LyrArc Article Gist
The U.S. Labor Department reported 120,000 jobs were added by private companies in March 2012. The U.S. government cut jobs by 1000. Manufacturing added 37,000 jobs, with a lot of these jobs in the auto industry. Health care, financial services and professional and business services added jobs. Retailers cut 34,000 jobs. Construction and transportation did not change. Average hourly earnings increased by 5 cents to $23.39, and wages increased by 2.1% over the prior year, still about the same as inflation; leaving workers with no real increase in incomes. The U.S. has to increase jobs by at least 100,000 jobs to keep up with population growth. March 2012 jobs numbers revealed what the U.S. Federal Reserve already knew when it pointed to weak growth in jobs ahead. It comes as the equity markets are sharply overextended after a couple of months of better job numbers. The unemployment rate declined from 8.3% to 8.2%, largely from fewer people looking for work.

LyrArc Article Gist
Mike Atherton on India vs England Test cricket series in June-July 2025. It is seen as a Test series for the ages, India vs England 2025. Looking back at the series Australia vs West Indies in 1960 when the Test ended in a tie when Gary Sobers and Richie Benaud were players for their teams, one finds this one drawing the same level of excitement and suspense. The whole series of 5 tests was filled with suspense, Pant's theatrics, Gill's brilliant batting matching world records set by Don Bradman and Jadeja's all rounder performance with bat and ball matching that of Gary Sobers. Bowling was not far behind with Bumrah, Siraj and Stokes.  The England team and the Indian team were evenly matched with Ben Stokes,Root and Woakes, Atkinson, English players giving it their all. Woakes was injured dislocating his shoulder in an effort to save a boundary, such was the fielding effort on the Oval grounds in the final test. Woakes turned up to bat in much pain, but did not face any balls thanks to Atkinson. Stokes bowled overs almost to exhaustion to miss the last Test.  ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Renault signs an agreement with labor unions which provide for longer working hours and a one year wage freeze to reduce labor costs. Renault will in turn not close French factories and invest 1.1 billion euros to increase production in France. A similiar agreement was signed by Renault in Spain in 2012 and increased the urgency for reaching an agreement in France. Renault says increasing working hours 6.5% provided in the agreement will save the company 300 euros per car. Analysts estimate lower breakeven point for Renault after the deal. Renault said it will increase production to 710,000 cars in France by 2016 as part of the deal, taking output up to 85% of factory capacity. Production in 2012 declined to 532,000 in 2012, from 646,000 in 2011 and 1.2 million in 2007. Unions went into the negotiations sensing the danger in lack of competitiveness vs. Spain and Germany, and CFDT published a book titled "Renault in Danger!." Based on the experience in the U.S. as the economy recovered and sales recovered for Ford and GM, Renault may be seeing the effects of a gradual recovery in Europe by 2016. The 710,000 figure is a one third increase from the low 2012 figure, leaving room for expansion if this strategy succeeds. Renault's market share declined in Europe by one percentage point in 2012 to 8.4%, and its sales in Europe declined by 19%, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association. The increased production planned by Renault also includes 80,000 cars made for its partner Nissan....

LyrArc Article Gist
Even as the national minimum wage remains stuck at $7.25 states are making their own decisions to increase the wage. 21 states will increase the minimum wage including Republican states Missouri and Nebraska in 2025. 

