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The US added 103,000 jobs on net in December 2010, acccording to the Labor Department. The jobs were mainly added in leisure and hospitality (especially the food services and drinking places subsector ) and in health care. Payrolls for other industries show no growth. A different government survey, which is based on how many people are without jobs but are actively looking for work, fell to 9.4% in December 2010 from 9.8% in November. But part of the reason for this is that many people stopped looking for jobs.

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The Moody's ratings downgrades of major American banks will increase the short term borrowing costs of these banks especially because they have large amounts of debt to roll over.

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The economics situation in Eastern Europe is looking much better now after the recovery of confidence in the USA and Western Europe with stimulus measures and other steps to ease credit, and the decision at the G20 summit in London in early 2009 to provide a strong line of credit to emerging market economies struggling in this crisis. The European Bank for Reconstruction ad Development sees a 5.2% drop in GDP in 2009 over 2008, and the IMF 4.9% for Eastern European economies. The region varies country by country, with GDP decline forecast for 2009 over the prior year by the IMF showing a modest decline of 0.7% for Poland which is doing well, Czech Republic 3.5%, Hungary 3.3%, Bulgaria 2%. Other countries Lithuania 10%, Ukraine 8% and Russia at 6% decline in GDP for 2009 are hit hardest but thing there are also improving compared to last quarter. The stock market in Poland went up by 40% since the low in February 2009, Hungary by 50%, and Russia by nearly 90%, reflecting this increased confidence. A big difference is in the way the IMF under Dominique Strauss Kahn is operating. WIth the new mandate to help emerging market countries and the new funds from western countries, China and Japan, the IMF is working in cooperation with the European COmmission, the banks, and the national governments in Eastern Europe, to lessen the effects of this crisis. This is afirst for the IMF and aremarkable change. In May 2009 the IMF gave a$21 billion credit line to Poland with no strings attached , the kind of loan it made to Mexico, as aproactive measure to restore confidence. IMF told the Ukraine that a deficit of 4% of GDP was realistic when it released a $2.8 billion tranche recently. Latvia was allowed to run adeficit of 7% for 2009, with a committment to bring this down to 4% in 2010. Another change is that more aid is now given to western banks with souring loans in eastern Europe, so that these banks do not cut back severely or pull out of Eastern European economies. The EBRD has raised $24.5billion to lend to banks and other companies in the region. And $590 million went to UniCredit Italia, an Italina bank heavily exposed to Eastern Europe. Ther EBRD is looking at investing in 12 other western European banks. The Swedes have national schemes too to help the Baltic countries. The political situation is improving also, as the transition to new administration as aresult of voter discontent is being managed wisely. In the Czech Republic acompetent tranisiton government is headed by Jan Fischer, chief statistician, till elections in October 2009. In Hungary the transition government is run by an economist Gordon Bajnai, till an election next spring....

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The Europeans led by France and Germany demand stricter regulation and a financial regulatory system that oversees the entire financial system, and oversees all the larger countries. The US in contrast wants to see a lighter regulatory system, and lighter regulation of parts of the financial system like hedge funds. For the USA where the crisis originated, the emphasis is on larger stimulus spending. For the Europeans which have a larger safety net that they would like to see considered as part of their stimulus- and their social arrangement such as reduced hours in Germany to avoid layoffs, and the presence of a large public sector in France that is about 52% of GDP- the situation as they see it does not require breaking the EU's committment to control large deficits. The cultural and historical roots are also different. Germany was hit by hyperinflation in the period between the two wars, and there is thought there that this helped the rise of demagogic leaders and the collapse of democracy there. At that time the issue was war reparations that Germany found difficult to absorb in an economy devastated by the first war, which strained German finances. France and Germany also have no foreclosure crisis, and car sales and consumer spending are not in the deep decline that is seen in the USA. In fact car sales have increased in the two countries with the refunds for scrapping old vehicles, with no such plan in place in the USA. Making there is a credible position on the European side. Germany does see itself hit by the collapse in international trade. Germany and France face the prospect of helping their banking systems deal with the large bad loan situation facing them in Eastern Europe. At the same time Germany and France want to save some firepower for coming to the aid of key parts of the European community like Spain, Greece, and Ireland, which are facing a worsening crisis. In short both sides have credible positions, and some form of accomodation as events unfold may be a better desired outcome than some unified outcome. And little has been said of the position of the other countries in the G20, the emerging countries like Brazil, India, China, Russia, Indonesia, Argentina and others, and the position of the World Bank speaking for the poorest countries. These countries may favor stronger stimulus, and would favor the stricter regulation and supervision of global financial systems favored by the Europeans. This is because they may rightly feel that the messups in the global financial system have stolen their chance, at just the point where they were turning the corner in their efforts at bringing better standards of living to their peoples....

