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1.4 million green cards issued in the last year of the Biden administration 2024 as green cards issuance was at the highest level in a decade. Green cards to be issued only in the home country starting in 2026. The reasoning behind this decision is given by the US Immigration Agency-

"This policy allows our immigration system to function as the law intended instead of incentivizing loopholes. When aliens apply from their home country, it reduces the need to find and remove those who decide to slip into the shadows and remain in the U.S. illegally after being denied residency.”  

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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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WSJ Quiz on data centers- test your knowledge. Does China have the most data centers? No the US with 4000, followed by Britain with 515 and Germany with 500 showing that China is not in the AI craze the way the US is even though the idea of the US falling behind in AI is used to get trillions of dollars in AI funding. This only means infrastructure that is dilapidated and broken in the US will not be replaced, and that the US plan to reindustrialize to get jobs will lack funding as dollars are diverted from these essential and vital needs to AI. Eventually Asian countries with new infrastructure will find ways to get that US technology without having to pay for it. The American public will be paying for this AI craze. We at Lyrarc.com checked how many data centers China has built? The number is 250 data centers are operational and note this in the MIT Technology Review it says 80% of these data centers are not being used, there is 80% overcapacity in China. Because China's AI such as Deep Seek is designed so that it uses less computing power. What this means is that only the US will put over 3 times the combined data centers put in by China, UK and Germany for AI and US will put in 16 times the data centers China has put in. As China only needs or is using 20% of its 250 operational data centers or 50 data centers the US is putting in 80 times the data center capacity China is using in 2026. Why 80 times? Because China has a Plan and it can manage the supply to the need or demand. In the US each company is trying to put so many in so it can get the leadership position in the market. For example Amazon puts in $200 billion instead of the $100 billion it can afford simply to be in the leadership ranks. There is much wasteful spending in the US market system than China's coordinated effort in a new technology even though ideologues like to say the US system is superior, and a plan by the state is frowned upon in the US, costing the US dearly when it lost its entire manufacturing base to China while economists said everything was OK. Even the WSJ Quiz fails to ask the question we asked about China and how many data centers China has actually made operational, how much is overcapacity- 250 datacenters and 80% overcapacity. Showing how little the public knows and even WSJ has looked into, giving a few companies such as Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and others the freedom to spend in a reckless way so that future infrastructure investments and reindustrialization investments will be crowded out in the US economy. And economists as usual will say its OK. ...

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Berkshire new CEO Greg Abel 2026, Berkshire 2026 stock positions- Apple $60 billion American Express $55 billion Bank of America $25 billion, Coca Cola $25 billion, Chevron $20 billion, Chubb $10 billion. In addition GEICO wholly owned by Berkshire generates about $42 billion yearly in cash from premiums which can be used to invest in companies. By pursuing an affluent demographic American Express gets operating profit margins of 16% and return on equity of about 30%.  Apple has about 27% in net profit margin and 151% in return on equity in 2025. Because of the high affluence demographic of these two companies it offers a strong base for performance for Berkshire. The insurance company GEICO and its reinsurance operations offer a steady stream of cash. This  is the base on which Berkshire has done well over the last two decades. The efficient markets hypothesis moderate form for investors says that publicy available information is reflected in stock prices to a great extent except for anomalies and behavioural aspects. When investors use a basket of 1000 stocks reflecting the economy as Vanguard core index funds, the anomalies and behavioural aspects are less prevalent or cancel each other out creating a strong form of the efficient markets hypothesis in practice for investing discipline. Benjamin Graham, the mentor for all investment leaders would accept this as a way of securing investment gains without the vagaries and uncertainty in selecting stock positions. In 2025 the Berkshire funds achieved 10% gains vs the S&P 500 index which gained 17%, proof that the average investor can do just as well as the so called sage of Omaha, Warren Buffett. ...

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Apple App Store sales are estimated at $15 billion for 2014, increasing by 50% from 2013. Apple says it has directly or indirectly created one million jobs in the U.S., with two thirds of this in software development by developers to run programs on iPhone, iPad and iPod. The App Store opened in 2008 after the introduction of the iPhone in 2007. Other jobs created by Apple are the 300,000 working at parts and materials suppliers, or construction workers at Apple facilities. Apple employs directly 66,000 workers in the U.S., with 30,000 of this in retail stores.

