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BBC says "tech's seedy side exposed" by Musk- Altman trial 2026. Let's face it there is a seedy side, and a much less benevolent side to Tech than it likes to show. The overspending on AI is a sign of misplaced priorities when so much of US infrastructure is dilapidated, much of it from before 1945, that badly needs to be rebuilt. Much of the promise of hardware from Tech that would change education is a failure so much so that Sweden is shifting on a nationwide effort in its schools to a program - "from screens to binders" that gives children binders with notebooks to write in and books to read, removing screens altogether, and for good reasons of the educators of Sweden. Tech in its grandiose style pretends it is about the technological revolution when it is simply the companies Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, three of which are from the last 15 years. The technological revolution and the scientific revolution date back to Copernicus and Newton and the hundreds, thousands of scientists and pioneers of the industrial revolution of the last 250 years, and the men of vision and wisdom that gave us the British and American Constitution, the principles of self-government of civilized societies. ...

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CSU faculty organized against OpenAI contract expiring June 2026 at a time when students/faculty worry about loss of critical thinking skills amid 40% unemployment of new graduates. This is the California State University System once a major national institution of education under Governor Edmund Brown Sr in the 1960's that powered the 60's middle class, now torn apart by mistakes in higher education. Imagine Teniente-Matson in an AI created form speaking in many languages not realizing that this has little to do with education, as shown here in the NYT- coming to San Jose State from Texas A&M San Antonio. Both Hispanic student dominated institutions of education that have first generation Hispanics entering college- the promise of this first generation finding opportunities in the US economy. It is already fading for new graduates with high unemployment of 40%. The AI Initiative pushed by Governor Newsom in the state has created confusion or chaos says the NYT. This is the biggest 4 year public higher educational system in the US with 22 campuses, with diversity in California about 50% Hispanic. This is what "great" looked like for America in the 1960's with Eisenhower and JFK. Today with such misplaced initiatives and lack of the same wisdom and dedication to knowledge from that in the 1950's and 60's it is a fraction of its former self. It was marketed at $16.9 million for 500,000 licenses by OpenAI as a way for these first generation Hispanic college students most working class people to move forward. But as every commencement speech and everyone from the president to business leaders can attest it is all about hard work, hard work, hard work, and focus on reading and math, on sound basic skills, with pen and paper not ipads and iphones and AI that this job will be done. AI can never teach someone to persevere, to overcome obstacles, to put in the hard work over and over again to accomplish great things or to develop the curiosity for knowledge, the sense of new discovery  for scientific knowledge and invention that has powered America and Europe for three centuries. ...

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The NASDAQ Internet Index is up 46% in April 2014 over the past year, even though it was down 12% in March-April 2014 as investors grew wary over high price rises for stocks in the "cloud," "big data" and "social" fields. Investors turned to old tech stocks such as Microsoft which were seen as value stocks because of lower price and valuations. Gallagher suggests watching the IPO market for signals of where this market is headed. In the 1st quarter 2014 companies raised $10.6 billion in the U.S., the busiest quarter since 2000. 103 companies submitted initial IPO filings in the same quarter. Venture Capital has invested $29.4 billion in 2013, an increase of 7% from 2012, according to MoneyTree Report. Even though the NASDAQ Composite Index is down 5% over the last 30 days, Gallagher points out that the NASDAQ has witnessed 4 drops of about 10% since 2010.

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Sanae Takaichi press conference with DJT at White House March 19 2026- there is no mention of Japanese help with clearing Straits of Hormuz. US Japan relations after the meeting of Takaichi and DJT at the White House appear to be in good shape. Japan will invest $73 billion in US investment projects in 2026 as part of the $550 billion commitment made at the time of the US Japan trade deal in 2025 under the previous LDP prime minister. Takaichi is coming with strong support in Japan after winning a landslide victory in the general election. Japan's main concern is the belligerent North Korea and China's posture in Asia as it relates to Taiwan. Agreements were reached on critical issues- to develop alternative supplies of critical minerals, to rebuild the shipbuilding industry which US and Japan had given up after dominating it for most of the 20th century. This is critical to ensure open navigation on the oceans of the world. Agreements on high tech and AI, and agreement to purchase Alaskan oil to cut Japan's 90% dependence on volatile Middle East supplies. Japan has managed Middle East supply by keeping over 254 days of inventory but this looks to be very risky as Germany learned from its dependence on Russian oil which went in the wrong direction under Merkel. Japan has released about 18% of its total reserve amount of the 254 days inventory (146 days in national reserves and 101 days in private mandated reserves). It uses 3.14 million barrels a day in 2026 down from 5.8 million barrels a day in 1996, using about half today through conservation and using renewable energy showing the potential for the US and Europe. Germany has cut oil consumption by a third in comparison from 2.9 mbd in 1996 to 2.0 in 2026. And the US remains stagnant with oil demand highest in 2005 at 20.5 mbd and 20 years later at 20.5 mbd mainly because 14mbd or 70% goes to cars and trucks on the road for 347 million people over continental spaces (compared to 297 million in 2005) for a reduction of oil use of 15%. ...