LyrArc Article Gist
Under Mette Frederiksen immigration which reached 21,000 in 2015 was down to a little over 1000 a year. She is a strong fighter for workers and families and labor rights and yet tough on illegal immigration. She has been proven right about this as Britain and the US under Biden are seeing illegal immigration as a threat to workers and labour, are seeing the risks of distraction from illegal immigration doing a serious disservice to workers and families by making it hard to fight for workers and families on wages, cost of living and other issues.  Even with a strong record of fighting for workers and families, Frederiksen was one of the first European leaders to see the dangers of illegal immigration to society. It gave parts of the political spectrum that had no interest all along in workers and families doing well, an issue to run on that would come to cause grave harm to workers and families. This turned out to be the error of Angela Merkel a CDU leader brought up in Communist East Germany, who had no idea of the risks of her approach for open immigration. As Merkel let this chapter unfold it created fissures in Europe, with Tories and Nigel Farage taking Britain out of the EU and laying waste to its economy for 5 years till Labour's Starmer adopted a tough immigration policy and became prime minister in 2024. That danger then spread to the US in 2016 which also suffered as Republicans and Trump did the same in the US around rhetoric but without serious action on immigration till the Lankford- Biden legislation.  That bill would have closed the border with Mexico and ended immigration as an issue forever if passed into law in December 2023, as Senator Lankford says would have happened. Ending immigration as an issue forever alongside foreign wars as an issue, so that a concentrated effort could be made on improving badly damaged lives of workers and families. And on rebuilding badly damaged manufacturing in the US, rebuilding collapsing infrastructure, and competing with better education and healthcare with the large Asian countries China, Japan/ South Korea, India. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
In 2024 gender has receded into the background it is all about how to help ordinary Americans, workers and families, and children, and seniors. Harris is all about the Way Forward and the opportunity Economy, tackling the cost of living and jobs, higher wages.

LyrArc Article Gist
American men took the biggest hit for life expectancy in an Oxford University study, with life expectancy dropping by 2.2 years in 2020. American women life expectancy dropped by 2.65 years. Lithuanian men had a decline of 1.7 years. This is the largest decline going back to the days of the Great Depression in the 1930's

Elsewhere in Europe, life expectancy declined in many countries for the first time since the Second World War. This happened in Spain, Italy, England, Wales and Belgium. Women in 8 countries and men in 11 countries had drops in life expectancy over more than 1 year.

LyrArc Article Gist
India under the leadership of prime minister Modi hosting the G20 meeting of world leaders may have for the world passed the test of the ages on November 16, 2023. On that day the G20 with China, India, (and Russia's Lavrov), and the US issued the statement saying-  "The use of threat of using nuclear weapons is inadmissible. The peaceful resolution of conflicts, efforts to address crises, as well as diplomacy and dialogue, are vital. Today's era must not be of war." The words "Today's era must not be of war," were words Modi had stated repeatedly to the Russian president.  In dire situations that it can be conceived that small nuclear weapons with half the destructive capacity as Hiroshima bomb that could be put on a small missile could be used is a new threat. Hennigan in the NYT reports that as Ukrainian forces moved towards Kharkiv and other Russian held territory and were seen as a threat to Russian held Crimea, on October 23, 2023 the Russian minister of defense Sergei Shoigu, contacted the Defense ministers of US, Britain, France and Turkey about Ukrainian fighters it believed planning to launch a dirty bomb -a conventional explosive wrapped in radioactive material- on their own territory to frame Moscow. Hennigan in this NYT report says US Defense Minister Lloyd Austin and Jt. Chief of Staff General Mark Milley, held 3 phone calls in 4 days during this time around October 23, 2023, with their Russian counterparts. By November 16 Indian prime minister Modi and Chinese president Xi had their discussions with the Russian president to prevent accidental nuclear escalation. