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Adam Nossiter of the NYT describes the clearly presidential nature of Macron's appearences during the first month in office. First at the Louvre during the night election results showed him winning easily, and later in appearances at the G 7 summit meeting and at Versailles with the Russian president. This is in sharp contrast to the chatty, "little jokes" and other efforts of president Hollande that left people with the impression that he was not decisive and strong. The French presidency from the time of Charles De Gaulle by its very nature compared to the prime minister's position of England, requires a strong presence and decisive personality. Macron shows every intention of fulfilling that role. Observers have traced this to Macron being a research assistant to French philosopher Paul Ricoeur. Macron acquired a training at the end of the 1990's from Ricoeur, which emphasized the need for and virtue of a middle ground- that sees even the events of the French revolution in a different light, with the death of the king Louis XVI in 1793 as unnecessary. ...

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The Economist magazine says the difficult process of Brexit is now being put by Theresa May into the hands of the pro-Brexit ministers, Liam Fox, David Davis and Boris Johnson. Just staffing the Department for Exiting the EU under Davis, and the Department for International Trade under Liam Fox is taking a lot of time. And the differences between Fox and Davis also figure into the time it will take to invoke Article 50. It says the points put forward by Brexiters that Britain could revert to WTO rules do not work so well in practice, and it takes years to negotiate new trade agreements with other countries. It sees many problems, and says it is no wonder that Theresa May has told the Brexiter ministers to come up with answers as they are the ones who have sold this idea to the country.

