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Ford does not have a good idea why customers buy the F-150 truck even though its a big seller for years. Automakers believe personal -use buyers of the F-150 truck are one fourth to one third of the truck market. Its surprising that Ford does not have a detailed idea of who buys its truck and why for every 25,000 customers breaking it down into smalll segments so it can see it by demographics and other ways so that it can find out where its losing sales, when trucks are down by 41% in June for Ford how much have each of these segments lost in sales volume. Personal use buyers Ford analysts think are buying cars and these customers will be lost forever.

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Strategic siting in renewable rich areas (Dallas center the largest is in renewable rich area) and fair cost allocation to not burden small businesses and households are major issues in Data Center building. Data centers for AI -rows and rows of servers 5000 in hyperscale data centers- used 4% of the US total electricity use in 2024. This is growing rapidly. By 2030 this is expected to grow by more than double, by 133%. About 60% of this to power the servers and 30% for cooling the servers. About a third of these servers are located in Virginia, Texas and California. How will this affect Cost of Living concerns, affect electricity prices? Carnegie Mellon working with North Carolina State University did the modeling on the energy and emissions implications of data center buildup in the US in their Open Outlook Initiative. A 8% annual increase in electricity prices is expected on average and as high as 25% in Virginia by 2030.  Total of about 40% increase over 5 years. Between 2014 and 2024 10 year period average cost for a home electricity use went up 25% from $114 a month to $142. This would now go up by 40% to about $200 by 2030 in just 5 years significantly impacting cost of living in the US. In which states will it strain electricity grids? In 2023 data centers consumed 26% of the total electricity supply in Virginia. In North Dakota 15%, Nebraska 12%, Iowa 11%, Oregon 11% according to Electric Power Research Institute. What are the energy types used? Natural gas is used for 40% of the data center electricity, wind and solar 25%, nuclear 20% and coal 15%.   ...

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A drug store chain that invented the malt shake and had a store at every street corner in America from the 1900's Walgreens is taken private by Sycamore investment firm for $10 billion. At one time it was valued at $100 billion in 2017 and its stock hit new lows by 2024 hit by depressed margins for pharmacy drugs it reported lower earnings in 2024. In Jan 2025 the Department of Justice sued Walgreens for contributing to the opioid crisis in its dispensing of pills leading to its stock price dropping to $10 and its market value to $8.9 billion. Earlier Sycamore had taken Staples office supplies store chain private in 2017 for $6.7 billion.

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UK prime minister Starmer raises this question twice in parliament QA session about racist attitudes in Nigel Farage's Reform UK party.

“He’s still not condemned the language or taken action against one of his MP’s racist comments, refused to condemn them when asked last week. Reform is dragging our politics into a dark place. This Labour government stands for our patriotic British values of decency, tolerance and importantly, unity. So, it’s for Nigel Farage to explain.”

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The publisher of the Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Co., is working to overturn a court injunction that prevents the public from seeing the Medicare billing records of individual doctors. Dow Jones & Co., filed court papers in January 2011, to overturn the court injunction. The American Medical Association has fought to keep secret the amounts of money individual doctors get paid by Medicare. The AMA filed a lawsuit against the government to keep secret these Medicare records, on the grounds of privacy rights, and won a court ruling in 1979. This court ruling still stands. The position of Dow Jones in its efforts to change this situation, is that giving the public access to the records is essential to the monitoring of so large a public expense as Medicare. These records would then be available to state medical boards, nonprofit organizations, universities and newspapers who can act as watchdogs over the $500 billion Medicare program. Such transparency and monitoring is an essential feature for the proper functioning of such programs and to prevent misuse of public money. For a program like Medicare, fraud and waste has enormous implications, as it adds to the spiralling cost of healthcare and to the unsustainable budget deficits. In one of the largest cases so far, the FBI, Justice Department, 700 state, federal and local agents, worked together to charge 114 defendents nationwide with Medicare fraud in February 2011. A senior law enforcemet official says Medicare fraud is so rampant, "there's no way in hell you can prosecute your way out of this problem, no way." He says the the answer is more effective monitoring of the money that goes out. And a key part of that is transparency and public access to how the money in Medicare is spent, what individual doctors and healthcare providers are getting paid by Medicare. The lack of this transparency for a program the size of Medicare can only lead to a lack of monitoring as the Dow Jones suit asserts, and make it difficult for the government to check abuses in the way money goes out. At a time when teachers and public workers and seniors are expected to make their share of the sacrifices to fix the budget deficits, it is incomprehensible that money should then be allowed to go out of the Medicare system through fraud and waste, because of a lack of transparency....

