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Year over year rise in prices in January 2022 that contributed significantly to inflation of 7.5% in the US are-

For power up by over 10%, gas prices up over 20%

For groceries bakery, cereals etc up by 1.4%

For housing prices up by over 4%.

For used cars over 40%, new cars over 12%.

Health care services costly in the US far above the other OECD countries not down significantly continuing to burden American households.

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The Biden administration sanctions 24 Chinese officials for their role in reducing the autonomous status of Hong Kong. Most of them are connected with Hong Kong, one of them is on the Politburo in the central government in Beijing. The action takes place ahead of a meeting between the US and Chinese representatives in Alaska. China's recent actions to ensure that only those deemed as "patriots" could govern in legislative assembly in Hong Kong have added to the already existing tensions between the UK, US, and China. Earlier the Trump administration had put sanctions on 10 government officials in Hong Kong for eroding Hong Kong' autonomy. This adds to the already existing trade tensions, and protecting US technology tensions with China.

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Biden's ultimate faith in the fairness of the American cause and the American people gets him two big wins with the $280 billion semiconductor bill, and the $369 billion climate change action bill. Biden says about this when many had given up hope- "The work of government can be slow and frustrating, and sometimes even infuriating. Then the hard work of hours, days and months from people who refuse to give up pays off. History is made. Lives are changed." With Europe at war and struggling to get through the winter with gas rationing it was up to America to lead the way as the world faces ever increasing floods, fires and heat waves that affect food supply and environment. And Schumer? The New York Democrat asked about the effort quoted his father who passed away last year. "As my late father said: you need to persist. God will reward you." For months Mr. Manchin a critical vote in the US Senate had opposed the Democrats proposed bills. Then Senators Mark Warner of Virginia, Chris Coons of Delaware, John Hickenlooper of Colorado took a different approach. They did not openly criticize Mr. Manchin, and appealed to his sense of history, his zeal for playing a leading role in a high stakes legislative deal. Schumer and Biden were willing to make some concessions for fossil energy now that with the war in Ukraine the US needed to export LNG to Europe to replace Russian supplies. China and India were still going to be using fossil fuels after COP26 and after the pandemic induced lower growth. The US had to find a different approach some fossil fuel concessions would make it possible to use it as abridge towards the larger goal of getting ahead on renewable energy in a big way. This opened the way for a deal that centrists could support.  ...

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China's tariffs on US products could be called self-respect tariffs as US exports to China are small compared to China's $1 trillion surplus a year. $143 billion mainly oilseeds and grains! US business not willing to rely on US labor created the outshoring that built Chinese industrial growth, shipping out technology in the process, that created this situation. Consultants to Apple at the time such as myself bringing Total Quality of Management from Japan to the US, could see the failure of production quality at the Colorado Springs plant just before Steve Jobs returned to the company in 1998. About 20-25% of PC product was defective on the production lines seen with my own eyes. Looking back I believe it was not just the workers but the managers and engineering that needed to guide and motivate the workers with new ways to build in quality control. These were the days when Apple's Steve Jobs hired Tim Cook to revamp production and ship it to China. American workers got blamed. Yet as Jim Carlton shows in "Apple the Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania, and Business Blunders," by 1996 a new German CEO Michael Spindler 1993-1996 had driven the company to the ground. The struggle with Microsoft gave Jobs an idea- by shifting production to a low cost location he could make the high margins to outinvest all competitors with new products-ipods, iphones, ipads. There is nothing wrong with American workers and their craftsmanship. Timeline- Steve Jobs returns to Apple 1997-1998 Tim Cook is hired from Compaq to revamp manufacturing in 1998 1999-2000 - the strategy is made to shift all of the production to China. Jobs could generate the margins and quality to challenge Microsoft, and profits to invest in new products 2020 -   the weakness of the strategy is apparent with supply side shock for chips and computers with the pandemic stopping shipping 2024 - after taking small steps to shift production to India does little to shift back to America 2025- Apple facing serious tariffs and the country's mood shifting to Make in the USA tells the new US president DJT it will invest $500 billion to shift production back to America. ...

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Read about how the Ground Mission Control talks to the astronauts looking at the moon in the fly by in the Artemis II Mission on April 6 2026. Artemis II takes the observations and the information collected on this fly by, pictures of crater areas on the surface of the moon and other places, where a future landing place may be found for a landing on the moon that sets up a permanent exploration center. Judging by the enthusiasm generated in the US and the public support it looks like such a permanent exploration site will come next. The astronauts Reid Wiseman, Jeremy Hansen, Christina Koch, and Victor Glover were great as a team and really boosted the public perception of the Artemis II Moon Mission with their live talk with Mission Control on earth that the world watched.

