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Andy Burnham of Greater Manchester on what Labour party needs right now in September 2025. Here is what he told Laura Kuenssberg of the BBC-  “I am concerned about the balance, and I think you know, we need to use the deputy leadership contest to discuss some of these things. In a time where the scale and the nature of the challenge we face is such as it is, you need everybody pulling together, all parts of the party pulling together. And that points to a party management style that is less factional and more pluralistic." “Labour MPs need to be, they need to listen to them more and respect them more. You know, they were the ones who, if you like, caused the change in terms of winter fuel and disability benefits. But you know, they shouldn’t be punished for that." “I think that’s what it needs, you know, we need to hear the voice of the party, the voice of the members, and then the voice of our communities behind that, particularly in the north of England, to counter that London centricity.” ...

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Was Russia better off in 2021 than after the invasion of Ukraine. Was it better for upward mobility, health, openness of the economy and growth, and standards of living. Was the US perceived as a hegemon when it also lacked control of its own companies that preferred to invest elsewhere and ignored US workers for a long time. This report in the WSJ asks whether it is not true that not just Russia, but the US, the EU, China, India, other large nations faced a world order that was in many ways difficult, not to their liking, and in some ways posed risks for their countries. 

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A survey of 10,000 knowledge workers by Future Forum cited in WSJ shows 78% of workers care about and want location flexibility. And 95% of workers want flexible hours. This survey also found that 72% of workers in knowledge industries who are not happy with their level of flexibility are likely to seek out new opportunities in the next year. 

This happens as employers are finding it hard to get workers. The new hybrid arrangements during the pandemic have created a new workplace culture with hybrid arrangements, flexible work, going into the office only some of the time. More than two thirds of employees say they the hybrid setup was their preferred way of working.

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Craig Smith, the head of Surgery at Columbia University's hospital in New York, and Craig Smith the writer using language that provides solace to many people at a difficult time. He is also poetic at times quoting from John Wooden, as well as Emily Dickinson. He is in the middle of this public health crisis that is New York City today. When he gave the presidential address to the American Association for Thoracic Surgery he opened and closed his lecture with meditations on a Yeats poem. Here he is as a human talking to humans caught in a most perplexing time for medicine.

He quotes Emily Dickinson in one note saying- 

"Not opening when the dawn will come/ I open every door." Doors are opening all over the place.

 

 

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President Macron announces a curfew from 9.00 pm to 6.00 am in Paris and eight other metropolitan regions of France covering about a third of the population. The cities are in addition to Paris region, Grenoble, Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Montpellier, Saint Etienne, Rouen, Toulouse.  Macron said "we have to act now." The president called for bringing the daily cases which have reached a high of 27,000 by October 14 to about 3000 or 5000. About 1600 of the 5000 ICU beds in France are now taken for coronavirus cases and the curfew is an effort to keep the numbers from jumping as they did in March  and April 2020. To do this he said: "we won't be leaving the restaurant after 9.00 pm and we won't be partying with friends because we know that that's where the contamination risk is greatest." Macron made it clear that scientists are all in agreement on the pandemic continuing till the summer of 2021. He urged people to limit gatherings at home to 6 people and wear masks.  Financial support will be given to people affected by the curfew in the hospitality industry.  Anyone found outdoors after 9.00 pm will be fined 135 euros and 10 times that for repeat offences.  ...

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The leaders of India and China, Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping will meet at a 2 day summit in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, China, on April 27, 2018.  The meeting is significant because for the first time the 2 leaders will meet on a one on one basis for a significant part of the time without aides to get a better understanding of each other, and a get a sense of how to establish a good relationship between the 2 countries. Ma Jiali of the China Reform Forum, a think tank affiliated with the Communist Party's Central Party School says a better relationship would serve China's interests for regional calm, so that China can focus on internal issues of tackling poverty in the interior of China, tackle economic issues arising from a difficult trading relationship with the U.S. including the tariffs of the Trump administration.  China's leadership have not anticipated the decisions made by president Trump and the Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to take a strong stand on correcting an imbalance in trade that leads to about $1 billion in trade deficit each day for the U.S. with China. Previous administrations in the U.S. have not taken action. Also at issue in the U.S. China relationship is for the first time transfer of technology for "Made in China 2025." China's earlier advances were made with a free flow of technology from the U.S. and Europe.  The last time the two leaders met was in 2014. This time the issues of border relations in the Himalayas, and the relations with China in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean region, the growing relationship between Australia, U.S., India and Japan, are seen in a different light with the strong disagreements on trade relations with the U.S.  China sees a need for improving relations with India. Prime Minister Modi faces new elections in 2019 and the need to focus on infrastructure and development to win a second term in office for the ruling BJP Party.  A reduction in tensions serves the interest of both countries and leaders.   ...

