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Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the oldest person on the U.S. Supreme Court dies at 87. The U.S. Supreme Court is unique in that there is no retirement age as in India and other countries. She died of pancreatic cancer. She is one of the rare jurists in that she continued to work almost to the end. She was unique in other ways because she got along well with colleagues on the court of different persuasion. Justice Scalia who was the complete opposite in thinking and views than Ginsburg said that this did not matter much as Ginsburg was "fun to be with." Former president Clinton nominated Ginsburg in 1993. Recently Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh joined Roberts, Alito, and Thomas,  for a 5-4 majority on the court for conservatives. Ginsburg was a woman's rights advocate in the 1970's. She will be missed mostly for her vigorous personality and feisty attitude to life working and being active even with her health condition. The death of Ginsburg means that the court is now deadlocked with 4 to 4 and no majority for conservatives or liberals. The country has also changed. Both conservatives and liberals claim they uphold the constitution of the country. Ginsburg saw this as the inclusiveness the founders intended- for women, and minorities. The conservatives see this also from the vantage of inclusiveness as the country has splintered into those who are largely college educated and tech savy, and the high school educated and less tech savy more rural and in small town that lost jobs and social services from the shift of manufacturing to China. The conservatives  see the lack of inclusiveness for the rural communities and small towns left out in the tech booms of the last three decades and shift of manufacturing overseas. Cultural attitudes add another layer to basic economic issues and a sense of alienation on both sides. In this climate and with an approaching election in 41 days the Republicans want to nominate their conservative choice supported by their Senate majority, and the Democrats want to block this appointment till after the election.   ...

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GM CEO Wagoner was asked to resign by the Obama admninistration. The news was given Wagoner by Steven Rattner, who heads the auto industry task force setup by President Obama, at Rattner's office at Treasury. Mr Henderson, GM's Chief Operating Officer will fill in for Wagoner. When Wagoner assumed office in 2000 GM's stock price was $70, now it is $3.62, and GM capitalization is $2.21 billion in March 2009. Since 2004 GM has not earned aprofit, and has logged $82 billion in losses. Right upto the end the board of directors and lead directors backed Wagoner, even when the company was short of cash in the waning days of the Bush administration, and public opinion was very critical of the way management and unions had driven the company into the ground, all through this they held on, showing how hard it is to get an entrenched board and management doing things the wrong way. Now the Obama administration has taken years of festering issues in the auto industry and at auto companies head on. Not only Wagoner, the task force is working with GM to replace a majority of its directors. Kent Kresa a longtime director is to serve as chairman of GM. The President in a speech today on the auto industry said that he was rejecting the plans for restructuring provided by both GM and Chrysler. He is giving GM 60 days to come up with a new plan. The government would provide suffficient working capital for the next 60 days, during which time a revamped board and top management would have to come up with new restructuring plan. Obama made it clear that an expedited government sponsored bankruptcy was a clear option. And officials said that the inordinate amounts of debt at both GM and Chrysler have to be scrubbed, and bankruptcy would be "quick rinse" to rid the companies of much of their debt and contractual obligations. And the government would stand behind the warranties of both companies. For Chrysler the government is giving 30 daysto come up with a new plan, and time to reach an agreement for Fiat to work to revive Chrysler. And Obama reassured the public that FIat would have to repay the government before it could take money from the new Fiat run Chrysler out of the country. If Fiat and Chrysler reach an agreement and only then would the government step in with $6 billion in loans. If not Chrysler would be allowed to collapse....

