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Ron Pinnelli of AutoData says the main difference between automakers doing well and ones that are struggling is a few big successes and a solid product line. The Detroit automakers need a good hit, a home run like the Honda Civic and some solid sellers. This is what Ford, GM need, one or two good hits and a the rest of the line pretty solid. Note auto sales increase 0.6 % overall for Feb. 2006 and the market is holding up. Note also 1) GM is deemphasizing fleet sales- "taking our medicine and going on." - Good thing in the long run. 2) Toyota sales not up by that much 2.6% in Feb. 2006. 3) Honda's success is a result of new Honda Civic sales which went up by 37% in Feb 2006, and helped increase Honda's market share from 7.8% in the prior year to 8.5%, according to Autodata.

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This WSJ article provides a detailed account of the positions of Clinton and Trump on Wall Street, the financial industry, banks, Dodd-Frank, regulatory reform, 6 weeks before the U.S. presidential election.

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Chevron plans to cut its annual capital spending by 26% in 2021 and make sharp cuts till 2025. Exxon is also making these cuts as oil demand has dropped sharply during the pandemic. Other forces are all acting at once fracking has brought an oversupply of oil and gas, and solar and wind energy technology has advanced to where it is less costly than coal. These forces are acting to keep energy prices low.  India is highly dependent on energy for developing the largest region in the world with about 1.7 billion people in South Asia. India's strategy is to advance solar production beyond the current level of being 36% of its energy mix to a much higher proportion by doubling solar capacity by 2025. This new energy mix and low oil prices makes it possible for the region to develop quickly to meet rising aspirations in the region. This also reduces dependence on coal that was used by China as the main energy source leading to health problems, and gives India an opportunity never before possible in history of development with healthy sources of energy.   ...

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Apple appears to have peaked and it marks the end of an era. Americans have more to be concerned about than the latest incremental iPhone design with decline in reading skills among children, dropping mens college enrollments, cost of living crisis, and retiree poverty.  For the most part US prices are kept at last year's level as Apple is facing new competition and restrictions in China, with a new Huawei phone which matches the new iPhone. Apple has increased iPhone revenues by 44%, even though shipments have increased by 15%, with aggressive pricing, making iPhones generate $40 billion, 50% of total revenue. This aggressive pricing phase may now be ending as Huawei plans to increase global shipments by 20% even as the total smartphone market declined by 6% to 1.15 billion shipments. Apple has 55% of the US smartphone market and worldwide at 27%. This may be the peak and the end of an era in which Apple and other Tech companies not paying a fair share of taxes led to the defunding of infrastructure and public services. ...

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AP VoteCast shows over half of Americans and 8 in 10 Trump voters think support for transgender rights in government and society has gone too far. About 90 of Republicans, half of Democrats, and two thirds of Independents think support for transgender rights in government and society have gone too far. The situation about allowing transgender persons in women's locker rooms offends most women. Abortion rights is an issue for two thirds of women but half of the same women think transgender rights having gone too far, they cannot support transgender people in their daughter's locker rooms at school. Cultural issues such as these inflamed the situation with the signs in Madison Square Garden saying "transgender the hell out of locker rooms in our schools." What would FDR and Frances Perkins say about this, their whole lives spent trying to figure out a way for unemployment insurance and stabilizing employment. The net result is that only about 20-25% of women thought abortion was the issue, and 60-70% saw the economy as the main issue. ...

