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About 400 million or one in 4 people people smoke in China. State ownership of the tobacco industry only makes this worse. Enforcement of bans on smoking is lax. Experts warn that this would become a major healthcare problem in China.

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Chavez and the changes underway in Latin America that required economies to be part of the global economy to grow and prosper. In addition Brazil, Mexico and other countries in Latin America have added social programs and benefitted from a global economy and exports to enlarge the middle class and improve conditions of the working class and poor. This has made a social program type economy financed almost entirely through oil exports less relevant and likely to fall behind in today's world. Venezuelans now want to connect back with the global economy and things to return to normal as in the neighboring countries. A lot is changing in Latin America including the demographics with fewer children, access to education and social benefits and the benefits of technology, and no country can remain isolated for long.

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Mossberg says look for 500 gigabytes of storage, 4 gigabytes of memory, an i3 to i5 or i7 Intel processor, in buying a PC or laptop. He suggests waiting till fall 2012 for the new Windows 8, and summer 2012 for the newer PC's designed to use Windows 8. This will be a big change from before, because Windows 8 is designed to use the touch feature of tablets. Ultrabooks are a bit pricier, making PC's and laptops the lower cost option. Laptop makers are trying to increase margins on the machines. Mac's also will get a newer operating system called Mountain Lion by the fall.

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Declining manufacturing wages in the U.S. and the return of manufacturing jobs. Indiana's experience with new manufacturing plants.

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Diversification has helped BHP weather the decline in commodities prices better than Rio Tinto, Anglo-American and Vale. BHP is expected to report profits of $12.5 billion for the last fiscal year. BHP is also in the oil and gas business, in addition to iron, ore, copper, coal and aluminium. This has made it possible to take writedowns of $5.5 billion and still make stable profits. Andrew Mackenzie, the new CEO of BHP, is a Scotsman who is focussing on the productivity of capital and cost-cutting. BHP announced $1.9 billion in cost savings since July 2012. Mackenzie's goal is to reduce capital expenditures from $18 billion today to $15 billion or less in 2-3 years. Capital is tied up in incomplete projects taken up in the boom period of higher prices, and the process of reducing capital expenditures is gradual. Capital expenditures in the mining business increased dramatically from $20 billion to $120 billion from 2003 to 2012. For most of this period China's economy registered growth rates of over 10%....

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Migrant workers in China are not allowed to bring their children with them when they move to work in factories located in urban areas. This is the large price being paid for the rapid industrialization in China for 2 decades 1990-2010 by the 61 million children of migrant workers. Lixin Fan's documentary "Last Train Home" documents the life of children of migrant workers separated from their parents for long periods of time. Analysis from the All China Women's Federation shows 75% of the 61 million children left behind by migrant workers have parental visits once a year mostly during the national Spring holiday. 82% of these children want their parents to come back home and 42% say they have no one to talk to when they feel bad. A large proportion of the children are missing parental attention at the most sensitive age when they most need it- 38% left behind are ages 1-5, 32% ages 6-11.

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Shipping and freight statistics show an increase of shipments from Mexico. Trains and truck shipments from Mexico to the U.S. increased by 8.7% by weight in the first 11 months of 2011 compared to the prior year. By comparison shipping containers entering the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach went down by 0.2% in 2011. Mexico stands to benefit from the shift in dynamics as manufacturing costs in China increase with labor constraints, higher wages, higher commercial land prices and recent Asian supply chain issues making firms wary of unanticipated problems. This is expected to benefit the U.S. with the return of some manufacturig jobs and a serious rethink of outsourcing. Because of highly automated factories and advanced technologies the manufacturing process requires fewer and more skilled operators, reducing the labor component of costs. Carlisle Companies CEO, David Roberts says he is expanding tire manufacturing plants in Tennessee. He says he can make tires as cheaply or cheaper in the U.S than in China. This has serious implications as the U.S. gets down to rebuilding and renewal of its manufacturing industry....

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The nuclear arms race between Russia, China and the U.S. accelerates in 2016, as the arms control effort suffers a setback with poor relations between the U.S. and Russia, and China's bid to build up its nuclear weapons. This makes the world a more dangerous place, and puts at risk the gains made in the early years of the Obama administration with the SALT arms control negotiations and treaties in 2010-2011.

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Bank of America CEO, Brian Moynihan sees economic growth at 2.5% for the U.S. in 2014, and global economic growth for GDP at 3.5%. He expects the Fed to continue its bond buying program in 2014 to prevent any backsliding in economic growth in the U.S.

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Historical reasons spanning generations which have led to an impasse in Japan-S. Korea relations under president Park and prime minister Abe. The colonization of S. Korea and president Park's need to distance herself from her father who served in the Imperial Japanese Army when S. Korea was a colony of Japan, all serve to keep the two countries apart. The U.S. "pivot" to Asia under president Obama and pressure on S. Korea to improve relations with Japan has not helped. S. Korea prefers to stay neutral in Japan's disputes with China because of trade relations with the two neighbors and historical reasons.

