LyrArc Article Gist
A proposal to transfer debt in excess of 60% of GDP of all eurozone countries into a single fund to be paid off in 25 years is gaining attention in Germany. It is seen as finding acceptance with Germany's Constitutional Court. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, says eurobonds are unconstitutional in Germany. Germany calls instead for greater European integration and transfer of powers from sovereign governments to a European banking supervisory authority. In early June 2012 discussions continued in Berlin between Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission and Angela Merkel of Germany. The German position is summarized in the words of German finance minister Schauble, when he said that Germany could not hand over its credit card to other countries.

LyrArc Article Gist
Marie Le Pen and the National Front performed very poorly in French elections. Perceptions of voters are changing. The efforts in tackling the coronavirus, effective vaccination drives, public health protection, and building access to vaccine supplies, have shown the need for good leadership that believes in a science driven direction. Immigration is no longer the issue it once was and in some polls it is seventh on the list after climate change, economy,  education, pensions. The National Front in France and AfD are losing regional elections and popularity is dropping to about 10%. The Greens party in Germany and the Gaullist Republicans in France are being revitalized. Other factors are also present. The search for authenticity and effectiveness. After dismissing a popular prime minister who tackled the health crisis in 2020 France's president Macron fared badly in recent regional elections. His party En Marche was hastily put together in the last year of the administration of Mr. Hollande, the predecessor from the Socialist party. Its initial popularity has not turned into grassroots support. Mr. Hollande, Mr. Macron, are now seen as one term presidents. It is not so much that the centrist parties are gaining as a search for parties that can provide effective alternatives in the face of the challenges placed on the world by the pandemic- renewal of supply chains. climate change, public services, infrastructure, health, education, lives of the elderly. In the US, Europe, and India, countries in Latin America, there is a growing awareness of the need to rebuild with the people in mind, the people who have suffered badly in this health crisis and the financial crisis that preceded it in 2009. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Toyota plans to spend $175 million to advertise the 2012 redesigned and reinvented Toyota Camry. Toyota will use as campaign theme, "Its ready. Are you?" It focusses on the idea that Toyota is back after recent difficulties.

LyrArc Article Gist
Gordon Brown, former prime minister of Britain from 2007 to 2010, chaired the April 2009 G-20 meeting that came up with ways to tackle the global financial crisis. Brown also led the way by recapitalizing British banks, a step the U.S. followed. He comments on the volatility in financial markets in August 2007 following the S&P credit downgrade of the U.S.. Brown gives an incomplete grade to the tasks the 2009 G-20 set out to accomplish. He points to three goals the G-20 had set in the middle of the financial crisis in April 2009. The first was to prevent a recession from becoming a depression. The other two were to establish a financial stability regime, and a compact for growth. These two became paper promises says Brown. Brown sees the best approach to prevent a lost decade is for U.S. and Europe trading their way out of a downturn as the Asian market absorbs more industrial goods from Europe and the U.S. This includes policies that would keep commodity prices low and ways of coping with currency shocks. Analysts have pointed to an export led recovery as one of the solutions the U.S. was hoping to achieve with a lower value of the dollar. This has had only limited success because of deep structural problems- high consumer indebtedness, bad debt at the banks, weak housing sector following the mortgage crisis, and a rising U.S. deficit- which will take some time to clear. Brown does not come to grips with these underlying imbalances built up during the boom years of the last decade, both in Britain and in the U.S., during which he was the finance minister of Britain....