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There is a sense of cognitive dissonance in the states of former East Germany, known as the GDR or German Democratic Republic in the Soviet Union period from 1950's to 1990. The 5 states that formed the GDR continued to build close ties with Russia after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in the perception that this would build good long term relations. The crisis in Ukraine with border states of the Soviet Union opting in favor of close ties with the European Union and not Russia have disrupted the economic relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and Russia. As long as Russia needed the economic ties to build its economy and standard of living the political issues posed by NATO expansion and EU expansion were set aside by Putin and political parties within Russia. The very ties that were supposed to usher in an era of peace in Europe helped strengthen the Russian and Chinese economies. Leading to a point where these two economies were strong enough by 2021 in the midst of the waning pandemic to  assert themselves on political issues where serious differences existed such as expansion of NATO and Taiwan. When the economic relations such as making China a manufacturing powerhouse  was the path taken by American and European business in 1990's, business interests were focused on the declining quality and high wages demanded by unions and workers in the US and Germany. This could be personally witnessed at Apple's factory in Colorado Springs where quality was failing badly in the 1990's. Apple when Steve Jobs returned in 1997 adopted a China manufacturing strategy when its manufacturing operations in the US failed to deliver the quality and cost structure needed for it to expand. The high margins with low costs of manufacturing in China was the strategy adopted by Steve Jobs to compete with Microsoft and turbocharge its expansion. Soon other companies followed. A similar process happened in economic ties with Russia on a smaller scale. Two decades of such expansion whittled down American manufacturing, hurt American workers, hurt European manufacturing and European workers.  This process could not continue- yellow vest protests in France, the protest vote in US midwestern states in recent elections, the protest votes in German elections and fragmentation of parties, made this clear. The US imposed trade tariffs on Chinese products and moved to restrict flow of technologies to China under the Trump administration, accelerated by the Biden administration. President Xi was once of the view that China's ties with the US were important "thousand fold" in the period as late as 2010. Yet this lopsided trade relationship was not beneficial to American workers or American interests as a technologically advanced leader. It is true that American workers and engineers at Apple had failed to ensure American quality competitiveness in the 1980's into 1990's, yet no advanced country or its business can come up with a false narrative that cedes its manufacturing leadership and jobs for the working class of its country. That false narrative is being challenged today by Mr. Biden, Mr. Scholz, and all American and German political parties, and by Mr. Modi with Atman Nirbhar Bharat for local manufacturing. The integration one sees of the port of Hamburg as Chinese export hub with China's economy is one aspect of what has happened. A new leadership is taking its place in Europe and in America that sees clearly the false narrative. The visit of the new Danish prime minister to India is the beginning of the effort to set up a new logistics relationship with South and South East Asia, as Denmark's Maersk is a world leader in shipping logistics for exports and manufacturing. The planned Noida logistics center outside of New Delhi under Gati Shakti integrated development is part of the change happening today as a new supply chain is being built. The unwinding of the one sided trade relationship with China, and its related relationship on energy with Russia, led to the changing perception in Russia and China of the value of the relationship. Political relations superseded economic and cultural relations during Putin's second phase and Xi's second phase with assertive attitudes on NATO, and on Hong Kong, Taiwan under Xi and Putin 2.0. As could be expected Germany and the US were caught flat footed as leaders who were cast in the mold of Putin as a Soviet representative in Dresden, and Xi with his father leading the Communist struggle in the 1930's and 1940's against Chiangkaishek, acted in ways that reflected the Soviet period. Chiang left for Taiwan in 1948 when Mao-tse-tung setup the People's Republic of China. Taiwan and Hong Kong remained important in the perceptions of Xi 2.0, in the effort to build "China Dream" and erase last vestiges of what in Soviet times were seen as western colonialism. US and EU particularly Business and the new IT telecom Business failed to grasp these matters, and historical events such as the opium wars of the 1850's. Business and cultural interests lacked both the inclination to learn and the knowledge of these events in Chinese history and its relations with colonial powers Britain and Japan, and also Russia. In 1900 the Boxer rebellion against ceding Chinese ports to colonial powers Britain, Japan, Russia, ended with permanent colonial settlements in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tsingtao, other Chinese ports. Chinese rejuvenation in the mind of leaders such as Xi from the second generation of Communist leadership, means putting this behind, leading to the action taken in Hong Kong. In some ways as some observers have commented it is as much a problem of the sluggishness of American and European thinking, particularly business interests including in Taiwan, post British Hong Kong, and ignorance of recent Chinese history which was mistakenly thought not to exist or forgotten. This is as much of a problem as the action taken by Putin and moves by Xi Jinping. The great democracies such as India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, were ignored as American and European business interests integrated the American and German economies with China's. In terms of population the population of these regions and related parts of South East Asia such as Malaysia and Vietnam which have a shared cultural history is about 1.5 times the population of China. Travelling through the parts of India's largest state Uttar Pradesh, an Madhya Pradesh one finds how much American and European business interests have failed both their own interests, their own workers and failed the great democracies of the world, by not only not investing in the democracies of Asia, and also of Africa and Latin America and bought into a narrative of China which no longer holds true and may never have been true all along. This is starkly evident in a once in a century pandemic in these great democracies of the world. These democracies have been left to fend for themselves during the pandemic and their leaders facing false narratives in the media such as the BBC and American media outlets even on issues such as vaccination of the largest part of the world's people.           ...

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Theresa May, prime minister of Britain, faced a difficult situation by Jan. 2017- the European Union was not going to budge on the free movement of people and services within the EU. With no prospects for negotiations on the migration issue and a decision to retake control of migration, May announced on Jan. 17, 2017, that she would pull Britain out of the single market. By Jan 2017 Theresa May was perceived in the media facing tough challenges and having no clear path, and no clear plan, and little support from the civil service, business, and within a divided Conservative party, to implement Brexit. This has not changed much even with this decision, as the additional hurdle of getting Scotland, Ireland and Wales, and the close to 50% of the people who voted against Brexit to support this move remains as large as ever, the situation of ample uncertainty, for May and for Britain.