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Spain's Mariano Rajoy loses a no confidence motion in parliament and resigns as prime minister in May 2018. He is replaced by Pedro Sanchez of the opposition Socialist Party. It has only 84 seats in the 350 member parliament making his government short lived and paving the way for new elections. Rajoy came in after the 2009 financial crisis assuming the prime minister position in 2011. He has governed throughout the period of the economic crisis and high unemployment in Spain during the eurozone debt crisis, the collapse of the housing boom, the banking bailout and austerity programs in Spain. Economic growth resumed gradually since 2013.

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The Economist magazine points out that Indian companies will have to invest more in innovation if they are to maintain return on investment. It says the GST, government action to reduce corruption since 2012 through court decision on crony capitalism, better functioning markets for land, natural resources and capital, more efficient supply chains, will force large Indian companies to compete by becoming more efficient. Under the previous regime before 2012 large Indian companies were able to make high ROI but this was an illusory advantage, as the growth in the Indian economy could create opportunities for firms that can compete with innovation, quality and efficiency. In this sense the Indian economy is entering a new phase under the Modi administration with stretch goals and efforts to create  the next ten year period of growth very different from the past.

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Timothy Geithner as New York Fed Chairman was a key person in the rescue of Bear Stearns. In an interview with the WSJ he recounts events and defends his actions on March 14 in a conference call at 5am in the morning with Ben Bernanke, Kohn, and other regulators and staffers and Treasury Secretary Paulson. By 7 am a decision was made choosing from 2 options not to do it, let Bear Stearns fail, and Fed would make an infusion of liquidity into the banking system to reduce the impact, or make a loan to to give time for Bear Stearns to make a merger. Mr Bernanke did the head count and all top officials agreed to the loan option. At 7.30 the morning of March 14 about $80 billion in short term loans would come due. If Bear Stearns went into bankruptcy protection lenders would get back collateral instead of cash and might sell the collateral en masse and pull back trillions of dollars of similiar loans to other investment banks. Also Bear Stearns had trading positions with 5000 other firms so the ripples would extend throughout the banking system. At issue in a Bear Stearns collapse with no Fed loan- a full blown run on Bear Stearns had begun on March 13 with customers and lenders pulling out billions of dollars. The man- Geithner does not have a PhD in economics and has never been a banker or trader, the background of previous chairmen of the New York Fed. He joined Treasury Department in 1988 and was an assistant to first Treasury Secretary Rubin and then his successor Sommers. Geithner was active in the rescue of Mexico, Indonesia and Korea in the Asian and Latin American banking crises. He was appointed to his position at the New York Fed in 2003, so he has 15 years of experience dealing with international banking crises. The criticism- has come from a colleague at the Fed Vincent Reinhart on the oped pages of the Washington Post, and from former Fed chairman Paul Volcker in a speech to the New York Economic Club. Geithner has asked to speak at the same club to give his account and his defense of his action. Note that Bernanke and Paulson and Kohn were in on this decision and voted in favor of it and there appears to be a consensus that all in the conference call supported it. Geithner kind of put it all together and so he is defending it. Geithner's contribution- Geithner pulled in the other players in the financial markets into close communication with the Fed. He assembled an informal advisory group including Rubin, Summers, Greenspan, Volcker, former New York Fed Chairman Corrigan and investment banker Pete Peterson. He would also phone them individually asking : what should we think about an issue? What are the best 3 arguments for or against? What do smart people think? He also initiated a series of dinners at the NY Fed's executive dining room in which 5 or 6 senior executives from a major investment firm would meet his own top people. He also calls CEO's of important banks and investment firms every week in a crisis situation to ask- Whats changed? Whats better? Whats worse? What worries you? And after the credit crisis in August ,Geithner joined Bernanke in a small group that included Fed vice chairman Donald Kohn and Kevin Warsh, a Fed governor, investment banker and White House aide. ...

