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Private companies such as Reliance Power and Tata Power control only 27% of India's power generating capacity of 205 gigwatts. The government controls most of the capacity in this sector for generation and transmission of power and has failed to invest enough to keep up with growing needs. The government has failed to achieve even modest expansion goals for power generation. A target of 78.7 gigawatts of additions to the national grid were planned for the five year period ending March 31, 2012, but only 70% of that target has been met. China during the same five year period added 418 gigawatts. State utilities sell power at discounted rates resulting in large losses, making it difficult to invest in upgrades in transmission technology and facilities. Rate regulations make it unattractive for private investors. Another problem is the shortage of coal, with coal production concentrated in one state owned firm Coal India that has failed to invest in new technology and improvements. The result is the kind of massive outages from overload of the national power grid in July 2012, affecting most of northern and eastern India....

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At a meeting of GM engineers and Continental- which manufactured the Cobalt's diagnostic modules on May 15, 2009- the faulty ignition switch defect was confirmed by repeated verification of data from many car crashes. No evidence shows this was shared with senior managers. GM filed for bankruptcy in June 2009, two weeks later, and this could be the reason as the situation could be chaotic in managerial ranks. It was tnot until Oct 29, 2013, when GM officials met with the supplier Delphi that the issue comes up again. Records for the meeting showed clearly the defective switches were made at a Delphi plant from 2004 to late 2006. A part change had led to the defective switch. It is the period between 2009 to 2013 that GM has no answer for, as public opinion increasingly looks to GM for answers on why it took so long to make the recall. At Toyota the footdragging in managerial ranks caused the problems for the recall. At GM the problem simply disappeared at the lower levels as the company went through a bankruptcy and emerged from bankruptcy under new management....

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The resignation of U.S. Defense Secretary Mattis comes as a result of Mattis being unable to change plans by president Trump for a withdrawal from both Afghanistan and Syria. WSJ discloses that at a meeting on December 18 at the Pentagon, with John Bolton, White House National Security Advisor, Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State, and John Dunford, chairman Jt. Chiefs of Staff, Mattis could not temper the president's plans. On Thursday December 20th Mr. Mattis decided to resign. He then met Mr. Pompeo and onto the White House to meet president Trump. He and Mr. Trump discussed their contrasting world views in a 45 minute meeting, and Mr. Mattis handed over his resignation letter to Mr. Trump. Military officials were particularrly blindsided by the withdrawal from Syria. U.S. policy has vacillated back and forth in the intervention in Syria with president Obama also hesitant to commit troops in Syria. In the meeting Mattis understood that even a minimal presence in Syria was unacceptable to president Trump who ordered the removal of the 2000 troops there. The withdrawal from Afghanistan was also a result of limited patience with the war there in the 18th year and no sign that the Taliban influence had diminished since the war began- after Trump added 3000 troops to the 14,000 stationed in Afghanistan. The U.S. has 5500 troops in Iraq and there is talk about drawing this number down. The concern for the defense department is that how U.S. allies will see the withdrawal, and their perception of how reliable the U.S. is as a partner. For president Trump the cost is measured in terms of the long period the U.S. was engaged in the region without any tangible results, and U.S. not allies bearing most of the cost.      ...

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A biography of Steve Jobs that Jobs asked Walter Isaacson to write about his life. Isaacson is the author of biographies of Ben Franklin and Albert Einstein. After being diagnosed with cancer in late 2003, Jobs called Isaacson and asked him whether he would write Jobs's biography. He told Isaacson he wanted his kids to know him as Jobs wasn't always there for them. Jobs told Isaacson to write freely and sought no control over the content. The book delves into the effect on Jobs of his adoption, his search for meaning in life, the women in his life, his extreme behaviour and a sense even among his friends that he could be mean. He fathers a daughter at age 23, and does not have much to do with her till she is 10, and he coud treat his adoptive parent sometimes with callousness. His adoption affects Jobs early on as he describes it- at age 6 a girl living across the street asks Jobs if his adoption really expressed that his "real parents did not want you." His adoptive parents who did not have a college education, were very supportive and caring of Jobs. The effect of his adoption led Jobs on a search for meaning in life, on a seven month visit to India, into Zen Buddhist readings, extreme diets and primal scream therapy. Jobs was not interested in mechanical things and "did not want to get his hands dirty," says his adoptive father. It was the excitement of the surroundings in the early eighties in the area around Palo Alto and San Francisco that affected Jobs. The book describes his relationships with Joan Baez, a folk singer, computer consultant, Tina Redse and former Goldman Sachs trader, Laurene Powell. Right down to his last days Jobs met with Isaacson, reflecting on the meaning of death and what survives after it. Maybe its just an an on-off switch he says....

