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Krugman on taxes, Simpson Bowles and "low rates." He describes the U.S. under Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican president and war hero. A period which he describes in which unions had bargaining power, a third of workers were union members, and in contrast to to the 1920 business executives lived modestly and paid higher taxes. And yet the U.S. registered high rates of growth. There are several aspects to this period in contrast to the present that also need to be kept in mind. The post war booming economy after two decades of slow growth and war. Much of the present infrastructure in the U.S. was built during this period including the interstate highway system started under Eisenhower. The workers of developing countries of China, India and other parts of the world were not a part of the global labor force till the 1990's, with technology and transportation making global manufacturing a reality. The major factor in lowering wages and creating lower levels of unionized workers in the automobile as in other industries is the competition from lower wage labor in China and other Asian countries, and the presence of non unionized plants in the U.S. The choices made by economic decisionmakers of both parties in the last two decades, say experts including Fed chairman Bernanke, created a huge inflow of capital from Asia that led to housing and other bubbles, creating economic crises such as the one in 2008 and aggravating economic inequality. ...

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The economic damage is larger in some states with a larger manufacturing base and one tending to be cyclical. 20% of Michigan's GDP is in auto manufacturing. The large jump in cases to 40,000 and 3600 deaths have led to stricter quarantine. The unemployment rate in Michigan is forecast at 23% much higher than the national average of 16% that peaks in May. It is also likely to last longer till early 2020. As a result of the strict quarantine  larger parts of retail, service and construction sectors are affected. This has led to protests in areas where the coronavirus threat is not as large as it is in Detroit.

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This article describes the increasing cooperation between Finland, Sweden and Norway. Compatibility between Swedish forces has been improved to the point that a Swedish squadron can easily be integrated into a NATO led operation. This improves NATO capabilities in the Baltic region as Russia expands its military presence. Sweden is officially neutral, yet its values and security challenges are the same as that of the rest of Europe.

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This video of former Attorney General Bill Barr shows his testimony to the US Congress on president Trump's statements that there was election fraud from voting boxes coming into Detroit at all hours and in the design of voting machines. This led to Mr. Trump saying the election was stolen. Mr. Barr says he told the president that this was "detached from reality" and he feels that it was doing "a disservice to the country."

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A red wave fails to appear, says this report in The Guardian of the US 2022 midterm elections for the US Congress. A key Senate seat in Pennsylvania goes to Democrat Fetterman. Other races are tight and the final results will take time. Ron De Santis wins Florida as a Republican with a wide margin and is seen as looking for the Republican nomination for president in 2024. The Georgia Senate seat looks to be headed for a runoff.

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The US death rates were 15% above normal compared to other European countries at 9-12% above normal for the pandemic. The US deaths exceed 1 million in 2020 and 2021. India's death rate was about 26% above normal, Brazil's 24% above normal compared to 41% for Mexico, even though Brazil made the most headlines. Uneven vaccination in states in the northern and southern US led to the high US death rate and 1 million deaths.

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This report by Timiraos in WSJ describes the tussle between supply siders led by Mike Pence and David Malpass with the zero sum advisors who advised Trump on trade during the campaign. The zero sum advisors are focussed only on how to turn trade to improve the U.S. position and cut trade deficits. The supply siders are trying to show that trade can benefit the U.S. only that it needs to be adjusted so that it works better for the U.S.

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Three term Mayor Ed Korch of New York.

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Bad loans in Spain's banking system reached a high of 8.16% of total loans by banks in Feb. 2012, according to the Bank of Spain. The total amount of bad loans was 144 billion euros.

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The comparison by Goldsmith and Moyn has picked the wrong Roosevelt. Only Washington in the war of independence, Lincoln in the Civil War over slavery, and FDR Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the Great Depression and economic collapse, fall in that category and there is no one and nothing to compare with both the struggles they fought and the challenge to the survival of the US. On the next scale comes TR Teddy Roosevelt, and this is the Roosevelt to compare DJT with. TR was unconventional, TR spoke a different language and could be frank and outspoken. TR actions matched his words, as his days on the Indian frontier and with the Rough Riders. TR also had one term plus completing McKinley's term after his assasination. And TR like DJT did not like his successor and did everything to make the comeback denouncing the policies of his successor William Howard Taft in the 1912 election, which TR lost to Democrat Woodrow Wilson. All this is true for DJT in 2026. TR denounced the shift away from his "progressive policies" and the shift to corporate interests of Republican Taft. In this sense also DJT is similar as he denounced the shift to corporate interests of the Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama years. TR was no country club Republican and was willing to confront opponents in the politics to fight for the benefit of the working man, splitting the Republican party in the process. This is true of DJT. TR launched the rebuilding of the Navy, and announced he would reassert the Monroe Doctrine. DJT is doing the same and is reasserting the Monroe Doctrine. One could say that DJT feels the hidden TR in him and like Teddy Roosevelt is putting America in the place it once was. For TR the industrial revolution had distorted a country founded on the backs of settlers owning the land independent and rugged, as industry turned the country into corporate interests and workers in factories with few rights, and poor working conditions and wages. This TR even as a Republican fought to reverse. In DJT there is the Republican also of a different mould who fights to reverse the situation created by Bush/Clinton/Bush/ Obama over three decades since the 1990's when America has fallen to new lows when drug trafficking gangs in Mexico and Venezuela are able to run rampant over the western hemisphere, when elites in Canada and the US act impotent in the face of this, or living in their own world away from the streets and neighborhoods of America devastated by drug trafficking, towns and neighborhoods from Janesville to Flint economically deprived as elites shifted manufacturing overseas to China in complete indifference to the American worker and his family, and carried out wars in remote parts of the world such as hills of Afghanistan and deserts of Iraq no worker or farmer in America had even heard of or cared about since the American continent was settled in 1600. If there is a Woodrow Wilson around the corner who won in 1912, for the 2028 election, then it is someone who like Wilson will take policies to benefit the American worker and farmer and his family, and America as a Nation to a better place over the next decade. A passage from Teddy Roosevelt from his Autobiography about who TR was struggling against illustrates this point- "They favored Civil Service Reform; they favored copyright laws, and the removal of tariffs on works of art; they favored all the proper (and even more strongly the improper ) movements for international peace and arbitration; in short, they favored all good and many goody-goody, measures so long as they did not cut deep into social wrong or make demands on National and individual virility. They opposed, or were lukewarm, about efforts to build up the army and the navy, for they were not sensitive regarding National honor, and above all they opposed every non-milk-and-water effort, however sane to change our social and economic system in such a fashion as to substitute the ideal of justice towards all for the ideal of kindly charity from the favored few to the possibly grateful many." (Theodore Roosevelt, Autobiography, Chapter 5 title: Applied Idealism, 1913) ...

