pensions crisis

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Unequal Britain: Equalities in Britain Since 1945 by Pat Thane

Ayatollah Khomeini, British Empire, call centre, collective bargaining, equal pay for equal work, full employment, gender pay gap, longitudinal study, mass immigration, moral panic, Neil Kinnock, old-boy network, pensions crisis, Russell Brand, sexual politics, Stephen Fry, Stephen Hawking, unpaid internship, women in the workforce

London: Equality and Human Rights Commission. Thane, P. (2005), ‘The “scandal” of women’s pensions in Britain: How did it come about?’ in H. Pemberton, P. Thane, and N. Whiteside (eds), Britain’s Pensions Crisis, History and Policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 77–90. Thane, P. (2000), Old Age in English History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Thane, P., Ginn, J., and Hollis, P. (2005), ‘Women and pensions in Britain’ in Pemberton et al. (eds), Britain’s Pensions Crisis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 77–124. Townsend, P. (1957), The Family Life of Old People. London: Routledge. Townsend, P. (1964), The Last Refuge. London: Routledge.

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Notes to Chapter 1: Older people and equality 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Thane, P. (2000), Old Age in English History. Oxford University Press, pp. 19–28. Ibid., pp. 194–215, 308–32. Thane, P. (2006), ‘The “scandal” of women’s pensions in Britain: How did it come about?’ in H. Pemberton, P. Thane and N. Whiteside (eds), Britain’s Pensions Crisis: History and Policy. Oxford University Press, pp. 77–90. Thane, Old Age, pp. 333–52. Groves, D., (1986), ‘Women and Occupational Pensions, 1870–1983’, Unpublished London University PhD. Blaikie, A. (1990), ‘The emerging political power of the elderly in Britain, 1908–1948’, Ageing and Society, 10 (1): 30.

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Social Insurance and Allied Services. Report by Sir William Beveridge. Cmd 6404, p. 92, para. 236. UK Government Actuary’s Department (1975, 1991), Occupational Pensions Schemes, Table 3.2; Table 2.1. Thane, P., Ginn, J., and Hollis, P. (2006), ‘Women and pensions in Britain’ in Pemberton et al., Britain’s Pensions Crisis, pp. 77–124. Steventon, A., and Sanchez, C. (2008), The Under-Pensioned: Disabled People and People from Ethnic Minorities. London: Equality and Human Rights Commission. Sass, S. ‘Anglo-Saxon occupational pensions in international perspective’, in Steventon and Sanchez, The Under-Pensioned, pp. 191–255.

The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest by Edward Chancellor

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, asset allocation, asset-backed security, assortative mating, autonomous vehicles, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, bond market vigilante , bonus culture, book value, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, cashless society, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commodity super cycle, computer age, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, cryptocurrency, currency peg, currency risk, David Graeber, debt deflation, deglobalization, delayed gratification, Deng Xiaoping, Detroit bankruptcy, distributed ledger, diversified portfolio, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Elon Musk, equity risk premium, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, eurozone crisis, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, Extinction Rebellion, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, financial repression, fixed income, Flash crash, forward guidance, full employment, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, global supply chain, Goodhart's law, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, Greenspan put, high net worth, high-speed rail, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, implied volatility, income inequality, income per capita, inflation targeting, initial coin offering, intangible asset, Internet of things, inventory management, invisible hand, Japanese asset price bubble, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, land bank, large denomination, Les Trente Glorieuses, liquidity trap, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Lyft, manufacturing employment, margin call, Mark Spitznagel, market bubble, market clearing, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mega-rich, megaproject, meme stock, Michael Milken, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, Mohammed Bouazizi, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, operational security, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, peer-to-peer lending, pensions crisis, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, price mechanism, price stability, quantitative easing, railway mania, reality distortion field, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk/return, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Satoshi Nakamoto, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, South Sea Bubble, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, Suez canal 1869, tech billionaire, The Great Moderation, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, Tim Haywood, time value of money, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trickle-down economics, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, Walter Mischel, WeWork, When a measure becomes a target, yield curve

Given that the top three hundred pension funds held some $15 trillion-worth of assets, their massive bond purchases contributed to the decline in long-term interest rates.60 In the United Kingdom, liability hedging by corporate pension funds drove the yield on fifty-year inflation-linked gilts into negative territory.61 Thus, low rates begot a pensions crisis and the pensions crisis begot lower rates. The pension world was caught between a rock and a hard place. In theory, higher interest rates would reduce pension liabilities. In practice, they would also hit the value of pension assets, making a bad problem even worse.62 Relief came from an unexpected quarter.

