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Russians vote in 2021 parliamentary elections. With 30% of votes cast the United Russia party of Mr. Putin wins 45% of votes cast, followed by the Communist party of the Russian Federation with 22%, and the Liberal Democratic party getting 8%. Russia has mixed voting system with half the seats directly elected from party lists, and the other half assigned to individual candidates. United Russia had 334 seats out of total 450 seats in the outgoing parliament. Putin will need over 300 seats in the new parliament to get the two thirds majority to enact changes to the constitution. Putin needs this to extend his current term which ends in 2024.  Putin draws most of his support from the older part of the population that has seen the hardships imposed following the collapse of Communism around 1990. This led to collapse of the ruble currency, increase in poverty, an effort by oligarchs to capture state enterprises, and a chaotic period for law and order. Shockingly during that period even life spans of Russians declined as reported in the WSJ. Liberals who supported the shift to democracy had not anticipated all the ill effects of introducing capitalist free market systems in such a sudden and free fall way. Such sudden shifts to free markets are now better understood and seen as the wrong way, as western capital markets fail without inbuilt protections, safety net for workers and retired people, and are subject to serious distortions if no vigilant authority exists. This is in reality not a free market but a market captured by the few, in the interests of the few. Once this was clear retired people, pensioners, military, law enforcement, and liberals realizing what had happened shifted support to United Russia founded by Mr. Putin. Mr. Putin faces the typical situation faced by incumbents over long periods where there is a sense of the need for change. Yet the pandemic and other economic crises that could happen in the event of mismanaged economy are never really too distant for countries such as Russia, China, India that are developed but yet have not the strong industrial base of US, Germany, France. Such economic crises including the ruble currency and Russian energy companies were better managed under Putin than under the chaotic period following the collapse of communism and the introduction of so called "free markets" that were anything but. During the recentfree fall in oil prices Putin was able to manage a transition period with the help of president Trump who negotiated a price for oil with the Saudis to protect US shale oil workers and companies, as well as Russian workers and oil companies. As a result Russians particularly young people look for alternative places to vote for opposition parties such as Liberals, Communist party, and other parties. But the majority of Russians including those working for state energy and other state companies tend to stay with Putin's choices for state, regional and federal administration and for parliament. Nationalist spirit also provides additional support as Putin has restored Russia's status as one of the important nations in the world. Some missteps such as interference in US elections have led to a loss of some of this international influence, yet even president Biden understands the situation in Russia and is willing to work with Putin with new rules of conduct Under the Russian system about 70% of the laws are not made by parliament but are done by the government and the administration of the president and then go through parliament. In addition to parliamentary vote there are 6 governor races and three races for heads of regional republics. ...

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Philip Alston, UN expert on extreme poverty and professor at New York University School of Law, says most of the progress on poverty that the UN agencies  and elites talk about is based on one country China. In the rest of the world, in Latin America, in Africa, and in other countries in Asia the situation is not any better than it was in 1990. About half of the world's population 3.4 billion people live on less than $5.50 a day, and this is not much changed since 1990. The improvements in China could also mean that the situation has worsened in other parts of the world. The pandemic has taken the lid off the situation in Latin America with Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and other places there showing extreme weakness.  Alston studied this as UN's representative for looking at extreme poverty 2014-2020. He is clear in describing what happened. The World Bank he says set $1.90 a day for poverty line, artificially low and what will not pay for housing or food even. He calls it "scandalously unambitious as a benchmark" what would pay for "a mere miserable subsistence." By using this he says a devastating effect is being allowed to happen as more of the investment is drawn into a pro-growth narrative which pushes allocation of capital in the direction where it profits short term speculative capital and profits rather than the long term investments in health, education and public services that are vital for any country. The improvements in China have also come at the expense of communities in Europe and the U.S. as industries were being shifted with their jobs overseas since 1990, first imperceptibly and then in waves after 2000, which leaves millions exposed to poverty and social decay for the first time in history in the advanced countries. It is an unhealthy and destabilizing situation. Alston's other points are that the so called progress narrative has been used to drown out the appalling effects of policies that misallocate capital away from the vast numbers of people. And in doing this he says it has entirely upended or turned upside down the social contract with the people. From Carl Sandburg's "The People Yes" in the 1950's after the tragedies of war we have come to "The People No." Nothing could be more reprehensible than capital being allocated for dog walking apps and other speculative investments by investment funds pooling hundreds of billions of dollars when basic sanitation services, health care investments are neglected in countries like Brazil, and smaller towns and communities are being systematically uprooted for jobs and social services over three decades in advanced countries in parts of Europe and the U.S.   ...

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India's demographics show one startling fact. By 2020, the average age of Indians will be 29. This is happening just as the rest of the world is aging very fast. In the next 15 years India will have 130 million more people in the 20 to 49 age group. This compares with a shrinking in population of 100 million in that age group in developed countries and China, according to the U.N. Population Division. The problem facing India is malnutrition that runs as high as 43% for children with half the mothers anemic, weak educational system at the primary and secondary school levels especially in the government run schools, lack of good governance in the most populated states such as Uttar Pradesh in the Ganges plains which has 200 million people, the consequent overburdening of cities which have no plans to manage the migration of the rural poor to the cities. India has to find ways to fill the huge gaps in getting better nutrition, education, dignity and sense of opportunity, and work for the growing numbers....

