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An email by a Tokyo Elecric Power Company employee working at one of the Fukushima nuclear power plants shows in stark detail the struggles of workers at the plant. She writes: " My parents were washed away by the tsunami and I still don't know where they are. Normally I would rush to their house as soon as I could. But I can't even enter the area because it is under an evacuation order." She works for the plant manager of the Fukushima Daini plant. She says that where her parents lived the whole town was washed away by the tsunami. Describing her work location she says: "The scene is completely like a war zone," and that people are "working without sleep or rest." The email continues- "everyone has lost everything- their home, their job, their school, their friends, their families."

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Casey points to the co-dependency between stock market investors in the U.S. and the Bernanke Federal Reserve. The stock market slumped in July 2013 and then hit new highs when Fed chairman Bernanke clarified that monetary policy will contiue to be accomodative for a long period with rates low even as the Fed tapers off its bond purchases. This makes the task of normalizing interest rates tricky for the Fed. Bernanke and the rest of the Open Market Committee have to consider the problems of a bubble in the stock markets, avoiding a destabilizing selloff in markets because of strong signals of normalization of rates, and changes in economic conditions in the U.S. and to some exent globally. Similiar reassuring statements were made by the head of the Bank of Japan, Bank of England and the ECB.

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Kristof compares Pakistan to Bangladesh. Bangladesh he says has more girls in high school than boys, and compares this with only 3% of women in the Pakistan tribal areas who are literate. He points out that this may well be why Al Quaeda is in Pakistan and not Bangladesh. He asks if its so hard to build schools, then how is it that Greg Mortenson has built 39 schools in Afghanistan and 92 in Pakistan- and not one has been burned or closed down. The Afghan Institute for Learning he adds has 32 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with noen closed by the Taliban. Afghnistan needs nutritional support, irrigation, schools, education, healtcare just as badly as the rest of South Asia where one report says about 48% of the children under age of 48 are malnourished, just more desperately so.

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Economists from Mankiw, Eichengreen, Kashyap, Harrison Hong, Brad Long and others all agree that capital is front and centre, capital injection into the banks has to be the centrepiece of any action plan, and that a coordinated plan by all countries is necessary for it to work effectively. The remarkable consensus is registernig among policy planners and central bankers and finance ministers, as this is the direction that Paulson and the rest of the G8 are following, taking the cue from Gordon Brown's announced plan for the UK that made capital injection a key feature for recapitalizing the banks and getting credit flowing. Governments also need to guarantee the interbank markets as banks are shy of lendig to each other because of fear of what may be on the other party's balance sheet, something the US has still to do.

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GMAC under Cerberus 51% ownership is actually restricting credit for purchases of GM cars by insisting on credit scores over 700. To the point that GM is encouraging dealers to look for financing outside GMAC. Not a good state of affairs. Cerberus motivation may be that it wants the rest of GMAC instead of Chrysler and wants GM to give its 49% of GMAC in exchange for Chrysler's merging operations with GM. But anywhere upt half of Chrysler employees could lose their jobs in such a merger because there is no time for long term integration and the costcutting would be immediate. Again a bad state of affairs. And merging a money losing company with another money losing company at the beginning of a deep recession is not the kind of merger that has the chances of some success.

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This report in The Economist shows how Nairobi is coping with years of haphazard and disorganized development. As land prices jumped new investment has led to a unregulated disorganized building boom that has affected rivers and sanitation. The city's water supply and colonial era sewers are barely coping, says the Economist. To try to fix this the city has launched a demolition campaign for 4000 buildings. Meanwhile Nairobi's population has grown by 1.5 million over the 2009 figure of 3.1 million. Projects to build 200,000 low income housing is also underway. Four problems need to be tackled- a skills shortage, insufficent government investment, enforcement and rule of law, and last rent seeking typical of underdeveloped countries with corruption, complicating the tasks ahead. The biggest problem is large population growth for most African cities.