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Ms. Annegret Kramp-Krarrenbauer, elected leader of the CDU party in 2018 with the support of Angela Merkel, will not run for chancellor in next years election and will resign from her position by the end of the year. She will continue as Germany's defense minister. After losses for the CDU in recent elections and the embarrassment of local CDU leaders in Thuringia supporting the far right AfD, AKK as she is known decided to step down. Angela Merkel has decided not to run for chancellor again. Germany is set to chair the EU in the second half of 2020, and Merkel is no longer seen as a leader of influence. The Nationalist Alternative for Germany AfD has gained votes in recent elections following the 2015-2016 migrant crisis, with large numbers of refugees from North Africa and Arab world landing in Greece and Turkey and walking to Hungary, Austria and Germany. Merkel's handling of the crisis with acceptance of a million refugees in 2015-2016 unsettled European and German politics. Why? One way of looking at it is that in the same way that the U.S. took in Chinese imported goods ending in the Trump tariffs war, at some point it just becomes too big to handle. That ended up at $1 billion a day in imports from China when president Trump called it off and accused Obama Democrats, Bush Republicans, of betraying the country. Putting it into perspective Germany with one fourth of the population of the U.S. took in about twice the number of refugees in just one year 2015-2016 that the U.S. took in 10 years 2005-2015. The U.S. took in 675,000 immigrants between 2005-2015. This is as if the U.S. took in something like 20 million immigrants in a short period of 1 year on an equivalent basis- though the cultural impact is even greater in a nation like Germany that is like Japan an historically immigrant averse nation. All this happened too quickly for Germany to handle for its fragile cultural fabric. Much of the initial outpouring of support and positive sentiment came from the sense of having gone through World War II and the refugees in that and the early post war period, the need to return in the same spirit support Germany had received. Over time it eroded support for the Christian Democratic Union and Merkel. That Merkel could have done this is itself a small miracle. Now the rebuilding has to begin. Adenauer's CDU and the socialist SPD party of Willy Brandt now have less than 50% support, only with the Greens Party do they make up 50%. The question now is can the CDU, and the SPD which has fallen to 14% in elections, make it back and what kind of future makeup political parties will have in Germany, how the social fabric can be restored. AKK's achievement is to mend relations between the liberal Merkel wing of the CDU and conservatives from Bavaria (CSU) over immigration.  Candidates for CDU leadership are Armin Laschet, Jens Spahn, and Friedrich Merz. Laschet premier of North Rhine-Westphalia has Merkel's support. Looking back too much attention was taken up by the euro crisis, and too little was done in the areas of infrastructure, inequality gaps, education, child care, under Merkel's leadership and of the preceding SPD years, much like what happened under Bush and Obama administrations in the U.S. where wars, economic crises led to neglect on issues that affect lives of ordinary working families. ...

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What oil analysts would like to know about the Khurais oil field in Saudi Arabia is can it deliver. This is the Saudis big effort to sustain and increase oil production as other fields are aging and declining. The Saudis would like to see it add 1.2 million barrels a day to its current production of 11 million barrels a day. no date is set for when this oil field will come on stream and how much of the 1.2 million barrels a day will become reality. The Khurais field has been sitting there for many years while the Saudis tapped the Ghawar field just 60 miles away because of the complexity of the Ghawar field which situated deep within the rocky layers of the earth and dunes. Its been described as a hard sponge compared to the wet sponge that Ghawar is. The natural pressure is not enough to bring the oil up so natural gas or filtered salt water would have to be used. As natural gas is needed for soaring power generation needs filtered salt water will be brought from over 120 miles away from the Persian Gulf through pipes to Khurais and more than 100 injection wells have to be drilled so that 2.3 million barrels a day can be pumped down in a manner that would push the oil up but not kill an oil wellby going through a rocky fissure. All this has to understood through geologic mapping of 2700 square miles down to the microdetail for an area the size of Connecticut so that nothing goes wrong. 2.8 million 3-dimensional images of underground strata to trace any fractures in the rock that might cause trouble and building of models to simulate how the oil field may respond to water injection. The production would have to be monitored from Dhawan where the central monitoring facilites are for Aramco. Aramco the Saudi Oil company brought in for oil field services Foster Wheeler as project manager, Halliburton for drilling wells, Eni SpA's Saipem unit for water injection work, in the plan developed in 2005 with estimated cost of $6 billion. Halliburton is drilling more than 300 wells that go over a mile deep and then branch out horizontally, and 125 water injection wells. Nansen Saleri who heade reservoir management for Aramco and headed the Khurais revitalization effort is now running his own firm in Houston. He described it - the trick is to understand Khurais down to the smallest detail. This is a picture of the complexity and the resulting uncertainties of Khurais. A former head of Aramco oil exploration Mr. Husseini who retired 5 years ago says its quite possible that Aramco may achieve its target of 1.2 million barrels a day but isn't sure that production can be sustained at this level and what it might cost. Khuransiyah project was expected to generate half million barrels a day by 2007 en but is a year off schedule and many projects are running late from a shortage of steel and manpower. It used to cost $4000 to add one barrel of capacity through the 1990's now its estimated by experts to cost closer to $16,000 for a barrel added. So when will Khurais come on stream? And will the even more difficult Manifa field in the Persian Gulf come onstream? Its not certain. meantime oil reached 119 dollars a barrel. But analysts will be sure to watch this one and the new fields in Brazilian offshore waters to bring prices down just as conservation kicks in and global demand slips a bit from the super heated growth of the last few years especially from Asia. ...

