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More details about Akio Toyoda and his father Shoichiro Toyoda. Yoshi Inaba is expected to be akey advisor and Shoichiro will be advising his son, as the idea is to mentor him for the new position while the elder Shoichiro still is in good health. Akio is hands on, and likes to drop in without any publicity, anonymously, to look into how things are going and see for himself. He did this at an Ann Arbor dealership last summer, and has dropped in on Jim Lentz, a senior executive in the Americanoperations in the same way. He is unpretentious and can mix with younger exectutives and talks directly in English. He is expected to be more involved in the global operations of Toyota, to travel widely and introduce diversity into Toyota's executive ranks, which have remained Japan centric all these years for a company that is so global.

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The Magna Carta setting out the rights of the people in relation to the king was written in Latin in June 1215 and signed at Runnymede, England. For 800 years it has served as an inspiration for people to define their rights in relation to kings and arbitrary rule.

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New efforts to control air pollution over New Delhi and the persistent haze that hangs over the city in winter months by controlling the burning of stubble in Haryana state. Red zones have been identified and farmers getting the equipment they need.

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Mexico does 3 tests per 100,000 people very low compared to other countries. Reasons range from cost cutting to a push for herd immunity. Instead Mexico has pushed through deep cost cutting. The U.S. has 178 tests per 100,000 in comparison. This leaves Mexico running blind as it has reopened the economy. The government says half of Mexicans work in the informal economy and the economy needs to remain open. Not doing testing means there is less information on fighting the virus in the way it was done in Italy, Spain, UK, France and Germany. Other countries with a large informal economy are doing as getting as many as 500,000  samples a day for tests. Mexico now has 360,000 cases and its fatality rate is now approaching that of the UK.

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Walter Isaacson interview of Anthony Fauci at the Tulane University New Orleans Book Festival April 27, 2025. 

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The first significant action to help homeowners threatened with foreclosure comes from Sheila Bair, Chairman of the Federal Deposit insurance Corporation, one of the few people after Bernanke and Paulson who have shown initiative and foresight in the current crisis. Bernanke and Paulson had the foresight to open the Fed lending window to investment firms like Lehman Brothers and others but little has been done for homeowners to have significant impact. When interviewed on television in the days surrounding the Bear Stearns crisis Sheila has shown a good grasp of the issues and courage to take the initiative. This action is similiar in line to what Martin Feldstein has suggested on the pages of the WSJ for some time now. Martin wanted the Federal government to step in to loan homeowners the 20% of their outstanding loan and work towards bringing the homeowners payment to an affordable sum. According to Feldstein's calculation this would be about the right amount as a percentage of their loan so that homeowners rationally would not be better off walking away from the loan as the best possible decision under the circumstances. If the rational option was taken under a scenario that homeowners would get no direct help here is what would happen even though it may be intuitively read in one's mind. Homeowners would walk away in increasing numbers, it would become the popular option, one that has happened in prior housing crises in Colorado for example but this time it would be spread out across America, making it dangerous. This would launch a downward spiral or cycle in which the more homeowners walk way, or default the more house prices drop, and the more house prices drop a new group of homeowners who previously had enough equity in the house now because of the last price drop enter the category of homeowners who would be better off just walking away as a rational option. During the next wave this gorup would default and set the spiral or cycle moving again to lead to further price declines and another group of homeowners finding not enough equity in their homes to justify making payments and this group would walk away. At each turn of this spiral another cycle would be set in motion which is why it is so dangerous once it gets started, and the need for timely but also well thought out plan and good execution. This cycle is that of the economic system as a whole. As house prices drop at each turn of this cycle, it would have a serious impact on consumption for an already indebted American consumer. A drop in consumption means fewer product purchases by consumers, and the falling demand means factories would close as companies consolidate operations around the remaining factories to keep capacity utilization at reasonable levels, and this would mean layoffs and cuts in investment and other spending. The layoffs in turn would add another layer of homeowners leaving their homes through foreclosures adding to the pool of homeowners who have left their homes, and adding to the downward pressure on house prices. The pickup in inflation would bite at exactly the worst time as this would mean consumers would have to spend even more carefully. The price of oil which normally would respond to changes such as a fleet of cars with higher mileage on American roads would take a longer time to respond as this fleet change would take a few years to occur. It would respond to lower demand for oil in American factories but the considerable demand in Asia and other countries where the economies are likely to slow down but still be growing at rates to accomodate the large number of people who have not benefited from the market economy, would make the price decline in oil a gradual affair. The weaker dollar would add to the price of imports adding to the inflation. This bite from inflation would lower consumption even further in the economic cycle. And this would mean lower production in factories and even more layoffs at the next turn of the economic cycle. The Federal Reserve would find itself having difficult choices between maintaining confidence in the dollar, for which Capman and McKinnon argue on the pages of the WSJ recently and lowering rates but not achieving much in terms of stimulating either consumption or investment as this would take time to work itself out and all the Fed could achieve by its interest rate making tool is to buy time to weather these adjustments in an orderly manner. There is almost a consensus among experts that interest rate reductions in the current climate of inflationary movements in prices and the current currency exchange rates moving towards a loss of confidence in the dollar is something to be done very carefully and each action taken only with careful understanding of the possible consequences. A look at the proposal itsel shows that it gets around the whole issue of moral hazard by having the cost paid for in this manner. The mortgage investors will pay for the 5 years of interest on the 20% of the loan the government provides. The homeowner takes over after that. The mortgage investors cannot add deferred interest, prepayment penalties or other ways to make the homeowner pay some of the interest charges. And the homeowners payment has to be afforadable so mortgage investors have to show that the payment is not more than 35% of income of the homeownercalled the debt to income ratio (DTI). And only homeowners with mortgage payments above 40% DTI are eligible. And the government would raise the money needed through a $50 billion offering. To show there is no moral hazard that is the government bailing out any of the parties involved, the government will get back all of its money or intends to do so, the government will have the first rights to the money should a home foreclose and before anybody else is paid. ...

