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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."

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All sectors of the U.S. economy see an increase in hiring, including retail, transportation, healthcare and manufacturing, as the economy adds 288,000 jobs in June, according to the Labor Department. Manufacturing added 16,000 jobs, transportation 17,000 and the public sector increased jobs by 26,000. Hiring also picked up for high school graduates compared to the poor record in 2013. In 2013 one Barclays economist says the jobs for high school graduates at this point were declining by 16,000 a month on yearly basis. He says employers are now adding 29,000 jobs for high school graduates a month in 2014. The unemployment for high school graduates declined to 5.8% in June 2014, for persons with some college education or an associate degree 5.0%, for college graduates 3.3%. Barclay's estimate is that the U.S. added an average of 231,000 jobs a month for the first half of 2014. The inflation rate remains at about 2%, giving the U.S. Fed more flexibility in setting rates to support jobs growth. The lower unemployment rate of 6.1% understates the underemployment, as a more accurate measure of employment which includes people working part time because they cannot find jobs is at 12.1%. The proportion of Americans in the labor force is also at a 36 year low of 62.8%. These two indicators for unemployment, unemployment including people working parttime, and the proportion of Americans in the labor force, combined with inflation, are the main indicators Fed chairmam Yellen is looking at....

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Indifference on the Republican side, and a sense that not much is going to get done on the Democratic side, as President Obama pitches a $447 billion second stimulus plan in a speech to both houses of the U.S. Congress on September 8, 2011. Dana Milbank documents the attitudes and skepticism with which members of Congress received the proposals- a general sense that President Obama was too weak and ineffective to get things done and has lost credibility. John Taylor, senior economic advisor on the Republican side pointed out in a Wall Street Journal column a few days before the speech, that the jobs proposals Obama and economic advisor Alan Krueger were presenting were similiar to old plans that have not produced results. Taylor viewed them as placing too much reliance on government and not enough on the private sector to generate economic growth and jobs.

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A major change is taking place. Automakers around the world are shifting to smaller engines. Hyundai's Sonata for 2011 and the Tucson crossover for 2010 are going to have only 4 cylinder engines. Many V-6's offered by Detroit carmakers are being replaced with 4 cylinder engines and V-8 with V-6 engines. Ford is using the EcoBoost a turbocharged V-6 to offer new options for its Taurus, Lincoln MKT and other cars.

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This report by Martin in the NYT points out that Ohio no longer plays a critical role in U.S. presidential elections. It was critical for a Bush win over Gore, and president Obama carried it by 2 points against Romney in 2012. It is critical for Trump to win. For Hillary Clinton other states are gaining importance as they better reflect the demographic changes in the U.S. and the mix with minorities- states such as Georgia, N. Carolina, Colorado and Florida. Ohio has not seen an influx of Hispanics as other states, and is now more white, more evangelical voters, and reflects a mix that was prevalent earlier. 

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Romney's advisors work to re-focus the campaign with more time spent by the candidate in the swing states and states too close to call- Iowa, Colorado, Wisconsin. This is in addition to Ohio, Florida and Virginia, which are seen as critical.