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This New York Times editorial after the Senate passed a bill in October 2011 calling for action on the misaligned Chinese currency, points to ways a misaligned currrency is damaging for China. It cites the Peterson Institute for International Economics estimate that this is costing China $240 billion a year. This is a result of accumulating huge dollar reserves that have a declining value against the renminbi. Higher import prices lead to higher inflation. And low interest rates on savings, to the point that they are lower than the inflation rate, hurt the vast majority of Chinese and reduce domestic consumption. And perversely this leads to money pouring into speculative uses such as real estate, creating unsustainable bubbles in housing. The Times editorial says China is not generating jobs from this strategy, as the export strategy is relying on use of advanced technology in manufacturing and not creating many jobs. It cites a statistic showing employment has increased by only 1 percent a year from 2004 even with GDP growth above 10%. China is beginning to realize the cost of this strategy, and is planning a shift in its five year economic plan. But this rebalancing has many obstacles. The current system dominated by state run companies, banks, local and federal government, is biassed in favor of the old export led strategy, and experts are pessimistic about the possibilities for change. The Times suggests China may be falling back on the export led strategy as the global economy is slowing. The whole system would have to change after three decades of this kind of development, and would require new leadership and major changes....

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The 32 billion pound bid by the Hong Kong Exchange for the London Stock Exchange is not likely to be viewed favorably by regulators. There is already a bid for the London Stock Exchange that is being reviewed. As The Times puts it "it provides a stern test of the British government's appetite for foreign acquisition of strategic assets."

The London Stock Exchange is making an all share offer for Refinitiv, with the strategy to build a financial data business. That would make Blackstone and Thomson Reuters major shareholders.  The Hong Kong government owns 6% of the Hong Kong Exchange. 

The London Stock Exchange has a long history and is a strategic asset for Britain so that the Hong Kong bid is seen as a bit strange considering that the strategy is different for Refinitiv.

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The authors, Becker, Davis and Murphy, are from the University of Chicago. They point out that the uncertainty created by the Obama administration's programs including healthcare and social investments in education, energy conservation, and the desire to reduce carbon emissions, all tend to slow business expansion and investments to create jobs by putting additional costs on business. The expanding federal deficit and national debt also create additional uncertainty. Their point is that it was a mistake to start making major changes to transform the U.S. economy at this time, and that it would have been wiser to do these changes after the economy had recovered completely from the crisis. All efforts they say should have been concentrated on establishing conditions for a strong recovery. When combined with the lack of regulatory reforms to fix problems left behind from the crisis, and other failures, serious questions arise about how things will turn out in coming years. See Krugman- The Feeling of 1937, where Krugman takes this up from another angle, again with concerns about the future....

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This WSJ report looks at another example of the misallocation of capital of billions of dollars at a time when infrastructure, essential services, health and education are being starved of capital. In this example inflation of balance sheets at Wirecard before its bankruptcy enabled it to raise 3.7 billion dollars in the debt in the years before its collapse, with nearly half of this coming from Softbank an investment firm of people's money. Money that is now completely lost.

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A Peking University economics professor who believes that China should take the best of western institutions not just its technologies and management makes his views public on the internet. He will be removed form his teaching position at Peking University by the end of this year. He is offered a teaching position at Wellesley College in Massachusetts in the U.S. Other Amercan Universities with ties to Chinese Universities have remained silent on his situation, says Xia Yeliang. His wife continues to work in accounting at the University. China's leaders see it as acceptable to work within the system to make improvements but not make the views public in the western media because this creates a bad impression of the party and the country, as Xia Yeliang is told by the party chief at Peking University.