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Tells the story of Cherry, a state owned company that is China's largest independent car maker. It started about 1995 with just an idea in the head of Zhan Xialai an assistant to the mayor of Wuhu, and some other local government officials, in a poor eastern province Anhui who saw this is a way to boost incomes and growth in the province. Zhan brought in Zhoua manager in a cityowned building supply company. They brought in Yin an Anhui native who worked at a VW joint venture. In 1996 Zhou went to England to buy engine assembly equipment discarded by a Ford plant there and in March 1997 started building its first factory. It hired a Taiwanese company to help design its first model the Fengyun or Wind Cloud which it cobbled together using parts from component makers that supplied the China operations of VW and GM. It was not till Dec 1999 that the first cars came off this makeshift assembly line. And then it ran into bureaucratic obstacles as the company did not have a government license to be in the auto business . To solve this it became a part of the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation a large state owned company that had partnerships with VW and GM. Then it wasn't till 2001 that this Fengyun made it to market with 28000 being sold that year. Cherry then began work on a 4 door hatchback minicar that was called the QQ when it went on sale 2 years later in 2003 and looked like the Chevy Spark, a GM model. GM sued Cherry in Chinese court in 2004 saying Cherry had copied its design for the Spark and the lawsuit was settled in 2005. The settlement was described by Cherry as "very friendly." GM may have secured other concessions for manufacture and assembly in China because the QQ was then manufactured with local partners at a plant in southwestern China. It is Cherry's No. 1 model and far outsells the Chevy Spark. About this time in 2003 a big shift was ocurring in China as the car market was being pushed up by continuing development of infrastructure and road expansion, new ventures from Europe and the US expanding car sales in China. Government planners and executives began thinking about how China could develop its own potential in this growing and about to explode market. They decided they had to move upscale and buy the best technologies from Europe and the United Staes and recruit Chinese engineers working in the automotive industries in these regions. This led to a new phase of massive new investments. One of the goals after Cherry's brush with GM over copying its designs, was to acquire and then develop the technology so that it would be Cherry's own technology. In 2003 Cherry hired Xu Min an engineer at Delphi who was an Anhui native and was a specialist in combustion and fuel injection. They turned to an engineering consulting firm in Austria that specializes in internal combustion engines, and this firm AVL List GmbH agreed to train Cherry engineers to design and build the sophisticated engines. The culture that has grown up around this company in Wuhu, Anhui province, is also what drives the company. It exhorts employees in posters hanging on factory walls, "Know plain living and hard struggle." And in some areas of the plant JD Powers charts showing where Cherry lags behind its western counterparts in quality control surveys are shown on bulletin boards. Zhou, Zhan and Yin are known around Anhui and in the rest of China as "the Eight Guardians", a reference to eight defendors of the faith in Buddhist legend. ...

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The demand for ships went up so steeply that shipping rates hit the roof, and the prices of ships went up accordingly. Between the end of 2006 and July 2008 , shipyards received enough commissions, says the Economist, that this would double the world's fleet. Just as demand has collapsed and international trade has gone down, about 9000 ships are coming onstream. Now 11% of fleet capacity justs sits on the water, in the seas outside the harbors of Singapore, Hong Kong and other southeast Asian ports. A 150 tonne cape class ship that sold in 2003 for $18.5 million in the used market, when rates for charter were $15,000 a day, had risen by summer 2008, to $85 million with rates of $175,000 a day. These rates went up even more to $300,000 a day, which is 20 times what it was in 2003. And rates today are back down to $15,000 a day, where they were in 2003. This ship, cited by a broker, to give some idea of the extent of this boom and its collapse, was sold for scrap at $7 million. And South Korean shipyards are taking this into account, in their pricing and collection of payment, with 20% demanded upfront, 60% during construction, and 20% upon delivery. The backlog in shipyards is estimated by Clarkson Research, a maritime research firm, at $526 billion, even as banks are leery of lending and concerned about the value of the collateral in the event of default. Some smaller Korean shipyards are closing. Steve Mann, analyst at HSBC, says that half of the orders for delivery in 2010 will be delayed, so that there is work for 2011 and inventory or excess capacity does not pile up on the oceans. Even in this situation China, India and Vietnam continue to support the expansion of their own shipyards. This suggests additional losses for shipbuilders, shipping lines and the banks that lend to shipyards. All this also goes to show that the rush to industrialize, once it gets a firm footing- like it has in the Chinese model of increasing investment and local governments pushing infrastructure, industry and export factories with officials judged on GNP growth numbers- can exacerbate a boom-bust cycle. This is one industry, others include machinery manufacturers, commodity producers, and manufacturers of parts that go into finished products assembled in China for export. This means it would take the world economy down with it, if some external factor like the drop in export demand suddenly slows everything down. Machinery manufacturers in Germany, commodity producers in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Australia, and manufacturers of the high tech parts in Japan and Taiwan that are shipped to China for assembly, all go down in this boom-bust cycle, in a dramatic manner. ...