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Jeb Bush opens his election campaign in Florida where he was two term governor, and addresses the crowd in Spanish. Jeb Bush met Columba Garnica de Gallo, a Mexican girl when he studied in a foreign exchange program in Leon, Mexico in 1970, when he was 17 and she was 16. Jeb Bush was assisting in the building of a school in a small village outside Leon, as part of a program at Andover called Man and Society. They were married in 1974 in Austin, Texas. Jeb Bush received his BA in Latin American Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. His earlier schooling was at Andover, Massachusetts. He is the only candidate with deep personal and educational connections to Latin America coming from the traditional political elite. Columba's personal story as the daughter of a migrant worker who left the family when she was three, and her championing of causes related to women and domestic violence add a different aspect to the Bush story, seen as a privileged family. This makes Jeb Bush unique in the Republican Party- unlike Marc Rubio and other candidates of Cuban ancestry from the Miami area- with deep roots on both sides of the American story, and spanning generations from Columbus, Ohio to small towns in Texas and Mexico. Rubio's parents immigrated from Cuba in 1956 under the Batista regime later overthrown by Fidel Castro. The election campaign gives Jeb Bush an opportunity to create a consensus on issues relating to minorities, immigration and the struggling middle class. In a Republican debate in 1980, Reagan said "Rather than put up a fence (between Mexico and the U.S.) why don't we work out a recognition of our mutual problems." To which George Bush Sr. said: "They are good... strong people. Part of my family is Mexican." It is an opportunity to build connections to Latinos in the U.S., and rebuild the Republican party's connections to Hispanic Americans, closing the gap with the Democratic Party. This will be good for the country to move forward....

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Iran's new president is a moderate cleric Hassan Rohani. He won the presidential election in June 2013 with 18 million votes, or 50.7% of the votes cast. The second runnerup received only 16% of the vote, making Rohani the overwhelming choice of Iranian voters discontented after years of international sanctions over the nuclear development issue and the confrontational stance of the previous president Mr. Ahmadinejad. In a televised debate before the election Rohani summed up this discontent with the economic situation: "It's nice for the centrifuges to run but people's livelihoods have also to run, our factories have also to run." He contrasted the situation when he was the chief nuclear negotiator for Iran under president Mohamad Khatami, another moderate, when Iran avoided international sanctions, with the current situation. Currently even essential aircraft parts for Iran's national airline are difficult to source. Mr. Khamanei called Rohani "the people's choice." Khamanei and Rohani met to discuss the new government, which observers in Tehran say offers an opportunity for national reconciliation. The Revolutionary Guard Corps leaders also offered their support to Rohani. The Green Movement, Khatami and Rafsanjani supported Rohani before the elections. Rohani is known for his ability to reach out to all parties. He comes from a working class family in a small town in the province of Semnan, entered theological seminary later apprenticing himself to clerics at Qom, the main home of leaders of the Shiite religion. He then attended law school at Tehran University, becoming a student activist during the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Later Rohani studied in Scotland getting master's and doctorate degrees in law, which gives him a unique insight into concepts such as the rule of law for an Iranian cleric. He was member of parliament, deputy speaker of parliament and head of the management committee of the national broadcast service, and a member of the National Security Council....

