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Gongloff points out that the word exemption occurs on 100 of the 200 pages of the final draft of the Volcker Rule published for comments in September 2011, for a total of 426 times. The banks have 2 years after its introduction in July 2012 to comply with its provisions and are allowed to petition the board for 3 one year extensions taking the process to July 2014 or July 2017. And this whole exercizes resembles some form of kabuki theater as the title of this piece suggests, and makes going through its detail meaningless. Especially since the probability of a new administration in 2014 or in 2017 are high. At that time new rules would be written.

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Japan's central bank, the Bank of Japan, is under pressure from the government to do more to address deflation and the appreciation of the yen. The central bank increased purchase of government bonds to 10 trillion yen ($124.7 billion) in February 2012, and set a goal of 1% inflation. A senior cabinet ofice official attending the central bank policy meetings of April 9-10, stated that the government expects the Bank of Japan to "promptly" achieve the inflation rate of 1%.

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Compared to the situation in 2008-2009 during the global financial crisis with the excess supply of labor, China in 2012 faces an excess in demand for labor. In 2009 about 20% of migrant workers were unemployed when the crisis hit, and wages dropped 10% for migrant workers, according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Stanford University. The situation three years later is one of tight labor markets and higer wages. A large stimulus in not only not needed today in the way it was in 2008-2009 as a way to maintain social stability, it would reduce the benefits of the anti-inflationary steps taken in 2011-2012, by putting more pressure on wages and prices. Manufacturing sector wages increased by 20.1% in 2011, according to China's statistics bureau. This may be why the Chinese government is taking measured steps to avoid creating more bad loans through indiscriminate lending, and being more selective in accelerating development projects in the pipeline. According to Hong Kong's new Chief Executive Officer China plans to have about 7% growth. This shift in approach would help China refocus on growth strategies recommended in the recent Development Reform Commission and World Bank Report on China....

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Francesco Gurrerera, Money and Investing Editor for the WSJ points to the risks in the U.S. and global economy in April 2012- overdependence on the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, not enough "de-leveraging" of financial institutions after the 2008 global crisis, and the increasing risk associated with individual investors and businesses investing in risky securities in search of yield in a low-interest rate environment.

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Changes to China's five year plan to include critical social goals, reduce income inequality, and provide a social safety net. The influence of local governments in distorting central government policy.

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Like hundreds of thousands of other young migrant workers in China's factories, Yuan Yandong is from a rural area and lived on a farm. Better incomes have brought them to the factories in urban areas. In this case travelling long distance by train from Guangdong province to Shenzhen. As living standards improved across China and the government expressed a keen willingness to encourage workers to exercize their rights to fair wages and working conditons- especially by creating increased awareness of new labor laws in the state run media- migrant workers are becoming restless with conditions they accepted a few years ago. The growing use of cellphones and access to the internet have made news travel faster. A visit to a Foxconn factory shows a young worker, age 24, sitting on a stool 6 nights a week, 12 hours a night, with a quota to assemble 1600 hard drives for American computer storage company EMC, with the pressure to work continuously against the clock for each step in the manufacturing process. Foxconn is known for its highly disciplined nature of work, akin to a military style. Behind the scenes factories like Foxconn employ methods once used in the US at a similiar stage of industrialization, with 500 technical people continuously looking for the most efficient way to organize each step in the production process. Each movement and action of the worker is measured for time taken and process efficiency, according to experts at Tsinghua University in China. This means many factories can use less automation- and so less capital intensive manufacturing- and go to extremes where workers perform like machines. Yuan's ambition is to work only for another 2 years and then use his savings to get into hotel management. His wages are 75 cents an hour, and with the overtime premium about $235 a month. Foxconn announced a 33% raise in wages as a result of worker protests. The mind numbing monotony is becoming less acceptable in a changing China, and worker turnover in such factories is rising. After the initial burst of industrialization in which young migrant workers played a signifcant role in manufacturing, a new chapter in China's development is beginning- one less likely to create the large trade deficits with the US and Europe- which is moving in the direction of a larger domestic market with higher worker wages....

