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Gone are the days when Gandhi's India was stuck for 50 years in a sort of wavering in its standing up with America. Gone are the days of John Foster Dulles and the Eisenhower administration and the Kennedy administration following British policies of not seeing India's potential. Gone are the days when Nehru's own lack of comprehension and grasp of India's potential and the potential of 1.4 billion people made him put India in a non-aligned movement that was going nowhere with the likes of Yugoslavia (that no longer exists) and Egypt ( which is struggling). This is what Jaishankar referred to as "overcoming the hesitations of history", and Rubio as "perfectly positioned." Deep introspection on both sides with the live events in West Asia of 2025 and 2026, America's willingness to confront the issues in a straightforward manner under DJT, and Modi's patience, willingness to wait and still build for the US the strong relationships that it was loosening up with the European Union to regain the initiative in the western hemisphere with the Monroe Doctrine (Merz visit to India and Modi visit to the Nordic Summit/EU Summit in Oslo), proving the maturity of the relationship. America did not need to cover its own relationships across the Atlantic while attending to the damage done by drug cartels and foreign interventions in its backyard leading to more loss of lives in drug deaths than the Korean, Vietnam and WWI combined. India had already done so and would hold the relationships together in the interests of the Modern World created by Britain, the US, and the countries of Europe through the Renaissance, the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions. In a way Asia had matured- both China and India keen to join the Modern World of science and technology, of modernization, are on the same path, and seek relationships that matter, India on the American side and China in a arrangement of cooperation with competition, at the very time the European nations led by Britain and Germany were faced with struggles from European history from 1700 of how to deal with differences they have with their large Northern neighbor Russia and its concerns about NATO. ...

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After a sudden surge in the beginning of May the coronavirus wave in India, its second wave, is decreasing. It is 186,000 new coronavirus cases on May 27, down from over 350,000 at the peak. In India's largest state Uttar Pradesh with a population of 210 million the coronavirus cases have dropped sharply to 4000 a day. New coronavirus cases in Delhi and Bombay are around 1000 a day. The Indian government has moved quickly to tackle this wave with decisive action to meet the sudden surge in May 2021. For the rest of 2021 and into 2022 the most important action by the Indian government has been to create a government sponsored effort of India's entire pharmaceutical company sector to reunite in production of over 2 billion vaccine doses by December 2021. After independence in 1947 one of the steps taken by India with great foresight was to create a strong pharmaceutical sector with fair and transparent pricing of basic drugs and vaccines. Something that does not exist in this manner and scale anywhere else in the world. Today this is giving India a tremendous asset in the fight against coronavirus. India is already the largest producer of vaccines in the world, the new effort will make give it a decisive advantage in meeting not only India's but the world's need for new vaccines. ...

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Bringing US inflation from 5.5% in 2022 to 3.5% now is helped by decline in durable goods prices. Prices of furniture, used cars, appliances have fallen for 5 months and are expected to decline further. In October 2023 they were down from their peak in September 2022 by 2.6%, the Commerce Department shows. This is good news for the economy.

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DW.com looks at the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1917. Colonial powers Britain and France create artificial states of Iraq, Syria and Lebanon by 1921 out of the collapsed Ottoman Empire, that are unmanageable even in 2026 with mix of different Islamic sects at odds with each other. Danger being of US and Europe getting sucked into the mess of five decades of wars in the Middle East.

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Tens of millions of migrant workers head back to their homes in poorest states as LPG cylinder prices quadruple and are in short supply April 13, 2026. This piece in Le Monde shows how India which relies on imports for 60% of LPG supplies used for cooking in a country of 1.4 billion people is affected by the actions of nations in Middle East interrupting open seas navigation. 

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After rapid growth during 2021 home sales in the US are expected to decline by 10% in 2022, according to the National Association of Realtors. The rise of remote work and homebuyers seeking more space had pushed up sales in 2021 with low interest rates. Mortgage rates are now up to 5% in an higher interest rate environment having an impact on home sales. Higher median home prices with the median price of a home up 15% in March compared to the previous year, and 9.5% lower inventories are also having an impact.