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Chinese company investments in Korean companies are not doing well because of widespread feeling among Korean workers in these companies that the Chinese company is only interested in transferring the Korean company technology to China. Also hopes of selling products in the Chinese market have not been realized. Instead the experience is that the Korean company ends up up laying off most of the employees after being hollowed out. In 2003 BOE a Chinese company paid $380 million for Hydis, a Korean maker of displays for cellphones and laptop computers. After the transfer of technology to build a new display panel factory in Beijing, Hydis was left o hollow out and went into bankrupptcy protection in 2006. Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation bought a controlling stake in Ssangyong Motor of South Korea in 2004. Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, one of China's top state owned companies saw this as a push abroad, as China accumulated large dollar reserves from foreign trade, and a chance to acquire foreign technolgy for SUV and luxury car manufacture. Shanghai Automotive has partnerships with GM and VW to use foreign technology to make cars in China. The Korean economy after the financial crisis of 1997 was opening up to foreign investment. In this climate the Korean side was expecting China to open its market to Korean cars from Ssangyong, but this did not happen. Instead Korean workers say the company transferred technology to its Chinese parent, and after 5 years the partnership is falling apart in protests by the workers, layoffs and bitter battles amid declining sales. The Korean workers even have a word for such foreign companies that have come to Korea, during Korea's opening to foreign investors after the 1997 banking crisis, when Korean firms went for fire-sale prices. That word is "meoktwi", a slang term that means "a thief who eats and runs away." This has hurt China's reputation in South Korea, and its reputation as an enlightened investor in other countries. It also is what may be happening with Taiwanese investment in China in this downturn. Companies like Hon Hai, with its Chinese subsidiary Foxconn, are reported by the Economist to be shrinking their Chinese operations in a large industrial city sized campus employing 250,000 workers in the Shenzen area, to 100,000 workers. That factory city made laptops, PC's cellphones for Western companies using foreign technology....

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The U.S. and China sign Phase 1 of the trade agreement in a sign of reduction of trade tensions between the two countries. Difficult issues of state subsidies under China's state enterprise model of development, and technological competition were put off for the future. China made the deal possible by agreeing to double its purchases of agricultural products, and offering to purchase about $200 billion in American goods and services over the next two years. This gives relief to farmers, a key part of Mr.Trump's support base. This also helps achieve a key Trump and U.S. goal of cutting the U.S. trade deficit with China quickly, just as happened decades ago with Japan.  See the related article and link on how for the first time in decades China's trade surplus with the U.S. is now set on a path for permanent decline. It dropped significantly in 2019 by 12.5% even though China's imports from the U.S. dropped by 21%, based on Chinese customs data released for 2019. With China increasing these imports significantly and the U.S. holding on to tariffs of 25% on $250 billon of China's exports to the U.S. which are outside the Phase 1 agreement, the downward course is set for the next few years for correction of a dangerous trade imbalance. That imbalance was allowed to develop over successive Republican and Democratic administrations. China already has the European Union as its first leading trading partner and south east Asia as its second. China plans to not be so closely intertwined with the U.S. in trade, and yet preserve its state sponsored development model and drive to compete in technology. China's increased purchases from the U.S. of $200 billon are broken down in terms of farm products- $32 billion, manufactured goods- $80 billion, energy products- $50 billion, services $35 billion. In effect the U.S. gets its goal of cutting the unsustainable China trade surplus quickly and with certainty in 3-5 years. China uses the period to transition for less trade linkage with the U.S. yet preserving its state sponsored model of development and drive for technological advancement.   ...

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Justin Leverenz of the Oppenheimer Developing Markets Fund has seen the fund grow in five years from $3.9 billion to $41 billion in 2014. With the risk posed to developing markets economies from volatile capital inflows the fund is now closed to new investors. Often the mutual funds would buy and sell the same companies creating volatile inflows, and worse with sudden outflows as India experienced with slowing growth. Returns were 27% over 3 years 2010-2013, but have slowed to 2% to date in 2014 with the emerging markets crisis in early 2014. Leverenz is a quiet person and stays away from the limelight. He works solo without a team of analysts and tries to get a first hand feel for the companies he invests in by visiting and talking to the people at the companies. He travels for 6 months of the year, and has developed early relationships with fast growing Chinese internet companies Baidu and Tencent. He sees strong growth in India under the Modi administration, in China, and in Turkey....

