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Oil prices are at $73 a barrel in Jan 2025. DJT's goal for 2025 is for oil prices to drop to $45 to bring inflation down. To do this requires shale oil producers and Saudi Arabia to increase production. This report in WSJ says Saudis will have a hard time managing budget needs at this price and have indicated they will not increase production. Shale oil producers are also reluctant saying they are in a different phase in the production cycle and are not looking to expand production. 

Prices at the pump have dropped from $5.00 a gallon to $3.10. In 2024 per barrel prices were at $90. 

The new administration hopes that reducing regulations and speeding up the approval process, and new incentives would help increase production.

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China's Xi Jinping meets leaders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Tianjin, a northeastern coastal city near Beijing. He will meet Putin and Indian prime minister Modi. This is Modi's first visit to China in 7 years. A parade in Beijing will mark the 80th anniversary of the victory in World War II with attendance of Putin with Xi. On May 9 2025 Xi attended the parade in Moscow on the 80th anniversary of the victory in World War II. 

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National Guard deployment in New Mexico by Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham in September 2025. Grisham says of Albuquerque -“It is one of the most dangerous places. I want real results.” And Albuquerque Police chief Harold Medina says it is one of the best decisions he has made to get the help of the National Guard to cut crime and make the city safe. “I honestly hope they’re here for the next year," says Medina.

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The uncertain returns from AI is not good for retirees whose funds are invested in AI funded by corporate bonds. With enormous needs for capital how about $3 trillion for Ai investment to 2028 , says WSJ, only $1.5 trillion can come from cash flows and $1.5 trillion has to come from elsewhere such as corporate bonds and annuities retirees purchase. This lowers credit ratings of these instruments as AI returns are uncertain. This is not a good situation for retirees in the US.

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Mr. Trump has decisively changed the Republican party. Most Republicans support Mr. Trump personally, less the Republican party. Mr. Lindsey Graham, a senator from South Carolina, says of the Republican party before Trump that it had become a bit staid, that we looked like the banker next door who may foreclose on your house. Mr. Romney epitomized that in his view. Gone are the views on deficits, on wars, and on imports and transfer of technology to China as being acceptable.  Five years from 2015 when Mr. Trump came into prominence with his new style taking on the establishments of both parties with a fierce disdain for convention, both the Bushes and the Obamas and Clintons, the Republican party is completely transformed. Registered Republicans are now 60% non college educated in 2020 compared to 50% non college educated in 2016. The Trump policies on trade putting American workers first and America first have a resounding popularity with this audience- this should be no surprise after decades of job losses and factories shipped overseas under the previous administrations for 2 decades. Most of these workers are not college educated and are white and had enjoyed a good standard of living with a high school education in American factories till the shift of American manufacturing to China destroyed good paying jobs and impoverished the American working class.  Only 30% of college educated people are registered Republicans in 2020 compared to 40% in 2016. Overwhelmingly about 90% of registered Republicans are white.  They are majority male and older but there is a significant about 40% female and 40% young population under 40 years of age. This might resemble the party put together by Missouri Congressman Harry Truman as he led the Democratic Party in 1948 with a majority of non college educated Democrats, fighting for American workers and America first in the cold war with Russia. Truman also had a rough Missouri farm language and accent comparable to Mr. Trump's rough style and language disdainful of the old establishment and new tech establishment. Both were heavily disliked by the media and both did not let this bother them in any way. Both liked facing large crowds as Truman showed in campaigning by train across the country and Trump has shown in campaign rallies run in his own way. ...

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Simon Wilde of The Times Analysis of a Test cricket series for the Ages, India vs England 2025- showing 10 Key Moments in the Series of 5 Tests over 25 days of cricket. He compares it to Ashes cricket series back to 1981, 2005, and 2023. I would go furhter back to the West Indies Australia series of 1960 which ended up tied, with both sides having the same score down to the last run. It was a series in which Richie Benaud and Gary Sobers played major roles. Siraj has Christiano Ronaldo on his phone screen with the words BELIEVE! as he prepares for the final day's bowling. The catch of Siraj that did not count as he went over the boundary line for Brooks, and the last ball of the match at the Oval that flattened the wicket of Atkinson, the fielding effort of Woakes that cost him a dislocated shoulder and his heroic effort to come out for the 10th wicket when it was painful to run, the burst of sixes and fours knock of Sundar as India went up to 396, and the tense nervousness of the crowd in the final moments, Gill's perplexed face as he arranged the fielding deep at the boundary lines to avoid fours and the final sigh of relief when Siraj bowled out Atkinson- these were the moments that linger in the memory of the final test at the Oval in London. ...

