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Whites are aging faster in the U.S., census figures show, and white deaths are higher than white births as the birthrate for whites declines. This is also leading to anxiety among whites about uncontrolled immigration, and behind the Republican party's moves on immigration. The effects of world trade and the hollowing out of some industries with the effect on local communities in the U.S. has exacerbated the anxiety. Signs of this were evident in the last decade leading to the Trump campaign based on immigration issues and trade in the 2016 election, which resonate more in the mid sections of the U.S. with the lack of the tech industry and financial industry of the two coasts.

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Australia's Productivity commission states in a report that 4 large banks control 75% of the lending, deposit and credit card business leading to higher fees for consumers. Profit margins of Australian banks are some of the highest in the world. The report says stability should not be the only goal for banks.

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About 200 coal plants closed in the U.S. since 2010. Another 40 will close in the years ahead. No new coal plants are being built. At the most the new EPA roll back of emissions rules will stave off closure for a bit longer for a few coal plants, reports Brad Plummer in NYT.

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Terminal 1 at Heathrow Airport in London is being torn down as it makes way for the expansion of Terminal 2. Terminal 1 was opened as the biggest and most innovative in Europe in 1969- 50 years later it is a relic of the past in airline travel and all artifacts are being auctioned.

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Spotify raises $1 billion from venture capital firms in March 2016. It gives the VC firms a 20% discount in a IPO offering for the shares in 1 year, and adding 2.5% every 6 months till an IPO. Spotify is losing money and plans an IPO in 2 years. It faces competition from Apple Music streaming service. Private equity firm TPG, Dragoneer Investment Group, and clients of Goldman Sachs participated in the deal. Tech firms are increasingly using convertible debt rather than equity. Spotify also pays annual interest of 5% which is added to the debt, and this increases by 1 percentage point every 6 months till it reaches 10%. Fidelity Investments has marked down its Spotify stake, down 27% for Spotify shares since August 2015.

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France lags behind Germany and other countries in competitiveness. France's share of European exports decreased from 15.6% in 2000 to 12.5% in the first 5 months of 2011, according to Coe-Rexecode, an economics consultancy firm. Germany has used the last decade to lower social spending and state spending, bring wage restraint, and making industry more productive. France has not experienced a similiar process. Competitiveness and growth is needed for France to improve public finances. After the rise in borrowing costs to Italy France's premium over Germany to borrow for 10 years went up to 71 basis points on July 13, it is now at 62 points. France's trade deficit is rising and was 7 billion euros in April and May, according to Societe Generale.

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Serious problems with transparency, and the quality of data used for the CPI and property prices index prepared by China's National Bureau of Statistics. The statistics are seen as flawed by experts because they understate the serious property price bubble in China. It does this by diluting the large rises in big cities with smaller rises in smaller cities. From now on data will be published separately for each of the 70 cities that make up the index, and a new method will be used for calculating property prices that only looks at housing, not commercial property. For housing prices it will use data from online property registries, instead of a survey of transactions that earlier understated housing price increases.

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GM management is now considering government supported bankruptcy as a serious option, after insisting for months that that would not work, and that it would affect the whole supply chain. This comes as GM's auditors raised "substantial doubt" that GM could operate as agoing concern considering its state of finances. Prices on GM's bonds are down to less than 20 cents on the dollar, for GM's $3 billion 30 year bond. according to Thomson-Reuters. Under bankruptcy GM's entire debt load could be reworked and bondholders would see it in their interest to make necessary concessions for this to happen. Also the franchise overhaul could proceed on the retailing side. A prepackaged bankruptcy would typically be accomplished in afew months.

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Toyota is seeing declining sales and has cut its temporary workforce by more than 20% from 8,800 in March to 6,800 in September. Sales declined 4% in the July-September quarter. The whole area in Toyota city with 76,000 jobs connected to the auto industry and the area around Nagoya is being affected. And emerging markets are not making up for steep declines in the American market. Analysts at Credit Suisse and UBS predict Japan's economy could contract by 1% in 2009. Sales at major department stores in Nagoya dropped 8.7% in September, the largest decline among 10 major cities in Japan, and there is a fivefold increase in the number of distressed businesses seeking government loans according to a report by the local chamber of commerce.

