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The Economist says working age young people arriving as migrants from war torn areas such as Syria should be welcome in the EU, because the EU's society is aging. As the labor force declines in the EU, it will need younger workers to make up for the declining labor force and the large number of pensioners to be supported. Fears of terrorism could be overcome by having a strong screening process, and cultural assimilation can be speeded up by providing free language education and access to the university system, as in Germany. This would turn the Syrian refugee crisis into a plus for countries such as Germany, which have a large program for newcomers. The war in Syria is so deep and widespread, and emigrants have made a long and perilous journey, making asylum a credible reason.

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U.S. Secretary of State Clinton and Turkey's foreign minister Davutoglu met in early August 2012 and agreed to set up intensive operational planning and coordination of the two countries efforts on Syria to end the Assad regime. The two foreign ministers said a unified task force with intelligence, military and political leaders would be set up immediately and will look at all options including direct assistance to the democracy movement and forces fighting the Assad regime.

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Debbie Wasserman Schultz's vigorous efforts to fire up the Democratic party's base after the waning of support since the 2008 presidential election. She says it is a make or break moment for the middle class and drawing attention to the problems of the middle class is not class warfare. She was chosen by Obama as the Democratic National Committee chairwoman as the party heads into the 2012 presidential election.

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Keller says that Fox News has contributed to the corrosiveness that has affected public dialogue in the U.S. He admits that the prestigious urban newspapers like the Washington Post and the New York Times can be condescending and too open to consider points of view that do not have merit. Yet, he says, they are different from Fox News in that they are self-critical and take up different points of view outside their own, an openness that Fox News lacks. A little research shows another side of the Times- during its early years the Times with a scoop of its own helped put the boss of Tammany Hall, which dominated New York politics in the late twentieth century, in jail. The journalists of the Times, even though they have their own screwups, always must carry the added responsibility of living up to a long heritage.

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The 25-30 fishing vessels and tugboats that have supplied Misurata by sea, act as an essential lifeline to the city besieged by Ghadafi. The boats operating under cover of darkness carry both humanitarian supplies and war needs for defence of the city. Libyan volunteers staff these boats, volunteers who believe that the people have finally found their voice against the Arab strongmen who have run countries in their region for decades. The defence of Misurata has another passion for these people, men like Saif Nasser who runs the tugboat Al Iradah 6- and this is to prove to the world that the Libyan people's struggle is not a sectarian struggle which should end with a partition of the country's east from the west. Misrata is a coastal city only 130 miles from Tripoli's coast. If the city is being defended against all odds, it tells the world that this is a popular struggle to build a new democratic Libya with civil rights and civil society, and a voice in their government, similiar to the struggles in Syria, Egypt and Tunisia....

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Jac Welch gives Obama an A for leadership. Mind you he says he doesn't agree with all the President's policies. He is talking about leadership. He scores Obama in four areas, Vision and Team Building, Speed and Authenticity, and he finds him at an A in all areas and gets an A in authenticity with alittle help from Michelle with her warmth and personality. There are 2 more traits on which the test is still going on he says, that of resilience and the wherewithal to champion unpopular causes.

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Spain's banks have government debt holdings as a percentage of bank assets of 6.8% compared to 13.1% for Italy's banks. This is based on data available from the IMF. But Italian banks are far better capitalized than Spanish banks. Bank shares of Italy and Spain hit post Lehman lows in July 2011, but Italian bank shares are likely to recover faster than Spanish bank shares. Italian banks raised 8 billion euros of capital in 2011 and most banks have an average core Tier 1 ratio of over 8%. By contrast Spain's bank sector is perceived by markets as undercapitalized and the IPO's of savings banks Bankia and Banca Civica will be affected by the unsettled markets.

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Federal Reserve proposals in Dec 2011 for large U.S. banks leave capital cushions at 5% of assets. This phases in the higher 7% of assets rule for capital reserves and a surcharge of upto 2.5% based on bank risk levels under new Basel III regulations for implementation in 2016.

