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Recent stories in Demographic
OESO-studie: Belg werkt het minst
Een analyse van de Sociale Indicatoren door de OESO, toont enkele verrassende conclusies: Mexicans work longer days than anyone else in OECD countries, devoting 10 hours to paid and unpaid work, such as cleaning or cooking at home. Belgians work the least, at 7 hours, compared with an OECD average of 8 ...
Automatische concurrentiehandicap
De ontslagnemende regering loopt vast op het IPA. Vooral omdat ABBV/FGTB het akkoord niet zien zitten, werd het naar de regering verschoven. De Standaard stelde de vraag aan Rudy De Leeuw (ABVV) wat er mis is met het IPA. Wat is er mis met het IPA? 'Veel. Onze militanten van de sterke ...
Global food supply issues
The global population is increasing, and so does the food demand. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) even estimates that global food demand will have doubled in 2050. A huge challenge, but achievable. Food supply is not expected to become a big issue, which is not the case for sustainable food production. Rabobank ...
Kinderen en ecologisch evenwicht
Een aantal dagen geleden was er een zeer interessante discussie op Radio 1 , met Etienne Vermeersch. Onderwerp was de onstuitbare bevolkingsgroei, en de vraag of een geboortebeperking een oplossing is voor het probleem. Op het moment dat ik dit schrijf bedraagt de wereldbevolking 6,809,067,379 ...
It's a long way to Tipporary...
Yesterday Fitch released a report with some arithmetics and outlook on the ageing population and how the developed west so far has anticipated on these demographic evolutions. As usual, most politicians and media take this with a benign neglect attitude : What's the problem, 2050 is still ages away ? Or in true Belgian style, it ...
AAA Maple Leafs
According to the World Economic Forum, Canadian banks have been ranked as the soundest and most safe banks world-wide, this for 5 years in a row. Toronto Dominion Bank, the country's second largest lender, is the only publicly traded lender in the world which still carries a AAA label from Moody's (for what that's worth of ...
Housing update - The Gemini Portfolio
Gemini, the immortal twins Castor and Pollux, in this case Dublin and Cork. We picked up an interesting story from out of Bloomberg with the Irish unit of RBS liquidating its Dublin/Cork real estate portfolio. Royal Bank of Scotland Plc’s Irish unit offered to sell properties, including 640 apartments and a hotel, for about ...
My calculated Pension Risk
The age of financial repression is going global these days. And it hence shouldn't come as a surprise that large pension funds are not really happy with what monetary policy is fabricating in terms of QE and interest rates. As a consequence, some re-allocations are taking place. Yesterday, the news came in that Japan's Teacher's ...
The beaten generation
The labor market, the most important one in economic terms as far as I am concerned. We used to have the idea that the European labor market is much more distorted than the American one, the latter supposedly more "free". Despite today's so-called good news on the US - admittedly, it's not so bad - the numbers don't tell the whole ...
Food prices - Along came a spider
Last month, the FAO - UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation - called for a special meeting (24/09 in Rome) after riots in Mozambique and press head lines suggested we were heading for a major food crisis, with echos from the 2007-2008 commodity spike. How serious is it and should we become worried ?
Another crack in the wall
Men kan het bijwonen van een concert van Roger Waters (Pink Floyd, weet u nog…) in Manchester op twee manieren verantwoorden. De eerste manier is de eerlijkste: het gaat hier duidelijk om een totaal uit de hand gelopen passie, een vorm van nostalgie die door gespecialiseerde artsen als pathologisch zou omschreven worden. Guilty as ...
Farming in Qatar
Qatar's energy resources have given it one of the world's highest per capita incomes, a futuristic urban skyline and enough clout to host the 2022 soccer World Cup. But its wealth may not be enough for the arid state to achieve an even more ambitious goal: becoming largely self-sufficient in food. ...
Het ene pensioensparen is het andere niet
Het ene pensioensparen is het andere nietWie dacht dat men met de ogen dicht aan pensioensparen kon doen, is deze week toch abrupt met de feiten geconfronteerd geworden.Pensioensparen wordt door de financiële instellingen verkocht als een product waarvan de bijdragen deels door de belastingen worden betaald (fiscaal aftrekbaar) en ...