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The IMF extends $100 billion in loans to countries that have healthy economies but need temporary help, such as S.Korea, Brazil, Mexco and Singapore. Some of these countries have borrowed heavily in other currencies and the drop in the value of their own currencies makes repayment difficult. No strings such as requirements to raise interest rates and to cut public spending are attached to this program. Under this program countries could borrow five times the amount they are normally entitled to, $25 billion in Brazil's case, without the strict conditions that normally accompany such loans. Nobel Prize winner Stiglitz was chief economist at the World Bank. He said the funds use of the words restore confidence itself could make a lot of countries nervous. That is because in the Asian and Latin American crises in the past, the IMF set strict conditions to increase interest rates and cut public spending and food subsidies at a time when the poor especially and the rest of the people, all needed help, thereby increasing public distress. In the developed countries stimulus packages and infrastructure spending goes up to support employment and incomes, but the IMF has advocated quite the reverse in the case of the developing countries, with the US Treasury a key factor in IMF support and ideology. Which is why countries in Asia like South Korea see a stigma attached to the IMF and are refusing IMF help. In Pakistan also the IMF support is a last resort or Plan C. Iceland for instance raised rates in return for IMF help from 6% to 18% to try to stabilize the currency. The IMF was created as part of the Bretton Woods agreement of 1944 when the Allied Powers USA and Britain and other countries that sent representatives met in New Hampshire for a postwar economic system. Japan, S. Korea, India and China and many other countries were not part of it because of the war or colonial empires....

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Rolf Wetzer, a German metal working factory manager reflects feelings widespread in Germany. He says, we work hard and save our money, and he can't see why Germans have to throw money at countries that cannot do the same. There is considerable negative feeling about the bailout of Greece, because it is seen as brought about by the excessive spending, public corruption, and irresponsible accounting that went on in Greece. There is less negative feeling about the bailout of Ireland, as the Irish are seen as an industrious people, and the crisis was brought upon Ireland by Irish banks. Because of the negative feeling it will be much harder for Angela Merkel to go back to the German parliament for more funds, especially as her popularity has suffered. The existing fund will be stretched by the possible bailout of Portugal and Spain. Germany remains committed to the euro, but there is considerable anger about the bailouts. Germany has benefitted from the euro-zone through its exports, which jumped 31% in the last decade. Germany has a $105 billion trade surplus with the rest of Europe. At the same time there is fear that public opinion may turn against the euro. Thomas Mayer, chief economist at Deutsche Bank, says you can already feel it. Frank Schaeffer, a legislator for the Free Democrats, says that whether Germany needs the same currency as its neighbors is something he has doubts about....

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The auto parts industry is seeing a huge transformation as American Axle, Visteon and other companies look to Europe, Asia and other countries for growth and shift to a lower cost manufacturing base overseas. Costs are in many cases about 5 times in the USA than in other countries in Asia. And health care costs are a major part of the costs the auto parts makers face in the USA. To get an idea of how fundamental a change is going on American Axle which in 1995 did not have a plant overseas now expects 75% of its $1.3 billion in product orders to be met by plants overseas. And it is planning to build plants in India and Thailand. Visteon which used to be part of Ford Motor and made parts like heating and cooling systems mainly for Ford, will by 2010 according to Visteon's CEO, have sales to Hyundai and Kia of 28% of sales, making the Korean company its largest buyer. Ford's North American operations will only account for 6% of sales from 15% today. That is a dramatic change and involves closing plants in the US. For Visteon this means $635 million in cost reduction mainly through plant closings in 2008-2010....