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Pictures in the BBC of DJT and Melania as they arrive in England for a visit with the Royal family and King Charles in September 2025.

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Mr Biden's bold vision for the US in infrastructure, in health and education, in competing in the world is outlined in this video in the NYT of his address to the joint session of the US Congress in April 2021. Biden is determined to move quickly and this comes across in the first 100 days. He says he "has never been more optimistic and confident about America."

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William Barr, Attorney general of the US 1991-1993 and again 2019-2020, says serious regulation to breakup the power and chokehold on communications of Big Tech should be the first priority of 2023. He says they have too much power and pose a threefold danger. First they have a chokehold over essential channels of communications and commerce, letting them be the gatekeepers to the digital world. Second they vacuum up a trove of personal information of users that permits manipulating user beliefs and behaviour. Third, they distort the "marketplace of ideas"  and as gatekeepers can pursue their own political and economic agendas. He cautions antitrust litigation is too slow and case by case approach is not the way. And too much time is misspent on proving misconduct, when that is not necessary, as regulatory intervention has been needed whether or not there is misconduct for a fair and good market system to work. He says new dangers are happening and it is time for Congress to stop being all talk and no action even as digital platforms are taking unfair advantage and endangering the fairness of the market system. ...

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Compared to 1971 Bangladesh has come a long, long way, on its 50th anniversary. From 80% of the population struggling with extreme poverty in 1971, Bangladesh now produces enough food for its 167 million population. The economy is only 13% agriculture with most of GDP coming from industrial production and services. Girls education is remarkable. 98% of children have attended primary school and there are more girls in secondary schools than boys. Norwegians and other European observers who visited Bangladesh in 1970's compare the situation with today and are astonished says this report in DW.com. By 2030 the GDP of $409 billion is expected to double, bringing the country close to 1 trillion dollar economy. The garment industry is the second largest after China, with $35 billion a year in exports. It has changed life of women in Bangladesh, employing 4 million people. Remittances from overseas bring in $24.7 billion for 2021. Overall target for exports is $51 billion for 2022. Problems include the rural urban divide with development concentrated in Dhaka and Chittagong, and increased urban poverty. And despite rise in number of children and girls in school the quality of education for a skilled workforce remains poor, says this report in DW.com ...

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Experts say solar energy costs are going down by 30-40% every time the deployment of solar energy doubles in a country. The Modi administration plans to triple solar energy production in the next 5 years. This investment in solar energy should drive down costs from the $35 per megawatt hour in 2020. Experts say that costs are going down at a rate that was never expected.  For India the courage in making these investments in solar energy since 2010 and accelerated in 2016, are path breaking. This could be a world changing event for India as cost of energy can bring up living standards throughout the country. Gone will be the days when children lacked electric bulb light to read and study in villages in India. It also shows the need to heed Vivekananda's words: "This I have seen in my life- he who is overcautious  about himself falls into dangers at every step; he who is afraid of losing honor and respect, gets only disgrace; he who is always afraid of loss always loses." The pioneers in India pushing forward these new initiatives have listened to these words. ...

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Apple follows Microsoft in increasing workers pay. Apple increased the hourly pay for workers to $22, increase of 45% over 2018. It follows Microsoft which has doubled its worldwide budget for meit based pay increases. Annual increases are moved up by 3 months and new pay increases take effect in July at Apple. Apple shares have fallen 21% this year to May, making stock based awards ineffective.  Apple has paused plans to call workers to office for at least 3 days a week as coronavirus cases rise again in California. Apple was one of the first companies to move to remote work in 2020. The pandemic has increased Apple sales tremendously of laptops and iphones so that the increase in workers pay was long overdue. In this sense the Biden administration has brought with it president Biden's genuine and deeply felt concerns for workers and families to the forefront of company and workers attention. Overall for private and government employers the first quarter of 2022 brought with it a 4.5% increase in workers pay, says the Labor Department. Inflation was higher and outpaced worker wage increases so that worker pay has more room to grow under president Biden's leadership. ...

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In another sign of how the capital allocation system is failing America and how capital markets are malfunctioning, this report in WSJ shows how capital of $346 billion in 2021, much of it needed for vital investments in renovating crumbling US infrastructure, in chips and science, in education, is being wasted. Vital needs are being ignored in America in education when only one thirds of eight graders are passing NAEP test reading comprehension in the US. No one talks about it yet it is a fact that cannot be ignored. Yet underinvestment in education, health, infrastructure and public services happens as wasteful investment takes place as hundreds of billions of capital is diverted into ventures that have little meaning. Shown here is a robotic pizza maker that is going out of business. The Internal Rate of Return for venture firms was negative 7% in the third quarter of 2022. As president Biden said in The State of the Union this year "free markets without competition is not capitalism it is extortion." There is no competition in the planned misallocation of this type that fails common sense,  American families and children,  as well as financial rates of return. ...

