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John Steele Gordon has done a good job of covering the history of banking in the United States since the days of Alexander Hamilton. One of his books is "Hamilton's Blessing", describing the first effort to set up a central bank in the US, the Bank f the United States, modeled on the Bank of England. Here he describes the resistance by Jeffersonians and their successors like Andrew Jackson who did not understand the purpose served by a good central bank and did everything to either dissolve it or to not give it the powers and the authority and the staffing that it needed. It was not till after the crisis of 1907 in which JP Morgan acted as the central bank in loaning his own money to prevent a bank and financial panic and collapse, that the first central bank the Federal Reserve was set up in 1913. Even then it was not given the authority and powers and staffing needed to command the economy in panic or financial collapse which happened in 1931. Part of the reason the crises were less frequent after 1931 is because of a better understanding of economics and also because of the Federal Reserve's ability to step in during a crisis. What went wrong in the 1990's with the S&L crisis and in 2008? Gordon points to a system of undue political influence as one big problem. And the lack of a unified, coherent regulatory system free of undue polticial influence. Both in the 1990's and in 2008 Congress and the regulatory authorites failed to keep undue political influence from distorting and damaging the financial system. In the 2008 crisis ideology simply componded the problem as deregulation and dependence on free markets without any checks simply compounded the problem into its huge dimensions. ...

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As a federal criminal probe gets underway into AIG, questions remain about whether AIG misled investors, and whether AIG executives themselves suppressed information from their own internal auditors and ignored the advice of their external auditors Price Waterhouse. The internal auditor raised questions with his boss Mr Cassano about the credit default swaps that AIG had written for its clients. An requests for collateral from AIG to support the credit default swaps were kept hidden. The internal auditor Mr. St. Dennis wrote" I was gravely concerned about this (the request by clients for collateral from AIG worth billions for the derivatives called credit default swaps AIG had sold) and AIG believed that the likelihood of makig payouts was remote." Mr Cassano kept Mr Dennis out of important meetings because he said "I was concerned that you would pollute the process." An important aspect of all this is how it relates to executive compensation that has motivated some of these actions. Mr. Cassano according to the audit committee chairman, earned $280 million over 8 years at AIG, left the company in March and was slated to receive $1 million a month through the end of 2008. The contract was terminated the day before the Congressional hearing. This is a huge amount about $35 million a year and not only is this executive compensation but it is paying someone enough that he would do something that is unethical, or lead to large negative consequences, or even commit fraud, depending on the ethical base of that individual. And this is where executive compensation has ceased to be executive compensation but almost enough to pay someone to do something equivalent in consequences to robbing the bank....

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The Nobel prize in economics was created in 1968 by the Swedish central bank and was not one of the original Nobels. The latest recipient is Paul Krugman of Princeton University, who also writes a column in the New York Times op-ed pages since 1999 and has been a critic of President Bush's policies. He is a student of Jagdish Bhagwati who is wellknown for his work on international trade. Krugman won for his work on international trade theory where he came up with more realistic models of what goes on in international trade compared to the traditional comparitive advantage model where each country produced what it was good at. Krugmanexplained why worldwide trade was dominated by a few countries that were similiar to each other, and why a country may import the same kind of goods that it exported. He also explained under what conditions trade would lead to centralization or decentralization of populations. He has done work in international monetary policy and theory for his dissertation as well as some of his more recent academic research and teaches a course on this subject and the international liquidity crises at Princeton. Krugman compared his wnning of the Nobel to Joseph Stiglitz winning in 2001 after which Stiglitz did not get an easy time from critics of his economic ideas, especially when he was critical of the handling of the Asian and Latin American liquidity crises by Clinton's Treasury Secretary Rubin and Treasury Secretary Sommers. At the time Kenneth Rogoff at the IMF was very critical of Stiglitz. Jagdish Bhagwati at Columbia University described Prugman's winning as the next best thing to his winning the prize. Both Bhagwati and Krugma have worked tirelessly Bhagwati for international trade and Krugman for traditional bread and butter issues for the working class espoused by the Democratic party....