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In this editorial the Wall Street Journal says it supports the "sequester" or trigger of automatic cuts in 2013 if the Supercommittee in the U.S. Congress fails to reach agreement on budget cuts. Across the board budget cuts are not the best option, but says the Journal given that politicians have failed to come to agreement this is the best option available. This will generate $68 billion in savings in 2013. The Congressional Budget Office estimates cuts will be 7.8% for domestic programs, and defense will take a 10% cut. Medicare spending will fall by 2%, mostly payments to providers. To put this in perspective the Journal points out that total domestic discretionary spending doubled to $614 billion in 2010 from $298 billion in 2000, providing a higher starting point for cuts. It says some of the cuts in defense could be restored through a supplemental bill as planned by Sen. McCain.

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Kurczewski test drives aNano LX around the test drive track near the Tata Pimpri factory, and on city streets. He thinks the pickup is good for Indian city streets. The four speed manual transmission makes changing gears abreeze. The 0.6 liter engine is half the size of the Toyota Yaris or the Honda Fit. Acceleration is slow 30 seconds to reach 60mph, but in Indian traffic this works fine. Visibility is excellent. No exterior passenger side mirror, no radio, and luggage goes in from inside the car, all deisgned to keep costs down. THere is Airconditioning in the LX which accounts for half of Nano orders so far and goes for $3800. Three point safety belts, but no air bags. A Nano Europa with improvements to meet European safety and emission standards and air bags will be intorduced to Europe in 2011, and asimilar car also intoroduced to the USA by 2011 possibly at Chrysler-FIat dealers.

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With the aggressive actions taken along the 1600 kilometre border in eastern Ladakh by China's People's Liberation Army, India needs a younger soldier to protect the border at high altitudes in below freezing temperatures. The entire 3500 kilometre border in the high Himalayan regions from east to west need technology driven surveillance with soldiers fit and ready for such duty. Agnipath's goal is to bring down the average age in the army from 32 years to 26 years to better reflect the youthful population in India. A tighter better disciplined force with high tech is needed. Bringing in more and new recruits is intended. Both the 25% of recruits retained after 4 years benefit and the 75% benefit. The 25% will have opportunities to move up the ranks. The 75% who come back out of the military will have the advanced technical training and courses, certification, that would make them attractive to the public and private sector companies in 2026 and beyond when India's economy will be 50% larger than today at growth rates of 10-12%. This is already seen in the way technologically trained military recruits from World War II in the US Army, Navy and Air Force were quickly absorbed at high salaries in the high growth period of America 1950-1970, with incentives like the GI Bill. Modifications that could be discussed- The 25% retained after 4 years. There is no magic number it could be raised to 30 or 40% during these post pandemic years and then lowered to 25% as the economy grows rapidly by 2025, or kept at 30% without changes, a number of options could be open.The financial aspect of the training can be modified where the 25% retained could have these 4 years added to their years for calculating pensions. The 75% are given 1.2 million rupees and even this can be adjusted upwards so that they could start businesses as entrepreneurs or have the time to pursue higher education before taking up for example with free education to enhance their education in areas of interest as was given by the GI bill to Americans in the armed services after World War II in 1946. Ideas from the GI Bill signed by president Franklin Roosvelt in 1944- Adding one year of unemployment payments, low interest loans to start a farm or business, full tution and living expenses for college. In 2008 the Veterans Act in the US continued support for education of servicement by making eduction free at a public college or university.  The Roosevelt GI bill benefited about 7.8 million servicemen in the US armed services. 2.2 million went to college, 7.6 million took training programs. It was an impressive achievement. No scheme is perfect there are budgetary constraints such as how to manage pensions to give the armed services the best possible funding including the training and course capabilities that also need good financing and the higher pensions for armed services. Every political party  government around the world without exception will have to face these budgetary constraints and the goal is to do right by the armed services providing the income and opportunities they deserve. Was a decent effort made with the right goals set? This is how these matters of national interest for India and the Free World that includes South East Asia, Africa and Latin America, should be discussed.    ...