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In this chapter we show how the policy of ultra-low interest rates, which started with the Dotcom bust and was revived after the subprime crisis, reduced the level of saving in the United States and elsewhere. The collapse in interest rates also lowered the return on retirement investments and raised the value of retirement liabilities. As a result, a pensions crisis appeared in the United States and Europe. Retirees around the world faced the grim prospect of outliving their savings and dying in penury. A DEARTH OF SAVINGS The notion of interest as the wage of abstinence found no favour with the legions of economists at the Federal Reserve. America’s central bank embarked on its easy money policy at the turn of the century without duly considering the impact on the country’s savers.

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Both the current account and fiscal balances were in surplus. The financial sector didn’t contribute to Iceland’s recovery but continued shrinking. Instead, new growth came from a variety of sectors: tourism, renewable energy and technology. While the rest of the developed world was engulfed in an intractable pensions’ crisis, Iceland’s private retirement savings comfortably exceeded national income. A decade after the crisis, Iceland’s GDP was 15 per cent above its pre-crisis peak – a better performance than in most of the developed world. In 2018 Iceland claimed seventh place in the OECD’s ranking of output per capita, up four places since 2007.

How Money Became Dangerous by Christopher Varelas

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, airport security, barriers to entry, basic income, Bear Stearns, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Bonfire of the Vanities, California gold rush, cashless society, corporate raider, crack epidemic, cryptocurrency, discounted cash flows, disintermediation, diversification, diversified portfolio, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, driverless car, dumpster diving, eat what you kill, fiat currency, financial engineering, fixed income, friendly fire, full employment, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, initial coin offering, interest rate derivative, John Meriwether, junk bonds, Kickstarter, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, mandatory minimum, Mary Meeker, Max Levchin, Michael Milken, mobile money, Modern Monetary Theory, mortgage debt, Neil Armstrong, pensions crisis, pets.com, pre–internet, profit motive, proprietary trading, risk tolerance, Saturday Night Live, selling pickaxes during a gold rush, shareholder value, side project, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, technology bubble, The Predators' Ball, too big to fail, universal basic income, zero day

Sure, the solution may sound simple in retrospect, but the reason such situations are uniquely difficult is that they often have more to do with a disconnected populace, the self-interested motives of politicians, and the greed of Wall Street than with the actual financial and economic fundamentals. * * * In 2007, Stockton’s mounting pension crisis arrived. During the previous years, when allocations for public employees were set at untenable levels, the city hadn’t reserved enough cash to cover those payments. Now the bill had come due, and the city owed CalPERS—California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the state’s pension and retirement fund—tens of millions of dollars that it couldn’t pay.

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Shrinking the police force led to a marked increase in murders and violent crimes. Unemployment rose to levels among the highest in the nation. And the city leaders who had written and produced this tragedy would soon exit stage left and melt into the crowd. * * * Well beyond Stockton, there is a colossal, looming pension crisis in this country. Stockton may be a warning, a look into our nation’s potential future. The current failures are on many levels, each contributing to a vicious circle that is quietly sinking us further and further into a pit. In short, here’s how pensions work and why the system is dangerously broken.

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There needs to be oversight and accountability, and that begins with each of us having a more active role in asking the right questions every time we encounter a politician with any influence over a pension or retirement system. “How funded is our pension plan? How are the funds invested? What exactly are you doing to mitigate the coming pension crisis?” Until we commit to addressing this issue, we can’t expect the same of our politicians—they will not prioritize challenges beyond their term of office unless we force them to be accountable. 3. Engage with your local community in a personal way. Join a local cause or group, a recreation club or philanthropic endeavor.