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The government controlled Securities Association of China says a fund of 120 billion renminbi ($19.4) billion is set up July 3, 2015 to buy shares in the larger more stable companies and reduce selling of shares from brokerage firms portfolios. This is not likely to have much impact because of its small size, and because the volatility is concentrated in small and medium size firms stocks which had doubled since June 2014, and were hit by the sharp decline in June 2015. The stock exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzen also suspended initial public offerings. Share prices have dropped by about 30% since June 12 on the Shanghai and Shenzen stock exchages. With the surge in the Chinese stock market prices till June 12, 2015, share prices of many small and medium sized companies doubled or even quadrupled in value. The overall index on the 2 exchanges doubled because as the smaller stocks quadrupled the large blue chips went up by about a fourth in value. The overall Shanghai market went up 149% to June 12, 2015, over the prior year. It is down 28.6% as of July 5, 2015 since June 12, 2015. A stock index of 100 large mainland Chinese companies traded both in Shanghai and Hong Kong were up about 24% by contrast. A major problem is the margin trading with loans to investors from stock purchases up nine times in 2 years and informal financial companies charging annual interest rates of over 20%. Small investors focussed on small and medium sized firms because they were going up the fastest, and many risked their life savings. Younger workers were also part of the group caught up in the frenzy of stock buying. Shares in the larger companies are only about 30% of the overall value of companies on the Shanghai Stock Exchange....

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No less than a report by Harry Truman's Commission on Migratory Labor in 1951 says-  Migratory labor caused low wages in the Southwest and traced social ills to illegal immigration: “The magnitude … has reached entirely new levels in the past 7 years.… In its newly achieved proportions, it is virtually an invasion,” the report says. What one sees from this archive of the US Congress is that there ebbs and flows back and forth on migration across the southern border. The trade unions and even Harry Truman's Commission come out for restricting migration depending on this ebb and flow. Remember that Asian immigration is flatly opposed from 1910 to 1950. twenties - open to meet farm labor needs, 40% of US vegetables grown in the southwest. thirties - with the Great Depression a Hoover deportation effort forties- welcoming immigrants to meet war needs under Franklin Roosevelt fifties- under both Truman and EIsenhower the welcome ends and apart from the bracero program for agriculture, the Eisenhower administration conducts Operation Wetback. The House of Representatives Archives show the history of Hispanics in the southwest and immigration from Mexico in the period of the 1930's to the 1950's. One sees the effects of the Depression and Labor's AFL CIO and trade unions favoring limits on immigration from Mexico because of the difficulties American citizens were having finding jobs during the 1929-1934 period. Herbert Hoover moved illegal immigrants back to Mexico in the first program at a time when there were strict limits to Asians emigrating to the US. For much of the twenties the border was left open to meet the needs of the southwest farms for Mexican labor. Then came the war when Mexican Americans joined the war effort in great numbers. After the war the difficulty of finding jobs for troops returning to the US created new pressures to limit immigration. Ike setup Operation wetback to deport about 1 million migrants.   ...

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South Korea never had the benefit of representation in parliament under the Japanese the way India had in the British parliament for Naoroji and others by the 1900's, political participation in the 1920's, assembly elections in 1930's under the British. Democracy came to South Korea in 1948 in the middle of a huge war in the Korean peninsula with invasion from the North, leaving it without democratic traditions, and again in protests in 1960 against Synghman Rhee's military government. Then followed military governments by Park and Chun till 1988. Democracy is only 36 years old in South Korea since 1988. BBC gives this Special Report on President Yoon of South Korea how he was elected as a prosecutor of a right wing government and made Chief Prosecutor by left wing parties. After this appointment he investigated ministers in the left wing government. This increased his popularity but also alineated both the left and the right. Running for election as president of South Korea he won by less than one percent of the vote.  BBC talks to a Yoon primary school friend Lee who describes his interaction with his friend over many years- during which he make more introverted, angry and vehement, and after becoming president more authoritarian. The process is described by the BBC talking to other colleagues and friends of Yoon who worked with him. They found that he relied more and more on a close group of like minded right wing groups. After losing the parliamentary election by a big majority he became a lame duck but still stubbornly refused to talk to the Opposition leaders to work together. Soon he began to see them as his enemy watching too many one sided You Tube videos. The result was one day he declared martial law, creating a huge wave of  opposition by the public, the military and others. In 6 hours he had to withdraw martial law- ending his career when his impeachment was upheld today April 3, 2025 by the Constitutional Court. ...

