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This WSJ podcast is a new series on hackers from Russia and other places and how the US is fighting back for cybersecurity.

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A thin Republican majority in the single digits, many elected with an investigative mood, and 3 newcomers from New York who are moderates to be targeted at the outset by Democrats will make the House ungovernable says this analysis in the NYT of the US Congress midterms of 2022. 

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US president Biden's multi-trillion dollar spending plans for infrastructure, climate change plans, education and healthcare, are based on a changing perception about the effectiveness of the public sector spending initiatives. The Reagan period idea that the public sector is not as efficient as the private sector that lingered through the Clinton, Bush and Obama, Trump administrations is no longer accepted. After the pandemic another perception is taking root that when it comes to health infrastructure the government has a leading and indispensable role to play. Gone are the doubts about this that hung like a cloud over the nation's plans for infrastructure in health, education and supply channels. Following the global competition with China a new factor is also playing its part. The need for government to play an active role in trade, in protecting technological resources, and in supporting US technological firms in competition with other countries. There is a new perception that the government should be determined to play this role. In the effort to be self-reliant after the pandemic the government is expected to play a role in redesigning the supply channels and providing the direction and incentives for supply channels worldwide that give America a competitive advantage and less dependence on other nations. ...

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Prospects for the Indian auto industry with 7% of India's GDP depend on a good monsoon rainy season and a vigorous vaccination drive. Sales declined badly in May 2021 with the second wave of the pandemic.

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An effort to deepen India China cultural ties and tourism visits, people to people contact, with president Xi Jinping's visit to Mamallapuram in southern India near Chennai. It is from this region that under the Pallava dynasty Bodhidharma went to China bringing Buddhism in 527 AD, and Xuanzang came here in 627-643 AD from Fujian province to collect precious Buddhist manuscripts for translation. The deep historical connections between the two countries have withered under British imperialism in the modern period. There is also a sense that the best way to deepen the relationship is for people to come and have face to face contact with the culture, history and development.

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A 1000 mile windswept coastline and 300 days of sunshine make the southern African nation of Namibia an attractive location for green hydrogen projects. Green hydrogen is produced using wind and solar energy. There is a 50 fold increase in green hydrogen projects in just the last 12 months globally. The costly technology needs many projects to get to lower costs through technological advances. Germany is doing a pilot project in Luderitz, Namibia. Luderitz will need a deep water project to ship the fuel out.   Renewable wind and solar energy is used to distil the hydrogen atoms in water, as opposed to the currently used method to maky hydrogen from fossil fuels, known as gray hydrogen, or blue hydrogen if the emissions from fossil fuels are captured. Namibia is chosen as its natural advantages could bring the costs down faster. Other locations being adopted are Morocco, Australia, and Chile. The two sites in Namibia had bids from Africa's Sasol, Australia's Fortescu, Germany's Enertrag and Hyphen Hydrogen.  Hyphen Hydrogen won the bid for the two sites. It says the $9.4 billion project is targeting 300,000 metric tons of green hydrogen production a year from 5 gigawatts of renewable energy generation capacity by 2030. "Now all of a sudden the desert has become valuable," says Namibia's finance minister Mr. Shiimi. Additional asset for Namibia is that it ranks highest after Cape Verde in Africa for transparency, creating ease of doing business. It is ranked 57 in Transparency International rank of transparency for countries in 2020. China is 78, India 86 in rank. Namibia is putting up $45 million for the feasibility study on the project with the sesert scrub land an hour from Luderitz, once a diamond mining town on a rocky Atlantic coastline in 1900. Two sites are located in the area each 675 square miles. South Africa is severely short of energy supplies and a pipeline is being considered to take the Namibian hydrogen to South Africa. The African region is expanding in renewable energy. Lake Turkana Wind Power Project in Kenya provides 17% of installed electricity capacity in Kenya with 365 wind turbines.     ...

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Greg Ip looks at the Chinese economy its strengths and and many weaknesses including debt and declining foreign investment in 2023, as president Xi visits the US this coming week. With a slowing economy, high youth unemployment and excessive debt, China remains a resilient economy because it has strengths in manufacturing. It would take the US the next decade to build up its manufacturing capabilities after neglecting this important field with mistaken policies for three decades under presidents Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Obama and Trump. President Biden is taking steps for this new manufacturing revival to take place.