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900 million eligible voters in India means this is the largest election ever. The election will take place in 7 phases in April and May from April 11 to May 19. Votes will be counted on May 23. The election is for 543 seats in parliament, the Lok Sabha. Turnouts are high with 66% turning out in the last election that brought Mr. Modi and the BJP to power.  Unlike elections in Britain a lot is spent in each election, about $5 billion in the last election and double that this time. The U.S. elections in 2016 had spending of $6.5 billion as a comparison. Women vote at about the same rate as men and more women than men are expected to vote this time. Prime minister Modi won the last election with promises of development and infrastructure. He is delivering on infrastructure but building manufacturing and generating jobs in the formal sector remains a tougher task for any administration in 4 years. During the first term Mr. Modi made needed changes including introducing the GST tax to integrate India's fragmented market and get rid of a patchwork of regional state taxes. He introduced a whole range of projects and yojanas which are setting the stage for widening the middle class, and improving living conditions. Some of the problems such as the bad loans in the banking system date back to previous administrations and the government has taken steps to clean up this problem by refinancing banks and introducing a bankruptcy law. This has slowed GDP growth to about 7%. However this would have happened under any administration.  The brief war with Pakistan in February 2019 has added another dimension to this election with questions about whether this may help Mr. Modi because of his strong stand against terrorism camps in Pakistan.  In the end it all comes down to whether the public still believes the BJP party under Modi is best qualified to develop the infrastructure to modernize the country and improve services, and whether it can create enough of the manufacturing capabilities to generate jobs needed. It may not be that the BJP under Modi has  not made mistakes in the process of learning how best to tackle development, but whether a patchwork of regional parties led by the opposition Congress party is in a position to provide the strong decisive direction to make quick decisions on development. Getting the agreement of a number of regional parties such as the party in West Bengal state or the Uttar Pradesh state when it was under a previous administration of Mrs Mayawati means an even slower rate of decision making as it leads to lack of speedy decision making. Whether voters have short memories and forget the slow rate of infrastructure development under previous administrations or have a willingness to give the BJP a chance to show what it can do under Modi for development can eventually decide this election. An example of what this means is in how the Mumbai Metro is being pushed through to timely delivery- Metro Rail's head Mrs. Ashwini Bhide simply says she feels for the people of Mumbai who have suffered from delays in development of needed infrastructure for so long, with millions doing appalling rides in a creaky old rail system. In her view it should have been done yesterday. It is this attitude that can make or break the current administration, and whether it can get this message through to voters one more time. Most who have this attitude are aware that China is now laying enough concrete every two years than America did in the whole 20th century, as reported in the Guardian newspaper, and are equally passionate about delivery of services and rapid development of badly needed infrastructure.         ...

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US Secretary of Defense Gates has launched a drive to save $100 billion in defense costs over 5 years. These costs were expected to put back into weapons procurement and other costs. The President's Deficit Commission report of 2010 proposes to apply the savings to deficit reduction. US military spending costs $700 billion a year. Weapons reductions include one version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, and the Army's Ground Combat Vehicle. The deficit panel also took aim at the military health care costs, up from $19 billion a decade ago to $50 billion. And the deficit panel would cut the US military personnel and bases by a third from the 150,000 military personnel stationed overseas.

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The US military is finally, after years of being left out and over 300,000 young Americans losing their lives from fentanyl drugs being brought into the US- after Coast Guard is overwhelmed by the scale of activity- is finally now being enlisted in the effort to save lives and restore the integrity of America's borders. The deaths in this war are more than 3 times that in the Vietnam War and Korean War combined which were about 100,000. Yet ineffective political leaders have not responded with American strength in the face of the magnitude of losses. And ignored or neglected the firm basis on which president Monroe proclaimed the Monroe Doctrine to keep colonial powers out of this hemisphere. The result is that America and the youngest of its people America's most precious resource, have paid the price. America can do a better job of protecting the interests of the people of this hemisphere because of its great traditions of good government over several centuries going back even to the British days- it is America's solemn duty and responsibility to do so to the people of this hemisphere. ...