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Jordan Bardella,  age 28 years, is the youngest proposed candidate ever for prime minister of a G-7 country. The US Constitution says the presidential candidate, the head of government, has to be 35 years old, setting an age limit. No such age limit is set in the French Constitution for the Fifth Republic setup by Charles De Gaulle in 1958- a French citizen over age 18 years is allowed to stand for president. The current prime minister of France Gabriel Attal is 35 years old, appointed by president Macron. Macron ran for president at age 38 years, had experience as a cabinet member in the Economics ministry of Francois Hollande. Attal was Minister of Public Accounts and Public Action in the Elisabeth Borne government in 2022, and Minister of Education and Youth in Borne's government reshuffle in 2023. Jordan Bardella lacks any experience in government and most of his time was spent in representing his district in the National Assembly and in party positions. As the RN is unlikely to get an absolute majority in the National Assembly Bardella by saying he would not take up PM position without an absolute majority is also aware of this lack of experience and an astonishingly young age. ...

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Pat McFadden is Minister for Inter-Governmental Relations. He says Keir Starmer wants to see migration numbers fall after it was shown that net migration to Britain was 906,000 in 2023. The number of migrants crossing the Channel is reported to reach 20,000 since Keir Starmer became prime minister on July 5, 2024, a period of 5 months. This shows Labour under Starmer is serious about migration and appalled at Conservative administrations not walking the talk. Caps placed under David Cameron to cap at tens of thousands were not followed. "Targets haven’t worked very well. We’ve got things we were saying about this in terms of getting net migration down. I don’t say targets don’t work in any circumstance but numerical targets on migration have not had a happy history in recent years." “But we do want legal migration to come down, we do want to train more of our own workers, we do want to get more people off welfare and into work.” The ebbs and flows of the economy and Britain's needs, culture and integration, always legal migration- this is policy for Britain under Keir Starmer and Labour. ...

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Anti Immigration sentiment is not new - it has just changed racial stereotypes from arguing against southern and eastern Europeans and barring Asians for "quality" in 1890-1970 to today's heated debates about Latin American nationalities.  Pew Research ( and the adjoining MPI) show highly relevant US Immigration history. Pew Research shows the foreign born share of the American population is at 13.8 percent. It reached 14.8% percent by 1890,  brought down in the interwar period by 1970 to 5 percent. It has gone back up- the wave of immigration blocked from successive Acts keeping out Chinese (1882), Japanese (1924) and all Asians(1924) has changed to include Asian migration under policies of John F. Kennedy. Pew Research shows in 2022  10.6 million immigrants living in the US were born in Mexico, making up 23% of all immigrants. This is 3.2% of the US population of 335 million in 2024 according to the Census Bureau. The promise of president Harris to sign the legislation negotiated with Republicans in Congress (Senator Lankford) in March to close the Border would remove this distraction from cost of living, housing, and climate challenges. ...

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Compare AI models for versions v2 v3 by DeepSeek that cost $5.6 million with Anthropic AI model that cost $100 million+, and one gets the order of magnitude in cost for the new DeepSeek China model vs its US counterparts.  The hundreds of billions of dollars that OpenAI and big spenders such as Google, Meta, and Microsoft would have to drain capital markets would be a disaster for workers and families in the US and the standard of living, the infrastructure improvements that don't get done, and the investments in transportation and other vital needs such as schools, education and healthcare that directly impact the cost of living and the standard of quality of life in America and other countries. This is where competing models from China, from India, and from European countries can get us back to where we want to be to continue improving the cost of living and standard of living, quality of life in America for workers and families. This is the choice workers and families made in 2020 and in 2025, rejecting the wasted resources in wars that serve no purpose, and rebuilding the Nation's infrastructure, its water, schools, transportation, healthcare, childcare.  ...

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As the first military plane with 100 deportees from the US lands in Amritsar in the Punjab state, there is this reflection in India on why migrants decide to come mostly from Gujarat and Punjab two of India's prosperous states, and Gujarat a centre for industrial development under Vikshit Bharat 2047. Modi visits Washington Feb 12 for meetings with DJT.  Times of India says agencies that track illegal migrants report 90,415 migrants illegally entered the US from Mexico or Canada between October 2023 to Sept 2024. Half of the 90,415 migrants were from Gujarat. The two leading states for migrants are Punjab, Gujarat followed by Haryana, UP and Maharashtra.  In the Punjab this report shows business communities and urban professionals as part of the illegal migrant flow looking for better life- for reasons of governance, and social security, including people from well to do families. And not for reasons of job scarcity. And this is changing demographis with decline in population in Punjab with it being made up by migration from Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Bihar states into Punjab.     ...