LyrArc Article Gist
Pearlstein says the major news stories of today all are about the same theme- of how the US was encouraged to live beyond its means by trading partners who prospered as this went on, with the tacit agreement of financial and political leadership in the US who raised no alarm about this. These stories are: the G-20 meeting in South Korea with the goal of rebalancing the world economy, the President's Deficit Commission Report recommending bold steps in changing the tax and spending policies of the US, the criticism of the Fed's decision on $600 billion of quantitative easing, and the renewed concerns about Ireland where severe cuts in public spending have failed to reverse a downward slide.These trading partners prospered by lending Americans the money to consume more than they produce. It was he says a wonderful arrangement while it lasted, because it helped bring millions out of poverty in Asia, while letting Americans enjoy a transitory period of a higher standard of living. This unsustainable arrangement converted the US from world's biggest creditor nation after World War II to the world's bigggest debtor nation. He credits Geithner for coming up with a more convincing and less confrontational way to correct the imbalances by setting limits on the deficits and surpluses of trading nations. He points out that the Chinese have barely budged on the issue of an undervalued currency, the world be damned. And the German and Chinese criticism rings hollow he says, as both countries are the main beneficiaries of the current system. The normal mechanism of correcting imbalances with a floating rate exchange system is hardly relevant, as it is incompatible with state run economy and strategy of export growth of China. Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson have presented he says a bold deficit reduction plan that is credible, fair, economically sound. Even though it was received with the usual complacency and lack of awareness both in the media and in Congress. The simple reality after all the awfully complicated details and the painful implications is this: Americans have to consume less and produce more, and trading partners have to consume more and produce less. And this shift cannot be pushed into the future as our trading partners would like....

LyrArc Article Gist
The Romney story says this editorial is one of a turnaround- of a kind patiently nurtured from his days turning around businesses as a management consultant. This one was different and probably required a lot of soul searching and courage to take up new positions. As a technocrat, says the Journal, Romney would have been more comfortable with a room full of IQ's going over spreadsheets of numbers. He tried to do this by not taking up specific positions till the need to convince voters, first in the GOP base and then centrists and independents after the convention, forced Romney to make the reassessment and turnaround he needed to make. In November 2011 he accepted the Ryan position that Medicare needed changes, and in Feb 2012 he took up the case for lower tax rates and cutting deductions. In October 2012 came the first debate, with it Romney abandoned his reluctance to put forward a plan for the economic recovery and put forward his five point plan. That was the turning point in the campaign but all the other steps including the selection of Ryan, a Congressman from a working class district in Wisconsin, agianst the advice of advisors, were leading up to this turnaround. This was likely the most difficult of turnarounds, even searing in its soul searching as Romney scribbled "Dad" on paper at the lectern before the first debate- turning back to beginnings he had doubted for so long....

LyrArc Article Gist
The work of innovation teams that help reduce lost production time and make production more efficient on Boeing's 737 production lines in Renton, Washington. There are 1300 improvement teams at Boeing for commerical jet production. Examples range from conventional improvements such as remapping production arrangements to unconventional ones like the use of hay loaders to put seats on passenger planes. The work requires highly motivated production engineers and Boeing has a long tradition of this. Boeing has increased 737 jet production to 35 a month from 31.5 with the help of such improvements. The goal is to make 42 planes a month by 2014, and 60 by 2017 when the 737 MAX goes into production. Boeing has a large backlog of orders- 3,700 jets of which 2,300 are 737s.

LyrArc Article Gist
Data collected by the Aerial Measuring System from American flights over the Fukushima nuclear plant show that radioactive contamination has not spread beyond a 19 mile range from the plant. The system uses a plane and a helicopter flying over the site with equipment taking measurements in the immediate vicinity of the plant.

