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Alas, economists and intellectuals such as Gita Gopinath of the IMF, just don't get it when they say the EU can increase growth by half percent meeting labor shortages using immigrants. As WSJ reports 50-60% of asylum seekers in Netherlands since 1999 are less skilled /less educated immigrants, are unemployed or on benefits.The new view across all parties is lets stop the immigration surges, its too overwhelming for the people to deal with, so that we can focus on cost of living and low wages for workers. Across Starmer's Labour in Britain, across Biden/Harris Democrats lined up with Republican Lankford in the US pledging to sign the legislation to close the southern Border, and in France Macron's premier Michel Barnier wants to do the same.   Mette Frederiksen of Denmark was a pioneer in the EU in showing that immigration acts as a distraction that hurts the working class as it distracts people from the key issues facing workers of cost of living and low wages, poor benefits. She was elected as a Socialist party leader in Denmark in 2015 and as prime minister in 2019. Sahra Wagenknecht, follows Mette Frederiksen, herself a daughter of immigrant, has formed her own party out of Socialist Die Linke in Germany which is now getting about 15% German voter support, 25% in the east, along similar lines to pause and stop immigration because it hurts the working class. In other parts of EU- France's Macron coalition has a prime minister who has called for a pause on immigration. US president Harris and Candidate Harris have pledged to sign bipartisan legislation drafted by Republican Senator Lankford to close the southern Border. The European Asylum Agency has the numbers at just over one million asylum seekers in EU in 2023 and agains in 2024 split by country- Germany 127,000 24% France 77,000 15%, and Italy and Spain 87,000 each 17% each Belgium, Netherlands and Austria 17,000 each at 3% each, Greece a bit higher. Some like the US and Germany with stronger economic base and industries can absorb the educated immigrants from middle class fleeing wars and strife, and less educated immigrants in construction and hospitality. The bigger danger is in creating support for parties that will use the issue to take whole economies and countries backwards by further depressing workers wages, benefits and rights, exacerbating social divisions around race and income that they say they will solve but have no economic policy to do this. All socialist and socialist democratic parties have grasped this in 2023-2024, some earlier by 2019. ...

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Car size shrinks as the Focus, Spark, Aveo, Cruze small cars attract attention at the 2010 International Auto Show in Detroit. The big change is that these small cars are following the European small car in being refined and sophisticated, with a lot of features. This isn't the Chevette that Americans knew in the sixties and seventies, and the perception of what is the right size and comfort is changing completely as a new generation of buyers brought up in a world of pc's, i-phones, and globalized cultures is in the driver seat.

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A major change is taking place. Automakers around the world are shifting to smaller engines. Hyundai's Sonata for 2011 and the Tucson crossover for 2010 are going to have only 4 cylinder engines. Many V-6's offered by Detroit carmakers are being replaced with 4 cylinder engines and V-8 with V-6 engines. Ford is using the EcoBoost a turbocharged V-6 to offer new options for its Taurus, Lincoln MKT and other cars.

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Tom Walsh of the Detroit Free Presss describes the cliffhanger experience of the days before the Bush decision on the bridge loan to automakers in December 2008, including the hourts after spokesman Perino's comment that an orderly bankruptcy was an option which was followed by calls by GM executive to the White House and a flurry of activity by the Michigan delegation in Congress and contacts with Secretary Paulson. But says Tom Walsh all stakeholders should heed the seriousness of the moment because he says the outgoing and incoming Presidents and Congress are all watching for progress like hawks, and want to see visible progress in weeks not just 3 months from now, on costcutting and brand alighnment and debt structure. He says all auto executives, board members, suppliers, dealers, bondholdrs and union officials are on notice that their jobs are on the line.

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Chris Cillizza of CNN shows here that back home in Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins hears from people saying again and again that they support her stand against the Republican health care bill. The rural and elderly are hurt most by this bill and Cillizza says Maine has a lot of these people.  He also cites the opposition of Republican Senator Rand Paul who doesn't like the other costly things tagged onto this bill, and wants a clean bill free of "billion dollar ornaments."

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Patent related profits for US publicly traded companies$9.3 billion in 1999 from $8.4 billion in 1997. Patent related litigation costs in the USA $16 billion in 1999 from $8 billion in 1997 (a 100 % increase in litigation costs in 2 years). What migt the figures be like in 2007? Note that two thirds of the profits went to chemical and pharmaceutical companies.