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India's ruling BJP party wins 103 seats and is leading in one more seat in the 2018 Karnataka state assembly elections. This compares with 40 seats in the last election in 2013. The Congress party won 78 seats down from 122 seats in the 2013 election. A regional party Janata Dal won 37 seats. 113 seats are needed to have a majority and form the next government. The elections here could influence the national elections in 2019. India's tech city of Bangalore is the capital of Karnataka state. For the BJP Party is was critical to win the state as it prepares for the national elections in 2019 to advance its rapid infrastructure development program in India, and increase foreign investment in India's economy.

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Twitter has grown since its founding in 2006, to emerge as a social media platform by 2012. Its growth is during the same period that the smartphone made its entry- the iphone in 2006 and the android phone in 2008. The short form of 140 characters works well on a mobile smartphone. It was much easier to type in the 140 characters into a smartphone than into earlier phones. Its adaptability to the smartphone and the spread of smartphones everywhere gave it tens of millions of users.  Jack Dorsey who founded Twitter tries to develop a longer form through a startup Medium and does not himself believe that the short form provides a medium for thoughtful expression. By 2016 it forms the basis of president Trump's campaign against both the establishment in the Republican and Democratic parties.  By the time of the Joe Scarborough fact check of president Trump's comments on Twitter in May 2020 so much has become muddled up that the WSJ editorial while calling the comments nasty, says the fact check itself has bias. Mr. Trump says conservative voices in the Republican party are silenced.  By institutionalizing the short form the tech platforms and tech companies have built their own structures on the decline in cultural and other literacy in America, Europe and in other countries.   ...

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Vindu Goel of the NYT gives this report on IBM's expansion in India including an interview with Vanitha Narayanan, chairman of IBM India. In 2017 IBM had 130,000 employees in India, at operations in Pune, Calcutta, Chennai and Bangalore and other cities, double that in 2007. The U.S. operations have about 100,000 employees. As IBM's revenues have declined with technology disruptions, it has concentrated on expansion in India with its vast base of knowledge workers and costs of about one half to one fifth of what it would cost in the U.S. IBM has 380,000 employees worldwide, with 26% in the U.S. and 34% in India, and 40% in other countries. Microsoft employs 8000 employees in India and 124,000 total worldwide, Google has 1800 in India and 72,000 worldwide.  IBM removed operations in India in 1978 after a dispute with the Indian government. In 1993 it started operations in India in a joint venture with Tata. By 2004 the operations had expanded and IBM took full control. A $750 million 10 year contract was signed in 2004 with an Indian phone company Bharti Airtel. As Goel points out the shift is happening towards expansion in India with the growing demand from industry and government in India. The Watson venture has expanded in healthcare in India with contracts including one with Maniphal Hospitals. In 2016 this had reached $38 billion in hardware and software, services, to Indian industry and the government agencies. IBM's work is not simply in offsourced work from American companies. High tech and cutting edge research is also taking place and expanding. IBM is now uniquely positioned to get an expanding share of the business as more tech services are provided to the hundreds of millions of people in India who did not have access to tech and tech services before. Research concentrates on doing this at a fraction of the cost and in new ways suited to the local region, so that services can be delivered with a wider reach. This report provides a new perspective on how the next decade could see American companies with a long term focus take advantage of the rapid growth in the fastest growing large economy in the world, with advantages for both the U.S. and India. ...

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This editorial page opinion in The Economist says the increasing concentration in business is a real problem today. It says tech companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon are entrenching through acquisitions of smaller companies and startups leading to an unhealthy level of concentration, and control of entire markets. More competition is needed so that startups and smaller companies can grow, and new ideas or ways of doing things get a chance. A big problem is tax avoidance with individuals paying taxes like everybody else, and large tech companies like Google and Apple having the option to not have to pay just like everybody else. It calls for a "tough-but-considered" approach to tax avoidance. Its not that the money saved in taxes goes back to support millions of people hired by the industry through workers wages and future investment that builds a future for workers and the company. It cites figures showing 1.2 million employed in the top 3 carmakers in the U.S. auto industry in 1990, and only 137,000 employed by the top 3 companies in Silicon Valley including Apple and Google with capitalization of about $1 trillion.This contributes to a sense of unfairness that is being expressed in voter sentiment in the 2016 elections, especially with the wide divergence in the way that the top 45 percent has done in net worth of over $400,000 in 2013, after the 5% which is in the millions, and the bottom 50 percent at average overall net worth of $25,000 in 2013. A huge disparity that  U.S. Federal Reserve chairwoman Yellen, who cited these figures at a Boston Fed conference in Oct. 2014, says is "near their highest levels in the last one hundred years and probably much higher than for much of American history before then."  ...

