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The protests in Chile that started with a subway fare increase and then into protest against inadequate pensions, poor health care and schools, have turned into violent protests with extensive damage. Damage to supermarkets, stores and other businesses is estimated at billions of dollars. Damage to the modern Metro is about $370 million dollars. The economy will grow at 1% this year after growth of 4% in 2018.  The government plans a $5.5 billion stimulus, and the central bank could sell $20 billion including a quarter of its reserves to support the peso currency.  The government of president Pinera has only a 13% approval rating. A December poll by COES Santiago think tank shows 65% of Chileans support continuation of protests, and found that 89% of Chileans planned to back a new constitution. The old constitution was designed in a way that led to poor support for retirement and inadequate pensions. It also led to increased inequality in this country of 18 million. This constitution was drafted during the Pinochet dictatorship  and has now lost its legitimacy along with the rest of the political leaders. A referendum will be held in April 2020 for a new constitution.  The copper mines that support Chilean copper exports are intact and the country has low debt, which should help Chile invest in a recovery with the stimulus. ...

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After segregation in housing and schools since the 1867 Lincoln Emancipation, particularly in the US Southern states, protests happened in the South led by Martin Luther King Jr. to change this. situation. Voting Rights Act 1965 signed by LBJ ensures right to vote for Black people in the South- it follows protests in Selma Alabama and LBJ's 1965 "We Shall Overcome" speech that followed Selma. The first Blacks elected to US Congress were from seats redrawn to give Andrew Young a seat in Atlanta, and Barbara Jordan one in Houston. In 1993 2 more seats were added. James Clyburn was given a seat in South Carolina- he was a key supporter for president Joe Biden. Others followed. Today in 2026 there are 62 Black Members of the US Congress. This is about 11.6% of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 100 seats in the Senate total of 535. As a percentage of the population Black people are 16.4%- or 56 million out of US population of 342 million. The Supreme Court is essentially saying it is time to pause this as enormous progress has been made 12% out of 16% already achieved in representation for black people in the US considering the other inequities in American society, the changes in culture and in technology, inequities in world trade and for rural America. In a 2013 5-4 decision Shelby vs Holder US Supreme Court  swing to this conclusion with Alito, Scalia and Thomas joined by Kennedy and Roberts. This already struck down the core of the Voting Rights Act as unconstituional. Roberts wirties in that decision- Our country has changed,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority. “While any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.” Times have changed - in 2026 the Court reaffirms this. In Louisiana vs. Calais the Court voted 6-3, striking down the last aspects of the Voting Rights Act, because white voters in Louisiana objected to use of race to redraw districts. The equal protection clause of the 14th and 15th Amendment to the US Constitution prohibit using race to redraw political representation maps. ...

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The Hunter Biden investigation for non payment of taxes and illegally carrying a firearm was done under the US Attorney for Delaware David Weiss in 2018 appointed by Republicans, and extended into the Democratic Biden administration with Attorney General Merrick Garland. It ends in a plea deal. WSJ says this protects the Biden administration from any claims that it was helping the president's son.  He is the second son of Joe Biden and Neilia Biden. His mother and sister were killed in a car accident when he was a child. The only survivors Hunter and his brother Beau. Beau died of cancer in 2015. Hunter suffered a decline after that period leading to a divorce with Buhle in 2017, a troubling period for the whole Biden family she says. Hunter is a graduate of Georgetown and of Yale law school. 

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China's Defense Minister Gen. Wei and Mr. Austin, US Defense Secretary are to meet on the sidelines of a conference in Singapore in 2022. Mr. Wei last met Defense Secretary Mark Esper in 2019 in Bagkok. No meetings have taken place since then. Gen. Wei is seen as an outspoken leader who told a conference in 2019 that the use of the military to stop the Tiananmen protests in Beijing in 1989 was the right step as this gave Chine three decades of peaceful development.

