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French officals are pushing for a new eurozone architecture to address many of today's problems. This includes setting up a pathway that leads to the joint issuance of eurobonds. It also would include coordination of monetary policy with the budgets and fiscal situation in the eurozone. French officials see the lack of this as the cause of many of today's problems.

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The cover of the German magazine Stern shows U.S. president Obama and the words "The Spy," showing the indignation of ordinary Germans over the NSA spying on German chancellor's mobile phone.

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Whitney Harris was assistant to Robert Jackson, the chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. He did much of the investigative work to document the genocide. He told Der Spiegel in 2005 he had no idea of the scale of crimes when he started gathering evidence. He persevered in his efforts to establish a permanent International Criminal Court after the war. In the post war period he taught law at Southern Methodist University, and was a corporate attorney for Southwestern Bell Telephone Company.

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Saab is laying off one fifth of its workforce and Volvo is scaling back production. The European Investment Bank is giving 3 billion euros of aid to the European auto industry, with another 2.8 billion euros planned for April, 2009. 400 million euros each go to Volvo AB maker of trucks, and Scania AB, and 200 million euros to Volvo Cars. Peugeot Citroen, Renault, Fiat, BMW and Daimler each receive 400 million euros. Most of this goes to projects aiming at increasing fuel efficiency and cutting carbon- dioxide emissions.

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Germany is the world's leading exporter, with export of goods generating 41% of GDP, twice the rate in the UK and Japan and 5 times that of the US according to the OECD. With the global slowdown the German government now expects GDP to grow only 0.2% in 2009. And exports are expected to decline in 2009 with a worsening economic situation in most countries. Slowdown in the EU which takes in two thirds of the exports and in the USA will affect these exports.

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Government data show that the German GDP declined by 0.5% in the thrid quarter after declining 0.4% in the second quarter. IMF predicts GDP decline of 0.8% in 2009. Germany's recession look like the worst in Europe except for the UK which has many of the same problems as the US economy. Germany's housing market has seen prices grow by almost zero in the last 10 years and German consumers are not in debt so Germany felt fairly immune to the troubles facing the US and the UK and Spain. But Germany is a big exporter and it has become more dependent on exports in the last 10 years. Exports account for 41% of GDP and CHina sucked up alot of machinery exports from Germany and China is in the midst of a drastic slowdown. In fact for the first time China is seeing a decline in monthly electricity output. And China's GDP growth rate may go from 12% to the range of somewhere around 6% in 2009, considering that Chinese export factories are closing down as the USA its main export market is seeing a rapid slowdown. Its already reached 9% and the slowdown is just beginning as the US market is also at the beginning of its slowdown. As the US market declines further in 2009 China's export factories will face a further decline in orders. Comparing the US at 10%, Japan at 20% and Germany at 41% of GDP one can see how heavily dependent the Germans have become on exports, especially with Asia's booming economies sucking up German exports. New orders for German goods declined by 18% from their peak in November 2007. And this is just the beginnning. So German unemployment is expected to increase. Its true that German banks invested heavily in mortgage related securities and other risky assets abroad, and the international financial crisis has led to a bailout fund of 500 billion euros setup by the German government. But Bundesbank figures show that what is causing the drastic contraction is the drop in investment spending as loan demand has dropped. ...

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The Economist says working age young people arriving as migrants from war torn areas such as Syria should be welcome in the EU, because the EU's society is aging. As the labor force declines in the EU, it will need younger workers to make up for the declining labor force and the large number of pensioners to be supported. Fears of terrorism could be overcome by having a strong screening process, and cultural assimilation can be speeded up by providing free language education and access to the university system, as in Germany. This would turn the Syrian refugee crisis into a plus for countries such as Germany, which have a large program for newcomers. The war in Syria is so deep and widespread, and emigrants have made a long and perilous journey, making asylum a credible reason.

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Hassett and Baker suggest learning from the German experience of the last decade in reducing unemployment, including "kurzarbeit" programs, work sharing, and cooperation between industry, unions and government to reduce unemployment. France is already taking action to learn from the German experience.

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The Swiss National Bank spent $63 billion in May 2012 to prevent the Swiss Franc from appreciating beyond 1.20 per euro. The Swiss Bank is printing francs and buying up euros to keep its peg set in September 2011. The peg is intended to preserve Swiss export competitiveness.