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A striking change is coming over US airlines as they turn their focus from operating costs to taking out unprofitable routes, reducing the size of their plane fleets, and increase the number of seats filled on a flight. The numbers bear this out. According to ATA the airlines reduced fleets from 3469 aircraft to 2747 aircraft from 2000 to 2005. American Airlines is typical in discontinuing 27 MD-80 aircraft which are older and gas guzzling. Delta and Northwest used the bankruptcy period to to get court approval to return many planes to leaseholders by breaking the leases- before breaking the lease parking the planes was more expensive than flying them at a loss. As a result according to ATA US airlines filled an average of 77.6% up from 75.4% in 2004. With this strategy airlines recovered some of their pricing power. US Dept of Transportation statistics show prices are higher than at any time since Sept 11, 2001 and the Air Travel Price Index, increased by 9.1% in 4th quarter 2005 over 4th quarter 2004. And airlines are being more restrained in getting into new routes just because some other airline has eliminated that route. Airlines however have to be careful to increase prices just enough but not too much that demand starts falling, and this is possible with fewer seats on more popular routes. Other methods the airlines are using are sophisticated O&D origin and destination revenue management systems which reduce the number of inexpensive, and unprofitable seats available on the internet. Larger airlines have tried to get back corporate customers by reducing the extremely high fares they used to charge and instead raising last minute fares because corporate customers see this as a price burden they are willing to shoulder. Larger airlines are doing better in relation to the price discounters like Southwest and JetBlue. With Southwest's hedging strategy against fuel price increases not as useful as in prior years it too faces need to raise fares....

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This article by General James Jones is the second from the highest ranks of the Obama administration, saying the entire Middle East policy of U.S. president Obama was flawed and could lead to dangerous consequences. Gen. Jones, former National Security Advisor to Obama 2009-2010, says the situation today is worse than in 1991 when the U.S. launched Operation Provide Comfort to protect Kurdish refugees in Northern Iraq from Saddam Hussein, with an engagement of about 5 years and 25,000 Allied troops. Jones says the crisis in Iraq and Syria is of an order several times worse than 1991 and at any time since the 2003 invasion, as it involves the setup of a terrorist ISIS state in the heart of the Middle East. What went wrong? Jones says all the warnings from other Middle East nations about Maliki's corrupt policy and sectarianism used to stay in power turned to be true. Even Maliki's own advisors and colleagues say in a separate report by Matt Bradley that Maliki battled not for the Iraqi state but only to preserve his own power. Jones calls the U.S. president's decision not to act in Syria when the "red line" of use of chemical weapons was crossed, the failure to maintain a limited military training presence in Iraq after 2011, and not insisting that Mr. Maliki arm the Kurds, as having gravely aggravated the problem in 2014. Jones calls for arming the Kurds directly with sufficient weaponry for defending their region and providing immediate expanded aid to the Abadi government, appointment of a special envoy to ensure direct and immediate communications with Baghdad and with Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite leaders. He calls also for close air support of Iraqi and Kurdish operations, and an aggressive diplomatic effort to unify the Middle Eastern nations to remove ISIS from the region. Jones says this is the right thing to do in the name of all the Iraqi people yearning for peace, for the U.S. service personnel who made sacrifices in Iraq for 23 years, and for U.S. national security....

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Ostrower and Cameron point out that Dennis Muilenburg, the new CEO of Boeing, is first and foremost a engineer. He comes from a different background than former CEO Jim McNerney. McNerney graduated from Yale University, and followed a path of consulting with McKinsey, work at P&G, moved to General Electric where he worked under Jack Welch for many years, before the position at Boeing. This was a path for many CEO's at the time. As the U.S. returns back to its manufacturing and technological roots and with the manufacturing and technical problems at Boeing and Airbus, Muilenburg brings the right focus to meet future challenges. Muilenburg graduated from Iowa State University with a bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering, a master's degree in aeronautics and astronautics from the University of Washington He joined Boeing as an engineering intern in 1985, and is at Boeing since 1985. Since Dec. 2013 Muilenburg was president and COO, leading Boeing's effort to use automation to cut costs of developing and building commercial jets. Before that job he headed Boeing Defense, Space and Security, where he is credited with improving the operating margin from 9% in 2009 to 10.8% in 2013. He cut costs and closed facilities as the division share of Boeing revenue declined from about 50% in 2009 to about 34% in 2014 following defense spending cuts, but did this while maintaining higher research spending to drive efficiency improvements, say analysts. At Boeing Muilenburg's first 14 years were spent designing jets and military systems, some for contracts such as the advanced fighter jet program which Boeing lost to Lockheed, before moving to Washington D.C. for a new unit selling air traffic management services. He says the move was a period of personal growth for him more than any other period in his career. Muilenburg enjoys cycling, and puts in about 120 miles per week around Chicago...

