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This is a big desicion by the Obama administration, and has global implications for the amount of oil consumed and the emissions discharged. The Obama administration will introduce one national standard for automile emissions and mileage standards, replacing the patchwork of standards and skipping over the challenges to the California standards by using those standards to set the national rules. The rules take effect in 2012. It will create a new national standard for a car and light truck fleet in the USA, that is 40% cleaner and more fuel efficient by 2016 than it is now, with a new average of 35.5 miles per gallon. The current national standard is 25 miles per gallon, and this standard has fallen way behind the Japanese and the Europeans. The Europeans went through their battles for fuel efficiency a few years ago with auto industry resistance, and this was finally settled with tougher standards, giving the European industry advantages in technology over the Americans. The American car industry stalled higher standards, and what standards were passed were whittled down by heavy lobbying in Congress. As a result a battle raged between those interested in conservation and the environment and the Detroit car industry, especially in a deteriorating global environment for this type of prolific oil consumption on American highways. This lack of foresight on the part of Detroit carmakers, and their management, accelerated their financial collapse in 2008 and 2009, as large car and truck sales collapsed. That this tough new standard of 40% improvement in 2016, would in fact not have been possible without this fiinancial collapse and turning to the government for a bailout - with the entire board of General Motors being replaced- is one of the ironies of this situation. This decision will almost certainly accelerate the development of smaller models, and bring the kind of attention to them that will give them the quality and features and comfort to make them command higher prices and become profitable, as is the case in Europe. For too long the American small car became synonymous with being a lesser car in many dimensions of design, quality, comfort and performance, so that it became a cheap car that you upgraded from to a larger car as you became affluent. It had been that way, but did not have to be that way after the world had changed. And the larger models like the pickup trucks and large cars are more likely to be phased out with the new regulations. This will also bring a `new sanity to oil prices, as the reduced consumption in the US will accomodate the increased consumption in India from the small cars like the Tata Nano which look set to sell in the millions, and still keep oil affordable for tight budgets worldwide. In this sense it is a victory for global good sense. For President Obama this is a personal quest, as he co-sponsored 2 bills in 2006, during this second year in the US Senate, one to raise fuel economy standards, and the other to encourage the use of alternative fuels....

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Entergy is one of the largest energy companies. Its CEO for nine years, Wayne Leonard, talks to Joseph Rago of the Wall Street Journal. Its the No.2 generator of nuclear power in the USA, and uses coal for only 7% of its energy. He has made his name in nuclear energy, and here he talks about the government's cap and trade program and nuclear energy. He points to today's technology as far superior to the technology that was used in the Failed Three Mile plant, that put back nuclear energy plants in the USA for decades. He believes that price signals are needed for CO2, and the cap and trade program helps to do this, so he supports the cap and trade program. He admits that self interest colors perception of Entergy, compared to coal using utility producers like Duke Energy and American Electric Power. With coal only 7% in its portfolio of plants, and big in nuclear energy, it stands to gains from a cap and trade program, whereby Congress will set a ceiling on emissions, then allows businesses to sell any of its extra allowances that stand for the right to make emissions. And in doing so creating the largest commodity market, in carbon backed securiites. He and the government agree on the point that the allowances should be auctioned off, rather than given away as the companies with many coal plants believe. And the billions in new revenue from these allowances would be returned to the public. He understands that the view of companies like Duke and AEP, that use coal and would have to increase rates, and face the anger of ratepayers as they pay more for the allowances. He also thinks the bill should be written with a fine pen, so that if Congress mandates 20% of energy come from renewables. That it should specify replacing coal not natural gas as what this replaces, to get rid of the most polluting sources. He points to the real need for looking at things globally, as doing things locally, even to show responsible leadership in the world community, can lead to no progress in the global picture. The reason is that China is going ahead with the rapid construction of conventional coal plants. It has surpassed USA coal capacity, and is on track to double it sometime in the next decade. If the USA closed down every single coal plant, and all the time new coal plants are going up in China and India, then we would have ruined our economy, and it was'nt making much difference globally. And he says, if we just say lets lead and people will follow us, "its silly", because China isn't going to follow us, especially when they have $2 trillion invested in their coal plants, and they still aren't feeding feeding all their people. So how to deal with this? Develop the new technology for carbon capture for existing conventional coal plants, and help the Chinese with retrofit technology to curb emissions in a realistic manner. At this time most current funding is devoted to technology for second generation systems, that are still 10-20 years away....

