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John Frisbie, president of the US-China Business Council, says the single most important issue over the last year for the council's members is China's innovation policies and how they link to government procurement. Concern about China's "indigenous innovation" policy.

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GE will spin off GE Capital into a separate business and put up about 20% of the assets for an IPO in 2014. GE will also get out of the retail lending business. The unit may also be put up for sale at a later date. This move is designed to meet shareholder interest in separating the industrial assets with steady earnings from the volatile financial business. GE Capital is the fifth largest bank in terms of its size and still generates a large part of profits for GE. Profits in 2012 for GE Capital were $7.4 billion. Other moves would reduce exposure to consumer lending and increase lending to midsized businesses. These are remaining moves following the 2008 financial crisis, in which GE Capital hurt GE's overall performance badly, for GE to return to its industrial business roots.

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Simon Johnson, is Professor at MIT's Sloan School, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute of International Economics, co-founder of BaselineScenario.com a widely cited site on the global economy, and is a member of the Congressional Budget Office's Panel of Economic Advisors. Here he talks to the WSJ's Deal Journal reporters. He says the stress test don't mean much because the government using a milder scenario, made the banks look better than they really are. He suggests a wait-and-see strategy, as banks have 1 month to file plans on how they will raise needed capital and 6 months to do it. He sees a steeper yield curve on Treasury debt as a result, with long term Treasury securities like 20 year Treasury notes yielding higher than short duration securities, which should stimulate long term lending. Expect banks to issue more bonds than stocks which dilute shareholders value, and as bond prices are low. Johnson sees real risks of inflation in 1-2 years, becaue of the way the government has inflated the economy, in a manner he says like the private sector bubble. Expect the government to cut back to prevent this from happening. He also sees pretty good earnings in the financial sector in the second quarter which should help stocks. The question remains about how sustainable all this will be, because he says " the government by oversubsidizing the financial sector will get us stuck in the same kind of financial bubble that got us into the mess in the first place." ...

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China is well positioned to cope with the cutoff of supplies of oil from the Middle East after decades of focus on building up its stocks of oil. China has made self sufficiency in energy a key goal for the economy. China uses 16 million barrels a day of oil, of which 12 million is imported, and production inside China is a little over 4 million barrels a day. It normally adds 1 million barrels a day to its stockpile inventory. This inventory stockpile is 1.2 billion barrels and is good for 100 days. China is able to make up for oil supplies by importing more from Russia. The Power of Siberia 2 pipeline for natural gas is being pushed forward for natural gas supplies from Russia to China. China has large supplies of coal for electricity. It also is increasing its capacity to make renewable energy, solar panels and wind turbines.

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Met with Robert Thomson after his talk at the Detroit Economic Club in the late 1990's and had a short conversation. He was managing Editor of the Financial Times (Pearson Group) at the time. He seemed friendly, open and very knowledgeable. It appears that Murdoch is bringing with him good people to oversee the Journal. Murdoch is expected to focus attention on Dow Jones Newswires, a business he "wants to aggressively develop."

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  Tennis player Roger Federer's speech at Dartmouth College is useful advice - "its only one point" when you lose it, how to move on to the next one free of thought no negative energy, “When you lose every second point, on average, you learn not to dwell on every shot. You teach yourself to think, ‘OK, I double-faulted. It’s only a point.’ When you’re playing a point, it has to be the most important thing in the world, and it is. But when it’s behind you, it’s behind you. This mindset is really crucial, because it frees you to fully commit to the next point and the next point after that, with intensity, clarity and focus.” And how often does this happen? Every second point almost. Because he says he won at Wimbledon and US Open with only 54% of the points. He lost about half of the points and still made it, and this message is real life, it matters to most of us. When we focus, when we concentrate on the task at hand it is one minute at a time.  Mikaela Shiffrin is the ultimate example of concentration skill going downhill fast between poles requires utmost concentration and she did this for the US in the Olympics after many disappointments in previous Olympics, none of it mattered to her, as she practices and focused. And that takes one to Federer's next point it wasn't effortless. It was repeated practice, it was girt with practice that made a difference. Only today this was evident as Sanju Samson talked about talking with Sachin Tendulkar last night before today's World Cup cricket game Final with New Zealand in which he hit 89 runs and the third time he has done it in the last 2 weeks, in Ahmedabad's Modi Stadium, to become the Player of the Match, watched by nearly 1 billion fans around the world. And Federer's last message is to do this by having some fun, enjoying the experience, learning something new, exploring, and getting to one's potential. ...