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About 15% of black men of working age in the population, and 21% of black women, were employed in the U.S. public sector, according to the population survey. The Labor Department reports 500,000 jobs in the public sector were lost since 2007. This reverses an historical trend of resilience in jobs for the public sector during economic downturns. If population increase since 2007 is figured in there are even fewer jobs considering more jobs might have been added, with estimates as high as 1.8 million. This is bad for black people in the U.S. because many work in public sector jobs driving school buses, in the post office, in the police and in other public services, with black people being 30% more likely than whites to hold a public sector job, and twice that of Hispanics. Thic comes at a time when the black community has seen a devastating impact from the foreclosures and other economic damage that followed the 2008 financial crisis. The result is shown in a study of foreclosures for 2005-2009 at Cornell University showing mostly black and Latino neighborhoods were affected by foreclosures at three times the rates for white neighborhoods. According to Pew Research Center the median white family had net assets of $142,000 compared to $11,000 for the median black family. With median black household income at 60% of that of white households the gap keeps increasing especially with high unemployment in black neighborhoods....

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The campaign rhetoric for renegotiating NAFTA and building a wall at the border has had a sharply negative effect on growth in Mexico. Growth slowed in 2016 and is expected to be close to zero in 2017 with declining foreign investment in the economy. The uncertainty is leading to sharp decline in foreign direct investment of 24% in the first 9 months of 2016, according to the Bank of Mexico. Further declines can be expected in 2017. The decline in the value of the peso of 16% since May 2016 has led to 6 interest rate increases in the past year. Inflation on annual basis was at 4.72% in Jan. 2017 and is rising. As Mexico depends on exports for one third of its output growth, and 80% is sent to the U.S., there is a need to diversify with trade agreements made with the European Union and other countries. Mexicans now question the value of NAFTA trade agreement as average growth of 2.6 since NAFTA was signed is below the 4.6% in the 2 decades prior to that. And poverty level is the same with about 60% of people in the underground economy. In addition crime, drug trade, a weak education system, weak rule of law, political corruption, show that Mexico has not made the progress since NAFTA that it should have made. ...

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A coalition of Sunni businessmen, Communists, and popular activists led by Moktada al-Sadr from the holy city of Najaf in Iraq takes the lead in Iraq's 2018 elections with 55 seats. This coalition called Sairoon or Moving Forward was put together to fight corruption in Iraqi politics and government. The coalition named Nasr of prime minister Haider a--Abadi won 39 seats, and is seen as likely to work together with Sadr in forming a government. The parliament has 329 seats. Another party of militia members who led the fight against Islamic State Fatah won 45 seats. Sadr has called for less intervention from America and Iran in Iraq's government and plans to cleanup the corruption in government.

