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On average about 90,000 jobs were added by the private sector by July 2010. 125,000 jobs have to be created on average each month for the job numbers to keep up with growth in population. And most of these jobs were created in March and April of 2010 when the economy was doing better. The 8 million jobs lost in the recession still remain to be recovered. And employers who have raised funds at low interest rates -companies like IBM paying 1% for $1.5 billion in bonds issued- are holding off on hiring in the current economic uncertainty. Worsening the situation is the cutbacks in state and local governments with layoffs of 48,000 workers. Even the $26 billion aid package passed in Congress for state governments will not help make a serious impact, considering the budget problems facing state governments. An example is Seattle, which has used its rainy day fund to bridge a $40 million gap in its 2010 budget. It faces a $56 million gap in 2011.

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The 8000 government jobs that are likely to be lost in Longbenton, England, at "the Ministry," work done for the revenue and customs part of the tax agency of the UK. Premier Cameron plans to eliminate 192 independent government agencies. The north-east of England has long been a part of the UK with lower per capita incomes, and the region more dependent on government jobs.

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Andy Grove makes this passionate plea for the dignity of workers in America in 2010. It is worth reading in 2020 what this founder of Intel Corp and pioneering spirit of Silicon Valley has to say. Andy Grove of Intel says there is something seriously wrong when the unemployment rate in the Bay Area is higher than the 9.7% national average for the USA. American companies have added jobs like crazy in Asia, but things are sputtering back home. Hon Hai has 800,000 employees and makes most of the electronic and computer products for American companies. Grove says startups are not the answer, unless they scale up and create jobs the way Intel did starting back in 1968, with a $3 million capital infusion by investors. The move from the first production model to mass production is critical, as companies hire thousands of people. Innovation and scaling up have to go together. He makes his point clearly by pointing out that Apple has 25,000 employees. For every Apple employee there are 10 employees in China working on Apple iMacs, iPods, iPhones. And he adds that the same 10 to 1 relationship applies to other U.S. tech companies. And here Grove asks the tough question by first posing an answer. He says it sounds like- no big deal, we keep the high paying jobs, we keep most of the profits, but what kind of society are we going to have with highly paid professional workers and lots of people unemployed? And he doesn't mention that there are a lot more young people unemployed. He says the US has become very inefficient at creating tech jobs, and it would be a great mistake not to act decisively early on. And adds that the investments in such areas as solar power and electric car batteries have to be made early on to maintain leadership in these areas. Grove faults academics like Alan Blinder and others who say loss of manufacturing jobs and whole industries was no big deal. The U.S. has forgotten the value of manufacturing jobs. He wants to see America focus on jobs and rebuild its industrial base. And less of transferring engineering knowhow and new technologies overseas, technology that can help bring innovation and scaling up of factories at home. In his view individual companies doing their own thing, in a misguided fashion that jobs don't matter, is not the answer to the situation we face. The industrial economies of Asia, China at the present day, have focussed on jobs and technology, and scaled up. Grove reminds readers of the situation in America in 1932, when jobless veterans demonstrating outside the White House in large numbers were dispersed by soldiers with live ammunition and fixed bayonets. This makes him shudder at the very thought of it, and brings back memories of his early years in Hungary, as a young man in 1956. Are we listening? ...

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Investment by a large private investor in auto supplier Lear Corporation. See the related article on Collins Aikman and the price position at the urging of hedge fund investors that led to closing of Ford's plant in Hermosillo, Mexico, which makes Ford Fusion cars.

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From all accounts the lawyers against Musharraf, the opposing factions of Bhutto and Sharif and the Islamist parties alliance distancing itself from Musharraf's campaign against insurgents in the tribal areas and Waziristan, and the army's failure to do much against the militant islamist in the border areas with Afghnaistan present a picture of Pakistan coming apart. The army as a national institution is losing credibility even as the US needs the Pakistani military to continue the fight in the border areas while it is fighting with other Nato forces in Afghaistan's southern provinces. Actually whole areas in the British assigned areas of southern Afghaistan have been given up to militants or provincial leaders with their own forces. In this situation even as the people seem genuninely keen on a new direction their is no unified leadership or organization to hold it together which commands the confidence of large parts of the country and people. And so the US even under pressure to support democracy would simply put its interests in Afghanistan and the border regions of Pakistan before the interests of the people of Pakistan in finding some genuine solution to the problems. that would give Pakistan a chance to set a new longterm direction different from its past. ...