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Ms Aydintasbas of the Turkish daily Milliyet on the lack of support from the Obama administration for the government of prime minister Erdogan in Turkey to bring down the Assad regime in Syria. She points out that the movement for democracy in Syria as part of the democracy movement in the Middle East is only a normalization of history. She sees democracy finding its normal place in the hearts and minds of Muslims everywhere.

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Actions being taken in the UK to prevent spread from variants of coronavirus in July 2021 as increasing number of British tourists visit France, Greece and Portugal. Quarantine is now required at home for 8 days for vaccinated people from UK coming back from France because of a rise of cases in France

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The Indian variant B.1.617.2 is beleived to be 50% more transmisable than the UK variant B.1.1.7 variant of the coronavirus. It is expected to be the dominant strain of coronavirus in the UK. The government has sent out the army to vaccinate populations in UK where this variant is widespread.

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Mohamed Bin Zayed was educated at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst in the UK and graduated in 1979. He is a strong proponent of US leadership in the Gulf region and Asia. He is now the third president of the United Arab Emirates with which India has significant trade and economic relations with 8 million Indians living in the Gulf region. Of the approximately 10.1 million people in UAE about 1.1 million are citizens and the rest are foreign workers. Mr. Modi has thanked Mr. Zayed for the good treatment given to Indians in the Gulf region by Zayed and his administration. 

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Chicago Radio was the name given by Nanik Motwane of Bombay for his DIY loudspeaker system using imported components from the US and UK. This gave new life to pro-independence Hind Swaraj meetings, so that Mohandas Gandhi's voice, and Nehru's and Patel's voice, Bose's voice, could reach the crowds during the period 1920-1947, and the period that followed. This BBC series tells about the struggle for creating modern India that started with Mohandas Gandhi and Hind Swaraj written in 1910, on the shoulders of Tilak and Gokhale, Naoroji and others.

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Lael Brainard, head of the National Economic Council, and former Vice Chair at the Federal Reserve answers questions at the Council of Foreign Relations in Dec. 2024. Points she made are- The inflation we experienced was correctly diagnosed by Powell and the Fed as caused by Supply shocks from the pandemic not 1970's style embedded expectations inflation.  The response was to free up the supply by freeing up the clogged Los Angles Ports with labour and logistics coordination, and other actions. It also included redoing the supply chains to reduce dependence on China as only supplier. The 2017 tax cuts mean revenue will be 1.5 percentage points lower than the historically 18% of the GDP. This will increase the deficit. Biden administration had kept the deficit in control and reduced it by making offsetting adjustments when investment in certain areas such as childcare was done. The childcare tax credit is important for American families. Action is needed to increase the supply of housing. These are reminders of what is needed for the new DJT administration to keep the American economy on a strong footing says Brainard.     ...

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Strategic siting in renewable rich areas (Dallas center the largest is in renewable rich area) and fair cost allocation to not burden small businesses and households are major issues in Data Center building. Data centers for AI -rows and rows of servers 5000 in hyperscale data centers- used 4% of the US total electricity use in 2024. This is growing rapidly. By 2030 this is expected to grow by more than double, by 133%. About 60% of this to power the servers and 30% for cooling the servers. About a third of these servers are located in Virginia, Texas and California. How will this affect Cost of Living concerns, affect electricity prices? Carnegie Mellon working with North Carolina State University did the modeling on the energy and emissions implications of data center buildup in the US in their Open Outlook Initiative. A 8% annual increase in electricity prices is expected on average and as high as 25% in Virginia by 2030.  Total of about 40% increase over 5 years. Between 2014 and 2024 10 year period average cost for a home electricity use went up 25% from $114 a month to $142. This would now go up by 40% to about $200 by 2030 in just 5 years significantly impacting cost of living in the US. In which states will it strain electricity grids? In 2023 data centers consumed 26% of the total electricity supply in Virginia. In North Dakota 15%, Nebraska 12%, Iowa 11%, Oregon 11% according to Electric Power Research Institute. What are the energy types used? Natural gas is used for 40% of the data center electricity, wind and solar 25%, nuclear 20% and coal 15%.   ...

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Eduardo Porter describes the choices facing Germany as EU leaders of most EU countries call for deposit insurance, European banking regulation, and eurobonds.

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Larger solar farms producing 30MW are part of the many solar power projects rejected in the UK in the last 5 years says this report in The Guardian. This would have cut an estimated 100 million pounds off of UK electricity bills says environmental group Green Alliance, enough renewable energy to power 147,000 homes.