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Research done by the WSJ shows people who sped time on fitness and are older are happier. More females than males by a wide margin. Community involvement rates are higher and faith in God is seen in people who are happier. Aaron Zitner shows the lives of 3 people including an 80 year old who ran a health clinic for 25 years who find happiness through community involvement and many projects including one that cut ten pregnancy in her county and is now writing grants to restore an old YWCA building in Cortland, N.Y.

A 77 year old civil engineer on a 7 acre farm in Chesapeake, Virgina, has good relationships, community involvement, and the same house for a generation, whose belief in God helps him be happy and find serenity in life.

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French president Emmanuel Macron selects Gabriel Attal, 34 years, as the youngest prime minister of France, to succeed Elisabeth Borne. Attal has served as city councillor in Paris, party spokesman, budget minister, education minister before taking on the job of prime minister. Macron is completing his second term as president. Macron has struggled with low approval ratings for most of his presidency. At one time before 2017 his popularity was about 60%. Since then it has fallen steadily. After being reelected his attempt to pass the law for raising retirement age led to large protests. Macron's ratings are in their twenties after avoiding parliament to pass the law on retirement age by executive authority of the president.

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In endorsing Obama for President the New York Times says he has met challenge after challenge and put real flesh on his early promises of hope and change. It says leading America forward will require strength of will, character and intellect, sober judgement and a cool and steady hand, and Obama it says has these qualities in abundance.

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TSMC will build a third plant in Arizona with the $6.6 billion in grants it gets from Biden's CHIPS Act. It will increase its investment in the US from $40 billion to $65 billion, essential to make the US a manufacturing hub for semiconductors. Intel, Samsung and other companies are making similar investments in the US in semiconductor plants. After years of post Reagan/Friedman period orthodox economics that led to the US chip industry and other advanced manufacturing following textiles to Asia, the US is making its policies follow actual practice and experience. This experience shows that in semiconductors with long lead times of a decade to build plants the country which supports its semiconductor industry gets ahead while others following orthodox Reagan/Friedman period economics fall behind. This has revealed the danger of a theoretical economic textbook approach that doesn't work and endangers American manufacturing and technological leadership. A culture wrapped around the textbook approach has led to the US and the EU, India, losing their competitive advantages and losing manufacturing in industry after industry, with loss of millions of jobs and deindustrializing. It has also led to decline and increasing lack of economic opportunity in towns and communities dependent on this manufacturing across the US and the European Union. ...

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Susan Jaccoby brings up a major issue facing healthcare in America from personal experience. A third of the Medicare budget, she says, goes to the last year of life, and a third of this goes to the care in the last month. At the same time public opinion polls show Americans see the problem being too much medical intervention rather than too little. Especially when there is no hope except to prolong life for the patient with an highly deteriorated qulaity of life for a few months or a year, doing no service to the patient or future generations who may see their basic services cut when they most need it as a result of the unaffordable spiralling cost of Medicare. A Pew Research Center poll in 2006, shows 22 percent say a doctor should not always make efforts to save a sick person's life, and 70 percent believe that patients should be allowed to die in some situations, when it only prolongs life for a few months for instance and patients live in pain. The problem only gets worse in future years as an estimated 8.5 million Americans are expected to be over 85 years in 2030 with these same choices facing patients, their families, Medicare and the country....

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The importance of a gap year in education remains underutilized in Indian education because of a lack of role models. A gap year in education during the early college and postgraduate years can give a person new experiences and skills, a new sense of purpose, that he or she may carry over into further education and create additional opportunities over time. In this way the gap year actually reinforces the idea that is behind changes in the way education is being setup today, that encourage young people to try out different subjects in the sciences and the humanities to find what they are best at and where their interests lie. In the same way new experiences including travel, meeting people, trying out new activities can enhance one's personal development and growth as a person.

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China generates 53% of its emissions from coal in May 2024. All the remaining from non fossil sources. Two factors are evident, yet both do not indicate a big fall off in fossil emissions from this point just a plateauing effect with it flattening out. The first is that China is putting in solar and wind at 8 times the level of the US, taking up two thirds of world solar and wind installations. The second is that the one third of emissions from construction and real estate is falling off because that industrial sector has collapsed. Overall the future points to slowing of emissions as China comes only gradually down from that 53%. What happens in China makes a huge impact on climate change. India has also committed to climate change action and meeting targets early under PM Modi so that India as it industrializes will not follow the path of jumping fossil emissions China had. This is useful to know as the US and EU, UK, expand solar and wind. It is important that the US stay committed to climate change action something missing from the Republican platform for 2024. Delaying climate change action will impose huge costs on the US that could be about 1 trillion dollars if it is stalled now and is taken up in 2028. ...