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US added 22,000 jobs in August 2025, with job losses in construction and manufacturing, and gains in healthcare.

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With 121 medals the U.S. team did better than in any Olympics except 1984. Britain did extremely well, and the Australians were overestimated. China did not do as well as in the Beijing Olympics, which was expected. The British investment in training athletes has paid off since the London Olympics, getting 67 medals.

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A study by BuzzFeed shows that all but three of 20 fake stories by hoax sites or hyper partisan elements with likes on Facebook spread fake news with stories on Trump or denigrating Hillary Clinton. During the last 3 months of the campaign in 2016 the fake stories or bogus news stories appearing online and on social media had a greater reach than authoritative reporting by mainstream news outlets, according to a study of Facebook activity by BuzzFeed. President Obama and chancellor Merkel took aim at the fake stories on social media and hate opinions in talking to the public in Berlin at their final meeting in November 2016. Obama said "because in an age when there is so much active misinformation and it is packaged very well and it looks the same when you see it on a Facebook page or you turn on television." He added it is a big problem that 43 percent of eligible voters do not vote and when "we are not serious about facts and what's true and what's not, particularly in age of social media when so many people are getting their information in sound bites and off their phones." Merkel compared the situation today with digitization to the social disruptions during the Industrial Revolution and gave her own warnings. ...

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Questions raised by Nicholas Kristof of the NYT on Russian hacking during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Kristof says the implausible or far fetched idea of foreign interference in U.S. elections is not as implausible as it may appear.

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Two US carrier strike groups and 17 naval ships prepare for joint exercizes with Japan's Self-Defense Forces off Okinawa in the first week of October 2021. In late September a British aircraft carrier group goes through the Taiwan Straits. China has flown aircraft near Taiwan's airspace before. On October 1-5 over a period of 4 days China sends 150 fighter, bombers and other aircraft near Taiwanese airspace. This situation is reminiscent of the situation in 1950-53 during the period of the Korean War when US president Harry Truman sent the Seventh Fleet to the Straits of Taiwan. In 1954 Chinese artillery started the shelling of offshore islands Quemoy and Matsu. This happened again in 1958 under president Eisenhower. At that point the US sent a naval contingent to the Taiwan Straits. The crisis was resolved through talks with China. Eisenhower then setup a joint defense agreement with Taiwan.  Here the Taiwan Defense Minister says China is capable of an invasion of Taiwan in 2021 but "it has to calculate what it would cost and what kind of outcome it would achieve." He also says that after 2025 "it would have lowered the costs and losses to a minimum." As US companies seek expansion in China the situation is changing rapidly in 2021 in the other areas.The US under president Biden sees the wars under previous presidents and the economic policies of not investing in American industrial strength have created risks for America in its role in the world. Biden seeks to restore American industrial strength through massive investments. It has been reported that Taiwan even considers the concentration of world semiconductor industry in Taiwan a way to assure the US dependence on Taiwan for semiconductors would lead to allied economic commitment to Taiwan in addition to defense commitments already given. In a sign of awareness of the distorted situation in semiconductor manufacturing that American companies such as Intel have allowed to happen, including ceding essential technologies in manufacturing semiconductors to other nations, the Biden administration has pushed to reverse these policies giving $52 billion in state aid. President Biden talked to president Xi of China in early September in a 90 minute call. This was aimed at easing hostility between the two countries. During that call the two leaders had agreed to abide by the Taiwan Relations Act, that states Taiwan's status should be resolved through peaceful means. It was passed in the US Congress in 1979 during the period when the US restored diplomatic relations with China. The situation today resembles that in the period after the Korean War into the late 1950's when China under Mao continued shelling of islands under Taiwan from the mainland. This makes the existing supply chains that make the US, Europe and India overly dependent on China,Taiwan, Singapore, for manufactured goods look antiquated and out of place. American companies such as Apple, GM, Black Rock and American financial companies are caught in a bind as they operate as if nothing is happening, when a lot has changed during the coronavirus pandemic. The Biden administration is pursuing its own long term policy for restructuring the supply chain for American industry. ...

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US adds 22,000 jobs in August 2025 with losses of jobs in manufacturing and construction, and gains in healthcare.

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Exports growth in aerospace and agriculture, housing, and rebuilding inventories is helping France achieve 0.7% economic growth in 2025.