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Paletta, Hilsenrath and Solomon give an exceptional journalism report on the silence and tension in the room at the meeting on Monday, October 13, 2008, at 3.00 pm in the Treasury building. It was an historic meeting between Treasury Secretary Paulson, Fed chairman Bernanke, and FDIC chairwoman Sheila Bair on one side, and the head of America's leading banks on the other side. The situation was explained, the bankers asked questions, bankers were not allowed to negotiate, and at one point Bernanke had to intervene saying there was no need for this meeting to have a confrontational tone. Wells Fargo's Kovacevich asked why banks had to accept a capital injection. Kenneth Lewis of Bank of America softened the tone of the meeting by saying that "any one of us who doesn't have a healthy fear of the unknown isn't paying attention." Even before the meeting an anxious John Mack of Morgan Stanley asked Paulson for the reason for the meeting and Paulson told him, "come on down, you will be pleased." John Mack who had fought so many rumors of the firm's demise, was surely pleased with the $10 billon injection of capital in Morgan Stanley by the government in return for preferred share and a dividend of 5%, which helped assure markets about Morgan Stanley's future. Goldman Sach's also received $10 billion. The meeting was ended at 4.30pm. Before this Timothy Geithner, head of the New York Fed, acting as the point man went around handing each CEO a term sheet with a place to sign. Another meeting was setup for 6.30 pm and at that time all the term sheets were returned - and all were signed. There was no meeting. Treasury officials and Fed officials and others had hoped that the intervening time would give CEO's a time to talk to their boards, to think things over, and clear their heads. In a few hours the government took preferred shares in the nation's leading banks and injected $125 billion into the largest banks. Treasury injected $25 billlion in Bank of America, Citigroup, and JP Morgan Chase, And between $20 and $25 billion in Wells Fargo, and $3 billion in Bank of New York Mellon, and $3 billion in State Street. Another $125 billon would be injected into other smaller banks in coming days. Officials at Treasury, Fed and FDIC and other government officials hoped this would give a "confidence shock" to the nation's banking system. ...

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Defense Secretary Gates does not see Russia as the threat it was in the Cold War, first because Russia's conventional forces are a "shadow" of what they were during the Cold War, and Russia has adverse demographic trends that will diminish Russia's ability in conventional forces. He sees the Georgian war in the context of Russia's seeking to exorcize, as he puts it, past humiliations. And Gates sees opportunities in the relationship with Russia. Such things as Russia's willingness to work with the US on Afghanistan. Evidence of this is Russia supporting the renwal of the UN resolution on Afghanistan. Another indication is that Russia he says is very worried about the drugs coming out of Afghanistan, and has been supportive to provide alternative routes for Europeans to get equipment and supplies into Afghanistan. These views come across in an interview on December 17, with Charlie Rose, a five time elected Congressman, for the PBS Charlie Rose show. They are also reflected in an article in Foreign Affairs journal's current issue. Gates was a CIA analyst and has some insightful observations. Gates told Charlie Rose that he does not see the Islamic radicals and violent Islamic extremists as a threat in the same way as the threat in the Cold War years. This threat is not as big as the threat to freedom during the Cold War. He says the failure in strategic communications was huge as agencies of the US government engaged in activities in other countries, like the Agency for International Development and the US Information Agency, were neglected starting in the in the 1990's. Communications in other countries of what the US represented and stands for was left to the Pentagon, a role the Pentagon was ill-suited for. He sees the Islamic terrorism as more of an ideological conflict. Speaking at a town hall meeting at the Balad Air Force base in Iraq, in December, Gates pointed to these communications failures as a real challenge for the new administration. But he now sees a huge opportunity in this past failure, and ways of addressing it creatively, in addition to commiting resources and people to this effort. Walter Pincus wrote this article, and its part of the fineprint analysis effort at the Washington Post in which speeches, reports, and other documents are examined by people like Pincus, to catch the really important things, uncovering the fine print that really makes the headlines. Another aspect of this fineprint effort is that there are a huge number of reports, and speeches and documents that had a tone reminiscent of the Cold War during the Georgia war and yet they do not correctly reflect the real situation about Russia, as Gates sees it from his analysis of what is actually happening. Gates has used Foreign Affairs, the Dec 17 Charlie Rose Show on PBS in which he was interviewed, and the speech at the Balad Air Force base in Iraq, to communicate his views and analysis. They are important to underline and emphasize precisely because they show that all that cold war hysteria reporting and speeches may be misleading and lead to improper conclusions and mistakes in policy, wasted effort, wasted resources, and lost lives. And just as the US strategic communications was starved of resources and effort, so also this necessary work to retrieve and give emphasis to the important things is neglected. One additional link to this is the speech, discussion, and QA session in Washington DC at the time of the G20 summit in which President Medvedev and the new administration's elder statesman and diplomat Marilyn Albright, former secretary of state, expressed their hopes and plans for a new era in Russian-American relations. ...