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This important WSJ report shows how the CDC labs failed to come with the test after contamination of a component and failure of the third part of the three part test components. In the absence of a working test from CDC where delays cost three weeks of February the private labs all over the country and state labs could have developed their own test, yet HHS and FDA required approval for these labs to develop their own test and use it. From Feb. 8 when state and city public health labs detected problems with the CDC test to Feb 29 when solutions were developed including simply excluding the third part of the three component test, and letting labs around the country do their own test, were 3 crucial weeks that let the virus spread out of control. The CDC, HHHS, and the FDA and their managers and heads of departments bear responsibility for these errors. Week after week the delays continued, instead the two component test which detects if the genetic material in the sample is coronavirus material, could simply have been approved at the outset instead of the approval for this given weeks later. The third component of the test checks if the virus mutated, according to this report. There is no explanation why the labs all over the U.S. were not allowed to go ahead on February 9 itself or within a few days after that to develop their own tests once it was clear the CDC test did not work on that day. CDC officials failed to recognize that there was a possibility that they may not be able to fix the faulty third component of the test and the risks if they gave false reassurances. There is also no explanation of why a German designed test was not used once the CDC test failed on Feb. 9, which would be a proper way for action considering that this pandemic had already shutdown parts of China by this time. Alarming also is the mention in this report that on Feb. 22 a FDA official in charge of lab diagnostics  flies to Atlanta where the CDC Respiratory Diagnostic lab which developed the test is located. His boss FDA medical device center director is cited from later information as describing the lab as "filthy" meaning the lab had the potential to contaminate, and going so far as saying that if it had been any other lab it would have been shut down. Considering that investment in public health has deteriorated over the last two decades and that there has been a massive misallocation of capital in the country away from public infrastructure this is appalling. The thought of critical labs for emergency health needs as not being up to high quality standards in the U.S. as a result of two decades of misspending, that this shows, is very disturbing.  This WSJ report is based on interviews with people who know about the testing crisis, and undisclosed emails, correspondence on the issues involved. Community transmission began in January 2020 in the U.S. These delays were costly in February and could have been prevented either by going with the German design on Feb 10 or asking labs across the U.S. to develop their own test, and letting other labs immediately use the modified 2 component test of CDC that worked instead of doing this action weeks later. Mardi Gras on Feb 25 and other places where large crowds gathered in sports stadiums could have been stopped had testing gone forward and shown the true extent of the community transmission in these critical weeks.  First China delayed a U.S. team of experts coming into the country for weeks, and then the CDC, FDA, HHS, failed to get testing started, creating  a false sense of complacency. Two crucial errors outside and inside the country that caused so much damage to America and the world.   ...

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Germany has shown that low tech contact tracing efforts work- no apps needed, a phone, a desktop computer with a centralized database, and most important the human relations skills of the person doing the calls. The  sensitivity to the situation facing each person being called, being able to talk to the person in the language they speak in a multilingual environment such as California, is shown here. A 40 person team operates in San Francisco consisting of public health officials, clinicians, medical students and librarians. They call the contacts of people with coronavirus, arrange tests, and as needed send packages of food and medicines to hotel rooms or homes. Every call is expected to last 15 minutes but all sorts of questions are handled.  English and Spanish are used. Here one of the persons doing the contact tracing says she does not use apps, just an open source software used in the fight against Ebola. Definitely low tech, no waiting, get going is the message to every city in the world. She says apps software such as what Google and Apple are putting out can tell you whether the person went to some place, but cannot tell you more about that person, cannot tell you about problems the person is having being tested, and how they are having difficulty providing for families. One of the big lessons from Germany and efforts such as this one in San Francisco, and in other places such as Paris, Singapore, Taiwan, is that there is a complex nature to contact tracing that cannot be solved by tech. In fact the best thing to do is to get started immediately, with a phone and a database on a computer, as long as you have a person who has the motivation and skills, empathy with people, a lot can be done. Waiting for apps is a dangerous waste of time is shown by the low tech German experience, and the experience in other places. Most important is starting immediately. The example shown here of working with migrant workers in contact tracing shows in the most vulnerable places it is these human relations skills that count, that no tech app can do. It requires detective skills to find out and get people to share their history of movements and contacts for 14 days . In Singapore crowded dormitories house 300,000 of 1.4 million migrant workers. Singapore using an app also but its use is secondary. Apps don't work in many situations but fail in the most critical situations such as these dormitories and other eccentric or atypical situations such as faced by South Korea with religious groups and gay communities, elderly people in Europe, that generate the worst dangers of spread and need to be cluster isolated quickly. Human contact tracing has a history of being an effective method and was used in China and South Korea during the 2003 SARS epidemic. More countries need to adopt the method used in Asia and in Germany, particularly Britain, the U.S., France and India. It is OK that Britain's NHS and India's national government with Aarogya Setu app have put out their own apps which balance privacy concerns with the need to act immediately and cover the entire country, but the hard slog of human contact tracing teams in each district is indispensable. This is why the former Health minister in Britain calls it Britain's national mission to do this. Speed is key- putting together teams across the country in every district from skilled volunteers or government workers, and pulling together the phone and a centralized database on a computer as basic equipment. The fact that this is easily doable and people with human skills needed can always be recruited as they have been in Germany- from public officials in local government who are less busy in lockdowns, medical students, clinicians, volunteers, people from different professions- makes it inexcusable not to learn from others experience and get going. Just Do It. You want to reopen business, professions, offices and public services- Just Do It, it makes this possible. You want to prevent spread of the virus- Just Do It, it makes this possible. You want to limit damage to the economy and get the recovery going- Just Do It, it makes this possible. People of all shades of opinion can agree on this- its the only thing that works, even when there is a lack of enough proper accurate testing. ...