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Coal is making a comeback as many countries in Asia are bringing back coal units following LNG shortages. Impact of Hormuz shutdown- 40% increased use of coal in Korea, coal units reactivated in India, and put on standby in Italy. Italy delays phaseout of coal to 2038. Coal is a reliable fuel in this period of Hormuz Straits shutdown. Much of Asia's LNG comes through Hormuz. Use of coal in the US shown here in graphs which in a second explain why the DJT administration and Republicans say it makes so little difference what the US does in coal for climate change when China and India make up 90% of the use of coal. Consider what these charts show- use of coal in 2027 in the US is 331 million metric tons vs 1422 million metric tons for India, almost 5 times the US coal use happening in India. EU is 244 million metric tons. But wait the Chinese number is much much larger than India's - 5005 million metric tons used in China in 2027. India's coal use alone is 3 times that of the EU and the US combined.  China's coal use is about 10 times the coal used in the US and EU combined. And when one compares US+EU use of coal to India + China coal use - India and China used in 2027 13 times as much as the US and European Union.  Which is why because cutting coal use also impacts communities hit hardest by the Elites of America (Bush+ Obama) shipping out its whole manufacturing base to China. These communities get some relief from these same Elites policies that shut down all coal plants, instead of using a carefully structured wind down that allows some selective use of coal plants which are cleaned up for emissions, and pushes China to do more. Small cuts in coal use in China which has benefitted from our Elites shipping out the national manufacturing base of the US to China, would make a bigger difference than large cuts or total shutdown of coal plants in the US, where the communities impacted are in the rural parts of America that have lost factories and jobs such as in Pennsylvania due to Bush and Obama policies of looking the other way to deindustrialization of America. ...

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The stimulus checks in government pandemic aid packages are being spent prudently in the US. Government aid checks were sent out in the first wave since March 2020 and now again in the second wave in 2021. The stimulus pandemic checks are being allocated wisely. A Federal Reserve Bank of New York study shows that Americans saved about 36% of the first stimulus payment checks, 29% was spent, and 35% was used to pay down debt. For the second stimulus payment underway in 2021 this survey also shows Americans are expected to spend even less and use even more to pay down debts. With stores mostly closed, travel restricted, and consumers not having the opportunities to spend, and the sense of insecurity, additional income from unemployment checks, saving has increased. Americans saved $1.4 trillion in the first 9 months of 2020 compared to half that in the same period in 2019, according to analysis by Berenberg Economics. That amount is about 10% of household spending. The tight spending during 2020 means, say economic researchers, that spending will jump in 2021 after the vaccination drive. The trend is positive in that Americans tended not to save enough. People in China and India, tend to save more giving government a larger pool of savings to draw from in national infrastructure spending. In November 2020 Commerce Department estimate is that saving in the U.S. was 12.9%, up from 7.5% in November 2019. Anecdotal evidence shows U.S. savings accounts for people at the lower end of incomes have been depleted for years, hit by the unemployment of the 2009 recession. This was caused by errors by the banking community and business. To this is added people in arts and culture, people in professions involving contact, travel and leisure, food, during this pandemic ten years later. National priorities need to be set to bolster this part of American society and its core social fabric. The steps to bring home manufacturing jobs under Mr. Trump and the "Buy American" initiative under Mr. Biden is just the first step. More steps are needed and the resources, implementation and drive to bring America back to the healthy society of social cohesion and upward mobility aspirations under presidents Truman and Eisenhower in the 1950's. ...

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About half of Conservative voters voted for Reform UK in 2024 election says this Ipsos report in 2024 showing how Britain voted by ethnic, gender and education. This brought Reform UK to 17-19% of voters over the age of 45. More recently reports show three in ten voters saying there are too many asylum seekers in their neighborhood and this makes up 70% of Reform UK supporters as reported by Ipsos. This has brought the UK Reform vote from about 17-19% to double to 34% in 2025 polls. Labour is only at 25% and Liberals at 11% and Conservatives doing poorly.

