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This NYT editorial says that before he was elected Mexico's president Nieto, with his book "Mexico- The Great Hope," (Mexico- La Gran Esperanza)presented himself as a candidate who would transform Mexico. Yet says NYT three years into his administration it has turned out to be very different, with no effort to clear up the questions about the murder of 43 students in Guerrero state. Economic growth has not matched the hopes generated after the Pacto de Mexico was approved and new legislation limiting monopolies passed. The slump in oil prices has led to limited results following the opening up of the oil industry to foreign investment. The result is an administration increasingly unpopular in Mexico and failing to deliver on the hope generated in the early months of Pena Nieto's administration. Many of the tasks for transition of Mexico to a modern economy- free of monopolies, crime, a better education system, economic growth in all parts of the country, remain unrealized. During his term as governor of the state of Mexico 2011-2015, Pena Nieto's main achievement was the 608 Compromisos or promises which were placed on the internet website tracking progress on the health, infrastructure, highway and other projects. During the current administration the early results were achieved in the first year through agreement with the rival PAN party for the Pacto de Mexico, to reduce monopolies and open up the oil industry which had falled behind technologically with lack of investment. Since then the progress has been slow, the one bright spot being the auto industry with increased foreign investment. Regional disparities persist with the Bajio region, and the areas around Queretaro, Aguascalientes, near Mexico City growing fastest. Pena Nieto won the 2012 election with 38% of the vote mostly from this region, the incumbent PAN party at 25%, and the left front Of Lopez Obrador 32% drawing support from less developed areas in the south and the rest of the country. Just as the earlier Atenco protests and police action to clear protesters blocking land acesses by the state for expansion of Mexico City's airport, and the Soy 132 student protest movement during Pena Nieto's term as Governor of State of Mexico 2011-2015 affected perception of his administration, the murder of students at Guerrero affects perception of this administration. Nieto comes from the upper sections of the PRI as the nephew of two former governors of the state of Mexico, has a law degree from the Ibero-American University, and a masters degree in business administration from ITAM....

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Jim Tankersley of the Washington Post looks at the myths and realities of trade following incorrect statements made by Donald Trump about international trade. For example Trump suggests that Japanese automobiles imports are a big problem, though the imports have been cut by over 50% since the 1980's with Japanese companies Toyota and Honda making cars in the U.S. in Kentucky and Ohio. Detroit faces competition from foreign manufacturers based in southern states, including Alabama for Mercedes Benz and Tennessee for Nissan. Mismanagement including lagging in fuel efficiency and quality, and higher health costs for older workers were problems facing Detroit in the past decade. The Obama administration provided support to the auto companies to make the recovery following two bankruptcies in the U.S. auto industry, showing the U.S. has intervened as needed and the auto companies have made transformational changes. A big problem says Trump is the trade agreement with China which he promises to renegotiate. Tankersley points out that no such treaty exists. The U.S. agreed to China's entry into the WTO. This is not something the U.S. can renegotiate as the WTO sets rules for trade for all countries. The likely result of a shift away from Chinese imports would be more imports from countries such as India and Vietnam which are lower cost producers than China. Trump says some of the 2 million jobs lost in the past 2 decades will come back, yet the shift may be towards lower cost countries from China, with fewer jobs coming back to the U.S. High tariffs would not lead to the growth Trump predicts. A study made by Moody's Analytics at the request of the WP shows a Trump move for high tariffs would lead to a recession and lead to mass layoffs as other countries imposed their own tariffs, leading to large loss in U.S. exports. Trump has made claims such as telling the Post that $19 trillion in federal debt could be paid off in 8 years without raising taxes by fixing trade. No grounding on facts is provided by Trump. One of the failures of the media in the 2016 election campaign is the failure of the media to provide scrutiny for candidates claims and wild exaggerations, which have gone uncontested or unquestioned, or without the persistence till satisfactory answers are given by the candidates making them. Especially when the stakes are so high, for the U.S. and for the global economy. ...

