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Prime minister Matteo Renzi focussed on some critical aspects of how other Europeans see the negotiations in the Greece bailout in June 2015. Considering that the EU had relaxed conditions for the surplus, a critical condition for reducing austerity programs in Greece and focussing on reforms, and considering the high unemployment not insisted on further cuts to the public sector employees, the conditions put forward focussing on reforms such as collection of taxes are seen as essental by other eurozone countries, including Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Italy. Renzi told II Sole 24 Ore- "The point is that Greece may get different conditions, but it has to abide by the rules. It's not the case that we have taken early retiremnt pensions away from the people of Italy just to allow the Greeks to have them! We have brought in labor reform, but it is not the case that, with our money, a number of Greek shipowners can continue not to pay taxes.. I could go on." If he went on he would cite the tax collection laws and methods in Italy which were changed under prime minister Monti to tackle tax evasion in Italy, with no effort to collect the $11 billion in estimated taxes that are not collected in Greece. Italy banned cash payment above 1000 euros and started a cross referencing initiative to tackle tax evasion under premier Monti. Greece took up tax evasion legislation in 2010 in parliament but opposition from many groups led to no action. In 2012 Labor minister Elsa Fornero broke down in tears as she described raising the retirement age for women to 66 in the private sector from 60, saying this was to prevent "collective impoverishment." Italy lacks childcare and older women help with childcare for grandchildren. Renzi was probably thinking of these changes in Italy. He went on to say- " If there is a mass get-out clause over the rules, what will happen in Spain in October? And in France in a year and half? It is one thing to ask for flexibility amid abidance by the rules. It is another thing to think that one is the craftiest of them all, in other words to be the that does not abide by the rules. We want them to save Greece. But the people of Greece also have to want that." On tax evasion and other issues for long term financial health Greece is seen as not following basic financial rules for sustaining the euro....

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Ford is facing a sales disaster in the China market after lagging in coming up with new models and falling behind in adopting new technology in the hyper competitive Chinese market. Sales dropped from 1.27 million vehicles in 2016 to 752,000 vehicles in 2018. In 2018 sales dropped by 37%, when the Chinese market declined by 3%. In 2019 the car market in China shrank by another 12% in the first half.  The problems stem from poor management. Alan Mulally started the China project, his successor from a Michigan furniture company CEO Jim Hackett was unable to grasp the challenges in China with new technology a key feature of keeping abreast of the Chinese market. A succession of new executives in China from U.S. or EUropean operations compounded the problem each group lacking the touch needed with local Chinese conditions. Some experts say Ford is now becoming irrelevant in the Chinese market after being a late starter in coming to China and then investing billions in a catch up effort. GM and VW started much earlier. Ford reported loss of $1.5 billion in 2018. From 5% in 2015 its market share dropped to 2.1% in first quarter 2019. Ford was complacent and applied a global strategy in China when local Chinese car companies were moving with lightning speed. Ford was asked to locate in the far interior of the country as a late comer to China and its partner Chang'an Auto was more concerned about keeping car jobs than introducing the latest technology and models. China is obsessed with new technology and there is no way Ford could be allowed to get away with outdated models. ...

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After overly aggressive bank lending following the financial crisis of 2008 China is now badly overextended. China has also learned from the U.S. experience about the risks inherent in growth generated from a credit boom. In 2009-2010 China was also getting less bang for the buck in terms of the increase in lending needed to generate growth compared to earlier periods. Orlik says don't expect China to help the global economy the way it did in 2009-2011, and that there is no Plan B for China.

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Joe Nocera of the New York Times, says that it is the Attorney Generals of the 50 states in the USA, that have taken up the rights of homeowners, not the federal authorites. He points out that the Obama administration, the Treasury department and the federal agencies, have failed miserably in getting the banks and servicers to take loan modification seriously. It was the attorney generals of the states that were with homeowners from the beginning, to prevent predatory lending and outright fraud. Until they were stopped by federal bank regulators, who sided with the banks in court. The subprime lending crisis might never have ocurred, says Nocera, had the states not been obstructed in this way. As the subprime lending mounted, the state AG's were talking to people in their communities, and knew the reality on the ground. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision, two primary regulators of the banking industry, saw their role as protecting banks from consumers rather than protecting consumers. Professor Prentiss Cox, of the University of Minnesota Law School, who was an assistant attorney general in Minnesota in charge of consumer enforcement, says federal regulators should have been listening to us, instead of trying to shut us down....

