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Timothy Rooks in DW.com points out rightly that it will be how well Macron grasps the opportunity to turnaround the economy within the EU that will make a difference. France needs some of the changes Macron is proposing because it has one of the largest state sectors of western economies, and private industry needs to be revitalized to generate the jobs to reduce youth unemployment. A cut in the corporate tax to 25% from 33% would be in line with Britain, Germany and other countries. Some cuts in spending 60 billion euros over 5 years, and 50 billion euro stimulus package. The wealth tax would be retained, and the 35 hour work week.  He has opposing views on 35 hour week but now will focus on flexibility on overtime, capping severance pay and investing in education, job training, other ways of reviving the labor markets to get hiring started again and cut into 25% unemployment for persons under age 25. He also plans to follow the German model of letting companies deal with unions at the local level, at the company level, not only at a national level. Close cooperation with Germany and the confidence of French industry will be a plus as he works to revive the French economy, with the conviction that this will also be a project to fulfill the hope of young people for jobs, and a way to reduce the number who have turned to extremist parties in France. ...

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The title says it all. The Jobs bank the United Autoworkers trade union in the US setup in GM in 1984 threatened American automaker GM's very survival in 2006. It put workers who were not needed at GM in a jobs bank. It basically meant the idled workers -many of them close to retirement -would stay there till they retired doing nothing collecting full salary. As Mohandas Gandhi had done for India in Hind Swaraj in 1910, the American labor movement needs to look at itself in the mirror if labor is to find its way into a world of dignity and fairness in wages that Mr.Biden truly seeks for American workers.   It was setup when GM had 45% of the US market and 415,000 workers. By 2006 113,000 workers were not needed with GM having lost marketshare to Japanese makers and the Jobs bank was costing GM about $10 million a week, half a billion a year threatening its survival. The Labor movement and the UAW union did nothing to fight its own membership and set it on the right course in union with management, putting at risk the very foundation that labor had put in place since Wilson, FDR and Truman for  fairness in wages and working conditions. Jeremy Peters tells the story in the NYT. That it was recent as 2006 and shows how much had gone wrong with the labor movement and the failure of its leaders to do the right thing. The Jobs Bank says NYT was intended to prevent manufacturers from shifting manufacturing overseas, instead it did just that by undermining confidence in unions and the American labor movement, and in American workers. Two crippling wars initiated by Republicans Bush and continued by Democrat Obama, disinvestment in American manufacturing, companies like Apple shifting their entire manufacturing through outshoring to Taiwan and China, the 2009 crisis from deregulation of American banks, led to the loss of not one, but two decades for America. In today's news a modest $2 in minimum wage increase from $15 to $17 over 3 years is all that New York governor Kathy Hochul could get- even though Assembly Democrats were asking for more- to give American workers and families a fair wage to meet the cost of living crisis.  ...

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A nuclear plant in a war zone with repeated shelling? This is taken up in this debate video of 44 minutes in FR24 which you can click on. The world has not seen this since the start of nuclear energy from plants in the 1950's. Calder Hall the first UK nuclear power station and the first in western Europe started in 1956. Eisenhower opened the first US nuclear power station Shippingport on the Ohio river in Pennsylvania, 50 kilometres from Pittsburgh in 1958 as part of the Atoms for Peace Program. The US built 54 nuclear plants that are operating today in 2022 generating 50% of the renewable energy in use today in the US. The question is what does the unthinkable conducted by the Russians and Ukrainians, by weaponizing a nuclear plant do to public perception of the safety of the Atoms for Peace Program initiated by president Eisenhower in 1954? What does this damaging of public safety perceptions after Fukushima do to the Atoms for Peace type of programs in China India, and European Union that are part of the emissions cutting programs in the world? These are serious questions at a time when climate change is not simply a word but means floods, fires, drought, and declining food production all over the world from Spain to Pakistan, from Germany to China. China and India are affected. China has 53 nuclear plants in 2021 with 50 GW and plans to double this by 2030. India has 22 nuclear plants  with 8 GW in 2021 and plans to triple this to 22 GW by 2030. How will climate change be tackled with public safety perceptions affected with another nuclear accident like that in Fukushima arising from shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. As the president of the UN Security Council Zhang Jun of China clearly stated at the UN SC meeting last week that China opposed use of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant by Russia (or Ukraine) in any way that could lead to damaging nuclear safety leading to an unintended accident. China only gets about 5% of its energy from nuclear, India about 3%, and this will need to increase multiple times to tackle climate change. France gets 70% of its energy from nuclear, the US 20%, by comparison. Nuclear energy safety and clear rules to prevent weaponizing of nuclear plant zones is essential and a solution like that developed for the food grain shipments from Odessa through Black Sea to the Mediterranean has to be arranged quickly. ...

