubble. That agreement imposed strict austerity measures. Under the treaty terms only 12 of 17 EU countries have to ratify the treaty. The Socialist candidate in upcoming French presidential elections, Mr. Hollande, has called for renegotiation of the fiscal treaty to include measures to promote growth. For young people in particular, immigration- to Australia, New Zealand, Canada- is looking like an attractive option. For new graduates jobs are scarce, and cuts in university subsidies mean additional out of pocket costs of over $8000 a year with no student loan options....

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All sides joined the President at the White House, as part of his consensus building efforts, and to get aseat at the table in restructuring health care. The insurers and health care providers, including technology providers, all committed to cutting the cost of health care. New social insurance programs to cover 45 million uninsured Americans, and to make health care affordable for businesses and individuals, will be unworkable at currently projected rate of increase in health care costs of 6.2% a year for the next decade. The industry promised to reduce that by 1.5% through voluntary efforts, even though there is skepticism about whether they will deliver. The insurers are against a government sponsored health plan fearing it will drive them out of business. Insurers and health care providers are lobbying against the cuts in their Medicare payments, and insurers are fighting Obama's cuts to their private Medicare Advantage plans by a total of $176 billion over 10 years. Doctors are fighting a 21% cut in their Medicare fees scheduled to take place in January 2010. Pharmacuetical companies and makers of medical devices are concerned that new products will have to pass a cost-benefit test before being approved for coverage under Medicare. Its just that they all see the continued rise in costs as somehow unsustainable, especially in the current economic crisis, and share the feeling with business and the rest of the country that the system is broken. At the same time like the banks and bank executives, health care companies and their executives go on lobbying aggressively and doing things the old way, which raises questions about how well these systems that are broken can be put on the right path....

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This is an indepth article on Donald Trump's financial holdings, looking at the debt that Trump has built up in his real estate dealings, by Susanne Craig of the NYT. To get a detailed look of this the NYT inquiry into the holdings engaged RedVision Systems, a national property information firm to search publicly available data. Much of Trump's business is shrouded in mystery. But it is well known that Trump has used debt to build his business in a way that is not considered good practice in business, having led to three bankruptcies. Trump says he "is the king of debt." And "he loves debt." The recovery of real estate values during a rescue effort for the country's financial system also helped Trump tackle debt in a way that was not available to other entrepreneurs who suffered from the oil price collapse- one of them McClendon also used debt aggressively and his business collapsed leading to suicidal car crash. You can love excessive debt only if the government supports you with some sort of financial guarnatee misplaced, or you are lucky to get away with it- just ask McClendon. The irony is that the rescue of the financial system led to the low interest rates that hurt savings of the middle and working class, and the lack of help to Main Street in the home foreclosure crisis also hurt the same people disproportionately. The Obama administration policies in this regard rescued the very same business interests such as the New York real commercial estate symbolized by Trump, that are now appealing to those hurt as president Obama worked to let the financial system recover. The intention was never to support excessively overleveraged banks or overleveraged real estate built on debt, but in reality this is what happened. A nation cannot run its financial affairs in this manner of overleveraging to extract high profits that an investment bank such as Lehman or Goldman Sachs does, or a real estate company such as Trump's does- if regulators let them do this. Normally after the financial crisis of such dimensions that it shook the world economy in 2008-2009 leading to fears of a collapse as happened in the 1930's, the same faces would not still be there. But this is a strange period or a transition period where things are being sorted out, and the same faces Blankfein at Goldman Sachs and Trump in New York commercial real estate are with us.  And though the bashing of Goldman Sachs connection to Clinton is evident in the campaigns of Trump and Sanders, the bashing of Trump real estate and finance companies with its overleveraging and bankruptcies is evident in the campaign of Clinton against one posing as a representative of the working class. John Paulson who benefitted by shorting mortgage securities that caused the financial crisis of 2008 is on Trump's top economic advisory team, including the hedge funds and financial interests on Wall Street that Trump is saying support Clinton. No one, not the NYT or WSJ, can answer this, its just the paradox of today's situation. Hillary Clinton can say she has learned her lesson, with her Methodist upbringing and her own supporters such as Robert Reich and others, and break with the past especially as it in no way contributes to her success as president, not one bit. In fact rebuilding the middle class and infrastructure require entirely different connections and views on life, a different imagination.  Trump has billions of dollars and a real estate business that is so complex that even the NYT and property information firms can only say that in the end it is shrouded in mystery. Companies owned by Trump says the NYT from this inquiry have debt of $650 million. Other Trump business activities through 3 passive partnerships owe an additional $2 billion. It is a lot easier for Hillary Clinton to put the speech fees behind her as they have little to do with what she is as a Methodist and a proponent of improving women's lives, than it is for Donald Trump- for whom his business is everything that he is including his art of the deal- to reject who he is. ...