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The full text of the letter is given here. In this letter the U.S. sets out some important facts about events that happened during the coronavirus crisis during the crucial 4 month period from December 2019 to March 2020. Every week lost in this time due to reasons of a lack of transparency, openness meant hundreds of thousands of people more infected and tens of thousands of deaths worldwide. There are questions of transparency, of openness and this raises questions about the manner in which the World Health Assembly operates with hundreds of small countries in Africa and Asia having votes equal to that of the U.S., India, Brazil, Mexico with votes taken of over 200 countries. The entire election process can now be seen as questionable, when over a billion people in one country alone such as India or hundreds of millions in Brazil and Mexico would have to bear the consequences of poor decisions made by small countries that can be swayed in one direction or another based on political bias and other considerations that have nothing to do with global health.  At the conclusion of the letter by the U.S. to the current WHO shaped by a controversial election in 2017 the following is stated about the standards set by Gro Harlem Brundtland and which helped the world prevent the SARS crisis which originated in China in 2003 from spreading to the large countries of the world India, Brazil, Mexico, and other such countries in Asia and Africa, Latin America, and the U.S. European Union. "In 2003, in response to the outbreak of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in China, Director-General Harlem Brundtland boldly declared the World Health Organization’s first emergency travel advisory in 55 years, recommending against travel to and from the disease epicenter in southern China. She also did not hesitate to criticize China for endangering global health by attempting to cover up the outbreak through its usual playbook of arresting whistleblowers and censoring media. Many lives could have been saved had you followed Dr. Brundtland’s example." Even this does not come to grips with the flawed way in which the election of WHO head is done. It can no longer be relied on when there is the danger that lack of transparency can emerge in the WHO leadership itself because of a flawed process. It risks endangering the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions in countries such as India, Brazil, Mexico, as well as in the relatively small countries of Africa and Latin America where even basic water supplies are at risk but which could tilt elections at the World Health Assembly. Consider that a cyclone just hit the Indian state of West Bengal and Bangladesh on May 20 just as the coronavirus pandemic is spreading. That this region of 1.5 billion people had just 2 votes out of over 200 cast at the World Health Assembly in 2017 shocking. And even these votes cast based on old geopolitical considerations not how good the candidate is, and how good the country he is coming from is in terms of its record  on public health. The irony here is that private foundations in the advanced countries in the U.S. and Europe some of whom are major donors to WHO did not think that more experienced candidates in their own countries with a better record of public health such as in France or Germany are better qualified, in a flawed NGO support mentality left from the Clinton years. Basically the people in these large countries such as India, Brazil, Mexico were disenfranchised, when the austerity policies were consuming the European Union, and the U.S. had just elected a new administration itself groping for ways to reverse years of neglect of public services and infrastructure priorities. They would trust good leaders no matter where they come from, who have a record of transparency, leadership, and all the values we cherish together no matter where we come from. ...

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Without the patience and skills of S. Jaishankar peace at the Indian border with China could not have been restored in 2022. Here he describes the challenge of border incursions when he still called on his counterpart Wang Yi and maintained friendly communications, asking Yi not to let China complicate matters so that solutions could be found and things did not deteriorate further. At the time of tense Ukraine dispute in Europe, Jaishankar who was earlier the Indian ambassador to China, navigated this period of tension with China using his knowledge of China and how best to continue the diplomatic communications.  Less well known is the work put in by Jaishakar to bring citizen to citizen contact between Indians and Chinese by setting up such intercultural and educational programs in several Chinese cities as Ambassador to India. Jaishankar had the foresight to know that this would be important for the future. Yet these contacts are only a small fraction of the potential contacts between India and China on a citizen to citizen direct basis that are needed. Never is that more true than today with the wars in Europe, and the need for peaceful development in Asia. China is still a middle income country and India modernizing to become a middle income country. Both Europe and the US are far ahead in development than China and India. Jaishankar was appointed the Foreign Secretary of India in 2015 and in 2019 Foreign Minister of India in the Modi administration. He was the longest serving Ambassador to China for about 5 years in 2009-2013. He is unique because of his having been a senior diplomat to China, Japan, Singapore and the US, and speaks Japanese and Chinese. ...