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The European Union has a massive surplus of $147 billion with the U.S. President Trump is making this an issue in trade negotiations. A 20% tariff on German cars imported into the U.S. is part of the tariff response from the Trump administration. 

To settle this dispute Germany is making new offers with the visit of European Commission president, Jean Claude Juncker, to Washington. France sees little room for compromise as it sees Trump's efforts designed to break European unity by driving a wedge between France and Germany.

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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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Liz Whitehurst is one of many young people who are giving up jobs in offices to take to farming. They are not from farm families and bring a new way and exciting way of looking at farming free of the pesticides and other practices common today. Only 2% of U.S. land is being used for growing fruits and vegetables, according to the Union of American Scientists cited in the Guardian newspaper, and this needs to at least double in acreage if American needs are to be met. Only 15% of Americans get the daily requirement for fruits and vegetables- so desperately needed is this  to lower the BMI of the 70% of overweight Americans with BMI over 50. In the light of this crisis the shift of young people to farming is an encouraging sign.  In 2015 Liz, 32 years, decided to buy a 3 acre farm in Upper Marboro, Md, giving up benefits and better pay at nonprofit jobs in Washington state.  Here she is shown picking up Aragula leaves in the November chill. She is not alone. She is joining a movement that is bringing highly educated, former urban first time farmers as the demand for better food, for local and sustainable food, especially fruits and vegetables grows in the U.S. Year on Year there is a 20% increase of farmers in states like California, Nebraska, South Dakota in the 25-34 age group. In the 2014 USDA Census this group is growing at 2-3% just when other groups are shrinking by double digits. These farmers are more likely to connect with the community supported agriculture (CSA) prorams and markets, to grow organically and limit pesticide and fertilizer use. They tend to have farms less than 50 acres. Liz leases the house and the fields from a neighboring couple in the 70's, growing organically certified peppers, cabbages, tomatoes and salad greens kale to aragula, rotating fields. On Tues, Thurs. and Fri. she and two friends are to be seen waking up in the early hours of darkness to kneel in mud and cut the greens. What motivates them is having a positive impact, to do that so it is immediate and you can see it making a difference, says Liz. Still young farmers face many hurdles, including student loan debt, and finding ways to meet the larger needs for online grocery service or the grocery chains. Yet a trend is taking shape for small and middle farms that provides some optimism as the number of farmers shrink significantly overall. Most alarmingly it is the lack of national and local policies to meet the health crisis of rising BMI's right at this level of local farms and community farms for local produce. Lack of any consciousness about this, even though good health in the U.S. as in other countries has always rested on what you are eating, long before processed foods became the norm this is the way the world met nutrition needs.    ...

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 U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, views China's response in trade negotiations as one of conducting extended negotiations that lead to little change. This has continued says Lighthizer for over a decade putting the U.S. at a serious disadvantage in trade. At a White House meeting in August 2017 Lighthizer convinced president Trump that China was in his words "tap, tap, tapping us along."  This confirmed president Trump's own instincts about the U.S. trading relationship with China. Lighthizer is a veteran of trade negotiations, having experience in the Reagan administration as the Deputy Trade Representative in 1983 in negotiations with Japan, when Japan was in a similar situation that China is today. At the time trade negotiations with Japan were getting nowhere. Lighthizer is said to have turned one Japanese response in negotiations into a paper plane and sent it flying right back. Lighthizer does not seek the limelight but is serious about his role having published op-eds in the NYT and WSJ since 2000 about how U.S. trading relationships were putting the U.S. and U.S. workers at an unfair advantage. Many of these op-eds are in the Lyrarc archive and a Search with the term "Lighthizer" would bring up these articles. This report in NYT shows how the role of Lighthizer was not anticipated by China when it sent Liu He to Washington in November 2017 to negotiate with the U.S. President Trump made certain Liu He and other Chinese leaders would have to talk to Lighthizer first. In a session with president Jinping laid out U.S. views that the past negotiations had accomplished little and new negotiations had to be undertaken very differently from negotiations in the past. Earlier in July trade negotiations conducted by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross were "shut down" by president Trump because China continued to repackage earleir offers which meant little to the U.S. As a lawyer at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher LLP Lighhizer represented steel industry clients hurt by subsidized Chinese steel industry imports. Mr. Trump and Lighhizer have bonded well because their instincts have been the same- that the U.S. had not been well represented in earlier negotiations by lawyers who saw themselves as speaking for American exporters.  Lighthizer is also a seasoned trade negotiator and has waited for the right time and situation to tackle the unbalanced trading relationship with China. For 30 years Lighhizer represented American manufacturers as he practiced trade law at the Skadden law firm. His strategy has been to get the administration to unite behind a clear trade strategy. He says "I try to be friendly in trade negotiations. I am not the theatrical type. The art of persuasion is about knowing where the leverage is." At this time the leverage lies in the huge trade surplus of about $300 billion China has with the U.S. The U.S. goal is to bring this down by $100 billion through this new negotiating strategy as earlier negotiations have failed. ...