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FR24 points out that it is not that unusual to see prosecution of French former presidents and prime ministers for campaign financing irregularities or putting political party officials on public payrolls. It shows that this happened to president Chirac, president Sarkozy, and prime minister Fillon. In fact former prime minister Fillon was doing well in the elections after the presidency of Socialist president Hollande. The revelation that he had put his wife on public payroll as parliamentary assistant with little work led to Mr. Macron taking his place as the leading candidate. No jail terms were served for these charges under French law. Here it is important to note that French law limits spending on election campaigns to 22 million euros and Sarkozy exceeded that number. In the US and India there are no such strict limits. So are France's leaders that much worse than the American leaders who spend and collect money lavishly? Or in India where the campaign financing has the result of making it hard to build the infrastructure desperately needed by a young aspiring population. Framers of the Indian constitution including Gandhi and Nehru intent on getting the British out never realized that political parties would look to public funds as ways to finance their campaigns, leaving less for the intended purpose of building roads and bridges making the country a poor place to invest in and entrenching underdevelopment and poverty.  In the US tech companies in Silicon Valley or banks in New York and Silicon Valley, pharmaceutical companies and companies in other sectors, are able to gain monopoly positions or favored regulatory setups for their industries by funding election campaigns for Congress. When this results in egregious behaviour such as the 2009 financial crisis or the current banking crisis this behaviour causes severe damage to ordinary Americans much worse than what Mr Chirac or Sarkozy were prosecuted for.  South Korea has a long history of prosecuting former presidents. Three presidents have been prosecuted so far. One president served as much as five years for a jail term. ...

