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American journalist, John Foley, beheaded by ISIS Islamic State insurgents in Iraq following American bombings near Mosul dam and Erbil to push back the militants attack on Kurdish Northern Iraq. John Foley survived a 44 day ordeal after being captured in Libya in 2011. He went back to cover the Syrian conflict and was captured by ISIS in 2012. He is shown with a helmet covering the war in Aleppo, Syria, in November 2012. His father John Foley in Rochester, New Hampshire, says Foley was as much a humanitarian as a journalist. He graduated from the Medill School at Northwestern and saw the covering of the Middle East as bringing a voice to the powerless and the helpless in the region.

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Petrobras bonds lose the investment grade rating from Moody's in 2015. Petrobras went on a borrowing binge after 2011 with a 63% increase in debt to $135 billion by third quarter 2014. About 60% of this debt is in dollars, according to Moody's. As a result Petrobras owes more every time the Brazilian currency, the real, depreciates. Fitch Ratings considers Petrobras as only a one notch above junk rating. Standard & Poors has not downgraded Petrobras yet because it sees the Brazilian government coming to the rescue of Petrobras. Corruption scandals and weak management at Petrobras also are likely to influence future ratings. Petrobras has lost access to capital markets, leading to cuts in production and slow expansion with tight cash flow.

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Prof. Lasson of the law school at the University of Maryland, teaches civil liberties. He provides perspective on the situation in Baltimore by giving a brief history of the city, and going over the history of Catholics, Jews and black people in the city as they struggled to assert their rights. Thurgood Marshall did not apply to the University's law school because he feared he would not be accepted. He went on to be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967. The 1857 Dred Scott decision before the Civil War was written by Roger Tany, who was from Baltimore. Maryland was a slave state before 1865. The law library at the law school of the University of Maryland now has Marshall's name.

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Bernanke in reflections on his policies for quantitative easing in response to the 2008 financial crisis, says the policies were intended to protect Main Street and the average American, even though this is not readily apparent. He says the policies did not lead to inflation as critics have stated, and one has only to look at today's inflation statistics to know this- referring critics to the government CPI report in Jan 2014 that consumer prices went up by 1.5% in 2013 and less than 2% for 2012. Bernanke says he hopes he took the right actions, and still retains the conviction that the American economy will recover losses from the 2008 financial crisis- even though the answers to this questions won't be seen for some time.

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Rattner calls his own contact with GM's culture a revelation of what went really wrong at the automaker before the bankruptcy. He refers to the "nods" and the "salutes," the superficial power point presentations, and failed leadership, calling it hugely disappointing and stunning in its scope and extent. The greatest damage is done to GM's employees, its partners and customers, and to America, with the collapse of values and culture at a key manufacturing company. Did Akerson and Whittaker, CEO's brought in from the outside after the bankruptcy, get a grip on this and make changes, or was their period at the company too short to make an impact. The period since the recalls has not convinced the American public that GM is now a different company.

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Ghosn touches on another issue emerging in the auto industry. With prices of iron ore jumping steel prices are also increasing which will force automakers to raise prices in the foreseable future. With economic downturn in the USA and parts of Europe Nissan like other automakers will find it difficult to increase sales with higher prices. This makes the new markets of India, Brazil Russia, China and Africa and Middle East with exploding demand significant. As the president of Honda in India puts it its better to spread the profits and sales globally. Nissan laid the ground for a 1.1 billion plant south of Chennai, India, rather than wait for the infrastructure to deliver just-on-time in India, the infrastructure will come later.

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Informational capital that was lost in the 1930's as local banks went out of business and the information on credit worthy borrowers disappeared and with it the credit to all businesses dried up leading to great unemployment. Are community banks that took losses from their holdings of Fannie and Freddie shares and some going out of businesses suggesting a loss of informational capital in the present crisis. Some of these banks will be acquired by other larger banks so that would limit the loss of informational capital. And bad policy compounded the problems in the 1930's. Now the FDIC andf the Fed with support of Treasury will be looking at the smaller local banks to see that that banking sector continues to function.