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Jill Biden teaches at Northern Virginia Community College. She wants to continue her job teaching community college students helping them prepare for 4 year colleges, even after Mr. Joe Biden becomes the new president of the U.S.  This story of Jill Biden in The Times is exceptional in giving a vivid picture of the person closest to the new U.S. president. Both the Bidens, Joe and Jill, come from working class families in the northeastern U.S. Mr. Biden's life is marked by a single event that has affected his whole life the death in a car accident of his first wife Naomi in December 1972 when he was running for U.S. Senator in Delaware. He won that election becoming the youngest senator in U.S. history. The family retained high ambitions for Joe, hoping that he would become president. Jill met Joe Biden during this campaign and she married Joe in 1975. Jill had spent 13 years of her career teaching English in secondary schools, and the past 27 years teaching in community colleges, including the eight years when Biden was Vice President. Along the way she studied for 2 Masters degrees and a doctoral degree. Her dissertation for the doctoral degree was on the topic- Student Retention at Community Colleges: Meeting Student Needs. Student dropout rates are high about one in three in community colleges dropout.  It is a sign of the misplaced priorities of today that Dr. Biden takes pride in her degree and many do not think this is important enough a topic for a dissertation. Not only her education and hard work studying for advanced education makes her a unique asset, there are other parts of her character that make her exceptional and right for the times. Jill Biden entered a family that in some ways after Naomi's death was broken. The were two children surviving the fatal car accident in 1972, Beau and Hunter. This story shows how she handled this in a way that required extraordinary serenity and composure. There was the ambition of the family. There was the memory of the accident and Naomi. There was the cynicism about her passion for education in fashionable Democratic party circles out of touch with the roots of the national character in education and in libraries starting with Ben Franklin and Jefferson. With president Biden entering office at a time when the U.S. as a country is broken by the very neglect of education, healthcare and working class Americans, Jill Biden at 69 years has the experience, vigor of spirit and character needed today.   ...

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S. Koreans do not like the Wal-Mart style large warehouse type of retail stores as a place to shop in. What they want is the Korean outdoor market comfortably tucked inside. A better comparison to Korea's own E-Mart owned by Shinsegae is Target stores in the U.S., where there is a a nicer spacious layout, lower shelves. Then you have to add the feeling of a Korean outdoor market with vendors in the form of girls with polo shirts showing the brands they represent calling out to customers, above the sound of butchers calling out prices of meat and fish. A senior executive at Shinsaegae's E-Mart says S. Koreans hate the warehouse format. As a result Wal-Mart and Carrefour had to withdraw from the Korean market. E-Mart's founder, Lee Myung Hee, is the daughter of the Samsung Group's founder Le Byung-chul. The company is now run by her son, Mr. Chung, who is combining professional mangement with ownership management to run E-Mart. The original E-Mart was a small operation acquired by the Samsung founder in 1963, and separated from Samsung under Ms. Lee in 1991. The first E-Mart opened in 1993. In 1999 Samsung took a 11% interest in Samsung-Tesco discount chain retail stores, a joint venture with Tesco Corp. of the UK. Shinsaegae expanded quickly after the 1998 Korean financial crisis, by acquiring land at attractive prices. With the failure of the Wal-Mart stores in S. Korea, Shinsaegae acquired the Wal-Mart operation for $872 million in 2008. ...

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Osam Bin Laden is killed in a U.S. special forces attack on a compound 40 miles from Islamabad. The area known as Abbottabad is also the location of a Pakistani military academy. One Pakistani helicopter and 2 American helicopters were involved in the attack. Experts say this changes the dynamic of the war, with the U.S. keen on a disengagement in Afghanistan, and Pakistani concerns about the expanded U.S. footprint in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region working in the same direction. This also comes at a time when the Middle East is no longer what it looked like a decade ago. Democracy protests have changed the way ordinary Arabs look at the world. In recent months Pakistan's relationship with the U.S. has grown tense. Last week the Wall Street Journal reported that top civilian and military leaders of Pakistan met with the Afghan government leaders in Kabul recently. At the meeting Pakistan's leaders suggested that it would be better for Afghanistan to move closer to Pakistan and China, and distance itself from the U.S. The Pakistani leadership must be aware of domestic politics in the U.S., the changes in the Arab world, the desire of Americans and the U.S. government to wind down America's military involvement, and decided that the removal of Osama would give give America less reason to continue its military presence....

