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As the market for mortgage securities has collapsed and there are few buyer for the packages of mortgage securities that upto now were sold easily to lenders, the rates not just for subprime but also for jumbo loans are rising. This will affect the market in the middle sector with buyers with good credit also being affected when they buy homes in the 500,000 dollar range.

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Modern development is ignoring the water situation for future years. Widespread pollution is shrinking the water available. And industry in China is wasting water as it uses many times the water used in developed nations for industrial development.

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Consolidation of banks throughout the country with the takeover of Wachovia by Citigroup.

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What if car buyers have to pay all cash absent the ability for people with good credit to get loans, a scary development for the auto companies. Analysts say tight credit was a crucial factor in the 27% drop in September sales. About 31% of all nonluxury sales in the last week of September were all cash deals, says Libby chief market analyst JD Powers. And down payments are much higher than before. Abd lease deals are dropping from 16% till late July 2008 to 9% in the last week of September 2008. Whats unprecedented is that buyers with credit scores in the upper 700's are being turned down and that is sure to trigger even more declines in the next few months. And dealerships are closing 600 of 20,770 already losed this year.

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Consumer spending in the US is up for Christmas 2021 with 5.8 million more US jobs in October than a year earlier, with higher wage checks and stimulus checks, child tax credit payments, all boosting spending power. With 231 million Americans vaccinated with at least one shot compared to none Christmas last year more Americans are in stores. Shopping online is up only 7%, in store retail sales up 14%, according to Commerce Department. Passenger traffic on interstate highways is back up to where it was before the pandemic.

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Year over year rise in prices in January 2022 that contributed significantly to inflation of 7.5% in the US are-

For power up by over 10%, gas prices up over 20%

For groceries bakery, cereals etc up by 1.4%

For housing prices up by over 4%.

For used cars over 40%, new cars over 12%.

Health care services costly in the US far above the other OECD countries not down significantly continuing to burden American households.

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Russia's takes on a tough negotiating position in the winter of 2025-26, just when the Russian economy suffers decline in oil revenues. Opaque loans in the defense sector that make up 25% of loans or $202 billion could be a problem. Cost of the war in 2025 are over $200 billion. Other problems are the finances of Lukoil and Rosneft, the increasing amount of sanctioned oil that is sitting on tankers in the sea with no buyers. Gazprom has a loss of $12.9 billion in 2025, with cash reserves depleted from $22 billion in 2022 to $6-8 billion in Jan 2026, with $20 billion of additional debt taken on. Rosneft profit dropped 70% in 2025 to $3.6 billion. Consumer spending is down by about 9% in December 2025 compared to 2024. Yet this is unlikely to lead to social or political problems in Russia. It will make it more difficult to finance the war compared to previous years. The Ukraine economy needs $135 billion for the next 2 years for funding the budget which now depoends on laons from the EU. Both Russia and Ukraine are fighting an exhausting war as it enters the fifth year of the war, exhausting their economies and their population, as the leaders of Russia and Ukraine fail to reach an agreement. ...

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Because the battery pack in an EV vehicle goes on the floor of the vehicle instead of the engine up front, it frees up space in the front for the trunk. The term for this trunk up front is "frunk" or e-trunk. No one really knows what to call it.

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Core consumer price inflation in Japan was up by 4% in December over a year earlier. Food prices were also up by 4%. This is the largest price increase since 1991. Services price inflation was up by only 0.8% compared to 7% in the US. The inflation target of the Bank of Japan is 2%.

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Juliet Small on ECHR how it got to this in 2025 where it ignores the right of governments to protect their own ctiizens. Of law turned upside down by lawyers in Strasbourg in 50's and 60's and after to where the legal class appears to have messed it up so much and left it to politics to clean up this mess in Europe.

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The drop in the value of the Turkish currency, the lira, hits ordinary Turks as it pushes up the price of food, medicine and other essentials. The lira has dropped by over a third of its value against the dollar in 2021. This is leading to a decline in living standards in Turkey, says this report in WSJ. President Erdogan is pushing an unconventional strategy to increase growth, by having the central bank cut interest rates as the value of lira drops sharply. This could lead to further drops in the lira making it difficult to make dollar debt repayments says this report in WSJ. The problem extends beyond drop in standard of living for average Turks. The country's banks are affected and companies that have borrowed heavily in US dollars and foreign currency denominated debt. A large mismatch between foreign currency debt such as dollar debt and the country's foreign exchange reserves has led to countries such as Argentina falling behind and seeking IMF assistance. WSJ points out that Turkey has about $160 billion in foreign exchange assets, and $280 billion in liabilities as of August 2021, according to the Turkish central bank. Bank lending in foreign currency is 24% to 45% of their total loans in the first half of 2021, according to Fitch Ratings. This could lead to dollar debt rollover difficulties as debt repayment comes due in April 2021. ...

