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The WSJ cites several surveys showing Hillary Clinton's large lead among voters less than 35 years is declining. This is the reason WSJ says that the overall lead of Clinton among all voters has declined to about 2-4 points. In Michigan for example a Detroit Free Press survey showing a 24 point lead for Clinton declines to 7 points among voters under 35 years, and causes a overall 11 point lead to fall to 4 points. Some of the support has gone to third party candidate Gary Johnson. In the 2012 election president Obama won the votes of about 60% of voters under 30 years, an important part of Obama's coalition. Of the 66 million votes cast 22% were from voters under 30 years age. As a result First Lady Michelle Obama will campaign on a college campus in Virgina. Senator Bernie Sanders will also campaign to attract the younger voters that made his campaign so strong, and Elizabeth Warren will speak at two Ohio universities in coming days. Sanders will stress the importance of Clinton's proposal for debt free college and funding more programs with higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans, and ask young voters to look further than mere personality to what they can expect to improve the lives of students and young people. This is happening 6 weeks before the election. A look back at 2012 about 7 weeks prior to the election in Lyrarc shows Obama with a 6 point lead, but only even with Romney when it came to handling of the economy because of the long recession. This shows how each election presents its own different set of circumstances and challenges. ...

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The commodities boom allowed Brazil under president Lula to commit to heavy state spending, subisidies, protection of favored sectors with large tariffs, that led to inefficiency and high debt. The policies continued under president Rousseff. Corruption scandals in the latter part of the Lula administration led to more populist policies for the Workers Party to stay in power, says Porter. Compared to Mexico and Chile, Brazil and Argentina under presidents Lula and Kirchner moved in the direction to closing up their economies to trade and foreign investment that would make corporate sectors more competitive and less dependent on the state for subsidies and favors. Mexico's economy other than the automobile sector is struggling, as mismanagement also plays a part as with the handling of Pemex and huge capital injections needed. Mindfulness and thoughtfulness is needed in setting policy direction, aware of the risks free of illusions about rosy scenarios, knowing that ideology plays less of a part than exercizing good judgement....

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This story by Emmarie Huetteman describes the effort of three Republican women in the U.S. Senate who had the courage to listen to the different voices in their home state and use their informed judgement in deciding how to vote on a Republican healthcare bill or Affordable Care Act repeal effort. Especially when they heard that it would hurt people in their state, the elderly, low income and other vulnerable people without offering alternatives. Even when this meant resisting pressure from fellow Republicans. The senators are Capito of West Virginia, Collins of Maine, and Murkowski of Alaska. This is particularly significant at a time when too much polarization has led to paralysis in coming up with informed discussion and good solutions to problems. It is also significant that senators from the midwestern states such as Iowa- Mr Grassley, and Kansas- Mr. Moran, also joined the effort to listen first to people back home in their districts before making up their mind. 

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Polls just days before the French presidential election show independent candidate Macron getting about 60% of the 18-24 year age group. There is discontent in this age group because of high unemployment. The unemployment rate is 24% for people below age 25, higher than 18% before the financial crisis of 2008, compared to 7% in Germany for this age group. For people 25 to 29 years it is 14%. This is why Marie Le Pen has appeal in economically struggling northern towns. Yet most French people are finding it difficult to take on an agenda as radical as Le Pen's that takes France out of the eurozone. In the final debate just 24 hours before the vote Le Pen entered into a discussion about leaving the eurozone but showed she had no clear idea of what this would mean for France. She described Brexit as an example and Macron shot back that Britain was never in the eurozone to begin with, and it appeared that Le Pen was just hoping that it would all work out, without a clear grasp of the facts. She had no response to Macron on how an exit could create panic in the markets and lower the value of savings of ordinary French people by about 20%. On pensions she stated that 60 was the age for retirement under her plan opening herself up to the criticism that she had no clear idea of the facts as Macron pointed out- that it would mean lower benefits or higher payments into the retirement system. This may be why even some young people who see the banking experience of Macron as a liability, may be offset by others who see this as a possible asset because of the need for some valuable experience in an independent candidate, as described by Dalton.    ...