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Experts say about 110,000 votes separate Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the three states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that decided the 2016 presidential election in the U.S. giving Trump the win. Post election reflection in the Democratic party points to a disconnect between the establishment in both parties and the white working class. It is described as something that was not thought enough about even though as pointed out in Lyrarc, and in The Washington Post by columnists, and in news coverage about the inequality movement long before Bernie Sanders appeared in 2015. In the period when banks were favored over millions of homeowners facing foreclosure in 2010-2014, the surging stock market and the zero to to half percent interest on savings that hurt savings of most of the working class and lower middle class without stock investments, and the continuing problems in communities facing job losses from trade for the third decade. The hollowing out of the regions in Ontario from job losses from the Canadian industry helped Justin Trudeau win the Canadian election. In this election it helped Trump in crucial midwestern states, combined with a degree of indifference shown by establishment Democrats. Former Vermont governor Howard Dean is planning to run for chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Bernie Sanders says he backs Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison to be the next chair of the DNC. Jeff Weaver, campaign manager for Sanders, says the problem lies in what has been clear for some time now "that the centrist wing of the democratic party has no standing with working class and middle class  voters in this country." In 2016 only 51% of union households supported Clinton the lowest since 1980, 43% supported Trump. Obama won 59% of union households in 2008 and 58% in 2012 to 40% for Republican Romney. Trump picked up 3% of union households, Clinton lost 7% of union households, creating about a 10 point gap that would be magnified in industrial states where union jobs are concentrated, for about 18% of the people who voted in the election, enough to create the shortfall in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsyslvania. Fed chairman Janet Yellen pointed out the problems at an Inequality conference in Boston in 2014, pretty stark in its reminder that inequality had surged to levels not seen since the depression of the thirties, with 62 million households having a net worth of $11,000. Krugman and other economists had pointed this out on the pages of the NYT. Yet the post election reflection in the media is as if this is some special insight when it was clear for all to see, and covered in depth in Lyrarc for years since 2008. There is voter fatigue after 8 years of one party in power as pointed out by Obama campaign strategist, David Axelrod. The loss of union enthusiasm made the task of  a third term for the Democratic party even more difficult.     ...

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A Washington Post poll in September 2016 shows some surprising results with Clinton competitive in Texas and Arizona, long red states. It shows Trump's appeal to older white voters helping him in Iowa and Ohio. Clinton has a slight lead in Michigan. Clinton also leads in Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Colorado, and also in Florida.  As the race gets closer with about 50 days left Clinton's lead of 8-9 points is now about 4 points. Most striking this time compared to 2012 is that Clinton is polling way ahead with college educated voters. A race with libertarian candidate Johnson shows him getting 15% of the vote in 15 states narrowing Clinton's advantage, but also putting pressure on Trump to win undecided voters. Clinton has consolidated the Democratic vote better than Trump with 90% support in 32 states compared to Trump's above that in only 13 states, a key weakness because of dividing the Republican vote with Trump's crude and blatant attacks during the primaries that have left some Republicans thoroughly alienated. Unlike any previous election this one is dividing the vote based on gender and education. A big additional difference is college educated white women where the gap is the widest seen in any election- a 23 point lead for Clinton with white college educated women nationwide. In the midwest Michigan still has a history of voting Democratic especially after the auto industry rescue by Obama. Demographic changes not mentioned here also play a part such as in Colorado and Nevada long time red states. A Clinton edge in Texas is the most surprising result in the entire poll results showing the old red state blue state division is now replaced by women, minorities and college degrees as the dividing line. Part of the reason for this is that the losses due to globalization. And in this respect Clinton does better than Obama, but not as well as Merkel in Germany who has also suffered with people who lost out in globalization but not to the extent of Obama, and to a lesser degree than Obama for Clinton. Enough minority support, Republican support, and blue collar support, in addition to women voters,  may be the difference for Clinton in Texas. The other factor is the advertising campaign funding and the national security issue, on which Clinton does better than Obama in the latter a key factor in red states, and is similar to Obama in the former to tackle midwestern states. Such as Michigan and Wisconsin, liberal in history but with large shifting blue collar votes. Hurt by globalization, but in the case of Michigan helped by the Democrats rescue of the auto industry. In a way this could bring the country together after Obama with the disappearing North-South or red state blue state division, and with enough union or working class white support for Clinton in addition to dominant college educated voters to form a new coalition of support compared to a predominantly red state white state division of Obama years based on the minority vote.  ...