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WSJ points out that the wealthiest 400 billionaire families in America pay only 8.2% in taxes on federal individual income taxes between 2010 and 2018, not the 3% it says president Biden has said. The average income tax rate in 2020 was about 14% says the WSJ. For higher incomes it was about 25%. All this happened while infrastructure, education and health remained woefully underfunded, with Tech companies egregious behaviour in not paying their fair share of taxes and massive misallocation coupled with low productivity of capital invested compared to infrastructure. 

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Analysts and mutual fund managers say the declines in the U.S. stock market in April 2014 focussing on tech and biotechs is healthy, as values of tech stocks and biotech stocks had gone up too fast. The pause in the market and even declines of 5-10%, as funds shift money to safer consumer, pharmaceutical and neglected large cap stocks, is likely to set the stock market up for further gains in the latter part of 2014, according to many analysts and mutual fund managers. Unlike 2000 and 2007 there are no similiar bubbles in the market, and the pause has helped clear some of excesses which is seen as beneficial, say fund managers.

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The increase in the Nasdaq Composite Index to 4000 by November 2013. In contrast to the period in 1999 the Nasdaq Index now has companies in the Index in a broader number of tech fields including medical technology, pharmaceuticals and consumer. Tech companies in the Index now have reliable tested products and generate significant revenues and profits. Apple has 8.02% representation in the Nasdaq Composite Index. Other companies are Microsoft with 5.15%, Google 4.80%, Amazon 2.88%, Intel 1.95%, Qualcomm 2.09%, Gilead, 1.88%, Amgen 1.42%. The Index is more diversified in 2013. B/E Aerospace and First Solar are part of the Index. About 13.5% are in Health Care technologies, including Celgene and Myriad Genetics. And 7.1% in Telecom, including SBA Communications. Priceline, Amazon are part of consumer internet companies in the Index. Tech based companies make up only 45% on the Index Composite compared to 66% in 1999, with these companies on stronger revenue and profit footing and not bid up speculatively as they were in 1999....

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Internet company valuations and IPO's in mid- 2012 reach the frenzied levels before the the tech bubble burst in 2000-2001.

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The old adage of people retiring well on stocks of essential household purchases held to retirement such as P&G turns out to be true. Tech stocks fell from grace in 2022. For the three worst years of the pandemic 2019 -2021 tech stocks such as Google and Amazon gained over $4 trillion. In 2022 Tech stocks lost about $3 trillion WSJ graphs show in this report. America has changed profoundly during this pandemic and frothy or frivolous anything is bad news.

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HP splits in two in October 2014 separating the PC and printer business from its tech services and corporate hardware operations. The will create two companies with the idea that the 2 businesses are better managed separately.

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All you need is this article in the WSJ of Sept 16, 2015, 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 and 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. 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. 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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Nagourney and Dougherty of the NYT give this report on the housing crisis in California by 2017 with the median cost of a home skyrocketing to twice the figure for the U.S. This price is now $500,000. The result is longer commutes even for people with incomes over $150,000 a year, stretching to as much as 2 hours one way. It means people lacking housing stay in vans with improvised kitchens and other sleeping arrangements. Not enough homes are being built because of strict zoning and planning regulations that are kept in place by neighborhood groups, effectively excluding outsiders. Now its not just the coastal areas that are affected but the whole state. Governor Brown of California tried to pass a measure in 2016 that would push communities to build more affordable housing, and ran into opposition from local officials and environmentalists. Now the opinion in the state is changing with younger people denied a chance at decent housing at the forefront and some elected officials such as the Mayor of Los Angeles, Mr. Eric Garcetti. A new bill in the state legislature would make it harder for cities that are falling behind in building housing to lose the right for City Council to hold back on approval of new construction, effectively bypassing it. California's law capping property taxes after Proposition 13 was passed in 1978 has also held back construction. Other factors are the building of new offices for  companies in the tech boom around San Francisco without a corresponding effort to build new homes for these new office workers. California was slow to respond to housing needs for young people, with only 311,000 housing units built since 2006. ...

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Experts compare the performance of two states with thriving economies California and Texas, but run by governors who are different, one passionately liberal Democrat and the other passionately conservative Republican. The Texas economy is slowing following the drop in oil prices. The Dallas Fed has lowered the forecast for growth in Texas to 0.5%-1% from the 1.5% rate projection. This compares with a growth rate of 3.4% in 2014. During the economic downturn following the financial crisis of 2008, Texas was lucky to have laws that prevented the kind of housing bubble that happened in California. It also benefitted from high oil prices. California has recovered from the worst effects of the crisis with unemployment dropping from 12% in 2011 to 6.3% in 2015, and half million jobs added in the last 12 months. Many of the jobs are in the higher paying tech sector. Critics point to the weakness in education and lower paying jobs in Texas. Texas has diversified ite economy since the 1980's, with about 13% of the state's GDP from the oil and gas industry in 2015 compared to 19% in the earler period. ...