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The party congress of the Communist party does not look like its going to lead to any changes in the system, only to make sure it runs better by getting public input through pollsters on public officials, and on web sites on new legislation. The pollster, including a firm, Horizon Group, describes his role as working out a mechanism for people to express themselves as there is very real frustration in society. Websites airing public opinion helped introduce nondiscriminatory clauses in the new employment legislation. But otherwise there is actually a tightening of the control of dissent, as the party is worried that once it starts it will get out of control and jeopardize the economic progress However this leaves the future quite uncertain as there is still not enough room for airing the very real frustrations and concerns such as for the environment, health and services, the prevailing corruption, and the problems in the countryside of the poorer regions in the interior of the country. These concerns are being pushed into the future. For instance without a free press its hard to air corruption cases, as in India. Only two of the several thousand petitions under the system of letters and complaints xinfang are resolved. About 12 million are received each year by the government. Because of the obsession with tight control many activists end up in prison even though the causes such as the environment are popular. Like the activist who called attention to the Lake Tai pollution, and the rural blind activist mentioned who argued on behalf of women that were forced into late term abortions. Here the government actually stepped in to announce plans to cleanup Lake Tai, but the system continues its inexorable push to drive out any dissent even if it does not relate to political issues. This may be one of the severe distortions of the present system. ...

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Michelin has come up with a tire that improves braking distance and reduces rolling resistance on the tire. This "green" tire is now on the Peugeot 308 model car. It brakes 10 feet shorter than the previous generation tire and cuts carbondioxide emissions by 4 grams per kilometer, equal to a reduction of one metric ton of carbon dioxide during the life of the car. Michelin charges 10% more for this tire. All this is happening while tiremakers in the US which hasn't signed the Kyoto Protocol like the Europeans have, are trying to dissuade Congress and the states from passing new legislation or adding to the current energy legislation to mandate fuel efficiency standards for tires. One of the US tiremakers arguments is that it would create safety problems by increasing braking distance. Which can't be very convincing if Michelin already has the technology. The Japanese tiremakers like Bridgestone also are trying to develop new technologies to come up with better more fuel efficient tires. As this happens will this put US tiremakers behind and give a competitive advantage to the European and Japanese tiremakers? Note that a study in 2006 by the National Academy of Sciences in the USA estimated that about 2 billion gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel could be saved each year in the US by reducing rolling resistance of the tires by 10%. This was estimated to be the equivalent of taking 4 million cars and light trucks off the road. Other studies on the cost side show that the increase in production costs in Europe for reducing rolling resistance of tires comes to about 20 to 30 euros. Add to the 2 billion gallons of gasoline saved in the US the amount saved in Europe and Asia and you have a substantial saving. Add increases in air conditioning efficiency, increases in fuel efficiency of automobiles, and you have significant reductions in demand over the next 5 years and even more over next 10 years. How will this affect gasoline demand and prices? ...

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Remember the pictures of all the bicyclists in cities in China, now there are cars instead, and that we assumed was progress. But crammed as we are into small urban areas, and with so many people in the planet and so many with aspirations for a better life in China, India, Brazil and Russia and other countries, this does not point to a sustainable future. We need bicycles back and a new kind of automobile that is sustainable on the streetsof urban areas. So here we are in New York City and commercial buildings like the Rockefeller Center operated by Tishman Meyer following old rules prohibiting bicycles, looking down on bicyles, and seeing bicycles as affecting safety in the building. So cyclists are on their own. The city has about 5000 bicycle racks, and will add 1200 by 2009, and expects to add 37 bike shelters each for 8-9 bikes by the end of the year at transit hubs. The number of bike racks are inadequate as nearly 131,000 people ride bicycles daily in New York City according to Transportation Alternatives. The city has plans to add 200 miles of new bicycle lanes but mparking is a huge problem. Parking on the street is also risky because of bike thieves in New York City. So new solutions have to be found and it would be nice if building had an area on the ground floor with a separate access for cyclists or a way to go to underground parking through a separate acess and directly park and take elevators just as one does for underground car parking. This would be really commuter friendly but till then its the shop owner who lets youpark there or a friend who has a business and an area where he lets you park your bike and so on, everybody having to be creative. But make no mistake bicycles matter for clean air, the environment, for congestion, for people, for healthy living, and to create a good living environment in urban areas....