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Volcker says that even with all the fuss about the length of the Volcker Rule, its important to remember that the regulation itself is only 35 pages. And he says that lawyers for the banks are not honest when it comes to this, because they spent a lot of time finding holes in the rule and were working to add complications to it, and now they are turning around and saying that the Volcker Rule is too complicated. Asked about Dodd-Frank, Volcker says that it does make the U.S safer in a financial crisis because of the crisis resolution process set up under Dodd-Frank legislation. A bank fails and the resolution is clearly laid out- the government takes over and liquidates it, or merges it or sells it. Stockholders don't get a bail out, management is fired, and creditors have to take losses. A lot still depends on having vigorous and alert regulators. He sees two large problems, the Euro crisis and the U.S. deficit, which need strong action. Volcker remains perplexed by why the situation of huge disparities in income growth has not been expressed to a greater extent- on one side the lack of growth in income for the average family in 10-15 years and the other side having the huge increase in incomes at the top end. He does not know of any years when this was as big as it is now- except 1928, 1929....

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The effort by Prince Bandar, a senior advisor to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, to send arms to Syrian rebels through a command center in Jordan, after differences with Turkey and Qatar on how to arm rebels. WSJ reporters Entous, Malas and Coker provide a detailed account of the Saudi effort under Prince Bandar. The Saudis are determined to bring down the Assad regime especially now that chemical weapons are involved.

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German response to Obama's urging for a bigger stimulus as seen from the American side. The German side looks at the hyperinflation of the 1920's, the American side looks at memories of the Great Depression and the Hooverist response, in the early years before Roosevelt.

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Leonhardt points out in the NYT that Hillary Clinton actually won in the popular vote by a substantial margin, by more than 2 million votes and more than 1.5 percentage points. He says that Democrats need to pay more attention to the working class in midwestern states- the job losses, crumbling infrastructure, and the plight of communities such as Detroit, Michigan which suffered through the bankruptcies of Chrysler and GM, and again with the foreclosure crisis, the financial crisis of the City of Detroit. With a similar situation in the neighboring states of Wisconsin and Ohio, in places like Toledo and other parts of communities facing industrial decline. While the Silicon Valley centred region powered the economy in California, and the financial industry and real estate powered New York, older midwestern communities never really recovered from a long decline stretching over 2 decades. The result was the loss of faith in Democrats among union workers and young people, leading to the loss of Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan. For most of its history the Democratic Party was based on its union and working class base including a large number of white voters. Only under Obama because of his unique candidacy was the coalition so dependent on the minorities vote. Before minorities were part of the Democratic coalition, but not in the way under the Obama candidacy. A return to its historic and normal base among whites in unions and working class communities, liberals, minorities, is a way to go back to the historic and natural base of Democratic support. In a sense dependence on tech communities for election funding and the tech booms, globalization, may have distorted Democrats sense of their historic role as champions of the working class and middle class communities throughout the country. There is now an opportunity to restore this lost mission of protecting the interests of the middle and working class who have seen huge drop in net worth as reported by Janet Yellen of the Federal Reserve at the Inequality Conference on October 17, 2014-"62 million households with a net worth of $11,000 for the year 2013." Poorly covered in the media and not made the utmost priority by Democrats (or Republicans). In the words of Janet Yellen, this was in the past several decades "the most sustained rise in inequality since the 19th century after more than 40 years of narrowing inequality since the Great Depression." She added the shocking words "by some estimates, income and wealth inequality near their highest levels in the past hundred years, and probably much higher than much of American history before then." Even discussion in the media goes back to the Obama coalition and treats it as a way forward for Democrats, when history shows it was different and the situation described by Yellen calls for a serious response. ...