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A report on the Status of German Unity from the German cabinet, says the eastern part of Germany, formerly the German Democratic Republic, suffers from a declining population and could have benefitted from the addition of young people as immigrants. As it stands the area with the lowest number of refugees or immigrants is where most of the xenophobia anti-immigrant sentiment exists.  It says the eastern part of the country including cities like Dresden need to develop a more receptive culture to attract young people for economic progress.

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The OECD countries in Europe including Germany, France, Denmark, Italy, spend on average $14,000 on childcare. The US spends astonishingly only $500 per toddler, about 4% of what advanced countries in Europe spend.The Biden plan is to change that. On the floor of the US Congress Senate minority leader McConnell protests against what he calls extravagant spending by the US in the Biden plan for families and workers.

In our selection of reports in world media we show the effect on women during the pandemic taking on childcare responsibilities with schools closed because of coronavirus. The impact has been a catastrophe for women leading to increase in mental health problems as culture and other reasons lead to women taking on 60-70% of child care and household chores. Women with careers are not able to join the workforce because of childcare shortages, losing income and feeling overburdened.

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Coronavirus cases on a daily basis exceed 70,000 in one day in Brazil with 26,000 in Sao Paulo alone. Brazil's cases now exceed 2.5 million, the worst hit after the U.S. followed by India. President Bolsonaro has failed to provide leadership in the pandemic, himself contracting the virus and not following social distancing, mask covering till recently.

President Macron of France gains in popularity with over 50% satisfied with his performance after his hard fought gains in getting the 390 billion euros nonrepayable common debt funds for the European Recovery Fund for hard hit pandemic countries. Macron was able to get the full support of Merkel of Germany to get this approved after Dutch premier Rutte's effort to stall the aid effort in weeks of long negotiations. It is a show of European solidarity and brings Europe together, giving much needed aid to Spain and Italy.

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Steven Lee Myers provides an exceptionally good report from Russia on the 2014 Sochi Olympics. He describes an effort by the Putin administration in Russia to develop Sochi which extends for 90 miles along the Black Sea, the only subtropical seashore in Russia. Here Myers interviews Pakhomov, a Putin supporter, who is Mayor of Sochi, to get a picture of how Putin supporters see this effort. Pakhomov says this part of Russia was never developed and foreigners have a poor view of Russia, with one westerner telling him that Russia had little except vodka and bears. For the first time the entire Sochi areas has seen a massive infrastructure effort with roads, railways and a new airport. Myers gets a different picture from Yulia Naberezhnaya, a scientist who is a Putin critic and environmental leader in the Western Caucusus, who he interviews after meeting at a bus stop in Sochi. Naberezhnaya heads Environmental Watch of the North Caucusus which sees the environmental laws being ignored in construction work. The country is divided with nationalistic feeling running high before the Olympics, and a friend of Naberezhnaya finding herself on the opposite side with work in the security services. She warns her to be careful- something Naberezhnaya says has Kafkesque overtones. Myers also meets Boris Nemtsov, a senior official in the Yeltsin government, who participated in street protests during the recent elections in Russia, and is critical of the money spent in this Olympics. Estimates of the money spent run as high as $51 billion, in comparison the Olympics in Beijing, China cost about $40 billion. Dmitri Chernyshenko, president of the Sochi Olympics Organizing Committee sees the project as one that unites the nation, while critics such as Nemtsov see it as a huge overspending and corruption favoring Putin's friends in the business community. Myers is acting Moscow Bureau Chief for the NYT and has done extensive interviewing for this report, including an interview with Vladimir Yakunin, head of Soviet Railways. Yakunin says his company's investment of $1.3 billion will take 20 years to recover but puts it on the scale of the Trans-Siberian Railway build by Czar Nicholas II, which helped bring Russia its current borders reaching to the Far East. And yet the question of cost is never far from people's minds, coming at a time when growth is slowing in Russia- emerging markets currency values incluing the ruble are declining and they are having a tough time attracting foreign investment. A member of the International Olympic Committee, Gian-Franco Kasper, is reported to have told Swiss SRF radio that about a third of the spending on Sochi was lost because of corruption and excessive costs....