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Companies now realize that stretched supply chains is a risky business. Shipping costs have tripled and in some cases are ten times what they were before the pandemic. Logistics, containers, shipping, manufacturing in remote locations, is making this more complex and unmanageable. Cuts in coal consumption in China and economic recovery is pushing up demand for oil leading to $80 a barrel in oil prices. Outages in factories in south east Asian countries and China are leading to shortages in semiconductors and other products in the supply chain. This is affecting automobile production and other production affected by lack of such inputs.

This is prompting a serious rethink of existing supply chains.

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Apple's new privacy rules are reducing the extensive tracking of internet users that took place in an unregulated industry for the last decade. Apple has introduced a long overdue privacy change that restricts how users can be tracked on apps such as Facebook, Instagram and other apps. Users are now asked if they want to be tracked and can opt out. US users opt to allow tracking only 16% of the time they see the Apple privacy prompt. This will be one more needed step to protect the privacy of users that had suffered  in the last 10 years from rampant and unrestricted tracking of users.

 

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Shale oil producer spending in the U.S. is forecast to drop by 3%, but this will still add one million barrels a day of additional shale oil production. Prices are now at about $45 a barrel and shale producers are cutting back on production rigs in operation with the 40% decline in oil prices. The EIA expects oil production to reach an average of 12.1 million barrels daily in 2019 from an average of 10.9 barrels a day in 2018. This suggests there will be additional supplies and continued downward pressure on oil prices. The situation is favorable for the U.S. and countries such as India which benefit from lower oil prices.

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There are 240 Norwegian and Finnish companies in India, says this report in The Hindu. Nordic countries are providing green technologies to India. At the Nordic-India Summit held in Copenhagen in May 2022, the five Nordic prime ministers and prime minister Modi agreed to intensify cooperation on digitalisation, renewable energy, maritime industries and the circular economy. Denmark is helping India with ports and logistics. Trade ministers of Norway and Finland visiting India together  Feb 9-10 describe the efforts to provide Nordic technology solution in green transition to India. Trade between Norway and India has doubled in the last 3 years and the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund is likely to become on the largest investors in India at $17.6 billion. Vestre us Norway's Minister of Trade and Industry, Skinnari is Finnish Minister of Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade. 

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Economy Minister Habeck says- "Our energy system will be structured differently: we will have 80% renewable energies by 2030."  Germany will close its last 3 nuclear plants this week. Germany is shutting down all nuclear energy when other countries are increasing reliance on nuclear energy. Westinghouse is building Poland's first nuclear plant. Britain, France and Finland are increasing nuclear energy with its very low carbon emissions. Biden administration in the US is backing the building of a new generation of smaller nuclear reactors. Mr. Habeck the Economy minister says for the short term Germany has its natural gas storage tanks half full with the winter heating season over. New LNG terminals and imports help replace Russian supplies. In the long term Germany is way ahead in renewable energy than other countries and will craft its own solution in its own way.

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At a critical juncture in the global fight against the pandemic eight in ten U.S. counties are in lockdown. About 29% of the U.S. economy is offline on April 5, 2020, according to Moody's Analytics. U.S. daily output has fallen by 29% compared to March 2019. Moody's Analytics predicts a 30% annualized decline in the second quarter GDP as businesses gradually reopen in the summer. Higher unemployment and loss of household wealth are likely to cause demand side drops making the recovery very gradual in this scenario. It all depends on how long this lasts and how effective the fight against the pandemic is including the steps taken to cut the spread of the virus, the action taken for rapid testing and isolating of clusters as happened in South Korea and Taiwan, which remain models for effective action. 

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Germany's Europe Minister does some FACT CHECK on Trump's statements that German's shift from fossil fuels has failed.

The German Foreign Ministry stated-

"Like it or not: Germany’s energy system is fully operational, with more than 50 percent renewables,” the ministry wrote, “And we are shutting down — not building — coal and nuclear plants. Coal will be off the grid by 2038 at the latest.”

Anna Luhrmann, Europe minister said-

"As democrats, we can no longer allow false statements to stand uncommented.”

"We have stopped using nuclear power and are burning less coal than we have since the 1960s. And our energy supply is and will remain stable."