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The WSJ's Latour, Browne, Tejada and Wei interview Lou Jiwei, chief executive of the China Investment Corporation (CIC), China's sovereign wealth fund. He says it is too early to talk about eurobonds as the financial arrangements necessary have still to be put in place. CIC is reducing its exposure to Europe. CIC is interested in infrastructure investments and sees infrastructure investment as the way out of the economic crisis for the U.S. and Europe. He has the most confidence in investing in China. Other locations are in emerging markets Brazil, S. Africa, Latin America. CIC's target is to have 50% of the assets in long term investments in infrastructure investments, commodities, real estate and direct investment and private equity, etc. and the other half in public securities. But this will pose challenges and CIC has not reached this level. It is learning from ATP, the Danish pension fund, Calpers, TRS, and CPP, the Canada pension fund. The portfolio is mark to market which creates pressures to reduce short term volatilities....

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Manpower decisive in 20226 for Ukraine as two hundred thousand deserted and 2 million dodge the draft. Ukraine has more older men at the front lines than before. The situation is where Ukraine with a population of 40 million faces Russia with apopulation of 120 million, three times its size. The war is in its 4th year. Ukraine needs young people to rebuild and the focus was to prevent loss of young generation to the war to rebuild. This is getting harder to do. It also show why after 4 years of war the war on both sides has dragged on for too long. Britain, France are further away from the frontlines, and Germany, Poland much closer, the Nordic countries and Baltics having lived with Russia as a neighbor, their respective locations affect how they talk about this war. US has rightly seen that it is in no one's interest to prolong this war with loss of tens of thousands of young people every month.

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At a glance see on a world map with colors which countries have accomplished the transition to renewable so as not to get caught in the quagmire of the Middle East for oil supplies- most of Europe has done very well, and the laggards- Asia from China and India that are making an effort to Japan which has a poor dismal record. Brazil Uruguay 90% Denmark 80% Canada 66% Germany Spain and Finland 50% UK 46% Italy 42%  France 27%- share of renewables in electricity production (2023). This means much of the world is not dependent on volatile energy supplies from the Middle East. It is only in China, India, Japan, South Korea that dependence is high on Middle East. And in China and India this is the time to focus again on renewables. Most baffling is Japan with only 23% and it is the country that has so much of its supplies flowing through the Persian Gulf volatile oil lane- when Europe has moved on and accomplished the task of avoiding volatile Gulf region.

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Chris Klomp, 45 years, takes over at 65,000 person $2.6 trillion government agency, Department of Health and Human Services, as Counselor, as Robert Kennedy Jr. heads for the campaign trail in addition to HHS duties March 12 2026. He impressed DJT with his negotiating ability against the drug companies in the government's efforts on Affordability of medicines. DJT calls him "my favorite Mormon." Susie Wiles was looking for a stabilizing force at HHS after vaccine controversies and wants the message to focus on improving health and cutting costs. Robert Kennedy Jr says about Klomp- "He is moving quickly to impose operational discipline, sharpen our strategic direction, and fortify a renewed sense of mission and accountability.” Klomp is pulling together all the agencies under HHS including FDA and others. Klomp takes his role seriously to cut costs and improve Health- .“In health care in particular, I do believe that I’m my brother’s keeper, and our job is to do the very best that we can for the people that we serve — the American people.” ...