Broke: How to Survive the Middle Class Crisis by David Boyle

anti-communist, AOL-Time Warner, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bonfire of the Vanities, bonus culture, call centre, collateralized debt obligation, corporate raider, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, deindustrialization, delayed gratification, Desert Island Discs, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial independence, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frederick Winslow Taylor, gentrification, Goodhart's law, housing crisis, income inequality, Jane Jacobs, job satisfaction, John Bogle, junk bonds, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, low interest rates, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, Mary Meeker, mega-rich, Money creation, mortgage debt, Neil Kinnock, Nelson Mandela, new economy, Nick Leeson, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, Ocado, Occupy movement, off grid, offshore financial centre, pension reform, pensions crisis, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, Ponzi scheme, positional goods, precariat, quantitative easing, school choice, scientific management, Slavoj Žižek, social intelligence, subprime mortgage crisis, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, Vanguard fund, Walter Mischel, wealth creators, Winter of Discontent, work culture , working poor

From the 1890s to the 1970s, the company occupational pension schemes thrived. They gave individuals the protection of being in a large group. They also provided the capital needed to develop the City of London as a major financial centre. Then, over the past quarter of a century, the whole edifice started to unravel. People who speak of a pensions crisis usually point to the way that people are living longer. Robin Ellison quotes one company pension scheme that includes seven people aged 107. If they are women, which they probably are, that means they have been on pensions for forty-seven years. No unmodified pension scheme can survive that, but the problem is solvable: it just means we have to work rather longer.

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[34] OECD figures, see: Guardian, 5 Dec. 2011. 5 The fourth clue: the dog that didn’t bark [1] Michael Hammer and James Champy, Re-engineering the Corporation (New York, HarperBusiness, 1994). [2] Quoted in Simon Gunn and Rachel Bell, The Middle Classes: Their rise and sprawl (London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2002), 213. [3] Peter Morris and Alasdair Palmer, You’re on Your Own: How policy produced Britain’s pensions crisis (London, Civitas, 2011), 26. [4] Morris and Palmer, 26. [5] Guardian, 22 Sept. 2010. [6] Peter Taylor-Gooby, ‘Uncertainty, trust and pensions: The case of the current UK reforms’, Social Policy and Administration, vol. 39, no. 3, Jun. 2005. [7] Norman Fowler, Ministers Decide: A personal memoir of the Thatcher years (London, Chapman’s, 1991), 204

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[13] Lawson, 590. [14] Lawson, 591. [15] The Times, 23 Feb. 1986. [16] Fowler, 223. [17] Daily Express, 17 Dec. 1985. [18] Lawson, 592. [19] Quoted in Cris Sholto Heaton, ‘Where are the customers’ yachts?’, Money Week, 1 Aug. 2006. [20] Fowler, 222. [21] Austin Mitchell and Prem Sikka, Pensions Crisis: A failure of public policy-making (Basildon, Association for Accountancy & Business Affairs, 2006). [22] Independent, 17 May 2009. [23] This example is worked out in more detail in Morris and Palmer, 25ff. [24] John C. Bogle, Enough: True measures of money, business and life (New York, John Wiley, 2009), 30

Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? by Thomas Geoghegan

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, An Inconvenient Truth, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bob Geldof, business logic, collective bargaining, corporate governance, cross-subsidies, dark matter, David Brooks, declining real wages, deindustrialization, disinformation, Easter island, ending welfare as we know it, facts on the ground, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, haute cuisine, high-speed rail, income inequality, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, laissez-faire capitalism, low skilled workers, Martin Wolf, McJob, military-industrial complex, minimum wage unemployment, mittelstand, offshore financial centre, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, pensions crisis, plutocrats, Prenzlauer Berg, purchasing power parity, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, union organizing, Wolfgang Streeck, women in the workforce

