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Africa's Harrison Mwillima looks at Geman reunification from an African perspective of regional integration, and says unity should be an everpresent endeavour. Visiting cities in East and West Germany organized by DW's Africa department he is struck by how much East Germans feel left behind. Merkel herself grew up in East Germany but like many young people in 1990 left for the west and seemed to forget the east where they came from. He remembers the time when people from Angola , Mozambique and other African countries studied at universities in the German Democratic Republic, former east Germany,  and the sense of socialist solidarity that aroused much enthusiasm.  Mwillima says a sense of unity can only go so far if there is a lingering sense of inequality  between the two parts. He sees a distinct hunger to achieve unity among regions and peoples or countries. Yet 31 years later in Germany its not only worth pursuing this ideal but remembering that it has to be done as a natural and ever growing endeavor that is not just an event. ...

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Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia's leader for less than 2 years, is a courageous choice for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, says the Guardian. He has accomplished much in a short time with the peace arrangements with Eritrea, ending a 20 year old war, and opening up dialogue and discussion in the country by lifting bans on opposition groups. Half of the cabinet is female, and the head of the election commission an exiled dissident.  Yet the Guardian is cautiously optimistic because the change is sudden and dramatic, it needs to be consolidated for the long term. The Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front appointed him as leader to make these changes. What the Nobel Prize COmmittee has done is to recognize the hope that this brings to Africa, torn as it has been by recurring wars and ethnic conflicts for  way too long after the scars of colonialism. Can the positive changes in Asia provide new inspiration to Africa that this can be overcome and modernization, improvement in the lives of people happen as everyone each on his own account takes personal responsibility.   ...

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Adam Nossiter of the NYT describes the clearly presidential nature of Macron's appearences during the first month in office. First at the Louvre during the night election results showed him winning easily, and later in appearances at the G 7 summit meeting and at Versailles with the Russian president. This is in sharp contrast to the chatty, "little jokes" and other efforts of president Hollande that left people with the impression that he was not decisive and strong. The French presidency from the time of Charles De Gaulle by its very nature compared to the prime minister's position of England, requires a strong presence and decisive personality. Macron shows every intention of fulfilling that role. Observers have traced this to Macron being a research assistant to French philosopher Paul Ricoeur. Macron acquired a training at the end of the 1990's from Ricoeur, which emphasized the need for and virtue of a middle ground- that sees even the events of the French revolution in a different light, with the death of the king Louis XVI in 1793 as unnecessary. ...

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The Times takes a good look at Liz Truss, who she is, what are her good points and areas she will need to work on. It says Truss was ignored by Conservatives including Theresa May after  being brought in by Cameron as Environment Secretary in 2014. She comes from a intellectual family with her father a Math professor and her education at Merton College, Oxford University. She also had the opportunity to build on her economics and accounting background at Treasury, and at the Ministry of International Trade where she signed a number of trade deals for Britain.  What has changed her was her decision to learn and develop on her own after being ignored in the Conservative party. She shifted from Remain to becoming an aggressive supporter of Brexit and coming out decisively for Boris Johnson as prime minister.  She is willing to challenge the Treasury and others in the civil service when she feels she needs to. Her challenge says The Times is to develop the skills that are needed to work with others and take the country forward. One advantage she has is that she has confidence in her own experience and education to have strong personalities work in her team. Another quality that helps her is that she is not ideologically a conservative, so that she is willing to try new ideas to get the economy working and move Britain forward. And adding to that she has the depth that Cameron and Johnson lacked with her experience gained in parliament, at Treasury, in the International Trade ministry, and recently as Foreign Secretary. She may well be the underestimated candidate compared to a mostly predictable Sunak. ...

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Another clear warning from Britain under Boris Johnson the failures from that time could still affect the US if it copies Johnson. Krugman looks at Project 2025 that has received the backing of the former president. He points to one aspect of this blueprint for a Trump second term, how civil service would be overhauled to remove civil servants not meeting the requirements put forth by the new administration. He says this takes America backwards. Till 1883 when president James Garfield set up an independent civil service in the US people employed by the government were routinely chosen from the winning party leading to flaws and much instability, weak administration. In Britain this type of effort of Project 2025 was tried under Boris Johnson by using an adviser who wanted to blow up parts of the British civil service for not cooperating. That experiment failed badly and the adviser was fired with much recrimination, Johnson being discredited, and administrative failures. Project 2025 would shut down the Education Ministry and the Homeland Security Ministry, for even more upheaval of the civil service. Not to mention the proposal to reverse the founding of the central bank the Federal Reserve in 1909 under Woodrow Wilson that stabilized the economy after banking panics. These are clear dangers. ...

