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Yoshimi Inaba, who now heads the North American operations of Toyota, thinks Toyota became complacent and lost touch with the customer. He says Akio Toyoda, the new CEO, wants to put some "passion" back in the company, and to see local executives speed up the decisionmaking at the company.

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Insights offered by a actor- growing up as a child in London of parents from Ghana and Sierra Leone- on the younger years of Nelson Mandela. Idris Alba is interviewed by Barbara Chai of the WSJ on his role in the movie "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom." To understand his role Idris spent one night at the prison on Robben Island where Nelson Mandela spent 18 years of his life. Idris says he focussed on bringing the younger Mandela to life, not on his lines but everpresent the idea of a man setting a revolution in motion. In doing this he was bringing to life a man with all his character and flaws, a man unknown to young S. Africans, who only know the older Mandela.

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Global coordinated policy action offers a glimmer of hope in the global financial crisis.

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This Journal editorial does not shy away from the task of evaluating the Greece bailout in March 2012, for what it really means; its longer term consequences for the EU experiment, the consequences for Greece, and what it does for democracy in Athens. Its clear it points out the last 2 years were spent insulating the rest of the EU from the fallout of the debt crisis in Greece. Even though it would have been better to have acted at the outset two years ago- to let Greece go into a planned default, reduce debt to manageable levels, and to have acted on reforms earlier. This would have setup a better outcome than the one today. It would have meant a bigger haircut for the banks and greater debt reduction which would have hurt European banks. The current outcome is bad for Greece's economy which leaves it with debt at over 120% of GDP in 2020, and no hope to return to growth. And its bad for democracy as the two main political parties in Greece were required to pledge support to the austerity measures against overwhelming public opposition....

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Redmayne is the Australian goalie brought in as a sub for a penalty shootout by the coach against Peru. The result 5-4 in favor of Australia. Here he is shown as being a really unconventional choice, no one had even heard of him, to bring a bit of distraction for the Peruvian soccer players.

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S. Jaishankar, Indian Foreign Minister speaks at the University of Delhi on his chapter in the new book Modi@20 Dreams meet Delivery. He also discusses the war in Ukraine, the Indian view on people and shortages created by the war of energy and food, and India's approach to Pakistan and China.

 

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The coach of Freiburg and Bayern Jens Scheuer for women's soccer will now take on English team Brighton and Howe in a special assignment. Here he talks about his plans and his daily routine from seven to seven followed by a shower and a look at the day's matches. 

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Nadhim Zahawi is Conservative party chair appointed by Mr. Sunak. He was finance minister. This report in The Guardian looks at the penalty imposed and tax settlement with Zahawi that was made by His Majesty's Revenue and Customs, Britain's tax agency, as part of the settlement practices with wealthy individuals.

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US president Joe Biden says he will allocate $80 billion additional funding to the IRS in the US so that it can get $700 billion owed by the wealthiest in the US. This is part of his "American Families Plan,' increased funding of health, education, improving upward mobility, and opportunity for the American people.

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The new Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese has visited India as a backpacker in his younger days and led a parliamentary delegation to India. He is committed to deepen economic, strategic, and people to people links between India and Australia. Albanese is also committed to fighting climate change and moving aggressively on renewable energy.

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US president Biden calls presidential immunity ruling of the US Supreme Court "extreme and dangerous." He calls for a 18 year term limit for Supreme Court Justices and a code of conduct. Biden proposes a constitutional amendment to put this into effect and Kamala Harris backs Biden's Supreme Court reform.

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Iran's Ahmadinejad's speaks to reporters and editors in New York before his address to the UN General Assembly. He says: "During a historical phase, the Israelis come into the picture and are then eliminated." This WSJ editorial finds President Obama's response and his address at the General Assembly of the United Nations inadequate to convince Iran's government and ruling mullahs that the program has to be ended. Sanctions have not produced the needed results and have only gradually been tightened showing a lack of resolve. President Obama failed to speak up for young people and university students in Iran who held demonstrations against the Ahmadinejad regime when it changed the election results- just as he did not speak up for the young people fighting a dictatorship in Libya and Egypt, or just as has failed to do for the young people fighting today in Syria. In this respect Obama has abandoned America's role as a beacon of hope for countries around the world. It is left to American media and public opinion to vigorously express these ideas in unison, as it has already done every step of the way. Clearly Ahmadinejad does not speak for the Iranian people, especially the young generation, and Egypt's president Morsi like every other Arab leader may have problems with Israeli policy but sees the need for peaceful coexistence. It would be more accurate to say that the Iranian people, like the people of Syria, are trapped as Morsi put it to the General Assembly, in "the tragedy of our era," moving from dictatorship to dictatorship....

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Rep. Paul Ryan got his start in politics in 1983 when he was hired to work for a think tank Empower America. This think tank was formed by Weber, Kirkpatrick, Bennett and Kemp, to preserve Reagan era ideas of focussing on economic growth generated by private investment. This was followed by working as an aide to Senator Brownback of Kansas and Rep. Jack Kemp till his election to Congress in 1996. Kemp was the big idea guy and it was Paul Ryan who delved into the budget details at the time to support Kemp's ideas. Kemp was Republican vice presidential candidate, the same position that Ryan is in today. Ryan represented the area around Janesville, Wisconsin, in the U.S. Congress. He graduated from the University of Miami, Ohio.