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This Wall Street Journal editorial comes out in favor of higher capital reserve requirements similiar to that suggested by Federal Reserve Board governor Daniel Tarullo. The Journal says that if regulators are serious in the U.S. about controlling systemic risk, then the 14% rule or a 15% rule for assets held in reserve by banks should be adopted. Daniel Tarullo had suggested a 14% capital reserve requirement. These requirements would be phased in gradually over several years. Basel III requirements require only a 7% requirement and is phased in over many years. Capital standards are likely to be gamed. For this reason the requirement for only Tier 1 capital to be eligible is essential. What about the Basel III standards and the European banks? Would this put them in a better position to earn higher returns. This should be a problem left for European taxpayers to tackle says the Journal. As long as U.S. taxpayers are supporting U.S. banks with an implicit subsidy to take on larger amounts of risk -because they will be saved in a crisis with taxpayer dollars- the Journal says it makes sense to require 10-14% in capital reserves. It cites the Japanese banks which were highly overleveraged with lower capital reserves compared to American banks, and fared poorly. The Dodd-Frank bill imposes a complicated set of regulatory requirements with regulators required to write new sets of rules. The editorial concludes that it is far better to tackle the problems in the banking system with a sufficiently high requirement for capital reserves to manage risks than to have the detailed rule making on every subject that Dodd-Frank suggests....

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Italy's prime minister, Mario Monti put it best when he said in a speech in Brussels in April 2012: "If a country becomes more productive and competitive, but there is no demand for its products domestically or around it, growth will not materialize." There is a new shift in opinion towards a balance of fiscal discipline with growth measures to get Europe back on track. The feeling in different parts of Europe is that the German view of austerity alone will not work for Europe. And the view is coming from the far right to the far left, from Marie Le Pen, far right presidential candidate in France, to the far right leader whose move to withdraw support to the government in Netherlands on the issue of austerity measures led to its collapse. Geert Wilders, leader of the Freedom Party in the Netherlands, said: "we don't want our pensioners to bleed just to meet the dictates from Brussels." The IMF has put out research that questions what is now called "the German hypothesis." The "German hypothesis," is based on the unique experience of Germany with the Hartz reforms under chancellor Schroeder which were based on wage restraint by workers, the German "kurzarbeit" program of government support for retaining workers with lower pay during cyclical downturns, improving competitiveness of German companies, and conservative budget practices. There appear to be two exceptions to this. One is that demand has to be strong outside or domestically for a country to reduce unemployment and improve productive capacity utlilization as it increases competitiveness. This was the case as Germany made the Hartz reforms under Schroeder. Wage restraint acts as a form of devaluing currency for reducing the cost of its products to improve exports. All leading parties and the unions are now in favor of wage restraint and lowering wages to preserve jobs to improve France's competitive position. Germany had the benefit of a decade to implement these reforms to reduce unemployment, because demand was not declining domestically or around it during its reforms. The situation is different in Spain where in all likelihood demand would shrink further with unemployment rising from 25% to higher levels, and higher sales taxes. This is why Francois Heisbourg, special advisor at the Paris based Foundation for Strategic Research, says about the current situation in Europe, that destroyiing Greece with strict austerity alone wasn't something the EU can look back at with the sense of having done the right thing, for Spain it appears misguided and lacking careful thought. The editors of the Wall Street Journal expressed the same sense when they described the March 2012 bailout of Greece as a tragic sideshow, because the main purpose was to buy time and insulate the other larger economies in the EU by giving the French, Spanish and German banks time to improve their financial position. The Journal called it bad for Greece leaving it with debt at 120% of GDP till 2020 and no economic growth, and bad for democracy as it was done against overwhelming Greek public opinion- The Tragic Greek Sideshow, Feb. 22, 2012. Volker Perthes, director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, a Berlin think tank, says the Germans have always viewed German leadership in Europe with discomfort, and would prefer a leadership where several states, France, Italy, Spain, and other countries in the EU coalesce around consensus positions. This is historically true for the German position since chancellor Adenauer. With the Free Democrats in decline, and the Social Democrats and the Pirate party doing well in recent German elections and favoring consensus in Europe, Merkel's Christian Democrats need to rethink their policy to give greater weight to economic growth for a consensus position in Europe. ...