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Fatigue and staffing levels are seen as problems from an investigation of a crash at Haneda AIrport, Tokyo, Jan 2, when a Coast Guard plane and Japan AIrlines flight 216 were both allowed to go on the same runway. 369 passengers miraculously were evacuated from Japan Airlines plane after the Coast Guard De Havilland turboprop turned into a ball of fire from the collision. Japan Airlines president, Yuji Akasaka, says the human part needs refining, even though plane safety technology is advanced- the air traffic controllers referred to the Coast Guard plane as "No.1" in giving instructions which were misunderstood. One unusual aspect no human monitoring of the runways was taking place as this was immediately implemented at 6 of Japan's major airports after the accident. The US is also having similar problems of potential human error, similar to Japan.

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Greece spends 2.2% of GDP on the defense budget compared to 1.2% for Germany for 2014, according to the World Bank. Greece's Syriza government almost took Greece out of the eurozone over spending cuts for the poorest pensioners, submitted the proposed creditor terms for the cuts to a referendum in a manner reminiscent of the rejection of an ultimatum rejected by Greece from Mussolini for occupation of the country, using the term "Oxi" in Greek for "No." Greeks remember this with a postage stamp showing "Oxi," so embedded it is in the Greek memory. And about 85% of young people in Greece vote for "Oxi" in the July 5, 2015 referendum. Why is a NATO member spending so much on defense during a severe crisis, and is the EU right to insist on cuts in defense spending and some of the other reforms. Between 2000 and 2008 Greece's spending on military was about twice the euro area average- close to 3% for Greece compared to about 1.4% for Germany, and much lower in other countries in the euro area. The total Greece debt is not an issue the way it was earlier in 2010-2012, according to experts including Krugman and the former Greece finance minister in separate opeds in the NYT, as its now financed at very low rates, and the next step inevitably under any administration in Berlin and Athens would have been longer maturities and even lower rates- under any administration in Greece, including under Samaras- as the Germans, the Dutch and the French, know deep down it can never be fully repaid. The main issue of money transfer to creditors was tackled by changing the dateline for the surplus the largest issue according to experts, a similiar flexibility shown to Italy, Spain and France for their deficits as their economies suffered from spending cuts, high unemployment. This returns the focus for how Greece can manage its budget prudently including military, welfare, and other areas. The referendum did not change the way Greece will tackle spending under EU guidelines after the Syriza left government accepts the new 3 year package negotiated with the EU in Brussels July 12, 2015. The new plan will include $300 million in cuts for military spending by 2016, and shipowners will now pay taxes....

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An indepth look at Mexico, its assets, its huge potential and what is holding Mexico back. It ranks much higher than Brazil in many respects- higher investment as a fraction of its GDP, technical education, an easier place to do business, less regulation, better management talent, more industrialized. In 2010 Mexico had $400 billion of business with the U.S. With rising Chinese wages Mexico is an attractive place for foreign investment, with a hardworking and educated workforce. Mexico suffered badly during the 2008 recession in the U.S. It is trying to reduce its dependence on exports to the U.S in key areas such as the automotive industry. Exports to the U.S. by the automotive industry are now 65% of the total, and the auto industry association in Mexico is working to bring this figure to 50% by exporting to Latin America and Europe. Economic growth was 5.4% in 2010, and expected to be 4-5% in 2011. Drug violence may have reduced the growth by one percentage point according to some estimates. The think tank, Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, estimates that economic growth would be 2.5% percentage points higher if labor market and competition laws are changed, and the oil industry is opened up to foreign investment as happened in Brazil. A study by OECD and the Federal Competition Commission (CFC) of Mexico has shown that 31% of Mexican household spending goes to products operating in high price monopolistic or oligopolistic markets. The bottom ten percent spend even higher proportion of incomes, around 38%, for products supplied in such markets. This includes pharmaceuticals, airline travel, banking, and electricity. Taking on these cartels is a difficult task. The CFC is beginning to take the first steps in this direction, in what will be a long road to fair prices for Mexican consumers. Banking was opened to Wal-Mart. The collapse of Mexicana was an opportunity to auction landing slots to other airlines. An auction system has been developed by CFC for drugs. A new competition law sets penalties for collusion in pricing, with upto 10 years in jail. And Carlos Slim's telephone monopoly was fined $1 billion for its telecom monopoly practices. In 2009 the Calderon government shut down Luz y Fuerza, a state electricity company costing the governmment $3 billion in subsidies for an highly inefficient operation. ...