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Under Article 23 of the Basic Law, Hong Kong's constitution stated Hong Kong would pass legislation to stop national security crimes such as treason, secession and espionage. The Basic Law also had a provision to grant universal suffrage. It is important that the universal suffrage or democracy was never granted or made a priority by Hong Kong people during the boom years under the British, as a French commentator for La Croix aptly points out in FR24. He says he watched incredulous as Hong Kongers selfishly pursued money.  The Article 23 also provides for the National Peoples Congress to add laws for national security. The last time that Hong Kong people were faced with the National Peoples Congress passing such laws was in 2003 when half a million came out in protest. This was shelved at that time. It is now law today. Why now? More protests are expected and an election in July would bring more seats in the legislature for the pro-democracy parties, says the WSJ. Another factor is that Hong Kong at one time represented 16% of China's GDP in 1997, today it is down to about 3% in 2019. It is no longer that important to China, even while continual protests from Hong Kong detracted from other vital issues facing China as it shifts away from its trading relationship with the U.S. and as the U.S. imposes strict conditions on trade, investment and technology flows. Under the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act passed by U.S. Congress in 2019 an annual assessment has to be made by the State Department whether "one country, two systems" is operating. This is why Mike Pompeo, U.S. Secretary of State has made his comments that "no reasonable person can assert today that Hong Kong maintains a high degree of autonomy from China." The new assessment would diminish confidence among foreign businesses in the city, in addition to ending its special trading status with the U.S. ...

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Steinhauser, Walker and Stevis provide an exceptionally good account of the events leading to the March 25, 2013 EU 10 billion euro bailout of Cyprus, with the closing of one bank and the downsizing of another bank. The Cyprus government of president Anastasiades bluffed and lost. That Anastasiades and the Cyprus government would do this in serious negotiations with the finance ministers of Netherlands, Germany, France, the EU, ECB and the IMF at the headquarters in Brussels, in negotiations that ran to midnight on Sunday March 24, 2013, is simply astounding. Charles Dallara representing European bankers tried to do this with German chancellor Merkel at EU headquarters in Brussels during negotiations on Oct. 27, 2011, on an earlier confrontation over bondholder haircuts, bluffed to the last minute and lost. The way Cyprus handled the negotiations surpassed that. Right down to the last hours the Cyprus president waffled- backtracking on earlier agreement to close Cyprus Popular Bank. Calls were made by German finance minister Schauble to Merkel and by French finance minister Muscovici to French president Hollande to give a joint Franco-German response. Finally Anastasiades was told to pack up and leave on Sunday, March 24. The Cyprus government was not defending small depositors as its earlier plan was to tax all deposits at the two largest Cypriot banks 6.875%. Merkel saw this as an error as this would hurt small savers. The final agreement shut down Cyprus Popular Bank but protected insured deposits under 100,000 euros. Another disturbing sign for the ECB and the EU was Cyprus allowing several hundred million dollars to be wired out of the country even though banks were closed and an offical freeze on ouflows existed. A serious mistake in negotiations was when Cyprus finance minister kept EU finance ministers, the IMF and the ECB officials in the dark by not returning calls for 16 hours on Thursday March 25, 2013, while he tried to negotiate a deal in Moscow with Russia's Putin. This destroyed Cyprus's credibility leading to the ECB's warning to cut off liquidity to Cypriot banks which would put the banks into instant bankruptcy. By Friday morning, March 22, 2013, Merkel was angrily briefing her CDU party lawmakers on the negotiations, telling them the Cyprus government and Anastasiades did not get it, that the whole Cyprus model of outsized offshore banking sector- catering mainly to Russian investors - had collapsed. Cyprus unlike any other member of the EU was trying to face down Europe. Negotiations with Greece had been tough and street protests everpresent, yet negotiations went on in a responsible manner and in good faith, something missing here....