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Kerala state of 35 million people who speak the language Malayalam, is one of the rare places today that has only 4 deaths from coronavirus, 524 cases confirmed and no community transmission. Here the Guardian looks at the reasons why. The Health minister KK Shailaja started very early on January 23, with a meeting of her rapid response team when the virus was still in China.  She setup a control room and instructed Kerala's 14 districts to do this on Jan. 24. When the first case arrived on Jan. 27 on a plane from Wuhan, Kerala had already adopted the WHO  protocol of test, trace, isolate and support. These passengers were checked for temperature, tested and quarantined. With some at a nearby hospital and others in home isolation. This is all the more amazing considering that Kerala is a state in southern India on the west coast that has a large number of people living and working overseas. Many are in the Gulf countries and the arrival of these refugees could have triggered a second outbreak. This was prevented by careful testing, and contact tracing of clusters.  When one group was evasive and concealed information from an airport surveillance team -arriving from Venice, Italy,  in late Feb- a case was detected back to them.  Contact tracers tracked down all of the hundreds whom they had been in contact with and quarantined them.  By 23 March all flights to 4 Kerala airports from overseas were stopped, including Cochin and Trivandrum. On March 25 India went into lockdown.  Some of the achievements in Kerala include quarantining 170,000 people early. with strict surveillance, which is now down to 21,000. Accomodating and feeding 150,000 migrant workers from other states, before returning them on charter trains to their home areas. A big reason for the success is the high literacy rate in the state. A big emphasis on education and healthcare is a part of the Kerala model. Shailaja is a secondary school teacher, and Health minister. From the days since independence of India in 1947 the state has a strong socialist tradition of taking care of the basics- health, education and public services. It also generates a part of its GDP with income from workers who are overseas.  Another reason for the success in dealing with coronavirus is experience. The state had a virus epidemic called Nipah in 2018 which has become the story for a movie called Virus in Malayalam. There is decentralized public health system in the state and people value their health care facilities, understand and trust the health care authorites. There are hospitals at every level of administration and 10 medical colleges. But trust and education, experience tackling the virus before, are key. Kerala is showing that poor countries can deal effectively with the virus, and create a better life by adopting the right model of creating good societies that value education, healthcare services, better economic structures and distribution of wealth, and  a degree of trust and responsibility found in a state that values public spiritedness. ...

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With poor sales for the Blackberry Z 10 in 2013, AT&T and Best Buy retailers are discounting the phone to $49 for a refurbished phone, and $99 for a new phone from the original price of $199. Such steep discounting soon after the March 2013 launch of the Z 10 suggests the phone is selling poorly.

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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.

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Nawaz Sharif allies himself with the lawyers movement which has popular support in the country. With all the chaotic politics and military's role in politics, the rule of law is seen by many as the best way for the people of Pakistan to have a better future. Ifthikar Chaudhary is reinstated as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

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Sales of Ford's best sellig pickup truck F-150 fell 31% in May, compared to May 2007, and sales of SUV's and pickup trucks dropped 24%. Its sad that it took so long for the American car companies to phase down from the large vehicle business and shift resources in a big way to smaller cars.

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How Abu Dhabi is coming up with a set of best practices for its sovereign investment fund for Abu Dhabhi and the U.A.E.

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India's large deposits of coal and iron ore are in the north east part of the country. In the least developed and poorer part of the country, in and near the states of Chhatisgarh, Bihar and Orissa and Madhya Pradesh. About 85 million tribal people live in the dense forests of this region. State governments have given rights for extracting coal and iron ore to Indian steel companies and some foreign companies. But no arrangement has been worked out so that the tribals can improve their standards of living and have access to education, health care and better living conditions by the companies, and relying on the governments and bureaucracy has proved precarious as they have done little for the tribal people. This has created an opening for a Maoist type violent movement which originated in West Bengal in Naxalbari several decades back. Because of the rapid progress in other parts of the country in the south and north and western parts of India not enough attention has bee given to develop a solution that integrates the tribal people into the progress that the rest of the country is experiencing starting with basic things like literacy, living conditions, sense of ownership and dignity, health care and so on. What this does is slow down the overall process of development as violent incidents take place against mining sites of major Indian and foreign companies. Chhatisgarh state an area with poor control by the government over Naxalite militants is where 23% of India's coal and iron ore deposits lie. India's Planning Commission prepared a special report on the collective failure of social and economic policies in the tribal areas and poorer parts of the country. At this point the government's response has been to respond with security arrangements but better policies and execution of efforts to improve conditions in tribal areas are needed in a timely way....

