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Macron received 27% of the vote to 24% for Le Pen and 21.7% for Melenchon. Pecresse of the Republicans 4.7% and Zemmour on the far right at 7%.  If no candidate wins 50% of the vote there is a runoff on April 24  of the voters who voted for other smaller parties and how voters for former socialist candidate Melenchon respond in the runoff. French departments in the Caribbean, Atlantic and Pacific can vote. There are also 1.4 million overseas voters. Which all adds to an interesting mix that these Guardian color coded graphics provide an insight into to show voter sentiment in 2022. Le Pen continues to draw support from the northeast, southeast around Marseille, and rural regions in east and south with Zemmour drawing away some far right voters in the Marseille region. Some of these areas suffered as manufacturing shifted to China, as in the industrial midwest of the US. Some of this is also communities involved in the Yellow Vest protests about cost of living for working class voters. Macron draws support from the western and south west regions around the cities of Toulouse, Bordeaux, Lyon, and affluent areas of Paris that have gained during the Tech and advanced industrial revolution. This also includes rural areas. Melenchon as former socialist candidate draws support from less affluent suburbs of Paris and all parts of the country looking for a shift from power concentrated in the presidency. About 13.2% of the vote is for smaller parties,  showing the kind of fragmentation that happened also in Germany as the main parties the Socialists and the Republicans lost significant numbers of voters. Valerie Pecresse of Sarkozy's Republicans received only 4.7%, showing severe losses for the main parties. ...

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Saakashvili, the President of Georgia who was elected in 2004 has spent a lot of time in New York, as a waiter, as a student at Columbia Law School, and was elected at the age of 36, and runs an administration with a lot of 30 year olds. He says he has "American va;ues". HE also ran for election in 2004 on the platform of taking back the two ethnic Russian regions of Abhkazia and South Ossetia. Note also that the mountains near Abkhazi border the region around Sochi where Putin goes for vacation and likes to ski in the mountains and where the winter Olympics are to be held in 2014. He has also had run ins when he has talked to Putin saying he has western support for his position and has met with disdain from Putin. See th link to other articles in the New York Times about Putin's perspective on all this and how the two men share a dislike for one another which may have exacerbated Russia's response still further.

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This podcast in the WSJ takes up a Chinese startup Luckin Coffee that had major investors in the U.S. and China, including big banks in the U.S. and Europe.  The idea is simple- sell coffee in China to aspirational coffee drinkers following western lifestyles using mobile app. It is the story of huge investments and losses, and collapse of a NASDAQ listed company with what the WSJ investigation calls fabricated sales. Why are infrastructure and health, education products starved of capital left high and dry, while billions are poured into such investments with huge losses. All you need is this article in the WSJ of Sept 16, 2015, shown in today's articles. Showing forecasts of rapid growth of coffee consumption for an aspirational western lifestyle consumer in China, and a small mobile app investment to attract investors in a startup -if you refashion the coffee retail outlets as a tech company by selling coffee for delivery/takeout by mobile app. Luckin Coffee in China shown in the podcast in today's articles did this and attracted billions of dollars in investment from investors, including large banks and financial companies in Europe, U.S. and China, only to collapse in 2 years with losses and investigations in China and the U.S. Luckin Coffee soared after its NASDAQ stock exchange listing in 2018 only 1 year after its founding. WSJ calls it "brazen" the effort to add tech hype to a coffee company and have it listed on NASDAQ in just over a year, only to see its sales and value collapse just as quickly. $400 million in convertible bonds losing 90% of their value, the stock losing most of its value and NASDAQ delisting the stock after $311 million in fabricated sales were found as reported in the South China Morning Post. For U.S. investors the problem is that Chinese companies can list on the NASDAQ or other stock exchanges in the U.S., but U.S. investors cannot look at financial records of companies in China. Yet there are basic questions- why is it a tech company? Why are investors like big banks and other large financial investors pushing so much money into such places when there is so much that needs to be done in health and infrastructure investment, and real tech investment? 5G or 6G? Health systems? Ocean Grounds has a coffee store in Shanghai, Pacific Store has coffee retail outlets in China, and Starbucks is still in the business with retail outlets - remember none of these companies are tech companies. In 2017 Luckin Coffee started by making it look techy with a mobile app and refashioned itself as a tech company.  What is so big about a mobile app as there are hundreds of millions of apps. The rest came from making it look like Starbucks, right down to baristas, fancy coffee machines, and opening stores near Starbucks, according to the Podcast in the WSJ.The difference between Starbucks and Luckin Coffee - the price Luckin Coffee would sell for about $2 compared to about $4 for a Starbucks latte. Yet do this by pricing at closer to Starbucks and issuing promotions discounts constantly on the mobile app, that would bring the price to about $2. That is all it takes to make a tech company nowadays. No scientific research, no science and technology, no technical experience, nothing of the kind that led to the invention of the computer chip or the vaccines that are now being developed, or research activity of any sort. Banks, financial companies are willing to channel huge amounts of money into these places and lose it, as they did in We Work, and are doing at companies such as ride sharing app companies, as well as other app companies without any core technological component or value added such as infrastructure or health products. Only it is not the bank's money but the people's money and savings that are deposited at banks and channeled into investments. At the same time as investments in much needed infrastructure and health, education, services that really matter to us as a society, are neglected and starved of capital.     ...