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U.S. president Obama invited NYT's columnist Thomas Friedman to the White House for an interview on Saturday afternoon April 4, 2015. Here Friedman gives president Obama's response to his questions, and Obama's concerns about the heated rhetoric in the U.S. and Israel on the negotiations with Iran detracting and distracting from his key goals of protecting U.S. interests and Israel. On the Sunni states, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Obama points out that there are some tough conversations needed about changes inside their societies which pose a greater threat to the governments than Iran. Obama says he understands perfectly that Israel and the Jewish people after their experience of the last hundred years are determined to not let Iran develop a nuclear weapon, and their right to be concerned that the agreement could let Iran clandestinely develop one. Obama says the verification is extensive and covers any facility in Iran, any suspicion about secret facilities, yet it leaves the subsequent decisions if Iran created difficulties, to a international body over which the U.S., UK, France, have no control. This is a principal issue for critics of the negotiated agreement. No mention is made of why Iran simply discarded the option of sending the atomic material to Russia to be processed into nuclear rods for the Bushehr nuclear plant built by Russia only a few days before the final outline was developed. And why the U.S., with allies Germany, France, UK and Japan, did not offer the Iranians an economic aid package if needed in return for the billions Iranians invested for that atomic material, to ensure that the atomic materials are shipped out of the country- to create a nuclear agreement that would be credible to all parties. The economic aid would benefit Iran modernize its oil industry, including refining operations, meet basic import needs, and provide tangible proof to the Iranian people of our best intentions for the future, that president Obama strongly espouses in the interview. The interview does show the quandary president Obama faces in Iran for strong action, that is a result of failed policies with Iran since the Eisenhower administration's intervention 1953 during the Cold War that displaced the elected government of Mosaddegh in Iran and setup the Shah's regime in 1956, the support of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in the war against Iran, which Obama mentions in this intervew. In the light of the repeated failures of the U.S. policies a Democratic party leader faces increasing reservations for taking strong action against Iran's development of nuclear weapons capabilities, preferring to exhaust every diplomatic channel, and take risks in the hope that time will give the Iranian people an opportunity to to reintegrate in the global community and pursue the peaceful development of nuclear energy. This strain in president Obama's thinking is evident throughout the interview with Friedman. Other aspects of president Obama's policy in the Middle East shared in the interview are about supporting the Sunni states in some areas, and Iran in some areas, at the same time as the nuclear issue is "put in a box" and separated from the regional conflicts. Friedman presents this as the Obama doctrine, yet it appears to be coming after a series of improvisations in foreign policy following a failure to act in 2011-2013, when the "once in a lifetime" opportunities presented by the Arab Spring were not taken up by the Obama administration, leading to the region's current disintegration....

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The SEC requirement that companies disclose the ratio between median worker pay and the pay of senior executives. The SEC says it is putting out the rule as part of implementing Dodd-Frank legislation to control excessive executive pay. Companies will be allowed to survey a fraction of their workforce as appropriate for companies with global operations. Executive pay will include pension benefits and stock options under the new rule. A WSJ chart using information from the University of Southern California and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, shows the ratio between what CEO's on average make and rank and file workers make remained at about 30 times in the post war period till about 1970, a period of rapid growth in the U.S. economy. By 1980 this climbed to about 60 times and exceeded 100 times by 1990. The period of stratospheric growth for CEO pay and extreme widening of the gap then occurs between 1990 and 2000. By 2000 the dot com boom- telecom boom and the internet- creates a surge in executive pay reaching over 500 times. This drops to about 280 times in 2008 and picks up again to reach about 320 times in 2011. Many of the poor business practices, the excessive leveraging and risktaking in the financial industry, take place against this background of excessive pay for senior executives. Some of that risk was passed on to others through such methods as securitization in the period leading to the 2008 financial crisis, so that executives were compensated with higher pay for taking excessive risk that they personally or their companies did not assume. Dodd-Frank legislation following the 2008 financial crisis sought to correct this imbalance by having pay information disclosed. The excessive pay has also coincided with an increase in the frequency of boom-bust cycles in the economy. The busts prompted the needs for intervention by the U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve, to drop interest rates more than would otherwise have happened during this decade, culminating in the huge bond purchases and monetary easing by the Bernanke Fed. The SEC under Mary Jo White is mindful of these distortions in the economy as a result of misallocation of resources based on excessive executive pay, and the need to take action before the next crisis. ...