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Is time slipping away for Russia to restore what it sees as its special relationship with Ukraine, as Ukraine finds its own identity through its language and independent Orthodox Christian Church since 2019. This WSJ podcast report is by James Marson who lived in Kiev from 2007 to 2012, and Ryan Knutson, with the Archbishop of St Michael's cathedral in Kiev, and the editor of Elle magazine edition in Ukraine joining in.  To understand Ukraine one has to know that Russian is the language of the cities, which means people in Kiev speak Russian. People in the countryside Ukrainian. This is very unusual for a nation and it shows the condition of the country for centuries where intellectuals in cities dominated cultural and political life distant from the people in the countryside. For centuries Ukraine was dominated alternately by either Poland and Lithuania or Russia other than a period of 200 years around 1250-1400 when the Mongols were dominant. The peasants and countryside suffered greatly as in India and other parts of central Europe in the long history till the modern period in 1900.  Russians see their origins in the Kyivan Rus, a state bringing together the different ethnicities Ukrainian and Russian in the period 1000-1240 under the Byzantine Church in Constantinople. Kyiv, the modern capital of Ukraine called Kiev today being the capital of this state. This is the cultural connection that president Putin and Russians see as one they do not want to see drift away. After the Russian state drove out the Mongols in 1240 the northern provinces and Kiev became part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the rest became part of a new Russian state. After 1650 Ukraine became part of the Russian Empire and by 1800 with the partition of Poland was fully made part of the Russian Empire. Russian is now after 1800 the language of the intellectual class in Kiev and the cities, and Ukrainian language persists in the countryside. In 1804 Ukrainian is banned as a language and subject of instruction in schools. The end of the Russian Empire under the Tsars in 1917 ended the ban on the Ukrainian language and a period of respect of the cultures of the different soviet republics including Ukraine ensued. Putin has strong feelings on Kyiv, or modern Kiev, as the place where Russia as a country began. He wrote a 7000 word essay says this report in WSJ in 2010 on this relationship as he sees it.  Yet the period of protests in Kiev since 2010 has resulted in Ukraine building  its own identity as a nation. Magazines in the country are required to use Ukrainian for 50% of their circulation. People in Kiev now use Ukrainian instead of Russian as the sense of national identity is being revived. During 1917-1921 Ukraine fought a war with the Bolsheviks after the Russian Empire collapsed. This history is why Russia is acting now to push for Ukraine not drift completely away. It is also what makes Ukraine different from Poland which has cultural ties to Western Europe. It is why the US or Germany is not willing to go to war with Russia over Ukraine, as it would over Poland. It is also why Russia may not see war as the best option as about one third of Ukrainians say they will fight to defend their country, according to this report. The situation is complex and this is why both sides want to negotiate some way out in which Russia wants the US and NATO respecting its sense of connection with Ukraine in its history with Kyiv as the place Russian state started, and Russia not going further. Russia's tangible proposal is for no to Ukraine joining NATO or the European Union. The US and Germany want something else- the right of Eastern European nations that suffered from Tsarist or Soviet domination or German Hapsburg domination to finally be able to assert their own right of self-determination as democratic countries. This would include Finland. And also Sweden. Ukraine is not another small Eastern European country. Population is 44 million and it is the second largest by area in Europe after Russia.  Russia may also see the move to bring this up at this time as a way to unify the country against what it sees as threat from NATO. As Brendan Simms of Cambridge notes in his recent book -Europe, France went through a period after 1600 when it needed external danger as a way to unify the country, as much as unity of the country to fight external danger. The economic costs after building Nordstream II pipeline are to0 great for both Russia and Germany, and for the US and Russia during the pandemic, which means there is a real need to find a way out for all sides.     ...

