Can Turtles Fly?

Future of the World is Already Written... Demographics is one of these things that is hard to change and once set in motion, can last for a lifetime... (source: " Global Demographic Trends Shape Policy Environment ," Mark A. Wynne, Economic Letter, Dallas Federal Reserve, July 2016, Vol 11, No 7; main page link )

How Educated is the World? Education vs Age in the Modern World Competitiveness of countries, and their standard of living, has historically been driven by education. This relationship may not be as strong in the future—my view is that higher education isn't as big of a distinguishing factor as it was in the past—but very-low education still prevents certain countries from competing on the world market. The chart below from McKinsey Global Institute shows education vs age for key countries. It is obvious that the higher-educated countries are older. It's not clear to me if this is due to lower-educated populations having lower lifespans and/or having more kids. Those scoring low on the education scale are, as expected, poorer as well. (click for larger image) (source: " The world at work: Jobs, pay, and skills for 3.5 billion people ," McKinsey Global Institute. June 2012)

US Ethnicity (self-identified survey) (source: 2000 US Census. Downloaded from VisualizingEconomics.com ) Canadian Ethnicity (self-identified survey) (source: 2006 Census. Downloaded from wikipedia.org ) The maps here are flawed but I thought I would show them anyway since they are interesting. Since the maps plot self-identified results, they may or may not be reflective of the truth. Furthermore, respondents can write in anything so ethnicities such as "American" and "Canadian" can mean anything.

It probably isn't a surprise to many that my favourite column in the business weekly, The Economist , is the Buttonwood column. It closely parallels my interests, with a blend of macro views intermingled with investing. I have no idea how useful any of it is to investing but I like reading it :) A few weeks ago, Buttonwood had an interesting column, " The very long view ," talking about how asset returns typically depend on when you invest. This isn't true for stockpickers since they will do well in any conditions if they are right. Indeed, it's hard to say what type of environment suits someone like Warren Buffett or Walter Schloss, given their strong performance in almost any environment. Yet, for the general public, it is likely true that your returns will depend heavily on the timing. The article quoted a Barclays Capital analyst, Tim Bond, as saying that asset returns are strongly correlated with the 'saving age' portion of the population. Button...

Looming Crisis - Gender Imbalance (source: " The worldwide war on baby girls ," The Economist, Mar 4th 2010)