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Short time work programs, paid leave, aid to small business for employee retention with the government paying a big percentage of wages, and unemployment benefits till companies rehire employees with government paying for this, are all different ways in which the U.S. and Europe are coping with the coronavirus crisis.  In the U.S. 22 million have applied for unemployment benefits with the U.S. government picking up a substantial part of the wages till companies rehire these employees. In the UK the government has launched a program that gives 2500 pounds or $3100 to each worker each month upto 80% of the worker's pay. The money is sent to businesses for retaining employees. This could cover estimated 8.3 million workers in the UK at a cost of $52 billion. The U.S. has a similar program with the first phase $377 billion already distributed to small businesses which requires retention of employees for government forgiveness of these loans. The basic idea is retain employees who could stay at home or be in short work programs or work from home. The French government is paying the wages of 9.6 million workers, almost half of workers in the private sector by sending the money to 785,000 small businesses. In Germany the Kurzarbeit program covers 725,000 companies which supports the wages of employees in a downturn and is financed from a special fund. The cost for Germany, France and Spain is about $147 billion or 135 billion euros for such programs. The European Union will step in with a 100 billion euros loan package. ...

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A review of the aid program for Greece done for European leaders meeting in Brussels on October 23, 2011, shows that most of the money sent to Greece has gone to pay off bondholders (mostly European banks that lent to Greece). For the initial bailout program of the European Union and the IMF in May 2010, international loans amount to $91 billion. Of this $52 billion has gone to repay bonds that came due between May 2010 and September 2011, according to this review. The report was prepared by the European Commission in coordination with the IMF and the ECB. Greece owes over $300 billion dollars and Greece's borrowing extends far beyond the country's size and ability to repay, creating extraordinary risks to the financial system in Europe. The initial bailout program based its lending on little or no haircuts for the bondholders, who are mainly the European banks (mostly French and German banks) that loaned the money, which creates another set of risks, and a logjam, because taxpayers in the stronger financial countries such as Germany are equally adamant on not paying for the excess lending of the French and German banks. The financial leaders in Germany, Finance Minister Schauble, Axel Weber, the former head of the Bundesbank, and other prominent financial experts have also adamantly insisted on following prudent financial practices, and are opposed to using the European Central Bank to buy the sovereign bonds of France, Italy and Spain....

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Germany is trying not to choose sides in the trade and security disputes between China and the U.S. Yet it owes a lot to the U.S. from the days of the Marshall Plan and U.S. taking on the role of defending Germany after the Berlin Wall. China was then a partner with the Soviet Union in the Cold War.  Today China is Germany's top market for its car industry. Yet the U.S. export market is much larger than China at $119 billion with China's at $96 billion. In Germany 28% of jobs are linked to exports, and in manufacturing this goes up to 56%, according to Germany Ministry of Economic Affairs. Germany supplied much of the factory  equipment from its engineering companies and the infrastructure that powered up the China transformation. A transformation now underway in India.  There are signs of a shift as engineering companies in Germany grew faster in the U.S. than China, increasing by 6-10% a year. India remains a key growth market for Germany over the next 10-15 years as growth in China slows and India accelerates with its younger demographics and investment in infrastructure. Much of the infrastructure in China is built and it is approaching the saturation Japan reached in the 1990's with additional investments adding little in the way of productivity. Longer term Germany has more potential for growth in countries in South and South East Asia  that will need to make huge investments in infrastructure and technology for manufacturing to meet the aspirations of the people there. Other issues related to freedom going back to the Berlin Wall and the rebuilding of Germany after World War II will emerge. German companies are running out of patience says this report in the WSJ with the bureaucratic obstacles, forced technology transfers, subsidies by state model to extinguish competition, and protectionist approach to home markets, even as state funded companies in China put other companies in Europe, Asia and the U.S. at a disadvantage. Germany will need to transition to a shift in its global relations, a process that is only now taking place. Just as with austerity policies in which it has now made the shift from going with the northern European countries (Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Finland) to the Southern European (France, Italy, Spain) in favor of common solidarity even at the short term cost of common debt, Germany now is facing the shift for solidarity with the U.S. for its support of Germany from the period of the Berlin Wall in the 1950's, for the U.S. and European solidarity in the face of the post-coronavirus world. The U.S. showing its generosity and openness to Germany and war torn Europe even as it took on the added responsibilities for creating a new alliance with Europe.   ...