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Many of the 255 Comments on this article in the NYT say it is misleading or grossly misleading title. Michael Crowley of NYT quotes Wertheim for his conclusion that there seems to be a sense that the world is out of control, there is chaos under president Biden. This is subtly presented and clearly wrong. Wertheim is the author of a book that questions America's exceptionalism, and says "isolationism" was somehow concocted by policy makers such as Eisenhower and Dulles, both Republicans for a postwar world built on American supremacy. What Crowley and Wertheim do is put their very idea of asking questions about policy which is a part of the discussion into misrepresenting through misinformation about what happened. Biden has acted with courage to close wars no other president not Reagan/ Rumsfeld who started the conflict with Iran by arming Iraq's unprovoked war on Iran, not Bush who initiated the war in Afghanistan, not Obama and Trump who did not close the war in the mountains around Kabul that is a "graveyard for Empires" - the Maratha Empire in India in the 1700's that opened the door to British rule in India, not the British Empire wisely staying out of it, the Soviet Union beginning its decline there, and the US mired in it similar to the Soviets. Crowley/Wertheim are only making things worse- Netanyahu was emboldened by the former president and made a major security failure. Putin miscalculated in Ukraine, Biden simply acted in the way any wise American president would -strengthened NATO with Finland and Sweden, providing reasons for Russian restraint yet without escalating the conflict. To say this is chaos is to misinform and misrepresent, and favor the very Supremacy that former president Trump proposes as policy based on US power. By contrast Biden' approach is peace through strength from building close relations between partners in Europe and Asia, not provocation or supremacy. Wertheim is only one voice in a larger discussion not the authority he is presented as. For Wertheim to say "isolationism" was a bogey and point to 1950 as the point when it was created is simply wrong. It existed in some form from the early days of the Republic. Washington was an advocate of not involving the fledgling Republic in foreign entanglements of France even though it was an ally. It is not that response to isolationism is the cause of America embracing the role of leading the Free World as it is now. It is simply the situation leaders faced. Truman faced it when Soviets planned insurgencies in Turkey and Greece which would not exist as democracies today without Truman. And across Eastern Europe Hungary 1956 Ike acted cautiously. Czechoslovakia 1968 LBJ Johnson acted cautiously already in the wrong war with Vietnamese nationalism.  ...

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Researchers David Autor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Gordon Hanson of the University of California, San Diego, and David Dorn of the Center for Monetary and Fiscal Studies in Madrid, in independent research, studied the impact of trade on 722 clusters of interrelated counties in the U.S. They focussed on the surge in Chinese imports and found a pattern. Counties with higher exposure to Chinese import growth showed higher unemployment and higher expenditures by the government for unemployment benefits, food stamps and disability benefits. Their calculations show the increased government payments amount to one to two thirds of the gains from trade with China. This does not include the losses suffered by people losing jobs who deplete savings as they look for new jobs. Hanson studied the effects of trade and Chinese imports in the 1990's and found the effects were relatively small. This time the effects are large and show counties that lacked local investments in industrial machinery and technologies in which China was still playing catchup such as Caterpillar in Peoria, Illinois, and Boeing in Everett, Washington, were most susceptible to higher jobless rates and in need of government support payments. Autor and Hanson found that from 2000-2007, communities in the 75th percentile- ones with greater exposure to Chinese import growth than 75% of all communities- saw a manufacturing jobless rate of about one-third more than communities in the 25th percentile. The government payments mean higher taxes or larger deficits are needed to support these communities, and long periods of unemployment reduce the incentive to work. Michael Spence, a Nobel prize winning economist from New York University, says the world has never seen such a rapid pace of growth as China experienced between 2000-2011, with rates approaching 12% in some years, making past experience and prevailing theories on trade an insufficient guide to what is happening....