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Punjab National Bank has seen fradulaent transactions for $2 billion in 2018 by 2 jewelers, a power and steel company defrauding it of $550 million in 2019, and now bad loans defrauding it of $491 to a housing lender Dewan Housing Finance Corp. Dewan Finance is in insolvency resolution under the RBI, the central bank of India.  To clean up this banking sector mess, a result of bad loans by banks after the 2008 financial crisis, the RBI has taken some serious steps. One of the steps in 2017 was to order major banks to resolve bad debts or refer the debts to bankruptcy courts. RBI took over Yes Bank , and the largest state bank the State Bank of India organized a consortium of banks to invest $1.35 billion to support Yes Bank. In other action the government has merged smaller lenders and banks with larger banks. Much of the bad lending is a result of bad lending practices without due diligence taken, poor management, and bad administration from an earlier period. The lack of strong banking sector is holding back India's growth and GDP growth as there is less to lend for infrastructure or industrial projects. The result is growth that has fallen below 6% in recent years, and the Modi government sees this as an obstacle to rapid growth of the economy under its Atmanirbhar Bharat plan for a self-reliant economy. ...

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Prices in Britain are expected to go up with Brexit. New figures show prices up 1.2% in the year to November 2016, up from 0.9% in the year to October, according to the Office of National Statistics. Economists expect this to go up rapidly to 2% by the end of March 2017, to reflect higher prices for oil following the sharp drop in the value of the pound. A big increase in clothing imported from overseas, as well as other consumer prices are also pushing up inflation.

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The Guardian gives this story of Khamanei's rule in Iran after 1989. He was made president in 1981 in a landslide win at that time just 2 years after the revolution in 1979 that toppled the Shah of Iran's monarchial regime. Khamanei comes from a the family of a modest cleric in the town of Mashaad who was immersed in the anticolonial writings coming out of Arab North Africa's liberation movements. His policy towards Israel and the US, difficult relations with Arab countries in the neighborhood, and pursuit of nuclear weapons technologies, led Iran to become isolated and face sanctions that hurt its economy and its oil industry for three decades. It created its own version of governing and in setting up proxy militias but this resulted in huge investments diverted from the economy of Iran, neglect of its oil industry and production under western sanctions, that led to economy collapsing and student protests every decade. This expanded in 2025 to broad sections of the population calling for a new direction. Protests were suppressed leading to a disconnect with the people by 2026. To truly understand Iran one has to step back to the 1900's ( as one must also do to understand China or India), as Iran was ruled by the Qajar dynasty at the time. The first Majlis parliament was set up in Iran in 1906 -with the help of "good" Britishers like the British agent in Rajkot who helped send Gandhi to London to study law- wished to see a constitutional setup similar to Britain and limit the powers of the monarchy so that reforms in agriculture and in the civil service could be made. It lasted until 1908. At the time other Britishers in the British Empire both in India and in London sought to maintain British influence and keep out Russian influence. It was not a coincidence that the Majlis lasted only till 1908. That year in 1908 the first discovery of oil in West Asia was made in Khozestan province by George Reynolds, with investor backing of William D'Arcy. The following year 1909 the Anglo-Persian Oil Company( later Anglo Iranian Oil Company and later British Petroleum) was formed. The oil concession was given by the Shah from Qajar dynasty. From that time on Iran became the scene of oil company interests, monarchial interests first under Qajar dynaasty and then under Pahlavis dynasty (which set itself up like Napoleon II in France from humble origins, after 1925 to replace the Qajar dynasty), and the emerging middle class lawyer and civil service, agricultural landowners class, all competing for power and influence in a Asian region with Shihite Islamic embedded in the fabric of the society. Power swung to different groups from 1925 onwards for 5 decades to the 1979 revolution that overthrew the Pahlavi temporary replacement monarchy that worked with British oil interests. West Asia became a meeting point for anticolonial writings emerging from Arab North Africa and other places that took the form of and led to a socialist style anticolonial Baathist influnce that overthrew a monarchy in Baghdad Iraq in the "Free Officers" coup of June 14, 1958 led by Karim Kassem. Out of that Pan Arabic Iraqi mood emerged S. Hussein who with weapons systems imported from the US and Europe initiated the war with Iran in 1980. The Iranian counterrevolutionary movement to Iraq began from that time with the leadership of Khomeni and Khameni from 1981. This is what one has seen swing back and forth in the West Asian region for about 5 decades to 2026, the regional Arab states mostly Sunni monarchies ranged against Iran with its Shiite and also modernizing population. US oil interests in Arab monarchies of the West Asian region from the time of FDR's meeting with Saudi's Faisal in the WWII period clashed with Iranian public interests competing with oil interests (US and British) allied to monarchial interests, and the emergence of Shiite Islamic authority in Iran in these clashes. Iranian public interests that started out with the Majlis and parliaments set up by the "good Britishers" never got a chance in Iran just as the modernizing effort of Sun Yat Sen in China in the 1900's never got a chance in the middle of the surviving monarchy in China by 1910, and the Japanese colonial interests in China from that time competing with the Nationalists Koumintang and the Communist Chinese workers movements emerging in the 1930's, all competing for influence during the Chinese civil war and in its aftermath the emergence of Mao and the CCP of China. This is the situation we in the world face today. ...