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Italian born Canadian Sergio Marchionne, a former tax consultant turned auto executive who joined Fiat in 2004, planned the acquisition of Fiat in 2009. GM's payout to Chrysler following a decision not to acquire Fiat, and the U.S. government's need to merge Chrysler with another auto company after a bailout, gave Marchionne the opportunity to acquire Chrysler on favorable terms. Hard bargaining with the government led to acquiring Chrysler for free, using the $2 billion from GM to show the government that it would make the needed investments to bring Chrysler back from bankruptcy. This decision, the bringing in of outside talent, and the revival of the auto industry following the bailout, has led to the success of Fiat Chrysler.  Sergio Marchionne had the right instincts to persuade the government that Fiat with its small cars including the Fiat 500 was the right company to run Chrysler, and supporting president Obama's fuel efficiency goals gave him the right credentials with the Obama administration. A chain smoker of cigarettes who also gulped down espressos, her was a workaholic sometimes carrying 5 smartphones. He passed away at the age of 66 from health complications. Ironically the Dodge Dart was presented as the car that would get 40 miles per gallon. Other efforts at fuel efficient automobiles have not happened in the way it was envisioned by the Obama administration. The Dart did not become popular. Only the redesigned Fiat made it as a hit in Europe. The plan to import small Fiats to the U.S. remained only on paper. As the auto industry revived Marchionne canceled plans to make nearly all of the Chrysler cars and shifted production to more popular Jeeps and Dodge Ram, a move followed by Ford and GM. Fuel efficiency issues from the bankruptcy period are still alive today with the decision to leave small car manufacturing to Japanese and German carmakers, and the efforts of the Trump administration to turn back the Obama administration fuel efficiency targets.  ...

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Germany benefits from the lower value of the euro in relation to other currencies. Germany's exports to the eurozone as a percentage of all exports increased from 38.4% in 2009 to 41.7% in 2011, according to the Germany Federal Statistical Office and the German Chambers of Industry and Commerce. Exports to China increased from 4.64% to 6.11%, and to Asia from 11.8% to 13.73%, and to the U.S. from 6.77% to 6.95%. This increases the gap between Germany and other eurozone countries with smaller exports. Ireland with its large export base and foreign investment is likely to benefit from the lower euro. German companies VW, BMW, Mercedes, Heidelberg Cement and EADS also benefit from the weaker euro. France's Peugeot with sales concentrated in Europe does not benefit from the weaker euro compared to German auto companies with higher sales overseas, especially in China.

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This Wall Street Journal editorial calls for more transparency in disclosing bad debt problems at Spanish and other European banks. It faults recent and upcoming stress tests of EU banks for not being stringent enough and taking into account adverse scenarios. While Spain's central bank says only 20 billion euros are needed to recapitalize the cajas savings banks, other estimates are much higher. Moody's country report says Spain could need upto 120 billion euros to recapitalize its banks. A big problem is European banks exposure in Spain which is over 700 billion euros as of September 2010- Spanish banks have high exposure in Portugal and German banks have high exposure to Spain.

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How German political leaders view the Euro currency and the European Union. German history and the need for fiscal discipline and the European Union. The constant between Chancellors Adenauer, Kohl and Merkel- a sense of European unity as part of the fabric of the new Germany. A desire to find a way through the sovereign debt crisis of 2010-2012, by introducing fiscal discipline into the structural framework and preserving the hard won gains for the Euro currency and the European Union.

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Viviane Reding, vice president of the European Commission, provides a five point proposal to strengthen the European Union and take the steps to a closer political union. She says the Maastricht Treaty does not provide the strong foundation the European Union needs and the steps are already underway to change this. The fiscal compact for financial discipline in the eurozone that all members of the eurozone agreed to is one such step. Other steps remain for a closer union and she suggests the time is now for an open debate inside the EU countries about what people want to see the EU become by 2020. As a timetable a treaty on political union could be ratified between 2016 and 2019, with it going into effect once two thirds of the countries have approved it with referendums. Countries would have the opton of political union or staying in a close form of association but not union.

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Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, a senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, leads the EuroFuture Project. Here he offers his ideas of the dilemmas facing German leaders in agreeing to letting the European Central Bank take a larger role of supporting the bonds of Italy, Portugal and Spain. He says Germans are seeing a contradiction between European demands for German leadership and not wanting to be led by Germany or perceiving Germany as a hegemon. Brockhoff says Germans have never in the postwar period wanted to or learned to exercize continental leadership. He recounts the postwar period when Germans were content with the deutsche mark, and limited their expression of national pride to the deutsche mark. Giving up the deutsche mark was part of the deal for reunification of the two Germanys, a surrender of economic sovereignty for the sake of a larger integration into Europe. He says that even though the arguments are framed in terms of orthodox economics, economic nationalists who never really wanted to give up the deutsche mark are the core of the opposition to the common issue of eurozone bonds. The German position is to go back to the framework of principles for economic and monetary union and tighten the rules for spending and taxes, something that is good in the long run, but does not work in the short run with shrinking economies from austerity programs and nervous markets. The Merkel government's resolution of this crisis is to set new fiscal rules for the eurozone, and either move in the direction of letting the ECB play a larger role, or support such a move. What is not clear is whether the government will survive the next election taking on this leadership role in Europe, or a revolt in the Christian Democratic party....

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In remarks published in English on the Bundesbank website, Jens Weidmann, Bundesbank president and member of the ECB governing council said: "The ECB should be aware of its independence. This also requires it to respect, and not to overstep its own mandate." This is seen as a pushback by the Bundesbank to ECB president Draghi's comments on July 23, 2012, about doing all that is necessary to keep the eurozone together. Weidmann referring to the situation in France recollecting his days as a student in France in 1987, said there were "two different worldviews colliding." And that this situation prevailed in all political debates right up to the present day. He says about deflationary tendencies -"If these countries go through adjustment processes which result in decreases in wages and prices, then this constitutes one-off shifts in the wage and price structure and not deflation."