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Stephen Miller, as both intellectual and organizer, is shaping policy on immigration at the White House as adviser to Kristi Noem, head of Homeland Security. He is a dedicated follower of DJT and White House deputy chief of staff. He also brought Prof. Navarro to the attention of DJT on trade policies.  He was a key figure in the first DJT administration at the age of 31 having served as communications secretary for Senator Jeff Sessions and developed his ideas during the period with Sessions. As director of speech writing and senior adviser to DJT,  he wrote some of president DJT's policy speeches in the first term, the speech to the Republican National Convention 2016 , and the Inaugural Address of 2017,  including the speech on Jan. 6th 2020 following the storming of the Capitol building.  Who is Stephen Miller? He comes from a Jewish family that immigrated in his grandfather's generation in 1903 to Ellis Island from Belarus, during a period of discrimination in Russian regions. During the period on campus at Duke University where he graduated in Political Science, Miller was a follower of a prolific author, David Horowitz. Horowitz was part of the Jewish leftist intellectual movement in New York in the post war period, but after the 1980's joined the Reagan movement and questioned the ideas he had believed in, questioned what he saw as the antisemitism on US campuses. At Santa Monica public school in California in 2000-2003 Stephen Miller questioned the multiculturalism that replaced the America of the founding fathers, that he saw at the school. It is this perspective that also underlies Stephen Miller's ideas about universities, about immigration, about the economy and China under Bush, Obama and Biden. Miller is also an organizer as he set up the America First Legal in 2020 with funding from donors on the right which has filed many lawsuits during Biden's term in office.  ...