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Children in the US should not be directed to educational content developed by tech companies using writers in Kenya and Philippines who lack the education to do this. A data labeler that hires people in Philippines and Kenya at $8 an hour, hundreds of thousands of low cost contractors, to create content. Some of the content is of such low quality that it had to be redone by Scale employees, says this story in WSJ. It started out providing this to self driving technologies companies needing data labeling, and now does this for AI.  Samples of questions for content are - explain a moon landing to a 6 year old, says the WSJ. Serious questions about quality of content going to AI and the willingness of Tech companies including Google and Apple to not make this a priority.  Education requires a different approach for quality of content and the tech monopolies are not the ones who should be in this role to build the educational content that a team of scientists and faculty envisioned in cultural literacy for the US under ED Hirsch since the 1970's. More than at other times in US history this is important to preserve the Nation the founders envisoned. ...

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India's Apollo Tyres acquires Cooper Tire and Rubber in a $2.5 billion deal. Apollo plans to use its international outlets to sell Cooper brands, and sell Apollo tires in the U.S. using Cooper's independent dealer network. Cooper competed in the lower priced tire segment in the U.S. selling through independent dealers and through shops for cheaper replacement tires.

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Many people ask how prime minister Modi can maintain a high level of energy while having such a busy schedule. Modi had 20 meetings in 65 hours in his 3 day trip to the US. Many of these meetings were important ones, including one with Quad leaders, meeting with Mr. Biden, his speech at the United Nations, meetings with US CEO's.

Modi drinks a lot of water to stay hydrated. He also tunes his body and sleep cycle to the time zone of the destination. Yoga, exercize, and good nutrition habits, also play a part in Modi's ability to maintain that level of energy. Concentration, discipline, determination, play a part in how he handles work.

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Trump's Attorney General William Barr was Attorney General of George Bush in 1992-1994 and brings extensive experience, which may have helped him stand his ground on December 1, 2020 rejecting claims of presidential election fraud at a meeting on Dec. 1 with Mr. Trump. In his book 'One Damn Thing After Another," Barr describes what happened on December 1, when he had lunch with Mike Balsamo of the Associated Press. Mike asked him what Barr was finding about election fraud claims. Barr's answer was that to date he had not found fraud on a scale that would have affected the outcome of the election. Within a short time this information was all over the country.

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Generation Z, the generation born between mid 1990's and 2010 is highly collaborative and favors working together. It is passionate about unionizing workers as a way to prevent more workers from falling into poverty or income insecurity during a cost of living crisis, and to obtain benefits from employers such as time off for illness or for things essential for quality of life. In 2023 71% of the American public supports unions and unionizing as the pendulum has swung too far in the favor of employers and large companies with declining union membership and a culture that often treats workers with a lack of respect or dignity.

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German foreign policy is seen as too dependent on China and too China focused, in this conversation of DW.com with experts at German Council on Foreign Affairs (DGAP), European Council on Foreign Relations. Germany had little focus on India and no clear policy to expand ties under Merkel. German foreign policy should take the example of France and other Scandinavian nations in building strong ties with India, says this report. Relations with China of the US and EU countries are strained following trade and technological competition. Merkel continued old policies from 2000-2010 in 2010-2020 even as the EU was losing its technological edge with China. This report says a new German federal government after the upcoming election has to decide what relations it wants to build with India, following the example of France, and Scandinavian nations. And what role the EU will play in India's rapid development in industry,  technology, shipping, transportation, renewable energy, other fields, and opportunities for co-operaton in many fields in 2020-2030. This is also about "Whats at stake for Germany?" in new foreign policy under a new chancellor from SPD or Greens, or some other coalition. And what role Germany will play in the rapid modernization transformation that is now likely to take place in India in the next 10 years. ...

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BYD has aa price earnings ratio of 60 times after Buffett bought into the company. Its F3 model is the best selling compact in China. And the F10 is the second biggest seller in monicars. By 2009 end sales are estimated at 137% above 2008 by JD Power and share prices up 7 fold since Buffett's investment.