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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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Judge Rakoff is interviewed by Adam Liptak as an essay by Rakoff appears in the December 22 issue of The New York Review of Books. Judge Rakoff is critical of the Justice Department for not prosecuting individuals responsible in the 2008-2009 financial crisis and merely offering excuses. He discounts the Justice Department argument that proving intent is difficult or that proving fraud is hard because of the sophisticated counterparties on both sides. He says assistant attorney general in the criminal division Bauer's assertion that you have to prove the individual involved made a false statement, intended to commit a crime, and that the other side depended on this for what they were doing, is misleading. The government is not required to prove that one party to a transaction relied on another party. On the difficulty to prove wilful criminal intent for individuals several layers above those who made and marketed the bad securities, Rakoff says the legal doctrine of wilfull blindness could have been used. Reflecting on why the Justice Department has not prosecuted individuals for wrongdoing the way Milken, Keating and Skilling were prosecuted in prior financial crises, Rakoff comes up with a explanation. He says the government's own role and the role of firms throughout the financial system is suspect in the 2008-2009 financial crisis unlike prior crises. Not only regulators are failing to to do their job. The financial system offers incentives for the packaging of bad debt securities. Fannie Mae has government backing and its management buys these securities to expand access to housing for low income people. The profits made on these securities brings U.S. and foreign banks into this business and leads to a proliferation of these securities around the globe to the point that small towns near the North Pole end up with these securities in their portfolio. This complicates things for prosecutors who in some situations have themselves worked for banks selling these securities. In its slow deliberative way the Obama administration, the Justice Department, and the S.E.C.'s new head, move to prosecute firms during the administration's second term, but not enough is done and tackling individual responsibility for deterring future wrongdoing in the interests of a safe and fair financial system seems a long way off....

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Several experts point to a dangerous change in the nature of unemployment in this downturn. Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute, says people are more likely to get stuck with unemployment now than at any time in the post war period. Andrew Stettner, deputy Director of the National Employment Law Project, says a larger share of the unemployed are not going to be able to go to the same line of work. They will need new skills, just like an auto worker in a permanently downsized industry would have to find new skills to make a product in the renewable energy field or health care. And the law as it currently stands does not help either. Because if an unmeployed worker looks for training or goes back to school he loses his unemployment benefits, something the Obama administration proposes to change. What this means is that many of the unemployed will end up as permanent job losers. Rob Valetta, an economist at the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank says that throughout the the last 3 decades including good times, the unemployment pool is shifting towards permanent job losers. Lawrence Katz, a Harvard University economist, points out that once workers exhaust their unemployment benefits and don't get new training, they become disconnected to the labor market, and bascially end up on disability or become permanently unemployed. The statistics bear this out. In April 2009, 47.1% of the people collecting state unemployment insurance exhausted the usual 26 weeks of benefits without finding work, according to the Bureau of Laor Statistics, that is the highest rate on record. In December 2007, there were about 2 unemployed workers for every job opening, according to Labor Department data. In March 2009 there were five unemployed workers for every opening. Mark Beaupre, 49, of Providence, R.I. lost his $8 an hour manufacturing job an year ago, one of many manufacturing jobs he has held since the 1980's. His wife Cathy lost her customer service job a year ago. This couple who together made $50,000 a year, are now behind on their mortgage payments and have applied for food assistance. At a recent job fair in Providence he says three thousand people turned up and he could not even get into the parking lot. ...