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After Mohandas Gandhi one of the main leaders of modern India is one who came from the untouchable castes, the lowest caste in India's caste system which had declined over centuries. Babasaheb Ambedkar comes from Ratnagiri district in Maharashtra from a family that had gained its way out of the caste constraints by working for the British East India Company. He later studied at Elphinstone College in Bombay, and went to Columbia University on a scholarship. He finished Masters degrees at Columbia University and later at the London School of Economics, in economics and political science.  Returning to India he wrote "Annhilation of Caste" in 1936. Mohandas Gandhi was at this time working on his own movement to get rid of the untouchability that over centuries made its way into the original caste system and weakened the foundations of Indian society. To understand this one has to know that in many upper castes it was seen as becoming an outcaste even to travel overseas, which by itself may have led to the decline that India experienced in the period 1500-1950, and which Gandhi personally experienced and fought his way out of. By 1942 even the British recognized Ambedkar's efforts and he was Minister of Law and Justice in the war cabinet. In 1947 Ambedkar was chosen to lead the team that would write India's Constitution. In his latter years Ambedkar became a Buddhist and has written several books on Buddhism. By 2015 Ambedkar day was recognized as a public holiday by the new government and his memory is enshrined in the efforts now underway in India's largest state of Uttar Pradesh to bring modern ideas, and modernization through next generation infrastructure, and opportunity for Dalits of which caste Ambedkar was one, and the same for all of the 250 million people of Uttar Pradesh, almost the size of America. ...

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In this report in TOI, Vijay Gokhale, former foreign secretary, points out the big shift taking place in how Germany like the US is paying attention to its mistake of overconcentrating its supply base and investments in one country, China. This type of overinvestment in one country does not make sense for a country for its supply chain, until one accepts that China succeeded to a great extent in building next generation infrastructure, logistics, and ease of manufacturing in China. India is only now learning this lesson- and Modi's experience in Gujarat stemming from studying China's evolution as an industrial nation. Lessons that are now being applied all over India to do, to build the kind of next generation infrastructure and logistics that would make it attractive to make in India and invest in India for Germany and the US. Gokhale describes the intense discussions that are taking place in the inner circles of all three parties, Merkel's CDU out of power questioning Merkel's policies of building so much concentration of business in China, the SPD questioning why it went along, and the Greens knowing that India is their natural partner and the one partner that thinks and acts most like the Greens Baerbock and Habeck. Baerbock is critical of the sale of a stake in Hamburg port to China. No other German leader is like Baerbock, who feels really at home in India in a way that few German leaders have during her recent visit. There is so much change in the Biden administration and in the three major parties thinking about China and how the future of the western nations rests squarely on India's shoulders and its young aspiring population of 1.2 billion, that even India under Modi's leadership for technological change and infrastructure has not kept pace with these changes. This is why Gokhale calls it tectonic. ...

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Omicron cases are up in an almost vertical line on a graph with cases doubling every 2-3 days in the UK, similar to the pattern in South Africa during the beginning of the spread in South Africa. Since then early data in South Africa show the trend in the province of Gauteng, center of the omicron outbreak in South Africa in the Johannesburg area, has reached its peak. On Dec. 16 it recorded 27% of national infections compared to 70% the week before. Head of the National Institute of Communicable Diseases in South Africa, Michael Groome, says "we had areally dramatic increase in Gauteng, which has now leveled off."  Hospital admissions in South Africa show a different pattern than earlier hospital admission rates in previous waves, with only 1.7% of cases being hospitalized in this Omicron wave compared to 19% for the Delta variant wave at a similar point in the wave, says Health Minister Joe Phaahla. In UK as of Dec. 14, this WSJ report cites health authorites saying 73% of cases in London are omicron variant, doubling every 1-2 days, with omicron making up 41% of all cases in England. In the US the Centers for Disease Control show Omicron variant making up 2.9% of all cases in US as of Dec. 11, with highest concentration in New York, New Jersey of 13.1%. Proportion of positive tests went up from 3.3% to 5% in New York City. A convention in New York City, Anime convention at Javits Center, November 23, 2021, shown in a recent NYT report, could potentially have acted as a super spreader event in New York according to NYT though not confirmed, similar to football stadiums events in Italy in March 2020. Dense atmosphere and large crowds increase the risk of a super spreader event happening, say experts. ...