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There is a surge in online classes and web based learning by 2017. About 36 million people in the U.S. who have some college but no degree benefit from these classes. The low overhead and value of these classes is making colleges move ahead with investment in this field. Arizona State, University of Massachusetts, are some of the universities pushing ahead. Purdue University as part of its "You Can, Go Back" initiative under president Mitch Daniels,is planning to acquire Kaplan University to supplement its efforts. 2U which runs online school programs has revenue growth of 30% a year. It runs marketing and the web platform, nuts and bolts, while schools provide faculty, in a unique collaborative effort. Colorado State University Global Campus went from 200 students to 18,000 half from Colorado, with only a $12 million loan from the University in 2007, which it paid back by 2012, showing the financial viability of these classes. 

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German banks have commited 60% of their capital in loans to the shipping indusry, according to Moody's Investors Service. The 10 largest German banks have loaned 98 billion euros to the shipping industry and provided a surge of credit to the industry that has led to structural overcapacity. This includes Commerzbank and banks in Hanover and Hamburg. Under German law investors make tax free profits in this popular tax shelter. Experts in Hamburg say the container industry ordered too many ships and banks provided easy credit, resulting in an oversupply, declining cargo shipping prices, and losses at shipping companies. HSH Nordbank in Hamburg, owned by local governmnts and savings banks, says it need 1.3 billion euros in guaranees from Hamburg and the state of Schleswig -Holstein. Moody's affirmed the negative outlook for German banks partly because of the bad loans in shipping.

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Local media reports in China say president Xi Jinping has lost some credibility in his efforts to manage the stock market, with the prevailing sentiment that all government decisions require his approval, and the Tinajin warehouse explosion. One of the errors insiders in the Party say was to bring decisions normally under the prime minister Li Keqiang, such as decisions related to economic policy making and financial markets, under committees headed by Xi Jinping. As a result the perception that a good economic team was running the economy has been lost. Experts say the current leadership faces increasing pressure after events in July and August 2015, with sharp slowdown and efforts to use stock markets to reduce debt of state owned companies.

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PC shipments worldwide declined by 14% in the first quarter of 2013, compared to the prior year quarter, according to IDC. Gartner Research's estimate for the first quarter PC shipments shows a decline of 11.2%. IDC analysts say the introduction of Windows 8 with touch screen capabilities has not reversed this trend. It may have exacerbated the trend because Windows 8 made changes that reduced the PC experience to bring in touch screen and other features available on tablets, and made the product more confusing to use. This view of IDC is confirmed by some companies which say the incremental value of Windows 8 is not worth the cost of training employees to use the new PC's with Windows 8.

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With Democrats controlling 51 votes and 11 Republican votes needed in the Senate to reach the 60 votes for passing aid to automakers legislation, the whole issue remains clouded for now. Politicians of both parties made statements but the reality is that there is not enough support in Congress for aid to automakers. And if the $25 billion that has been already approved for retooling plants for higher fuel efficiency is now released for salaries and operations by congressional vote to change this it still has to pass a poosible veto by President Bush. And Republican opposition is hardening as they call for real changes in how these companies are being run and at the same time some Democrats may also support this position.

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Claire Cain Miller provides this exceptional account of the ways lack of family friendly and maternity leave policies is hurting not just women in America, but America's economic and technological progress. Strangely one hears little about how the lack of paid leave for women for maternity and other reasons, even as it hurts economic growth with the lower participation of women in the labor force. This is being vigorously discussed in Germany and Japan with calls for more family friendly workplace policies and more child care facilities to encourage women to join the workplace or continue working and pursuing careers. This happens when the overall labor force participation rate for women and men in the U.S. is declining, making this an important issue. Equally significant is that this reduces the contribution women can make to technological and scientific progress, and productivity improvements, because 59% of higher education degress are now going to women. The case of a Toshiba research engineer who was able to tackle a problem critical to development of the next generation of television technologies after Toshiba let her continue in her research role with friendly maternity leave policy, is an example of the kind of technical progress lost to the economy without such policy in Japan or in the U.S. See the link for Toshiba. Miller provides the example of Google, where attrition for women employees dropped by 50% with family friendly maternity leave policies. For Google, Toshiba, and other companies with women having advanced degrees the cost of hiring a new employee or making up for the loss of losing valuable women employees is significant. The U.S. is the only developed country without paid maternity leave. Only 59% of workers say their employers offer them paid maternity leave. California is the first state in the U.S. to offer paid parental leave. ...

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Lim Chow Kiat, chief investment officer of GIC Pte. Ltd, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund, says he sees returns on financial assets in developed markets being much lower in future years, including possible negative returns, because of a sharp runup in recent years and changing monetary policy. He sees more opportunities in emerging markets because of younger populations and opportunities from overhauls to economic structures and behaviour. He says he will still look for opportunties in developed country companies that have significant international expansion. GIC invested $1 billion in Indian online retailer Flipkart recently, $680 million in Bank of the Philippine Island, and $1.3 billion in the Time Warner Center building in New York along with Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

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A new EU law on transport biofuels would require that biofuels companies prove that their biofuel production and use reduces greenhouse emissions by at least 35% compared with production and use of traditional fossil fuel. That means rapeseed oil based biofuels pass with 37% emissions cut and corn based ethanol which only does 22% fails. No US corn based ethanol would be imported into the EU and it shows that in these policies the EU is way ahead of the USA. See the link to the Yale -Columbia survey rating countries record on greenhouse emissions and the environment where the EU is way ahead of the USA, and the USA lags way behind in many areas.