Euro on the rise sending the USD lower and GBP higher as short positions were unwound ahead of year end which together with thin liquidity has exacerbated what would normally have been a smaller set of moves.
Ages: 0-14 yrs 17%; 15-24 yrs 12%; 25-54 yrs 48%
Population: 1.435 Billion
Growth rate: 0.6%
The last statistic is the one to note as you will have noted that as 77% of the population is below the age of 54, that means 23% is above the age of 55. Not a problem for the moment but given increased longevity and the 48% of the population between 25 and 48, when they are no longer working in 40 years time, it will be a problem. They will all need to be paid for in older age and a smaller workforce will have to work that much harder. This is not unfamiliar to those in Western Europe who now have to deal with both a declining and an ageing population.
Booked your spring bank holiday weekend away? Smug that you are ahead of the pack? Even though you have paid double for those flights to Spain? Oh dear. 30 million diaries were printed and sold before the announcement that the traditional first Monday in May had been moved to Friday May 8 to commemorate Victory in Europe or VE Day. Apparently blissfully unaware of this, many Brits keen to get those towels on the sunbeds ahead of the Germans/ French/Dutch have plonked their money down, booked their flights for the weekend of 1-4 May, and there’s the clue, now look like plonkers!
Discussion and Analysis by Humphrey Percy, Chairman and Founder
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell gave a speech in Washington last night that further confirmed his hard line thinking: US interest rates will need to go up more and probably it will take two separate rate rises to see if that is sufficient-the clear implication is that if it needs more, then that is what […]
US Economy The US job figures on Friday most certainly set the cat among the pigeons: with non farm payrolls expected to be up by 187,000 and the market’s expectation that Chairman Powell of the Federal Reserve was talking the talk rather than walking the walk when he had said last Wednesday that rates were […]
UK Housing Market Plenty of comment about the UK’s housing market and where it is headed, but maybe it’s time to boil down the essentials for the next year: with rates higher and unemployment likely to rise, conventional wisdom suggests that the housing market will fall. However, there are two key differences to recent previous […]