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The inspiring story of Joan Poh, only the second rower to compete for Singapore in an Olympics. She rises at 5 am to workout as she also works as a nurse in a 10 hour shift at Tan Tock Seng Hospital. She has missed meals as she does her training in the midst of work as a nurse. She returned to working in nursing after a call from Singapore government for frontline medical workers in April of 2020. She sees sport as a dream, a luxury that one has to work for. Puts in 100% as a nurse and when rowing 100% as a rower.  At 5 foot 5 inches, 30 years old,  she is much smaller than other rowers, and uses her technique and training to compete. She is the oldest of 3 children who grew up in a 1 room apartment in Singapore. Without resources she learned to row on a long boat by joining a dragon boat rowing team when she was 17, then learned to scull in 2015 at age 25. In 2019 she took extended leave from her hospital to train for the Olympics in Australia. A Canadian who won Olympic Bronze in 1996 and 2000 coaches her free from Vancouver Island in Canada, using videos and workout programs, and went to Singapore when Poh qualified for the Olympics to train her in person. She looks at competing not just as medal winning, and sees this as one step in building a team in the right direction. She sees creating opportunities for others, and overcoming her childhood situation growing up struggling for resources. She says early on it was for her not wanting her lack of resources to decide what she could do. As she puts it - to always aim for a strong start even though one started with not such a good start. ...

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Britain's prime minister Boris Johnson and his negotiating team meet EU president Ursula Leyen for dinner in Brussels on December 8, 2020, to get over fundamental differences for a Brexit deal. This report in The Guardian describes the details of that dinner meeting.  Boris Johnson told parliament that the European Union was asking Britain to be the only country in the world not to have sovereign control over its own fishing waters. He said the EU was also asking that if the EU were to pass a new law that Britain does not comply with they would have the right to  automatically punish Britain or retaliate. On the issue of environmental and other laws that relate to the EU and Britain they are both at the same level today. The EU is worried that in future competition between Britain and the EU in trade and business Britain could relax environmental or other laws to gain an unfair advantage. Boris Johnson and his Conservative party back benchers insist that Britain should have sole right to make its own laws. France's Macron introduced the idea of automatic retaliation as a way to get Britain to keep a level playing field. Both sides see this as a negotiating tactic, hence the dinner meeting as a way to let top negotiators including the leaders to set an informal tone to the final stage of tough negotiating. Merkel made her own remarks to the German parliament saying she was willing to let the negotiations collapse if Britain rejected the EU approach. Merkel stated that if Britain insisted on certain conditions EU could not accept she was willing to let Britain leave without an exit agreement. This way if something went wrong Merkel would not take the blame.   ...

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The problems that hit the UK economy with the announcement of unfunded tax cuts were worsened by very poor communications, the cavalier attitude of the new Truss government and finance minister Kwarteng, and a lack of experience, says this report in the WSJ.The toxic mix of inflation, higher interest rates particularly in the US, and the conflicting messages from the Conservative party with critics within the Conservatives calling the step misguided, had a strong impact on financial markets. Yields on British government bonds jumped beyond that of Greece and Italy, and the British pound fell with large drops in its value falling to 1.03 to the US dollar. Only the intervention by the Bank of England helped recover the pound to $1.11 and yields that went up from 3.6% to over 5% to drop back down to 3.8%. Many other countries face the same high inflation and rising interest rates in the US, so that poorly managed political situations such as the leadership race in the Conservatives party in the UK can have damaging economic consequences. This is a point of caution for other countries economies and governments says the WSJ. Italy's new government coalition has managed to keep expectations of major changes to policy to the Draghi government to the minimum in anticipation of economic problems that could emerge with differences with the European Union, and to avoid poorly managed communications. This is true of all countries in the world and a reminder of the importance of correct messaging in financial markets, and taking a prudent role of funding extra spending programs. This was also done in the $360 billion Inflation Reduction Act and Climate bill of 2022 by the Biden administration. where the dollar spending was adequately accounted for with policies considered prudent to tackle climate change, support badly impacted segments of society, and new infrastructure. This is a learning lesson for other governments. ...

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President Xi's struggle to bring 43 million people out of extreme poverty in China in 3 years as shown in this BBC video. Xi Jinping's focus is on the people left out in the boom years in which the wealth gap expanded to astounding levels and many were left behind. Communist era society under Mao went for leveling up after the 20's and 30' capitalism under the Nationalists. Then came the Japanese invasion in 1931 and chaos out of which Mao built Communist China by 1947. The years with the Nixon opening in 1971 led to another experiment with capitalism to modernize China under Deng and Jiang Zemin in the 80's and 90's to this day after the experiment under Mao had collapsed by 1976. This led to a fading away of the Communist Party's ethos and reason for existence till its revival under Xi Jinping. For Jinping the efforts to guide China's progress started by Deng appeared to derail with the widening wealth and inequality gaps in China, the sense of corruption and misuse of power at local levels that people could see, and the gradual sense in America that the experiment of outsourcing manufacturing and jobs to China was failing for Americans. From 2013 to 2017 a complete rethinking was underway which shaped Jinping's ideas for the future for China. Some of it may be still underway after the realization that Russia and China had diverging views of the world also, following China's sense that the prolonged war in Ukraine affecting its relations with the European Union does not help a country such as China as a middle income country with large pockets of poverty. Russia was seen as a non colonial power in the Soviet era yet it was a major part of the western colonial powers that suppressed the first revolution for an independent China in 1901.   ...