(Streeck) German model of social democracy and capitalism child care benefits children in poverty civic trust college attendance rates college tuitions in contrast to France education system elderly poor English-speaking GDP per capita and German character and Germans who resemble Americans Germany as “Green” Germany’s darkness and historical trauma government-provided benefits/entitlements green technology holiday weekends and leisure time hours worked and standard-of-living income equality/inequality law students and bar exam middle class military draft nursing-home benefits and parent care pensions and retirement political conversations political identity and political educations quality control reading and print culture retirement age savings rates size and history in Europe small houses and unification U.S. elites’ opinions of weak state and socialist-friendly private corporations welfare women’s benefits and birthrates See also Berlin, Germany; financial meltdown of 2008 (the Krise) and German model; German model of social democracy (future of); German model of social democracy (German socialism); German model of social democracy (jobs/employment); German model of social democracy (labor and industry); German model of social democracy (unions and labor movement) German model of social democracy (future of) ascension of CDU changes to the European model decline of labor unions/union organizing financial meltdown of 2008 (the Krise) Germans’ despair about pension crisis rumors of collapse SDP-Green government and Agenda 2010 German model of social democracy (German socialism) and Catholicism co-determination contrast to older state socialism and German capitalism labor unions and wage-setting and postwar U.S. Army occupation and reading works councils German model of social democracy (jobs/employment) high-skill jobs and high-end precision goods manufacturing workforce percent of adults holding an associate degree percent of adults self-employed public-sector civil service jobs skilled-labor shortage subsidies for artists unemployment German model of social democracy (labor and industry) export sales “globalization” thesis high-skill jobs and high-end precision goods industry and social democracy labor costs labor markets market flexibility postwar economic recovery (the “German miracle”) public spending/consumer spending levels services and “virtuous growth” voices of the left on the labor crisis voices of the right on the labor crisis wage moderation and “wage costs” wage-setting by unions worker control German model of social democracy (unions and labor movement) decline of labor and organizing after the Krise foreign-born union membership and postwar U.S.

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See also reading and European social democracies Newsweek Norway nursing-home benefits and parent care Obama, Barack On the Road (Kerouac) Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Orwell, George Overy, Richard “Palace of the Republic” (GDR parliament building in Berlin) Party of European Socialists Congress (May 2001) pensions and retirement benefits European social democracies German model Germany’s pension crisis public-sector jobs retirement age U.S. Pilgrim’s Progress (Bunyan) PISA test plutocracies Polish immigrants Porter, Michael Postwar (Judt) “producer” wants/“consumer” wants Prussia public goods/private goods Putnam, Robert Quadragesimo Anno (papal encyclical) rail transportation reading and European social democracies essay reading in France French newspapers and journalism German daily newspapers Germany high school graduates/postgraduates Internet reading and manufacturing workforce people reading in public and political awareness and television viewing Reichstag (Berlin) Rerum Novarum (papal encyclical) retirement benefits and pension plans European social democracies German model Germany’s pension crisis retirement age Social Security U.S.

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Pilgrim’s Progress (Bunyan) PISA test plutocracies Polish immigrants Porter, Michael Postwar (Judt) “producer” wants/“consumer” wants Prussia public goods/private goods Putnam, Robert Quadragesimo Anno (papal encyclical) rail transportation reading and European social democracies essay reading in France French newspapers and journalism German daily newspapers Germany high school graduates/postgraduates Internet reading and manufacturing workforce people reading in public and political awareness and television viewing Reichstag (Berlin) Rerum Novarum (papal encyclical) retirement benefits and pension plans European social democracies German model Germany’s pension crisis retirement age Social Security U.S. “Rhineland capitalism” Rohmer, Eric Rubin, Robert Ruskin, John Ryanair Samuelson, Paul savings rates Schettkat, Ronald Schmidt, Helmut Schmitt, John Schroeder, Gerhard and German middle class SDP and labor SDP and welfare state and socialist left Schumpeter, Joseph SDP.

Stolen: How to Save the World From Financialisation by Grace Blakeley

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, asset-backed security, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Basel III, basic income, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Big Tech, bitcoin, bond market vigilante , Bretton Woods, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, capitalist realism, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate raider, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, currency peg, David Graeber, debt deflation, decarbonisation, democratizing finance, Donald Trump, emotional labour, eurozone crisis, Extinction Rebellion, extractivism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, fixed income, full employment, G4S, gender pay gap, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global reserve currency, global supply chain, green new deal, Greenspan put, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, impact investing, income inequality, inflation targeting, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jeremy Corbyn, job polarisation, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, land value tax, light touch regulation, low interest rates, low skilled workers, market clearing, means of production, Modern Monetary Theory, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, neoliberal agenda, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, paradox of thrift, payday loans, pensions crisis, Phillips curve, Ponzi scheme, Post-Keynesian economics, post-war consensus, price mechanism, principal–agent problem, profit motive, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, Right to Buy, rising living standards, risk-adjusted returns, road to serfdom, Robert Solow, savings glut, secular stagnation, shareholder value, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, sovereign wealth fund, the built environment, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, transfer pricing, universal basic income, Winter of Discontent, working-age population, yield curve, zero-sum game

