Helping you navigate the new normal
The Financial Times kindly made my letter on the risks now associated with central bank stimulus their Lead Letter One has to agree with your editorial that deflation is now probably inevitable (“Deflation is a bigger fear than hyperinflation”, FT View, April 28). But it is still disappointing to see that the role of central
Major paradigm shifts are occurring in the global economy, as I describe in a new analysis for ICIS Chemical Business Over the past 25 years, the budget process has tended to assume that the external environment will be relatively stable. 2008 was a shock at the time, of course, but many have now forgotten the
There are few real surprises in life, and President Trump’s decision to launch a full-scale trade war with China wasn’t one of them. He had virtually promised to do this in his election campaign, as I noted here back in September 2015: “The economic success of the BabyBoomer-led SuperCycle meant that politics as such took a back
No country in the world now has a top quality pension system. That’s the conclusion from the latest Report by pensions consultants Melbourne Mercer. As the chart above shows: Denmark and The Netherlands have fallen out of the top category In the G7 wealthy nations: Canada is in category B; Germany and UK in C+; […]
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A paradigm shift is underway in global petrochemical and polymer markets, as I discuss in a new article for ICIS Chemical Business. Previously successful business models, based on the supply-driven principle, no longer work. As our new study, “Demand – the New Direction for Profit”, explains, companies now need to adopt demand-led strategies if they […]
10k Americans have been retiring every day since 2011, and 18k Europeans, as the BabyBoomer generation reaches the age of 65. But pension schemes have not adapted to the fact that average life expectancy is now 20 years at age 65. This is causing major problems for the economy as pensioners leave the workforce […]
We seem to be approaching Stage 2 of the Great Unwinding of policymaker stimulus, as the economic implications of demographic change become ever stronger. The combination of today’s ageing populations with the collapse in fertility rates means it is totally unrealistic to expect growth rates to continue at the SuperCycle levels of the past. They were turbo-charged by […]
One of the great myths of our time is that the world’s population is inevitably growing. Almost everyone has heard that the population is certain to reach 9bn by 2050, from today’s 7.3bn. Yet births in 2013 in the G7 economies (almost half of the global economy) were at the lowest level since the Great Depression year […]
The blog’s important eBook, ’Boom, Gloom and the New Normal: How Ageing Western BabyBoomers are Changing Demand Patterns, Again’, was published 3 years ago this month. Co-authored with John Richardson, it identified the major changes taking place in global and national demand patterns: Growth accelerated from the 1980s, as the population became concentrated in the wealth creating 25 – 54 […]
The ageing BabyBoomers are now leaving the suburbs in large numbers, and moving back to the cities, as the blog discussed in October. Thus as the Wall Street Journal reports, housing needs are changing quite dramatically. The main growth area for housing is now in high-rise apartment towers built for rent: “The growth in new rental […]
Milton Friedman received a Nobel Prize for economics in 1976, partly on the basis of his analysis that ‘inflation is everywhere and always a monetary phenomenon’. It sounds an appealing insight, but of course it is wrong. The reason is that it confuses cause and effect. The above chart presents a different view, highlighting the […]
Barrons, the leading US investment magazine, recently published a major cover story analysing the potential impact of the Millennial generation on the US economy. These are the young people now aged between 18 to 37 years, who are starting to enter th…
Most commentators seemed surprised by last week’s news of weak US Q4 GDP growth. To help avoid similar shocks in future, the blog is pleased today to present its ‘cut out and keep guide’ to future levels of US GDP and interest rates.
The guide has …
The financial magazine MoneyWeek have produced a new video in their Investment Tutorial series, looking at the impact of today’s ‘demographic cliff’ on the economy.
Editor-in-Chief Merryn Somerset Webb suggests this is “One of the key bits of informat…
Today is a day for celebration, as it marks the day that the average Western BabyBoomer, born in 1958, will join the New Old 55+ generation! This is a truly remarkable moment. Even 100 years ago, as the chart shows, this generation simply didn’t exis…
Are you a typical employee in the chemical industry (aged in your 30s or 40s)? Have you noticed that you spend rather more money than your parents? Then you may have spotted the reason for the more difficult economic conditions that your company is n…