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Britain's prime minister Boris Johnson and his negotiating team meet EU president Ursula Leyen for dinner in Brussels on December 8, 2020, to get over fundamental differences for a Brexit deal. This report in The Guardian describes the details of that dinner meeting.  Boris Johnson told parliament that the European Union was asking Britain to be the only country in the world not to have sovereign control over its own fishing waters. He said the EU was also asking that if the EU were to pass a new law that Britain does not comply with they would have the right to  automatically punish Britain or retaliate. On the issue of environmental and other laws that relate to the EU and Britain they are both at the same level today. The EU is worried that in future competition between Britain and the EU in trade and business Britain could relax environmental or other laws to gain an unfair advantage. Boris Johnson and his Conservative party back benchers insist that Britain should have sole right to make its own laws. France's Macron introduced the idea of automatic retaliation as a way to get Britain to keep a level playing field. Both sides see this as a negotiating tactic, hence the dinner meeting as a way to let top negotiators including the leaders to set an informal tone to the final stage of tough negotiating. Merkel made her own remarks to the German parliament saying she was willing to let the negotiations collapse if Britain rejected the EU approach. Merkel stated that if Britain insisted on certain conditions EU could not accept she was willing to let Britain leave without an exit agreement. This way if something went wrong Merkel would not take the blame.   ...

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Who is Nandalal Weerasinghe? This report in The Daily News gives some idea about the man chosen to help Sri Lanka negotiate a deal with the IMF.  Dr. Nandalal Weerasinghe was an alternate executive director at the International Monetary Fund before being appointed deputy governor of the Ceylon Central Bank in 2012. Before this he managed several macroeconomic departments at the central bank and was assistant governor of the central bank from 2007 to 2009, He has spent the large part of his career in economic positions at the Central Bank of Ceylon after getting his PhD in economics from the Australian National University. Weerasinghe is the leading expert in macroeconomics from Sri Lanka who has IMF experience. He says "things will get worse before they get better." He retired early from the central bank with a change in government in 2019. He was reappointed as Sri Lanka faced a debt crisis in March 2022 following the two year long pandemic, and the Ukraine war in 2022 that was bad for emerging market economies. Weerasinghe says about the crisis facing Sri Lanka- Recent decisons followed Modern Monetary Theory. This has dire consequences. In recent times the savings brought about by the low tax and interest rate regime passed savings on to the corporate sector and took away spending power from savers and pensioners. Surging inflation made things even worse for the lower income middle class and older parts of society. Years of accumulated debt have brought Ceylon to this point. In Ceylon one is seeing the effects of savings being passed on to the corporate sector in an economy dependent on tourism and remittances from overseas workers, both hit by the two year long pandemic. This is part of  a trend that has hurt emerging market economies from Argentina and Pakistan which also turned to the IMF to Turkey.  In other countries in the European Union savings also passed on to the corporate sector with low tax and low interest rate regime. With high inflation resulting in the cost of living crisis seen today in France and Germany. This type of policy that Weerasinghe calls 'Modern Monetary Theory' is not healthy for the European Union and the US, as these policies led to the neglect of much needed and vital investments in infrastructure, health and education. Only now are these effects being corrected by new administrations of Biden in the US and Scholz in Germany, with Biden's 2 trillion plan for workers and families, and a similar plan from chancellor Scholz. With this come needed investments to tackle climate change, all of which was neglected before. India has taken a different approach. By following good governance, managing vaccination effectively during the pandemic, social emphasis for food, water, electricity, cooking gas, medicine for the vast population of 1.2 billion, and a Master plan for building Made in India manufacturing,  India has avoided such crises and maintained strong economic growth. In this sense it is a model for South Asian, South East Asian, African, and Latin American emerging market economies that face a difficult situation today. Good governance is critical.   ...