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There is a sense of cognitive dissonance in the states of former East Germany, known as the GDR or German Democratic Republic in the Soviet Union period from 1950's to 1990. The 5 states that formed the GDR continued to build close ties with Russia after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in the perception that this would build good long term relations. The crisis in Ukraine with border states of the Soviet Union opting in favor of close ties with the European Union and not Russia have disrupted the economic relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and Russia. As long as Russia needed the economic ties to build its economy and standard of living the political issues posed by NATO expansion and EU expansion were set aside by Putin and political parties within Russia. The very ties that were supposed to usher in an era of peace in Europe helped strengthen the Russian and Chinese economies. Leading to a point where these two economies were strong enough by 2021 in the midst of the waning pandemic to  assert themselves on political issues where serious differences existed such as expansion of NATO and Taiwan. When the economic relations such as making China a manufacturing powerhouse  was the path taken by American and European business in 1990's, business interests were focused on the declining quality and high wages demanded by unions and workers in the US and Germany. This could be personally witnessed at Apple's factory in Colorado Springs where quality was failing badly in the 1990's. Apple when Steve Jobs returned in 1997 adopted a China manufacturing strategy when its manufacturing operations in the US failed to deliver the quality and cost structure needed for it to expand. The high margins with low costs of manufacturing in China was the strategy adopted by Steve Jobs to compete with Microsoft and turbocharge its expansion. Soon other companies followed. A similar process happened in economic ties with Russia on a smaller scale. Two decades of such expansion whittled down American manufacturing, hurt American workers, hurt European manufacturing and European workers.  This process could not continue- yellow vest protests in France, the protest vote in US midwestern states in recent elections, the protest votes in German elections and fragmentation of parties, made this clear. The US imposed trade tariffs on Chinese products and moved to restrict flow of technologies to China under the Trump administration, accelerated by the Biden administration. President Xi was once of the view that China's ties with the US were important "thousand fold" in the period as late as 2010. Yet this lopsided trade relationship was not beneficial to American workers or American interests as a technologically advanced leader. It is true that American workers and engineers at Apple had failed to ensure American quality competitiveness in the 1980's into 1990's, yet no advanced country or its business can come up with a false narrative that cedes its manufacturing leadership and jobs for the working class of its country. That false narrative is being challenged today by Mr. Biden, Mr. Scholz, and all American and German political parties, and by Mr. Modi with Atman Nirbhar Bharat for local manufacturing. The integration one sees of the port of Hamburg as Chinese export hub with China's economy is one aspect of what has happened. A new leadership is taking its place in Europe and in America that sees clearly the false narrative. The visit of the new Danish prime minister to India is the beginning of the effort to set up a new logistics relationship with South and South East Asia, as Denmark's Maersk is a world leader in shipping logistics for exports and manufacturing. The planned Noida logistics center outside of New Delhi under Gati Shakti integrated development is part of the change happening today as a new supply chain is being built. The unwinding of the one sided trade relationship with China, and its related relationship on energy with Russia, led to the changing perception in Russia and China of the value of the relationship. Political relations superseded economic and cultural relations during Putin's second phase and Xi's second phase with assertive attitudes on NATO, and on Hong Kong, Taiwan under Xi and Putin 2.0. As could be expected Germany and the US were caught flat footed as leaders who were cast in the mold of Putin as a Soviet representative in Dresden, and Xi with his father leading the Communist struggle in the 1930's and 1940's against Chiangkaishek, acted in ways that reflected the Soviet period. Chiang left for Taiwan in 1948 when Mao-tse-tung setup the People's Republic of China. Taiwan and Hong Kong remained important in the perceptions of Xi 2.0, in the effort to build "China Dream" and erase last vestiges of what in Soviet times were seen as western colonialism. US and EU particularly Business and the new IT telecom Business failed to grasp these matters, and historical events such as the opium wars of the 1850's. Business and cultural interests lacked both the inclination to learn and the knowledge of these events in Chinese history and its relations with colonial powers Britain and Japan, and also Russia. In 1900 the Boxer rebellion against ceding Chinese ports to colonial powers Britain, Japan, Russia, ended with permanent colonial settlements in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tsingtao, other Chinese ports. Chinese rejuvenation in the mind of leaders such as Xi from the second generation of Communist leadership, means putting this behind, leading to the action taken in Hong Kong. In some ways as some observers have commented it is as much a problem of the sluggishness of American and European thinking, particularly business interests including in Taiwan, post British Hong Kong, and ignorance of recent Chinese history which was mistakenly thought not to exist or forgotten. This is as much of a problem as the action taken by Putin and moves by Xi Jinping. The great democracies such as India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, were ignored as American and European business interests integrated the American and German economies with China's. In terms of population the population of these regions and related parts of South East Asia such as Malaysia and Vietnam which have a shared cultural history is about 1.5 times the population of China. Travelling through the parts of India's largest state Uttar Pradesh, an Madhya Pradesh one finds how much American and European business interests have failed both their own interests, their own workers and failed the great democracies of the world, by not only not investing in the democracies of Asia, and also of Africa and Latin America and bought into a narrative of China which no longer holds true and may never have been true all along. This is starkly evident in a once in a century pandemic in these great democracies of the world. These democracies have been left to fend for themselves during the pandemic and their leaders facing false narratives in the media such as the BBC and American media outlets even on issues such as vaccination of the largest part of the world's people.           ...