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India decides not to join the China sponsored Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. India says it has significant issues in providing market access that would hurt Indian industry and agriculture. Prime minister Modi called it a question of conscience. All parties in India now oppose RCEP because of a fear of India being flooded with cheap Chinese imports. Japan and China, South Korea, all protected their local industry to give it catch up time to come up to western technological and production levels before allowing limited access to U.S. and Europe. The U.S. has reverted to protecting its industry from cheap Chinese imports by rejecting the Trans Pacific Agreement, showing that advanced industrial countries can also be hurt by cheap subsidized imports if they are not careful. Workers in less densely populated areas were worst affected statistics show. Lacking the voice of larger urban areas and tech industry they were ignored leading to the situation the U.S. and Britain face today of a working class set adrift. ...

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Fed Governor Kevin Warsh who is an investment banker and was an important participant in shaping the Fed's response to the credit market crises commented about the crisis and what lies ahead at a New York University conference. The credit crisis poses meaningful downside risks to the econmy and especially now as the crisis developes to small businesses and consumers he said suggesting that consumption spending is likely to take the next big hit. He sees credit replacing liquidity as the primary antagonist. For financial markets the curative process is unlikely to be swift or curative. Underscoring the problems ahead- he said we are fighting against the wind. The Fed does not know what to expect whats the next crisis around the corner, as each time things settled down in the last 6 months something else developed because of the crisis in confidence, the perception that the financial architecture itself is not working, and fragility of credit markets. Telling is his remark that a new financial architecture born of the forces of creative destruction is in the early stages of construction. More creative destruction lies ahead before all participants, the mortgage industry, political parties and poiliticians, lenders and financial institutions, homeowners, and the public can be persuaded that some sacrifice will be required of all and things that normally would not be palatable will have to be swallowed to help forge a solution that avoids a downward spiral....

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Economists score Geithner's performance an average of 51 out of 100, Obama's an average of 59, and Bernanke's 71. 42% of respondents scored Obama below 60.

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House Majority Leader Eric Cantor rejects the McConnell plan for raising the debt ceiling. Senate Minority Leader McConnell says on a conservative talk show- "all of a sudden we have co-ownership of a bad economy. That is very bad positioning going into an election." McConnell's plan is to shift the responsibility for raising the debt ceiling to President Obama, by separating debt reduction talks from debt ceiling talks. Cantor believes its best to push on with cutting back spending. Obama's response was to offer $1.7 trillion in spending cuts, at which point he expected Republicans to support tax increases, telling Cantor in negotiations "enough is enough." The McConnell plan is supported by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Republicans in the Senate. The details of the plan are being are being worked out, with one strategy being to add to it the $1.5 trillion in spending cuts identified in bipartisan talks with Vice President Biden. Both sides are looking at this jockeying for advantage for the 2012 election. At one point in the talks with Cantor, Mr Obama is reported to have told him- "Eric, don't call my bluff. You know I'm going to take this to the American people." Cantor for his part, wants to limit the duration of the debt ceiling increase so that it would be a short term extension and would come up for a vote before the 2012 presidential election....