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The US sees no contradiction to India looking for bargain priced oil from Russia to meet the growing needs of its economy and is actually furthering the goals of the G-7 by lowering the price Russia gets for its oil. It helps the economy of 1.2 billion people that like the rest of the world has struggled to fight the pandemic and has incurred the kind of heath costs that even China is now struggling to pay for. President Biden clearly understands and supports this. Democracies an only succeed if they fulfill the aspirations of their people. On this point Biden made clear in his State of the Union that he will generate what it takes from large corporations that paid no tax, to invest in America. Rather than fuel the profits of large oil companies India has increasingly chosen to use Russian discounted oil to invest in India. The Biden and Modi policies are identical generate savings and invest big time in trillions of dollars over the next few years to put democracies ahead in meeting rising aspirations that have been unfulfilled for far too long, which is where the real battles are being fought and will be won, and rightly so. US Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources, Geoffrey Pyatt,  said during a visit to New Delhi on Feb. 16-17- "Our experts now assess that India right now is enjoying a discount of about USD 15 a barrel in the price that it is paying for its imports of Russian crude. So by acting in its own interest, by driving a hard bargain to get the lowest price possible, India is furthering the policy of our G7 coalition, our G7 plus partners in seeking to reduce Russian revenues."  Looking at the bigger picture the problem was created by Germany under Merkel who built Germany's over dependency on Russian oil to power a cheap fuel economy it thought was in Germany's interest. This is now being reversed by the hard work of Mr. Habeck of the Green party in the coalition government of Scholz in securing alternative supplies in record time for the EU to avoid a recession. In this sense the perception created early of India which has suffered itself from invasions in 1962 and incursions in the Himalayas more recently, it is not a problem India can solve by becoming energy short at a time when it has invested so much in fighting the pandemic. A similar problem was created by Republican and Democratic administrations of the past that concentrated the supply chain in one country. India lost much investment in the last 8 years as a result of the policies of Merkel's Germany and past Republican Democratic administrations in concentrating the supply chain in one country. ...

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Facing low approval ratings the new cabinet of prime minister Kishida is aiming for stability. New ministers can get to work immediately. New Cabinet secretary Yoshimasa was previously defense minister and foreign minister, and is No.2 in the Kishida faction of the LDP. It is a difficult road ahead as members of the Abe faction resigned from a fund raising tickets probe by prosecutors. 

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A reminder that the old Republican party of Eisenhower and Teddy Roosevelt still exists, simply waiting to be revived from its slumber with a new platform that brings in a different attitude and culture to the problems facing the US of infrastructure, manufacturing at home, public services, health and education access for all Americans and holding on to the bedrock of principles and courage of Ike and TR.

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Consumers are taking on new loans for cars and purchases such as refrigerators, but at the same time businesses and consumers are paying off debt at a faster rate. The sharp decline in the Euribor rate in 2015 is good news for Spanish consumers and business as most loans are tied to the Euribor rate. Yet memories of the severe downturn in the Spanish economy are leading to consumers reducing debt with reluctance to take on new loans. The result is that even though Spain's economy is expected to show 3% growth in GDP in 2015, the loan levels at Spanish banks are expected to remain flat in 2015 over 2014. The IMF says GDP will not reach precrisis levels till 2017, reflecting how deep this downturn has been in Spain. IMF forecasts show that debt held by Spain's businesses and households will be double economic output till about 2020.

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The failure of Merkel's and Macron's policies in Europe. The policies contained a contradiction says this WSJ report- doing little to address concerns of Russia over NATO expansion and yet opting to build better economic relations with Russia. Merkel and Macron failed to tackle the main issue of NATO expansion. Did NATO need to expand continuously and what could be done so that Eastern European countries could join the EU but not NATO as a defense alliance. Without some new framework on this issue that was determined between US, Russia and Germany, France, for post 1990 peaceful relations the relationship with Russia based purely on trade has collapsed.  

This WSJ report also brings up the issue of the US and Europe not having it both ways - continually expanding NATO in the interests of the smaller nations in Eastern Europe and yet hoping to build a better relationship with Russia.

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Alberto Carvalho, Superintendent LA Unified School District ,following work as Superintendent at Miami-Dade County School District, and tech contracts that did not work out for schools leading to an FBI investigation.

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Friedman on the ouster of president Morsi after only one year in office following large scale protests. He sees this as the beginning of a fallback of political Islam, with the protests of secularists in Turkey, the shift to a moderate candidate Rouhani in Iran's presidential election, the shift of the Emhada Islamist party in Tunisia to work with center-left parties in writing the constitution, and the election of a western educated political scientist to lead a coalition government in Libya. In each country the secular and liberal leaders and the young people felt the revolution was being stolen from them by Islamist parties and are asserting themselves to gain a voice in government. The Islamist party in Egypt has older leaders, an authoritarian structure and hierarchy, which failed to incorporate liberal and other opinion in writing the constitution and in forming the government. A more tolerant and open Islamist party needs to be part of a broad based government with other parties, which can focus on the economy, unemployment, infrastructure and public services....