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The U.S. and China sign Phase 1 of the trade agreement in a sign of reduction of trade tensions between the two countries. Difficult issues of state subsidies under China's state enterprise model of development, and technological competition were put off for the future. China made the deal possible by agreeing to double its purchases of agricultural products, and offering to purchase about $200 billion in American goods and services over the next two years. This gives relief to farmers, a key part of Mr.Trump's support base. This also helps achieve a key Trump and U.S. goal of cutting the U.S. trade deficit with China quickly, just as happened decades ago with Japan.  See the related article and link on how for the first time in decades China's trade surplus with the U.S. is now set on a path for permanent decline. It dropped significantly in 2019 by 12.5% even though China's imports from the U.S. dropped by 21%, based on Chinese customs data released for 2019. With China increasing these imports significantly and the U.S. holding on to tariffs of 25% on $250 billon of China's exports to the U.S. which are outside the Phase 1 agreement, the downward course is set for the next few years for correction of a dangerous trade imbalance. That imbalance was allowed to develop over successive Republican and Democratic administrations. China already has the European Union as its first leading trading partner and south east Asia as its second. China plans to not be so closely intertwined with the U.S. in trade, and yet preserve its state sponsored development model and drive to compete in technology. China's increased purchases from the U.S. of $200 billon are broken down in terms of farm products- $32 billion, manufactured goods- $80 billion, energy products- $50 billion, services $35 billion. In effect the U.S. gets its goal of cutting the unsustainable China trade surplus quickly and with certainty in 3-5 years. China uses the period to transition for less trade linkage with the U.S. yet preserving its state sponsored model of development and drive for technological advancement.   ...

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Extraordinary pictures taken by a photographer from Edinburgh who left Britain for Singapore and Far East in 1862 at the age of 25 years. He had worked as an apprentice with an optical manufacturer and learned photography. What is astounding is that this was the time when Japan was opening up to the ideas and technology from Europe with the Meiji restoration around 1871, China in transition under the Manchu dynasty which was to collapse in 1912 ending the monarchy. A major rebellion happened with the Taiping rebellion in southern China in 1854 that lasted till 1862. The Taiping rebellion was against the Manchu dynasty as a foreign dynasty imposed on Han people in China, and the result of famines, difficult conditions for peasants, opium addiction, poor economic prospects for a large population. Mao considered the Taiping rebellion as an unfinished revolution which the Communists continued this time against other foreign rulers the Japanese and European colonies in China,  and the Nationalist rule of Chinag-kai-Shek with corruption and wide disparities of incomes. John Thomson took pictures of China in the 1870's, now in the Wellcome collection and displayed in an exhibition at Heriot Watt University in Britain. Women and children in Guangdong, Canton and Beijing are shown in these pictures of China. Between 1872 and 1942 is a period of only 70 years with tumultuous events and huge changes in China. By 1944-1949 Communists controlled vast parts of China with Mao's forming of the People's Republic of China for the Chinese people, free of foreign influence, corruption, and opium trade of the British. And again 40 years later by 1989 China using a market economy to change China into a modern nation as advanced as Japan, Europe and America. For India the new People's Republic of China under Mao also brought the PLA army to the borders of India. In 1950 China invaded Tibet at Chamdo, and in 1951 annexed the country under a 15 Point Agreement making it a region of China. With that invasion India and China face each other for the first time in the Himalayas across a border stretching east to west for thousands of miles. A war in 1962 was followed by incursions across the border in 2020 in the Ladakh region. Both sides build infrastructure on either side of the Line of Control that stretches for 3500 kilometres. Most of the Indian people remain ignorant of the changes happening in China from the Manchus to the Communists. Most Chinese have little knowledge of the changes happening in India from British period to the post independence period under Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi , and further to the changes for modernization happening under Mr. Modi. Large populations of over 1 billion people facing each other but knowing little about each other in one of the strange situations in the world, and armies building infrastructure on either side of the line of control. ...

