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Difficulties facing Britain which depends on continental Europe for exports and would be affected by whatever happens in Europe, and yet is reduced to being on the sidelines. This comes at a difficult time for the Cameron government, which is a coalition of Conservative party members who are euroskeptics, and the Liberal party members who are the most europhile of the the three major British parties. Sarkozy and Merkel have made clear that they would move ahead with a closer fiscal union within the eurozone, no matter what Britain's views are. This leaves David Cameron's government to what Labor leader, Ed Miliband, called "handwringing," as Britain can do little about the future direction of the EU. Cameron is able to please backbenchers in parliament from his party with talk about protecting British interests, but has no neotiating leverage, according to Steven Fielding, director of the Center for British Politics at the University of Nottingham. Britain may also have antagonized European leaders. Sarkozy said about Cameron and British government views: "You say you hate the euro and now you want to interfere with our meetings." This also happens as Britain faces rising unemployment, and deficits larger than anticipated after austerity measures taken by the Cameron government....

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Joe Nocera of the New York Times, says that it is the Attorney Generals of the 50 states in the USA, that have taken up the rights of homeowners, not the federal authorites. He points out that the Obama administration, the Treasury department and the federal agencies, have failed miserably in getting the banks and servicers to take loan modification seriously. It was the attorney generals of the states that were with homeowners from the beginning, to prevent predatory lending and outright fraud. Until they were stopped by federal bank regulators, who sided with the banks in court. The subprime lending crisis might never have ocurred, says Nocera, had the states not been obstructed in this way. As the subprime lending mounted, the state AG's were talking to people in their communities, and knew the reality on the ground. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision, two primary regulators of the banking industry, saw their role as protecting banks from consumers rather than protecting consumers. Professor Prentiss Cox, of the University of Minnesota Law School, who was an assistant attorney general in Minnesota in charge of consumer enforcement, says federal regulators should have been listening to us, instead of trying to shut us down....

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Major decline in oil prices in Oct. 2014 as prices drop to $81 per barrel and are forecast to reach $70. U.S. oil production increased by about 56% or 3.1 million barrels a day since 2004. U.S. demand for gas and fuel declined 8% compared to 2004. Initially instability and wars in the Middle East sustained high oil prices in 2012-2013. Yet with growing output from shale and other sources in N. America and slowing economies of Europe and China, the situation reached a point in 2014 where supply exceeds demand. This shift more than offsets any instability in trouble spots. The situation affects the U.S. consumer favorably with an estimate of $1 billion in savings for American consumers with every one cent drop in price at the gas pump, by one estimate from Deutsche Bank analysts. Typical American families gained an extra $50 a month from the decline June to October 2014, according to analysts at Gasbuddy.com. The declines are a boost for the slowing economies of Europe, Japan, China, S, Korea and India. China's imports for 2015 are estimated at 61% of oil consumption, using official estimates. In the current slowdown the lower prices offer relief. India which imports 75% of its energy benefits signficantly, as this helps lower inflation and reduces cost of fuel subsidies for state run companies. Russia is adversely affected by the declines as it depends on oil and gas exports for 50% of the nation's budget. Estimates by AFK Sistema economists show the Russian economy contracting in 2015 with oil at near $90 per barrel (Brent crude is at about $85, and WTI at $81 in early Oct. 2014). Russia's former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin reflects opinion among Russian executives and politicians, when he told state television that Saudi Arabia may be pushing prices lower to target Russia's oil resource based economy and Mr. Putin, in an effort to broaden the effect of sanctions. (The Saudis have strongly protested the Putin intervention in Syria.) Venezuela has used $120 per barrel and Angola $98 for its budget, leading to a strong hit for the economy. ...