Home ownership is now in decline.47 House prices have torn away from wages to such an extent that most young people cannot afford to buy a home. Home ownership amongst 25–34-year-olds has fallen from 65% twenty years ago to 27% today.48 Many young people are now accustomed to the fact that they will never own their own homes. On top of the stagnation in wages, the pensions crisis, and the erosion of the nation’s collective wealth, today’s young people missed the 1980–2007 boat entirely, and are now left with the wreckage of an economic model that has enriched their parents — not to mention a dying planet. Elites’ strategy for dealing with our current crisis is to divide working people in order to protect themselves, squeezing the poor whilst protecting middle and upper earners.

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Elites’ strategy for dealing with our current crisis is to divide working people in order to protect themselves, squeezing the poor whilst protecting middle and upper earners. But this strategy is coming unstuck. Young people today know that they have little to gain from the continuation of the status quo, even as their parents cling to its remnants in the hope of protecting the value of their assets. But as house prices fall, the pensions crisis escalates, and wages continue to stagnate, even these voters are likely to concede that there might be a better way to run the economy. Impending environmental collapse adds an urgency to all of these issues — if we do not radically transform the way our economy works now, many parts of the planet will rapidly become uninhabitable.

The Corona Crash: How the Pandemic Will Change Capitalism by Grace Blakeley

Anthropocene, asset-backed security, basic income, Big Tech, bond market vigilante , Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, carbon tax, central bank independence, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, creative destruction, credit crunch, crony capitalism, debt deflation, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, don't be evil, financial deregulation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, gig economy, global pandemic, global value chain, green new deal, Greenspan put, income inequality, informal economy, inverted yield curve, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, liberal capitalism, light touch regulation, lockdown, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, Modern Monetary Theory, moral hazard, move fast and break things, Network effects, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, pensions crisis, Philip Mirowski, post-war consensus, price mechanism, quantitative easing, regulatory arbitrage, rent control, reshoring, Rishi Sunak, savings glut, secular stagnation, shareholder value, social distancing, structural adjustment programs, too big to fail, universal basic income, unorthodox policies, Washington Consensus, yield curve

The importance of accounting for capital gains’, Resolution Foundation, 21 May 2020. 43 Carys Roberts, Grace Blakeley and Luke Murphy, A Wealth of Difference: Reforming Wealth Taxation in the UK, Institute for Public Policy Research [IPPR], 2018. 44 Stephen Clark et al., Are We Nearly There Yet? Spring Budget 2017 and the 15 Year Squeeze on Family and Public Finances, London: Resolution Foundation, 2017, resolutionfoundation.org. 45 Josephine Cumbo and Robin Wigglesworth, ‘ “Their House Is on Fire”: The Pensions Crisis Sweeping the World’, Financial Times, 17 November 2019. 46 Richard C. Koo, The Other Half of Macroeconomics and the Fate of Globalization, Chichester, UK: Wiley, 2018. 47 Grace Blakeley, ‘The Next Crash: Why the World Is Unprepared for the Economic Dangers Ahead’, New Statesman, 6 March 2019. 48 Rana Foroohar, ‘Tech Companies Are the New Investment Banks’, Financial Times, 11 February 2018. 49 Koo, The Other Half of Macroeconomics. 50 Chibuike Oguh and Alexandre Tanzi, ‘Global Debt of $244 Trillion Nears Record Despite Faster Growth’, Bloomberg, 15 January 2020. 2 Into State Monopoly Capitalism 1 Philip Aldrick and Gurpreet Narwan, ‘We’ll Do Whatever It Takes, Central Banks Vow’, The Times, 27 March 2020; Scott Minerd, ‘Prepare for the Era of Recrimination’, Global CIO Outlook, Guggenheim Investments, 26 April 2020. 2 Rudolf Hilferding, Finance Capital: A Study of the Latest Phase of Capitalist Development, ed.