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As Kamala Harris offers $25,000 to home buyers to make it more affordable and sets up a $40 million Innovation fund to build more homes, sets a target of 3 million homes to be built, housing and cost of renting or owning is front and center of attention in 2024. Dougherty and Davis of NYT look at the US housing shortage and rising rents for apartments and homes. A look at Kalamazoo, Michigan, as a sort of microcosm of the US housing situation. Around the time of the 2009 financial crisis and aftermath when vacant homes on streets in many cities were being bulldozed and when there was more housing than people needed the seeds were being planted for today's shortage of homes. There was less interest from builders, there were restrictions on mortgages and higher down payments, capital was harder to get for builders, adding up to fewer homes being built. US demand was for 1.6 million units of housing, the supply was about 1.1 million over the next decade after 2009 leading to the buildup of a shortage of 5 million home supply. Covid changed some patters of housing behaviour. More people work from home with remote work. Then by 2022 mortgage rates were up making housing less affordable just when owners of apartments raised rents by 20-30 percent. In Kalamazoo up by 40%. ...

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"For all my grandfather's travels, he structured his life so that he was home in Plains to teach at Maranatha on Sunday. It was central to his life."

"Every time I went to church with him it was packed. The line started before sunrise and I was always very thankful that I got to walk in with my grandmother."

Josh Carter in his eulogy to his grandfather Jimmy Carter, a Southerner who lit a little candle in America in 1976.

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The 23rd Winter Olympics open in Pyeongchang, South Korea with 92 countries participating.For the first time the North and South Korean delegations marched under one flag. This is the result of policies pursued on the Korean peninsula by the North and South Korean governments to reduce tensions that increased the dangers of a conflict following repeated North Korean nuclear tests. The U.S. has responded with tougher sanctions coordinated with China. South Korea's president, Moon Jae-in sees this as an opportunity to engage North Korea in the direction of reduction of tensions, a policy he planned during his election campaign but cut short by worsening U.S. relations with North Korea.

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Robert Redford American actor and founder of Sundance Film Festival of Utah passed away at age 89 years in September 2025. He is remembered for giving independent films a start by develping the infrastructure for this in Utah. Redford started buying land in Utah early in his career as he realized that the Los Angeles area where he grew up was becoming congested and lacked green space with expanding development. Utah also offered him the wide open spaces in the mountains and an opportunity to work with independent films of artistic value. He worked with director Sidney Pollack and actors Paul Newman and Dustin Hoffman, Jane Fonda, in many popular films including- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting, The Way We Were, and Out of Africa. He also directed films such as The Ordinary People winning an Academy Award for direction.  After Van Nuys High School, he attended the University of Colorado on a baseball scholarship before dropping out. He spent time in Europe followed by study at the Pratt Institute in New York, and classes at American Academy of Dramatic Arts, which led to his acting in a Broadway play Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park in 1963.  Of films Redford never let the publicity affect him and cared little for being well known, preferring the wide open spaces of Utah exactly because he knew so little about the area and also because it felt like home not being so well known. Sydney Pollack sees Redford as representing a little bit of the American essence as it were, part of the old American landscape of the 1950's and 1960's, of the old heroic figures of that period in American history. ...

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New York Times readers respond to Drew Western's article in Sunday Review, NYT of August 7, 2011. Readers express disappointment with President Obama's lack of courage and initiative.

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Questions about the true cost of the Obama health care legislation and the assumption that the legislation cuts the deficit by billions of dollars. This WSJ editorial says one has to look at this closely, and not merely look at CBO projections, which may be based in a certain context and not reflect the true costs, especially because many accounting gimmicks and use of numbers to present a particular picture is taking place. The information this editorial cites is that: it uses 10 years of taxes to fund six years of subsidies, Social Security and Medicare revenues are double-counted to the tune of $398 billion, a new program funding long-tem care frontloads taxes but backloads spending, and the assumption of an automatic 25% cut to physician payments that Congress is unwilling to authorize. Rep. Rand Paul has tried to present an alternative view which needs to be studied just as closely, because of the enormous impact of a jump in spending at a time when the public finances are fragile. WSJ also cites the work of Richard Foster, the chief Medicare actuary, as an alternate perspective of how things could turn out, Doug Holtz-Eakin, and Eugene Steuerle. It calls for common sense in evaluating programs, entitlements, defense or other government spending. They not only cost money, but costs escalate over time as history has shown over decades, till they eventually are discovered to be not affordable unless the middle class is willing to dig deeper into its finances to pay for them. Alternate perspectives from a range of informed opinion, Howard Dean, Martin Feldstein, and the head of Harvard's Medical School show that the issue needs to be looked at closely and carefully and cannot be something in which CBO numbers can be trusted to tell the whole story. Especially when common sense, history, and informed opinion across a spectrum of thought advises caution, and fragile public finances also suggest caution. Howard Dean, former Governor of Vermont, says the health care bill is not real reform, and may do more harm than good. He says in a Washington Post article, December 17, 2009, the Obama health care bill does not insert competition into insurance markets, does not significantly reduce costs, and does not improve the delivery and use of health services. It was he says done with a political calculus and crafted for votes not real reform. Jeffrey S. Flier, Dean of the Harvard Medical School, gave the Obama health reform bill an "F" grade, saying in a Nov 18, 2009, WSJ article, that it was disingenuous to call this reform, Congress and the White House were simply deceiving the public. He said the bill will accelerate US health care spending, postpone most of the major health care problems, expecially the ones that drive cost, including the "fee for service" system and delivery of health care. He says in his discussions with economists and other health care leaders the opinion was unanimous that the bill will accelerate health care spending. He cites Massachusetts as an example, where access to care was expanded under the same dysfunctional system, and spending went up, and it doesn't work. Feldstein, who in early 2008 suggested proactive solutions to the mortgage debt crisis which were never adopted, says that the Obama health care law means higher taxes in the long run to pay for the $1 trillion cost of health care for the uninsured group over 10 years. Feldstein says that the Obama plan is to cut Medicare to cut spending, and will reduce the amount of medical services, as reduced spending comes from fewer services, not reducing payments to providers. And he asks if the cost reductions are weighted too heavily towards reduced services and not reduced payments to providers ,would this result in large cuts to services to affect the quality of healthcare for the 85% of the American people who are accustomed to a different pattern of healthcare. ...