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Jose de Cordoba of the WSJ provides this excellent story on the nature of the migration crisis in the U.S. that is creating political divisions in the U.S. What is causing this surge in migration to the U.S.? Cordoba provides some useful insights to understand the nature of this problem. Nine out of ten migrants in Guatemala which sends most of the migrants from Central America are moving north from Guatemala through Mexico to the U.S. for financial reasons, it points out. Only 10% are because of violence in the region, the rest for financial reasons according to the United Nations International Organization for Migration The jump in apprehension of Guatemalans at the American border shows a surge from 15,000 in 2007 to 236,000 in 9 months of 2019, according to U.S. government data. The surge began in 2008 and jumped in 2014 after U.S. court rulings that first required migrant children to be allowed to join relatives in the U.S. followed by a ruling in 2015 that allowed a parent to join the children and allowed court proceedings to take place that takes years. The result was that smugglers advertised on radio and families sold small plots of land to join relatives in the U.S. who had gone before them. The migration is also specific to certain areas hit by damage to crops, including coffee crop from drought, or certain towns that simply sent more people simply for financial reasons advertised openly.  For 8 hours of work a migrant could make at $12 per hour amount of $96 per day, in Guatemala the daily wage would be about $5.  Overwhelmingly it is financial reasons or economic opportunity that sends migrants north. After it became known that kids could help migration the people in family groups apprehended at the border jumped from about 40,000 in 2015 to 390,000 in fiscal 2019. Smugglers charge $8600 per adult and half that for a child and an adult that can be dropped off at a checkpoint. The efforts of president Trump to close the border to this migration include having Mexico sign an agreement to police its southern border with Guatemala using its newly setup National Guard. As a result the migration has actually surged in 2019 with migrants seeing this as their one last opportunity to join relatives in the U.S. or to migrate to the U.S. The Trump administration tried separating families because of the loophole in the law that allows children to be not deported and parents to join their children. But this created a public outcry and the effort now is to close the loophole in the law. It is also strange that as many migrants are coming from one town Joyabaj  with population 100,000 as from Guatemala City the capital population 2.5 million. In fact the economy has grown by 3.4 % a year in Guatemala and efforts have been made to improve conditions with the help of donor countries in the West for several years, though the drought conditions exist. The situation is similar to that in Europe. If one looks at the violence by gangs in central American region after the end of the guerilla wars and compares it to the wars in Syria and Iraq, one can see how humanitarian concerns preceded what eventually turned out tobe a full blown migration for economic reasons. Initially chancellor Merkel adopted a humanitarian stance but failed to recognize that there was another side to his situation that would attract a wave of economic migrants from places as far apart as North Africa to Afghanistan. Poverty has existed in these regions for many many years before the current migration, with drought and lack of economic opportunity going far back in time. Merkel only recently recognized this problem and the new CDU leader Kambrauer has clearly recognized this. CDU policy shifted in 2018-2019 with curbs on economic migration that has reduced it to a trickle. This process is underway in the U.S. at its border with Mexico and for Mexico with its border with Guatemala. In the short run Europe and the U.S. are paying a price. Not just in the way it has divided each country with a far left and a far right eroding the centrist parties that existed before. In some cases centrist parties that were popular on the right and the left now hve leaders from a far right or a far left faction within the centrist ruling parties. Boris Johnson in Britain, Trump in the U.S., leaders in Italy, Austria and Hungary. Or as in Germany and Spain new far left or far right parties causing the centrist parties to dwindle in influence or as in Germany this combined with a shift to the Green Party in Germany and Liberals Party in Britain as a show of disapproval for how the migration issue has been tackled.  The Economist in a July 2019 issue also points out that the country's own citizens have fared worse with migration. It shows how the Conservative Party's austerity cuts for welfare budgets was popular in Britain as long as eastern European migration at high levels in Britain were allowed starting with the Labour party under Blair. This disproportionately hurt the middle class and the poor after the hit already taken from the faulty banking caused recession. With the drop in migration it is now felt by a majority in Britain that the austerity cuts have just gone too far and a mood is set in to restore many of the cuts and fund public services. Meantime some of the damage has been done and will take a decade to correct as the issues that mangled the centrist parties and led to fragmentation on views of what society should look like have taken place with Brexit and high levels of poverty, income inequality in Britain, lack of investment in infrastructure with overallocation to tech with declining productive benefit for every additional dollar spent. ...