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Same store sales continued to drop for the fifth consecutive quarter for Best Buy electronics retail stores. Best Buy shares have declined by 32% as of September 14, 2011. Best Buy has 1,100 stores in the U.S. and competes with online retailer Amazon for electronics sales. Investors see Best Buy management's plans to reduce square footage by 10% as too slow a response to a developing crisis for big store sales. Best Buy CEO, Brian Dunn, says about 40% of online purchases from Best Buy are picked up at its stores. He sees a role for retailers with physical store space because, as he sees it, customers still want to see, touch and feel the latest tablet or other electronic gadget. Critics say customers are prone to use the stores to look at products, and make the actual purchases online at Amazon, where no sales tax is paid.

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Copper futures fell by more than 6% on Sept. 22, 2011. Rio Tinto's shares were down close to 11%. In 2011 shares of BHP, Rio Tinto and Xstrata have dropped by 30-40% from the peak reached on July 7. This is much faster than the fall in metals prices. The Dow Jones-UBS Industrial Metals Index declined by 19% in that period. The decline in mining shares suggest medium term metals prices will drop to the recession levels in the last quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009, according to RBC Capital Markets. This view is not reflected in commodities markets. Iron ore prices are double now compared to prices during the 2008-2009 recession, and copper prices at $3.48 are much higher than the $2.02 average price during the 2008-2009 recession. Goldman Sachs estimates that BRIC's growth would have to decline sharply for this to happen.

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How the nations private investors, private equity funds and funds that are backed by public pension funds, could acting as vulture investors, become part of the solution to taking bad assets off the banks that have them. The first step is forming apublic private partnership and White House advisor Summers has already met with private equity managers about this. Again these investors are in for making atidy profit so the government would have to pick up alarge part of the tab. In the case of IndyMac private investors paid $13.9 billion but only took responsibility for 20% of the losses the government picked up the rest of the losses. And in this way during the savings and loan crisis private investors made returns in the 30% range. They would come in this time for double digit returns. ould bear the rest of the losses.

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By September 2009, says the NYT based on a state by state analysis of Labor Department numbers, 1 out of 4 persons in California will either be out of work or just working part time. At this time in July 2009, 1 in 5 persons in California are in this situation. This would mean a 25% unemployment/underemployment rate in California, and the rate in Florida, North Carolina and Washington could reach 20%, by September 2009. This spring the unemployment/underemployment rate reached 23.5% in Oregon, 21.5% in Michigan and Rhode Island, and 20.3% in California. In Tennessee, Nevada and some other states that rely heavily on manfacturing or housing, the rate was just under 20% this spring, and may have since passed that number. And so far only $90 billion of the stimulus has made it out the door according to Moody's Economy.com. From now until the end of 2010, an additional $25 billion or thereabouts will be spent every month. In most of the Great Plains States and the Mountain West the unemployment/underemployment rate was still below 12% in spring 2009, and in North Dakota as low as7.8%. But these states are getting adisproportionate share of the stimulus fund, which shows that the allocation of stimulus funds needs to be adjusted. Who are these parttime workers and how many are there? Take Richard Smith and his wife Lyn. They left Michigan where he worked for GM and Ford in white collar jobs till he was laid off. Mr Smith moved to Charlotte, N. Carolina last summer. He hasn't found full time work after sending in hundreds of applications. He now works a few days aweek at agolf shop, repairing clubs and making $9.50 an hour. With the help of that money he has bought abargain-basement foreclosed house. Part time workers like the Smiths comprise about one third of the 20% unemployment/underemployment rates in states like Michigan and Oregon, so the rate for those who are completely out of work is around 13% in these 2 states....

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The Affordable Care Act subsidies are basically a band aid approach to a fundamentally broken health care system in the US, says Washington Post Editorial Board on Nov. 1, 2025. The 22 million ACA subsidies will cost $350 billion over 10 years. Democrats have the government shutdown over this issue of extending Obama ACA subsidies where enrolment increased in the covid and Biden years with generous subsidies. The Washington Post looks at how we got here since 1945, decisions made about employer insurance plans that created a patchwork of plans from private sector and other plans outside it with perverse incentives and inefficient subsidies. It calls the system stupid, and politicians looking to the next 2 year midterm elections wary of addressing the whole problem in the proper way for a system that will benefit all the people of the US.