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U.S. president Trump's statement calling for a list of goods for tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods leaves China without a clear response and facing new risks. The U.S. exports about $150 billion in goods to China so that China would have to impose penalties to respond at the same level. Placing restrictions on American firms on access to China's market, and imposing other penalties would have the effect of reinforcing the perception of unfair practices targeting American business and lead to hardening of U.S. response.  The U.S. sees itself as being in a better position with the U.S. economy experiencing a growth trend. China with large local government and bank debt faces a difficult situation. President Jinping's policy of reducing the risks of bad debt in the banking system involved sacrificing some growth to stabilize the system. China's GDP growth in 2017 was 6.9%, the target at 6.5%. Future targets and actual growth now look to be much lower.The trade war with the U.S. has the effect of dampening growth leading to calls for the central bank to loosen its monetary stance. In response to Trump's announcement the People's Bank of China pumped $31 billion into the nation's banks. China is studying Japan's response in the 1980's and 1990's when the U.S. took strong action against Japan's growing trade surplus. Japan responded by appreciating its currency and using stimulus to cushion the effect of lower exports on the economy. The stimulus led to the housing bubble and over time a period of low growth and stagnant economy. The large China stimulus in 2008-2009 has compounded the problems in the banking system. Not deleveraging and controlling financial risks in China's banking system because of the trade war would bring a new set of risks. ...

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A strong U.S. jobs report in July with 255,000 new jobs, unemployment at 4.9%, provides positive sentiment going forward. The Federal Reserve is likely to be wary of raising rates because businesses are hiring but are not making the investments needed to spur economic growth, which remains at about 1%. The labor force participation rate is now at 62.8%. The measure of unemployment and underemployment shows a better picture of how different age groups are faring including the 25-54 years age group- this is at 9.7% in July 2016, it was 9.6% in June 2016. This measure shows those working part time because they cannot find a full time job. The market today is stronger for those with the right job skills, but not across the spectrum for all Americans, only setting the stage for further progress and increasing investment as confidence improves.

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The U.S. Census Bureau shows incomes of American households, the median household income, surged in 2015 by 5.2%. This increased by $2800 to $56,500. This is the largest increase since 1967. It shows that steadily improving employment and hiring is leading to improvement in incomes for the middle and working class. Ris in minimum wage has also helped . The largest increase was for the lowest 20% of the income tiers. Full time working women did better than men, with increase annually of 2.7% for women, and 1.5% for men. Nocitizen incomes increased 10.5% to $45,100, native born households went up 4.4% to $57,200. The number of people without health insurance also declined from 33 million or 10.4% of the population to  29 million people or 9.1%. Another way the changes are helping lower income households is the decline of the official poverty rate to 13.5% in 2015 by 1.2 percentage points from 14.8% in 2014. Through a series of small incremental steps the path is being set for a recovery of household incomes for the middle class and working class. A bright spot is that the improvement has affected all age groups, household types, regions and ethnic groups, though among full time workers women did better than men. In this recession older white men have had more difficulties getting back into the workforce. This is reflected in the political scene in 2015-2016 for the election season. ...

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Van Dam says its not that great being a worker in the U.S. because it is hard for the unemployed resulting from competing with workers in other countries with lower wages, and for those who are unemployed harder because worker collective bargaining is weakened over 3 decades. He cites a 296 page OECD report showing very little government support for unemployed and at risk American workers. It says this has contributed to higher income inequality and larger share of lower income people than almost any other advanced a nation. Only Spain and Greece are shown as having more households earning less than half the median income- showing large numbers of people are poor or close to being poor. In the U.S. an average of 1 in 5 lose their jobs each year, and 23% of workers 15 to 64 are in their job less than a year in 2016. The job churn hurts workers because of firing and layoffs being frequent, more than is healthy for a economy. The U.S. and Mexico are the only two countries not requiring advance notice before firings. And fewer than half of workers find a job within a year in the U.S. Two in three families with a displaced worker fall in poverty for some time. Unemployed workers with typically 26 weeks support get less support than any other country in the study. Only 12% of workers in U.S. are covered by collective bargaining. ...