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Just about half of Africa's population is within 25 kilometres of a fiber network for mobile telephone connections. In Nigeria this is much lower at 14%. Instead of having to lay costly fiber optic networks for high speed broadband connections Africa can benefit from new 5G network technologies that enable Africa to leapfrog to better high speed internet connections. The telecom company MTN has started testing 5G mobile internet in Nigeria with live demonstrations in Abuja and Calabar, and in other Nigerian cities during a 3 month trial period. Nigeria is one of the few African countries that is pushing 5G with rollout in 2020. 5G uses radio waves to transmit and receive data between an antenna and one's mobile phone. It operates at high radio wave frequencies which cannot travel as far as other frequencies, so a denser network of base stations or masts is needed. This makes it highly suitable for large urban areas. A report by GMSA shows that South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya and four other African countries will have 5G by 2025 and this will be about 3% of mobile data compared to 16% worldwide. Problems with use of 4G in Nigeria show the issues facing Africa. Cost of using 4G is high for the average user, so that only 4% of users of mobile internet in Nigeria are 4G even though Nigeria has an extensive 4G network. Instead 40% of Nigerian users use 3G networks. 5G faster internet could help Africa in areas such as health with telemedicine, and in remote education, say experts. They also say 5G rollout in Africa will benefit from drop in costs as the technology becomes widely used in Europe, China and America. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Omicron cases are up in an almost vertical line on a graph with cases doubling every 2-3 days in the UK, similar to the pattern in South Africa during the beginning of the spread in South Africa. Since then early data in South Africa show the trend in the province of Gauteng, center of the omicron outbreak in South Africa in the Johannesburg area, has reached its peak. On Dec. 16 it recorded 27% of national infections compared to 70% the week before. Head of the National Institute of Communicable Diseases in South Africa, Michael Groome, says "we had areally dramatic increase in Gauteng, which has now leveled off."  Hospital admissions in South Africa show a different pattern than earlier hospital admission rates in previous waves, with only 1.7% of cases being hospitalized in this Omicron wave compared to 19% for the Delta variant wave at a similar point in the wave, says Health Minister Joe Phaahla. In UK as of Dec. 14, this WSJ report cites health authorites saying 73% of cases in London are omicron variant, doubling every 1-2 days, with omicron making up 41% of all cases in England. In the US the Centers for Disease Control show Omicron variant making up 2.9% of all cases in US as of Dec. 11, with highest concentration in New York, New Jersey of 13.1%. Proportion of positive tests went up from 3.3% to 5% in New York City. A convention in New York City, Anime convention at Javits Center, November 23, 2021, shown in a recent NYT report, could potentially have acted as a super spreader event in New York according to NYT though not confirmed, similar to football stadiums events in Italy in March 2020. Dense atmosphere and large crowds increase the risk of a super spreader event happening, say experts. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
In remarks published in English on the Bundesbank website, Jens Weidmann, Bundesbank president and member of the ECB governing council said: "The ECB should be aware of its independence. This also requires it to respect, and not to overstep its own mandate." This is seen as a pushback by the Bundesbank to ECB president Draghi's comments on July 23, 2012, about doing all that is necessary to keep the eurozone together. Weidmann referring to the situation in France recollecting his days as a student in France in 1987, said there were "two different worldviews colliding." And that this situation prevailed in all political debates right up to the present day. He says about deflationary tendencies -"If these countries go through adjustment processes which result in decreases in wages and prices, then this constitutes one-off shifts in the wage and price structure and not deflation."