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David Barboza of NYT describes the hidden subsidies China gives to Foxconn for its plant in Zhengzhou, in a poor region of China. The factory there makes about half a million iPhones a day. These subsidies include incentive packages, infrastructure building, local government help of about $1.5 billion. As a result Apple has high margins. For a 32 gigabyte iPhone 7 that costs $400 to make, the retail price is about $649 in the U.S.  The hidden subsidies is why Apple can maintain dominance as profits are reinvested. And the result is that with only 12% of the smartphone market Apple can take in 90% of the profit, according to Strategy Analytics. Barboza looks back at Apple before co-founder Steve Jobs left in 1985 as focussing on manufacturing at plants in Colorado and California. By 2001 with iPod sales soaring the move to China under Cook, who previously worked for Compaq, was underway. With the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, the move to China for manufacturing accelerated. The reason: only China offered the kind of subsidies, the speed of approval and building of infrastructure facilities, the local government support, the hundreds of thousands of workers, and the best tooling engineers, to produce in huge volumes with speed, and maintaining quality levels. Earlier plants including one in Colorado Springs that this Lyrarc editor was invited to visit just prior to Jobs rejoining Apple had many quality problems, so much so that Apple had a large part of the manufactured personal computers set aside for rework. The quality levels were dismal, defects were unbelievably high. This is the Apple manufacturing process and plant that Jobs must have seen when he returned, and which he hired Cook to fix. Not only were costs higher in the U.S., (subsidies in China came later) when Jobs looked at the manufacturing quality and the inability to get the quality he needed from American workers and engineers at that time in the 1990's, only then did he turn to China- and the more he saw what was possible to accomplish there he sensed an unusual opportunity to finally put the ghosts of memories from competition with Microsoft at rest, and to surpass everything that had been done in Silicon Valley. The result one of the most ingenious and large manufacturing networks in the world, huge profits for an American company, except for one thing- it would not do much for American workers. ...

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Friedman describes the "Lies" of U.S. officials of this and previous administrations, in their policies towards the Middle East and South Asia, that ignore the legitimate interests and aspirations of the people in the region.

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Calls at the BRICS leaders New Delhi summit for a change in quotas for the World Bank and the IMF, and a more open merit based selection process for heads of the two financial institutions. According to the Economist Belgium has a larger quota than Brazil at the IMF.

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Yuka Hayashi's interview with Gen. Shigeru Iwasaki, Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Japan's Self Defence Forces. Iwasaki says Japan will improve its defense capabilities in the southwestern part of Japan and protect Japanese airspace. Japan will increase defense spending under the government of LDP leader Shinzo Abe.

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The recent appointment of fast food executive Andrew Puzder as Labor Secretary has caused great concern among union leaders. Puzder supports a $9 minimum wage compared to $15 supported by Democrats. Unions now represent 7% of the labor force, down from a high of 20% during Reagan's time when Reagan appointed a construction company executive as Labor Secretary and cut regulations.  Globalization has thinned the ranks of workers in unions. And the failure of Democratic administrations to stem the shift of factories overseas to China, Mexico and other places, as part of global supply chains focussed on cost, has weakened Democratic support among workers since the period of Bill Clinton. It eroded to the point where Obama won 65% of support among unions and Hillary Clinton won 56% in 2016. Interestingly the Republican Romney gained 33% versus 37% for Trump, showing voters were more inclined to move away from Democrats and only a smaller number willing to support Republicans, but the shift enough to give Republicans a win in 2016 for the presidency. The figures are from a Election Day survey of trade union AFL-CIO, and a larger proportion in midwestern states showed disaffection with policies from Clinton to Obama. In fact Obama spent years promoting another free trade agreement TPP that favored tech more than auto and older industries, just as Bill Clinton had promoted NAFTA, without giving thought to what this was doing to its worker base of support. A similar situation happened with Social Democrats in Germany as a SPD administration moved to the centre and handed Christian Democrats led by Merkel a win in parliamentary elections. As Democrats such as former Labor Secretary Reich, a professor at UC Berkeley who served under Bill Clinton, describe the problems of working class people their is less reflection on the impact of the changes from globalization and how Democrats handled or mishandled it, and more on the politics between the two parties.   ...

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The wounds left behind in S. Korea from the 1997 Asian financial crisis when the IMF imposed conditions for $21 billion in loans as part of a $60 billion loan package to prevent a sovereign debt default. The conditionality imposed for loans led to layoffs and economic hardship for the working class. S. Koreans remember the crisis as the "IMF crisis." It also has a particular stigma in S. Korea which the IMF is now trying hard to erase. One laid off employee from an automobile plant describes the period as a hard hitting IMF typhoon. So struck are S. Koreans with the term that it has become synonymous with financial hardship. In the 12 years since the crisis the IMF itself has changed. It is now trying to provide help to countries on better terms and is conscious of the problems of austerity policies. During the 2008 financial crisis Seoul stayed away from the IMF. Seoul is host to the G-20 in 2010 and now has a participatory role in international meetings. The IMF has created a emergency loan facility that could be useful for Asian countries and wants to change the perception of the IMF in Asia....