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What is Japan and South Korea learning from Hormuz? Do nothing not a strategy. US is self sufficient in oil. Does it make sense to get 90% of imports through Hormuz and expect US to take on responsibility when it does not need oil from Hormuz?

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The P5+1 countries in the Istanbul talks with Iran are the five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany. Catherine Ashton, the EU's senior foreign policy official is the lead negotiator. Saeed Jalili is the lead Iranian negotiator. By July the two groups have held three rounds of talks which proved inconclusive and were lowered to meetings at the deputy level in July, 2012. This was followed by bellicose statements from Iran and U.S. defense preparations in the Gulf of Hormuz. The Israelis described the situation as reaching a critical point, with the U.S. continuing to put its faith in tighter sanctions to persuade Iran to give up its program.

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About 565,000 workers are missing in the UK workforce in December 2022. The Guardian asks the question- Will they ever come back? Many left under stress from healthcare work, from the hotel and restaurant business, and from manufacturing during the pandemic. Some took early retirement, some taking care of family members. A similar situation exists in the US. Jay Powell at the US Federal Reserve, its central bank, and Fed Governors including the head of the Federal Reserve for California are working on ways to get these people back. Brian Deese of Biden's National Economic Council is also working to find solutions including better child care and better benefits for workers. Settling the rail strike on terms attractive for workers and getting rid of onerous rules for workers who could not get paid heath care leave in rail companies, are ways the Biden administration is responding.

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Years of Tory cuts and austerity spending left the UK unprepared for the pandemic, says this editorial in The Guardian. The running down of the public sector was a policy choice says The Guardian. In the decade before Covid the Tories cut public spending as a proportion of the GDP from 46% to 39% leaving Britain exposed during the pandemic. Jeremy Hunt continues in a long line of Tory chancellors who are impervious to comprehension of the fall in incomes of ordinary households, the working nurses and teachers who turn to food banks. Hunt even talks about another 100 billion pounds of cuts over the next 2 years. And  turning Britain into a Silicon Valley, when Silicon and Tech is failing in the US, and when the US Justice Department is seeking the breakup of Big Tech with support from Republican Bill Barr. 

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US tariff on India of 25% penalty for buying Russian oil and 25% baseline going into effect 21 days later in DJT executive order of August 6, 2025. A 30% baseline on China but no penalty for buying Russian oil. The 21 days will give time for India to come up with an agreement with the US. 

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Cost of driving depends on where you live in the US- California (taxes and climate change fee), and mountain states (no inland supplies in West), Illinois taxes are much higher compared to the South and South East (close to refineries no taxes). Specific formulations add extra on the Eastern seaboard states  from New Hampshire to Virginia, and in the West California have requirements to reduce smog and pollution. At one time in the 1980's in Pasadena the smog would be so bad you could not see the green color on the leaves clearly. For most of the US gas prices on April 22, 2026 are around $3.62 or lower compared to $3.92 on average in March for the whole US and $5.83 in California, $5.00 in Oregon, $5.38 in Washington. Texas, Alabama, North and South Carolina at around $3.62 and Florida at $4.00. In Virginia to Maine in the North East it is around $4.00. A look at the map shows that talk of $5.00 gasoline hurting the Republicans in the midterms for Congress is incorrect because the Democrats are likely to hold on to California, Washington Oregon, their base with gas at close to $6.00 the very opposite of what they are saying. Much of it because of state policies against oil refining and climate change taxes, formulations of gasoline that cost more to address smog. The head of the distribution channel for gasoline in the US, Scott Berhang, head of fuel wholesalers marketing group Sigma says- “At some point, [the war] could translate into supply shortages. That could happen. But we’re not really there yet. I talk to my members all over the U.S. They’re not seeing any supply issues. There’s no problem getting fuel. Everything is normal.” State taxes can be as low as 9 cents in Alaska and 71 cents in California, 66 cents in Illinois. The price of gas in swing states Arizona $4.59, Pennsylvania $4.11, Michigan $3.78, Wisconsin $3.69, North Carolina $3.75, Georgia $3.57. If we use $3.61 price of Texas and most of South and close to this in all but mountain states and western states then we are slightly above the same price gasoline was sold at the pump in 2011-2014 of $3.51 per gallon. This is a significant fact considering the media talks about gasoline prices in the US as a significant cost of living issue. Which means saying Iran War is "crippling" US consumers at the pump is farfetched and totally incorrect.  ...

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Washington Post looks at history of rare earths since 1945, and how the US EU and Japan let China become the sole supplier of rare earth minerals. This error is being corrected in 2025 and the US, EU, Japan remain vulnerable for the next 2 years till these countries build up an alternative supply of rare earths. It is a situation where vital national interests in the US and EU, Japan were lost sight of for three decades.