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Participation by the Democratic Left party led by Fotis Kouvelis is necessary to form a stable government. Kovelis says the harshest austerity measures such as the demand to cut the minimum wage would have to be revoked in a new platform for New Democracy, Pasok Socialist party, and the Democratic Left. The timetable for Greece to meet budget deficit targets would also need to be extended. This comes as the three parties negotiate terms for a new government led by Antonis Samaras.

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 Harris's role for the Border was limited to telling Central American migrants to stay home. Much of the migration was a result of wars started in the Reagan years in Central American states of Nicaragua and San Salvador. This destabilized the region and led to gangs taking over parts of the country in San Salvador and entrenching Castro style regime in Nicaragua, leading to outward migration of young people. As this report points out Harris was supposed to take on decades of such misguided policies in Central America in a few months. A drought hit agricultural coffee regions of Guatemala increasing migration. Her role instead was to ensure several wins. Win No.1 to generate stability setting up the peaceful transfer of power in Guatemala, singling out corrupt regimes. Win No. 2 to generate jobs. US AID and IFDC loans were increased, foreign investment attracted to generate 250,000 jobs. Win No. 3 the increased stability led to gradually declining migration from Central America. What replaced it was Venezuela. And that is a repeat story of Reagan style wars in Central America. Under the Trump Administration the US did not take up the Monroe Doctrine and act directly to support a stable fairly elected government in Venezuela, an obvious solution. Instead going half way- destabilizing the government but then left it on its own. The result about a third of the population leaving the country in these years to Colombia and other parts of Latin America in a immense humanitarian tragedy.  In 2023 Venezuelans not Guatemalans entered at the US Border in large numbers, most of them middle class families that left Venezuela after hyperinflation and mismanagement of the economy. Realizing the danger by January 2024 Biden negotiated with Senate Minority Leader McConnell and his Republican representative Senator Lankford to pass legislation in the Senate closing the Border. All that was needed was the House to act and 30 years of Border problem would be solved.This was blocked in the House by new Speaker Mike Johnson on advice from former president Trump who chose to use the issue in the 2024 election. Biden then used his executive powers to close the Border leading to lower numbers of migrants under Biden by July 2024 than under Trump. Migration Border Czar was never a term used by Democrats in the Obama and Biden years. Biden who also served in a role given migration as one of the issues to handle under Obama, had this as only one of his assignments. Biden played more important roles in foreign policy with his experience as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for decades. Border policy was made by president Obama and his advisers. The same is true of Harris, Border policy being done by president Biden and his advisers. Similar to Biden's role as VP Harris was given assignment to cover foreign policy and was the US representative at 3 Munich Security Conferences in 2021-2024 following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Chancellor Scholz of Germany said of Harris last week that he had full confidence in Harris as both competent and experienced. ...

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The memo to U.S. president Reagan written by his economic advisors in November 1980 before his first inauguration. Inflation was running at 13% and the economic problems looked as intractable as they do today. Advisors included Milton Friedman and George Shultz. The memo called for setting steady policies for the long run to encourage investment and growth, and at the same time steady monetary policy. This is different from the repeated quantitative easing efforts by the Federal Reserve responding to financial markets, and the Obama administration's stimulus efforts that have not led to long term growth. On the long term perspective the memo said: "The need for a long-term point of view is essential to allow for the time, the coherence, and the predictability so necessary for success." The memo was released by George Shultz.

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Risks Katie Nixon of Northern Trust sees are in a sharp fall off in growth in China. She is less concerned about the risks of another flareup in the eurozone crisis. What worries her clients is how all this will end- the 2008 dropoff in growth followed by loose monetary policy by the Fed. Whether this will end in stagflation or a situation like that in Japan?

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Feldstein sees the need for some kind of tax cut in 2008 that would be triggered by increase in unemployment. He advocates further decreases in interest rates by the Fed in 2008. He doesn't see much relief for subprime borrowers. The doollar in his view is still overly strong and a lower dollar would help the US reduce its trade deficit by stimulating exports even further.