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Galston says Hillary Clinton is right to say as she did at Roosevelt Island in her opening campaign speech, that "growth and fairness go together, for lasting prosperity, you can't have one without the other." Economic growth was at 4% for 5 of 8 years of the Clinton presidency, but in the 15 years since the economy has managed 3% only twice in the George Bush presidency, and fallen below 2.5% in the last 5 years. The high growth rate following World War II was a result of the increase in the workforce and productivity. The workforce increased by 2% annually between 1950 and 2000. Since then as female participation peaked and the baby boomers reached retirement age the workforce has increased by 0.7%, and is slowing to 0.5% annual growth for the next decade. Growth in productivity of 1.9% between 1991 and 2007, slowed to 0.4% after 2010. Galston tells the next president to go all out to increase the labor force- adopt family friendly policies similiar to Europe so more women can work, get more immigrants into the labor force, more elderly should be encouraged to work given the better health, reduce the college dropout rate to reduce incarceration and bring more young people into the labor force, get more people who qualify for disability but could work part time into the labor force, and emphasize the importance of increasing the labor force participation rate a policy being followed by the Federal Reserve's Janet Yellen....

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Meet Victor Brown, one of the remaining 450 workers at Buick City, GM's sprawling plants in Flint, where in the 1980's 27,000 workers built GM cars. Victor Brown of Clio, Michigan, and O.C. Cooper do not want to leave, and have repeatedly turned down buyout offers from GM preferring to stay with GM even if it enters bankruptcy, and take their chances. Since 2006, GM has persuaded 60,000 of its hourly employees- about half of the total hourly workforce at GM in the USA- to take cash buyouts and leave. Cooper says, this is the only life he knows, he is 64, a machine operator at Flint North, a run down engine plant in Flint, Michigan. Every day for the 42 years he has worked here, he gets up, washes up, and drives to the plant. He can't imagine anything else. If he leaves he will give up $60,000, for apension half that amount, with no guarantee that its secure after a GM bankruptcy. Victor Brown is 55, a repairman with 36 years at GM, he is divorced and putting a son through college. A year ago he and others turned down a buyout offer for $62,500 to retire with all benefits, now this is down to $20,000, and a car voucher for $25,000. GM needs an additional 21,000 jobs to be cut and closing of 13 plants in its latest restructuring under help and supervision from the Obama administration. ...

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Fiat's 35% stake in Chrysler was obtained not for a cash investment, but mainly in exchange for covering the cost of retooling a Chrysler plant to produce one or more Fiat models to be sold in the US. Fiat would also provide engine and transmission technology to help Chrysler introduce new fuel efficient small cars. This purchase would see the Cerberus 80.1% stake in Chrysler diluted. It would not affect the 19.9% of Chrysler that is owned by Daimler. As part of the Fiat deal Chrysler is supposed to restructure the $9 billion in debt it has on its books. Cerberus may lose billions on the deal, but it faces an even bigger hit if it is forced into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection or it continues running Chrysler into an even deeper slump in auto sales in 2009. The Fiat deal is the only thing that Chrysler has to show that it should keep the government loan of $4 billion and get additional funds if needed to keep the company runnning. Chrysler did not show any new models at the North American Auto Show in Detroit recently and has practically ceased product development. For Cerberus this is the exit plan and ends any prospect of making the Chrysler deal work. Cerberus acquired Chrysler by mortgaging all of Chryslers plants and assets for a $12 billion loan from a group of banks, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and Citigroup. ...