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When the president and his administration are investing trillions of dollars in the economy as Biden is doing with support from friends in Congress from both parties and the US economy is growing with Made in America reviving American manufacturing- this changes the way labor and immigration can be viewed. There is an expanding demand for labor in such an economy and this is true today. Paul Krugman in the NYT shows evidence that the native born Americans have not lost jobs to immigrants in 2019-2024. Much of the demand in the restaurant, hotels and health care industries, in construction, agriculture and occupations native born Americans are less interested in filling are filled by entry level workers who are immigrants. The Wall Street Journal showed in a recent report that Topeka, Kansas is trying to recruit new immigrants to come and live in Kansas where the unemployment rate is lower than the national average today under Biden of 3.7%, and there are thousands of jobs to be filled. This is why Senator Graham of South Carolina and Tillis of North Carolina, the senior Republicans in the Senate, were trying to fix asylum and parole policies in immigration with the help of president Biden to close the border and yet allow an organized flow of new immigrants to the US to fill jobs that would otherwise remain unfilled. Not everybody wants to live in Topeka but there are immigrants such as the Venezuelan and Colombian immigrants shown in that report who are happy to live in the Kansas winters in the prairies of the American heartland. Many come from educated backgrounds and are similar to other Americans already in Topeka such as the mayor of the town, and fit in well say officials in Topeka promoting economic development in the state. It is noteworthy that Kansas is a Republican state for decades.  ...

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Henri Specht, Director of the Olympic Village, walks along newly installed boardwalk along the river Seine and sees how the Olympics will turn an industrial bank into a pedestrian walk area.This approach  has not been taken before and shows the French have taken the courage to try something new. The French government and organizers have built the Olympic Village in one of France's poorest suburbs along the river Seine in northeast of Paris to give it a jolt and revitalize the area. Carbon emissions will be cut in half using new technologies and it will be kept cool without airconditioning. Each of the 40 low rise tower blocks will provide housing for 14,000 people for Olympics and another 9000 for Paralympics. This a 52 acre project with housing for athletes to provide housing for residents, a new Aquatic Center, and other facilities to increase its potential for regeneration. Training facilities for employment are added in with high unemployment of about 20%.   Will it work? It was home to car and steel factories that have now closed as manufacturing went overseas. In 1998 the Stade de France stadium was built here to revive the area. Institut Montaigne says poverty will not disappear. The mayor says new housing is being delivered to change our image and improve the social balance in the city. In the neighboring town of St Oen the mayor has attracted $400 million euro investment for new housing. Tesla is putting its French headquarters in St. Oen. For the village about two thirds of the budget of 2 billion euros ($2.2 billion) comes from private real estate companies and one third from the French  government 646 million euros. After the games a third of the 2800 apartments in the Olympic Village will be sold to private owners, one third to go to public housing, and one third for rentals to students and others. ...

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Svenja Schulze brings new hope and dynamism to Germany's Development Ministry. As head of the Development Ministry she brings international experience in fighting climate change as SPD minister in the last government heading the climate change related Environment ministry. There she launched the climate protection package measures aimed at making Germany climate neutral by 2045. She now heads a ministry with a budget of $13.5 billion (12 billion euros). She wants to cooperate better with the Global South with an effort to tackle poverty and help developing nations. After the shocks of the pandemic this is an essential and important task. Her predecessor as Development minister Heidemarie Wiezcorek-Zeul, SPD minister 1998-2009 says the ministry needs clout in decisionmaking and for this it is important that the Development ministry is separate and an independent entity not lumped in with the Foreign Office as in Britain. That would be quite disastrous she says.  Climate change issues are also seen as development issues and about poverty reduction. This is a useful point that Mr. Modi was trying to make as he addressed the COP26 Summit- that climate change has to be done in the overall context of mitigation, that climate change control is part of poverty reduction and brings in new opportunities when done this way. Examples are zero budget farming, and solar energy as low cost energy for rural areas in India. Here Schulze talks to employees at the Ministry and tell them "We must all strive to make a good life possible for everyone in the world, That may sound overly emotional, but it is our aspiration."  Martina Schaub, chairwoman for VENRO whivh represents 140 private and church development organizations in Germany sees Schulze as a sign of optimism. The need is great particularly in the weak health systems of many countries. It is a sign of hope, and of the new Germany under Schulz. ...