LyrArc Article Gist
After the Biden years when foreign born employment surged the decrease by 773,000 shown by Trend Macro in foreign born employment in the WSJ is an adjustment from the effects of open border policies. This also prevents downward pressure on wages for American workers in construction, hospitality and retail- the story of the last 20 years. This is similar to what would have been seen in the Eisenhower years after Operation Wetback led by Gen. Swing and AG Brownell in 1954. Just as by 1956 the foreign born employment declined after years of uninhibited growth and open borders in the years of World War II. Note that Mexico's agribusiness owners were against open borders in that period and the Mexican government was also against open borders and the loss of labor from Mexico needed in agribusiness. Today the situation is somewhat different but in the sense of an adjustment it may be very similar. Just as in 1956 Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956 had a mandate for making this adjustment DJT has won a mandate for a similar adjustment in 2024. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
UN projections show median age of Chinese citizens will overtake that of Americans in 2020. Yet China's median income is only a quarter of that in the U.S. Life expectancy in China today is 76, very close to that in America. In 1960 a Chinese person born that year had life expectancy of 44 years.  China is aging at the pace of Japan, and a bit slower than South Korea, but wealth per capita was three times higher in South Korea and Japan than China when the aging accelerated. A Chinese woman fertility rate today is 1.6 compared to 4.6 in 1973. A prominent Chinese economist says in a recent report that median age in China in 2050 will be nearly 50 compared to 42 in America and 38 in India. WSJ cites figures showing China will have gone from 9 working age adults per retired person in 2000 to just two by 2050. So how to pay for retirement of all these workers today? Government spending on retirement is a tenth of GDP, about half the level in older wealthier countries, and increase in spending will impact growth. Today this is about 6.2% potential growth rate. It also pushes wages up with a shortage of workers in cities such as Shenzen and X'ian even with the use of new technology and robots in factories.  Solutions are to raise retirement age currently set at 60 years, increasing labor force participation of women as Japan has done, and increasing productivity. China has transferred 10% equity stakes in four state owned financial firms to the national pension fund to shore up its finances as estimates from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences show it running out of money in 2035. Traditionally children supported families in old age but the one child policy leads to situations where the child is working or in another city. In Suzhou near Shanghai, a retirement business sends 1800 helpers to private homes and 130,000 retired people, in a new trend. The city administration of Shanghai plans 400 neighborhood care centres for elderly by 2022, with health clinics, drop in facilities, and homes. 12,000 elderly people use one centrre in central Shanghai area of Changning. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Mexico has emerged as the world's fourth largest exporter of cars in 2012 after Japan, Germany, and S. Korea. Mexico is expected to surpass S. Korea in a few years. In 2011 2.68 millon cars and trucks were manufactured in Mexico. Honda, Nissan, VW and other companies are building new plants in Mexico. Exports in 2012 are expected to reach 2.14 million cars. With the increase in wages in China's auto plants Mexican wages are highly competitive with China, considering the proximity to markets in N. America and Latin America. Wages in Mexico are about $40 a day for assembly line workers. By comparison wages in China are about $3 an hour. Honda plans to manufacture its Fit small car in Mexico. VW executives say a VW car made in Europe is imported into Brazil with 35% duty, into the U.S. with a 25% duty on trucks, and this can be avoided by making automobiles in Mexico. The quality and reliability of vehicles made in Mexico compares well with vehicles made in Japan, according to Nissan, and productivity at plants is high. There is also good avialability of engineers and plant workers. The growing automobile production also means new plants of auto suppliers from Japan, Germany and other countries in a snowball effect as new auto plants open creating new demand for components....