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The transformation of Fiat Auto. Marchionne relying on "my kids", getting good people throughout the Fiat global operations and outside of a younger generation, who were open to doing things in a new way. He had the courage to unassumingly go about the business of remaking Fiat, by removing middle and upper managers who produced a kind of paralysis or sclerosis in Fiat, making change impossible after years of a failed culture embedding itself. And in their place he brought in an energetic courageous bunch of younger managers and designers. It would be fair to say that he tore up the old plans, tore up the old organization charts, tore up the car plans and designs in the pipeline, tore up the failed models and put in place new ones- the Bravo for the Stilo, and tore up the old management, put in new people and tasks and wedded them in an informal way, with their own culture developing along the way. The were teams and their tasks, all wedded together in an informal arrangement, in close proximity, with informal communication. Marchionne saw his role as helping people reach decisions, setting stretch goals, and encouraging levels below him to take responsibility and make courageous decisions. He saw the Cinquicento as his version of the Apple iPod, and benchmarked Fiat against Apple, so he was looking outside the auto industry for people to emulate and for new ideas. He himself was from outside the auto industry. ...

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The Indian PC market is expected to grow rapidly from now on with growth of 30% a year. About 9 million PC's will be sold in India in 2007. Lenovo, Dell and HP and local maker HCL are all gearing up with extensive sales plans and product lines. The Indian market will see increased sales from larger companies and strong growth also from consumers and small business. In March HP opened a new factory near Delhi, and Lenovo will open a new plant in Baddi in northern India in july to make 2 million PC's, Dell opened a new factory in Chennai in August. HCL is partnering with Intel to make a lowcost PC called the Classmate. HCL once dominated the market but has lost market share to H-P as it made the mistake of being late in the notebook market, only introducing notebooks in 2005. H-P increased its market share by selling in smaller cities in India. H-P has 21% of the market compared to 13.5% for HCL in 2007, according to IDC estimates. Over the past 3 years prices have fallen from $500 to $350, if prices fall significantly again, and there is strong competition between Dell, HP, Intel, HCL, Sony, Acer and other makers, then one should see the Indian market really take off across the spectrum, from larger companies, to small business and the consumer....

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Research by Chief Marketing Officer Farley's research team found that Americans associate Ford with "on sale", "American" and of being"powerful", attributes that don't help Ford much in being loved by car buyers. What Farley wants car buyers to see in Ford is "Quality, Green, Safe and Smart." And that is where Ford is headed in its marketing campaign. Farley is from Toyota and knows a thing or two about saying the same thing that the dealers are saying. All of Ford advertising will be coordinated so dealers and Ford say the same thing. The new advertising campaign will focus on the line "Ford. Drive One" a line that Mullaly likes because he likes to say at every opportunity "Have you Driven a Ford Lately," another of the older Ford lines. Its about getting buyers to look at Ford. The new campaign was presented to the Board recently by Farley and takes Ford in a new direction It makes sense as it made sense for Toyota, to have a clear message, a clear idea about what you stand for and what people to think of you, and to say it with one voice whether dealers, or Ford the company in Dearborn, Michigan, or other Ford related organization. The 4000 Ford dealers will now have hands on discussions with Dearborn about what they are seeing and what should go into the advertising and monitor the progress as this effort which may go on for several years takes place....

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How to deal with Bush era tax cuts is a big issue dividing Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. If no deal is reached by Jan 1. taxes on the average middle income family would increase by $2000 in 2013. Median inflation adjusted income declined 8.9% to $50,054 in 2011 from $54,999 in 1999, and economic mobility has fallen. The Democrat's position is for Bush tax cuts to apply to incomes below $250,000. Peter Orszag of the Congressional Budget Office and Jared Bernstein point out that while this makes the tax code move in a progressive direction it also creates handicaps in providing a sufficient revenue base to support middle class spending programs down the road. According to the Tax Polcy Center, if Congress is unable to reach agreement and all tax increases go into effect Jan 1, taxpayers in the bottom 20% of income distribution would see a $412 increase in taxes compared to an increase of $633,000 for the top 0.1%. New York Mayor Bloomberg has supported eliminating the Bush tax cuts for all groups, saying there is no free lunch. Alan Krueger, head of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, says the trends caused by globalization and skill-biased technological change which have increased inequality are likely to continue or accelerate. ...

