LyrArc Article Gist
The Peronist candidate Alberto Fernandez wins Argentina's election with 48% support. Mr. Macri's economic policy led to mismanagement of the economy, and recession, high inflation. Mr. Macri took on $100 billion in foreign debt and had to turn to the IMF for a $57 billion bailout. The shift in administration happens as the peso tumbles. By lifting capital controls in 2016 when the official rate was 10 to the dollar Mr. Macri shifted direction but failed to manage this in a prudent way leading to a jump in the foreign debt. By the second half of 2018 this policy led to the peso falling to 45 to the dollar and another drop by mid 2019 to about 60 to the dollar. The central bank has burned about $22 billion or a third of the central bank reserves to defend the peso, including $4 billion only last week. A third of this decline in reserves is due to withdrawals as capital controls were reimposed., the remainder due to interest on debt and bank interventions in currency markets to defend the peso. Customers are now limited to $100 in withdrawals leading to demand in the black market pushing the rate to 75 pesos to the dollar. Argentina is no stranger to these crises, yet they repeat every 10-15 years. The earlier Peronist administration of Mr. Nestor Kirchner came in when there was economic collapse in 2003 and had to suspend debt payments as a last resort. Negotiations were begun with lenders only after 2007 when Mr. Kirchner's wife Christina Kirchner assumed office. She won the election in 2011 but was defeated in the 2015 election by Mr. Macri, and reelected in 2019 as vice president running under her former chief of staff Mr. Alberto Fernandez. The Peronists are a socialist party and restored a degree of stability to the economy, limiting foreign debt and managing the economy with a rebound in commodity prices such as soyabeans exported by Argentina to meet growing demand in China. By 2015 the country appeared ready for a change, but Mr. Macri's austerity policies and mismanagement of the debt led to a repeat of earlier crises with high inflation and collapsing peso, hitting working class Argentines.    Argentina has a long history of alienation with IMF loans with policy strings attached for austerity spending, starting in 1957.  About 58% of the people who voted Macri into office opposed turning to the IMF in May 2018 after interest rates were raised to 40% by the central bank to stem a drop in the peso. The IMF loan this time was a shorter duration loan on better and was supposed to help Mr. Macri stabilize the economy and its cash and payments position. The jump in foreign debt including issue of dollar denominated bonds, lack of caution and prudence in managing the finances, lack of currency controls, drop in foreign investment by 2019, and the fall in commodity prices from the commodity boom years especially soyabeans, combined to create another collapse in Argentina. It was thought that the 2003 crisis that hit the working class and poor hardest was behind it once and for all. Yet only 15 years later the country is in a similar mess and hardships, showing that prudent management of finances, maintaining social programs to support the middle and weaker segments, and ways to create sustainable growth from within, are still the major problems facing not just Argentina, but also Brazil, Chile and other nations of Latin America.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The Japanese yen surged in value following the 2008 financial crisis as it was seen as a safe haven. As a result the Korean won declined by 42% against the Japanese yen. This continued till 2012. Japanese companies had to compete overseas at 80 yen to the dollar and shifted operations overseas. Now with the policy of monetary expansion of the Japanese central bank the situation is reversed in December 2014. The Korean won is up 40% against the Japanese yen since 2012. The Japanese yen is now down to 118 to the dollar in Dec. 2014. Abenomics gets a new mandate with the snap election in Dec. 2014. Aaron Back says Samsung may have gained ground in televisions and smartphones but other areas in electronics such as chips, displays and image sensors remain competitive and responsive to price. In autos Hyundai market share has declined to 4.4% by Dec. 2014 from 5.1% in 2011, according to MotorIntelligence.com. So far Japanese companies have used the currency advantage to improve profits and come up with better products. By using profits to invest in new technology and productivity Japanese companies can provide more features at the same price points to gain market share without having to cut price. After years of declining margins in electronics, autos and other markets this appears to be the current strategy. Another reason for this is that Japanese companies have already shifted production overseas, the shift being higher for Honda than for Toyota. Technological improvements from investments in R&D in Japan can be transferred to manufacturing operations overseas just as Apple is doing with smartphones manufacturing in China. The currency shift also improves Japan's position relative to American and European competitors in international markets....

LyrArc Article Gist
The UN Refugee Agency says 7.6 million Syrians were displaced and refugees in their own country, 3.6 million Syrians are in other countries as refugees. Worldwide it says about 60 million are refugees. About half of the refugees are children. Of this about 14 million people were displaced in 2014, with 11 million of this displaced in their own country. Fighting in Iraq, Syria and Libya, appear to be the main cause of displacement in 2014. Never before in the agency's 50 year history are there so many displaced people in their own countries.

LyrArc Article Gist
Is the Volt an idea vehicle that will be produced on a very small scale too small to have any impact in the car buying scene or worse still an idea vehicle that is ways off a prototype stage or is it something more serious? The battery is a critcal part of this. Toyota worked with Matsushita and Toshiba to develop its battery for the hybrids. GM needs some highly capable partners with large R&D budgets to come up with a suitable battery for the Volt but little information on this is available or GM has not really thought this part through yet.

LyrArc Article Gist
Toyota follows GM in announcing it will have a plug-in model in the market by 2010.

LyrArc Article Gist
Renault and Nissan will work with Mr Agassi to test electric cars in Israel on an experimental basis before developing its own electric cars from scratch by 2010.

