Are We Broke Yet?

With the Yanks taking a leaf  out of the Robert Mugabe school of economics and demonstrating an inability to master simple household economics I found this neat little graphic regarding each countries rating. Although given the quality of ratings agencies I am not certain I would place too much faith in it. From  Reuters

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So….Who Is In Charge?

… Until recently, most studies just broke out the top 1% as a group. Data on net worth distributions within the top 1% indicate that one enters the top 0.5% with about $1.8M, the top 0.25% with $3.1M, the top 0.10% with $5.5M and the top 0.01% with $24.4M. Wealth distribution is highly skewed towards…

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Population

Whilst this little graphic represents Europe it could be any Western nation. Of particular note is the dramatic shrinkage in the working age population. While the problems of population aging for Europe’s generation-contract-based pension systems are now slowly becoming public knowledge, the consequences for overall economic growth and technical innovation are still widely ignored. With…

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Not All That Rosy

Piece from the NYT on how hedge funds are not doing all that well. There is a mythology around hedge funds that they are all seeing, all knowing and always profitable when this is very far from the truth. There are obviously giant profitable funds that are run by sane sensible individuals using robust logical…

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Socialist or Capitalist

Great little piece on the gains in markets under various economic philosophies. This is the most telling chart from the article. You will note that we rank 17th out of 18 countries and the laissez–faire Yanks rank 15th. The orignal article from which this chart is drawn can be found here and it makes a…

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