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Ayn Rand's philosophy. She writes in "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" - "Economic crises and runaway government power grabs don't just happen by themselves; they are the product of the philosophical ideas prevalent in a society, particularly its dominant moral ideas." Rand says the message in our society is always "selfishness is evil; sacrifice for the needs of others is good." But Rand's message is selfishness rather than being an evil is a virtue." Adam Smith wrote about this but in adifferent way, saying that man looks to people around him and is looking for the respect of his peers, this itself is a needed good, something that men and women need badly, the respect and esteem of their peers. For this reason they temper their selfish actions for the common good, or this motive can be tapped for the common good to emerge from self interested actions. The question and the answer not like Rand's which is categorical, is put by Smith in the context of how a man views his actions, and what is best in his enlightened self interest. The answer depends on the values in a society at a particular time, because if everyone is pursuing this self interest by distorting things so that he can pretend to himself that he is doing something for an enlightened motive when there are the crasses motives behind it, like Mr Mozilo of Countrywide promoting mortgages for the poor and unqualified, and society or his peers don't call him to account, or others of more respectable background like Mr Thain and Mr Rubin and many others do the same in nore fashioable ways, then the whole fabric of society is corroded. When the fabric of society is corroded then it doesn't matter which philosophy is held, Marxist, libertarian, free enterprise, right or left as used up terms, because its moral underpinnings which are the only true support are corroded. This may be the reason Smith wisely talked about this in somewhat moral undertones such as winning the respect of peers in society for what you do, given that society had the moral element built into it its mores, customs and ways. This is the difference between Smith and Rand, and Smith and Marx, and Smith and other philosophies that are categorical and rigid. That Alan Greenspan was a member of the Collective or group that was closely associated with Rand, and with Rand's philosophy, may have put blinkers or concealed things from him, which he might have seen if not biased by such views of categorical and rigid nature about the virtues of laissez fairre capitalism in all situations. Reagan's admiration for Rand also may have created a bias in favor of laissez fairre capitalism, when what was needed was an effort to avoid excesses in the other direction of state involvement, without getting tied down to some rigid philosophy that might seriuously impair one's ability to respond in a very different situation of excess in another direction, of individuals promoting their self interest to the ruin of the economic fabric of American society....

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How GM is seeing the value of new technologies not just for their value in commercialization but in the value in brand image. To be seen as the innovation leader does a lot for brand image and this does a lot for selling cars across a whole lineup which does't remotely use that technology. This is the case with hydrogen fueled cars and GM is now taking this challenge seriously. Refueling remains an issue but all untested technologies have to start somewhere and GM wants to be seen as an innovator from now on.

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Pope Francis is strongly critical of the manner in which the capitalist system has functioned in recent decades, increasing inequality, and hurting the marginalized, the working class and poor. Pope Francis tells people during his visit to the poorest countries in Latin America, Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay, that the Catholic Church committed grave errors during the period of Spanish colonialism by allying with the ruling classes and creating great inequalities and suffering. The director of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic studies at Catholic University of America, Stephen Schneck, says the Pope is reflecting a century of activism on social issues since the Pope Leo XIII encyclical in 1891, calling for social and economic fairness for labor, with the encyclical "Rerum Novarum" - or "On the Condition of Labor." The Pope's message in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, to nearly 2000 social activists, farmers and trash workers, neighborhood activists, was that change has to come from grassroots, that the local communities have acquired the knowledge which is valuable to act for economic and environmental betterment. He praised cooperatives and local organizations that enhanced the value of labor. His message resonates say Catholics because he has stayed in close contact with local communities, and the poor, working class people in Argentina. It is focussed on empowerment of local communities. In Bolivia the left government has adopted measures that attract foreign capital and investment, so that it is a model that stays away from socialist ideology, while at the same time embracing the grassroots idea of empowering local people and communties. In this way it has improved living standards in Bolivia and received favorable ratings in capital markets....

