Why wouldn’t it be?
Here is the borrowing or surplus of every country as % of GDP for 2017 (source: International Monetary Fund),
Note: We have excluded the performance of Venezuela and Libya on the map because they are major outliers. They are included in the data set below.
Continue reading “Visualised: Borrowing or surplus of every country as % of GDP”
We have been analysing some numbers from the latest releases from Eurostat (the official statistical office of the European Union), the International Monetary Fund, the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan.
We will be posting several findings in the next couple of days. We begin with GDP per capita between 2007 and 2017 for countries which are part of the European Union based on a statistical release from the Eurostat.
The 10 largest asset managers in the world, a list that includes BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, Fidelity, Allianz, UBS and JP Morgan Asset Management have some $32 trillion assets under management (at the end of 2017). The entire space of asset managers have around $65 trillion of assets under management.
Fund managers have over $3 trillion of new inflows a year, primarily down to private pensions (governments keep pushing it given the looming state pension crisis). These fund managers get paid as long as they invest the money. There lies the problem – they have to invest it. It isn’t as simple as it sounds. Continue reading “The problem Asset Managers have is that they have money that must be invested”
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the Bank of England (BoE) both released UK data on March 29 and the data doesn’t look good. Key highlights include:
Everything by design is kind of complicated. And because it is complicated it is inefficient. But inefficiency keeps people in jobs. Let us explain.
Education is form of an inefficiency. Just 20% of people go on to a role that requires their knowledge from college or university education. But keeping more people in education keeps them out of the job market.
Government regulations change so often that it inherently creates several roles. The law is complicated and inefficient, but it keeps many people in a job and creates new jobs.
New technologies become a trend and all big organizations want to keep up with the trend. The result? More jobs for new stuff. And new stuff brings with it new experts, new certifications and new training. Continue reading “Inefficiency keeps unemployment low and here is why it now matters”
How often do analysts get the markets wrong? How often to fund managers get stock picks wrong? They get things wrong far more often then they get it right.
2017 was probably the worst year for hedge funds. And the start of 2018 isn’t turning out to be any better.
The problem probably lies with everyone focussing on the business cycle rather than the structural factors driving the markets. Continue reading “Markets should ignore cyclical factors and focus at the structural factors instead”
Sweden is an amazing country. It is the country where Ikea, Skype, Spotify, Ericsson, Mojang (of the Minecraft fame) were founded and the country of the world’s oldest Central bank Sveriges Riksbank.
It is also the country with the highest Value Added Tax (VAT) rate and amongst the highest income tax rates.
We look at the Swedish economic model and what makes it unique and whether the economic model could be considered as a role model for the world. Continue reading “What makes the Swedish economy unique and should the world follow its economic model?”