LyrArc Article Gist
At a time of great inequality and lack of fairness in wages after the pandemic in 2023-2024 when the United Auto Workers were struggling to negotiate a living wage the $55.8 billion pay package for Musk will stand out for its sheer recklessness. Tesla lacks a collective agreement with its workers in Europe and the US and its efforts to keep wages low were seen as an impediment for the UAW to negotiate its agreement to correct some of the flaws that hurt workers in earlier agreements. These agreements were made when the auto industry was recovering in the previous decade and tiered wages made as a concession meant new workers could earn less than the poverty level. Rarely in American history have such extremes of pay existed and diminish the idea of America as a nation of opportunity for all, as a beacon to the world.

LyrArc Article Gist
US president Biden's 2024 Budget places great emphasis on aid to workers and families in the US and shores up the Medicare hospital-insurance trust fund. He will do this by raising taxes on the wages, investment gains and self-employment income of people making more than $400,000 a year. Additional savings come from increasing the drugs on which Medicare can negotiate prices from 20 to 50 drugs.  Childcare- families making less than $200,000 a year will get subsidized child health care, the lowest income families paying nothing. Housing- Building and preserving 2 million housing units. Series of tax credits to make buying homes more affordable. College education- Reducing the cost of going to education with $12 billion allocated for this. Offering tution free community college. Family and Medical Leave- Federal paid family and medical leave program. Retirees- a $2000 cap on out of pocket cost of prescription drugs for retirees. Reduced taxes for under $400,000 income households- This would be done without increasing the deficits to extend the tax reduction from the 2017 tax cuts to households making less than $400,000 a year.     ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Does a 10% reduction in tariffs on China with the October 30 2025 agreement- made in Busan South Korea at APEC meetings- make a difference for companies relocating from China? It only does for smaller companies who are stuck with Chinese sources. Larger American companies prefer to diversify their supply chain and continue to relocate part of their factories to Vietnam, India and other countries knowing that the tariffs game will end up with allies EU, Japan and India in the 10-15% tariff range as a concession to US for putting up with trade disadvantages and job losses 2000-2025. China's will still be at 47% in comparison and the fentanyl issue causing serious questions to be asked by the American people which have not been grasped in China or even in the US by companies and politicians.   Does it affect the urgency and general shift out of China? The fentanyl issue is unlikely to change and it is likely to do lasting damage to China's credibility to a degree that it not clearly understood in China, and even not fully grasped even in the US today because of the sheer size of the number dead- more young Americans dead from fentanyl than in the Korean, Vietnam and First World Wars combined. Other issues are technology that has been transferred without a proper assessment of the importance to national security, the need to shift the manufacturing base back home that US industries have inadvertently and carelessly shifted to China in the disastrous Bush and Obama years 2000-2016, and for the jobs, the wages, and cost of living concerns when supply chains are outside one's control. This article asks the question about tariffs on India and Brazil as being contradictory and showing a lack of consistency in tariffs. India is compared to China with India facing a 50% tariff because of Russian oil purchases, and Brazil a 100% tariff related to treatment of former president Bolsonaro even though US has a trade surplus with Brazil. One expects that at some point India and the US will come to an agreement that lowers the tariffs in a way that was done with the European Union to bring it closer to 10%. China's tariff to be sure is still around 47% dropping from 57% a concession for rare earths and for the upcoming elections and economic concerns not because of policy intent which has not changed on  strong action for fentanyl which is also part of the Appeal to the People in the DJT base.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Turkey's elections for parliament and for president are on May 14, 2023. President Erdogan is running again after two decades in power. Turkey faces high inflation of over 57% which has created a serious cost of living crisis in Turkey. Erdogan has issued a wide range of stimulus measures- energy subsidies, a doubling of the minimum wage, pension increases, and a chance for 2 million retirees to retire immediately. A kilogram of tomatoes used to cost 8-10 liras and now costs 25 liras. Rents are going up with steep increases. Turkey has been hit hard by the war in Ukraine as it depends on Ukraine for grain supplies. A popular mayor of Istabul Ekrem Imamoglu from the Opposition is shown here as an alternative for president. Erdogan started his political career as Mayor of Istanbul with the military opposing him. His management of the economy helped him win two terms as president, which is now in a severe crisis.

LyrArc Article Gist
President Biden gets his $1.9 trillion aid package through the U.S. Congress with 220 votes for and 211 against. All Democrats except one voted in favor and all Republicans voted against. Earlier the $15 minimum wage was dropped from the bill to get it through the Senate. Also kept were income criteria to prevent the $1400 check to individuals in households going to the most affluent income earners. The Senate vote was close - 50 to 49 in a party line vote. The Biden aid package comes on top of earlier aid under president Trump in 2020. This aid is likely to provide enough stimulus to the US economy to restore growth to levels that were there before the pandemic hit.

LyrArc Article Gist
Tankersley points to the broken links between economic growth and growth in jobs and incomes since 1989, which have created a shrinking U.S. middle class. In the postwar period before 1989, a one percent increase in economic growth generated a six tenths of one percent increase in jobs growth during economic recoveries. During the 1992 recovery under George Bush this was down to 0.4%. In the 2001 recovery under George W. Bush this dropped to 0.2%, during the current recovery under Obama this is at 0.3%. Income growth also showed a similiar pattern. Median household incomes declined from 1990-1992 and from 2002-2004, after adjusting for inflation, even with economic growth of 6% during this period. For the 2009-2011 recovery period the economic growth was about 4% yet real median incomes increased barely at 0.5%. By contrast from 1982 to 1984 with economic growth of 11%, real median incomes went up by 5%. The result workers median wages are lower now in the beginning of 2013, after inflation adjustment, than at the end of 2003, and real household income lower in 2011 than in 1989, says Tankersley. Why were the recoveries of 1990 and 2001 for the most part jobless? U.S. Federal Reserve studies show employers mindset had changed, instead of hiring back laid off workers during recoveries, employers did not add many jobs. Automation in factories requiring fewer workers, global outsourcing and supply chains, manufacturing overseas, lack of union-management cooperation on wages and jobs in industries such as the auto industry, increase in temp workers, all played a part in creating fewer and fewer good paying jobs. Some of this is playing out worldwide. In Japan the economic recovery has also come with similiar costs- moving jobs overseas for the auto and electronics industries, increase in temporary worker jobs with lower pay and benefits to about one third of all jobs, and depressed consumer spending as a result lowering the economic growth potential. Even the recent German economic recovery has come with an increase in lower paying temporary jobs and driven by exports to Asia. For the U.S. the situation was worsened by three additional factors- housing foreclosures and the hit to savings from the 2008 financial crisis, high cost of college tution and resulting debt, and the high cost of medical care. The Obama administration's effort to increase the minimum wage would help the poor, but do little to address the broken links between economic growth and jobs growth/income growth. The push for college education does not address affordability and neglects jobs training. Most of the questions raised by the changing patterns remain unanswered, which may be why Obama calls this a generation's task, not that of one administration....