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The story of the Vanguard 500 Index Fund's founding in 1976, and the inspiration from Nobel Laureate economist Paul Samuelson, is told by founder John Bogle. On August 31, 1976, the first index mutual fund, First Index Investment Trust was born. It was launched by Bogle at Vanguard. The idea he put forth was that passive index management could outperform active management with its fees, load, commission and other costs. The IPO target was $150 million, but the underwiritng resulted only in $11.3 million. The underwriters suggested cancelling the deal, saying that this was not enough to own all 500 stocks in the S&P 500 Index. Bogle's response was just the opposite- he now had the world's first index mutual fund. Here Bogle talks about the early inspiration. His senior thesis at Priceton University in 1951, in which Bogle broached the idea that mutual funds could not say they were superior to market averages, received support from Samuelson. This was followed by the article 23 years later by Samuelson in "Challenge to Judgement," an article in the Journal of Portfolio Management in summer 1974, that stated: "that some large foundation set up an in-house portfolio that tracks the S&P 500 Index." Bogle took up the challenge and offered well diversified funds at minimal costs, with a focus on the long term investment. Writing in Newsweek in August 1976, Samuelson said that his prayer had been answered. Bogle describes how his inital encounter working with Samuelson's "Economics: An Introductory Analysis," was difficult. He barely made a C-. In 1993 Samuelson offered to write the foreword on Bogle's first book- "Bogle on Mutual Funds." The relationship lasted 61 years!...

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Fomer U.S. Census Bureau officials Gordon Green and John Coder released a study by the firm Sentier Research. The study looks at two groups of Census data from 2005-2007 and 2008-2010, which has information on interviews with 3.5 million households for each period. The study shows 38 states with household income declining. The losses in income are greatest in the midwestern states affected by the loss of manufacturing industries. Incomes fell by 5.7% in the midwestern region of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin. Oil, shale and other energy producing states- Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas- saw incomes rise by 0.3% from 2007 to 2010. This report looks at pretax income levels in 2010 dollars for all 50 states and 297 metropolitan areas. Michael Greenstone, professor of environmental economics at MIT, says the regional shocks from the economic crisis can last for a couple of decades. The Midwestern states showed median annual household household income decrease by 4.7% to $49,710 and the Southern states showed a drop of 2.5% to $47,389. Nationally for the U.S. the drop in annual median household income from 2007 to 2010 was 3.5% to $51,287. Another finding of the study was that of the top ten metropolitan areas with the highest percentile of incomes, nine were in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey, a region where the financial industry is based. Silicon Valley in California comes in at No. 10 in this list of metropolitan areas. In terms of growth of households reflecting migration patterns and new families the Mountain States of Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, and Nevada did as well as the oil patch states of Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma, showing an increase in households from 2007 to 2010 of 5.8%....

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The return of the old Mubarak regime, with the bureaucracy, military and provincial loyalists supporting Mr. Shafiq as the presidential candidate. Shafiq was former commander of the Egyotian Air Force, the same branch of the military to which Mubarak belonged. The driector of the Carter Center in Egypt, Sanne Van Den Bergh, says the Egyptian military and government had imposed the most severe restrictions on independent election monitors compared to any other election it has monitored. Monitors could not stay at a polling station for more than 30 minutes, were not accredited in advance, and were not allowed to observe the totalling of votes at Cairo headquarters. Levinson describes how the old Mubarak regime loyalists and the military planned the operation. He describes how this has similiarities to what happened earlier, when the Mubarak regime under pressure from the Bush administration made openings by allowing the Muslim Brotherhood to contest elections and then clamping down to maintain control. The entire old system of the Mubarak regime, in business, the military, the bureaucracy, and in the provinces, with all loyalists owing their jobs and economic prospects to the regime, remains intact and has not changed since the democracy protests in 2011 and parliamentary elections. It has not made the transition to a new democratic process in Egyptian life, and has little to lose from making an effort to return to the old regime. With the military remaining above the constitution and run by members of the old Mubarak regime, democratic processes have fragile prospects. With the failure of the old regime to generate the economic opportunites and investments needed in agriculture and industry, the problem is how Egyptians can build an economic future, the alternative being falling further behind each year....