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Apple, Caterpillar, and Microsoft, Amex pushed the Dow higher to get to 50,000 from 25,000 in 2018 in just 9 years when it took decades to get to 25,000. Sales Force, because of AI threat, Boeing because of its engineering and quality issues acted as laggard. Exxon was removed, Chevron stayed on. Intel was taken out and Nvidia took its place. The PE ratio in 2026 for Dow is 22 times earnings. Companies with higher stock price Goldman $929 a share as an example have a bigger impact in moves of the Dow just because of the higher price per share. Compared to Apple at $249 a share. The calculation is to take the price s of 30 stocks add them together and divide by a factor that adds effect of stock splits and new index entrants. That factor was 0.162 in 2025. Note that it took 76 years to 1972 to get to 1000 for the Dow Jones Average in 1972.

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AI demand increases cost for iphone chips- Apple cost structure is affected in 2026.

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In France 67% of young people 15-17 years in a Acadomia survey support ban on under 15 years children for social media. A bill is being introduced in French parliament to restrict children under 15 year from social media platforms supported by the governing party. A French parliamentary inquiry into “the psychological effects of TikTok on minors”, was set up in Spring 2025, and the results have set off an alarm about the negative effects on children. The new law would apply to children in high school lycee 15 years to 18 years, as it is already in place for children 11-15 years in college French middle school. The bill will be debated in parliament on Jan 19, 2026 and has support of EPR Ensemble Macron's party and of 121 members of parliament. It also restricts use from 10 pm to 8am to support better sleep patterns for young people and for studies.

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A significant portion of Apple services business including Safari payments app revenues is now at risk with changes in 2025. Google payments for search alone make up 19% of Apple's operating profit, says this report in WSJ.

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Thirty years of neglect it all began in 1998 with Tim Cook from Alabama was hired to ship manufacturing to China- Apple now takes WSJ reporters to its "nascent effort" in building new supply chain for chips manufacturing in 2026. Steve Jobs was hired in 1998 when Steve Jobs returned to run Apple a second time. By this time the company was failing and manufacturing plants had huge quality control issues, morale was low. Instead of fixing these problems at US factories, Jobs and Cook came up with a new strategy- Make in China, invent and price at a premium in PC's for large margins with low cost Chinese manufacturing using tightly controlled US design, reinvest the profits in a virtuous cycle, invent and design to compete with Microsoft. It succeeded for Apple share owners, and it failed for American workers and people- succeeded by creating a $3 trillion valuation, it failed for the American people by leaving American workers to go unemployed and setting the trend to destroy the manufacturing capabilities and structures that had led to the US following Britain with 300 years of dominance in standards of living for its people and its industrial stength since 1750. (1750-1900 Britain's dominance 1900-2000 US dominance). It also created Asian competitors in China/Taiwan, and South Korea to whom the US business had in reckless manner based on textbook theory of economists for four administrations (Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama) had shipped American manufacturing and knowhow to China. ...

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Tim Cook talks to developers at a world wide virtual and in person event. 

Apple will introduce a new 13.5 inch Macbook Air with a inhouse M2 chip for $1195 on sale in July 2022. A new 13 inch Macbook Pro will also be made.

The new iPhone with 5G capability had sales of $191 billion in fiscal year ending in September 2021. iPhone sales up 6.2% in 2022 vs 39% in 2021 when the pandemic led to remote work on Apple and other PC's.

App store and ad sales up by 17% to $80 billion, larger than Mac and iPad sales. 

Apple Pay will break payments into 4 installments as an option. Messages will have an unsend or edit option for 15 minutes.

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The average price of a smartphone in India in 2022 was $206 excluding taxes, Apple's smartphones go for $898. With discounts Apple is now bringing the price down to below $500. In 2019 phones over $500 made up 3% of the market. This has increased to 6% in 2022. Apple is counting on this share of the market going up and prices being brought down below $500 to build a larger share of the market. Its market in 2023 is about 5% in India compared to 22% in China.

In China Apple has its own stores. It is only now opening its first store in Mumbai. This and building manufacturing facilities in India could be the way to increase its share of the market in India to where it provides an alternative comparable to the Chinese market. This is the first time after the pandemic and the supply chain issues, the idea of friendshoring, that Apple is reorienting its policy for making India a key part of its supply chain and market. 