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In the centenary year of the Lincoln Memorial, America's and the Free World's most iconic monument, the Washington Post gives this story on how it went from conception in 1867 to the cornerstone being laid in 1915 to its opening in 1922. In 1939 it acquired new meaning as Marian Anderson sang "My Country I sing of thee," a video of this being shown here. By the 1940's it symbolized the struggle to bring all races and peoples of north and southern US together as it had done up to that time, but also the struggle of the Free World in the newly decolonized countries of Asia and Africa. This is an aspect of the Lincoln Memorial and its inscription that has not been told. The words of Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence combined with the words of Lincoln to strike a chord in the countries of Asia and Africa struggling for freedom.  The words of Jefferson- We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, and among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. The inscription on the Lincoln Memorial- In this temple as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the Union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever.        ...

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A survey of immigrants all over the world asked about their new living standards shows Mexico at the top with Taiwan, Portugal and Spain. And Kuwait at the bottom. Surprise is that New Zealand ranks next to Kuwait at the bottom. The reason is the high cost of living and jobs not paying enough, fewer opportunities, a growing rich poor divide. New Zealand ranks high in the natural environment and climate, yet the cost of living is too high in relation to salaries. New Zealand ranked below global averages in worklife- in feeling fairly paid for work, seeing purpose in work, or liking workhours. By comparison Australia ranks ninth from the top- for the economy, compensation and work hours. 

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Who is the oldest Nobel prize winner in history? John Goodenough, a Nobel at age 97 years, who invented the lithium ion battery at a Lab in Oxford in 1974. John Goodenough is a good example for Joe and Jill Biden's idea of an America that puts more emphasis on the public good, and of the Christian (and Buddhist) virtues that life can only be well lived without greed and delusion.  He was an Episcopalian- what the Church of England is called in America.  He received no royalties for the lithium ion battery invention, only 6 decades of salary at Oxford, MIT and UT Austin. Goodenough persevered through a difficult childhood, studied mathematics at Yale because of his dyslexia, and physics at the University of Chicago under scientists Edward Teller and Enrico Fermi, getting a doctorate in 1952. 

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Heat mapped sidewalk heat is shown in color images in the NYT for 3 US cities Phoenix, Sacramento and Portland. Phoenix one can understand but Sacramento and Portland are hard to grasp- such is the acceleration of climate change effects across the Us and in other parts of the world. Does one then sees anywhere in the NYT, WSJ, W. Post, the Guardian, on the television news channels any coverage of what each candidate for the next 4 years running the US government is going to do for climate change effects? Inaction on climate change would produce severe costs for the US economy which will drain its resources 2-4 years from now as the effects of climate actually accelerate when nothing is done. This could cost as much as a trillion dollars in 2028 if nothing is done for climate change under the former president.

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Explores the possible consequences of $100 Oil. 1. More difficulties for GM and Ford and Chrysler. 2. Ben Bernanke has a difficult choice, increase interest rates to curb inflation or lower rates to stimulate an economy thats slowing down considerably. 3. Ethanol gets a big boost. 4. Middle East funded resistance or terrorist groups get a boost fro oil money. 5. Oil at $100 is not enough to cause a resession according to one estimate, Standard and Poor's Chief Economist David Wyss, it could lower growth from 2.5% to 1% in 2007. 6. Hybrids get a boost. Honda does better with the Civic and the new Fit. Toyota's hybrids get a new boost. 7. Oil Company profits go even higher. Does this boost funding for exploration to a higher level than currently remains a question both for national oil companies and private oil companies.

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Germany's train drivers union GDL is in talks with Deutsche Bahn for wage increases of $606 per month with an inflation bonus, and a 35 hour week instead of 38 hour week. The Deutsche Bahn management has offered a 11% raise and inflation bonus. Last week GDL staged a warning 20 hour strike.

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Saying that these countries had significantly cut imports from Iran, the U.S. government gave exemptions from the sanctions on Iran to 10 European countries and Japan. Exemptions were given to Belgium, Britain, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain. This leaves 11 countries facing possible sanctions including China, India and S. Korea, with negotiations underway with these three major importers. The sanctions law passed by the U.S. Congress gives the government room to avoid damage to global oil markets and U.S. allies.