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Nickel cadmium batteries - this year 2008 the European Union is banning the sale of all nickel cadmium batteries. Question is why is the US not banning them. And why are companies like Energizer, Duracell, P&G, Mattel, Toys R Us and Walmart still buying them? Why is Panasonic making them? A toy costs $1.50 less to make using nickel cadmium batteries. Are parents aware of what it does to workers making them? Are plants safe in developing countries especially in corruption prone coercive environments like the one in factories in China? Some of the owners of such factories are in Hong Kong, Hong Kong based companies, are they aware enough of the risks and the ethics of doing is? This story is of an engineer who was exposed to factory conditions in a company GP that was supposed to be a good company to work for, and few knew about the effects of cadmium in the year 1995 when she joined. The Panasonic factory is in Wuxi which is not in some remote part of China. And note this about 10% of China's arable land is contaminated with heavy metals such as cadmium according to China's own State Environmental Protection Agency, and the metals are entering China's food supply. 12 studies have shown unsafe level of cadmium in fruits and vegetables. Is this a necessary price of industrialization or is it possible to find a way thats better- a challenge for countries like India. Can there be better protection of workers and still have industrialization? Wouldn't it make sense that a motivated well treated work force will perform better in better working conditions. Aren't there costs involved for workers and owners of such plants. Owners also bear costs, bad press, medical payments, workers leave and good workers are hard to find in the wave of bad publicity and health risks, customers in the west refuse to buy the product, the company's brand name is tarnished forever, as would happen for GP in this case. The coercive patterns of using police to suppress publicity for a Hong Kong Company shows owners in Hong Kong have the same disregard for worker rights, even when living in an area that one hears talk about democratic rights. See the link to chemical spills contaminating a river in China also by a Hong Kong based company. ...

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The Waldorf was built in 1931 by Hilton Hotels founder Conrad Hilton. After a century of use it was outdated and needed major repairs. In 2014 Hilton decided to sell it and hired Blackstone advisors who said it would get about $1 billion. China had just allowed Chinese to buy foreign assets in 2014, and a Chinese founder of a regional insurance company Anbang Group offered $1.9 billion when Hilton knowing that China was keen in acquiring foreign assets priced it at $2 billion. In 2017 only three years later China decided to pull back from allowing private investments of this kind, Anbang's Wu was arrested for business practices. 2017 was the time when Xi at the 19th  Communist CCP Party Congress put forward his ideas for "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" and made it part of China's Constitution, and launched anti-corruption drive against corrupt business practices. The Waldorf was taken over in this drive by Chinese government. For 10 years China held onto the property and built 375 900 square feet condos in the Waldorf for $6 billion and 375 hotel rooms by the time it reopened in 2025. Was it worth it? Even if China could get $3.2 million for each of 375  900 square foot condos this would generate $1.1 billion. It would take 8 years to generate the remaining $900 million of the $2 billion paid for the Waldorf by Anbang's founder Wu if the Waldorf's 375 rooms were rented out for $1000 a night for 300 days. China would still be at a loss for $6 billion. This type of extravagant business investments characterized Japan in the 1980's and 1990's leading to the gradual stagnation in Japan's economy as other countries caught up in quality control and other production efficiency practices using new IT technologies. China looks to be following the Japanese example with infrastructure overbuilding. The US and EU will catch up in the next wave of investment in America and Europe by 2030 and other Asian economies such as India will also catch up with China. Investment productivity will play a part, new technologies will play a part, and a return of manufacturing to the US and EU, a build of India's manufacturing and logistics will play a part. ...

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With voter turn out at 72% in Finland's election the National Coalition party headed by Petteri Orpo gets 20.8% of the vote, the far right nation first Finns party 20.1% and the SDP 19.9%. The NCP party will form a new government in coalition with one of the two other parties. The NCP supports Ukraine in its war with Russia and also its joining NATO. It advocates less spending on unemployment and housing benefits. The Finns party is for less non EU country immigration. Boosting the economy and creating new jobs is also part of the new government's program.

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Excellent article about GM loss of share in the coastal regions, east, west and south using Miami as the example. As the region changed, demographics changed marketing stayed the same, and new models to target changing prefences were not introduced. Smith, Thompson, Ms Green the Avon lady, and Stevens, all have an interesting story to tell and all feel a lot better about their jobs. Are the right people now in place? Silos at the Renn Center, its true. The matrix structure cn one capitalize on its advantages and reduce its disadvantages, is it the answer to having good people in place who all talk to each other or a consultants answer. Good to revisit and for deeper insight. Note Smith is in charge of Global Product Deveopment, Who is Zarrella (Bausch and Lomb?) why was he ther in the first place and how much time was lost having the wrong people in top places.