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Because of anti Bush and anti american feeling every crank politicain or simply gangs fighting turf wars and even bandits or thieves can call themselves Taliban. Also the Wahabist religion of militants is not the religion in the Sind and Punjab 2 main provinces of Pakistan. And some of these areas like the Northwest frontier province and the areas bordering Afghanistan like Afghanistan itself have an independent streak and don't take well to any foreigner be it the Russians, the Pakistanis (Punjabis and Sindhis) and to the Americans or going back to the colonial era the British. Its convenient and a easy label for a lazy media that hasnt done its homework, and for politicians who lack the education and disposition to do their own homework or a cultural barrier that makes this difficult to call all this one label Taliban, or some other label, but its dangerous as the manner of dealing with this may be quite different given a correct understanding of whats happening. When turned over to the American people living in a modern world or to modern world Europeans for response to these labels there is only the gut instinct of them versus us the core feeling of something different and alien which is hostile. As this writer points out the Pakistani people themselves by and large are simply like people everywhere, may just be looking for better lives like the rest of us, and are not keen on the militants though they may carry anti Bush feelings. And the Pakistani people resentment for the USA not because of some innate or inherent hostility but because they feel left out of the modern world and its benefits of development like infrastructure, hospitals and basic services, just like most of the developing countries, which have alternated between hostility and friendship towards the USA, just as the USA has alternated between truly benevolent policy towards the developing world and policy thats more in tune to a prior colonial period of its partners in Europe like the British and the French. And in this sense the Pakistani people desire for economic progress may not be automatically construed as expressed through the politicians as they are corrupt and selfserving. Its a complex state of affairs sure but its not made easier but made more complicated by lazy man's labels without understanding the situation on the ground first hand and doing one's homework. ...

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JP Morgan Chase will modify the terms of $70 billion in mortgages for borrowers who are behind in their payments or expected to be. This covers 400,000 borrowers. The focus is especially on a type of loan structured so that the monthly payment increases, and Chase inherited $54 billion of such loans with the takeover of Washington Mutual in September 2008. Some of these loans are called options adjustable rate mortgages where borrowers can make payments that don't even cover the interest costs, resulting in increasing the loan balance. Chase will replace the options ARM's with fixed rate loans.In taking over WaMU, Chase had a large exposure to the California housing market. WIth WaMu CHase ended up with $16 billion of subprime mortgages. The mortgages that Chase will modify for this plan with affordable payments make up 4.7% of the home loans it owns or are serviced by Chase's EMC Mortgage Corporation. So this is a good start but a lot remains to be done. Chase's Scharf who heads the retail division said that Chase had heard loud and clear what the thought leaders in the country are saying, and wanted to provide leadership on this issue to the whole industry as it does'nt make sense to wait. About 7.3 million American homeowners are expected to default on their mortgages from 2008 to 2010, and about 4.3 million homeowners lose their homes, according to Moody's Economy.com. While opinion leaders like FDIC's Sheila Bair and Reagan adviser Martin Feldstein have called for government help to prevent foreclosures from the early months of 2008,and FDIC has considered about 40% of current monthly payments the affordable amount for loan modification in IndyMac FDIC modifications, neither the Bush administration, banks or companies in the mortgage industry have taken any leadership on this issue. And now Scharf says it makes no sense to wait, in effect a signal to other banks to do the same. Scharf also said the stronger you are the more easier it makes to take these decisions suggesting that the $25 billion in government funds it received helped it reach this decision on this plan, which makes a lot of sense for the banks because foreclosures are the worst way to recover money with bad consequences for all parties and disastrous for the US and global economy....

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Janet Yellen, Fed chairwoman, says the financial system is safer now after the financial regulation, stress testing, living wills and other changes that the Federal Reserve has implemented. She says there is no need for a reduction in these key regulatory rules. One of the changes is that banks now use a safer mix of financing- equity financing has doubled for capital, and wholesale borrowing is cut in half, since the 2008 financial crisis that took the U.S. and with it the global financial system to the brink of disaster. The appointment of Randall Quarles to the Fed by the Trump administration was intended to  reduce regulation, and this is Yellen's response to such proposed ideas.