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Karl Rove points to major distortions in the Obama election ads on the Romney tax plan raising taxes on the middle class and increasing the deficit, issues which are shown to be important to independent or undecided voters. Romney left an opening to Democrats by not announcing more details on his tax plans, something he started to correct on the campaign trail in Ohio on Sept. 25, when he provided more details and said his plan would reduce taxes on the middle class. He said his tax cuts would not be large and would be designed around the objective of keeping the deficit under control. Earlier Democrats had seized on the vagueness of his tax plan to state that the Republicans would make a huge increase in the deficit with their tax cuts. Rove urges Romney to correct distortions in ads in the presidential debates.

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The Bank of Mexico, Mexico's central bank, cuts interest rates by half a percentage point to 3% in June 2014. The consumer price index is at 3.4% for 12 months through mid-May, and the central bank sees the inflation target of 3% by early 2015 as achievable. The central bank's estimate for GDP growth in 2014 was lowered to 2.8% from 3.5%. GDP growth was annualized 1.1% for the 1st quarter of 2014. Mexico has failed to live up to the growth expectations after the new Nieto administration's efforts to jumpstart the economy and opening up of the state oil industry to foreign investment. The policy changes of the Nieto administration set the future course of the economy and will take time to deliver results in economic growth. More effective administration and execution is needed for economic growth.

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Experts at Stanford Law School say the fewer IPO's expected in coming years will be a good thing as it reduces the boom and bust cycles in tech and internet IPO's of previous years. New technologies enable firms to reach breakeven at a much earlier stage with smaller investment- using founders money and capital from angel investors and less reliance on venture capital- so that companies can focus on the long term. The result will be fewer jobs created in investment banking and more in other places.

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By July 2013 only about 40% of the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation rules were completed, 60% of deadlines were missed, according to law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP. A singular aspect of the Dodd-Frank legislation was that rule making was left to regulators in different agencies and open to lobbying by the financial industry. This has the effect of delaying the rule making until a consensus is reached, diluting some of the original intent as financial firms jockey for advantage, and making it voluminous in many cases because of the wording designed to achieve consensus and account for objections by various interests. Reform legislators such as Barney Frank openly said they had no interest in learning enough about the financial industry to do the rule making, and may have left an excessive amount of the rule making to regulators in the future. A consumer protection agency was established under the new law and derivatives are required to be traded on exchanges. The Volcker Rule to separate investment banking from deposit taking and a requirement that banks hold onto a portion of mortgage securities marketed are not completed. The S.E.C. has to write the rule on how much money brokerages must set aside for losses on swap trades. Another bubble in financial markets would leave the U.S. and European economies vulnerable to problems similiar to the global financial crisis of 2008, which is why the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the European regulatory authorites are requiring large banks to set aside more capital reserves. The S.E.C. under its new chief is also taking a more active role in overseeing the banks for violations of securities laws, including a series of actions taken against JP Morgan Chase bank in 2013. This has a deterrent effect as the huge monetary easing by the U.S. Federal Reserve to reduce unemployment also creates bubble conditions in financial markets, according to Fed governor, Jeremy Stein. Former FDIC chief, Sheila Bair, says the lack of leadership in this area is simply astonishing....

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According to data from the American Mortgage Banker's Associationone in seven households are behind on their payments on mortgages or in foreclosure. This data shows that 14.4% of first lien mortgages on one to four family homes in the third quarter were 30 days or more overdue or in foreclosure process. This results in about 7.5 millin households at risk of losing homes. This percentage was 10% in 2008 and 7.3% in 2007.

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Enrique Pena Nieto of the PRI party wins the presidential election in Mexico with 38% of the vote. Lopez Manuel Obrador came second with 31% of the vote, and the candidate of the ruling PAN party, Ms. Vazquez Mota came in third with 26% of the vote. Voters were eager for change afer 12 years of rule by the PAN party under Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon. Mexico averaged growth of 2% during these years, though growth has increased since the financial crisis. But the benefits of globalization, foreign investment, and trade reached the better educated and skilled workers leaving many behind. This period included negative growth during the 2008 financial crisis. .