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Niall Ferguson, a history professor at Harvard, and Moritz Shularick, a economic history professor at the Free University of Berlin, coined the term Chimerica, to describe the Chinese export machine and the American overconsumption right down to negative savings. Now they call it an economic monster that needs to be given a burial. It does little good for America. For America its a 10-10 deal the authors say, 10% growth for China and 10% unemployment int the USA. The mood in the USA is no longer to go on with this arrangement they warn, and ask that the Obama administration take steps to end this arrangement. The USA should ask China to make a 30 % depreciation of the renminbi say Ferguson and Schularick. Krugman makes a similiar point and warns of dire consequences in aworld out of balance on the same page of the NYT, see the link. Ferguson and Schularick point out that unlike China, both Germany and Japan let their currencies appreciate by 60% for Germany and 50% in Japan, at a similiar period in their country's development. China's renmibi is pegged at 6.83 renminbi to the dollar, and China's government used $300 billion in reserves to keep the renminbi from appreciating this year. Throughout the 1980's and 1990's it was pegged at around 8.28 renminbi to the dollar. For the USA this has been very costly, with a distortion in the global cost of capital significantly reducing long term interest rates, and helping create the real estate bubble in the US. They point out that with Japan and Germany dollar reserves increased roughly in line with growth of American GDP at about 1% and stable before moving slighltly higher in the 1970's. By contrast China's reserves have grown from about 1% of Ameica's GDP in 2000 or $165 billion to 5% in 2005 and 10% in 2008 and headed for 12% in 2009 end. This is simply unsustainable any longer; carrying on any longer risks China losing the very basis of its economic success which is the open global trading system....

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How do you get the hiring right. The worst way to go is to hire people and then find out that it doesn't work -its a wwaste of a lot of time and can cost the company dearly whether its small and beginning growth or facing a spurt of growth and needs more people. Jack Welch of GE suggests being very careful at such times so you don't mess it up. What about the involvement of other people in the company? This is important. From the top to other levels its a good idea to get involved especially in businesses where people can make a huge difference. Sony's Akio Morita used to personally get involved for each and every hiring in the early days of the company considering that a lifeline for the company- he used to see Sony as a pioneer and entirely dependent on the people it hired and what they did everyday. Jack suggests getting the involvement of other employees and who understand the company and whats its tryng to achieve and what kind of people strengths it wants. But in larger companies there may be a tendency not to get involved because no reward or incentive is there for time spent in this very important activity when there is so much else to do. So he suggests making it mandatory that employees be rated or scored and how well they do, so empolyees interviewing don't take a cursory or casual approach to interviewing. Employees are also mentored. After 6 months the hiring interviewers are rated based on the decision they made and this way at least one can keep score on who is more effective at this. However like all such practices when codified you run the risk of hiring interviewers playing it safe so that a lot of bold and exciting candidates might just be left out. So stick with the spirit of this more like Sony and let signal to people that every newemployee is important to the future of the company and the CEO personally taking an interest in individual employees and new hires interviews, and letting this energy flow into the ranks of those who are hiring. ...