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This Washington Post analysis of the Republican tax bill gives an exceptional view of the bill's impact and provisions. This is the first major change to the tax laws since 1986. The size of the bill is $1.5 trillion, with the Joint Committe on Taxation projection that the bill will increase tax revenues over a decade by $500 billion, meaning that it will cost $1 trillion being added to the deficit. What the bill does: 1. It offers a permanent tax cut to corporations by reducing the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent. Industries benefiting the most are mining, real estate, technology, manufacturing. 2. The individual tax cuts expire in 2025. They are skewed to disproportionately help highest income Americans, much less lower income Americans and much more highest income Americans compared to high income Americans. In this sense it is skewed in a an unusual way to the highest earning Americans- a sort of Trump effect in place. The top 1% get a tax break of $51,140 in 2019, middle income people earning about $100,000 get about $1000 a year in 2019, tax payers earning around $50,000 about $380, and those earning less than $25,000 about $60 a year in 2019. Taxpayers earning about 150,000 get about $2000 a year tax cut. (Tax Policy Center) 3. The basic assumption is that tax cuts are revenue neutral if there is economic growth and most of that growth comes from corporations investing in growth. The problem as Greg Ip points out in the Wall Street Journal is that countries trying thsi approach in the past such as Britain have not seen such growth materialize. Corporate profits are the highest in 15 years as percentage of GDP, according to Vanguard founder Bogle, and are now 20% of GDP compared 11% in 1980. If corporations did not invest with this level of profits how much additional investment is going to happen, ask critics, especially as demand drives growth and wages are not boosted under this plan.  4.  Because the bill's changes to current law makes it likely that 13 million less Americans will be insured over a decade- from fewer people signing up for Medicaid and on exchanges for Affordable Care Act- it will hurt lower income Americans. Skewing at both ends of the income spectrum of this type is rare in American history particularly in the twentieth century after the Depression of the 1930's, and poses risks for social cohesion, making it unpopular with most Americans. A CBS News poll taken Dec 3-5 shows 53% of all Americans opposed, only 35% support the tax bill just passed in Congress.  5. Then why did Republicans do this? Republicans needed a legislative success after failure to repeal the Obama Affordable Care law. This pressure led to passage with Republicans probably aware that this is temporary tax reform requiring a real effort by both parties working together after the midterm elections in 2018 and as the presidential election approaches in 2019.    ...

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As the coronavirus surges in India with over 300,000 cases a day on April 26, a clear picture on the vaccination drive in the country is critical. The following is the picture of the vaccination progress from Union Health Ministry in India as shown in The Hindustan Times. India has vaccinated 140 million people with at least one dose says this report in The Hindustan Times.  On Saturday 24th April 2.4 million doses were given for that day at 8 pm. This was done over 99 days. This means about 12% of the population of 1.2 billion has been vaccinated.  This compares with the vaccination in Germany for about 21% of people vaccinated with over 18 million getting the first dose in Germany by around April 25. Both Germany and India have suffered from vaccine shortages, some skepticism about vaccinations. Gradually sentiment is shifting in both countries so that once skeptical Germany now has about 75% of people willing to take vaccine on April 25, 2021. In India about 6 million healthcare workers have 2 doses of vaccine, and about 9 million have 1 dose. About 6 million frontline workers have 2 doses and 12 million frontline workers have 1 dose of vaccine.  There is a shortage of vaccine supplies and a bold decision was made by the Indian government on April 25th 2021, after the surge of cases to a world wide maximum of over 300,000 cases a day. The decision was to give immediate regulatory approval for the three major vaccines in the US to be brought and used in India. And delivery will be speeded up - no customs duties and fast processing of supplies access to speedy logistical supply routes. This is a huge step forward for the vaccination drive as this means Pfizer, Moderna and J&J vaccines can now be used in India. The government is also urging the companies to make in India or export to India with prices that provide flexibility in pricing for the private market. The locally produced Covishield Astra Zeneca based vaccine produced by Serum Institute will be allowed to be sold to the private market at 600 rupees or close to about $10. Pfizer and Moderna, J&J can price in a way that would be somewhere around this price range. The access to more vaccines and the ability of the companies to make a reasonable profit in the Indian private market means that vaccine supplies should open up in May and June.  This could give a huge boost to vaccination numbers so that India's vaccination percentage of population vaccinated should keep up with that in countries like Germany and France that were slower to get started in Europe but are now catching up quickly. This is a massive achievement because the population numbers are huge compared to Europe. ...