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The Washington Post survey of 1200 readers on how the Republican healthcare plan of Speaker Ryan and the House of Representatives looks to them, how it affects them in their lives. Here Somasekhar of the Post gives the stories of 5 Americans. Some see the prospect of losing their insurance under the Republican plan even as they reach an older age, others a smaller segment says the Post, whose premiums jumped under the Affordable Care Act say they faced high premiums and high deductibles. The Post says the large majority of opinions have expressed anxiety over the proposed Republican Ryan House plan for healthcare. One of them is an uninsured poor farmer, Mr. Woosley,  income about $18000 who gained benefit from expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act,  one Mr. Smith, 32 years, a personal injury attorney who faces paying $10,000 if he did not take insurance and $10,000 if he took insurance because of high premiums so a wash either way deciding to do without it, one a tech worker Mrs. Powers, 62 years, income $22,000 on year and $4000 the next, from middle class during the tech boom but facing fewer opportunities and uncertain income from part time work, hit by the deep recession facing fewer opportunities as she gets older and now the prospect of losing insurance without government subsidies, one who is from the middle class who sees little benefit from the Affordable Care Act and is forgoing insurance because of the high premiums yet faces a penalty for not being insured under the ACA, another Mr. Blanchard, 52 years, is from the middle class, a computer programmer who lost his job in downsizing, earns $100,000 as a consultant self-employed, pays $767 in premium a month and relies on the Affordable Care Act which helps him gain freedom from working at a company that could downsize,  another is a middle class programmer Mr Riffle,age 44, and his wife, who does not qualify for a subsidy with a $71,000 family salary from working 4 jobs between himself and his wife- this person finds it too expensive for his salary to buy insurance $900 a month and $14,000 deductible under the Affordable Care Act. His views are worth listening to as they go to the crux of the problem- he says he may not be any better with the Republican plan. He sees the real problem as the high cost of health care in the U.S. and the only way this can be fixed is for members of Congress to be asked to use the insurance exchanges they create. If this sample is representative it shows that there are real problems with both the Affordable Care Act and the Republican plan, that the high cost of health care the problem lurking behind every plan that does not squarely address this, and till that happens and members of Congress experience what ordinary people face, this problem can never by fully solved.   Woosley, Smith, Powers, Blanchard, Riffle, and their personal experience is at the crux of what is right and wrong  with the Affordable Care Act, and also with the new Republican plan of Speaker Ryan and the House of Representatives. For every Woosley, Powers and Blanchard who benefit, there is a Smith and a Riffle who are indifferent or are affected by the high cost under Affordable Care Act and the current system of medical care with its high cost. The Affordable Care Act does not  tackle high cost, for that to happen the culture in America that makes it possible and acceptable to charge high prices must change. Another problem apart from bringing health care costs is that any solution needs to have the whole country behind it. If the notion that all people are entitled to basic health care is to stand, the whole country needs to believe it as they do in countries like France, Britain, Germany and Japan. If this has to be made a workable proposition health care has to be offered at a price that makes this possible to achieve, and that idea also needs the deep and broad sense of support from the culture in America similar to that in these other countries. Until that happens politicians in America will get elected and turned out of office in turns on issues such as health care, based on which side they take and which problems they choose not to face squarely and responsibly. ...