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An intimate biographical account of new Chinese leader Xi Jinping and his connections with Muscatine Iowa, where he visited as a head of a Chinese farm delegation in 1985. Xi Jinping remembers the trip vivdly and plans to spend time with friends from that visit during a visit to the U.S. in 2012. He spent two nights during that visit in the bedroom of two college age boys of the Dvorchak family. This revealing account of Jinping's life shows that the actual story of his life is quite different from the title of "princelings" or privileged sons of former communist leaders that is suggested by this reference in the media. Because of the volatile nature of Chinese politics, his father Xi Zhongxun, who led communist partisans in the struggle of the pre World War II years, was rehabilitated twice after falling out of favor. The first period was in 1962 and it was not till 1979 when he was fully rehabilitated. During this period which coincides with the growing up period of Xi from 9-26 years of age, Xi experienced many hardships. During the years of the Cultural revoultion Xi was sent at age 15 to Shanxi province where his father had led partisans. He lived there for 7 years in a traditional cave dwelling in the village of Liangjahe doing farm work. He was denied admission to Tsinghua University twice before being accepted in 1974. There he graduated with a degree in organic chemistry. This was followed by three years working as an assistant to Geng Biao, defense minister and a partisan who was a colleague of his father. The next job was deputy Communist party chief of Zhengding county in Hebei province. Iowa Governor Branstad visited Hebei in 1984, and Branstad played host to a animal-feed delegation led by Jinping in 1985- the visit to Muscatine was part of this trip and which Jinping has told others he enjoyed more than his visits to Oregon or California that year. The second time Xinping's father went out of favor was after his criticism of the crackdown of protests at Tienanmen Square. These experiences have given Xinping a confidence and experience in different situations that other Chinese leaders including the current leaders lacked. If Jinping has inherited some characteristics from his father he may also have the courage to take China in a new direction, and make the kind of changes China needs as it shifts away from an export based economy. At the same time rule in China is by consensus of leaders on the communist party's standing committee. His father helped initiate the special economic zone in Guangdong province in 1978, and Xi Xinping held senior posts in the provinces of Fujian and Zhejiang and in Shanghai, giving him close ties with industry and local government in areas that led the export based economy. Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore puts Jinping in the" class of Nelson Mandela type leaders, who has great emotional stability to not let his personal misfortunes and sufferings cloud his personal judgement." Of political positions Jinping has a certain wariness. He once responded to mention of him as the potential leader with the words: "Are you trying to give me a fright."...

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The Treasury and Fed's handling of the financial markets crisis on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday as it unfolded Sept 17, 18, 19 and 20, the worst since the 1930's. With the credit markets battered, the collapse of Lehman Brothers investment bank and the rescue of AIG right on the heels of the rescue of Fannie and Freddie the previous week, and all these moves barely improving the general loss of confidence and increasing fragility of the financial markets worldwide. Steps like the ban on short selling by the SEC to stem two 400 point declines in the last few days, and the Fed setting aside $50 billion to shore up money market funds by making them whole where needed, and providing about $200 billion through the European Central Bank and the central banks of Japan, Britain, Canada and Switzerland, were tactical moves so Paulson and Bernanke had to address the real problem of removing the highly illiquid assets of risky mortgages from the financial markets. This would require working with Congress to put together the necessary legislation which is what Congress, Treasury, the Fed, and others will work on this weekend of September 21, 22, so that the legislation could be drawn up the following week and passes into law creaing some Federal agency that will buy up the illliquid mortgage assets owned by banks, investment banks, and other financial institutions before there is another series of collapses in the financial markets necessitating rescues by the Fed. Meantime Treasury has raised another $200 billion last week through sale of Treasurys and provided this money to the Fed to use as needed. The result of the most recent chaos in the financial markets has resulted finally in agreement among all parties about the need for committing taxpayer money in hundreds of billions of dollars to be used to buy up the risky illiquid mortgage assets at steep discounts to be resold later to bargain seeking companies so that the banking sector can repair their balance sheets and recover, as being much safer and less costly route than the cost of rescuing financial firms with systemic risk on an individual basis after a run on these firms or their imminent collapse. Which is why people like Laurence Meyer of Macroeconomic Advisors himself a former senior Fed official believe that this is the first serious effort to tackle the crisis by getting to the root cause of the problem and removing the illiquid mortgage assets and the Government an taxpayers spending the hundreds of billions of dollars but at the same time finally seriously tackling the crisis in a manner that will restore confidence to the markets and to the industrial economy of the USA. His comment, "the markets voted and they liked the proposal", as the Dow Jones went up 610 points at one point and ended up the day Thursday September 19 at 410 points gain for the day....