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Milan will host the World Cities Culture Summit in 2020, and the Winter Olympics in 2026 shared with the Alpine town of Cortina. The international book fair of Turin is moving to Milan. The left of centre Mayor Giuseppe Sala has promoted the city to increase tourism by 50%. And foreign investment is increasing for new construction projects with $21 billion to be taken up in the next 15 years. Experts are asking if this is coming at a price as the rest of Italy has stagnated for 20 years, and the rural large city gap is increasing throughout Europe. The flow of professionals to cities such as Milan, Paris, Munich, Berlin, from other towns and cities is creating a huge shift that experts at the Centre of European Reform see as a problem because of the political turmoil, and rising inequality with ever widening gaps between smaller cities and towns and rural areas with the big cities. This is compounded by ageing and demographics such as seen in the eastern part of Germany, and parts of France. Experts call it The Big European Sort, where a sifting or sorting process is increasingly transforming the demographics of European countries and driving polarisation. This process is also happening in the U.S. Experts say the big cities benefitted from the change with the European single market and the European Union. Places where working class people live are not seeing and increase in wealth which is disproportionately going to professionals clustered in big cities. Deindustrialisation has turned places like Mezio only 20 miles from Milan into industrial ruins. Towns that once voted socialist are now voting far right in these hollowed out industrial places. In the U.S. and in Europe the process was exacerbated by the flow of cheap imports from Asia hollowing out factories in regions around big cities, and by the growth of services industry in big cities with globalization in finance, legal, and other professional services. Fro 1980 to 1995 Paris region lost about $5.5 billion in industrial output and gained $20 billion in services output that also aligns with globalization in areas such as finance, according to CER, Eurostat. The process had accelerated in 1995-2020. By telling this story about Milan and the Lombard region around it like Mezio, The Guardian is saying it is time to look at how everything works together rather than breaking apart- citing the Finnish architect Saarinen about how a chair fits into a room, a room into a house, and a house into its environment, an environment in a city. So the question is how can we build the future by seeing that the city fits into a region, and a region fits into a country. As a young professional described this on BBC television interview recently this is a difficult period with the ability to design the future seemingly snatched away by the times, but also an opportunity to rethink and take the actions today for a better tomorrow for all. This is part of the coverage on Cities in The Guardian looking at how cities can work, and how cities can become part of healthy regions, for organic growth. ...

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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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Donald Trump's campaign and the Republican National Committee raises $64 million in July 2016 through a digital and mailing effort that helps to bring in a large number of small donations- about two thirds of it. The fund raising effort for Trump brings a total of $82 million in July, just short of the $90 million raised by Hillary Clinton that month. Much of the digital fund raising effort was made possible by efforts made by the RNC to improve its mailing lists since the last presidential campaign. Many of the Trump donations are made from the Trump website buttons of $10, $25, $50, and by an offer to match this with Trump's own personal finances. Hillary Clinton is also ramping up her fund raising. Trump now has $74 million on hand, up from $1.5 million at one point, and Hillary Clinton has $102 million. For the Trump campaign that was far less organized than the Clinton campaign, this is an effort to catch up, though this comes quite late in the campaign with only 3 months left; with advertising rates higher, and not enough time to invest in digital and campaign infrastructure.  ...