LyrArc Article Gist
Thomas Hoenig was Governor of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank for 20 years. Here he talks about the dangers of "too big to fail" with Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times. He is due to retire at the age of 65 in 2011. Hoeinig has stood for conservative safe financial practices for U.S. financial institutions throughout his 20 year old career, and cautioned against extending the government safety net for banks that engage in risky financial activities including derivatives trading. And essential element of safe financial practice and part of necessary market discipline, he has pointed consistently, is the fear that taking on risky activities or acting recklessly has a price- creditors can take out their funds if they see a banks as unsafe, and the financial institution may have to be broken up or closed. He joins Alan Meltzer in his criticism of Federal Reserve policies under first Greenspan and then Bernanke that take on the job of stimulating the economy and creating jobs through a very loose monetary policy after the collapse of a bubble. Hoenig sees the role of the Fed in such situations as a neutral player. The reason say Meltzer and Hoenig is that the Fed has not given enough thought and attention to the long term consequences of its policies. What were the consequences of the low rate policies in 2003 asks Hoenig? It promoted another bubble and the mortgage meltdown of 2008. What were the consequences of QE II asks Meltzer in an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal on August 11, 2011, "The Folly of Economic Short-Termism?" It has failed to revive the economy or reduce unemployment. Hoenig also points to questions of fairness and equity that arise when banks are treated differently and farmers, seniors and other groups are asked to make sacrifices....

LyrArc Article Gist
Joe Nocera talks to experts like Simon Johnson at MIT. Johnson says that when he talks to other experts, after a two minute discussion, they say we should just nationalize the banks. Here Christopher Whalen, a veteran bank analyst, of Institutional Risk Analyst, and Joshua Rosner of research firm Graham-Fisher, say the same thing, with the phrases, lets get on with it or just do it. Says Simon Johnson, thats what we told emerging market countries, Thailand in 1997, or Russia in 1998, when he worked at the IMF. He says we told them to close down some of the banks, and take over the others, and inject government capital. He adds its the best practices, and its straightforward. So asks Nocera, is Geithner talking about the stress test banks will be subjected to, as first step preceding nationalization, more of a calculated approach to gradually introduce the idea of nationalization. But he isnt sure, as Geithner also told David Brooks of the NYT, that governments were not so good at managing banks. No one knows for sure. But says Nocera thats exactly what the government did to solve the S&L crisis. And the man who was former chairman of the FDIC, and helped run the program for the Resolution Trust Corporation, says the government did a pretty good job of it, taking over banks, replacing top managers and directors, and stripping out the bad assets and selling off the now healthy banks to private buyers. So can it be done again and will it be that hard? Yes, its been done before, and its not that hard say these experts. Every month that the administration and Geithner procrastinate puts the banks in a deeper hole, and will mean more layoffs and a worse crisis, even years taken to recover. What he has'nt mentioned is that even if after some procrastination the government gets around to doing it to clean up the mess, there is one added complication this time that is different than what happened with the S&L crisis or with the Swedish cleanup, or the Japanese cleanup after 2003, this time the global economy is caught up in the crisis which makes recovery that much tougher....

LyrArc Article Gist
The U.S. takes in 70,000 refugees a year, but only 1500 Syrian refugees have been taken in by the U.S. by Sept. 2015, as a huge migrant refugee crisis unfolds in Europe. Germany has to make the same background checks and is moving quickly, the U.S. takes 18-24 months. The withdrawal of the U.S. from the Middle East under the Obama administration led to the collapse of the fragile situation in Libya, Iraq and Syria, and the unraveling of these countries, a direct cause of the massive refugee crisis in the region with about half the Syrian population and large parts of Iraqi, Kurdish, and Libyan population dislocated. The result is a massive humanitarian crisis, turning the hopes of the Arab Spring into something no one could have imagined across North Africa. In a small Lutheran church in Frankfurt, Paulskirche, is the German story of a popular movement that spread throughout Europe in 1848, for a transition from autocratic governments to parliamentary democracy. Aspirations similiar to that expressed in the Middle East and North Africa in 2013-2014 in the Arab Spring were expressed in Germany and many parts of Europe in 1848. In the centre of Berlin on the Kurfstendamm lie the bombed but preserved ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, telling the story of the intervening years 1848-1949. It took many years before the same aspirations for liberty found shape in Germany's Public Law of 1949, finally finding a safe resting place after years of failing to unify a people around the ideas of liberty and justice for all, and not nationalism. Germans who had the hardest time waging that fight, by embracing the refugees in a spirit of openness carry on that fight into this century. Paul asks the question- who will lead? A Lutheran pastor's daughter takes up the fight without the slightest hesitation, and full measure of confidence with the words- "Europe will have failed on the question of refugees, if the close connection between it and universal civil rights is destroyed." ...

LyrArc Article Gist
This Journal editorial says Romney is cautious and conservative in his politics, and finds his ideas for a value added tax problematic. It sees the need for Ron Paul's supporters in a successful Republican campaign in 2012 and critical for governing in 2013, because of Paul's genuine desire for change to the status quo. Of Santorum the Journal says there is need to broaden the economic message beyond reducing taxes for manufacturing companies, and going beyond the moral fervor to show how he would revive the U.S. economy and jobs growth.

LyrArc Article Gist
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) CEO, Natarajan Chandrasekeran, says rapid adoption of new technology will play a significant part in the plans of the Modi administration in India. The release of infrastructure projects worth over $100 billion that are in the pipeline but stalled because of lack of leadership and direction would give an immediate boost. The careful selection of new projects for the greatest impact on growth, rapid technology adoption, and the synergy between technology, human resource development and invested capital, could generate additional percentage points to the growth rate in India. Old myths on what is and is not possible will have to be discarded along the way.