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Ryan's sunny disposition, willingness to engage in ideas and facts and his message convey a very different image than the one in Democratic party television ads of someone looking like him pushing an old granny off the cliff, says this Journal editorial. Which makes it all the more important that he should be given very opportunity to speak to the media and to the public, it says.

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Even the entry into the Philippines by Wirecard executive might have been faked- where there was supposedly $1.9 billion in Philippines bank accounts of Wirecard that are reported to simply not exist- says this report in the WSJ.  

It shows how flagrant activities in misallocating capital have become at a time when PPE supplies, healthcare equipment and medicines are hard to find during the pandemic. Hundreds of billions of dollars have not only been misallocated away from basic infrastructure, education and healthcare but also in many ways wasted. A kind of Dickensian "it was the best of times, it was also the worst of times." 

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The nominee for the position of FBI Director in the U.S. in July 2017, Christopher Wray, is a former defense lawyer, prosecutor and Justice Department official. He responded to questions from Senator Graham on his views on Russia, and from Senator Leahy. He told the Senators that this was not a job for the faint of heart, and that "I am not faint of heart." He said he respects Mr. Mueller and Mr Comey's long service. Answering persistent questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee Wray said: "I believe to my core that there's only one right way to do this job, and that is with strict independence, by the book, playing it straight." Wray's background is Yale Law School 1992, Assistant U.S. Attorney in Georgia 1997, and with the Justice Department since 2001 becoming Assistant Attorney General for the criminal division. 

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Professor Yann LeCunn of the Sorbonne University, France, is a pioneer in the field of AI.  He is now focusing his work on Advanced Artificial Intelligence AAI, saying that the large language models which are being developed in a surge of data center spending of $400 billion in 2025 alone are not the way AI will develop in the future. AAI is based on visual learning similar to how an infant learns, and not by consuming large amounts of data as under large language models.

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Brooks sees serious hope for results in Obama's program for education improvement in the USA.

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U.S. President Lyndon Baines Johnson was committed to spending on a war overseas and domestic priorties for the Great Society program at home. Johnson struggled with Congress to meet the costs of both. He even suggested a 10% tax surcharge to pay for the war and domestic programs. Dallek says 79% of American opposed a tax increase in 1968. Republican Richard Nixon was elected U.S. president that year.

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Rick Perry, former governor of Texas, at one time suggested elimination of the Energy Department. He is likely to be confirmed by the U.S. Congress to head the Energy Department in the Trump administration.

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The participation of Islamist men who did a lot of the hard fighting against Gaddafi with secular leaders in the new government of Libya. Islamist leaders complain the west does not understand them and their aspirations for freedom above all else. One Islamist leader says westerners think we want to lock up our women in boxes. See the amazing account of Belhaj in an interview with Nordland of the New York Times, Sept. 1, 2011. Belhaj is an Islamist who led the rebel fighters into Tripoli and was appointed head of the administration in Tripoli. He tells Nordland he is grateful to NATO for its help and holds no rancor for the past.

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A less known political leader, Albert Hernandez, who teaches university law classes, is now set to become the next president of Argentina. He has worked with Peronist party under the Kirchner administrations and quit Christina Kirchner's administration after some disagreements on policies.  He is so far ahead of president Macri- sixteen points in the primary, that it is seen as too much of a gap for Macri to reverse. Hernandez is seen as a pragmatic leader and has as his running mate Christina Kirchner. Ms. Kirchner says she supports Hernandez as he can bring together all the Peronist factions. Mr. Hernandez is 60 years old and has worked with Peronist leaders in government from the 1990's who supported free market changes and with the Kirchner administrations when Argentina was recovering from economic collapse. Hernandez says he is learning from the mistakes made by Christina Kirchner. During the administration of Nestor Kirchner, Christina's husband, Hernandez, who was chief of staff, acted as a key problem solver. Argentina faced a crisis in debt accumulation and defaulted on the debt during that period around 2003. Argentina recovered from that crisis with the help of a commodities boom and demand from China. Mr. Hernandez was also chief of staff under Christina Kirchener who followed her husband as president, but resigned early because of differences on economic policy. Today debt accumulation is again a problem, with debt built up under the Macri administration and errors in policy of Mr. Macri. Christina Kirchner asked Hernandez to lead the ticket after it was clear that Peronist factions who did not support her could only come together if Mr Hernandez was the candidate. As a moderate without ideological tendency Mr. Hernandez was able to lead a broader coalition after errors in economic policy made by Mr. Macri leading to high inflation and a declining economy. Mr. Hernandez says he would renegotiate a deal with the IMF for a $57 bailout, which was signed by Mr. Macri to tackle a currency crisis. He also plans to take a new look at the trade deal with the European Union. Today both Brazil and Argentina are mired in economic crisis. Brazil through extravagant spending including on pensions, that left basic sanitation services, transport services, health care  poorly funded. Argentina has gone from prosperity to crisis, before 2003 during the first Kirchner administration, and now under Mr. Macri in 2019. Recurrent economic crises are a regular pattern in the region since 1950, with the region dependent on commodities exports and failing to build manufacturing industries.   ...