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Martin Caparros describes the deadlock in Spain with no two parties on the right Ciudadanos and Partido Popular, and on the left, Podemos and the Socialist party, able to have enough seats i parliament to form a government. An agreement between Ciudadanos and Partido Popular of prime minister Mariano Rajoy, has brought the 2 parties close to 170, 6 short of a majority in the 350 member parliament. New elections will have to be held for the third time in December 2016 as a result of this impasse. The two main parties in Spain the Partido Popular and the Socialist party, alternated in forming a government during the period since the restoration of democrati government after Franco's dictatorship. Following the deep recession in Spain since 2012 two new parties have been formed Podemos on the left, and Ciudadanos a centre right party. Both parties are critical of corruption, and the cuts in spending for education and healthcare following the financial crisis in Spain and bailouts by the European Union. Caparros describes the cynicism that voters express about not just the two main parties, but also for Podemos and Ciudadanos, as voters voice their rejection of politicians and parties on the left and the right. A similiar process is taking place in other countries, in Britain most recently with Brexit and the departure of prime minister Cameron. In the U.S. with the Sanders and Trump movements, and the Beppe Grillo movement in Italy.  ...

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Michael Barnier was the candidate for Les Republicains. Macron's Movement Renaissance party is closest in thinking to the Les Republicains, the party of De Gaulle. He was appointed prime minister of France by Macron. Barnier had proposed a strong policy of turning off non European immigration for 4 years, and not allowing relations of immigrants within the country to come in. This immigration policy is becoming accepted in Europe among the socialist parties. In Denmark socialist prime minister Mette Fredriksen was elected with policies for the working class and unions but opposed to migration on grounds that it hurts the working class. France, Germany are shifting in this direction after overburdening of social services, and crime by migrants. The US is also shifting in this direction for both Democrats and Republicans with Biden policy to close the Mexican border. This ends a period of relative tolerance which set back goals of workers and their families for a decade or longer as anti migrant parties used the protest vote to oppose worker rights and shifted the economy into the hands of pharma, oil and tech companies, billionaires in the US, UK and Europe at the expense of workers, middle class, and students.  ...

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Bill Keller tells U.S. president Obama that if he is serious about looking at the right path in Egypt he should go back and read his own speech made in May 2011, at the beginning of the Arab Spring. He points out that the Eastern European countries under Soviet supported communist regimes did not evolve into democracies without help and guidance from the western world. It took years of work and is still in progress with the European Union leaders taking on the issues of authoritarian tendencies in Ukraine, Romania, and other countries. Early on the reason why European Union leaders, Germany, the UK, France, Spain and other nations were very sensitive to the issue of genocide in Bosnia and Kosovo, was that their idea of Europe after the horrors of the last major war were for a civilized Europe with no place for leaders like Milosevic. President Clinton joined the effort and the western world was firm in its resolve which continued till the transfer of Milosevic to the Hague Tribunal, and the negotiations for a different Serbia to enter the EU completed only recently, nearly 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. These are long and difficult processes because of history, conflicts, poverty, prejudice, ignorance and demagoguery, but the EU, the U.S. and its partners withstood the test. The Arab world is different but the aspirations for freedom and economic progress are the same, and the U.S. should follow the same values and instincts in the way forward in the Middle East. The path chosen by the military in Egypt of firing on civilians and suppressing all dissenters is not sustainable, says Keller. ...

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The retirement age in France is much lower than other European countries. As people live longer and pension system finances are strained retirement ages are being increased. In France the retirement age is 60, and dates back to the Socialist president Francois Mitterand in the 1980's when the Socialists and the unions strongly supported a retirement age of 60 and a 35 hour work week. Socialist party former general secretary, Francois Hollande, calls changes "unjust reform." The Sarkozy government is treading softly by making a gradual change with the legal retirement age increasing by 4 months per year starting in July 2011, till it reaches 62 by 2018. The pension deficit is forecast at $40 billion a year for 2010. People in taxing jobs or in difficult occupations are exempted. By contrast Germany as plans to change the retirement age from 65 o 67. Britain and Italy have set this at 65.