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Gerard Lemos writes from London about Chinese society today. He was visiting professor to Chongqing University of Business and Technology from 2006 to 2010. During this period he talked to many ordinary Chinese to find out what was on their minds -concerns that stemmed from China's one child policy, urban migration, health care needs, education and jobs were all uppermost in their minds. Lemos says even with the rapid industrial progress the lives of ordinary citizens are affected by fears and uncertainty about the future. The lack of jobs, lack of good healthcare, children who have migrated, are all part of their daily lives. For older people the one child policy in an aging society means the prospect of being alone in old age and the prospect of inadequate health care. For the young education and job concerns. Lemos points out that it is not about a choice between China's model and a Western model, it is more about a search for the Chinese soul, now that the basic material conditions are in place with the usual gaps and problems. At the same time it is a society prone to political sentiment such as the anti-Japanese protests....

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Mr. Rodrigo Maia, the 49 year old son of the former Mayor of Rio De Janeiro, Cesar Maia, is uniting Congressmen from all parties in Brazil's parliament to get things done and restore lost confidence, such as the recently passed pension reform. Brazil's pension system sucks up most of the money in the budget with overly generous benefits, leaving little to pay for essential public services such as sanitation and transportation. Shockingly sanitation has suffered as only 50% of the sewage is treated in Brazil.  Polls show confidence in parliament after corruption scandals and lack of work to help the people of Brazil with essential public services has fallen to an abysmal low of 7%. Only 50% of Brazil's sanitation is treated and the rest flows as untreated sewage and rubbish into the rivers. To bring some sanity to pensions the Brazilian parliament, with the organizing skills of Mr. Maia to bring parties together around the reform, has cut $240 billion over 10 years from pensions and introduced 65 years for men and 62 years for women as minimum retirement age.  Brazil has 33 parties and Mr. Maia's is with the centre right DEM party. How did this happen. This WSJ story says Rodrigo Maia, 49 years, was born in Santiago, Chile in 1970 during the days of Brazilian military dictatorship. His father was in exile in Chile. The election of a  far right figure Jair Bolsonaro who supported the military dictatorships record as president in the recent election was a warning sign for the different parties in Brazil on the centre right and the centre left that corruption scandals and a do-little spirit was wiping out their influence and destoroying their credibility with ordinary Brazilians. The pension cut reform was their response to gain some of the lost goodwill from the Brazilian people. In the past Brazil's members of the Chambers of Deputies were people of power and influence who held positions for long periods and passed on these positions to people in their families or in their close circle. The elections and democratic governments following years of dictatorship brought in a new class from centre right and centre left that mismanaged public finances and excluded new ideas. The Car Wash scandal and scandals at the state petroleum company under Da Silva's Workers Party led to loss of confidence not only in the centre left party government of Da Silva and the Workers Party, but also in a do-little parliament. The large state spending from the government was possible during the commodities boom from China with Brazilian iron ore and other products getting high prices. WIth the collapse of the commodities boom and lower prices the entire system of state spending has unraveled revealing how much generous pension system is damaging the financing of  basic public services.  Corruption is prevalent in many countries in Asia including India but nowhere has the spending on essential public services such as sanitation suffered as in Brazil. And nowhere was parliament and the government able to get away with staging Olympics, World Cup and building many stadiums, handing out generous benefits to gain public support as in Brazil when basic sanitation and health services were neglected in a shocking way. The health system was weakened to a great extent when it lacked the resources to tackle an outbreak of yellow fever in 2018 as it moved south from the Amazon region towards Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Protests against the lack of investment in public services such as transportation and bus systems resulted in the public protests in big cities that led to the rise of Jair Bolsonaro in an effort to bring new administration to tackle the problem of financing for infrastructure, public services, health and education.    ...

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Andrew Jacobs provides this exceptional account of the tense atmosphere in Brazil, and the split between supporters of the government and the opposition, in April 2016 with the impeachment effort against president Rousseff.

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Mr. Eike Batista's EBX Group companies were one of the prime beneficiaries of huge government investments in mining, oil and other commodities. The fading of the commodities boom is resulting in large losses for these companies. Street protests in Brazilian cities shows the weakness of the Brazilian economic model that neglected public services in transportation, health care and education and concentrated on infrastructure and mining projects.