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The House bill on health care cleared the House Committee on Energy and Commerce with a vote of 31 to 28. Five Democrats joined all 23 Republicans. Compromises were reached with Blue Dog Democrats, centrist Democrats who had concerns about the cost of the health care overhaul. The bill will be taken up again in September after the August recess, when Congress will be faced with the task of recociling the House and Senate versions and reaching common ground on a number of proposals. Some common ground has already been achieved between centris and Blue Dog Democrats and Democratic members who support Obama's proposals. Among the changes on which consensus was reached in the House version: 1. Access Insurers will have to accept all applicants and will not be able to charge higher premiums because of medical history or current illness. All insurers will have to offer a minimum package of benefits, to be defined by the federal government, and nearly all Americans will be required to have insurance. Insurers will have to get prior approval from the government before increasing premiums over a certain amount. About 95% of Americans will be covered this time. The cost will still be approaching $ 1trillion over 10 years. Federal subsidies will be given to those who cannot afford health insurance and Medicaid coverage will be expanded. And the insurance will be made more affordable for the uninsured. Democrats also reached a consensus on creating some sort of government insurance plan or nonprofit cooperative to compete with private insurers. 2. Mobility And under this new plan it will be easier to change jobs as one would retains one's health insurance. This should actually help the job market, and help promote the mobility that is needed, now that jobs are shifting out of sectors like autos to sectors like energy. 3. Cost The Energy and Commerce Committee voted 47 to 11 to set aprocedure for the government to give federal approval of generic versions of expensive biotechnology drugs. By one estimate this saves $9 billion over 10 years. The Democratic proposals from the Energy and Commerce Committee would authorize the Health and Human Services Secretary to negotiate prescription drug prices for Medicare benificiaries. The agreement and consensus among the conservative, liberal and centrist Democrats, and Democrats with ties and connections to the health care industry was reached after intensive negotiations, and adoption of a package of amendments that helped bridge the differences they had. ...

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This election is seen as a turning point for Britain. The Liberal-Conservative coalition has come up with a radical plan to cut spending and decentralize services in the areas of education, policing and health care. The plan is to cut the deficit quickly from 11% of GDP in 2009-10, to 2.1% in 2014-15. By comparison the outgoing Labor government's plan was to balance the budget by 2016-17. And the fiscal impact of Labor's budgets would have been 4% by 2014-15, compared to the Cameron government's looking at 6.3%, with larger and accelerated cuts in spending. It is something of a gamble by the Tory-Liberal government. If the severity of the cuts in spending stifle growth, then Plan B will be needed. The size of the cuts are not seen as feasible. With growing interest payments with the large borrowing by the government, and no real cuts in healthcare spending, departments delivering public services in Britain face cuts of 25% by 2014-15. With defense and schools limited to cuts of 10%- other departments would face cuts of 33%. According to the Institute of Fiscal Studies one way to reduce the severity of these cuts in department budgets, would be to find additional savings in the welfare budget. In June, Mr Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced 11 billion pounds in savings in this area (with half coming from using a different measure for inflation in calculating benefits). Additional savings of 14 billion pounds in welfare budgets, can reduce the size of the cuts needed in departmental budgets to 20%. One example cited is means-testing payments that go to the affluent as well as to poor people, such as child benefits, and cutting winter-fuel payments. Tories and Liberals agree on the need to decentralize government and services in the areas of schools, policing and the NHS. In schooling the idea is to give more choices to parents and children. Current schools can apply for academy status and new "free schools" will be run be non-profits, charities, churches, and parents. These schools will have freedom to set pay, select curriculum, and still receive state funding. In policing, the idea is to have directly elected police and crime commissioners for every constabulary in England and Wales. The elected commissioners would appoint constables and determine budgets and priorities. For the National Health Service the move is to give groups of general practitioners a significant role in the delivery of health care. ...

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VW's sales in the U.S. doubled between 2009 and 2012, and VW set aggressive goals for the U.S. market to reach 800,000 by 2018. The goal was a stretch goal because this was double the level of 438,000 vehicles in 2012. This was part of its Mach 18 plan to pass GM and Toyota in global sales by 2018. Now this goal appears less achievable, because of new models from Honda and Ford which surpass VW's Jetta and Passat in technology, features and fuel efficiency. The U.S. market sales have increased by 9.6% in 2013, VW's sales declined by 1.3% so far through August in 2013, at 282, 913 vehicles. Ramping up production at the new Chattanooga plant will have to be put off and 500 contract workers have been given leave from the assembly line. By contrast Toyota sales for the 8 month period 2013 increased by 7% and 8.6%. In August Toyota's were up 23%, Honda's 27%, and VW down 1.6%. VW executives have said the company needs sales of 400,000 to make the U.S. manufacturing operations profitable. VW made a strategic decision to cut costs and bring the Passat price more in line with competition from similiar cars from Japanese carmakers. But this was done not relying solely on productivity and other improvements, but used cost cutting using cheaper materials. VW even went one step further by taking away the European suspension which delivered a more precise ride, and installed a lower cost suspension on the Jetta and Passat. Customers have noticed with some buying older models with the European suspension. Honda and Toyota moved in the other direction in the last 2 years coming out with more advanced features on the Accord and Camry. Ford did this with the Fusion. The new Accord has a backup camera, iPod connection, power seats and alloy wheels as standard. As a result Passat sales were up only 3% through Aug 2013, and Accord sales increased by 17%, Ford Fusion sales up 13%. VW's response is to ramp up discounts. It is also coming up with a new engine, Jetta compact with a sportier ride will be introduced, and a redesigned Golf hatchback for 2014. The slowdown in sales at VW shows how competitive the car market has become with Korean, German, Japanese and American carmakers quick to make inroads in turn with weak points of the competition. Strategic missteps can be costly for any manufacturer and the customer can never be taken for granted....