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Summer tourism is helping support a second wave of the pandemic. This report says Croatia is a case study on how the opening of tourism can trigger a second wave. Because Croatia depends on tourism and Croatia had controlled coronavirus cases in May, the government decided to open its coastline areas to tourists from Europe. These tourists returned home with the infection and spread the virus. Clubs and bars were allowed to reopen for the summer season after the lockdown in April along the Adriatic coast attracting visitors. With 500 miles of coastline and Mediterranean climate, ancient towns and affordable stay, Croatia is crowded with tourists. In 2019 21 million visitors came here according to the Croatia Tourist Board. On Italian visitor from Parma cited here says she found crowded parties and bustling bars and restaurants where hardly anybody kept social distancing and wore masks. People in shops and bars she says told people they did not need to wear masks. The governments in Europe were keen on making up for the economic costs of the pandemic and opened the internal borders of the European Union in June. The opening of resorts in the sunbelt of Europe in Spain and Portugal has led to the spike in cases in Madrid and other cities in Spain. The same is happening in France. But vigilance dropped especially in Croatia where little or no restrictions were visible. Not only were bars allowed to open but the social distancing rules and mask rules were never practiced. Some Croatians call it incomprehensible. It has led to the spike in Germany, Czech Republic and Austria. The Koch Institute says 12% of all new German cases are traceable to Croatia. It is now a fact that international travel is a way the coronavirus accelerates. Governments in France, Germany, and the UK which are not especially dependent on tourism have the option to encourage people to stay in their home countries and remove this cause of acceleration while keeping shops and offices open so that business and jobs are preserved. For people hurt by lack of employment in the hospitality industry and others with lost wages from being in an occupation that acts to accelerate the virus it is a better option to offer financial assistance than to end up closing offices and shops in another partial lockdown. Opening bars helped accelerate the pandemic in California after the lockdown with steeply rising numbers of new cases. Educating the public to the extent that it should be about the dangers is also missing.    ...

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The Economist magazine says Mr. Trump's claim that he could fix things because he is an outsider is now quickly proving to be false. The lack of experience works against the Trump administration as it stumbles from one crisis to another. The tweets that were used to turn voter sentiment against opponents now work the other way. There are other problems that are noted here but not emphasized to the extent they need to be. Mr. Trump, as Peggy Noonan, a Reagan aide, has pointed out in the WSJ, risks alienating the very blue collar vote, and older voters whose interests he claimed to defend. This happened with the Ryan Republican House health care bill as millions of poor Americans approaching retirement were one of the worst affected groups. The Economist points out that the next project to tackle tax reform has the same possible consequences for the Trump blue collar base, as it says Republican plans for tax reform are seen as regressive. Tax reform has eluded previous administrations, and requires more experience in building coalitions which the Trump administration lacks in its confrontational attitude towards Congressmen on both sides of the aisle who disagree with him. Improving the U.S. trade position, infrastructure investment are other areas that the administration plans to tackle, yet the first 100 days show that the lack of experience and the lack of a calm composed mind is hurting the Trump administration, to the point of policies that hurt the very voters who put their faith in the Trump administration to improve things. A similar process is unfolding in Britain as it faces a Brexit negotiation that the Economist points out has been badly handled by prime minister Theresa May, and could lead to worsening the economy if no deal is reached because the European Union sees that it is not in its interest to do so, and Ms. May realizes only later that she has taken nationalist sentiment a bit too far for a European economic arrangement to work and provide mutual benefit. A continent wide economic arrangement that it was the wisdom of past leaders from Britain, France and Germany to support for over six decades is not easily undone by one vote, or one government. ...