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Suggested books for retirement to help understand better how to lead the life you want to live in your 60's and beyond are shown here.  The Big Shift: Navigating the New Stage Beyond Midlife, by Marc Freedman 65 Things to Do When You Retire, edited by Mark Evan Chimsky (a collection of 65 essays by achievers in their 60's with unusual and fulfilling activities during retirement) Second-Act Careers, by Nancy Collamer The Encore Career Handbook, by Marci Alboher Don't Retire, Rewire, by Jeri Sedlar and Rick Miners (these do just what they say with examples) Transition to retirement can be arduous- and here is where these books come into draw on the experience of hundreds of people between 50 and eighty years to shape a healthy and rewarding life in retirement. The Couple's Retirement Puzzle, by Roberta K. Taylor Retirement for Two, by Maryanne Vandervelde       ...

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For passengers air travel nowadays is travelling on planes that are often totally booked. This is because airlines are cutting flights. And with fewer passengers after the economic crisis hit, airlines are having a difficult time cutting flights enough to meet the continuing drop in the number of passengers. Before the crisis business and international travel was a good source of revenue, now this is fading as there is more competition on transatlantic routes with about 50 airlines offering flights between US cities and European cities. The liberalization of air travel between the two continents with the 2007 "open skies" agreement is keeping downward pressure on prices. The International Air Transport Association says the number of passengers travelling on business and first class tickets between N. America and Europe was down 18.4% in April 2009, compared with same month in 2008. Traffic between N. America and Asia was down 26%, for the same period. This is hitting Lufthansa ansd KLM-Air France hard, but is helping Easyjet, Ryanair, and Air Berlin. As demand drops airlines will continue to cut capacity, and this will be done by cutting the number of flights on a route and using smaller planes. After all this capacity cutting takes place by September, OAG Aviation estimates that the seats on domestic flights will drop to 66.5 million from a peak of 84 million in 2001, a drop of 21%. Some airlines which rely less on corporate travellers will not see as steep a drop. These airlines are Southwest, JetBlue and AirTran. Airlines that may not survive the effects of the economic crisis, with tight credit and drop in air travel, and volatile oil prices, are United Airlines and US Airways. United relied heavily on corporate and trans-Pacific fliers before the economic crisis. Fitrch Ratings cites this in reducing the credit rating for United to junk status, as well as the heavy debt maturities in 2009 and 2010. In June 2009 United raised $175 million by issuing new debt, but at an interest rate of 17%. At US Airways the combined airline with America West after a$1.5 billion merger is struggling. It has the thinnest cash position of any airline according to a Morningstar research analyst, and may need further borrowing to meet debt payments. With all assets already mortgaged US Airways may have little borrowing capability left....

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$2000 rebate to all Americans to help meet cost of living concerns is put forward by the US president. This would put the tariffs revenue to good use to achieve the goal of bringing back manufacturing and supply chains to the US using tariff policy. This is to counter other nations use of subsidies and other ways to put American manufacturers out of business in industry after industry for 30 years by pricing way below US producers. The rebate would offset the domestic effects on US consumers of products imported with tariffs, which are priced somewhat  higher because of the tariff even though most of the tariff is borne by exporters. The end result is the goal of bringing the product manufacturing for these products back to America, where manufacturing was shipped overseas through the shortsighted behavior of American producers since 1990, mostly to China. The WSJ takes no responsibility for this behavior of American corporations, and does not see this complete dependence of the US on overseas supply chains as a threat to America being able to conduct and independent policy for the Nation based on its own interests. For 30 years the WSJ and American economics profession has adopted the view that it does not matter if product after product is made in another country, or in only one other country as is the case with China as the sole manufacturing superpower in 2025. Who made China the manufacturing super power? Who ignored warnings of concentration of manufacturing in one place? It is these same economists and media such as the WSJ that have through their willingness to ignore these concerns even when it comes to advanced technologies that has made China the superpower in manufacturing it is in 2025. DJT and most of America is fighting a battle to bring these supply chains back to America knowing this is best for America and the American people. It is owing to this new spirit that once mighty industrial towns that had fallen to new lows are making a resurgence in the US- an example is in today's Washington Post report by Irina Ivanova with the title- An Old Manufacturing City sputters back to life, Nov. 11 2025. ...