Planet Ponzi by Mitch Feierstein

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, book value, break the buck, centre right, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, disintermediation, diversification, Donald Trump, energy security, eurozone crisis, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, Flash crash, floating exchange rates, frictionless, frictionless market, Future Shock, Glass-Steagall Act, government statistician, high net worth, High speed trading, illegal immigration, income inequality, interest rate swap, invention of agriculture, junk bonds, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low earth orbit, low interest rates, mega-rich, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, Neil Armstrong, Northern Rock, obamacare, offshore financial centre, oil shock, pensions crisis, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, price anchoring, price stability, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, tail risk, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, value at risk, yield curve

Consequently, as a nation, we owe over $17 trillion, which is substantially more than the $15 trillion or so we earn in a year. If we all worked hard for the next 365 days and handed over every single penny of our earnings to the IRS, the country would still be in debt afterwards. But, serious as the state-level pension crisis is, it’s only the tip of a vastly larger iceberg. The pensions owed to public servants are legal, enforceable, courtroom-ready obligations, but that’s not the only kind of obligation a government can create for itself. As a nation, we have also made public promises to all our current and future retirees, telling them that if they contribute to social security via the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) taxes, we will make pension payments to cover their old age.

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And he berates financial markets for wanting to turn France ‘into their poodle.’ (Actually, Arnaud, the bond markets don’t want a dog, they want to know they’re going to get their money back. You know: the almost $2.5 trillion that France borrowed.) Meantime Martine Aubry wants to fix the looming pensions crisis by bringing the pensionable age down from sixty-two to sixty. François Hollande wants to create 300,000 public sector jobs. And French voters appear to be partial to this nonsense. Almost three-fifths of the population want higher trade barriers to be erected unilaterally. The same number think trade with India and China has been bad for the country.14 Nicolas Sarkozy, supposedly a politician of the center-right, came to power promising sweeping structural reform and has delivered almost nothing.

The Wake-Up Call: Why the Pandemic Has Exposed the Weakness of the West, and How to Fix It by John Micklethwait, Adrian Wooldridge

Admiral Zheng, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air traffic controllers' union, Alan Greenspan, basic income, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bike sharing, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, carbon tax, carried interest, cashless society, central bank independence, contact tracing, contact tracing app, Corn Laws, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, defund the police, Deng Xiaoping, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Etonian, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Future Shock, George Floyd, global pandemic, Internet of things, invisible hand, it's over 9,000, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", Jeremy Corbyn, Jones Act, knowledge economy, laissez-faire capitalism, Les Trente Glorieuses, lockdown, McMansion, military-industrial complex, night-watchman state, offshore financial centre, oil shock, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Parkinson's law, pensions crisis, QR code, rent control, Rishi Sunak, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, school vouchers, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, smart cities, social distancing, Steve Bannon, surveillance capitalism, TED Talk, trade route, Tyler Cowen, universal basic income, Washington Consensus

Brian Anderson (Boulder: Rowman and Littlefield, 2013), 203–5. 10.Schuck, Why Government Fails So Often, 175. 11.We should confess that one of us comes from a family of British farmers. 12.Selam Gebrekidan, Matt Apuzzo, and Benjamin Novak, “The Money Farmers: How Oligarchs and Populists Milk the EU,” New York Times, November 3, 2019. 13.Colin Grubak, Inu Manak, and Daniel Ikenson, “The Jones Act: A Burden America Can No Longer Bear,” Cato Institute Policy Analysis, June 28, 2018. 14.Schuck, Why Government Fails So Often, 177, 180. 15.We are indebted to Mario Calvo-Platero for this insight. 16.Group of Thirty, Fixing the Pensions Crisis: Ensuring Lifetime Financial Security (Washington, DC, 2019). 17.“Policy Basics: Where Do Our Federal Tax Dollars Go?” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, April 9, 2020. 18.Greenspan and Wooldridge, Capitalism in America, 407. 19.Schuck, Why Government Fails So Often, 319. 20.“Law School Popular for Congress, with Harvard, Georgetown Topping List,” Bloomberg Law, January 25, 2019. 21.Jeremy Paxman, The Political Animal: An Anatomy (London: Michael Joseph, 2002), 206–7.