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Why polluting industries and colluding local government officials who are judged on the rate of economic growth achieved have come together and become entrenched to thepoint where its hard for the central government to implement pollution control measures. Deng's response to a sluggish socialist bureaucracy was to give power to local government officals to promote growth and to be judged on that basis. The environmental ministry and the environmental protection departments are very small and lack the resources to control these industries. And NGO's and the informed public and citizens are powerless to demand change as they are seen by the government as risking social stability by risking growth. After the East Asian crisis China anticipating a slowing down in competition with recovering Asian economies pushed harder for more economic growth. As a result production of steel set new records and the addition of power generating capacity each year surpassed the total power generation of countries like Britain and France.But this power generation does not use the modern technology available as it is costlier and takes longer to build. So a lot of short run decisions are being made in the interests of growth. An effort to introduce Green GDP backed by President Hu Jintao was dropped after it ran into a lot of resistance. Using this about 3 points of GDP were deducted from the 10% growth as environmental cost. This was based on modest environmental costs estimates and did not take into account the entire cost of pollution to health and the environment. China's own environmental experts think that Western estimates of environmental costs are if anything on the conservative side as they are based on models used in the west and conditions in China have little precedent in the scale and range of environmental degradation. Coal is burned to produce two thirds of the energy and uses older technology for power generation, it is a big polluter of the environment. And the modest energy efficiency goals set by the central government are not being met as a result China is already expected to be consuming as much energy in 2010 as it was expected by its own planners to be consuming in 2020. To informed outsiders it appears that the polutting process is systemic in its nature and only political change that allows people who are suffering the worst effects of this pollution to make their voice heard, can lead to reversing the trends that have been set in place from the Deng period of economic change that started in the 80's. ...

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Interesting and quite useful from a sociological and psychological point of view, that people believe what they want to believe. Even today writes Slackman, the Arabs and Muslims from Dubai malls to people one meets in a park in Algiers, cafes in Riyadh, and in shops and places all over Cairo, say the USA organized 9/11 so that they could attack 2 Muslim states, Iraq and Afghanistan. If we changed it a bit and said Rumsfeld and Cheney got the perfect excuse to attack Afghanistan's Taliban government from 9/11. It created the kind of fears in the US public about terrorists, individual, or state sponsored terrorism like Iraq's against the Marsh Shiites after the Kuwait war (which was a personal affront to both Rumsfeld and Cheney as they let it happen right under their eyes), then one can extend that to say Rumsfeld and Cheney felt they now had the opportunity to get Saddam out. So once you have the US even for good moral reason eager to intervene, this eagerness may not require too much of a stretch to be seen as the US administration engineering this atmosphere by organizing 9/11, or by letting it happen. This is true for an Arab public that feels humiliated and sees a loss of respect from all the setbacks they have suffered, including in Egypt where a President has maintained himself in power for thirty long years and has American support. And most of these people haven't left their surroundings, so they haven't seen the world outside. What they beleieve is only what is possible from what they can see possible from their immediate surroundings. From a -sociological and psychological perspective this is certainly possible and even realistic. When Friedman in the New York Times says its shameless that the 2 Republican candidates can speak of being change agents when Republicans have been in power for 8 years, and still the Republican faithful and some independents believe this, they have not lost their wits but may see this in terms of their gut feel and in terms of their own personal experiences and surroundings. Even when Paul Gigot of the Wall Street Journal sees little hope from either candidate when it comes to lobbyists influencing them and proof of this from lobbyists for Fannie and Freddie as their senior advisors. Then its still possible for Republican faithful, however weird it may appear to an informed observer,to see McCain and Palin as agents of change. Same is true for Obama. ...

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Ed Thorp and Bill Gross of PIMCO on risk management techniques they use which build on one basic fact avoid overleveraging. If you have a 5% edge from an information standpoint or over your opponent bet only 5% of your wealth on each toss of a coin. What do they think of today's markets? In the hedge fund world they say there has been a large flow of capital into it in the last 15 years from $100 billion in the early 1990's to $2 trillion now. But the amount of available investing opportunities have not gone up by much. So you have a large number of bets in a pool of assets that are of declining quality and the overbetting phenomenon that leads to gambler's ruin. And as the edge available diminishes one needs more leveraging to generate same returns which leads to the overleveraging that got Carlyle Capital and Bear Stearns collapse. The puts a big dent into the perceived stable situation creating huge crises in confidence and declining spiral.