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The second wave is here in Britain with Stage 4 "exponential" increase seen in Britain. Cases could rise four fold from over 4000 today, after rising four fold in the last month Aug 20- September 20, and that could make it reach 50,000 cases a day and 200 deaths a day. New restrictions include- Masks required in all retail stores and restaurants and public places. Businesses that breach rules could be closed or shut down. Pubs, bars and restaurants close by 10 pm and only table service. Weddings and receptions limited to 10 people. Individual fines for first time breaches doubled to 200 pounds. Adult indoor team sports not allowed. This is the first response. If infection rates are not down from the over 1 R rate and the transmission increases a national lockdown is considered as the next step. To not harm the economy and strike a delicate balance all who can work from home are encouraged to work from home.      ...

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David Reilly says the Fed's response to the large volatility in the stock market after the credit downgrade of the U.S. to AA+ makes sense. The Fed's Open Market Committee voted 7-3 on August 9, 2011, to keep interest rates exceptionally low till mid-2013. With credit markets working and the financial system having sufficient liquidity the Fed did not need to take drastic action. Coming only a short period after the end of QE II, a QE III could be seen as an over-reaction. Another reason for the Fed's action- more pressure was needed for the U.S. government and Congress to shoulder responsibility for the economy. In an earlier statement the Fed had pointed out that the Fed by itself can only do so much and this is consistent with that thinking. There are important headwinds from housing, large consumer debt, deficits, and high unemployment that the Fed alluded to in that statement that will take time to reverse with policy action on several fronts over a longer period. In the speech made on June 6, 2011, U.S. Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, said "monetary policy cannot be a panacea."...

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Caryn James provides an exceptional account of Robert Altman, iconoclastic director of M*A*S*H*, which came out in 1970, of Nashville, and a British period movie Gosford Park in 2001. His long career involved moments such as the one described in the currrent exhibit and documentary on Altman at the MOMA- he was fired by studio chief Jack Warner because "that fool has actors talking all the time." With M*A*S*H* the Altman style was estalished as anti-authoritarian, boisterous language, and the overlapping dialogue that so offended Jack Warner, irreverent attitude to established ways, and screenplays that invited improvisation. As Caryn James points out much of Altman's style has filtered through to a new wave of cinema directors, and into movies and television, to the point where it seems invisible. Ron Magliozzi, curator of the MOMA series, says of Altman that he comes across as such a maverick that people lose sight of his work in movies such as Gosford Park, a period piece where a story is told about a murder mystery on a English counry estate, a forerunner for Downton Abbey....

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By offering the prospect of higher returns in a low return environment venture capital firms are raising new funds at the highest rate in 15 years in 2016. Venture Capital firms have raised about $13 billion in the first quarter of 2016 from pension funds, endowment funds, and other sources, with about 50% of the funds going to about 7% of the total number of firms, according to Venture Source- including $2 billion to Accel Partners, other firms are Andreeson, Founders Fund, Kleiner Perkins. The returns for ten years from venture capital are about 11% compared to 6.8% for S&P 500 index, according to Cambridge Associates. Usually the fund capital raising lags behind market downturns. Much of the returns for some of the startups are not reflected in cash inflows with returns being large on paper, and startup financing has increased for firms, resulting in capital shortages and more fund raising in the industry.

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The Economist calls for more attention to efforts to promote growth in Europe and the U.S. in 2011. It describes as nonsense the policy of the European Central Bank to increase interest rates at a time when most European economies are struggling to increase growth. And more so when the ECB is busy buying Spanish and Italian bonds to support Spain and Italy.

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The background of Elena Kagan at Harvard Law School and her manner of navigating the internal politics of Harvard and dealing with the University head at the time, Obama economic advisor Lawrence Summers. The picture of an intensely motivated person who put in long hours to build rapport with Harvard Law faculty in her position as Dean of the Law School.

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Refinery owners are having ahard time selling refineries as demand for oil products declines. Wittner of Societe Generale estimates that European 5-2-2-1 crack spread , a proxy for refining margins will fall to average of $3.46 abarrel in 2009 from $6.53 in 2008. And refineries are laying off workers, and running them at a loss but with smaller production.

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The corruption inquiry in Turkey in 2013 on prime minister Erdogan and the AKP's ties to the construction industry. The rift between sufi preacher Fethullah Gulen, and the prime minister of Turkey, over policies that steer Turkey away from the west and the concentration of power in the AKP. Huseyn Gulerce, who is close to Gulen, says Gulen is critical of Turkey's drifting away from seeking membership of the European Union and not conducting democratic changes. Gulen and Erdogan worked together to bring the AKP to power in elections and reduce the military's influence in politics and government. Gulen left Turkey in 1999 after being accused of trying to turn Turkey into a Islamic state and has settled in Pennsylvania, U.S.. Erdogan is a one time Mayor of Istanbul, and critics say the construction industry business interests and Erdogan have ignored zoning laws to move ahead with haphazard development of the city pushing out old time residents. This was also a complaint of protesters in the summer 2013 protests in Taksim Square, Istanbul....