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Gates experience one rainy night in March, at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, welcoming 4 dead soldiers who lost their lives to a roadside bomb on a rutted road near Jalalabad, Afghanistan, provides an insight into what he sees as important for the US military. One is to address the realities of the war that is facing the US in the now, not some theoretical conventional war as the Pentagon is overly focused on. This war is fought in insurgencies in Iraq and in the Pakistan-Afghanistan area. And even the takeover of nuclear weapons by Taliban, is not ruled out with the collapse of the government in Pakistan. So he sees reason for doing things quickly. At Dover that night, Gates expressed his anger to his staff, "find out why they had'nt gotten their goddamn MRAP's yet (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles). Gates went into the 747 carrying the draped coffins, and knelt alone and prayed for 5 minutes. Gates was President of Texas A&M University, before he took the assignment at Defense during the last 2 years of the Bush administration. He knows the ways of the bureaucracy, and is a persistent and effective when faced with lack of cooperation and delays. When the field commanders in Afghanistan said they needed 40 Predator combat air patrols instead of the 12 they had, Gates went around the bureaucratic delays and had his task force set up and and doing problem solving down to details. They went about getting more flying time, and pilots, and control stations in the air force to support this. He keeps presentations limited to 45 minutes, and inists all slides be turned in the day before, for him to look over carefully. And he is decisive in making changes. The Army Secretary was asked to come to Washington immediately, and fired on the spot, not Gates says for the appalling conditions at Walter Reed Army Hospital, but for not acknowledging that problems existed and taking quick action to fix them. And Gates is using the 2010 Defense budget to steer away from large scale conventional weapons programs, and get more money for the immediate needs of the field commanders in the wars being fought today. He makes it clear in talking with lawmakers, that "listening to our troops and commanders, unvarnished and unscripted, has from the moment I took the job been the greatest single source of ideas on what the department needs to do." In doing this he has to face up to the bureaucracy and set ways of doing things at the Defense Department, things that were never questioned under his predecessor Rumsfeld. In 2008 the generals who run the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps formally "non-concurred" with the classified version of Gates's National Defense Strategy, which said it was necessary "to take additional acceptable risk" in the area of conventional war so that the military could improve its ability to fight irregular wars. Gates met with all the defense chiefs to listen to their objections, and decided to draw his own conclusion after thinking it over, that the reasons given "were non-compelling," considering the grave dangers that the military was facing in existing wars. Gates is convinced that its his job to give the troops in the field the equipment and resources they need, and he is not letting the military brass or officials block the way. He does not let the criticism affect him. Gates is very quiet when he listens to arguments presented on the other side that he does not share, responding in a thoughtful and controlled manner. Last week, Jaffe of the WPost says, Gates flew to Afghnistan to ask for the resignation of Gen McKiernan the field commander there, a man he had chosen 11 months earlier, but now felt was the wrong man for the job. During this trip he visited a new base being built in southern Afghanistan, and met four marines whose MRAP vehicle took the blast from a roadside bomb, all survived with minor scratches and injuries, and one broken arm. Gates was mightily pleased. ...

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The ruble goes from a low of 80 to the dollar in Dec. 2014 to 50 to the dollar by May 2015. The euro also strengthens against the dollar with weakening economic conditions in the U.S. leading to a reversal in the strength of the dollar.

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After over two decades of focus on GDP growth targets, China under prime minister Li Keqiang is giving more emphasis to job growth and problems of air pollution, education, and quality of life indicators. Premier Keqiang tells a news conference in Beijing in March 2014 that China needs to create 10 million new jobs each year. More bond defaults can be expected as the financial system is being changed with new rules. Li says China will no longer be "preoccupied" with GDP growth targets. Li made the new priorities clear-"The GDP growth we want is one that brings real benefits to our people, helps raise the quality and efficiency of economic development and contributes to energy conservation and environmental protection."

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The impact on ASEAN countries of the monetary expansion policy of the Bank of Japan, Japan's central bank, and the policies of the Abe administration. Infusion of new liquidity into Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.