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Putin takes the first step for Russia to join in discussions for a lasting peace. More than a ceasefire is needed, as many ceasefires have come and gone and the war is now over 15 years old, pausing for a while and then starting again many times. Russia calls for addressing the underlying issues behind the war.  It started with Russian support for Yakunovich 2010-2014 which ended with the Maidan protests in Kviv and Lviv. Russian and Putin strategy at that time was that as long as  a pro-Russian or a person leaning towards Russia with good relations to the West -as existed in some of the former states in Eastern Europe during the 1980's during the Soviet Union such as Poland and GDR- this would be acceptable. The Maidan protest led upheaval thus had a contrary effect which Germany under Merkel and France under Sarkozy and Hollande failed to grasp. Obama judged Russia by its GDP, ignoring its history and relations among European states as one of the major powers in Europe, a technological state with nuclear power. As China shifted away making the integration of Hong Kong and now Taiwan a priority under president Xi, and asserting the virtue of its state run capitalist system over free market capitalism, the fissures began to develop in the system that prevailed after World War II and which survived the fall of the Berlin Wall. These are some of the origins of the war and are also in some of its aspects geopolitical and relate to world peace,, and peace inside nations in general outside the Ukraine war. And here relate to Venezuela Mexico and US inaction in tackling borders and cartels, the US border with Mexico, Syrian war and Syrian refugees entering Germany/Europe, the anti refugee movements in Germany and the EU, refugee crime in US and Europe, all connected in some way to the unsettled borders of the Russian state with US and Western European + Eastern European states in NATO and the EU nearby. And the limiting or removal of Russian influence in Ukraine seen by Russia as unacceptable in regions nearest to Russia that speak Russian. Britain has the virtues of its parliamentary democracy, yet it is far from Russia's borders and it just like the Russian Empire had an Empire in India and a near thing to an Empire in China, as recently as 1950, over history of western colonial empires of 500 years not too long ago. Which means it is good to be starry eyed but the reality in European history since 1400 is of dominant states and colliding or co-existing spheres of influence, mostly co-existing in some balance of different states in the interests of peace and welfare of the people.     ...

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Seen as a rural urban divide, less educated and well educated and tech workers the situation in France looks similar to that in the US in the elections of 2016 and 2020. With business in the US and European Union shifting manufacturing to China and the governments neglecting rural areas, decline in standard of living for people on pensions that have not kept up with the cost of living, the situation in France as in the US is decades in the making. Bernie Sanders and Melenchon were appealing in different ways to younger people yearning for change and a system that would correct these changes.   Melenchon coming this close to less than one percentage point of Le Pen in the first round of French elections shows that a straight Macron Le Pen version of what has happened is an oversimplification, just as seeing the changes in America under president Biden vs Trump would be a simplification, as voters for Sanders who voted for Biden are changing the Biden agenda and setting America on a new path. A path to reshoring jobs that were sent to China, rebuilding American manufacturing, increasing workers wages and restoring workers leverage for higher wages, investing $2 trillion in child care, housing, supporting worker incomes and families, supporting older Americans on pensions. In the same way beneath the idea that nothing has happened after the yellow vest protests for cost of living, that has not only not gone away- but increased in the concern for cost of living in this election with the surging inflation - new developments are happening.  Even as Germany under Merkel appeared not be changing in 2020- 1 year after Merkel the situation will have changed completely to address social concerns that were ignored earlier and to invest in infrastructure in a big way. Behind this is a fundamental change that is taking place. Facing a challenge from totalitarian states the fabric of society in the free world, the US, Germany, France, other EU states, India, and nations in the free world will have to respond with changes that restore the fabric of society to what it was before this kind of fracturing, bringing all parts of society together to bring all the energies in place for rebuilding, investing in infrastructure, restoring local manufacturing and renewal. It requires a unified effort to be put in place to respond in the right way.     ...