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A study by Chris Whalen, managing director of Institutional Risk Analytics, of 7000 regional and community banks from data presented for the second quarter to the FDIC, shows that the bank's financial picture is deteriorating. Institutional Analytics put afailing grade on 1,882 banks as of June 30, 2009, up 16.5% from the end of March 2009. He says even the best run banks are feeling the bad effects of declining employment and asluggish economy. Whalen says this calls into question whether the stress tests for the "big banks" by the Obama adminsitration are adequate to control the crisis. Whalen says the asummption in those stress tests was that thes big banks had tohave enough capital and earnings to withstand a 9% loss rate, but what he is seeing in the industry is that we are already at a 9% loss rate , and the cycle has not peaked yet. He says any reduction in loss rates as assumed by the government may be shortlived as he sees things worsening in the fourth quarter of 2009. What about the good news that the big banks have raised capital in 2009. He says banks face operational problems, in addition to loan losses and low recovery rates on unloading assets they face rising expenses to carry these properties that generate little revenue. This cuts into earnings and what they can allocate to reserves. In this period banks are setting aside only half of what they would normally put in reserves to offset expected losses....

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Defense experts in Britain say the part of the Russian army that is modern is not large, and the part that is large is not modern. The Russian advance attack in Ukraine has floundered, says this report in the WSJ. About 25% of the Russian army is made up of conscripts. The hundreds of billions of dollars spent on modernization of the Russian armed forces have been spread thinly, and dissipated also because of corruption and poor management.  The Russian encrypted communications did not work as expected leading to relying on open communications that could be intercepted or jammed. The Russian government and president Putin were still stuck on 2014 and did not realize the determined resistance and the desire for independence of the Ukrainian people. Ukraine is a technologically advanced European country the size of Germany with a population of 40 million, and Russia has an economy the size of Italy, factors that also played a part. The corruption and poor economic conditions in the border Ukrainian republics setup by Russia led many Ukrainians in the eastern border region to question any advantages from Russian rule. The user of poorly motivated conscript soldiers led to many generals and other officers to have to be present on the front lines leading to Russian officer level casualties. The use of antitank weapons supplied quickly from the European Union and the US, and use of small mobile units of Ukrainian volunteer and army forces to tactically destroy the front and rear of miles long convoys of tanks and armored vehicles - leaving the rest of the convoys trapped in between. Logistics also failed to resupply deep inside Ukraine as Russian forces depend on rail based resupply which could not happen without control of cities on the rail lines. The volunteer forces in Ukraine after 8 years of war since 2014 and the immediate assistance with antitank and other military assistance from US, and EU, played a part in the western response to the Ukraine crisis and president Putin's actions.   ...