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India's GST tax collections - which finance infrastructure -reach the 1.40 lakh crore mark  (about $20 billion) for 3 months in a row in 2022. Increase in tax compliance culture, audit analytics, and actions against tax evaders, helped increase GST revenue collections. Revenues from import of goods and revenues from domestic transactions were 44% higher than the same month in the prior year. The increased economic activity and creating tax compliance culture are good indicators for economic growth in addition to the GDP numbers showing about 8% growth in 2021, the highest in the world surpassing China by a wide margin.  The growth slowed to about 4% increase in GDP in the 1st quarter yet the events of the first quarter such as the war in Ukraine increasing food and oil prices, depressing economic activity, have some other indicators unique to India that are entirely positive and hold promise for a surge in economic growth in this decade to 2030. With the pandemic years 2020-2021 pointing to shift in supply chains of US and Germany away from China towards India and other Asian nations, the Russian invasion of Ukraine with support of China will only make this shift move faster. At a time when Indian logistics and infrastructure improvements under the PM's Gati Shakti Master Plan will create the right conditions for massive foreign investment in the Indian economy. ...

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Drop in immigration reduces labor supply keeping the unemployment rate steady even as hiring cools off. Compared to the roughly 1 million in 2019 net migration was about 3 million in 2022 and 2 million in 2024. In 2025 this is now about a negative 250,000 or quarter of million negative migration. Out migration is expected at about 1 million. This means that about 35,000 non farm jobs created between May and July 2025 haven't increased the unemployment rate as fewer new workers join the workforce from illegal migrants. This has to have an effect for wages for the workers in construction and farm work as employers compete for a smaller number of existing workers though economists and the financial media rarely talk about this. This was needed following decades in which the labor supply increases from illegal migrants meant no pressures on employers to pay more than the minimum wage kept artificially low. This means that even well meaning Democrats who clamored for increasing minimum wage were doing exactly the opposite of what was needed for the existing worker base wages in construction, farm work, and household help, because of their sentiments or because of the immigrant wing in their party. Note that about a third of maids, a third of construction workers, and 25% of landscaping workers are not legal migrants. Agriculture Department estimates are for about 40% of farm workers to be without legal work authorization. ...

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Old tunes are back on Spotify in 2026 the year that nostalgic tunes are dominant with good memories when life was simpler- Connie Francis "Pretty Little Baby," the Beatles, Willie Nelson "Georgia", Neil Diamond "Brooklyn Roads," Sweet Caroline," US Air Force Band "Shenandoah."

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Young people in the job market and retirees making less than Rs 60,000 a month will not pay any tax under the Budget for 2023 for India. Growth will be generated through capital spending on infrastructure improvements that is 33% higher in 2023 than in 2022. By keeping the fiscal deficit under 5.9% the government is encouraging private industry to invest for growth. This report in The Indian Express says the Modi government and finance minister Sitharaman are acting with fiscal prudence and yet maintaining momentum for future growth.

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US Defense Spending charts as percentage of GDP since 1929 startling fact seen in this chart of Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis- that in 2026 we are seeing 1929-1937 levels of military spending to GDP ratio of 2-3% just before it jumped to 45% in 1940 in World War II. It is a cautionary tale not to spend too little (2-4% is a danger point), as lack of military modernization means a lot more spending soon after, almost 10 times that- 10 times 4% or 40%. Message to the US is not what Starmer and company are saying in Europe- it is that don't invite the existential crisis of 1940 again for western (US, EU, Canada, UK) and eastern democracies (India, Japan, Indonesia, Australia) by ignoring costs of military modernization. And 2-4% of GDP for military spending is not going to do this.

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Layoffs at Microsoft, Amazon and Google are offset by more hiring. So that the companies are smaller by a small margin in 2023 compared to 2022, yet way larger than 2018. WSJ looks at the growing size of these companies. At Microsoft the headcount is 101,000 outside the US, a 70% increase since 2019. Apple's 161,000 employees are much higher than the 137,000 in 2019. A small trimming of employees only took down 3000 employees.