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Andrew Jacobs provides this exceptional accoount of disillusionment of ordinary people in Brazil with the corruption scandals, deep recession, and the drop in president Rousseff's popularity from 50 percent in 2014 to 16 percent in April 2016.

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Steven Lee Myers provides an exceptionally good report from Russia on the 2014 Sochi Olympics. He describes an effort by the Putin administration in Russia to develop Sochi which extends for 90 miles along the Black Sea, the only subtropical seashore in Russia. Here Myers interviews Pakhomov, a Putin supporter, who is Mayor of Sochi, to get a picture of how Putin supporters see this effort. Pakhomov says this part of Russia was never developed and foreigners have a poor view of Russia, with one westerner telling him that Russia had little except vodka and bears. For the first time the entire Sochi areas has seen a massive infrastructure effort with roads, railways and a new airport. Myers gets a different picture from Yulia Naberezhnaya, a scientist who is a Putin critic and environmental leader in the Western Caucusus, who he interviews after meeting at a bus stop in Sochi. Naberezhnaya heads Environmental Watch of the North Caucusus which sees the environmental laws being ignored in construction work. The country is divided with nationalistic feeling running high before the Olympics, and a friend of Naberezhnaya finding herself on the opposite side with work in the security services. She warns her to be careful- something Naberezhnaya says has Kafkesque overtones. Myers also meets Boris Nemtsov, a senior official in the Yeltsin government, who participated in street protests during the recent elections in Russia, and is critical of the money spent in this Olympics. Estimates of the money spent run as high as $51 billion, in comparison the Olympics in Beijing, China cost about $40 billion. Dmitri Chernyshenko, president of the Sochi Olympics Organizing Committee sees the project as one that unites the nation, while critics such as Nemtsov see it as a huge overspending and corruption favoring Putin's friends in the business community. Myers is acting Moscow Bureau Chief for the NYT and has done extensive interviewing for this report, including an interview with Vladimir Yakunin, head of Soviet Railways. Yakunin says his company's investment of $1.3 billion will take 20 years to recover but puts it on the scale of the Trans-Siberian Railway build by Czar Nicholas II, which helped bring Russia its current borders reaching to the Far East. And yet the question of cost is never far from people's minds, coming at a time when growth is slowing in Russia- emerging markets currency values incluing the ruble are declining and they are having a tough time attracting foreign investment. A member of the International Olympic Committee, Gian-Franco Kasper, is reported to have told Swiss SRF radio that about a third of the spending on Sochi was lost because of corruption and excessive costs....

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A professor of sociology at the University of Basel describes the growing inequality in Germany, in graphic terms. For the lower middle class the efforts to gain upward mobility are like trying to move up on a downward escalator. About one third of jobs are temp jobs which lack the protections of permanent jobs which were at one time 90% of all jobs. Her book is titled- "The Hidden Crisis; German Social Decline at the Heart of Europe." Nachtwey says on the surface Germany has become competitive and has maintained its growth rate, benefiting from the strong manufacturing sector with trade surpluses, low unemployment. Yet this conceals the underlying crisis of the cost which this has come at- a persistent erosion of the social compact of one elevator where everybody moved up together that was the norm in the early postwar period, fulltime employment, a strong welfare state. Job protections weakened, and while manufacturing sector pay remained stable or rose, less skilled and low wage workers suffered. This has also led to the fracturing in the vote with the fragmentation of political parties following the refugee crisis and the weakening of centrist parties. Voters are now open to different messages after the increase in inequality and uncertain economic future for the lower middle class. ...

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Growing protests in Brazilian cities of Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, Curitiba, Belem, Brasilia, over inflation and the cost of living, government lavish spending on soccer stadiums even as public services of transportation, education and health care are being neglected. Tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered with one estimate of 100,000 for protests in Rio. The protests started with the Free Fare Movement in Porto Alegre, which calls for lower transportation fares, organizing demonstrations against an increase in fares.