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David Barboza of NYT describes the hidden subsidies China gives to Foxconn for its plant in Zhengzhou, in a poor region of China. The factory there makes about half a million iPhones a day. These subsidies include incentive packages, infrastructure building, local government help of about $1.5 billion. As a result Apple has high margins. For a 32 gigabyte iPhone 7 that costs $400 to make, the retail price is about $649 in the U.S.  The hidden subsidies is why Apple can maintain dominance as profits are reinvested. And the result is that with only 12% of the smartphone market Apple can take in 90% of the profit, according to Strategy Analytics. Barboza looks back at Apple before co-founder Steve Jobs left in 1985 as focussing on manufacturing at plants in Colorado and California. By 2001 with iPod sales soaring the move to China under Cook, who previously worked for Compaq, was underway. With the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, the move to China for manufacturing accelerated. The reason: only China offered the kind of subsidies, the speed of approval and building of infrastructure facilities, the local government support, the hundreds of thousands of workers, and the best tooling engineers, to produce in huge volumes with speed, and maintaining quality levels. Earlier plants including one in Colorado Springs that this Lyrarc editor was invited to visit just prior to Jobs rejoining Apple had many quality problems, so much so that Apple had a large part of the manufactured personal computers set aside for rework. The quality levels were dismal, defects were unbelievably high. This is the Apple manufacturing process and plant that Jobs must have seen when he returned, and which he hired Cook to fix. Not only were costs higher in the U.S., (subsidies in China came later) when Jobs looked at the manufacturing quality and the inability to get the quality he needed from American workers and engineers at that time in the 1990's, only then did he turn to China- and the more he saw what was possible to accomplish there he sensed an unusual opportunity to finally put the ghosts of memories from competition with Microsoft at rest, and to surpass everything that had been done in Silicon Valley. The result one of the most ingenious and large manufacturing networks in the world, huge profits for an American company, except for one thing- it would not do much for American workers. ...

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The difficulties the new U.S. Treasury Secretary faces as she tries to navigate the politics in Congress and the tries to reach out to moderates and progressives within the Democratic party. All have different views on spending, and where stimulus money should go in a second stimulus. Her long experience with the Fed is seen as not preparing her for the political role of evaluating different opinions that are described by some experts as ten times more political than anything going on in Fed meetings. As a student of Prof. Tobin Yellen sees government intervention as needed in times of economic crises. Twice in ten years the U.S. and the rest of the world has been struck by economic crises- the bank leveraging behaviours and poor lending practices that induced the 2009 financial crisis and in 2020 the coronavirus pandemic. Lessons learned Yellen says about the 2009 recession are that not enough stimulus was provided after the initial stimulus to get a strong enough recovery. Democrats are eager to spend over $2 trillion in a second stimulus. Republicans much less so particularly with a new president. Even under Mr. Trump spending was set at under $700 billion by Republicans for a second stimulus. Another economic crises is one of the U.S. strategic economic position in the world. On this issue of trade Yellen's husband George Akerloff, also a economist is more skeptical of the value of free trade. The failure of the World Trade Organization to ensure a level playing field as China subsidized key industries, and the loss of America's manufacturing advantage over three decades is now the defining issue in American politics. It takes the shape of manufacturing communities that were once a part of Democratic party support shifting away after devastated local economies from the loss of manufacturing plants to China. It takes the shape of a Republican party that is committed to bring back American manufacturing, and a Democratic party that under Biden is seeking the same result. How much each party will invest in terms of making things happen to get this done is one of the issues facing all parties, Congress, the administration, Ms. Yellen, and the new president. Economics does not have the answers. As economists could not have predicted the increase in women participation in the workforce, the drop in Black and Hispanic unemployment rates under the Trump administration. The lack of moral will to get trade to work for the American worker was more of an issue under Democratic and Republican administrations for the last 2 decades, so that issues of growing inequality were never better addressed by any party. It depended more on focus of the president elected to help American workers, and to avoid the cost and distraction of foreign wars when American interests could be protected in other ways. Yellen was not able to make a difference at the Fed because of these reasons and low interest rates have both helped and hurt the middle class, as low interest rates meant Americans were less able to accumulate savings for retirement since 2000. Determination and action counts for more than ideology or policy is the lesson learned in building strong economies and manufacturing.   ...

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China's breakneck growth was enabled by housing construction, and coal in a way that created problems of climate change. Now China's largest housing developers Evergrande and Country Garden together have a staggering $500 billion in debt and in serious financial trouble in or near default. How will China's government respond? It let Evergrande who had defaulted on debt payments build 300,000 apartments last year, just to protect home buyers. Now it's founder Mr. Xu is taken in for questioning and "illegal crimes." Making sure that the apartments on which people made deposits are built would cost another $72 billion, says Nomura. Yet suppliers, painters, builders and brokers are owed another $390 billion, in one estimate. And foreign creditors are getting together for complicated restructurings. Evergrande had entered wealth management promising 8 or 9% returns and has stopped making payments. All this is affecting public confidence in the future and China's growth story. For decades China depended on housing construction for high growth rates. Now the process is unwinding with both in financial difficulties. This NYT report says that after Evergrande's default, Country Garden failed to make a payment on $200 billion in debt last week and has 400,000 apartments that it sold but has not finished building. ...

