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Sony's strategies to return the smartphone business to profitability in 2015. Mr. Totoki, head of the smartphone division, says Sony will accept decline in sales of 20-30% to accomplish this. The smartphone division is seen as critical in the internet era. This means cutting the number of lowend models and scaling down operations in China, where sales are about 3% of the mobile division total. Sales are strong relatively in Europe, South east Asia, and Japan, which provide 34%, 27%, 23% respectively of total mobile division sales.

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Crude from Canada's Alberta oil sands brings about $65, a large discount from the $115 for Brent crude and the $97 price in the U.S. The increase in U.S. oil output is causing a surplus in the U.S., reducing demand for Canadian crude. The lack of enough pipelines to bring this crude to the U.S. also affects prices. The $50 discount to Brent crude affects Canada's oil revenues and economic growth. Canada's central bank cut the growth rate forecast for 2013 to 2% from 2.3%. This is also likely to weaken Canada's currency.

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Bill Keller of the New York Times, reflects on his experience in Moscow during the fall of communism, and the Russian youth then and their children in the protest marches in Moscow today. He sees a new generation with different expectations, not limited by the past in what they think is possible, should be and is normal.

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Toyota reported a 77% drop in earnings in the first quarter of 2011, with a large loss in the Japanese operations. The strong yen trading at 81 yen to the dollar is a significant factor. And for the first time Toyota's CFO Satoshi Ozawa said "we have reached the limits of profitable Japan based production at 80 yen to the dollar." Japanese operatios lost $2.4 billion. Honda reported a 38% drop in earnings for the 1st quarter.

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Steve Jobs anticipated a post PC period when he told a technology conference in 2010 that PC's would retain a lot of their value, but he said they will be used only by one out of so many users. Tim Cook told a Goldman Sachs investor conference recently: "From the first day it shipped, we thought- not just me, many of us thought at Apple- that the tablet market would become larger than the PC market, and it was just a matter of time that it took for that to occur." Analysts see this happening sometime between 2013 and 2017.

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The campaign rhetoric for renegotiating NAFTA and building a wall at the border has had a sharply negative effect on growth in Mexico. Growth slowed in 2016 and is expected to be close to zero in 2017 with declining foreign investment in the economy. The uncertainty is leading to sharp decline in foreign direct investment of 24% in the first 9 months of 2016, according to the Bank of Mexico. Further declines can be expected in 2017. The decline in the value of the peso of 16% since May 2016 has led to 6 interest rate increases in the past year. Inflation on annual basis was at 4.72% in Jan. 2017 and is rising. As Mexico depends on exports for one third of its output growth, and 80% is sent to the U.S., there is a need to diversify with trade agreements made with the European Union and other countries. Mexicans now question the value of NAFTA trade agreement as average growth of 2.6 since NAFTA was signed is below the 4.6% in the 2 decades prior to that. And poverty level is the same with about 60% of people in the underground economy. In addition crime, drug trade, a weak education system, weak rule of law, political corruption, show that Mexico has not made the progress since NAFTA that it should have made. ...

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Reliance Jio launches a high speed broadband service in India with annual plans for subscribers ranging from $10 to $118 a month for speeds from 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps. The prices are about one tenth of prices in Europe and the U.S. In 2016 mobile network prices dropped after Reliance introduced lower pricing. The new launch provides streaming services using high speed internet. Reliance Jio is taking on telecom companies, as well as streaming platforms. It is now the largest telecom company in India with revenue of $1.6 billion in the quarter ending June 30, 2019.  The free trial offer from Reliance Jio is 100 Mbps connection free, along with Jio apps. There is a 100 Gigabyte quota, with free 40 GB at a time 24 times- a total of 1000GB free. The only charge is a refundable deposit of 2,500 rupees ($35) for the router. Giveaways include high definition or LED television  and 4K setup box. 15 million people have registered for the service. Reliance Jio is aiming for 20 million residential users and 15 million businesses across 1600 towns in India. Reliance playbook is to launch aggressively with low prices and establish a dominance in the market. It did this in 2016 with free trial offer bringing in 100 million customers in the first 6 months. Today Reliance Jio service has 340 million customers who spend 30% more than other operator's such as Airtel and BSNL.   By cutting data prices in India sharply to one tenth of world prices Jio has created a completely different market and one in which there are only 3 or 4 smaller competitors in that space. Bringing down prices for users and enabling India to jump ahead in internet use in ways similar to that of South Korea, Finland, China.   ...

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The Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan, one of two safety regulators in Japan, met in October 2010. At that meeting a presentation by Takanori Tanaka, head of the government supported Nuclear Power Engineering Center, advocated new technologies that would reduce risk in the event of earthquakes and tsunamis. The presentation focussed on new plants and did not go into retrofitting old plants with new backup solutions for cooling in the event of electrical failure. A recent article by Hitachi researchers brought up the idea of isolation condensers which could provide temporary power supplies in the event of electrical failure. One such device was on No. 1 reactor at Fukushima (built in 1971), and worked after the quake but later failed. The views of nuclear engineers at Hitachi discussed here show that cost remains a constraint in the design of nuclear reactor cooling systems, and redundancy with several layers of diverse backup systems for cooling are not being pushed by companies building the reactors. See the group articles for G.E.'s Mark 1 system which show cost and easier to build were factors behind the smaller containment systems favored for that design. Fukushima plant uses the Mark 1 reactors. Without independent safety regulation that does not rely on the companies for analysis and solutions, regulation risks becoming too dependent on companies for coming up with the strong safety precautions that are absolutely essential. These safety precautions can succumb to cost pressures....

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Brazil faces a debt crisis in 2015-2016. Between 2010 and 2015 foreign debt of local governments and Brazilian firms increased from $100 billion to $250 billion, and dollar debt in local currency from 210 billion reas to 655 billion reas, according to Bank of International Settlements data. State banking institutions BNDES and Caixa Economica Federal financed 35% of loans in 2010, by 2015 this increased to 55%. Subsidized loans at 5.5% by BNDES to firms make Brazilian banking a fiscal operation, requiring additional funding. Petrobras increased debt issuance enormously during this period, and now needs government support as its debt is now one notch above junk status. Interest payments on Brazil's debt is 6% of GDP in 2014. Public sector debt is 66% of GDP, and credit to the private sector is 55% of GDP up from 25% in 2005. It will take Brazil years to recover from a huge borrowing binge.

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The increasing competitiveness of Mexico compared to China and India as an investment destination in 2013. Foreign companies are investing heavily in Mexico because of investment advantages in labor cost, supply of engineering and management talent, and proximity to the U.S.

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Rattner looks with alarm at recent figures showing that of 2.65 million jobs created in the U.S. in 2015, only 30,000 were in manufacturing. He reflects on growth in manufacturing with the recovery in automobile manufacturing between 2009- 2013 - during this period employment in the U.S. auto industry went up by 23 percent to 690,000, and employment in Mexico's auto industry went up by 60 percent to 589,000, showing much faster growth overseas. Manufacturing has also experienced decline in private sector wages of 0.8% since 2009, with auto industry wages down 12.7 percent, says Rattner.