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Venezuela faces an uncertain future after U.S. efforts to support Mr. Guaido and call for new free and fair elections have failed. With help from Russia the Venezuelan economy is showing signs of recovery from the steep decline and high inflation in 2019. Oil production is expected to reach 1 million barrels a day in 2020 after falling to 650,000- 700,000 barrels a day in 2019. Russia's oil company Rosneft provides critical help for Venezuelan oil sales and maintenance in oil fields.  National Security Adviser John Bolton is faulted for his advice to president Trump on Venezuela, that merely voicing support for 36 year old Guaido, would lead to regime change without action from the U.S. With the recovery in Venezuela with help from Russia and Cuba, Mr. Guaido's popularity has dropped by 20 points to 38%, according to a Venezuelan pollster Datanalisis. Most Cubans and Venezuelans in the U.S. are in Florida where there is support for new elections, and Mr. Trump continues to support Mr. Guaido. The lack of support for change from other countries including Europe, India, Turkey, and Mexico have led to a stalled situation in Venezuela. There is concern for the steep inflation, the migration of about 4.5 million Venezuelans, the shortages of critical supplies as a result of the economic collapse in 2019. The situation is stabilizing for the government yet the future of Venezuela with U.S. sanctions and weak economy leaves Venezuela in a precarious situation. Venezuela continues to be an example of how well meaning changes for social justice can lead to political changes that bring about economic collapse. This happens  when business and the economy flounder under mismanagement and corruption under crony socialism, a variant of crony capitalism. The old capitalist class and the privileged families who ran the country under its old two party system are gone. Replaced with a new class. The trying out of untested economic ideas in the quest for social balance leads to economic mismanagement, loss of critical human resources which leave the country, and a higher degree of poverty with shortages than before.  Today in Latin America Brazil shows how allowing generous pension benefits at the expense of basic needs and public services in the budget can hurt the economy. Argentina's overborrowing once again shows how this leads to IMF loans and harsh economic austerity. Chile shows how not financing pensions and public services can lead to collapse of public confidence and riots. Venezuela shows how the quest for social justice and reducing privilege can itself get flawed, leading to mass migration of as many as 4.5 million citizens. This happens under models that vary from free enterprise models to socialist or nationalist models showing that models can be less relevant than good sense and good management. In the beginning and for some time each of these models worked well, commodity price supported booms concealed real problems. Avoiding extremes, prudent spending, good investment and hard work, investment in education and infrastructure, building consensus, and good management, is critical for the future to avoid the bad outcomes facing much of Latin America. A lesson also for Asian and African countries that basic virtue is more important than socialism or free enterprise or nationalism when it comes to development.   ...

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Zweig points out that P/E multiples fall quickly in the midst of higher uncertainty. Benjamin Graham's "cyclically adjusted" P/E refined by Yale economist Robert Shiller smooths out the top and bottoms of the market by averaging the past 10 years of earnings and incorporating effects of inflation. This "cyclically adjusted" P/E for the U.S. market for the last 50 years is 19.5. The P/E for the market when the S&P 500 was at 1325 in late July 2011 was 22.9, and at the low in the first week of August 2011 of 1167 was 20.2. With the higher uncertainty- as for instance Bank of New York Mellon charging clients to hold cash- the P/E multiples are in a different territory. The P/E dropped to 13.3 in March 2009 after the financial crisis of 2008. Larger macroeconomic trends and uncertainty may have yet to play out and not registered fully in the market indexes. Jack Hough throws light on this from a different angle in the Wall Street Journal, August 5, 2011 comparing stagnant wages and its relationship with corporate earnings....

