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French coach Herve Renard has coached teams from Zambia, Saudi Arabia and other countries. Just one year after he brought Saudi Arabia into World Cup Soccer headlines with a win over Argentina, he is coaching the women's team of France. He is eager to take on something new and offered to coach the women's team after French players Wende Renard and Sommer had a falling out with the coach Deacre. Herve Renard has brought some calm to the team, wins over Brazil and Morocco, and a chance to make it to the finals.

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David Brooks say this is one of the periodic crises of faith America has faced. Its the rise of China. and its not the economic growth rate. Its the deeper spiritual issue that is troubling. The vigor that once was characteristic of the US, the optimism for the future, and the belief that the country is headed in the right direction, these are the things that stand in marked contrast between China and the USA today. 86% of Chinese people believe tht their country is headed in the right direction compared to 37% of Americans. Only one third of Americans believe that the next society changing innovation will occur here , while a majority of Chinese feel confident that it will happen in China. The results are from aNewsweek-Intel survey called the Global Innovation Survey. Brooks says America needs to slow down consumption and reward production, building things and innovative ways. And leaders must make the long term narrative of America's story convincing. See the link to Michael Porter's essay in Business Week on a strategy for America in the October 30, 2008 issue of Business Week, that Brooks cites as a way forward....

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Interview with Jim Press by Michelle Krebs of Business Week. It gives deep insights into the thinking of Toyota- its approach to the automobile business and the marketing of its cars. Being admired by the new generationof buyers, the perception of Toyota in the mind of buyers is important to Toyota. It will try to be strong in each community. The example of San Antonio is given so its roots will stretch deeper. Press tell Krebs that being part of the community is important for Toyota. See the related article by Ed Wallace, Business Week, May 25, 2006. Press says attrition is one of the reasons GM lost its high regard and perception with buyers. By that he means the older generations, two generations, that respected General Motors for its innovation and contributions, has passed away. This is replaced by younger people and a new generation which does not have the same recorded perceptions in its memory. In fact it may see just the opposite, in terms of Detroits attitude perceived as arrogant, in terms of fuel efficiency perceived as wasteful, in terms of quality perceived as not upto the higher bar set by the Japanese competition of Toyota and Honda. Toyota does not look like a pioneer in the ethanol vehicle field, so GM and Ford have a opening here they can use. Toyota will continue to set the bar higher on Quality. And this is not a company about to be complacent about its success . Press sees Toyota's success stemming partly from the failure of GM and Ford to maintain market share and only partly from its own better qualities. One of Toyota's goals is to keep increasing local content so it can show that its a truly American company to this new generation....

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What is happening here appears to be that the whole American system of government as it operates today has some serious weaknesses, which if exposed in a critical situation- and with some life threatening situation for an industry group- can subvert the whole system and the economic life of the country. The serious weaknesses are the lobbying of Congress that is legal, and the financing of Congressmen and Senators election campaigns by industry groups which is legal. The life threatening situation for an industry group are the accounting rules and nuances that require that the banking and financial industry that holds these mortgage home loans, if they change one loan to lower payments in one geographic area, have to then show the lowered value of that loan in their books on all other loans of that type in that geographic area. Without this the banks and financial institutions were already or close to insolvent with losses of over $1 trillion. With that accounting change the industry losses would make large parts of the industry insolvent. This becomes incentive enough to fight loan modifications at all costs for the industry, and explains why Hope for Homeowners has generated only 25 loan modifications when it was advertised to generate 400,000. This creates a once in a lifetime or once in a hundred year chance of the whole system of democratic government working to destroy the economic life of the country. How? By providing a big enough reason for the banking and financial industry to fight loan modifications almost to the death, against even their better judgement when in late 2008 and January 2009 this would mean suicide for the economic life of the country, and the chance that they would both go down into the depths, the industry and the boat that is the American economy. This is what this story tells us, all key Congressmen and Senators were taken into their fold by the lobbying groups with large donations to their election funds, both Republican and Democrat, Shelby, Frank, Dodd, Durbin, and their aides. After Hope for Homeowners program failed, the new Hope Now program was again designed with the connivance of lawmakers in both parties by the banking industry representatives. It was designed so it would largely fail by not doing enough to keep homeowners in their homes. The industry faced with a life threatening situation did the wrong thing. Instead of saying lets get the government to help to change the accounting rule, and advocating that the government join the industry to share the losses and go out aggressively to restructure the loans in a three way loss sharing arrangement with homeowners, government and the industry, the industry instead decided to stick its head in the sand and let nobody do anything period. To do this it had to create the illusion that somehow the problem would fix itself with housing recovering on its own. In addition to the donations many Republicans like Preston, Secretary of HUD with oversight of FHA, and others in the Bush administration, may have had the mistaken notion that somehow the housing industry would recover without much help, that the economy was basically still healthy, that the crisis was not as bad as it appeared, that freemarket principles were still the best guide, and that toxic assets of banks and foreclosures were two entirely different things, with foreclosures for those who had borrowed recklessly not a bad thing....

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The resistance to serious government assistance to make a large impact on foreclosures stems from arguments like these. They only tell one side of the story, as the mortgage industry and politicians pushed high cost loans on minorities like Hispanics and Black people who did not understand the risks, and dispensed with even the basic requirements for ability to pay on a sustained basis. Instead pushing them into higher amount loans which raised the chances of aquick default on the loan. See the link to this, a detailed article on Hispanics experience in the WSJ, with a graph that shows that more subprime loans were made to minorities than whites in 2004 and 2005, and especially to Hispanics. The other thing about this is that its a very shortsighted approach and one that will end up costing more money. Its also ending up having effects on the global economy which comes back to affect US exports, and make this a severe prolonged downturn that could last anywhere upto ten years if its not tackled in its most serious dimensions, with this one being crucial. Its crucial because the bank bailouts which are approaching a trillion dollars as the bill mounts after each passing month, and the lack of lending thats crimping businesses and leading to huge job losses of 500,000 a month are directly a result of the inability to fix this problem. Its like trying to find out who started the fire when irresponsible borrowers, speculators, the mortgage industry, the credit rating agencies who signed off on irresponsible securtization, the regulators who fell asleep on the job, and central bankers and treasury secretaries who lauded the innovation and the depth and sophistication of the US financial system ignoring the risks of too much liquidity in markets, all lit the matches that got the fire going. The longer the fire burns and bigger it gets, the harder it becomes to put it out the and more fire fighting resources it will take....