LyrArc Article Gist
Greg Ip provides useful insights into the nature of the economic recovery in Britain compared to the U.S. by 2015. The recovery in Britain has done better than in the U.S. in job creation, but has lagged behind in productivity gains. The labor force participation rate is 72% in Britain compared to 68% in the U.S., going back up to 2007 levels in Britain, whereas in the U.S. it has steadily declined with some older working class Americans too discouraged to look for work and left behind. Stagnant wage growth is a major issue in Britain, more so than in the U.S. where wage growth is slow. Economic austerity is not the main cause of the economic difficulties as the coalition government of prime minister Cameron relaxed earlier goals for austerity by 2012 with tax revenues and growth below forecasts. The structural budget deficit has been reduced by 6.6% of GDP since the peak, and the Office of Budget Responsibility estimates the UK economy was 1.5%-2% smaller by 2013 because of the austerity policies. Britain was also affected by the eurozone crisis to a larger degree than the U.S. Productivity remains a long term challenge- with needed investments in housing, education and infrastructure, improved lending for new business, and higher tech improvement exports....

LyrArc Article Gist
German chancellor Angela Merkel took a lot of criticism during the height of the euro crisis in 2010-2012, but maintained her composure, sense of direction, and flexibility to a changing environment. She emerges from the leadership test more confident than ever during the 2013 elections for chancellor. Relations with Greece under president Samaras are also being mended after the riots in Athens during 2011-2012. She has also shown flexibility coupled with firmness in the setting of deficit targets for eurozone countries, and the courage to address issues of equity and fairness by calling for setting minimum wages industry by industry. On social and womens issues members of her cabinet have pushed for fairness. She will be remembered for her leadership, ability to learn from mistakes as time progressed during the eurozone crisis and taking firm action when needed, as the eurozone recovers from its financial crisis.

LyrArc Article Gist
Casey Phair was born in South Korea and came to New Jersey when she was one month old. She plays for South Korea and at 16 she is the youngest player in the World Cup Women 's Soccer in 2023. She plays for a Development Academy that trains young aspiring players in South Korea. More of these academies are cropping up all over the world. Then there is Giulia Dragoni of Italy also 16 years, three Philippines players are teenagers. Linda Calcedo of Columbia is at 18 years the youngest goal scorer. Alyssa Thompson in the US team at 18 years is hoping to replace older players such as Alex Morgan. More talent is coming into the women's soccer game all over the world and the US lead is shrinking. Much of this talent starting at younger ages and players getting better facilities. Countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa are drawing on young players of ethnic links to their home country practicing in the US. This was clear when the Philippines beat New Zealand, Nigeria beat Australia, and the US hung on to a draw with Netherlands. France held to a draw against Jamaica. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
WSJ Editorial Board on 2025 DJT version of Eisenhower's 1954 Operation Wetback to curb foreign born employment. After the Biden years when foreign born employment surged the decrease by 773,000 shown by Trend Macro in foreign born employment for Jan- April 2025 in the WSJ, is an adjustment from the effects of Biden open border policies. This also prevents downward pressure on wages for American workers in construction, hospitality and retail- the story of the last 20 years. This is similar to what would have been seen in the Eisenhower years after Operation Wetback led by Gen. Swing and AG Brownell in 1954. Just as by 1956 the foreign born employment declined after years of uninhibited illegal migrant growth and open borders in the years of World War II. Note that Mexico's agribusiness owners were against open borders in that period and the Mexican government was also against open borders and the loss of labor from Mexico needed in agribusiness. Today the situation is somewhat different but in the sense of an adjustment it may be very similar. Just as in 1956 Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956 had a mandate for making this adjustment DJT has won a mandate for a similar adjustment in 2024. ...