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This NYT analysis of fund raising by the Republican and Democratic parties for the 2020 election campaign shows Republicans hardly raising any money from people with incomes over 250,000 and very little from incomes over $200,000 with most funding coming from the base white working class and lower and upper middle class. For Democrats fund raising is significant at the levels of income over $200,000. Geographically the Democrats get most of their funding from the east and west coast areas.  This reflects the changes in the parties starting in the the 2008 elections when higher income groups in software, finance, and in professions of law and medicine and Silicon Valley tech shifted to Democrats. The Democrats also held onto minority votes. In 2016 this changed with a sharp turn with tech on the west coast and finance professionals on the east coast shifting to the Democrats. The PPP agreement under Obama favored tech over the auto industry, and renewal fossil fuels such as solar were favored over the oil industry and fracking. In 2016 this helped shift the votes in Michigan and Pennsylvania to Republicans. Older manufacturing industries, oil and fracking were supported by Republicans who pushed back against ceding global dominance in manufacturing to China. By 2020 these changes are now entrenched with white working class voters in industries decimated and communities destroyed by foreign imports mainly from China, supporting Republicans. Republicans under Trump have made regaining the manufacturing leadership of the U.S. that was the situation after World War II, a top priority for the U.S.  The minority vote shifted with Hispanics moving towards Republicans to a much larger degree than before. The urban rural divide is similar to Europe where the similar impact of foreign imports mainly from China have destroyed older industries and led to sharp decline in older towns and communities outside major cities. This is the situation facing the U.S. and Britain, France, Italy Spain, and Poland. Germany as a manufacturing country dependent on exports is also affected but to a lesser degree. The unwholesome aspect of this is that the larger urban areas are divorced from the rest of the country  and rural small towns, smaller cities. In some form reintegration has to take place. The vast majority of the working class classified in today's terminology as the less educated lacking a college degree and white are  paradoxically with Republicans, and the wealthy professionals and industries in software, finance with Democrats. Nothing makes this more evident than a quick look at the map of the U.S. with blue on the opposite coasts for Democrats and mostly red in between and in the south. This is unprecedented in American history. A rising tide that lifts all boats in the U.S. and the return of the U.S. to the position it held after World War II could change this in the next decade. ...

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David Autor at MIT authored some of the first detailed studies about the severe disruption in U.S. communities from the trade with China following China's entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001. The sheer size of the impact now appears to have been underestimated by economists and other experts. It was believed says Hilsenrath and Davis, that the U.S. having absorbed the impact of trade with Japan in the seventies and eighties, and with Mexico following NAFTA, could do the same with China. That turns out to be false. Much of 2016 election season has been spent seeing the rise of anti-trade movements led by Trump and Sanders, and reveals a deep discontent with job shifting overseas, and disruption of communities across America by trade patterns. What happened? In 2015 China's exports to the U.S. reached 2.7% of U.S. GDP. Hilsenrath and Davis say it was about 1% less with Japan and Mexico when their exports surged. The rapidity of the impact is another problem. It took 12 years following Japan's emergence as a major supplier, to reach the same level of impact that China had only 4 years after China's entry into the WTO in 2001. A similiar situation of 12 years happened with Mexico after NAFTA. Another problem is that Japan's exports impacted mostly steel and autos, China's exports impacted a whole range of industries. The speed with which China's planners sought to change and modernize their manufacturing  base is unprecedented in history, and has an impact not only on the U.S. as a recipient of low cost exports, but also on China as it struggles with bad debts and job losses today, that are a legacy of that too rapid move. This was part of the drive to urbanize China rapidly by shifting agricultural workers to factories in the cities, at a pace unprecedented in history. Another factor not mentioned is the global financial crisis of 2008-2009 that hurt U.S. manufacturing in the auto and other industries, and the wide impact this had in loss of jobs and decline in wages. By 2010 the tide of public opinion had shifted. The WSJ/NBC poll of September 2010, cited in detail in WSJ 10/2/2010 under "Americans Sour on Foreign Trade" shows over 80% consistently for all levels of income, over $75,000 and under $75,000, Republicans and Democrats, working class Americans or well educated Americans, saying that Americans were struggling and there was less hiring, because of how trade had impacted their communities. Lyrarc covered this in considerable detail since 2006. All political parties, business leaders, ignored the implications of this huge change, the media covered it but assumed it would take care of itself as trade with Japan had done previously, and it was left to Trump and Sanders as outsiders to call it like they saw it 5 years later.  Economic inequality has widened in China to the point of it becoming unrecognizable as a former socialist economy. Now both countries are faced with the job of picking up, chastened by the experience, and hoping to limit the political fallout to achieve economic recovery. The very open trading system that had generated prosperity since World War II was being put at risk by a lack of awareness that trade brings with it changes, winners and losers, and manufacturing jobs moving overseas on a scale and speed unprecedented in history, was something that no one could cope with. ...