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Ghannouchi of Tunisia's Ennahada Party puts forward ideas for a pathway that Islamists could follow to integrate into the political life of Middle Eastern countries- compromise, working together with non-Islamist parties for the common good, focussing on economic development, pursuing moderate Islamist ideas, bringing in those excluded from the political process thorough a new inclusiveness, and respecting the opposition. He sees the successful election in Tunisia in which Ennahada worked with the opposition parties to ensure a smooth transition, as a model for other countries and the Arab neighborhood. In 2014 another process of smooth transition after elections, and respect for the opposition, happened in Indonesia with the election of Jakarta governor Widodo to be the new president. This set another model of respect for democracy, fair elections, respect for the opposition, focus on economic development and inclusiveness, for Muslim countries in another part of the world. Pakistan is another Muslim country which is working to create a model in the presence of much violence from Pakistan Taliban, and interventions by the military in politics. Assistance from the U.S. helped Iraq make the transition under the Bush administration till it unraveled with the policies of the Obama administration. Libya had the potential to make the transition with continued western cooperation and support- a change in administrations in the U.S. and France resulted in policies not supportive of a stable transition. The whole process now needs to be fostered carefully by western liberal democracies. Here Ennahada's Ghannouchi tells the world about the lessons learned by Islamist parties themselves for pathways to embrace for more inclusive societies focussed on economic development and progress....

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Prices for WTI crude dropped below $50 in January 2015. Higher inventories weighed on oil prices and Saudi Arabia added to the pressure by cutting the price of crude sold in the U.S.

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Steve Jobs anticipated a post PC period when he told a technology conference in 2010 that PC's would retain a lot of their value, but he said they will be used only by one out of so many users. Tim Cook told a Goldman Sachs investor conference recently: "From the first day it shipped, we thought- not just me, many of us thought at Apple- that the tablet market would become larger than the PC market, and it was just a matter of time that it took for that to occur." Analysts see this happening sometime between 2013 and 2017.

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Krugman points out the gains on three fronts evident from the Census Bureau report of 5.2% gain in median income of households in the U.S. He says the first is the growth in incomes of ordinary working class and middle class families, second the large decline in the poverty rate, and third the further rise in insurance coverage in 2015 for people without health insurance. He points to the steady efforts of the Obama administration to improve lives of ordinary families as working based on the Census report though results have taken time, and could have been better. The Stimulus, says Krugman could have been larger following the blow of the 2009 financial crisis and increased unemployment at the time. Janet Yellen at the inequality conference of the Boston Fed in 2014 pointed out the problems of 62 million households having net worth of about $10,000, and why this was running against the American idea of a better life for all Americans. In that sense the Census report is a movement in the right direction but a lot remains to be done.   ...

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The problems of a growing underclass or unskilled workers in Britain, and people who dropped out of school early. This is is found not just in isolated places but in the Midland cities also. Britain has a higher rate of dropouts, and a less developed apprenticeship program to find good work for these young people, compared to countries such as Austria and Germany.

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Ford making plans to put 2 plants one in Nanjing, China, and one in Thailand with about $1 billion investment combined suggests Ford is looking at GM's strategy and planning for a new era in automobile production, one that makes more cars in high growth regions of Asia. The demand is expected to grow largest in India, China and the rest of Asia. And these cars will have to cost a lot less than they are today for the lower purchasing power of Asia's new middle clases and lower middle classes which are growing in numbers. Meantime the costs in the US are still high even after reducing the health care burden through the health care trust that GM negotiated with the UAW. The UAW agreement with GM reduces labor costs for new workers but existing workers costs continue to be at the levels from before. And non assembly new workers not all new workers get paid at lower rates than the existing rates. So the progress in labor costs is still short of where GM or Ford needs to see it to compete effectively worldwide. Meantime the automobile markets continue to change and grow worldwide. The American car companies cannnot wait, they have to make decisions based on the labor situation in the US and their response is to build new capacity in the Asian markets, even while maintaining labor peace at home so as not to have upheavals in the domestic markets in the USA. New product and designs can still be handled in the USA so GM could agree to make commitments for manufacturing new product at plants in the USA, while at a minimum getting the UAW to agree to take over health care responsibility and agree on the playing field in labor costs for the future, which would have to take into account global competition and not just a labor social contract from another era. Ford's 2 investments are in alliance with Mazda, of which it owns 33%, and which generated $168 million in profits in 2006. Of the product in Thailand 80% will be exported to the rest of Asia excluding China and India, and also to S. Africa and Australlia and New Zealand. It will make about 100,000 cars. Currently Thgailand exports about 650,000 vehicles out of production of 1.25 million vehicles. About 70% of exports are pickup trucks....

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Efforts to repair strained Saudi ties with a visit by U.S. president Obama in March 2014.