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Defense Secretary Gates does not see Russia as the threat it was in the Cold War, first because Russia's conventional forces are a "shadow" of what they were during the Cold War, and Russia has adverse demographic trends that will diminish Russia's ability in conventional forces. He sees the Georgian war in the context of Russia's seeking to exorcize, as he puts it, past humiliations. And Gates sees opportunities in the relationship with Russia. Such things as Russia's willingness to work with the US on Afghanistan. Evidence of this is Russia supporting the renwal of the UN resolution on Afghanistan. Another indication is that Russia he says is very worried about the drugs coming out of Afghanistan, and has been supportive to provide alternative routes for Europeans to get equipment and supplies into Afghanistan. These views come across in an interview on December 17, with Charlie Rose, a five time elected Congressman, for the PBS Charlie Rose show. They are also reflected in an article in Foreign Affairs journal's current issue. Gates was a CIA analyst and has some insightful observations. Gates told Charlie Rose that he does not see the Islamic radicals and violent Islamic extremists as a threat in the same way as the threat in the Cold War years. This threat is not as big as the threat to freedom during the Cold War. He says the failure in strategic communications was huge as agencies of the US government engaged in activities in other countries, like the Agency for International Development and the US Information Agency, were neglected starting in the in the 1990's. Communications in other countries of what the US represented and stands for was left to the Pentagon, a role the Pentagon was ill-suited for. He sees the Islamic terrorism as more of an ideological conflict. Speaking at a town hall meeting at the Balad Air Force base in Iraq, in December, Gates pointed to these communications failures as a real challenge for the new administration. But he now sees a huge opportunity in this past failure, and ways of addressing it creatively, in addition to commiting resources and people to this effort. Walter Pincus wrote this article, and its part of the fineprint analysis effort at the Washington Post in which speeches, reports, and other documents are examined by people like Pincus, to catch the really important things, uncovering the fine print that really makes the headlines. Another aspect of this fineprint effort is that there are a huge number of reports, and speeches and documents that had a tone reminiscent of the Cold War during the Georgia war and yet they do not correctly reflect the real situation about Russia, as Gates sees it from his analysis of what is actually happening. Gates has used Foreign Affairs, the Dec 17 Charlie Rose Show on PBS in which he was interviewed, and the speech at the Balad Air Force base in Iraq, to communicate his views and analysis. They are important to underline and emphasize precisely because they show that all that cold war hysteria reporting and speeches may be misleading and lead to improper conclusions and mistakes in policy, wasted effort, wasted resources, and lost lives. And just as the US strategic communications was starved of resources and effort, so also this necessary work to retrieve and give emphasis to the important things is neglected. One additional link to this is the speech, discussion, and QA session in Washington DC at the time of the G20 summit in which President Medvedev and the new administration's elder statesman and diplomat Marilyn Albright, former secretary of state, expressed their hopes and plans for a new era in Russian-American relations. ...

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Krugman says France is getting a lot of attention, but it is Germany where attention needs to be focussed. German long term bonds are yielding 0.7%, a yield level associated with Japanese deflation. He says Greece's problem was a fiscal mess limited to a small country, and Italy has a problem of low productivity that is unique to Italy over several decades. Loss of French competitiveness is overstated, as France has only a small trade deficit, and some of that lack of competitiveness comes not from excessive growth in cost and prices but from policies pursued in Germany. He points to France's GDP deflator (the average price of French goods and services) since 1999 when the euro started, as rising 1.7% a year, and labor costs rising 1.9% annually. By comparison German price growth was 1% and labor cost growth was 0.5%. France is close to the ECB target of 2% inflation. Germany falls way short of the 2% inflation target.

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Gretchen Morgenson describes the issues of regulatory capture for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner during the 2008 financial crisis and the first term of the Obama administration, which affected how Geithner treated homeowners and banks. Morgenson describes close ties to Citicorp.

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Raghuram Rajan, Professor of Finance at the Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago, was appointed chief economist at the IMF in 2003. He presented a paper, titled "Has Financial Development Made the World Riskier," at the annual Jackson Hole meeting of economists and central bankers for 2005. Rajan says he had planned to write about how financial developments during Greenspan's 18 year old tenure had made things safer, but the more he looked the more evidence came up that the risk reward relationships in a normal functioning financial market had been terribly distorted. Market participants were being rewarded for wins but were not being asked to take on commensurate risks and impacts on their bonuses and rewards. He also cautioned about the use of credit default swaps which acted as insurance against bond defaults, and said insurers were generating big returns on this but with the appearance of little risk- even though the pain could be immense in a default. Banks were carrying credit securties on their books that posed risks to the whole financial system if things went wrong with the credit securities. Reaction from the gathering was unfavorable. Lawrence Summers, a former Treasury Secretary said, "the basic, slightly lead eyed premise of the paper was misguided."...