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Chinese views on the India war of 1962 are shown at the Beijing Military Museum in a display effort "One Hundred Questions on the China-India Border Self-Defense Counterattack."  China's PLA on its 95th anniversary looks at the 33 day war and calls it a "counterattack." It also says China withdrew because its goals were accomplished of getting back the territory it lost since August 1959 to India, that on the Indian side "the decision making was in the hands of civilian officials who did not understand the military at all," and called it "chaotic." It also brings up the international situation that Russia supported both China and India in the conflict and India had the US on its side. It says PLA withdrew because of the difficulty of supplying the military in the Arunachal region at a great distance from China particularly after the famine that resulted from the Great Leap Forward. Today there is a clear chain of command and joint work by the Indian Air force and the Army, infrastructure to support mountain operations being built at rapid speed, and building of modern defense manufacturing capabilities for the airforce and army as shown at the Defense Expo in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, this week.  One of the first aspects of the border that one sees in the region is how close it is to large population cities and towns in India and how remote it is from large population towns and cities in China. In this sense China after the experience with Russian conflict before 1900, later a large Japanese invasion in 1931and 1937 appears to have responded to its period of semi-colonialism with an aggressive policy of extending its frontiers to regions that were throughout history acting as large buffers between India and China- such being the case of Tibet which was occupied in the 1950's leading to the war with India and a border dispute that had never existed before in history. Other aspects today are that in 1962 the PLA had fought the war against the Japanese and the war agains the Americans in Korea all within a 20 year period. In 2022 China has focused for 50 years on modernizing its economy. The supply chain in the Ukraine war showed shortcomings in the Russian army, and the difficulties of supplying forces at great distances. There is also the question of morale when it is about  miles of icy terrain at heights over 10,000 feet, thousands of miles away from major population cities and towns in China- for reasons of Russian and Japanese semicolonialism behaviour not to be found in regions that had never seen large armies in history such as Tibet or Arunachal or the Himalayan border regions. The distances tell much of the story- the distance from Shanghai, Shenzen or Beijing, to Tibet is over 4000 kilometers and the border region with India additional thousands of kilometers over some of the most rugged terrain on earth with only remote mountain communities existing in the most difficult environments.       ...

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News Corporation has designed a newspaper for the internet with the personal involvement of Rupert Murdoch. The newspaper is called The Daily and will be supported by Apple for the I-Pad. Pricing is 14 cents a day, 99 cents a week, or $40 a year.

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WSJ reporter Monica Langley provides a glimpse behind the scenes of how Donald Trump comes up with his attacks on rivals, and statements on immigration, terrorism, refugees. Trump pays close attention to what is riling voters on any particular week, but other rival politicians are not willing to say. He looks for what resonates with the public, and in today's environment where politicians are cautious, careful and plodding, this strategy works. Donald usually puts down a few points on his private plane, looks at reports from campaign staff, yet makes all the decisions himself on what and how to say it. His memory helps, he says. And he has a flair for words, sounding uncouth at times, but yet choosing words carefully enough to sound reasoanble to his audience. In Jan 2016 this approach has worked for Trump in the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries, stalling progress by rival Ted Cruz, and holding back other rivals. Yet this approach has its risks as the primary season progresses. One of the changes in the Republican party politics in 2016 is the emergence of two candidates Donald Trump representing the white working class, and Ted Cruz representing evangelicals, who are both strident and willing to take strong positions on issues in striking contrast to leading Democrats. Trump on China, immigration, refugees, and Cruz on taxes, cultural issues for evangelicals, IRS, Affordable Health Care Act, and both candidates on terrorism. ...

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Like hundreds of thousands of other young migrant workers in China's factories, Yuan Yandong is from a rural area and lived on a farm. Better incomes have brought them to the factories in urban areas. In this case travelling long distance by train from Guangdong province to Shenzhen. As living standards improved across China and the government expressed a keen willingness to encourage workers to exercize their rights to fair wages and working conditons- especially by creating increased awareness of new labor laws in the state run media- migrant workers are becoming restless with conditions they accepted a few years ago. The growing use of cellphones and access to the internet have made news travel faster. A visit to a Foxconn factory shows a young worker, age 24, sitting on a stool 6 nights a week, 12 hours a night, with a quota to assemble 1600 hard drives for American computer storage company EMC, with the pressure to work continuously against the clock for each step in the manufacturing process. Foxconn is known for its highly disciplined nature of work, akin to a military style. Behind the scenes factories like Foxconn employ methods once used in the US at a similiar stage of industrialization, with 500 technical people continuously looking for the most efficient way to organize each step in the production process. Each movement and action of the worker is measured for time taken and process efficiency, according to experts at Tsinghua University in China. This means many factories can use less automation- and so less capital intensive manufacturing- and go to extremes where workers perform like machines. Yuan's ambition is to work only for another 2 years and then use his savings to get into hotel management. His wages are 75 cents an hour, and with the overtime premium about $235 a month. Foxconn announced a 33% raise in wages as a result of worker protests. The mind numbing monotony is becoming less acceptable in a changing China, and worker turnover in such factories is rising. After the initial burst of industrialization in which young migrant workers played a signifcant role in manufacturing, a new chapter in China's development is beginning- one less likely to create the large trade deficits with the US and Europe- which is moving in the direction of a larger domestic market with higher worker wages....