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Solyndra Inc. and what went wrong. Solyndra filed for bankruptcy in Sept. 2011, after investments of private and government capital of over a billion dollars. Of this $535 million was a loan backed by the U.S. Department of Energy, leaving taxpayers with large losses. When emails were being exchanged between Vice President Biden's advisor and OMB staffers on August 31, 2009, according to the Washington Post, Solyndra was already in trouble. OMB pleaded for more time to do due diligence and analysis of the company. A $535 million loan was approved just when the economics behind Solyndra's cylinder coated solar materials were being made obsolete by the existing technology of polysilicon cells laid out on a flat panel. At Solyndra's inception in 2005 the cylinder based technology held promise, as the polysilicon cells technology relied on polysilicon material which was costly to make. In 2009 China was investing heavily in the polysilicon technology and bringing prices down to where the material cost was coming down quickly-down as much as 80%. By the end of 2009, it cost $4.00 per watt to produce Solyndra's product, while the competing Chinese polysilicon product cost $1.00 per watt- today this is down to 75 cents for the polysilicon product. The Solyndra product was harder to manufacture and had more defective material that had to be discarded. It is in the midst of these sea changes in technology, costs, and the economics of the project, that the government pushed for and OMB approved the Solyndra loan of $535 million to build a new factory that could produce 500 megawatts. In 2010 the economics worked as it would be expected, leading to Solyndra sales of 65 megawatts. The original factory had a capacity with improvements of 100 megawatts. Solyndra lost $172 million in 2009 on revenue of $100 million. Private investors attitude to their investment changed in 2009. The Wall Street Journal quotes one investor who saw the government loan followed by an IPO as a way to exit and cash out. A press release by Solyndra in July 2009, stated the company had a contractual backlog of $2 billion, even as the economics of the Solyndra product were collapsing. Yet these orders were not firm orders but framework agreements. In Dec. 2009 the lead underwriters, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, made an initial filing for an IPO, which was cancelled by the board 6 months later when the new factory had to be closed. The private investors interests and the governments interests had already diverged by the time of the email pushing for the $535 U.S. government loan from McSweeney, Biden's domestic policy advisor, to the senior OMB staffer, cited in the Washington Post, Stephens and Leonnig, 9/14/2011. OMB and the White House staffers failed to see this and the bankruptcy outcome that seemed highly probable in August 2009, based on the economics and competitive technology and pricing. This does prove the often cited comment that the government is not good at choosing winners and losers when handing out money. It goes beond this to show the whole process of due diligence failing at agencies such as the Energy Department and the Office of Management and the Budget, where one would think technically qualified staffers could catch the problems and risks of a project that were so apparent. ...

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Walt Mossberg, who writes the Wall Street Journal's consumer technology review section, watched Steve Jobs up-close over the years since 1997. They met one-on-one for product introductions, long discussions about the industry, and recently after Jobs illness, at his home in Palo Alto. Mossberg describes a long walk to a nearby park after Jobs had undergone a liver transplant. It provided an insight into the man Steve Jobs was. Persistent- he called Mossberg for 4-5 straight weekends during the dark days of 1997-1998 to convey his vision of Apple products or discuss aspects of reviews. Patience and optimism about the future- Jobs always maintained a positive tone and a vision of what could be in the digital revolution, and Apple's role in it in these discussions. There is the opening of the first retail store in the Washington D.C. area, and Jobs patiently handles Mossberg's incredulity about Apple and its inexperience with retail stores. And Jobs saying that he had taken a serious interest in the details- down to the translucency of the glass. There is the meeting with Bill Gates at the fifth All Things Digital Conference, when both made their appearance together for the first time and Jobs hands a cold bottle of water to Gates. By this time Jobs had already come to the conclusion- as he once said after accepting a $150 millon investment from Gates in 1997-1998- that it was no longer true that Microsoft had to lose for Apple to succeed....

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U.S. President Obama's speech at the General Assembly of the United Nations, Sept. 25, 2012, in which he praised the work of Ambassador Stevens in Libya. He defended First Amendment rights in the U.S. of free speech to an audience that was not fully convinced that the "anti-Muslim video" designed from the start as a provocation, produced as a violation of probation rulings by the individual, and being given the distribution channel of a vast internet audience by Google owned YouTube, falls neatly into free speech. The German government is reported to be looking into banning the video from distribution in Germany, and Germany also protects free speech under its constitution. He cited the "voices that rally against bigotry and blasphemy," as the way a First Amendment democracy protects against this type of abuse; which would suggest that Google as one of these voices has the responsibility to treat such content similiar to other extreme content of a pornographic nature or other such provocative material inducing violence, which it routinely excludes from distribution. The ultimate protection of First Amendment rights comes not from the U.S. constitution itself, but from the responsible exericize of wisdom, vigilance and common sense. During the long years of drafting of the Constitution when Madison, Jefferson and others who drafted the document took pains to include every protection so that basic rights would be preserved, George Washington pointed out that one could do this only upto a point, because it was upto the wisdom of future generations to preserve these rights, and this could never be done completely....

