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Rattner looks with alarm at recent figures showing that of 2.65 million jobs created in the U.S. in 2015, only 30,000 were in manufacturing. He reflects on growth in manufacturing with the recovery in automobile manufacturing between 2009- 2013 - during this period employment in the U.S. auto industry went up by 23 percent to 690,000, and employment in Mexico's auto industry went up by 60 percent to 589,000, showing much faster growth overseas. Manufacturing has also experienced decline in private sector wages of 0.8% since 2009, with auto industry wages down 12.7 percent, says Rattner.

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Economists using data from Greek banks estimate the tax evasion in 2009 through unreported income at 28 billion euros. Using a tax rate of 40% 11.2 billion euros of taxes were evaded by Greek taxpayers. This is one third of the Greek deficit in 2009. The economists say doctors and engineers were prominent in the tax evasion list and find that these groups have large representation in Greece's parliament. Italy has taken steps under the Monti government to crackdown on tax evasion, but Greece is still to take action in this area, which is particularly glaring considering that the previous Greek government agreed to cut the minimum wage in Greece.

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The WSJ's Christopher Emsden and Alessandra Galloni's interview with Italy's Labor Minister, Elsa Fornero, after major changes to Italy's labor laws including Article 18. This is a major change for Italy. She describes the problems she faced and how she has tackled them to get the new labor law passed. Fornero will set up a monitoring system to ensure that the law's imprementation takes place smoothly. To make the change Fornero took apart Article 18 to its constituent elements, preserving the anti discrimination aspect and the right to appeal, but allowing employees to be terminated for economic reasons. This puts Italy on an even footing with its europartners Germany and France, and addresses one of the main reasons Italian businesses are loath to hiring new employees. It also addresses the main reason why foreign investment in the Italian economy is so scarce. In achieving this Fornero faced the lack of support from Confindustria, the business association (which does not cease to amaze her), CGIL, the labor unions, and the political class in Italy, with each side wanting to tweak the system to make gains or get special exemptions. Fornero is a pensions expert and economics professor at the University of Turin. Her ministry covers pensions, labor, welfare and equal opportunity policies....

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The Putin administration in Russia has set a goal for 2.5% GDP growth for 2013. The figures for the first 5 months of 2013 show growth at 1.8%. Russian president Putin told the St. Petersburg Economic Forum that central bank policies will continue inflation targeting. Putin's economic aide Ms. Elvira Nabiullina will become the new head of the central bank in July 2013. David Lipton, deputy head of the IMF told the forum the IMF assessment is that there is no slack in the Russian economy. Putin announced $13.6 billion in infrastructure investment for rail and road links, and liberalization of gas export rules, and improvements in the judicial system.

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Roosevelt say experts was a great crisis manager but not great when it comes to policies to create jobs. His achievements were stabilizing the banking system with deposit insurance, government investment in banks, and restrictions on banking practices, creation of the SEC, and fireside chats that steadied the national mood. Unemployment when he took office in 1933 was 25% from 3% in 1929, and industrial production had dropped 40% since 1929. So FDR took office when a lot of the damage had already been done, compared to that Obama takes office earlier in this downturn. And Roosevelt did not fully grasp John Maynard Keynes's advice when he visited the White House in 1934. Keynes complained to Labor Secretary Ms. Perkins that he had thought the President was more literate economically speaking, while the President felt Keynes had a rigmarole of figures he did not understand. Roosevelt said of Keynes: "He must be a mathematician rather than a political economist." It took some time for government spending to take hold. Throughout the 1930's government spending remained around 20% as a share of the economy. Today its 35%. And the average unemployment stayed at stubborn 17% on average for the decade of the 1930's. It was not till the 1940's that things changed. Total government spending as a share of the economy reached 52% in 1942 with the onset of the war, and peaked at 70% in 1944 when the unemployment rate dropped to 1%. One lesson experts say is that its easier to stem unemployment and job losses by action earlier in the downward spiral through vigorous action by government. In retrospect because industrial production fell by 40% during the 1930's experts say Roosevelt was actually timid in his response. U.S. Fed chairman Bernanke is a student of this period and draws a similiar lesson from that period for vigorous action early in the crisis....

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U.S. home ownership rate drops to 64.8% of American families in the 1st quarter of 2014, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This is the lowest since 1995.

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Bayer AG CEO Marijn Dekkers talks to the Journal's Geoffrey Rogow about the company's pharmaceuticals business and job retention. Dekkers says profits are reduced by the tight budgets of European governments and the pressure on pricing. He cites the 16% mandatory rebate in Germany on prescriptions. For Bayer diversification through the chemicals business offers a way to handle the ups and downs in the pharmaceuical business with patent expiration. He is not interested in acquisitions because of the high premium involved and the difficulty of recovering this for investors. Bayer like other drug companies has extensive operations in China. Bayer is training salespersons in top and second tier Chinese cities. It has a program to train 10,000 physicians in rural areas of China working with the local government. Dekkers makes an interesting point about jobs and job retention in the U.S. He says a lot of jobs were outsourced in the 1990's and its difficult to bring them back. Germany has done a better job with job retention with "kurzarbeit" and other programs working in partnership with industry. In his view this could have been managed better in the U.S. with active programs such as this in the last two decades....

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The shift away from Iranian oil with U.S. pressure and sanctions, and higher oil prices, could pose challenges for the Indian macroeconomic outlook in 2020.

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Prof. Scott Kennedy of the Research center for Chinese Politics and Business, voices concerns of experts who think that the $585 billion stimulus and the doubling of lending this year, increase in exports by a third last month, all point to an economy that is expanding too quickly. Kennedy says that no one defies economic laws, that eventually endless growth can get get you in trouble. The concern is whether the overexpansion of credit and the size of the stimulus may have led to overreaction in stimulus spending. People's Daily newspaper of China said that China's leaders are moving much faster than leaders of developed nations. But the flip side of this is that in the rush to increase spending there may be a lot of wasteful spending resulting in many bad loans a few years from now.

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Moody's downgrades the credit ratings of 26 Italian banks in May 2012. Italy's largest retail bank Intesa Sanpaolo SpA, showed net profit of 804 million euros, up 22% from the prior year. Of this 183 million euros was from capital gains made using the ECB low cost loans under special ECB financing to buy government debt. The ECB financing was through the Long Term Refinancing Operation launched by the ECB in December 2011, which benefitted Italian and Spanish banks.

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Policymakers have alot of mistakes and errors to avoid in the years ahead, things are by no means normal. And the normal of the future after the crisis is going to be one of slow growth, large deficits and high unemployment.

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Ms. Lagarde, France's Finance Minister, says in an intervew, "balancing our public finances is a priority." France plans to take 80 billion euros off its budget deficit between 2011 and 2014. See the groups for Osborne, the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, who announced large spending cuts today.

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Alan Blinder calls for something better than Social Darwinism to tackle the problem of foreclosures in the U.S. economy. Martin Feldstein has made the same call repeatedly. Homeowners under water need help from the government to avoid foreclosures. Rising foreclosures reduce the chances of a recovery in housing markets and U.S. economic recovery.

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Russia's GDP growth declined to 3.4% in 2012 from 4.3% in 2011. Exporters and Russian business are critical of the strict monetary policy followed by the central bank, the Bank of Russia. Inflation was at 6.7% in 2012 coming down from double digits in the prior decade. Central bank chief, Sergei Ignatyev, sees inflation coming down to 5% or even 4%, and says borrowing rates will come down as inflation declines, "maybe not immediately, but they will."