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Hangzhou, hard hit by closing export focussed factories, is trying a$100 million voucher program to increase spending. Since January, a fifth of the residents of this city have received $30 vouchers, and more vouchers are being issued. Taiwan just tried a voucher program with $102 going to each Taiwanese citizen. Taiwanese President Ma says 50,000 retailing jobs were saved and about two-thirds of one percent addded to GDP. The problem in China is the lack of a safety net and poor access to health care, that is making average Chinese to save over one fourth of incomes. Consumer spending is 35% of GDP. The government has focussed on exports, and used export generated revenues for huge infrastructure spending. With exports down by over 25% in January, the export model is fading away quickly. Japan and Taiwan have seen much higher drops in exports, and China should see even more deceleration in exports, with a lag of some months, as a lot of products made in China use parts made in countries like Japan and Taiwan. The China Development Research Foundation says one fourth of the population have no health insurance at all. Though by some estimates this number may be about two thirds of China's 1.3 billion people. Hundreds of millions of people have huge bills for treatment of serious illness that are not covered by even the most basic insurance. Public pensions cover less than one third of the workers. And an estimated 130 million migrant workers have no unemployment insurance. Even payments to the poor reach only a fraction of people eligible. The government has only tentatively moved to correct his. And outside economists say that something needs to be done in abig way to build this safety net. The government has announced a $123 billion 3 year initiative to deliver basic, universal health care and health insurance. This follows a 3 year drive to provide compulsory and free education to students through 9th grade. David Dollar, the World Banks's country director, described ameeting with Finance Ministry officials, and wrote in areport on the Bank website that the government had the resources to expand these programs quickly. Instead the government has taken a piecemeal approach when action on a large scale is needed. One of the problems may also be that to make universal health insurance, the current health system may need to be examined and rebuilt, so that economical cost effective treatments are encouraged and costs are managed effectively. This would make universal health care affordable by keeping costs manageable, in the same way that the Obama administration is trying to do in the USA. ...

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Easterly's thoughts on how the swing away from individual initiative, innovation and private enterprise hurt developig countries the last time state run enterprises and state intervention in all aspects of the economy became fashionable, in the 40's and into the 60's and 70's, costing decades of lost progress in many countries. He cautions against learning the wrong lessons from the American experience. The housing bubble and the failure of regulation to be modernized to keep up with changing financial scene and the simple failure of ethical and moderation in behaviour and good business practices teaches other lessons than simply going back to letting the state run things which has not worked in the past.

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The Trump administration's early proposal for NAFTA moves away from campaign pledges to completely renegotiate the treaty, instead taking the approach of working to improve the U.S. trade position in relation to Mexico and Canada. It includes seven objectives for tougher rules for labor and the environment favored by Democrats in Congress, and it also has support from Republicans with its effort to update NAFTA for changes in technology and in other areas since the accord was signed during the Clinton administration. The area in which U.S. and Mexican business are wary is one in which the Trump administration still seeks to keep the option of imposing protective tariffs, and a border-adjusted tax to level playing field for differences in taxes, as well as other measures to protect American jobs and interests. Because any renegotiated NAFTA also has to pass both houses of Congress this proposal took into account the different constituencies and interests for this issue. Robert Lighthizer, trade representative under president Reagan is likely to become the next U.S. Trade Representative and lead negotiator. We first profiled Lighthizer in a group in Lyrarc for pointing to the need for a level playing field in trade. As early as 2010 Lighthizer argued in op-ed articles that globalization and trade practices should ensure a level playing field for the U.S., and was covered in Lyrarc. ...

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Experts close to the central bank, PBOC, say it plans to limit depreciation to a modest amount, and to let the currency oscillate. Central bank policy is to make it expensive for traders to try to make gains on the yuan. The central bank plans to intervene the other way to make it harder for traders to make gains.

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China takes a different approach to the stock market declines on August 24-25, 2015, after the earlier failed interventions in July and early August called into question the transparency and integrity of the financial markets. The main Shanghai index opened 6% lower on August 25, and ended down 7.6%. This time the government let the market find its own level. Li Jiange, vice chairman of state owned investment company Central Huijin, wrote in his blog post that "The trade volume of the market can reach 2 trillion yuan ($300 billion) a day, which means if it collapsed no one could save it...The issues of the market should be handled by the market itself." In July and the early part of August Central Huijin was reported to have intervened to support the market. On Aug. 14, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) stated achange in policy to intervene "only when the market changes dramatically and introduces systemic risk." It is important to note that even with the 40% decline in the market index since June 2015 peak, it is still up 35% compared to the prior year....

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The marketshare of companies in China's smartphone market for the 1st quarter shows Samsung with a commanding lead of 25%, the Apple iPhone has only 6.5% of the market, Huawei comes in ahead of Nokia with 12% compared to Nokia's 11%, and close behind is ZTE with 11%, Lenovo with 8%, CoolPad with 6.2%. Motorola has 4.8%. HTC slipped badly and is now at 2.6%. With other companies having 13% of the market. The market is largely fragmented today with Samsung the leader. It also shows the very fluid nature of the market with many new entrants and rapidly changing positions for Samsung, Nokia and HTC. Nokia finds itself facing competition from many new entrants and a rapidly expanding Samsung, which accounts for its suddenly eroding position.