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Jurgen Klopp takes Liverpool to a 4-0 win over Barcelona in the Champions League semi-final of 2019. With 2 key players out from injuries, for Liverpool it was all about the mind and its approach to the game with a mentality to go out there and do whatever was needed. It strained credulity. In 7 minutes it was 1-0. In less than an hour it was 3-0. Without Firmino and Salah, two of their best players, it was disbelief at Anfield. Messi and Suarez tried for Barcelona, but it made no difference.

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How Instex works and how oil importers India, China and Japan see the need to maintain oil imports. The European side to Instex to pay for imports in Iran.

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The confusion about guidelines for reopening, conflicts about social distancing in communities and families, is prolonging the pandemic in the U.S. as this report shows in the WSJ.

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Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack of Iowa is one of the key people pushing for reviving Rural America. He has served as Agricultrue Secretary under a previous Democratic administration but lacked the resources for programs to keep young, aspiring and new would be farmers attracted to rural America and to farming. He sees the loss of 544,000 farms including small family farms in America since 1981 as a loss for rural America. He is now in a position to make a difference with $60 billion in funding in the Inflation Reduction Act. A former two term governor of Iowa 1999-2007 he is familiar with rural conditions in America's heartland and in agricultural states from Wisconsin and Minnesota to Nebraska and Colorado, from North and South Dakota to Missouri. Vilsack who has the ear of president Joe Biden says the loss of small farms has weakened rural America and wants to stop the bleeding. Lydia Phillips of NYT shows how billions of dollars of spending is now targeted at helping small farms plant a variety of crops that have more cash value than soyabeans and getting these to the market. A lot of the $60 billion goes to large farms for conservation and renewable energy. Vilsack is working hard to make it work for small farms and people in rural America, including generating many sources of income that includes money for renewable energy generated on small farms. ...

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Bret Stephens of NYT shows a lack of knowledge of European history and remains oblivious of the disastrous consequences of Reagan's policies that he lauds. He cites Reagan as saying to his own audience - "My idea of policy towards the Soviet Union is simple, some would say simplistic. It is "We win, you lose."  The US did not win through Reagan policies, it began three decades of US involvement in wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East, with Iran, that have wasted trillions of dollars and many lives, a period in which it created space for the emergence of China as a world power with newer infrastructure built in a period in which China could quietly rebuild and modernize while the US frittered away its vital resources to the point that funding was missing for vital infrastructure rebuilding and education was not financed by the government as it had done in the early postwar years. The classic European History book by Cambridge historian Brendan Simms, "Europe- The Struggle for Supremacy 1453 to the Present" shows that every time any country became too powerful, the others regardless of religion, old ties or other affiliation joined together to counterbalance and restore the balance- Britain, France, Russia, Austria-Hungary were never allowed to become too dominant. The idea that the Soviet Union collapsed because of Reagan's policies is incorrect- it would have collapsed a decade later without Reagan as by the 1980's the people running the government and the ordinary people had realized the system was not meeting the aspirations of Russians. By buying into this myth Americans were embroiled in useless wars and in so doing probably destroyed more wealth in a short time than any period in world history- the trillions of dollars of oil wealth transferred not to countries such as China or India that had to pull themselves by the bootstraps but to Arab desert regions that were itself not benefitted because they went to fight wars and destruction. ...

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The total government expenditure of the US including the individual states spending is 37% of US GDP (IMF). Musk $2 trillion cuts is 92% of the 2.17 trillion excluding defense, veterans benefits, interest on debt, Social Security, Medicare. The simple math means he plans to shut down the government. US  37.5%  Germany 48% France 57% UK and Canada 43% Japan 42% This shows that the US that has no universal health insurance and  subsidized public transportation, spends less than the developed OECD countries as a percentage of its GDP. Of the Budget of $6.75 trillion in 2024 Social Security $1.46 trillion   22% Medicare            $874 billion   13% Interest on Debt  $880 billion    13% Trump plans to remove tax on Social Security which would take this from 48% to over 50% meaning half of the Budget is off limits. If defense spending goes up not down then $874 and $325 for Veterans benefits are $1.2 trillion also off limits.  This means cuts of $2 trillion on $2.17 trillion or 92%. Do the simple math and this would shut down the government. ...