After being inspired by a blog post by The Economist’s Buttonwood correspondent, I drew the following graph.
One picture raises more questions than a thousand words:
(Feel free to use this figure for your own purposes, but please do not forget to mention the source, which is this blog.)
Simon Hedlin Larsson
Posted in Allmänt
Tagged Buttonwood, demographics, demography, pension, population, The Economist, working-age
Vladimir Putin vann stor popularitet som president bland annat för den goda ekonomiska utvecklingen som tog vid efter Boris Jeltsins år vid makten. Ekonomin har varit en av Putins främsta styrkor, men riskerar nu att bli början på hans fall. Ekonomisk utveckling frigör människor, ökar deras möjligheter att engagera sig politiskt, inhämta information och kommunicera med varandra. Putin sitter säkert på söndag, men hur länge kan en auktoritär regim fortsätta förtrycka en allt starkare, kunnigare och mer välutvecklad befolkning? Se exempelvis följande diagram på The Economists hemsida.
Simon Hedlin Larsson
What’s at stake today. (Source.)
Posted in Allmänt
Tagged Britain, budget cuts, debt, deficit, General Election 2010, The Economist
Martin Wolf skriver i en intressant kolumn för Financial Times om hur Tysklands enorma exportöverskott underminerar valutaunionen EMU, och i synnerhet dess svagare medlemmar:
“So long as the European Central Bank tolerates weak demand in the eurozone as a whole and core countries, above all Germany, continue to run vast trade surpluses, it will be nigh on impossible for weaker members to escape from their insolvency traps. Theirs is not a problem that can be resolved by fiscal austerity alone. They need a huge improvement in external demand for their output.”
Tysklands exportdrivna ekonomiska tillväxt är problematisk även av andra skäl. Stora obalanser gör att länder riskerar att bli för beroende av varandra. Om en alltför stor del av ekonomin i ett land bygger på export – vad händer ifall den utländska efterfrågan på landets produkter faller? Vad gör staten om den låga efterfrågan är låg utländsk efterfrågan? Ska man skapa stimulanspaket för världens mest belånade och importerande länder, eller? Inför ett sådant problem framstår staten som ganska maktlös.
Till saken hör också att Tyskland inte är ensamma med denna politiska fokusering vid export samt relativt konsumtionsovilliga kultur . The Economist skriver:
“Germany, like Japan, is bedevilled by chronically weak domestic demand. Consumers are reluctant to spend and, so far, buoyant export growth has not incited firms to invest, despite hopes to the contrary.”
Man bör vara väldigt försiktig med att ropa vargen kommer, men nog finns det stora risker med dagens obalanser i den internationella ekonomin. Länder som Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam och Tyskland har gigantiska handelsöverskott, medan USA har ett astronomiskt bytesbalansunderskott. Många av världens största ekonomier, som USA och Storbritannien, har dessutom omfattande budgetunderskott. Hela Eurozonen har enligt EU-kommissionen samlade skulder motsvarande 78,2 procent av BNP.
Lyckas man inte reda ut dessa obalanser inför nästa finanskris kan vi räkna med att få uppleva den värsta krisen i mänsklig historia.
Simon Hedlin Larsson
Dagens Daily Chart på The Economists hemsida:
“FAMILY, friends and foolhardy strangers are the individuals who often make the important investment needed to start a business. The amount of “informal capital” that can be raised from those close to entrepreneurs varies across countries. Peruvians, for example, are relatively poor so cannot cough up as much as people in richer countries. There was a significant decline in informal investments in the G7 group of rich countries in 2009 according to the latest Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Report. Investors are more wary of risky entrepreneurial ventures as a result of the economic downturn. Although almost a quarter of entrepreneurs in developed countries that are in the early stages of their start-ups thought that their businesses would grow.”
Bilden är hämtad här
Posted in Allmänt
Tagged Daily Chart, entreprenörskap, Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Report, The Economist
Tryck på bilden för bättre upplösning. Den är för övrigt hämtad här.
Tidningen The Economist publicerar här en ypperligt bra bild som säger allt som jag själv har på hjärtat om USA, politiken, byråkratin och sjukvårdsreformen (och som också ankyter till mitt förra inlägg och stärker ytterliggare argumenten för att den amerikanska kongressen och regeringen omöjligt skulle kunna [klara av att] lura oss):
A modest proposal
Jonathan Swift hade varit stolt.
Simon Hedlin Larsson
Posted in Allmänt
Tagged A Modest Proposal, amerikansk politik, byråkrati, Jonathan Swift, kongressen, sjukvårdsreformen, The Economist, USA
(bilden är hämtad härifrån)
I don’t know what kind of people you would like to meet, but you could always check my profile and send me a message if you think we might have some similar interests :)
Posted in Allmänt
Tagged Hamid Karzai, KAL's cartoon, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Robert Mugabe, The Economist
On The Economist’s current online debate, “Executive pay: This house believes that on the whole, senior executives are worth what they are paid.”, Nell Minow, Editor and Co-founder, The Corporate Library, writes in her opening statement that “Excessive executive compensation of the past decade is both a symptom and a cause of the current economic mess”.
Minow gives examples of companies like Countrywide, where the CEOs have abused their positions to push the boards to pay them even more, by for example hiring new compensation consultants when the current ones object higher executive pay. She also mentions Chesapeake Energy about which she writes the following:
“Frank A. Keating, Charles T. Maxwell and Frederick B. Whittemore, the compensation committee at Chesapeake Energy, not only paid the CEO, Aubrey McClendon, $100m, a 500% increase as the stock dropped 60% and the profits went down 50%, they spent $4.6m of the shareholders’ money to sponsor a basketball team of which Mr McClendon owns a 19% stake, they purchased catering services from a restaurant which he owns just under a half of, and they took his collection of antique maps off his hands for $12.1m of the shareholders’ money”
Now, I find this argumentation rather weak. There are certainly examples when the current executive pay system has failed. But the discussion should not be about whether the present system has flaws or not – everybody recognizes and agrees with that it does – what is up for discussion are performance-related pay versus restrictions made on executive pay by politicians.
To use these kinds of extreme examples as proof that executive pays driven by performance and by the market have failed is not very convincing. With the same mindset one could argue that democracy as a system has failed with reference to Russia, China and Cuba, where the political power is elected on paper, but on terms that many people would consider horrible. Or one could suggest that the current financial crisis was caused by free-market capitalism, when we know that the problem really was the lack thereof.
That McClendon of Chesapeake Energy was paid $100 million when the company’s performance dipped was not right, simply because it was not related to the (lack of) achieved results. It demonstrates a true flaw in the current system that needs to be improved. But that does not mean that the foundations – performance and competition – on which the current system is based, are wrong. It rather shows the opposite – that pay really should be related to performance.
Simon Hedlin Larsson
Posted in Allmänt
Tagged capitalism, executive pay, free market, imperfect systems, Nell Minow, performance, restrictions, The Economist
SIMON HEDLIN 