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BBC Director General who started out with Pepsi Cola and later joined BBC Tim Davie resigns. Also resigning is BBC CEO Deborah Turness for their role in BBC's editing of a Trump speech at the Capitol Jan. 6. The Guardian shows the speeches side by side, edited and original in today's Guardian Nov. 10. Editing led to a settlement with CBS News. BBC is being sued for $1 billion by DJT for damage to reputation resulting from such misreporting. The trust in the media is affected by such reporting errors and alternative media sources such as Lyrarc.com are now playing a useful role in the US and Europe, Asia to give a fair and open, transparent presentation of what is happening in the world to build educated and informed mindsets that affects and shapes people's lives.

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The reasons for pessimism are the effect of the global credit decline which makes it harder for Indian business to get access to credit, and the impact of shrinking export markets overseas. The lower inflation and less need for oil subsidies with the fall in the oil price are positive factors. The biggest positive factors though are the fact that exports amount to a much smaller amount of GDP, about 22%, smaller than other Asian exporting countries, as the export markets shrink. The resilience of its democracy and the energy and dynamism of its young people, added to the demographics that show about half the population is below the age of 25, and 40% under the age of 18, so there will be more wage earners and savings to support growth for decades to come. What experts including at the Economist see as the major advantage is the high savings rate which has risen from 28% in 2003-2004 to 35.5% in 2007 according to the Economist statistics. With this the investment rate in India has grown from 25% in the 1990's to 35% in the last five years since 2003 with Indian manufacturing growing at arate of 12% in 2007. And the Indian investment rate has been covered mostly by domestic savings. The two areas that hobble growth are the education levels and the state of the infrastructure which are challenges for organizations inside and outside the government and for business and will remain so for many years. With the global financial crisis the Indian growth rate is expected to fall to somehwere in the range of 5-6% for 2009 by experts. ...

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President Trump extends the U.S. lockdown for social distancing till April 30, on the advice of health experts. China meanwhile resumes industrial production and schools reopen. Factories, offices and retail outlets were shutdown for 2 months nearly nationwide in China. The U.S. has a social distancing lockdown not a complete quarantine of hotspots such as New York, New Jersey. Mr. Trump planned to quarantine New York but faced opposition from the governors of New York and New Jersey, including possible legal challenges. U.S. governors have acted imposing travel restrictions to their states from hotspots in other places in the country, forcing people traveling to self-isolate, stopping vehicles with out of state license plates and asking them to stay away. The U.S. cases have jumped from 100 in early March to 143,000 as of March 28, 2020, and 2514 deaths, according to John Hopkins. New estimates from president Trump and his team of experts are for the peak to be reached by April 15, and recovery gradually taking place by June 1, 2020. Based on the timeline in China shown below the time from the first set of 27 cases by December 15 to March 28 when China's factories were back to work and schools reopened across the country, is a period of 75 days. Based on this president Trump's timeline of June 1 for recovery has some foundation. China quarantined strictly compared to the U.S. yet in the early days it had no warning which the U.S. had in particular from Italy. The Trump administration by extending social distancing and lockdown restrictions till April 30 without a strict quarantine of the East coast areas yet with states outside imposing their own restrictions for outsiders, is doing what other countries such as China, South Korea, have to control this epidemic. The first coronavirus case was reported on November 17, 2019 according to the South China Morning Post, By December 15, the number of cases had reached 15. On December 27 on a single day 180 cases were recorded and the Head of the Respiratory Department at Hubei Provincial Hospital reported this to health authorites in China, according to the South China Morning Post, based on data collected in China.   ...

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As credit shrinks the property market has borrowers borrowing from hedge funds that are lightly regulated and charge higher interest rates as much as 12% on some loans. The market for commerical mortgages issued by banks has all but dried up, last year 2007 it accounted for 70% of financing commerical property. Before this hard money lenders like these hedge funds operated at the fringes targeting desperate investors and developers who needed cash fast or had poor credit, now commericial borrowers with good credit and track records are scrambling for funding. Its a sign of the times.