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Treasury Secretary Paulson meets Germany's Economics minister and the President of the European Central Bank Mr Trichet as there are indications that the situation in Europe is not looking much better. An influential survey of purchasing managers points out that manufacturing activity shrank in the 15 country euro region in June. The situation in Europe is uneven as some countries Like Spain and Ireland are seeing sharp declines in economic activity, whereas Germany is doing much better. German unemployment dropped to 7.8% the lowest it has been since 1992. Manufacturing activity contracted in June in Fance, Italy and Austria. In the midst of this Claude Trichet has to make a decision about inflation, the ECB's target inflation is 2%, and inflation in the euro region is about 4% with higher food and energy costs. Economists expect the ECB to raise rates to 4.25% this week. This will widen the difference between USA interest rates at 2% and Euro region rates at 4.25% and also affect the USA dollar....

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This editorial in the Wshington Post is sharply critical of the Obama administration's policies of inaction in Syria and Iraq. It says president Obama and his administration will have to answer for the policies to the American people and the people of the Middle East and Europe.

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Sheila Bair releases her new book in Sept 2012 on the financial crisis of 2008-2009 and the efforts to introduce financial reforms for a safer financial system: "Bull By the Horns: Fighting to Save Main Street from Wall Street and Wall Street from Itself." She is particularly critical of U.S. Treasury Secretary, and former head of the New York Federal Reserve, Timothy Geithner, as protecting the interests of Citigroup and Wall Street in his position as Treasury Secretary of the U.S. government. She describes in detail the situations in which Geithner tried to water down essential reforms to the financial system to make it safer, including the Volcker Rule. Of particular concern is the revolving door by which banking regulators or government officials join banks after service in the government which leads to weakening of regulatory and government oversight and systemic risks as in 2008-2009. Sheila Bair is widely respected for her efforts during the financial crisis from 2008 to 2011, when she headed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the FDIC. Her active involvement in defending reforms and setting up the system by which financially failing banks could be taken over and unwound without risks to the U.S. financial system are lasting contributions. She also succeeded as a manager by setting up an experienced and effective successor in Martin Gruenberg as head of the FDIC, to continue this work. A former Congresswoman, she describes herself as a Republican populist from Kansas. Her current role is as senior advisor to the Pew Charitable Trusts, which itself is a rare phenomenon today for a senior government official leaving government....

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Why the Arc of Taste, an international catalogue of at risk foods put together by Italian journalists, is a question put to this author of Eating to Extinction, about the lack of biodiversity in foods. Basically it is about the enormous variety in nature that has been taken away from us by supermarkets and large fruit and vegetable companies that have limited everything to a few varieties in a supermarket for the sake of efficiency in commerce. You may find it amazing, as Saladino says, Victorians may have eaten a apple a day for four years and never eaten the same one twice. So the first thing is to increase the awareness of people of how much diversity really exists in nature if it is allowed to reassert itself over simply food that meets the needs of commerce. Looking clearly at what is lost, Saladino tells The Guardian in this interview, he is reminded of his childhood in Ribera, Sicily, where in the 70's there were so many varieties of oranges and so much color in the food compared to the blandness and limited variety of today's commerce based supermarkets. These small farms have disappeared, and now the varieties that came with them are also in danger unless this biodiversity is restored. ...

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Keir Starmer of Labour says he stands behind every word in the ad that shows Tories including Sunak are weak in prosecuting crimes against woman and children. Labour says it will halve violence against women and girls. Starmer says- he will "make absolutely zero apologies for being blunt." That Labour will continue to use the Conservatives record on crime as legitimate criticism no matter how squeamish it made some people feel. "For the first time in my lifetime, everywhere you look from the economy to the NHS to the chaos on our streets- we have been set on a path of decline." Starmer said the last decade had seen the UK "become a country where thugs, gangs and monsters mock our justice system and make decent people's lives a misery." Starmer was head of public prosecution in Britain from 2008 to 2013. As early as 2002 he was Queen's Counsel. He was also a human rights adviser for Northern Ireland Policing Board and Association of Chief Police Officers. Starmer cites his work in improvements in Northern Ireland policing as one of the key factors in his decision to pursue a political career. The issue in the ad is a subject in which Starmer has much experience. ...