 

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Apple follows Microsoft in increasing workers pay. Apple increased the hourly pay for workers to $22, increase of 45% over 2018. It follows Microsoft which has doubled its worldwide budget for meit based pay increases. Annual increases are moved up by 3 months and new pay increases take effect in July at Apple. Apple shares have fallen 21% this year to May, making stock based awards ineffective.  Apple has paused plans to call workers to office for at least 3 days a week as coronavirus cases rise again in California. Apple was one of the first companies to move to remote work in 2020. The pandemic has increased Apple sales tremendously of laptops and iphones so that the increase in workers pay was long overdue. In this sense the Biden administration has brought with it president Biden's genuine and deeply felt concerns for workers and families to the forefront of company and workers attention. Overall for private and government employers the first quarter of 2022 brought with it a 4.5% increase in workers pay, says the Labor Department. Inflation was higher and outpaced worker wage increases so that worker pay has more room to grow under president Biden's leadership. ...

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Apple is discontinuing the iPod after  two decades. The iPod was the first major product Apple introduced after the return of Steve Jobs to Apple in 1997. Apple introduced iPod in 2001 and sold 450 million by 2022.

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Apple and Foxconn will add production sites in Karnataka state and Hyderabad in addition to expanding manufacturing in the site at Chennai. Apple plans production of 20 million iphones in India at the Chennai plant by 2024 and having 100,000 workers. The head of Foxconn met pm Modi this week in New Delhi. The supply chain for Apple is being shifted from China to India and other countries.

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Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway sold $75 billion in stocks in the second quarter 2024 including half of its Apple shares. It has now sold off most of its Apple shares. The cash level is now $277 billion in August 2024. The market is now recalibrating after tech stocks are going through skepticism. Berkshire is also trimming investmetn in Bank of America its second largest investment. Bufett says it is better to hold on to cash as he cannot find places "with very little risk that can make us a lot of money."

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Layoffs at Microsoft, Amazon and Google are offset by more hiring. So that the companies are smaller by a small margin in 2023 compared to 2022, yet way larger than 2018. WSJ looks at the growing size of these companies. At Microsoft the headcount is 101,000 outside the US, a 70% increase since 2019. Apple's 161,000 employees are much higher than the 137,000 in 2019. A small trimming of employees only took down 3000 employees.

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Daisuke Wakabayashi's exceptional account of how Steve Jobs directed the project to develop the iPhone starting in 2005 upto to the introduction in 2007. At one point Jobs gives Christie, the engineer leading the very small project team, 2 months to put it together or he would find someone else to do it. This is similiar to the way in which Sony's Morita approached his project team working on the Walkman telling them what he wanted to see and the size of the device. Jobs payed attention to all the details from how the phone names addresses appeared on the screen, dialing from the phone book, the swiping action to start the device, the music, and the colors on the screen. Only in on the project's detail were Bill Campbell, Apple director, and Jony Ive, Apple design chief. Christie was approached by Scott Forestall in late 2004 about this secret project codenamed "Purple." Christie is the engineer who joined Apple in 1996 to work on the Newton, and early touch screen device that failed because the technology was not developed enough at the time, making the device bulky and cumbersome. Christie was working on software for Mac computers in 2004. Greg Joswiak, Apple vice president for iPhone marketing, monitored other phone makers to see if they were coming up with a device that migrated the iPod's music features to the phone. Hence the absolute secrecy for this project. The project team is amazingly small. The practice of small teams can be found at Amazon and Kayak....

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The iphone 16e 2025 for $599 more battery, more camera and larger screen offers more features at the lower end of the price range. One can see this as a phone that helps tackle the cost of living crisis that could hurt Apple sales from buyers with moderate incomes who are cutting back. It could also target a growing middle class buyer segment in India. The e in 16e could stand for economy buyers who want basics in the Apple and could attract upper income buyers of Xiaomi , Huawei and Samsung. Apple iphones have strengths in: seamless ecosytem navigation interface reliable and secure ios software higher resale value Apple discontinues support for older iphones after about 7 years. iPhone 13's can still be used in 2025 4 years old, a good time to change would be by 2026. iPhone 15 was introduced in 2023 which means a good time for changing it is 2028 using a 5 year change which balances the need to update and  update to have access to newer iphones. ...