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The Obama administration has not given strong support to long delayed democratic processes in Egypt. The Washington Post cites several of the actions that have quashed Egypt's hopes of a return to normal democratic processes. The President and the Secretary of State have shied away from public support for democratic processes, free elections and freedom of expression. There is a failure to link Egyptian President Mubarak's suppression of free expression and of freely contested elections with the $1 billion annual aid to Egypt, much of it going to the military. And the Obama administration has failed to support legislation or resolutions calling for democratic processes and free elections. One of the opposition leaders is a respected diplomat El-Baradei, who headed the UN arms control agency. The US is missing an opportunity to do the right thing and make its voice heard. Not doing this only creates a credibility gap for the US in the Middle East. This comes after Obama's speech to students at the university in Cairo. In that speech he said that the tension between Muslims and Western nations "has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim majority countries were often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations." Not only is Obama squandering the hopes and aspirations of Egyptians looking for change, but this puts the US as going along with Mubarak, an 82 year old President who will not be around for long. ...

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Pearlstein lists the names of insider investors for Facebook- Peter Theiel and Founders Fund, Jim Breyer and Accel Partners, Greylock Partners, Microsoft, Li-Ka-shing, Bono and Elevation Partners, Alisher Usmanov and DSL. For full disclosure he states Washington Post Co. chairman, Donald Graham, is on the board of Directors of Facebook. Venture capitalists are leveraging their position in Facebook to get new investors, share prices of companies involved are up. Goldman benefits by the $60 millon for placing client money in Facebook, a cut of 5% from any profit they earn, and the hundreds of millions of dollars from being a lead underwriter for Facebook's IPO. What all this does is create the conditions for a bubble for internet stocks similiar to the bubble in late 1990's, with insiders reaping most of the benefits and the public taking on most of the risk as the internet stock loses its dominant position with the entry of new technologies and competitors in the market or a change in consumer preferences. As was evident in the earlier bubble this is not hard to create. Some of these bubbles are in fact already taking place for Chinese internet stocks on US stock exchanges, with investigation staking place into accounting practices of some of these companies. With the financial electronic media and analysts doing their part in the hype and sell such a bubble is underway, just when the debt burdened US middle class can ill-afford any losses that may take place. ...

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February 1, 2011, the day when a million demonstrators were expected to come out on Tahrir Square in Cairo, the Washington Post makes a call for a democratic transition in Egypt. The Post says unfortunately the debate has been affected by considerable misinformation and mistaken ideas. It singles out three for correction. The protestors have no platform, that the radical Islamists are likely to assume power, and that the US has little power to influence the change. The April 6 Movement is a principal organizer of the protests and is run by young people. The party of Mohamed El-Baradei and the Muslim Brotherhood have joined together with the young protestors movement to have a common platform. And in a country where an estimated two thirds of the population is under 30 years, the older leaders in the El-Baradei party and the Muslim Brotherhood are deferring to the younger leaders. The movement is middle class, centrist, and its main grievance is the yearning for liberty. Eliott Abrams, the deputy national security advisor to former President George W. Bush, and Mr Bush on C-SPAN, have come out in favor of the Egyptian people's struggle for freedom. See Abrams column in the Post. The Muslim Brotherhood is unlikely to win anything more than a minority of seats in any elections, because the overwhelming influence in the protests is secular, middle class, and seeks the democratization and modernization of Egypt. For the American people this is an opportunity to support the aspirations to freedom and a modernized economy for the Egyptian people....

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Condoleeza Rice, personally worked with Ayman Nour and other opposition figures during a visit to Cairo to promote democratic process in Egypt. Michael Gerson who was also present at that meeting in June 2005, writes about it in the Washington Post Feb 2, 2011. This is a really rare instance of a Secretary of State supporting dissent in this manner. She says here that the unsettling and the unfamiliar, the turbulence of a transition to democratic processes is preferable to the false stability of autocracy. Such a false stability can be seething with malignant forces and deep animosities which surely spell trouble in the future, and as Rice puts it, find a footing when autocrats suppress democratic voices. Rice calls into serious question the whole policy of the US to seek stability at the expense of democracy in the Middle East, more than it does in any other region and in sharp contrast to its policies in Eastern Europe. See the link to Karen Elliott House, former publisher of The Wall Street Journal, and a Pulitzer prize winner for covering the Middle East ( Feb. 15, 2011, WSJ), and the link to Elliott Abrams, former deputy national security advisor to President George W. Bush (Wash. Post Jan 28, 2011), for reasons why this is totally out of touch with conditions in the Middle East, and simply sets up problems for the future. The founding principles of 1776 are a better guide to conducting US foreign affairs and can be trusted to serve the country well....