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It is only 10 days from the Thursday July 4 election night and Keir Starmer went to work immediately Here is what he said today: "My new cabinet hit the ground running. We’ve lifted the ban on onshore wind. We’ve created a national wealth fund to invest in and grow our economy. We’ve met NHS bosses to get the 40,000 extra NHS appointments we need each week and 700,000 urgent dental appointments up and running as quickly as possible. The Department for Education is resuming and expanding its recruitment campaign to kickstart our promise to hire 6,500 new teachers. We’re taking emergency measures to pull the justice system back from the brink of collapse. And, on day one, we scrapped the Rwanda gimmick and began setting up a new Border Security Command to smash the people-smuggling gangs for good. Now is the time for politics as public service. A government committed not to its self-preservation but to uniting the country in the shared mission of national renewal. The start of the road back to restoring people’s hope and faith that politics can be a force for good. No more gimmicks, lies and self-serving self-obsession – this government knows we have a duty to the people we are elected to serve." ...

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A general strike is planned in Catalonia, Spain to protest police action preventing a referendum vote on independence called by Mr. Puigdemont, head of the state government. The government in Madrid sees the vote as illegal and could take away the regional government's powers under Article 155 of the Constitution. There are varying reports on how many people voted, with this BBC report saying that Mr. Puigdemont's estimate of 90% of people having voted is inaccurate. BBC News says turnout was relatively low at 42%, weakening Mr. Puigdemont's position. Talks are now taking place with Pedro Sanchez of the opposition Socialist party and Albert Rivera of the centrist Ciudadanos party. Mr. Puigdemont now calls for talks with the Spanish government, and mediation by the EU. The European Commission calls this an "internal matter" for Spain, that should be tackled using the Constitution. Other regions of Spain including Galicia where prime minister Rajoy comes from also suffered under the Franco dictatorship following the Civil War, including his family so that Mr. Rajoy does not represent Madrid so much as the new aspirations of the different regions in Spain to try to write a new chapter in Spanish politics. That chapter shown in a book by Mr. Rajoy on Spain's future clearly shows respect for autonomous regions as the direction for Spain. In Valencia and Catalonia one finds the regional languages used and this is respected under the Constitution. Yet the period under General Franco rankles many in Spain, more so in Catalonia and the Basque region, when the regional language could not be used. As in Scotland smaller parties that were not in government for decades now enjoy more support. Yet it is not clear that all the people of these regions want to permanently break the links with Spain or England under separatist parties that have only recently come to power. This is why the European Union is reticent on this issue.  ...

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Treasury yields went down as demand for treasurys went back up mostly from money market funds with nervous investors. Still it will be a few days befor the full effect of the Fed's action can be seen.

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Biden meets German chancellor Scholz during Scholz's 2 day visit to the US. He tells Scholz: "I want to thank you for your strong and steady leadership. I mean that sincerely. It's made a huge difference." Ahead of this meeting Scholz called on China to "use your influence in Moscow to press for the withdrawal of Russian troops," and "not to supply weapons to the aggressor Russia," in a speech to the Bundestag German parliament Thursday.

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The amazing story of Vivat publishing house that continued to publish books and even opened a new bookstore with bombing all around the city of Kharkiv. Many continued to work even from bomb shelters. The warehouse was moved to near Lviv. Since the war began Vivat has produced 60 books. The year before the war Vivat produced 2 million books. Today there is growing demand for books, for childrens books and books for younger people. People want to feel life is as close to normal and books are part of this.

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This leader in The Economist magazine says a hard Brexit of the sort announced by Theresa May at a Conservative Party conference is clearly bad for Britain. It also point out that half of British people voted to remain. It is not clear that voters have voted for a hard Brexit, a soft Brexit, or voter alienation with elites and effects of years of austerity since the financial crisis have helped tilt the vote to Brexit. It points out that the rhetoric may be damaging Britain's chance of negotiating a Brexit that limits damage to GDP, which the Treasury estimates to be nearly twice the loss in GDP if a member of a single market as compared to leaving it. British government leaders may be overestimating the willingness of leaders of France, Germany and other countries to make concessions. By talking up to their party base politicians such as May may be putting German and French leaders to also toughen their positions on free movement as an integral principle of the European Union, and consequently of membership in a single market. ...