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Friedman calls for a third party candidate to bring a focus on the issues facing the U.S. - winding down the war in Afghanistan, increasing fuel economy and conservation to reduce dependence on foreign oil inclusing a gasoline tax, enacting the proposals of the Simpson-Bowles Commission which eliminates or reduces tax expenditures and reduces spending, and provides any needed fiscal support for the short run. He says the two party duopoly is not working and even if the third party succeeds only in framing the debate and the issues in a constructive and useful way, it will have achieved something significant.

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Hitachi supplied signalling technology components for safety on China's high speed trains. Hitachi was the supplier to Beijing based Hollyss Automation Technologies Ltd., which is one of the two suppliers along with China Railway Signal & Communication Corp (CRSC) for the signalling equipment. To protect its proprietary technology from competitive threats Hitachi uses zumen or "black box" so that the components cannot be reverse engineered. Experts say that as a result Chinese engineers did not have a good grasp of how crucial aspects of the safety tecnology worked, leading to the collision of two bullet trains in 2011. The key components of the ATP, the Automatic Train Protection, the onboard brain on the trains, was supplied by Hitachi. Engineers at French company Alstom SA's China operations say China needs time to master the complicated technology acquired in the last seven years of the high speed rail program.

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Airbus CEO Fabrice Bregier, says Airbus is set to double its profit margin by 2015 through improvements in efficiency and management. In 2012 EADS Airbus unit showed an operating profit margin of about 4% on sales of 39 billon euros, compared to Boeing commercial airplane division operating margin of 9.6% on sales of $49 billion. Under the 51 year old French engineer Airbus is redoing the way it makes planes, giving factory managers more freedom to make decisions, and bringing an "entrepreneurial spirit" to the company. Each plant is treated as a small business, and Bregier says the fact that the planes are complex does not mean that one needs to be complex in doing things. Airbus parent company EADS stock has risen by 50% in the past year with shares at 42.84 euros on June 14, 2013. The reduced stakes of the French government and Daimler AG in EADS has increased the amount of freely traded shares to 72% from 54%, increasing pressure from investors for better performance. Airbus has 150,000 employees and subcontractors and changing the culture in the organization is a difficult task. Bregier was chief operating officer for 5 years before assuming the CEO position in June 2012. ...

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A 2007 video of Obama speaking at Hampton University in Virginia on race relations, on the slow relief sent to Hurricane Katrina affected residents of New Orleans because they were black, praising pastor Wright, and presenting a different view on race relations than President Obama has made in public appearances. The video has surfaced again in the final weeks of the 2012 presidential campaign, especially as polarization has increased in the last four years.

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Volvo is the economic centre of western Sweden. It merged with Geely of China after Volvo executives met with Geely Auto Holding group executives. Ford Motor acquired Volvo in 1999 for $6.45 billion but failed to invest in the company. Geely has invested $10 billion since the merger with Volvo and Volvo sales have increased. Volvo was able to operate autonomously under both Ford and Geely. There is now considerable uncertainty about the future of Volvo and its autonomous operating status after deterioration in relations between Sweden and China. 

Sweden has seen acquisitions of technology companies in Sweden by China and there is concern in Sweden from the standpoint of national security. In this new context there is considerable uncertainty in Sweden about the future of Volvo.

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It appears that the Russian strategy is to forge deals with companies the likes of BP and Shell with which it had negotiated deals under the pre Putin regime when Russia was hard pressed to negotiate what it sees as fair deals. It has pulled out of those deals and is now negotiating new agreements with the same partners. Both sides see somethig to gain under the new arrangement. Shell needs new sources of oil and natural gas exploration and ways to build its reserves. Russia finds a partner to help it build its own technology and expertise in oil exploration development.

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VW and Daimler both take equal investment share in biofuel company Chroen in Germany. Chroen is in the field of second generation BTL or biomass to liquid, synthetic biofuel. The convictions in Germany are that corn and other agricultural product based fuels are not going to be environmentally friendly as they the process of making fuel from corn takes as much energy and causes as much pollution as it saves. So no carbon dioxide reduction balance is possible with corn based fuel in the view of researchers at VW. Second generation biofuels use wood, plant stalks, or straw, as the raw materials.