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China Investment Corporation, China's sovereign wealth fund is expected to issue upto 28 billion in bonds to help recapitalize China's state owned banks. These banks face the prospect of increasing bad loans as a result of the hectic pace of bank lending in 2009-2010. Loans guaranteed by muncipal governments are estimated at 7.7 trillion yuan, or 17% of overall lending, about 50% of these loans face uncertainty in the event of falling housing prices, and 25% are bad loans. The recent IPO of Agricultural Bank of China raised funds, but the environment for raising money in this way does not look good, as information is spreading that these banks face large loan losses. The bonds from CIC would be picked up by state controlled companies. Yet these state controlled companies are engaging in the real estate speculation, as reported by David Barboza of the New York Times and Peter Coy of Business Week. In a down cycle things could get much worse as a state sovereign fund is selling bonds, state controlled companies would buy these bonds, and state controlled banks are expected to be recapitalized making a complete circle....

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David Albright, a former weapons inspector in Iraq, says 24 days is enough time for Iran to wipe out traces of nuclear work, such as working with explosives to trigger a weapon or construction of a small plant to make centrifuges. A situation actually happened in 2003 when the atomic energy agency wanted to inspect the Kalaye Electric Company site in Iran in 2003, where Iran was using centrifuges received from Pakistan. Iranians removed all traces of illicit work at the time while delaying inspectors. This case was cited by Olli Heinonen, a former deputy director of the agency. Heinonen says smaller scale activity such as manufacturing uranium components for a nuclear weapon can be carried out and the traces deleted in 24 days. Senator Corker points out that the time allowed would be more than 24 days when all the time is added up correctly.

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The German parliament votes 439 to 119 on July 16, 2015, approving a 86 billion euro aid and loan package to Greece under an aid for reforms plan. 60 members of chancellor Merkel's CDU group voted against compared to 29 voting against the bailout extension of Feb. 2015. This included approval of 7.16 billion euros in short term funding for July 20, to meet a 4.2 billion euro payment to the ECB. This was conducted as a special session of parliament. Chancellor Merkel said: "we would be acting with crude intelligence and irresponsibility if we didn't at least try this path." Finance Minister Schauble told parliament- "We believe that there is a chance that we can bring these negotiations to a successful conclusion," yet he cautioned that after the negotiations of coming weeks "we will have to discuss whether the negotiations have shown a way that works."

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Apple's plans to get a share of revenues and control customer data for digital newspapers and magazines it supports on the I-Pad.

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The weak dollar and lower unionized labor costs may make exports an attractive goal for US carmakers as the US market is shrinking. After years of shunning export markets US carmakers may finally be waking up to the potential in places like Brazil, China and India. GM is considering export of the Malibu to Brazil, and expects to send 25,000 Buick Enclaves to China because the Buick brand sells very well there. With the new UAW agreemets and lower unionized costs, the US carmakers backs to the wall and open to trying new things and not so America centric, and a cheaper dollar, exports may be one more way in which US carmakers can revive the automobile business in a declinig uS market. It is possible that after this recession the US market may have matured to the point where US sales levels may have peaked like that in Japan and Germany and exports and international markets are the only ways to growth. In this sense the transformation to making the so called Big 3 into global companies has begun in earnest in a true sense, and their company structures and the kind of people who work there will in future reflect this global nature of their business. The UAW is on board in this effort, new wages are at $14 per hour for new hires, and the UAW understands that exports mean additional jobs. In fact the Lordstown, Ohio plant is one location for another GM small car in the future which would be exported, this 42 year old plant once a target for closure could then become an example of renewal in a new kind of business model. Note that the US exported $50.66 billion in vehicles, half of it to Mexico and Canada. It imported $150 billion in vehicles. From now on the shift wold be to export to emerging markets....