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Ko Bo Kyi spent years in prison after protests over the army annulling Burma's 1990 elections. Pages of a magazine article on Mandela's autobiography were smuggled into Burma's Insein prison where he was jailed. A song about Mandela sustained Kyi and fellow prisoners in prison. He escaped to Thailand in 1999 after a second prison term and quickly obtained a copy of Mandela's "Long Walk to Freedom."

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Souleymane Guengueng of Chad, a political prisoner during the dictatorship of Hissene Habre, and the ray of light Mandela's release brought to him in prison. He now lives in New York City.

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The BBC's Soutik Biswas takes a look at prime minister Modi as he seeks a second term in India's general election in May 2019.  Modi's first term is marked by exceptional development schemes, efforts to provide health insurance to 500 million people who cannot afford health insurance, bringing cooking gas cylinders to hundreds of millions of Indian women especially in rural areas, efforts to jumpstart building of infrastructure projects such as airports and metro subways. A new law for GST brings together the country with one tax instead of a hodge podge of state taxes for interstate commerce, something India needed for a long time but different governments failed to implement. A failed effort to fight corruption by removing from circulation large denomination currency notes reduced economic growth briefly during the first term, though it may have accelerated the shift to formal economy needed in the long run to improve tax revenues for development needs. One of the problems for the Modi government is how do you put a value on something like Swach Bharat Mission, the achievement of the goal of defecation free India in 2019 by 100% on the 150th anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi, getting rural toilets up from 38% to 100%. Development had to start from the bottom up. Similarly in a country where middle men took up a lot of the transfer to poor families of government assistance- the delivery to hundreds of millions their own bank accounts.- how do you put a value on something like this, but it is essential for development from the ground up. More than missiles or other talk this has got to be the spirit of any development oriented administration in India. Ground up, big goals and rapid delivery and an apology for the difficulties that the people suffered earlier for lack of this infrastructure. For both China and India it is the same - moving quickly to make up for 100 years of colonial rule and stagnation. The Modi government has responded to rural farmer distress with support for guaranteed crop prices. As more young voters vote for the first time an important factor is how the new voters see the years ahead under either a government led by the BJP or by a patchwork of parties as the previous ruling Congress party depends on alliances with other parties with conflicting agendas or lack of rapid development agendas. The Modi government sees itself as setting the stage for the next phase of development that would change the economy through new infrastructure development and create jobs in construction and engineering, and other areas. The criticism is that not enough jobs were created in the first term. Yet bold infrastructure development targets such as transformed the Chinese economy could be the answer for job creation. The question then is who is better qualified to launch that effort based on its track record. The Congress party's main criticism is that it has to make alliances with parties that could stall development with conflicting agendas. The other is that in the the 2 years leading to the election of Mr. Modi the Congress led government of Manmohan Singh was stalled due to corruption charges, leading to a lack of decisionmaking at the highest levels, and stalled efforts for the rapid development that could deliver the kind of jobs India needs.  Young Indians would like to see growth first and foremost, only something rivalling China's transformation over 2 decades can do this. It should be kept in mind that China poured more concrete in the 21st century so far than all the concrete the United States poured in the 20th century, according to The Guardian report. The question then is who is best qualified and in a position to deliver this needed economic miracle.    ...