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Pfanner and Chen of the NYT talk to Samsung executives in Digital City, Suwon, head offices near Seoul. After capturing about 40% of the smartphone market Samsung still remains for the most part a hardware based company with strengths in production, cost and efficiency. Samsung still remains dependent on the Google Android software. Competitors in China are making smartphones that compete with Samsung products and cost much less. There is also the awareness of the problems faced by Motorola, Nokia, Blackberry, HTC, having only a temporary advantage in the fast paced software driven industry. Samsung's software efforts include merging its research effort in mobile operating systems with an industry effort that includes Intel Corp called Tizen operating system. In 2011 Samsung hired David Eun, who worked for AOL and Google, as one of the executives leading its software effort. The Boxee startup for television software was acquired and a partnership setup with the Flipboard news reading app company. In Feb. 2013 the Open Innovation Center was opened in S. Korea, New York and Mountain View, California, The same year the Samsung Accelerator program was setup in Palo Alto and Chelsea for tech startups to make products exclusively for Samsung. ...

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Supply chains are unraveling in many industries with the tariffs imposed by president Trump on imports from China, and renegotiated trade deals with South Korea and other countries. The growth in the value of foreign value added was possible with cuts in tariffs in the period after 1990 and the emergence of China as a low cost manufacturer with cheap labor. Foreign value added increased from 20% in 1990 to 30% in 2011. The impact on factory towns and communities in the U.S. of trade in which the U.S. manufacturing declined as it shifted to China resulted in the surge in support for president Trump. The tariffs war with China is an effort to correct this imbalance. The result is a shift in supply chains away from China in some industries and gradual shift in others. Rising wages in China had already resulted in early shifts and the the environmental costs adding to this trend. President Trump temporarily suspended a threatened imposition of duties of 25% on $325 billion of Chinese imports. A renegotiated Nafta agreement with Mexico for automobile production and determination of U.S. based content and wages was designed to reset the relationship with Mexico and the auto supply chain for production in Mexico. A threat of tariffs on European auto imports to the U.S. is set for a decision in November. The trade dispute between Japan and South Korea and threat of tariffs also shows the effect this is having in other countries. With the U.S. looking at its own interest in the global supply chain and its advantage or disadvantage, industries and companies are not free to make decisions based on which country offers the best arrangement and deal for manufacturing. Notions of competitive advantage in the tech race with China are affecting the way the U.S. and European nations are acting. ...

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The Guardian makes a serious point that the German miracle 70 years ago after World War II, was based on giving debt relief to war torn Germany. Half of Germany's borrowings accumulated after two world wars were written off. Germany was allowed to repay a large part of its debt in its national currency. The cost of servicing the debt was kept at 5% of export revenues. In 2021 the comparable figure is 16% for poor indebted countries. Yet the generosity extended to Germany is not extended to poor indebted nations in 2023, says The Guardian. There is no space for them to gain industrial strength or control, says this editorial. Big powers are not in a hurry to let poor nations develop away from sectors such as agriculture and mining. Private bondholders would be the biggest ones to pay for international debt relief- institutional funds and investors lent 250 billion dollars to 55 most climate vulnerable countries, China 46 billion dollars. It calls on US and UK to pass legislation requiring private bondholders to take part in international debt relief, as bonds are covered under English or New York law. ...

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How Airbus is learning from the mistakes made in Boeing's Dreamliner, which will be out in late 2009. Airbus's competing plane the A350 will come out in 2013. Use of outside contractors and puttting all that work together is a critical issue once again, especially with production spread out around the world, including Russia and China.

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This story in the NYT showing America's GE building a wind turbine three times as large as the Statue of Liberty in New York harbour, comes after a decade of bad news from GE, beginning with its role in the mortgage financial crisis when its stock dropped to new lows. Bad bets on conventional power generation in its power division are leading to the change at GE where it is now investing in renewable energy. Under CEO Immelt GE did not anticipate the surge in growth of renewable energy powered by government subsidies. Now GE is pursuing an aggressive strategy by building larger wind turbines than its competitors Vestas in Denmark and Senvion in Germany. A 12 megawatt turbine is planned by GE called Haliade-X, to be built at a cost of $400 million for demonstration in 2019, shipping units in 2021. Competitors are looking at building a 10 megawatt wind turbine. Vestas SA and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries have a 9.5 megawatt wind turbine in operation as prototype in Denmark. The bit of good news comes with the backdrop of big changes at GE as its power division falters badly. GE under Immelt badly misjudged the market for gas and coal turbines, building inventory and resorting to aggressive pricing, not anticipating the push evident in Germany and in China towards renewable energy. The shift to renewable energy reduced demand for conventional power in Germany and the U.S. In Germany. Electric companies in conventional power generation are struggling. At GE orders declined by 25% and profits by 50% in the 4th quarter over the prior year. 12,000 job cuts are planned in the power division, 18% of its workforce. Older board members at GE are expected to leave, and GE under new CEO/Chairman John Flannery plans to shed $20 billion in assets in a major restructuring and shift to renewables.   Larger wind turbines of 10 megawatts or larger are the next stage in wind energy as the Netherlands and Germany move to build wind farms free of subsidies. The economics of larger wind turbines are critical as less geographic acreage is needed with larger turbines. ...