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Ivan Rogers, UK ambassador to the European Union for three years till 2017 was sharply critical of the British government and forecast some of the Brexit problems. He has a book "9 Lessons in Brexit," which appeared in Feb. 2019. Here he is interviewed by Der Spiegel. He says he expected some of the problems but is still surprised that 4 weeks before the deadline the political class in Britain has not yet figured out what kind of Brexit they want. Here he points out that Cameron and Blair represented the centre in British politics. But that centre has now collapsed after the financial crisis and the period of austerity led to widening gaps between the different parts of British society. The public is now deeply alienated from both major parties. In both parties the populists on the left and the right have gained a bigger influence, as a result there are no centre right or centre left figures who command public influence. Rogers is a civil servant of high rank who has worked with several prime ministers including Blair and Cameron. His comments are worth listening to.  Was Theresa May the right person to tackle Brexit? Her problem says ROgers is that she started with a hardline position of reducing the number of people entering the UK from inside or outside the EU. Once you do this you cannot have free movement of goods, services and capital, so you have to leave the single market. And if Britain wanted a fully autonomous trade policy then it cannot stay in the customs union. Rogers thinks Theresa May never really understood what this meant- that it was going much further out of the European Union than Norway or Switzerland, or even Turkey. Now as she is trying to go back her right wing cries betrayal. Do British prime ministers understand the single market, the customs union, or how the EU really works? Rogers worked on European issues for a long time and he says after working very closely with British prime ministers that none of them had a deep understanding of how the European Union works. Plus they lack any emotional attachment to the EU, because of the mercantile relationship Britain has had with its neighbors. About the relationships in Europe between the Germans, the French, the British, what is it and what will it be like? Rogers says he has not seen a thinner relationship in his lifetime. He thinks the European political elites are not talking to each other anything like what was done 20 or 30 years ago. He says the Brits have to take a lot of the responsibility because the British political class lost interest in Europe. What could the Europeans have done? Rogers says the chaos continues because the British don't really know where they want to go. It opaque about the relationship on purpose. Have the Europeans thought about what kind of a continent they want to see after all this is over? This interview tells you more about the Brexit problem that many reports and opinions, bringing a thoughtful way of looking at the problem. ...

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Alan Meltzer would like to see the Fed reverse its quantitative easing, and lower excess reserves gradually starting now. By this he hopes to see the Fed avoid the mistake of making a big shift from excessive ease to severe contraction further down the road. He also warns agains excessive deficit spending. He says a weak economy is not the time to cut spending or raise taxes, and he is not talking of draconian immediate steps. He would like to see a multiyear program to increase fiscal probity and reduce deficits size and frequency. As it stands now he takes both parties to task for lack of fiscal discipline and honest accounting. About $1 trillion in deficits each year on average for next 10 years is in the works, and is an underestimate because the savings of $200-$300 billion in medicare spending have still to be realized, and states do not have funds for increased Medicaid spending, and payments to doctors have still to go down by 25%. Chinese government purchases of half our debt will postpone the day of reckoning says Meltzer, but far better for us to strike at the problem now, before we blow a hole in the dollar and start a downturn. See the separate report on the shrinking UK economy....

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Germany's economy has shown strong growth of 3.6% in 2010. Germany has benefitted from globalization, both on the demand side and the supply side. The euro provided additional demand from countries like Spain and Greece. And German machinery and automobile manufacturers see rising demand from China. Germany also has lower priced labor in Eastern European countries. The Mittelstand, the smaller companies making all types of machinery, are a strong part of the economy. And the Hartz reforms under former chancellor Schroder, have helped reform the labor market. Also German unions have been fairly restrained during this period of reforms. German schemes for retaining workers during the downturn helps retain core skills and supports a quick rebound. All this is helping make Germany look atttractive as a model to follow in the European Union. There are weaknesses in the lack of strong domestic spending, which means Germany is too dependent on demand in China and other countries. The other weakness is reduced productivity in the services sector....

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Vikram Pandit's style at Citigroup after 4 months, thoughful, asking lots of questions, fixing the little things that actually matter a lot, like the unwillingness of some heads of divisions to sit together in the same room, some hiring decisions and new lines of reporting and responsibiity and interaction in the organization structure that call for teamwork, discussion and collaboration. The oldtimers like Krawcheck used to clear lines of reporting are now getting used to the new culture of collaborative working. His style is first to come to grips with issues and not to come to snap decisions based on intuition, such as interviewing at length and asking tough questions at length to Ajay Banga, head of Citi's international group about the extensive defaults in Citi's consumer loan business in Japan. One of his views is that only if you get the foundation right can you talk about vision. Regarding pettiness in management and small grudges, its either going to be a partnership or you're not going to be here. some of his colleagues like James Forense say that they would take substance over form, judgement over form, any day of the week. And while he does not shy away from details like expecting lower level employees to pay for sporting event tickets Citigroup earlier gave out free, and he himself rides the subway sometimes, he has made some of the bigger decisions. Among these, getting capital from outside sources by travelling extensively abroad, urging Citigroup's board to slash the dividend for the first time in 20 years, selling off 2 peripheral units that did not belong and a third Primerica on sale also. And urged by his mentor former Treasury secretary Rubin who also used a note pad and a thinking thoughtful style like Pandit's at Treasury during the Asian banking crisis and the Mexican financial crisis, Pandit has been direct and realistic. He tells Wall Street that the fate of Citigroup is going to be decided to some extent by the duration of the environment we are going through, the twin perils of the debt-market crisis and the sluggish US economy. And that for now issues like these are going to overwhelm our actions. Pandit's father was a senior executive of one of India's leading pharmaceutical companies when the family moved to New York, so he has grown up around business, and is able to ask the question quite sincerely and matter of factly of his managers at the beginning of every meeting. "What are you doing with the shareholder's money?" After which come the torrent of well thought out questions, probing deeper each time, especiually where issues are festering for a long time, and remain unresolved. ...