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Stephanie Nolan's reports from Africa provide the few glimpses one can get today of the situation in Africa where variants are growing as a result of lack of vaccines (vaccine inequality) and the faltering vaccination drive, shortage of medicine and food supplies. Her report from South Africa showed how healthworkers and scientists in South Africa are working hard on the frontlines. This one from Zambia looks at the vaccination centers and vaccination workers as vaccination drives falter. The African continent with 1.4 billion people received 404 million doses. Today only 7% of the population is vaccinated in Zambia and the rest of Africa. People in Zambia do not have car transport so they have to walk 3-6 kilometres to get to a vaccination center, when they turn up at a center and it is out of vaccines they stop coming. Other problems are the social media accounts that show the vaccination drives as harmful to people, or CNN and other news that talk about blood clots that when carefully understood affect a tiny fraction of people. There are other issues also. Ida Musonda, a nurse in a clinic near Lusaka says after not many people turned up that she should go to markets and churches, but says there is no fuel for the vehicle to get clinic workers there. Bernadette Kawango is shown with her children. She works at an auto parts store and lives in a low income neighborhood in the edge of Lusaka. She ignores all the social media accounts that scare people from vaccines, yet she says she worries more about cholera, TB and malaria, and also HIV, AIDS. And she does not know anybody diagnosed with coronavirus.  The result is that there is vaccine shortage resulting in a kind of vaccine indifference (why walk miles to a center if it may not have vaccines), compounded by other problems such as the other diseases that also pose a threat in Africa, and the low incomes in a shrinking economy. And with about 8% vaccinated in Africa, the problem of variants can only be tackled by consistent and not erratic supply of vaccines. ...

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Republican McConnell and Democrat Schumer in interviews in recent days with The Washington Post, as the focus on the rest of 2024  is on what will the new US Senate look like, who is in majority, and who is in minority after November. A small faction in his Republican party opposed McConnell's bipartisan compromise. McConnell says after 17 years in the US Senate, that one has to remember what Harry Truman said. Truman America's post war president in 1950's said if you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog. Yet the Post also says the two McConnell and Schumer worked closely for 4 months to negotiate the bipartisan compromise on immigration to close the border. The first time the two sides have come  this close in this century says the Washington Post. Looking at the 22 Republisenators that supported McConnell and voted for the aid to Ukraine one finds most are senior and the majority of the senators with the most experience, compared to a small faction of newcomers without anywhere near the same experience. This is why the dissension in Congress can also be seen as not telling the whole story, when the most experienced people in the Senate and the House of both parties have come together on the big issues even when the fringes of both are engaged in unconstructive confrontation. You could see that when the younger J.D. Vance of Ohio addressed the heads of all the major US banks this past week in a Congressional Senate hearing and the difference when the more experienced Van Hollen of Maryland talked to the same banking heads. And when Senator Tillis of North Carolina one of the older experienced Senate Republicans made a strong plea for aid to Ukraine on the House floor and in his earlier support for the bipartisan change to asylum and parole immigration laws in the US. A broad center is emerging around coming together, around the most experienced people in the US Congress that sets the country in the right direction.   ...

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Mike Bird in the WSJ points out that there is very little foundation for the idea that there is a tradeoff between the economy returning to normal and lockdown measures. Singapore and Japan without strict lockdown measures have also shown very sharp economic decline. The U.S. Federal Reserve and MIT economists published a paper at the end of March that shows during the 1918 flu epidemic cities with stricter lockdowns actually had better economic outcomes. In the 1918 pandemic Philadelphia did not impose a strict lockdown till later, St Louis acted immediately with a lockdown. St Louis emerged out of the 1918 pandemic returning to economic normalcy much earlier than Philadelphia. It is critical say the authors to understand that pandemic economics is not normal economics. There are both a supply side and demand side effects. China today is still suffering from significant loss of world demand as it struggles even though its manufacturing and its retail stores are gradually returning to normal. It will continue to struggle as long as demand remains very low in the rest of the world. And even though the services sector is larger today in U.S. and Europe than in 1918, with a smaller manufacturing sector, the pandemic effects and economics provide a useful comparison.  Japan provides an example of how the services sector less exposed to overseas demand and with Japan operating without lockdown sees its service sector absolutely hammered.  This WSJ report says it recorded a sharper slowdown than even the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. The authors of the study including from the MIT Sloan School of Management say they found no evidence that the cities that acted more aggressively in public health terms did worse in economic terms. If anything says MIT Sloan Asst, Prof. Vermer the cities that acted aggressively did better. The authors are specific, the cities that performed 50 days more of social distancing performed better in manufacturing employment by 6.5% after the pandemic ended through 1923. Earlier social distancing by 10 days translated into a 5% increase in manufacturing employment. ...