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Experts at the East-West Center in Honolulu, say China will add about 55 million barrels to its strategic reserves in 2012, which is another factor that will keep oil prices high in 2012. A number of new storage locations are coming on stream to store the additional reserves. China imported 5.57 millon barrels a day in March 2012, an increase of 8.7% from the prior year month. Oil imports for the 1st quarter of 2012 increased by 11% over the prior year quarter, according to China's General Administration of Customs. This is a much faster pace than imports in 2011, which increased by 6%. China is building its strategic reserves to reach a goal of 90 days supply similiar to the U.S. strategic reserves. Lu Tienan, director of China's National Energy Administration, said at a conference in the first week of April that current total oil stocks, including strategic and commercial are enough for 40 days. It is doing this in the face of higher oil prices, because of the threat of sanctions against Iran's nuclear program could lead to a cutoff of Iranian supplies. China's oil imports from Iran were 11% of total imports in 2011, making this an urgent priority for China. Estimates of the East-West Center are for crude oil imports at an average of 5.77 million barrels a day in 2012, an increase of 13% over 2011. International Energy Agency estimates are for China's total oil demand for 2012 to be 9.9 million barrels a day in 2012, an increase of 6% over 2011....

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Tesla which had 11% of the new electric cars registered in 2024 through July, suddenly goes into free fall with registrations dropping to 3% and a 33% decline in the European EV market. From being second only to VW in EV market in Germany Tesla is not with a model even in the top 10. Tesla had got the support of the Scholz government to put abig factory near Berlin. Tesla CEO Musk's politics is having some impact with endorsement of the AfD by Musk seen as interference in German elections. The Tesla Y is priced at $74,000 another hurdle for buyers. And now there are many rivals from Germany and China. In an expanding market Tesla has lost 60% in registrations in first half of 2025 showing how deeply. BYD of China has a entry model Dolphin Surf for $20,000 in Germany, and has increased sales by 290%. Still Chinese car makers will only have 12% of the EV market and it is VW that is a winner in the competitive market in Europe. VW has ID.3 Pure for under $30,000 and in 2026 plans ID.2 Pure for under $25,000. ...

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Guardiam Oped by Keir Starmer for Britain and Mette Frederiksen of Denmark  December 9, 2025. Both leaders of socialist parties in Northern Europe, and Starmer now keen on following the example of fighting illegal migration set by Mette Frederiksen in Denmark. "When trust in government to confront the challenges of today falters, our sense of shared belonging can begin to crack. As the prime ministers of two great European nations, we will not let this happen." "That’s why we are both taking practical action to fix the asylum system. Denmark has led the way here, with tough but fair reforms which have delivered results. Last year, the number of people being granted asylum in Denmark was the lowest in 40 years, excluding the Covid year of 2020. The UK has taken similar steps. After years of gimmicks and failed policies, we are going further than ever before with action at home – surging removals of those with no right to be here and making settlement reliant on integration and contribution, while pushing for coordinated international action too." This addresses the problem of illegal migration to Britain that is threatening to create further divisions in Britain as if Austerity, Brexit divisions, followed by Covid have not rocked Britain enough already. Starmer says he will protect Britain's borders to protects its democracy, and that responsible progressive governments can and will deliver on the change people are crying out for- Britain will follow Denmark's example. They will join Italy, Germany, Austria and other nations that are moving in this direction. ...

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Michael Dell donation of $6.25 billion for Trump $1000 child investment accounts. The Trump accounts were passed by Congress for giving tax deferred investment accounts to children born from Jan.1 2025 to Dec 31 2028, as a way to give 25 million lower income children a good start in education and opportunities in life. The Dell money $250 per account will go to 25 million children, go to 10 years old born before Jan. 1 2025 as away to address the gap for children not in the age group Congress targeted. Dell's money goes to US zip codes with average incomes below $150,000. This is a recognition by the Republican DJT administration that many lower income children are being left out in the economic growth US has experienced in the last decade, approaching the problem from a different angle than the Democrats.