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Lingling Wei on Chinese policy on trade with the US in the WSJ and China seeking a visit by DJT to Beijing instead of APEC side meeting in South Korea. A meeting in Washington DC is seen as risky after the Zelensky meeting with DJT took an unexpected turn, and the idea of meeting in Beijing gives more opportunity for getting an organized result and show China's standing in the world of nations. This happens after XI met Putin in Beijing on Victory Day celebrations for World War II where Russian and Chinese losses were far larger than European or US losses. China's huge losses in the millions have not received much attention in the US or Europe. This is also true for losses by the Philippines, Indonesia and India from decisions made during wartime by colonial powers and the Imperial Japanese Army. A meeting of Xi and DJT in Beijing from China's point of view may also show China is ready to work with the US in trade and the economy where it has huge interests in a stable transition to where Chinese industry does not overproduce what it cannot sell and seeks a diversified market shifting away from concentration in the US. Both Xi and DJT are playing to a domestic and international audience to show they are wise leaders willing to engage and at the same time protecting their national interests. The issues of support for Ukraine and fentanyl sources in China remain unresolved. ...

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Krugman says the Euro was basically flawed when a single currency was established without political or fiscal union. Because of this the problem can only be solved he says, by action in Brussels and Berlin. Greeks he points out work longer hours than Germans and are not lazy, the welfare state is larger in Sweden and Germany, and Greeks were able to finance imports through trade, shipping and tourism before Greece joined the eurozone. After joining the euro foreign money poured into Greece causing inflation and making Greece wages rise with labor productivity 25% below the European average, making Greece uncompetitive. A lot of the foreign money was wasted and should not have been loaned to Greece in the first place, except that foreign banks perceived the eurozone membership as an implicit guarantee.

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The cultural identity of the Nation that has existed since the founders Washington and Jefferson, and since it's second beginning Lincoln and then TR and FDR,  was seen to be at risk in 2024, yet no party has put forward the need for Cultural Literacy as a Nation as part of national classroom education, a plea by E.D.Hirsch Jr. of University of Virginia, and others, from the 1980's onwards. Kash Patel is a public defender from New York, who worked in the NSC staff in the first Trump term. He is of Gujarati East Africa origin who studied at University of Richmond for history and Pace University for his JD. He actively defended DJT in what is known as the Nunes memo for the Mueller investigation into links with Russia. He also faced opposition after Defense Secretary Esper was replaced and he served as assistant to the new Defense Secretary, in appointment to the FBI, by then Attorney General William Barr. Kash Patel actively campaigned for DJT during the 2024 campaign. In addition to cost of living crisis for middle and working class families, unease about migration and the lack of Democrats sensitivity and urgency to serious issues raised by fentanyl flows and migrants crossing the border, the pressure on Border Patrol, were major issues in western, southern and midwestern states, leading to a Republicans gaining the White House, the Senate and the House in 2024.  The cultural identity of the Nation that has existed since the founders Washington and Jefferson, and since it's second beginning Lincoln and then TR and FDR,  was seen to be at risk, yet no party has put forward the need for Cultural Literacy as a Nation as part of national classroom education, a plea by E. D. Hirsch Jr. of University of Virginia, and others, from the 1980's onwards. Other issues were transgender and the dilution of morals and religion in the national life since the European settlement of the continent, the sense of losing identity as a Nation.  ...

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The importance of a gap year in education remains underutilized in Indian education because of a lack of role models. A gap year in education during the early college and postgraduate years can give a person new experiences and skills, a new sense of purpose, that he or she may carry over into further education and create additional opportunities over time. In this way the gap year actually reinforces the idea that is behind changes in the way education is being setup today, that encourage young people to try out different subjects in the sciences and the humanities to find what they are best at and where their interests lie. In the same way new experiences including travel, meeting people, trying out new activities can enhance one's personal development and growth as a person.