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To meet the budget deficit Russia plans to issue $50 billion worth of ruble denominated bonds and privatize $10 billion in state assets every year until 2014. Russia is also changing its policy to attract foreign investment. For the first time since the 1998 financial crisis Russia will turn to international banks and pension funds in the US and Europe to maintain financing for a whole range of activities- from modernizing the military to paying high public sector wages. Russia is planning the sale of a stake in state bank VTB. And shares in oil companies, hydroelectric dams and shipping lines are also expected to go on the market.

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Joseph Nye, Jr. calls for a more patient approach from the Americans with Prime Minister Hatoyama of Japan on the Okinawa military base issue. He says Hatoyama faces pressure from within his own coalition and from Okinawans concerned about their future.

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British budget cuts announced in Parliament by Britain's Finance Minister, George Osborne. About 83 billion pounds in cuts by 2015 were announced. But Joseph Stiglitz, writing in The Guardian, argued that the plan was a big gamble, as declining tax revenues with lower growth, would lead to smaller deficit reductions. The gamble is that the private sector will pick up, and make up for the reduction in public outlays. If this does not happen, this risks sending the economy into a tailspin. Osborne said that 490,000 jobs will be lost over the next 4 years, some from attrition. Payments to the long term unemployed will also be cut for those who fail to seek jobs, saving $11 billion a year. A new 12 month limit will be imposed on long term jobless benefits. Increase in the retirement age will start in 2020, from 65 to 66 years. At the same time free eye tests, prescription drugs and bus passes remain. Premier Cameron promised not to make cutbacks in health care in the period before the election. This was his way of helping the Conservatives make a comeback to power....

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The situation in small towns in East Germany such as Loecknitz on the Polish border. The economy is depressed with unemployment twice the level in West Germany, and young people moving away. The economy on the Polish side is much healthier and Poles are moving to the German side from the Polish city of Szczecin, a 30 minute drive. Poles are also buying depressed German real estate and starting businesses. This is adding to the local economy as young Germans have moved to the larger cities but there is the sense of being left behind among some Germans. It comes from the period of reunification when after investing $2 trillion to integrate the two economies the best that could be done was making cities like Leipzig and Dresden in the east prosper but leaving the coutnryside in East Germany in an abandoned state as young people sought opportunities elsewhere. This may be why Angela Merkel who grew up and studied in the former East Germany told the German parliament in June 2012, "Germany's strength is not infinite. Germany's powers, too, are not unlimited."...

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Dutch New Amsterdam with 1500 inhabitants become British New York in 1664. It is later retaken by the Dutch and exchanged for Suriname in the West Indies. From a neglected outpost for the Dutch it becomes a center for trade under the growing British Empire. The city inherits the Dutch spirit of tolerance, diversity and aggressive free trading.

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Scotland joined with England and Wales to form Great Britain in 1707, at a time of increasing opportunities for Scottish people in the expanding British Empire. Britain's shipbuilding industry had a major base in Glasgow. During the Thatcher Conservative government Scotland suffered, and decades of globalization led to gradual deindustrialization for Scotland, the demise of the shipbuilding and other industries. The Labor Party under prime minister Blair pursued a "devolution of powers" policy, creating the first Scottish parliament following a referendum in 1999. Ironically this has changed the fortunes of the Scottish Nationalist Party led by Jack Salmond, a economist first elected to the British parliament in 1987. Salmond became head of the party in 1990 and led it to second place in 1999 elections, followed by a win in 2007 and 2011 elections. Salmond is seen as a vigorous campaigner, who can speak above others and not seen as a good listener. The party gained the confidence of Scottish voters by running a competent administration led by businessmen who were well aware of problems in local communities. Programs such as free prescriptions for medicines were popular with voters. The Labor Party stands to lose its voter base in Scotland (former Labor prime minister Gordon Brown is from Scotland), and the Conservative Party will also suffer a blow with a yes vote to independence. Polls show voters don't fully trust Salmond, but a majority 39% support an yes vote to 38% no vote, with 23% undecided. Britain just emerging from a deep recession would lose Scottish oil revenues of about 6 billion pounds, and the economy would suffer as business waited to see how things would turn out before making investments. Scotland now manages health, education and transport. Even without independence Scotland now stands to gain more powers and control, and control a higher percentage than the 60% of Scotland's budget that the Scottish government manages today. Scotland represents about 148 billion pounds or 9.2% of the UK GDP....