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How rising cost of food prices is creating new tension in middleeastern countries like Jordan, Yemen, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. Inflation went up from zero to 6.5% offficial estimate unofficially even higher in Saudi Arabia. in many countries private sector wages have remained stagnant as prices of food items and daily necessities have gone up worsened by corruption in many cases.

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Ireland went off the cliff by taking enormous unregulated loans. The banks lent money freely and the regulators simply ignored the bubble that was developing through the last decade. The speculators, developers, bankers and regulators all let the bubble reach astounding proportions. One developer got a $6.3 million loan on a personal guarantee without meeting his banker. One 1000 square foot Dublin carraige house went for 3 million euros in an auction. One of the developers, Simon Kelly, says that everything was funded by the Germans through the European Central Bank. The sale of the Jury's hotel in 2005 resulted in the amazing price of 60 to 70 million euros per acre. Ireland's GDP which was $25 billion in the 1980's, reached $267 billion in 2008. The boom that was initially based on export competitiveness and the low corporate tax rate combined with an educated English speaking workforce, was followed by a speculative boom in real estate financed by Irish banks, where regulators simply looked aside and placed no controls on lending. To get an idea how the government looked at anyone who raised a red flag, look at this quote from Bertie Ahern, prime minister of Ireland from 1997 to 2008, who said at a trade union conference: "sitting on the sidelines cribbing and moaning is a lost opportunity. I don't know how people who engage in that don't commit sucide." And this coming from an Irish politician who helped in arranging the Irish peace accords with the help of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. The risks of such uncontrolled speculation in real estate was lost on regulators, the government, and politicians. And the bankers stopped paying attention to their loans, with everyone wanting to lend money to 10-15 deveopers who were able to drive the market. The regulator at the central bank simply didn't pay much attention to the reports he received every quarter about the lending. Now the average household in Ireland owes 132,000 to the banks, according to David McWilliams of the Central Bank of Ireland, and unemployment is at 14%. If the Irish had completely lost track of the picture, what about the German and British banks that loaned money to Ireland? Why was money being made so freely available to Ireland. One Irishman says getting a mortgage in those days was like getting cupcakes. With prices haveing reached the stratosphere at 60 million euros an acre, were the European banks also pushing money into Ireland beyond the ability of a small country like Ireland to repay? According to the Bank for International Settlements based in Basel, Switzerland, Ireland owes $139 billion to German banks and $132 billion to British banks. Easy money was also available from US banks for countries such as Argentina which suffered similar crisis in prior decades. Banking crises ocurred in Asian countries in the 1980's. Much of this experience was lost in the manner German, British and other European banks loaned money to countries such as Iceland, Greece, Ireland and Portugal. The Asian banking crises of the 1980's are being followed by European banking crises over two decades later. The ...

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WSJ reporters tell the story of Chuck Hagel of Nebraska from his early days in Vietnam, a cellphone business venture, Senator during the Iraq war, gradual shift to opposing the Iraq war, serving on the Senate Foreign Relations Commitee with Senator Obama, and the bond established with Obama over American involvement in the Middle East.

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Chuck Hagel answers questions in the U.S. Senate about his views on the Iraq and Afghanistan surge, on sanctions against Iran, and nuclear disarmament. Hagel says the U.S. must engage not retreat in the world, and discussed his world view without getting drawn into details about policy issues. He faces a difficult nomination for U.S. Defense Secretary with skepticism from Republicans. Hagel opposed both surges and says the right approach is bilateral disarmament for nuclear weapons.

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Teva Pharmaceutical plans to acquire the generic drug business of Allergan in 2015. Teva's sales of generics were $9.1 billion in 2014, according to EvaluatePharma, over 50% of its total sales, and 12% of global market. Alergan had $6.6 billion in generic sales in 2014. Allergan's strategy is to move up the market to branded drugs because of price competition from India in generic drugs. Teva's strategy is to increase the size of its generic business to better tackle pricing issues.

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New rules for euro currency nations in Sept. 2011. The rules provide for sanctions against countries with budget deficits exceeding 3% of GDP, and national debt exceeding 60% of GDP. Countries that break the rules will be required to make a cash deposit in a non-interest bearing account for an amount that is 0.2% of GDP. If the situation continues the deposit becomes a fine. The European Commission will still require finance ministers permission to impose sanctions, but the voting system makes this harder to block. The European Parliament will consider 6 pieces of legislation to make these changes.