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Commodities prices hit a low in June before the second Greece election on June 16, with lower unemployment numbers in the U.S. and growth of 6-7% in India and China. Still average prices of oil in 2012 of $115 a barrel are higher than the level in 2011. And corn prices dropping to $5.25 a bushel are still high compared with prices earler. Corn farmers in the U.S. are adding to acreage. The relatively lower prices also give more room for smaller stimulus by central banks to stimulate growth. Freeport-Mining CEO, Richard Atkinson said in a presentation that the growth is coming on top of a bigger baseline for China, India and Brazil. China's copper consumption went up by about 6 million tons a year, averaging 13% growth a year in the period 1995-2010. Now even with slower growth at 6% a year, by 2025 he estimates China's copper consumption at 9 million tons per year. This is a structural change that is supporting commodity prices, says Amrita Sen, analyst at Barclays Capital.

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Denning uses the Brazilian government's scrapping of a 6% tax on foreign purchases of bonds to slow the slide in the value of the Brazilian currency, the Real, to point to the changed situation today for Brazil, India, Turkey and S. Africa. Current account deficits in these countries are high, and foreign investors sentiment about emerging markets may be affected by the street protests in Turkey, reducing inflows of capital. The mining worker protests in S. Africa and the street protests in Turkey, have led to a decline in the currencies of the two countries. The Fed's quantitative easing program may be coming to a close, which would reduce the flows of capital to emerging market countries. Turkey has seen a boom in domestic credit supported partly by foreign capital inflows. The current account deficit to GDP ratio for Turkey is expected to be 7.28% in 2013, for S. Africa 6.46%, and Brazil 3.25%, according to IMF forecast.

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The growing middle class in Brazil, new aspirations and the demand for better public services in transportation, education and healthcare. Alexandre Peppe, a 29 year old from the outlying parts of Sao Paulo, is a new member of the middle class, being the first to go to college in his family and finding a job in the state government. He was one of the protesters on the streets of Sao Paulo. The growing middle class has new hopes and aspirations that see serious shortcomings in the corruption of political leaders, neglect of public services such as transportation and overspending on the soccer stadiums for the FIFA and World Cup championships. Economic growth is slowing to about 1% in Brazil for 2013, creating new constraints for public spending just as demand for infrastructure and services is growing for the now large middle class.

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Individual investors reacted strongly to declining prospects for emerging markets with slowing growth, depreciating currencies, corruption and political uncertainty in 2013. As of the beginning of June, retail investors pulled $18.1 billion from emerging market bond funds, about one third of the amount that went in to emerging markets since the financial crisis in 2007, according to fund tracker EPFR Global. Institutional investors have pulled out less, about $9.3 billion, or 10% of their investments in emerging markets bonds since 2007. A similiar pattern is seen for investment in the stock markets of emerging market countries. The U.S. Federal Reserve's monetary expansion helped pull more money into emerging markets such as India, Indonesia, Brazil and Turkey. As the Fed shifts away from these policies in 2013 emerging market countries have large current account deficits and less money to finance imports and debt.

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Mexico, Chile, Columbia and Peru will sign an agreement in Cali, Columbia, eliminating tariffs on 90% of merchandise trade between their countries and set a 7 year timetable for the remaining 10%. Visa requirements for citizens of these countries have been removed and plans are being developed for a common market. These countries have a private sector that plays a major role in their economies compared to Brazil and Argentina where the state plays an important role. The combined GDP is as large as Brazil's in the Latin American region- about 35%. The regional stock exchanges of these countries have created a single bourse. Their is potential for more regional trade- the Economist estimates intra-regional trade in South and Central America at a low of 27%, compared with 63% in the European Union and 52% in Asia.

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Saudi price cut in November 2014 to reverse market share decline in the U.S. The Saudi share of total U.S. oil consumption declined to 4.6% in August 2014 from 7% in August 2013, according to EIA. This brought NYMEX price to below $80 in early Nov. 2014.