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All the extreme rhetoric on how Project 2025 is going to be adopted under a DJT administration has led to unease that there will be deterioration in the government and society.  Yet it simply may not work that way.   A second objective look at Project 2025 and how it's value to Republicans will be carefully evaluated piece by piece by DJT is needed. Keeping in mind 2026 House and Senate elections, winning broad support for the traditional Republican conservative line of thinking, and maintaining the support of all Republicans in the business, government, media and other sectors.  1. Replacing federal employees with party loyalists. This happens at the top of every agency of the government for every government in the US and Europe after an election for the last century. At today's unemployment level of 4 percent, adult males actually 3.9% and adult females 3.6%, and considering the higher salaries paid in the private sector, the tenuous nature of joining as a party loyalist as the national mood can shift at any time and things change again in 2027; where was the federal government going to find employees to be replaced at mid and lower levels? There is also the situation seen in 1928 when a Republican Hoover victory made Democrat NY Governor Al Smith compel a reluctant Franklin Roosevelt, who was just recovering from polio, to run for NY Governor. By 1931 over 3 years Franklin Roosevelt and Columbia University's Frances Perkins tested programs to stabilize employment in the US, introduce unemployment insurance as a new concept, and a 40 hour week also new, in the entire northeastern + midwestern states, all governors working together. By 1931 in just 3 years Franklin Roosevelt was on the clear path to sweeping victory in 1932 with a tested program to stabilize employment. 2.  The No. 1 goal is to restore the traditional family. It is clear in 2024 that the vast majority of Americans, whites, women as well as men, of all age groups, whites as well as Latinos and Asians, blacks, see that things like transgender "have somehow gone too far." 3. Cultural Literacy is needed for any nation to long survive. This is not even on any platform. Yet knowledge about America's history of settlement of the continent -correcting for treatment of American Indians, blacks, Chinese, Japanese without pointless race controversies- is being rapidly lost, and with it an understanding of America's civic institutions and Constitution, its founders and presidents, and evolution of the nation over the 20th century with the Industrial Revolution. The very terminology that has defined public knowledge about these United States is fast disappearing. It is a cause for unease in the minds of people in rural and urban, conservative and other parts of the political spectrum alike of what will happen to America as this is lost. 4. On immigration  a consensus was reached by president Biden that migrant flow was mishandled and the Lankford legislation offered by Republican leaders accepted by both parties to stop the flow. During his first term president Eisenhower conducted a program of returning illegal migrants to their home countries, Germany is doing this now and the UK's Labor party has made it No. 1 priority to stop migrant smuggling. 5. An effort to increase oil and gas production. This will help bring down the cost of living by reducing energy costs in the US and also helping Europe to do the same. Biden had already accepted the idea of the temporary need to do this to ease cost of living burden on the people of this Nation. The economic cost of wind and solar, are ultimate drivers for expanding renewable energy as major form of climate change action. In the first term of DJT 2016-2020 the lower cost of natural gas made it economical to switch from oil to gas. In the Biden term 2020-2024 all the effort to increase EV's on the road ran into the problem of lack of charging stations. It is possible that spread of charging stations could reverse this in the second term of DJT. It is the private sector and also the local governments that play a big part, climate change action will continue, and new R&D breakthroughs will happen to jump start it again.    ...