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As it grows into a significant player in mobile advertising with about 35% of all mobile advertising, Facebook is looking for ways to put news content on its site. Earlier efforts were less successful. The Ice Bucket Challenge showed some publishers the risks of using a social media platform for news content. With Facebook users spending most of the summer posting videos of people getting water poured on them to raise funds to fight ALS, less links to news sites were shared with users. An initiative called Social Reader in 2011 with the Washington Post was designed to create a sort of newspaper for Facebook, but fizzled out in 1 year after readers found any post opened going to all friends creating a spam effect. Another problem is that news stories are slow to appear on mobile phones. Instant Articles is the latest effort by Facebook to publish news content on its site. Users would not link back to the news website but stay on Facebook. It makes news websites dependent on Facebook in the long run, say news publishers. They are wary of this because economic arrangements such as Facebook giving 100% of the money from ads posted against an article, can change over time. As of March 2015, according to Parse.ly analytics firm, Facebook was the source of 27% news traffic to all news sites, Google 22.7%. Editors of news sites now write headlines in a way that are optimized to appear higher up in search results....

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In 1980 Jeb Bush 27, was looking for a place where he could make a fresh start away from the Bush name in Washington and Texas. His father was making a run for president that year. Miami with its bustling Cuban American community seemed a perfect place for Bush with his fluency in Spanish and his Mexican born wife Columba. The co-chairman of the Bush campaign in Florida was a Cuban American, Armando Codina. He set up Bush Realty, making Jeb Bush a partner with a 40% stake in the firm. In this period 1980-1992, Bush's gross income averaged 107,000 for the 6 years before the elder Bush was elected president to $1.6 million in 1990 half way during the elder Bush's term as president, according to a WSJ analysis of tax returns. This was also a period when Jeb Bush while engaging in business deals, was also running for office- first as Commerce secretary for 2 years in 1987, making a unsuccessful run for governor in 1994, and a successful run in 1998, 2002. He helped boost the Republican party in the Miami area, bringing together Republicans and the Cuban American exile community, during the anti-communist mood of the Reagan period. As Miami-Dade county Republican party chairman he helped boost voter rolls for the party, which had a 2 to 1 Democratic party advantage in earlier years. Stewart and Reinhard document the situations in which the Bush connections at the White House helped Jeb Bush in his real estate business....

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On one hand the issue of the $165 million in bonuses going out to employees in the 370 person Financial Products Group, and oth the other the need to wind up the complex derivative contracts that are causing these huge losses at AIG. But are such huge payouts needed for these employees to do their job? Isn't this aprofessional responsibility of these employees? And AIG's retention-payment program was disclosed a year ago and the amount of the bonuses $400 million, says the Washington Post, had been widely reported. The company is set to pay according to the WPost $600 million in retention awards to about 4700 people throughout the global insurance units. WHat happens to the $600 million, as no opinion has been voiced on these upcoming payments. The whole idea of retention payment raises another question. Will the skills of these employees be needed in a long drawn out economic downturn spread over several years or longer. And will thefailure of such things as derivatives, and the tighter regulation, mean that they will play amuch smaller role in the future. And even in the insurance units will these skills draw a premium in a market where the supply of new talent is larger than the job market ? One expert has sugggested that even if some of them left, there would be younger people to replace them who might bring an even better set of qualifications, with amix of skills, caution and prudence. So is there something self-interested and spurious in the retention argument itself and shouldn't this bluff be called? ...

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A couple of things have taken Obama ahead given he is a candidate who the electorate is not so familiar with and his relative lack of experience, and they relate to McCain as candidate and Obama as candidate. McCain comes across as impulsive and casual, Obama has more composure and steadiness and is thorough. In the selection of candidate Obama filled in for experience, and McCain's selection handicapped his experience argument. McCain campaign's higher taxes from Obama argument is also blunted by his poorly thought out plan to tax health insurance benefits, which neutralized his claims of higher taxes from Demmocrats. And Obama's grassroots organization and fundraising maakes it possible to run a stronger better campaign and his focus has been consistent and steady on the economy, all of which add up to another advantage. And all this is happening against the background of 8 years of Republicans and unpopularity of Bush. To that is added the sudden deterioration of the economy in September 2008 and a global financial crisis, in which McCain's impulsiveness in going to Washington which led to Republicans voting down the first bailout plan in the House was set against steadiness of Obama on these economic issues, with advice from an experienced man like Paul Volcker, former Fed chairman. The worst hit economically are midwest states where the auto industry is near collapse needing its own bailout, and this has led to an astonishing lead in some polls of 25 points for Obama, quite unheard of for a fresh candidate....