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Prince Salman's efforts to launch an IPO of Saudi Arabian National Oil Company faces resistance from Saudi bureaucrats. Prince Salman wants to reduce the country's dependence on oil revenue, and hoped to use the IPO generated $100 billion to make investments in other industries. Saudi technocrats see risks in the plan- as costing consumers billions of dollars in higher gasoline prices, legal risks and public scrutiny. The IPO has been pushed back to 2021. Large new investments such as solar generation hub also face passive resistance in the bureaucracy. New investments policies have led to a Saudi recession in 2017, and reduced investment and consumer spending. Prince Salman sees it differently, once telling Theresa May of Britain that even if he got 50 of the 100 things he wanted done, that would be 50 not done otherwise. Salman has a disdain for the bureaucracy and has tight control over the country. He has led popular social changes such as letting women drive and taking away the power of religious police to make arrests. The Economy Minister has slowed down a plan to sell state assets such as government owned hospitals,airports, because conditions are not ideal. A plan to invest $7 billion in Uber was shelved. Aramco chairman Mr. Falih has reduced the size of investmetns including for the solar energy generation project. A plan to have ARAMCO listed on the New York Stock Exchange preferred by Prince Salman has been changed with advisers suggesting the London Stock Exchange as a place with lower risks of law suits under U.S. tort laws. Saudi executives at ARAMCO also pointed out that to reach the $2 trillion valuation that the Prince has in mind for ARAMCO the company would have to sell gasoline to Saudis at market rates, tripling oil prices in the kingdom -costing consumers $98 billion. The advisers believe it is more prudent financially to raise debt. Under that plan ARAMCO could raise debt to buy the Public Investment Fund's (PIF) 70% stake in state owned chemicals company Saudi Basic Industries Corp. which would infuse PIF with $70 billion, almost as much as generated by a IPO for ARAMCO. On solar energy Mr. Falih lowered the plan from 1500 gigawatts to 200 at a cost of $200 billion. Under a new plan this is at 60 gigawatts from solar and wind with 70% produced by the Public Investment Fund, the state's investment fund.   ...

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The vote count in Indonesia for 13 million election ballots shows Joko Widodo with 53.15% of the vote and Prabowo Subianto with 46.85% of the vote. Voter turnout was 70%. The margin for Widodo was 8.5 million votes according to the elecion commission. Former president Yudhoyono served a maximum term of 10 years since his election in 2004. The democratic period began in 1998 with the fall of army general Suharto who ruled Indonesia for several decades.

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That the IMF has returned to anew relevance is very much due to the leadership of DOminique Strauss Kahn, a former French finance minister who took the top post at the IMF in November 2007. It has committed $160 billion in ahost of credit lines and new loans to emerging countries and its lending capacity was boosted to $750 billion. Its ahuge turnaround in which the IMF went through alarge metamorphosis to deal with the global financial crisis. Still the Economist says not all is well, as the emrging countries China and India have paltry share in votes the IMF'S governance, Brazil's is less than Belgium's. This and the resistance of Europeans to change their disproportionate say in the IMF governance is shortsighted and shamefully so says the Economist. Fixing this should be a top priority at the G-20 Pittsburgh summit.

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Efforts to cut costs by new Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr have led to pilot strikes in Dec. 2014, with flight cancellations and 160 million euros of lost earnings in 2014. Intense competition and high operating costs are leading to this determined effort to bring costs down. Lufthansa and other major airlines such as Air France have seen the market change with about 40% of the intra European travel market having gone to Ryanair, EasyJet and other low cost carriers. Lufthansa's profit has declined to 300 million euros in 2013 from 1.2 billion in 2012, giving urgency to CEO Spohr's effort to remain competitive. For 2012 and 2013 Lufthansa cut costs by about 1 billion euros, and the target is for another 500 billion euros in savings for 2014. Most of this was done by job reduction of 3500 jobs, and by shifting low cost flights outside the Munich and Frankfurt hubs to a separate lowcost carrier, Eurowings, based in Dusseldorf. This has echoes of the strategy pursued by Air France for Transavia low cost carrier, leading to strikes by the pilots unions and flight cancellations. The Eurowings carrier will use a different pay structure with about 30-35 percent lower pay and benefits than the main Lufthansa carrier, done by separate agreements with pilots, maintenance and cabin crews unions. Critics say the focus on a separate low cost carrier is not the right strategy as it would remain a small part of Lufthansa group. Spohr, a company executive with 20 years in various Lufthansa positions says this is only part of a larger strategy and other changes to make Lufthansa competitive. Just as at Air France, pilots unions of Lufthansa see this as a step towards reducing in future the pay structure at the main airline operations. Labor costs are about a fifth of 30 billion euros in annual revenues at Lufthansa in 2013, with 118,000 employees worldwide....