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It might not all make sense that the Pakistan/China mediated ceasefire conditions (including US and Israeli condition of no nuclear weapons development and ballistic missile development) are really not known even in the media today, only known to the Iranian government and the US government. In these conditions Iran's government gets to show that it had achieved its goals, even with enormous reconstruction costs of the damage done during the war. DJT had pointed to a sort of regime change in Iran after most of the earlier leadership has been removed, and new leaders in place who are keen on setting up conditions for their own administration replacing the old one.  Over the period 2027-2030 the prospect is real that China, India and Japan may shift their oil supplies sources to other regions, increase conservation per unit of GDP, and increase supplies of renewable energy, steps already taken by Germany over the last decade. Most media looks only what happens today and in 2026. This may be the last of the Middle East Wars before Europe and the US, and India, China, Japan shift away from the Middle East to get supplies of fossil fuels, and it may bring new renewables technologies that reduce the dependence on fossil fuels to the point of making a true transition to renewable energy. It may also be the last of the Middle East Wars in the sense that people of European nations and the US insist on no involvement in MIddle East as a sort of quagmire for squandering American, European and Asian vital resources of people and capital, ample example being given over the last 40 years. Considering the costs of the war and the moral cost of destroying infrastructure such as power plants that hurt the local population more than the regime in power, China, Japan, the US, and EU, India may find it is easier to race each other in coming up with alternative supplies and shifting to renewable energy faster than planned, making Middle Eastern oil supplies  and volatility in prices redundant, which would be a good thing after the hugely negative and costly experience of the last 50 years of dependence.     ...

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To get a right grasp of the situation as a whole from the bigger picture than the headlines, is to know that even in the current chaotic immigration handling of both parties, the US comes out a winner in long term by 2034. That it gives for the younger generation a better future. Congress's Budget Office economic report shows GDP higher by 2% from the higher immigration of 5.2 million added to the US workforce by 2034. US productivity higher by 0.2% and residential investment including construction up by a whopping 10%. The younger profile of immigrants will help the US compete with India's younger population, and as China ages to have what it and Europe is aspiring to have- a younger population. The best way to look at the immigration issue is for the short term- manage it better by organized method of immigration without chaotic border crossings by allowing potential immigrants to apply from their home country, a step taken by the Biden administration. What it or any Republican administration could not control is the immigration that happens from countries the US is at war with or in conflict with. It is important to recognize that this is what happened with Venezuela the largest component of the immigration border crossings in 2023. It was made worse by actions of both parties Democrats and Republicans and made worse in 2017 by more severe sanctions on Venezuela under the Trump administration.  Also part of the problem is Venezuelan mismanagement- providing oil at pennies a gallon, hurting imports and spiralling inflation that only worsened under US sanctions after 2017. Long term- To reflect that US sanctions on top of mismanagement by Venezuela is a warning for all developing countries in Latin America, Africa, Asia and for the US. It meant 7 million refugees a staggering quarter of Venezuela's population fleeing the country, that burdened neighbors Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile. By 2022-2023 many of these refugees were making their way up the Darien Gap to the US. Yet within this tragic situation for Venezuelan people how could the US best respond is to close the border as president Biden has proposed with McConnell and the Lankford effort in the Senate, which was blocked by the House under Mike Johnson. This gives time to assess the situation, correct US laws on asylum and parole that allowed this chaotic way to proceed under actions of both parties.And not let this destabilize the US by understanding that while Venezuela has suffered for its role in the crisis the US will ultimately have come out a winner, as pointed out by the Congressional Budget Office projections. CBO projections of this immigration impact by 2034 of increasing the workforce population by 5.2 million will provide higher GDP, more tax revenues, and higher productivity than without this group of Venezuelan and other immigrants in this special situation of 2022-2023. For the Immigration projections discussion given by Phillip Swagel, Director of the Congressional Budget Office see page 51 of the Budget and Economic Outlook 2024 to 2034. For this search for term Congressional Budget Office or CBO which brings up the report on PDF and turn to page 51 or just click on Original Article on Lyrarc.   ...

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Apple makes most of its products in China. This exposes Apple to high risk with the Chinese tariff set at 46% on April 2, 2025. If it passes on the tariff to customers it faces a loss in sales, if it does not pass onto customers the higher tariff price and cuts margins it will affect Apple profits. Apple's high margin strategy by making in China is now at risk. Apple had been given a warning to shift from over concentrating manufacturing in China. It did not heed the warning since 2016 and only made small shifts of manufacturing to India and Vietnam.