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The ECB stands ready to act with the unanimous support of its 25 member governing policy, says Mario Draghi, president of the ECB. Draghi said that "if oil feeds into other prices, that could generate exactly what we want to avoid, namely a spiralling downward phenomenon" for wages and prices. Mark Carney of the Bank of England, says he will see "how things evolve." The U.S. Federal Reserve might slow planned rate increases in 2016, if inflation remains well below the target of 2%, and conditions indicate adverse effect on the economy.

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Ford's ways to boost fuel economy in the immediate short run. Putting Eco-Boost engines, reducing weight, using aerodynamic materials, power assisted steering, and doing this on the Ford Explorer.

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Russian president Putin tells Russians at an annual news conference on Dec. 17, 2014, that the West wanted to deprive Russia of its natural resources. He says steps taken by the central bank and his administration were proper, including avoiding capital controls, except that the decision to raise interest rates to 17% in mid-Dec. should have been taken earlier. He deflects criticism that the sanctions and the decline in the ruble were "payment for Crimea" (Russia's takeover of the Crimea) by saying it was "payment for our independence, our sovereignty." Putin expressed unease with the expansion of NATO to Russia's borders. He told Russians to expect that the crisis will last for 2 years and during this time the Russian economy will adapt, in particular shifting its heavy dependence on oil exports. During the 10 years of the Putin administration since 2004, Russia has not made a vigorous effort to diversify away from oil dependence. Progress was made primarily in better integrating the economy with the European Union, entry into WTO, building a sovereign reserves fund, until the crisis in Ukraine. The Putin years may be seen in the future as the transition years towards a more diversified economy, and may lead to a shift away from the kind of management of economic and foreign policy by a single leader that may have led to the disruption in relations with Germany, a critical economic partner for Russia. Chancellor Merkel said Germany would continue to support sanctions as long as Russia opposed the right of self- determination of people in Europe and European values. Germany continues even now to maintain dialogue with Russia through Social Democrat Foreign Minister Steinmeier, which is why Putin continues to refer to it as "our partners" and cites the differences with our partners, very different from the Cold War period when no such close relations with Germany existed. ...

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IHS Global Insight estimates that output in the US for the auto industry for 2009 will be 9.5 million vehicles, with capacity of 16.9 milllion vehicles this amounts to 56% capacity utilization number which is very low. Center for Automotive Research estimates that the sales began moving ahead of trend in 1996 and really accelerated after 1998. The easy financing fueled the boom. Now the 16-17 million sales years that were considered normal are seen as inflated and way above the trend. All this suggests that there is a lot of restructuring ahead for the auto industry.

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During 2012 and 2013 the U.S. put pressure on China and India to cut oil imports from Iran to increase the effectiveness of sanctions. As negotiations eased the sanctions, China increased oil imports in 2014 by 30% in 2014 over the prior year. China's Foreign Ministry sees a "win-win spirit" in the nuclear deal that opens up economic relations with Iran. Analysts say China has setup three new storage facilities on its eastern coast with about 45 million barrels of new capacity, which could be filled with new supplies as its growth slows and demand decreases. China's imports were about 7 million barrels a day in June 2015.

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Former World Bank chief Zoellick points to the need for investments in human capital and productivity improvements in emerging markets such as India, China and Brazil to overcome the problem of slow growth in 2013.

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The story of Lara Gass, a law student in Virgina, whose brakes, power steering and power failed causing a fiery crash, because of a faulty ignition switch in a 2006 Saturn Ion. The failure of GM to take the cars with that defective switch off the road till they are repaired is cause for anguish for 21 grieving families that lost a family member.