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Even China has not campaigned the way Canada, Mexico and British, American media have against DJT Tariffs because China knows it is basically about getting an even playing field when it is the only country with $1 trillion in trade in its favor in 2024, 12 times the Japanese high of $82 billion trade surplus in 2007. But why should China campaign when the American and British, German media are going to do the job for China? A simple quiz to K-12 would ask school children when is the last time a country has a $1 trillion trade surplus? Answer: Never. Greg Ip has written a few years back that the devastation of China outshoring of American factories and jobs was unlike the 1980's Japan trade invasion because of first China's size, second by the speed with which it happened at 10-14% Chinese GDP growth. There is a third Japan was an ally needing US for security and backed down, China's case is different it is challenging the US for control of the world economy and will fight this one over the long haul. Greg Ip of WSJ on the 53 countries asking to negotiate US Liberation Day April 2, 2025 Tariffs. These countries include Allies of the US in full support asking to negotiate Israel, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, India Allies of the US in partial support asking to negotiate Britain Allies of the US not in full support asking to negotiate Germany, France Allies of the US in the past campaigning against the US, asking to negotiate Canada, Mexico Not Allies of the US, not in full support, not campaigning against the US China A look at his list tells one only one thing, mostly all trading partners except for the $146 billion exports of the US which represents exports to China are the exports that are at risk if things don't work out on tariffs. This is what the media today WSJ added this last week to the NYT, Wash. Post and the BBC, Guardian of UK, German media will not tell the reader.  The DJT Tariffs and Tariff negotiations are Lighthizer Tariff negotiations which won the fight with Japan in the 1980's over unfair trade and gaining a level playing field. Lighthizer as Deputy US Trade Representative conducted the tough negotiations with Japan. He was USTR in 2016-2020 and his Deputy Jamieson is now USTR in 2025       ...

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Joe Nocera says, that its like the Wizard of Oz story, and the curtain being pulled back to reveal that it was the end of quarter games that enabled GE to make earnings estimates, quarter after quarter, for years. Last April is when the curtain gets pulled back because with the Bear Stearns collapse and the crisis in financial markets, these games could not be played anymore. The fact is that after all the talk about how great GE's infrastructure business and other businesses were, GE was making somewhere near half its profit from its financial businesses under GE Capital. And during this period very little was disclosed by GE about the complicated financial machinery of its GE Capital unit and how it generated its profit, everything had to be taken on faith. This does not work anymore, after all the excesses, leverage and errors that have taken place in the financial markets. After repeated denials that it needed to raise new equity, GE raised $15 billion in new equity in late September 2008, including $3 billion from Warren Buffett. Then there was the two thirds dividend cut in early March 2009, after repeated denials, so that GE could conserve cash. Investors want to know more. Is GE Capital marking to market its assets that have fallen in value, now that its clear that these assets are likely to decline further, and stay that way for a very long time. Two analysts at Sterne Agee questioned GE Capital's accounting. Two days after GE cut its dividend, on March 3, 2009, Nicholas Heymann issued a report saying that GE Capital " is now confronting the prospect that a downward trend in fundamental performance, fueled by weakening end markets and magnified by several liquidity constraints, could potentially lead to an extended period of steadily lowered earnings, depleted loss provisions, lower credit ratings, rising borrowing costs." A day later GE stock hit $6. And credit default swaps suggested investors were worried about a default. As investors look for more transparency from GE, its going to clarify whether embedded losses are at $4 billion as GE claims or at $21 to $54 billion as Heymann is saying. GE's CFO Mr. Sherin appeared on CNBC with defense of the company's position, saying the company had $45 billion in cash, and there were no triggers that would have call on the company's cash in the short term. He said GE is trying to rebuild its credibility, and also trying to be clear, open and honest. Sherin promised to do this at a meeting on the week of March 16, 2009, where he would give details on the parts of the portfolio causing the most distress, $20 billion of subprime mortgages in the UK, the loan portfolio in Eastern Europe, and the commercial real estate holdings. And he told Joe Nocera of NYT, that GE had nothing to hide. But no one including Nocera is giving GE the benefit of the doubt, and no one today is taking anything on faith....