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Following the WSJ Facebook Investigation and hearings in the US Senate there are calls for tough laws and regulations to prevent abuse of information technologies. Documents in the WSJ Facebook Investigation shows harm from the company's products- how the company's moderation rules favor elites, how its algorithms foster discord to increase user volume, and how drug cartels and human traffickers use its services openly, says the WSJ. One Senator calls the company "morally bankrupt." Yet Congress has known much of what is happening but failed to act to provide the legislation to regulate the new technology platforms such as Twitter, Google and Facebook, leaving them unregulated and without public oversight, leading to the idea that the US Congress itself has failed to protect young teenagers and prevent the harm resulting from such products. One Senator Ms Klobuchar says "there are lobbyists around every single corner of this building that have been hired by the tech industry. Facebook and other big tech companies are throwing a bunch of money around this town and people are listening to them." That would suggest that some of what one senator has called "morally bankrupt" also reflects back on Congress and the lobbyists, based on the WSJ Facebook Investigation. ...

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The tech boom bust since 2000 that has hurt America and Europe and which also laid the foundations for the loss of manufacturing and technology to China, ceding American leadership and critical advantage, is shown here in the WSJ. The role of the finance sector  is explained here. That has added one more factor to the factor of endless wars in the Middle East, where American and European investment in healthcare, education and new infrastructure was somehow diverted away, and much of America's and Europe's resources wasted- or not turned to the benefit of the people of America or Europe.  One financial firm that rode the tech boom to the hilt finds itself with unacceptable losses except in a severe recession. Tiger Global Management was using tens of billions of dollars from pensions, endowments and rich clients riding on some of Silicon Valley's hottest stocks.  With the plunge in tech stock values including startups in which Tiger pushed into aggressively now facing large losses after hyper valuations, Tiger's hedge fund which managed $23 billion at the end of 2021 was down 52% in 2022. Another of its funds that managed $11 billion has lost 62%. WSJ says this wiped out two thirds of the gains Tiger has made in the tech stocks since its founding. In addition large writedowns are expected on its venture funds valued at $64 billion at the end of 2021, says WSJ.  WSJ says cheap money (money somehow diverted from infrastructure and funding manufacturing in China instead of the US now goes by the misnomer cheap money) reshaped Silicon Valley in the last decade, as pension funds, rich investors and celebrities turned to well connected money managers such as Tiger to put money in tech stocks and startups. This WSJ report says compared to Sequoia Capital and an earlier generation of venture companies Tiger Global is simply not interested in management of companies it invests in, taking a broad brush approach, using Bain Capital for research, and trying to haul in a large load of fish like trawlers at sea hoping for some companies to make big gains. Many pension funds such as Calpers California's public pension fund invest in Tiger with a $400 million investment. WSJ also reports that Tiger Global's venture funds do not reflect the realities of the tech business as venture stocks will reflect the drop over 2022 and 2023, including its ByteDance Chinese tech investment which will need larger writedowns. Tiger has also not hesitated to get into cryptocurrency which has loss of about $1.5 trillion dollars. It is of interest to note that Julian Robertson, hedge fund manager of the 2000 period (when Clinton-Bush were US presidents) who ran Tiger Management provided the impetus for Mr. Coleman, then 25 years old, for the start of Tiger Global. Julian Robertson closed his fund in 2000 during the dot com bust. Coleman hired a Blackstone analyst and started on the next cycle of tech with social media platform Facebook now Meta, followed by China's JD.com as investments in a new China boom were started. The end result is that during a period of Middle East wars under Bush and Obama, and building dependence on Russian oil and gas supplies under Schroeder and Merkel, China was the gainer as the US and EU lost much of its manufacturing and technology to China. During this period US and Europe neglected investment in infrastructure that would benefit the people of America in ease of living and quality of life. Just as money was wasted in wars much of the tech investment was wasted. The companies that added value over time were started long before and relied on sales growth and new products that revolutionized their field such as Apple with smartphones that started well before the nineteen eighties, Amazon with logistics and its own style of management, Microsoft from an even earlier era. Tech monopolies Facebook, Google, and others would not be missed much in terms of real progress for the people of America. The cost is many decades of ceding manufacturing and technology advantage to China by US and the EU led by Germany. China 2030 and the war in Ukraine with China's support have shown how fragile the foundations have been with weak political leadership and a finance sector running backwards in terms of America's and Europe's strengths in new infrastructure, better healthcare, services and education for the people of America and Europe. Leaving it to the Biden administration and a new coalition of Greens and Scholz in Germany to begin the task of rebuilding America and Europe on strong foundations, including the dignity of the workers and families, that makes who we are and what we believe in, and why the free world believes in us. ...