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Mark Hulbert points to the comparison of financial ratios in Dec 1999 when the Nasdaq Composite Index reached 4000, with the situation in November 2013 when the Index again crossed 4000. He cites the changes from P/E ratios for trailing earnings at 30 in 1999 compared to 20 in 2013 for the Nasdaq Index, Shiller cyclically adjusted P/E ratios at 44 in 1999 compared 24 in 2013, Price/Book ratios at 5.1 in 1999 compared to 2.6 in 2013, and Price to Sales ratios at 2.4 in 1999 compared to 1.6 in 2013. The broad market could still be overvalued says Hulbert, but the Nasdaq index shows tech companies not speculatively driven up in the way they were in 1999.

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Many of the companies from the dot com tech bubble of 1999-2000 which were given $1 billion valuations went out of business, including names like Webvan and eToys. The same buble behaviour is evident in 2012 as many companies such as Facebook, Pinterest, Evernote, have $1 billion valuations, similiar to 2000. This is asignal that valuations may have spun out of control. It takes a few deep pocketed investors to raise the valuation of startup internet companies to these untested companies.

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Technology is reshaping the world of oil by 2018. The U.S. Permian Basin stretching from West Texas to New Mexico now produces more oil than the UAE and is likely to soon surpass Iran- production is at 3.1 million barrels a a day. There are as many rigs as in 2011 yet the production has tripled because of the use of high tech rigs that can move quickly to new locations over wide areas and with tech that can see hundreds of feet into the rock. By 2019 the U.S. will surpass Russia as the world's largest producer of oil. The drop in oil prices to about $40 a barrel in recent years is a result of Saudi efforts to block shale oil development by lowering prices. This has not worked. Initially some high cost producers exited the industry and the shale industry suffered. Over time the new technologies spurred by lower oil prices have led to the anticipated drop in cost. Shale oil can now be produced by core producers at $40 a barrel and still be profitable according to this WSJ report. All Middle Eastern countries cannot meet budget needs at $40 a barrel. In 2018 oil prices increased back up to $77 a barrel. In the next wave of declining prices the shale industry is better positioned than the OPEC countries.   ...

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The Asian-American voters are significant in some states such as New Jersey 7% of voters, Nevada 9%, Minnesota 3.1%, and California 15%. Compared to the 2012 election this is the fastest growing demographic up 16%. With lower immigration from Mexico this is likely to continue for several decades. Nationally it is 4% but growing rapidly. The Asian-Americans come from countries such as India, China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines. Seib says Trump has lost as many Asian-Americans as he has gained whites who chant "build that wall," by using such rhetoric. The Asian Americans are about 48% moderate and about 23% liberal, 19% conservative. Many are in the tech and white collar fields, in the suburbs of major cities including the South. Its this location that can make them an important influence. The Democratic Party has reached out to these generally better educated voters, who have heard about building that wall with unfavorable views- 40% saying they would vote against a person with "anti-immgrant views" regardless of what the other issues are. The early 2016 poll done by the Asian and Pacific Islander Vote project shows 61% having unfavorable views of Trump and 61% having favorable views of Clinton in 2016.   ...

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Kessler in the WP corrects Obama's claim that he created 800,000 jobs. He says this is clever arithmetic as it takes a low point in Feb. 2010 following the financial crisis. Kessler points out that according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. manufacturing jobs were 12.56 million in Jan. 2009 when Obama became president. In Nov. 2016, early estimates show there were 12.26 million manufacturing jobs, a loss of 300,000. This loss does not reflect the problems in the U.S. auto industry and older industries in the midwestern states as a result of trade and globalization that speeded up with the rapid industrialization of China. And led as Greg Ip pointed out in a recent WSJ report to a rapid acceleration of job losses in a decade that did not happen in the same scale during Japan's industrialization and urbanization in the sixties. This aggravated the situation in Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, and was met with a feeble response from Democrats. Even a economist like Krugman favoring the Obama administration's efforts came to the conclusion that TPP did not add much to gains from trade as most of the gains had already been realized. More of the gains went to tech and IT in California, at the expense of the auto industry based in the midwest. A report in WP show a president too close to IT in California and failing to grasp the situation in the midwest. Voters punish whoever is in power, regardless of being Conservative or Liberal, in Canada the hollowing out of manufacturing under Harper in Ontario and Quebec led to the win by Trudeau's Liberals.  ...