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About the reorganization of IBM under Sr. Vice President Robert Moffat Jr. that is underway. The idea is to make IBM more efficient by increasing the productivity of its people and reduce costs. There are over 200,000 people in the IBM services business. Operating margins increased by 2.3% to 10.3% with productivity improvements in the 1st quarter of 2006. IBM's revenues declined by 1.2% in the 1st quarter to $11.6 billion. This IBM Tech services restructuring will be watched closely by Indian IT and IBM's competitors. Moffat hopes to attack the IT tech services business with a new format to improve productivity and reduce costs, and bring IBM' strengths such as research capabilities to bear. The format is being a virtual factory with competency centres of excellence across the globe. The question is can Moffatt pull this off and convince a bureaucratic large organization to overcome inertia and do things differently. Especially as Indian IT is smaller and not yet affected by Big Company Syndrome. What Moffatt is attempting to do is to create a virtual global factory with specialized centres of compency in different global locations so that work can be transferred from one location to another- much as we see in the automobile industry- based on who does best what at what cost. Nilekani of Infosys, says American competiitors are "seeing it as a compelling threat after years of putting their head in the sand." They are responding to megatrends but not fast enough, according to Business Week. This may be attributable to the fact that Indian IT is younger, smaller, faces more competition inside India, and is more agile for these reasons compared to an IBM or an EDS. Hamm points out that IBM is shifting to a new posture as a globalized business, one that puts behind it its days as a multinational company or MNC, no more MNC geographically based independent country businesses, not an outsourcer as frequently assumed when IBM shifted some jobs overseas recently. The new IBM is an organization that builds on competency centers across the globe with concentration of skills and talent in different locations worldwide. It uses the competency centres to pull together the best people and sequence of operations to meet customer needs. ...

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Foreign investment in the auto industry is having a significant impact in the growth of Mexico's middle class. VW has plants in Puebla, General Motors in Silao, Chrysler in Toluca, Nissan in Aguascalientes. Production increased by 24% in February 2012 over the prior year. The growth is likely to continue. Facilities in Mexico have high productivity and are technologically equiped comparable to plants in the U.S., Europe and Japan. Nissan plans a $2 billion investment in a plant in Aguascalientes. Because of the lower cost of living, with food, transportation and health care costing less, even though household appliances cost more, workers at a Mexican plant earning $4 an hour in pay and benefits or $130 a week can still have a decent standard of living. Foreign investment is likely to grow with Mexico's emphasis on technical education - about 130,000 engineers graduating each year according to Mexico's president Calderon- the work ethic of young Mexicans joining manufacturing plants, the productivity of these lower cost plants, and a growing market in Latin America. Nissan plans to produce 1 million cars in Mexico with an investment of $2 billion in Aguascalientes. Nissan has succeeded in taking over from VW as the preeminent manufacturer in Mexico, and has 32,000 workers in the Aguascalientes area, once a small town but now a thriving city of 700,000. Drug cartels have no interest in places like Aguasalientes, which is why foreign investment continues to come into Mexico. The lack of economical credit- interest rate on car loans is about 10%- and the flow of about 600,000 used cars each year into Mexico from the U.S. has restricted growth in Mexico's automobile market. Jose Munoz, Nissan's senior executive for Latin America sees this changing as more credit including Nissan's new financing center in Aguascalientes make lower cost credit easily available to a growing middle class....

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Turner Adair, head of Britain's Financial Regulatory Authority thinks that banks have assumed an outsize role in the British and world economy, and are coopting their regulators. He sees the need to check many of the excesses. Why not use profits to build up reserves rather than give out huge bonuses and paychecks, he asks. He sees the need to challenge the accepted thinking on Wall Street and in the City of London, where the ideology of efficient markets became embedded, as it did also in the regulatory community. He came in the week Lehman Brothers collapsed as chairman of the FSA. And he wants to shake up the existing thinking. In March, the Turner Review. a 126 page report was published. A lot of attention was paid to his suggesting atax on financial transactions, called the Tobin tax, but its designed more to get people thinking and questionning the existing way of running banking as Turner said in an interview, "we have begun to accept this idea of liquidity as the new God." Can British or American society and the financial industry in both countries work to the benefit of both? Nobel prize winning economists and other experts have advised ashift to productive investments that grow the economy using technology, science and brainpower and new ideas, as opposed to the investment in mortgages and other speculative investments. As the regulators -including former and current heads of the SEC, and other regulatory bodies in the US, Cox, Schapiro and others- once held on to the same theory of uninhibited operation of free markets as best for generating increased wealth for society as the banking community, they tended to get co-opted in letting bad practices flourish. Went to sleep on the job as it were. See the links in Intelilinks. Adair Turner's admonitions are designed to get people thinking. He says, "banks need to be willing, like the regulator, to recognize that there are some profitable activities so unlikely to have a social benefit, direct or indirect, that they should voluntarily walk away from them." Investments in science, technology and new products, as in the 60's that generated a revolution in living standards, than the mortgages and consumer lending of the last decade, is what he may be saying, as do these Nobel prize winning economists....