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A Nikkei poll shows only 36% of people in Japan support a reinterpretation of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution to allow "collective self defense," and 51% disapprove. Prime minister Abe cites the need for "thorough debate," and legislative moves in this area will be held back, to gain support for reforms in the agriculture and other sectors. Abe appears to have lost some goodwill for reform measures to launch the Third Arrow. In an address to the Australian parliament in English Abe made a committment to the principle underlying Article 9 by saying- "This vow that Japan made after the war is still fully alive today." He also stated that Japan woud never let the horrors of World War II be repeated. Japan and Australia have agreed to share military equipment, and Japan has a role in developing a submarine fleet for the Australian navy of 30 billion Australian dollars (US $28.1 billion). At about this time in Beijing U.S. leaders for the foreign and finance ministries, Lew and Kerry, met for the Strategic and Economic Dialogue sixth round in Beijing's Diaoyutai State guest house. China's president Jinping, probably aware of the waves created by its own assertive stance in the region and the response of neighbors and Japan, said that the Pacific was large enough to accomodate both the U.S. and China....

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Andrew Kramer reports from the front near the city of Mariupol in eastern Ukraine with signs of a breakdown in the second Minsk accord. Following the breakdown of the Minsk agreement of September 2014 by February 2015, with fighting around the town of Debaltseve, leaders of Russia, Germany, France and the separatist eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk met again in Minsk, Belarus, on Feb 11, 2015. This led to the second Minsk Agreement and a ceasefire. This agreement called for release of prisoners, a zone to separate the soldiers on each side, constitutional reforms for decentralization in Ukraine giving autonomy to the Donetsk and Luhansk areas, and monitoring by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Minsk II agreement is under strain as the economic blockade by Kiev, and separatist violations of the ceasefire, have created a tense situation by June 2015. The second Minsk agreement was reached under pressure from the U.S. saying it would send arms to the government in Kiev if Russia continued to send troops into Ukraine, and Germany seeking to avoid a further escalation of the conflict. In the background the U.S. and the EU continued economic sanctions on Russia, and the Russian economy suffered from a decline in oil prices as a result of Saudi pricing decisions....

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The Byrd rule says Congress cannot pass changes to retirement rules in a reconciliation bill which do not require 60 votes to pass in the Senate. Using this method to get Trump's mega bill for tax cuts passed means that of DJT's promises to eliminate taxes on tips and social security only the tips one will be made into law. Congress will still give retirees a break by adding $4000 to the standard deduction for those 65 years and over. 

Social Security benefits were never taxed before 1984. In that year Reagan began taxing Social Security benefits.

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China has seen novel uses of the internet. Pinduoduo is one of them. It brings people together on the internet to socialize and shop together. Purchases are small compared to Alibaba- $324 a year on average. By  bringing people in large numbers it has brought in about 788 million users in 2020.  One of the attractions is an orchard game where people tend to their digital orchards to earn shopping vouchers and prizes such as boxes of mangoes.The founder Mr. Huang studied computer science at the University of Wisconsin- Madison where he met Chen who now runs the company. Huang's first effort as recently as 2015 was to sell lychees and fruit from their sole warehouse in Shanghai on WeChat platform. This failed when the computer systems of the website could not handle the large number of orders. Lychees then rotted at the warehouse. From that first effort he realized the way social and browsing platforms could work with shopping. To build up large number of buyers who could be served advertising he came up with subsidies to buyers that are financed from the advertising. Money from advertising is put back into the subsidies. The buyers get discount on purchases and the browsing social platform builds large number of users in a short time. In this way it has as many users as Alibaba but purchases are small.  As in these types of startups with huge valuations and fast growth no profits were made in 2020. The loss is $1.1 billion in 2020. It has put $13 billion of the ad revenues into subsidizing the products on the site. Investors have given the company $6 billion for an agriculture program to sell fresh food and produce.  The Chinese government sees the company subsidies as having an effect of distorting the market prices. Regulators have fined the company for its practices. The company's working culture has some aspects that come under criticism with deaths of two employees.  This offers a glimpse of China's internet culture. How much of it is real constructive development of the internet is always a question. Is investor capital productively invested is also a question. Like Japan in the late 1980's few questions are asked by investors about productive uses of capital. As growth slows as it did in Japan by 2000 a lot of these questions are likely to come back.   ...