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This report in the WSJ gives the background and positions taken by Patriarch Krill of the Russian Orthodox Church, and his support for the war in Ukraine as part of Russian lands nationalism. Russian lands nationalism is an idea that comes from the beginnings of the Russian version of Christianity that had its origins in Kviv Ukraine in the 10th century. Patriarch Krill has had a varied role questioning some some state policies and then backing off and supporting the state says WSJ. In 2011 patriarch Krill stood up for protesters critical of manipulation in parliamentary elections that year. Patriarch Krill grew up in the years of Soviet rule and was 24 in 1970 when he began his work in the church. He was rector of a seminary in Leningrad by 1984 and after being critical of the Soviets and war in Afghanistan was sent to Smolensk says this report in WSJ. After he returned he worked with the Soviet state, and after voicing concerns in 2011 about parliamentary elections described as manipulated he has supported the Russian state as it becomes assertive about Russian lands nationalism. To understand the Orthodox Church in Russia one has to know its presence in the post Soviet period. About 63% of Russians belong to the Orthodox Church. It also includes Ukrainians. After Crimean invasion by Russia the Ukrainian Orthodox Church that makes up one third of the Russian Orthodox parishes was recognized as a separate church by Patriarch Bartholomev of Constantinople. Patriarch Bartholomev and Pope Francis the two leaders of the eastern and western churches in Constantinople and Rome have been critical of Patriarch Krill and his support for the war and the idea of Russian lands nationalism. Since the war some parishes in Russia have signed a letter opposing the killing of brothers in Christ and one parish leader was fined $500 for his statements. There is now intense debate among Russians about what this war means in bringing conflict on brotherly peoples about their preferences in 2022 for aligning with Europeans in the western part of Europe. For most of Europe in the 21st century there is a big change, in the countries near the Baltic sea in Northern Europe, in countries in the middle of Europe, in Eastern Europe, the 21st century is seen as a time when states and peoples are making their own choices about freedom and what their preferences are particularly the young people. They no longer understand or conform to ideas of the earlier period or centuries. And this is what has made Ukrainian young people oblivious about what Russian lands nationalism means and its relevance today. Buddhism is today not prevalent in South Korea a democratic state and in China a Communist state in the way it existed for centuries. For it to be relevant people need to begin to believe in it as in Japan or Sri Lanka or Thailand. In the 21st century young people are making different choices and this may well be where the Ukraine war shows that people's choices count particularly in the 21st century, and it has little to do with the west or the US or NATO or even Russia. ...

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This report in the WSJ points to president Biden's speech to a joint session of the US Congress that providing two years of free community college would "change the dynamic" for education in America taking the first step to correct a dangerous drop in college enrollment for young men in America and ensuring working class families have access to college education. The last thirty years of skewed wealth distribution, loss of manufacturing in America, have created alarming distortions in  the access to college education for working class families. Mrs. Biden is a fervent advocate for community college access in today's America, as a community college teacher for 30 years. Biden's $45.5 billion 5 year plan would waive tution for 2 years of public community college. States would have to opt-in to participate, and federal government would provide 100% funding in the first year, decreasing contribution by 5% each subsequent year, with states picking up rest of the cost. It is quite shocking that this is being dropped from the Biden $3.6 trillion Families and Workers Plan that is now being whittled down to $2 trillion. Not because it is not badly needed for American economic competitiveness, and helping workers and families. But because following narrow parochial interests the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities opposes it. And because the US Congress is evenly split between Democrats and Republicans 50-50 in the Senate. The Association of Independent Colleges sees a shift to community colleges and a sharp drop in its enrollment. Community colleges saw a dangerous drop in enrollment of 12% to 4.5 million students in 2020 from the spring of 2019, according to National Student Research Center. Never was a program more badly needed, as American men are alarmingly falling behind in enrollment. Here are some responses to the failure to take even the first steps to broaden college access so that America can return to economic competitiveness. "What kind of world do we want to live in?" Martha Kanter, College Promise. "That's kind of a devil's choice, isn't it? The whole system has to work from infant care all the way through." Senator Tina Smith, Democrat of Minnesota. This is because child care and children's education will be funded yet a struggling generation of college students will be left out. US Chamber of Commerce opposes a $45 billion program that is critical to American competitiveness with China and other countries. US Congress drops a program that at $45 billion is only about 2% of the $2 trillion package and which is critical to economic competitiveness. Former Republican Governor Bill Haslam of Tennessee supports community college access as a pillar of economic development and it passed the supermajority in 2014. Mike Krause, Republican former director of the state higher education commission says- "I have been surprised by the lack of enthusiasm for what is really a massive workforce development concept that also provides a path to the middle class. You'd think that would hold some appeal for Republicans and Democrats." The lack of clarity and concentration, lack of unity of purpose to get all vaccinated,  is visible in America's vaccination drive. That same lack of clarity and concentration, lack of unity of purpose, is visible in America's faltering efforts at correcting serious and alarming problems for access to college and American competitiveness in the world. Julie Bykowicz and Douglas Belkins wrote this article in the WSJ.   ...