LyrArc Article Gist
Elliott Abrams quotes former President George Bush from November 2003 when he asked the question: "Are the peoples of the Middle East somehow beyond the reach of liberty? Are millions of men and women and children condemned by history or culture to live in despotism? Are they alone never to know freedom and never even to have a choice in the matter?" Abrams, former deputy natonal security advisor for President Bush, says the autocratic regimes and dictators of the Middle East have offered a false choice to the US- its us or the Islamists. Roger Cohen also points this out in a recent article in the New York Times. For Tunisia he says this was never defensible. It is a largely secular nation with a literacy rate of 75% and per capita GDP of $9,500, and Ben Ali, the dictator of Tunisia, jailed moderates, human rights advocates, editors, anyone who represented hope and change. Abrams says Mubarak has done the same in Egypt. And he warns that if you make moderate politics impossible as Mubarak in Egypt and Ben Ali in Tunisia have done, then you make extremism more likely. Ruling by emergency decree for decades creates a real emergency, as has happened in Egypt. Bush made that speech at the 20th anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy, and he reminded Americans that "sixty years of Western nations excusing and accomodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe- because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty." He admits that the Bush administration did not always conduct US diplomacy in this vein, but the President took the lead and the Obama administration's abandonment of that mindset is nothing short of a tragedy. Obama's policy of "engagement" actually endangers the US position as a supporter of liberty and freedom wherever it is stifled or muffled, because it turned a blind eye to the people themselves as it engaged with the dictatorial regimes in the Arab world and other countries. When the elections in Iran were stolen the Obama administration hesitated, waffled in its committment to liberty, fearing that it would affect nuclear negotiations. Obama did not -as of late Friday night Jan 28, 2011- call for free elections or clearly demand democracy. The law school analytical processes that Obama brings to the presidency and the demands of geopolitical diplomacy are impervious to the loud voices demanding freedom in countries denied liberty. Obama has forgotten the very same voices he passionately heard when he wrote in his first book that in the words "we hold these truths to be self-evident" he could hear the spirit of Douglas and Delaney, as well as Jefferson and Lincoln, the struggles of Martin and Malcolm and unheralded marchers to bring the words to life. He could hear the words of interned Japanese families, the voices of Russian Jews in lower East side sweatshops, of dust bowl farmers during the depression, all these voices clamoring for recognition and asking the question about what is community and how it can be reconciled with freedom. This failure to recognize these voices clamoring for freedom and economic opportunity is all the more striking because it was vision and a bold sense of purpose that energized the Obama campaign and both the vision and the bold sense have eluded the administration. Abrams calls for a clear unequivocal committment by the US government in favor of freedom and peaceful efforts to achieve it in the Middle East, because he says that as the demonstrators are telling the world outside supporting freedom is the best policy of all. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Allan Meltzer says a Fed QE III woud be bad monetary policy. He puts several questions to Bernanke- how the Fed and Ben Bernanke can know now what is the right interest rate policy in mid 2013, and what reason can the Fed give for adding excess reserves when U.S. banks have $1.6 trillion in idle reserves at the Fed. Meltzer cautions the Fed and other policymakers not to pay attention only to short term forecasts, which can be susceptible to large errors. And calls for attention to the long term consequences of their actions. One point he emphasizes is that the unemployment problem cannot be resolved with short term policy actions nor can it be resolved in a short time. It will take population growth, falling housing prices and rising rents to create opportunities for new construction. Another change is the transition to a less consumption driven and more export oriented economy. This transition which has started will also take time. He urges the Congress and the administration to focus on: reducing corporate tax rates by closing loopholes, long-term reductions in entitlement spending, a 5 year moratatorium on new regulations, and the Fed adopting an explicit inflation target between 0% and 2%....

LyrArc Article Gist
Housing market looks weak in Juy 2010 with the U.S. Census Bureau reporting single family housing starts falling in June by 0.7%. Permits for single family starts fell 3% in June 2010. A Wall Street Journal quarterly survey shows rising inventories in 28 metropolitan areas. Inventory was up at the end of June 33% from a year before in San Diego, and 19% in Los Angeles. Compared to 2008 when the banking crisis caused problems, now it is the general economic conditions that are acting as a drag on the housing market.

LyrArc Article Gist
Russian president Medvedev offers his view of the protests in Russia, that Russia is entering a new stage in the development of its political system. Medvedev told his United Russia party: "We are entering a new stage in the development of our political system and we should not close our eyes to that. It has already begun... It began because the old model- which faithfully and truly served our state in recent years, and did'nt serve it badly, and which we all defended- it has exhausted itself." He wanted to see United Russia take a leading role in reform. He warned that "it is categorically inadmissible that the political system be delegitimized." And warned Russians that the consequences of this were disastrous after the last time this happened in 1917. He was also critical of the U.S. government for its criticism of the elections.

LyrArc Article Gist
Jessica Todd, a USDA economist, says in a report that about 20% of the improvement in the diets of people surveyed comes from Americans eating out less at fast food places or restaurants. And this particular improvement she says is from an increased awareness on nutrition in picking out food, more choices available, and more nutritional information available to buyers. About one third of U.S. adults or 36% were obese in 2009-2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is a large increase from 15% in 1980. Studies show this is now declining gradually with increased public awareness of the risks of poor eating habits, including risks of diabetes.