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How the IMF conditionality has changed in the 2009 global economic crisis. The IMF head, Dominique Strauss-Kahn of France, is aware how sensitive nations around the world have become to the word IMF. So much so that it has even suggested removing the word IMF from loans to get takers. The IMF conditons worsened the S. Korean financial crisis in 1998. See link to this. This time Kahn has advocated that the developed countries of Europe and the USA increase stimulus spending to 2% of GDP.And there are fewer calls for cutting spending in developing countries offered help by the IMF. Pakistan was asked to increase interest rates by 3% but actually increased them by 2% to fight inflation. But to get some idea how the IMF is viewed with suspicion and hostility in many countries one has to listen to comments made. The move for Pakistan was so unpopular in 2008 that Mohsin Khan a top IMF official says he met with agroup of generals to get their backing. Some IMF officials insistend on a 10% rate increase. Something like that would have led to riots in Pakistani cities. IMF loaned Pakistan $7.6 billion. When S. Korea said no to the IMF credit line, Lee Hyoung-ryoul, a Korean Finance Ministry official said that S. Koreans tremble and financial markets turn sensitive whenever they hear the word "IMF." This time Brazil, S. Korea and Mexico, were offered condition free credit lines. But it has found no takers from these three conuntries, so badly is the IMF viewed in developing countries. Even though it appears that Kahn, in the small club of western nation's officials and staff that form the governing body of the IMF, is trying to give the IMF a new image, its just so bad and the views of the old timers at the IMF on spending or interest rates so contrary to the needs of people in the developed and developing countries, that a new generation of people in finance and economics will be needed before real change is established. ...

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Estimates of the exposure of European banks to Greece's sovereign debt shows BNP Paribas has 5.01 billion euros in exposure to Greek debt, Societe Generale 4.23 billion euros, Deutsche Bank 3.02 billion euros, and HSBC 1.94 billion euros, Credit Agricole 0.85 billion euros, Unicredit 0.80 billion euros, Santander 0.51 billion euros. The exposure of French, German, Italian and Spanish banks in Greece is a critical difficulty in resolving the crisis, as the banks are still in a fragile condition after the global financial crisis of 2008. With the debate on resolution of the crisis focusing on how a three way distribution of the burden should take place between austerity cuts, bondholder and creditors, and taxpayers in Germany and other EU countries, negotiations are finally taking place between each European government and the banks of that country. Three countries where such talks are taking place are Germany, France and the Netherlands. Finance ministry officials in Germany and France met with representatives of the banks and insurers in their country to arrange for the banks to voluntarily take losses on their holdings. The respective holdings of Greece's government debt according to the Bank for International Settlements are: French banks $14 billion, German banks $22.65 billion. Overall exposure to Greece is higher for French banks- at $56.7 billion for French banks and $33.97 billion for German banks. This opens the door to a Brady Plan type solution for the financial crisis in EU countries Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain....

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As OPEC members met again in June 2015 for the first time since the meeting in November 2014, there is a sense that OPEC no longer exerts the same influence on oil prices. There are 4000 oil companies in the U.S., says one U.S. State Department official, even if OPEC were to cut production the cuts could be matched by shale oil producers in the U.S. quickly increasing output. This is the new reality, say experts. OPEC expects to keep production at the same level of the current production ceiling of 30 million barrels a day in place for the 7th meeting in over 3 years. Algeria and Nigeria, both hurt badly by the drop in oil price, have called for cuts but failed to persuade the Saudis. With Russia unwilling to join a coordinated production cut, there is not much talk about doing this. The Saudis and Iraq have continued to pump more oil, with April 2015 production of 30.84 million barrels a day the highest monthly average since 2012. Other factors also remain in the minds of the Saudis and other producers such as the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar- policies on climate change, use of less energy and more from friendlier sources for the same amount of economic output demonstrated by countries such as Germany, advances in technology, energy saving transitions in emerging markets such as China and India....

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Robert Shiller of Yale University, calls for revenue sharing by the federal government with local governments. This should go beyond the $26 billion approved this month for aid to local governments, designed to assist with Medicaid and hiring teachers. It is difficult to create jobs quickly and disperse and use money wisely, without the help of local governments, military or nonprofit organizations- as these organizations have the necessary infrastructure that can be used to get things done quickly. He cites the Civilian Conservation Corps created by FDR, using the Army as the organizational framework.