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Lee Cheuk-yan, chairman of the pro-democracy Labor Party, describes the 17 year old Wong and young people in high schools to a crowd in Hong Kong in this way- these are very young faces, the old men in Hong Kong including many in the elite who dared not to speak up for Hong Kong's cherished traditions and rights out of caution will die, but these young people will carry on. Wong started the group Scholarism as an internet based movement to fight the 2012 "patriotic classes" plan of the Communist Party and Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying. That movement took hold in Hong Kong and the government had to shelve the plan. This time he is fighting for universal suffrage in Hong Kong in 2017 with the right to elect its own leaders without prescreening by the Communist Party. This is in the spirit of the Basic Law, former Hong Kong Governor Chris Patten tells the BBC. Patten helped negotiate the transfer agreement for Hong Kong and handled the transfer in 1997. In August 2014 China changed this intent leading to protest demonstrations. Wong is of Protestant parents who helped stir in him a sense of opposing social injustice. Beyond Hong Kong there is something else at work- a sense that the new leaders in Beijing are choosing the Putin Way that sees these demonstrations as inspired by foreign forces and treating all NGO's as foreign agents. In a larger sense the old leaders are living in a past world of territorial gains and keeping tight grip on power, when the world is now interdependent economically and politically, with change requiring new approaches to problems. The presence of 15 year old high school students and very young generation suggests no such foreign interference, as most of these students are very young....

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A major shift in public opinion happened between 1990 in the public's perception and tolerance of gay people and gay marraige. Support for gay marraige in Journal/NBC News polling shows young people, especially people 18-34 year old, were leading the way. In this group support for gay marraigne increased from 47% in 2009 to 57% in 2012, going up to 74% in March 2015. The increase is also shown in suburban residents, political independents, Midwesterners and Hispanics. A key factor in the change is that many people now know of one person in their work or personal lives who is gay. Technology, television and internet media also helped changed attitudes. In 1990 7 of 8 Americans said sexual relations between the same sex were wrong. In 2004 only 3 of ten Americans supported same sex marraige. A vote in Maine shows the dramatic shift- in 2009 same sex marraige was rejected by 53%, in 2012 53% approved it. The change in attitudes is faster than happened for miscegenation, which took 30 years after the Supreme Court ruled against anti-miscegenation laws to reach a point where a majority of Americans approved marraiges between black and white people. The Supreme Court's 5-4 decision on June 25, 2015, now makes gay marraige legal in all 50 states, and strikes down bans in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Yet there are a significant number of Americans who do not favor same sex marraige especially in southern states such as Texas, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama. A Pew Research Center poll shows 73% of white evangelical Protestants do not approve of same sex marraige. Other groups who do not favor same sex marraige in the Pew polling are conservatives and persons born before the post World War baby boom. ...

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The politicians in Japan are seen as aself-selecting elite, not just the LDP which has been the party in power for mostly all the post war years, but also the Democratic Party of Japan. Mr Ozawa the DPJ leader was from the LDP, and the new leader Hatoyama's grandfather was an LDP founding father. The LDP prime minister is Mr Aso whose grandfather was Shigeru Yoshida, a prime minister after the war. Mr Hatoyama and another DPJ leader are defectors from the LDP, and both have large family fortunes, as do many LDP leaders. Mr Hatoyama has abrother in the current cabinet. And LDP olitical families treat seats in the paliament the Diet, as inheritable sinecures. Actually half of the current cabinet of Mr Aso are offspring of former politicians. So the Economist is pessimistic about the prospects of real change and fresh ideas for Japan from this crowd of politicians. It sees the need for new ideas. The economy has seen asharp decline in exports. Companies like Toyota are seeing a drop in sales. Government debt is twice the annual output, larger than Italy's. Export led growth which was the basis of recovery since 2002 has crumbled. The demographics estimates show that Japan's working age population will fall fastest as its overall population drops significantly in coming decades. This makes the schemes of the LDP like sending back immigrants of Japanese descent to Brazil with no chance of return as a particularly nutty in the light of the demographics. Leaving change to Mr Hatoyama and Ozawa of the DPJ now makes the prospects of new ideas just as elusive as before. And the public is just as disillusioned, considering the very low ratings of Mr Aso and other politicians....