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Several military bases used in World War II in Greenland and now in disuse are being activated by Northern Command's Gen. Guillot April 6 2026. The US is only required to "consult with and inform" the Danes under a 1951 Agreement updated in 2004. On April 6 DJT stated that NATO was a paper tiger and that the Europeans had not offered to help the US in the Iran War because of their position on Greenland.

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The Masterplan Delhi 2041 implemented by Delhi Development Authority will take into account many of the problems of air pollution and environment friendly proposals that Delhi has today. Planning for more green areas, to encourage walking and better pavements are part of this focus as the current Master Plan 2021 comes to a close.

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On some of the major issues today, competition with China, vaccination drive, infrastructure, both parties in Congress are working together in 2020 with president Trump and in 2021 with president Biden. During 2020 Congress passed laws on competition promoting US, in 2021 Congress passed first aid to the people for the pandemic, and recently a $1 trillion in spending on infrastructure. The was achieved with help from Senators from both parties who worked hard together to find solutions. Brooks says in the NYT that Congress worked better than the CDC during the pandemic. Though the politics made the headlines Congressmen worked quietly in the halls of Congress to craft reasonable solutions to the nation's challenges to help the country recover from the pandemic and point the way to a bright future ahead.

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The new prime minister and government ministers put together by Macron in France look more like something from former president Nicholas Sarkozy. Two ministers close to Sarkozy are now Minister for the Interior and Minister for Culture. Macron is veering to the right in an effort to court voters on the right, as his best chance for reelection in 2022. With drop in GDP of 12.5% now predicted in France for 2020 by the IMF, high unemployment of 11.5% for 2021, and job redundancies, Macron faces a tough time as shown in this analysis. Details of the backgrounds of ministers and the way Macron is responding are covered in this  Analysis in the Times. He is less popular today- than the rising star he appeared as in 2017, with only 35% of voters now supporting him. 

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Ford car inventory April 2025 is 568,000 vehicles, 8% higher than in 2024. Only Dodge has more vehicles in inventory.  Ford From America For America car discounts give the price discount given to employees to customers in April 2025. This will displace some of the German and South Korean cars that face a 25% import duty on Liberation Day April 2, 2025. German and South Korean cars are made in their home country or a third country about 60% for South Korean makers Hyundai/Kia and over 70% for German carmakers VW Audi, BMW, Benz.

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Scott Bessent on restoring the mission of the IMF "brutally calling out imbalances" including China's surplus economy and unfair trading practices instead of "whistling by the graveyard"- in his address to the IMF, Feb 15, 2025. Bessent says the IMF and World Bank had mission creep and lost track of financial stability and were not asking the hard questions about China's focus on exports at the expense of the manufacturing capacity and jobs of America and Europe.  Hee are his remarks meant to show that Bessent is taking an all of the above approach on energy, knows climate change is real but cals for flexible approach, an approach he wants the World Bank to take. And for the IMF to focus on key issues that have led to deindustrialization of US and Europe essential for financial stability before getting into social and cultural issues that are not its mandate for which it is ill equipped to address. Bessent told the IMF and World Bank - "Instead, the IMF has suffered from mission creep. The IMF was once unwavering in its mission of promoting global monetary cooperation and financial stability. Now it devotes disproportionate time and resources to work on climate change, gender, and social issues.   These issues are not the IMF’s mission. And the IMF’s focus in these areas is crowding out its work on critical macroeconomic issues. The IMF must be a brutal truth-teller, and not just to some members. Instead, today’s IMF has been whistling past the graveyard. Its 2024 External Sector Report was entitled “Imbalances Receding.”  This pollyannish outlook is symptomatic of an institution more dedicated to preserving the status quo than asking the hard questions."  Some of these hard questions are about surplus countries- about China and their focus on exporting their way till they destroy the manufacturing sector of the rest of the world. ...