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After a lot of corporate advertising image of HP like Dell has become old and stodgy. How to revive the brand. Try taking a lesson from Apple. Try appealing at apersonal level, and try appealing to younger people to shake off the old image and put in a more invigorating one. About 180,000 visitors were attracted to an HP website named FingerSkilz.tv which shows closeup videos of a man's hand on a desk performing soccer tricks with a padded paper ball just bfore the 2006 World Cup. This was part of a new HP global campaign to give HP the cool image of an Apple. Content Links 1. We wanted to step away from selling computersas a commodity to telling a story in an autographical way- quote from Steve Simpson. Creative Director at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, which is creating new ads for HP. 2. Uses personalities like Jay-Z a rap artist and Shaun White a snowboarder, and is creating European and Asian personalities for advertising in other continents. 3. the print work features prominently images of hands see as a powerful symbol of communication around the world. 4. Sponsoring a new tv show Meet or Delete on MTV in which young people compare suitors basedon the content of their hard disks. ...

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Koch describes Trump's statement about Muslims with the notion that 'We'll have them all register' as "monstrous" and "reminiscent of Nazi Germany," in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC News weekly program. Trump is reported to have been open to a database tracking Muslims in the U.S. before backing off, according to WP, which is what Koch referrred to. About Cruz's statement about "carpet bombing" the ISIS group, Koch says he finds it "frightening." He calls both candidates "terrible role models" and agrees with George Stephanopoulos that Hillary could be a better presidential candidate than the two Republicans.

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VW and BMW show strong car sales in Germany, China and the U.S. for the first quarter of 2012, offsetting weaker sales in the rest of Europe.

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Polish and other Eastern European immigrants to Ireland return home from the Ireland aand the UK as the economies of the 2 countries and unemployment deteriorate and improved job prospects draw the immigrants back home. In fact share of immigrants in ireland reached a high of 155 as Ireland averaged economic growth rates of 5% for many years. Nearly half a million received the irish version ofa social security number. Polish immigrants were the highest almost two thirds followed by Lithuanians and Slovakians. Hourly wages for Eastern European immigrants are 45% less than for Irish people with the same education and experience. Now Ireland's growth has dropped to 1.2% for the last quarter. The reversal is also of the similiar magnitude. A citigroup econ9omist in Warsaw estimates that half of Polish immigrants to Western Europe will return home in the next 2 years. In the UK half of an estimated one million Eastern European immigrants have already left says London Institute for Public Policy Research in an April report. As the immigrants return the currency dynamics also help the pound has lost 40% of its value against the zloty, Poland's currency, and this makes the UK less atttractive to immigrants. Overall the EU immigration opening has helped both sides, as it has helped stabilize the Polish economy and the UK has gained from the immigrants services as it moderated wage inflation and increased domestic demand and met the demands of the economy as it was growing. Now there is a fear that too rapid an exit of immigrants would hurt demand in these economies and also overwhelm labor markets in Poland. Another noteworthy feature of this immigration wave was the low cost of airlinne tickets which has helped travel across europe and also helped European integration. One immigrant a polish mechanic says that he felt more like a commuter than a migrant, as it conly cost $150 a round trip. How are things in Poland today as they return. Very very different. EU entry has really helped Poland through foreign investment and aid from Brussels to assist the country in its catching up progress. Average monthly wages have gone up 30% with construction wages up 50%. and inflation a low of 4.4%. The difference is striking in the medieval city of Krakow in the southeast that has emerged as an information technology and outsourcing hub. where a steady stream of returning workers is helping companies hire workers to meet the new growth. German commercial truck maker MAN has finished recruting 250 mechanics for a new plant in Krakow with 40% of applications from returnig workers. And those who are returning bring fluent English skills and expertise gathered during their stay overseas, and new attitudes to work. This happened to Ireland as Irish workers returned home in the early years of its boom, they hared skills and attitudes learned abroad, according to an economist at Dublin's Economic and Social Research Institute who sees the same thing happening in Poland....

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This report by Timiraos in WSJ describes the tussle between supply siders led by Mike Pence and David Malpass with the zero sum advisors who advised Trump on trade during the campaign. The zero sum advisors are focussed only on how to turn trade to improve the U.S. position and cut trade deficits. The supply siders are trying to show that trade can benefit the U.S. only that it needs to be adjusted so that it works better for the U.S.