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Two realities are affecting exchanges. One is that trading commodities and derivatives is a $600 trillion business worldwide and is more profitable than trading in corporate shares. This shows in the value of ICE and NYSE in the stock market. In April 2011 ICE was valued at $1.5 billion less than NYSE, in Dec 2012 ICE was valued at $4 billion more that NYSE as it makes its bid to merge with NYSE. The other is that the Dodd-Frank financial system overhaul in the U.S. after the 2008 financial crisis has created a new model for derivatives trading providing advantages to regulated electronic exchanges and clearinghouses that handle derivatives trades with transparency. Jeffrey Sprecher, CEO of ICE, the IntercontinentalExchange, which handles derivatives trading through its clearinghouse operations, says: "For the past decade, our solutions made our markets increasingly electronic and increasingly clear. Today, financial reform is imposing that vision on many markets through a rule-making process." Bart Chilton, a member of the CFTC which regulates derivatives trading says Dodd-Frank legislation supports the business model of derivatives exchanges. This is especially true for Mr Sprecher and ICE. Sprecher has a good relationship with regulators with whom he talks directly, and is supportive of CFTC efforts to close loopholes as he is confident he can make money as long as the rules are clear. His confidence stems from his model which is technology based from day one, with its own clearinghouse and technology based transparency of the ICE data vault, information it shares with regulators. Sprecher stumbled upon this opportunity. He is an executive in the power industry. Working on developing power plants Sprecher found it was difficult for power firms to hedge investments in energy with financial contracts because there was no well organized, clear and transparent market for such contracts. This he set out to do by buying a little know exchange in Atlanta for buying and selling electricity, later getting the the backing of BP, and investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, to form ICE in 2000. Banks liked the idea of a having an organized clear place to buy and sell derivatives in oil and other commodities, and having an alternative to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in futures trading. Swaps trading under Dodd Frank supervision is converting to old style futures contracts where there is less competition for ICE's futures trading creating new opportunity. ICE setup its own clearinghouse, and acquired the Clearing Corporation, which was the base for a derivative called credit-default swap. To make derivatives trading transparent and reduce systemic risk Dodd-Frank legislation required exchanges to provide information to data warehouses which would then share the information with regulators. ICE setup its own data warehouse to do this called ICE Trade Vault. Dood-Frank rules envisioned the formation of clearinghouses and exchange such a ICE to provide a clear process, transparency and reduce systemic risk in derivatives trading. ICE under Sprecher by making this vision its own and using technology has created new opportunity. ...

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Former U.S. Treasury secretary Robert Rubin talks to Charlie Rose about the August 2 Debt Ceiling and Deficit legislation. He says there are two constructive things about the legislation. There are no serious cuts in 2011 and 2012, so there will be almost no loss in demand as spending cuts do not affect the immediate 18 month period. Former Treasury Secretary Summers also makes this point. And that the cuts include defense and non-defense. He favors the approach of the Bowles-Simpson Commission. On the overall situation Rubin points out the importance of getting a real public discussion going about what this means, what the consequences of decisions made now. Especially important for Rubin is public understanding of the importance of setting up a serious deficit reduction program that sets the date of implementation a couple of years into the future to give time to get back on track, and the need for increased revenues. A useful point Rubin makes is that the question of jobs and the question of getting into a sound position fiscally are really the same question. He cites his experience in 1993 when he helped President Clinton setup and implement a deficit reduction program- which had half spending cuts and half revenue increases. Bowles-Simpson Commission recommendations for closing loopholes for tax expenditures and Martin Feldstein's similiar proposal for limiting the deductions and exclusions to 2% of Adjusted Gross Income offer an option that creates revenues without any tax increases....

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This opinion by Mr. Swain, editorial page writer at the Wall Street Journal says it is regrettable that the expert class in America has failed to acknowledge its errors or conduct self-criticism. A new generation of journalists, think tank authors, and experts, will soon replace the old. They, he says, will make a fair assessment of the Trump years and look at their forerunners as acting in crucial moments, as idiots. He offers an alternative view of lockdowns as hurting the economy and causing a sharp recession in which people had to go without income, and some even hungry. To support this he says many parts of the country did not lock down and managed to keep hospitals running fine. California and New York with Democratic governors and large numbers of Democratic voters have borne the brunt of the pandemic in America. He points out the changes in the Middle East with policy that has brought Israel and the Arab world closer. The wars in foreign lands that are no longer being fought wasting precious resources. Democrats and the news media acted to consider Mr. Trump's election as illegitimate and the result of collusion with a Russian president, says Swain, till the Mueller investigation proved this to be not true. The real reason for Trump's election being that the Clinton-Obama Democrats had neglected working class interests and sent jobs overseas, and the Democratic party had shifted far from its working class base. That there is much for reflection in both political parties is stated in this view as the Democrats rush to a second impeachment Feb. 9, after president Biden has setup his new administration, and in the middle of a national emergency pandemic.   ...