demographics

In a number of posts recently I have highlighted the impact of declining workforces on economic growth and the way the policies pursued to address the Euro debt crisis are having the impact of accelerating the movement of young people away…

There is an experiment being conducted in Japan, but the experiment isn’t Abenomics (which I suspect won’t work, and could end very badly). No, the experiment is about learning to grow old with dignity, not as individuals, but as societies.

This is just a quick follow-up to the last post on debt deflationary dynamics in Europe and the contrast to policy in Japan. I think Yanis Varoufakis has it right that Europe is on the same path as Japan but just not as far along the path.…

Now, you may well deduct from all of this that I am as bearish as I have ever been, but nothing could be further from the truth. The issues I have discussed in this month’s letter are clouds on the horizon which are likely to take years to…

Japan is stuck in a shrinking population trap, and neither monetary nor fiscal policy will adequately solve the problem. Continuing to run fiscal deficits in a deflationary environment will only means that government debt is pushed onward…

I caught this FT graphic via David Wessel yesterday. It shows you that while the labour force in the Euro Zone as a whole generally continues to grow, the labour force in Germany has shrunk. During the euro era, Germany's labour force…

According to Angela Merkel, speaking in the German city of Mainz in mid February, European countries struggling with the fallout of the euro-area debt crisis have much to learn from East Germany’s experience with economic overhaul…

The core of the issue is not whether the country could see one, or even two, quarters of positive performance, but whether any faltering recovery will be sustained out into the future, through 2014 and beyond. It is here that all the old…

The rise and rise of Japanese debt is far from benign, and the dynamic, we are convinced, will at some point become unsustainable. Unfortunately by the time we reach that point it will be too late. Indeed, given that we agree with Krugman…