The Innovation Illusion: How So Little Is Created by So Many Working So Hard by Fredrik Erixon, Bjorn Weigel

Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, American ideology, asset allocation, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, Blue Ocean Strategy, BRICs, Burning Man, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cass Sunstein, classic study, Clayton Christensen, Colonization of Mars, commoditize, commodity super cycle, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, crony capitalism, dark matter, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, discounted cash flows, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Fairchild Semiconductor, fear of failure, financial engineering, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, general purpose technology, George Gilder, global supply chain, global value chain, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Gordon Gekko, Greenspan put, Herman Kahn, high net worth, hiring and firing, hockey-stick growth, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, income per capita, index fund, industrial robot, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Just-in-time delivery, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, laissez-faire capitalism, low interest rates, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, market design, Martin Wolf, mass affluent, means of production, middle-income trap, Mont Pelerin Society, Network effects, new economy, offshore financial centre, pensions crisis, Peter Thiel, Potemkin village, precautionary principle, price mechanism, principal–agent problem, Productivity paradox, QWERTY keyboard, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, rent-seeking, risk tolerance, risk/return, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, subprime mortgage crisis, technological determinism, technological singularity, TED Talk, telemarketer, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, The Nature of the Firm, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, total factor productivity, transaction costs, transportation-network company, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, uber lyft, University of East Anglia, unpaid internship, Vanguard fund, vertical integration, Yogi Berra

One estimate of US public pensions, erring on the extreme side, suggests the return on capital is going to drop to such low rates that up to 85 percent of US pension plans risk failure within 30 years.17 More moderately, studying the 25 biggest public retirement systems, Moody’s has estimated that there is a $2 trillion shortfall in US public pension plans.18 Perhaps that estimate overplays or undershoots the real size of the problem, but it is easy to see why they and others are worried about a growing pensions crisis. Estimates for the return on investment on pension savings rely on historic financial performances. With historically low interest rates, it becomes necessary for savers and investment funds to increase risks to reach expected returns. A deflationary economy with low nominal growth lowers the possible returns on safe savings.

…

Chance (Being There character) (i), (ii) multinational (global) companies characteristics of (i), (ii) and competition (i) and corporate cash savings (i) and dispersed ownership (i) and firm boundaries (i), (ii) and foreign direct investment (FDI) (i), (ii) and global trade (i), (ii) vs. home-market firms (i) and innovation (i) as logistics hubs (i) and market concentration (i), (ii) and market contestability (i) and private standards (i) and productivity (i), (ii) and R&D (i) and regionalization of Asia’s trade growth (i) and regulation (i) reputation of (i) and “slicing up” of value chains (i) and specialization (i), (ii) and supply chains (i) and transaction costs (i) see also big firms; globalization; globalization (overview) Musk, Elon (i), (ii), (iii) mutual funds (i), (ii) nanotechnology (i), (ii), (iii) NASA (i) Nasdaq, and sovereign wealth funds (i) national accounts (recorded data), vs. real value of improvements (i), (ii) National Science Foundation (US) (i) neoconservatism (i) neoliberalism (i) nepotism (i) net lending see corporate net lending Netherlands exports to China (i) taxi services and regulation (i) “new economy” (i) New England Journal of Medicine, medical devices study (i) New Machine Age thesis background: economic realities vs. technological blitz vision (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii); historical perspective (i) criticism of thesis: cyclical effects on productivity argument (i); jobs and technology issue (i); productivity/income decoupling issue (i), (ii); recorded data vs. real improvements argument (i), (ii); summary (i) and fear of artificial intelligence (i) and planning machine economic philosophy (i) and Robert Gordon on US labor productivity growth (i) see also The Second Machine Age (Brynjolfsson and McAfee) New York City dockers and containerization (i) taxi services and regulation (i), (ii) New York Stock Exchange (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) see also Wall Street New York Times, on Bell’s telephone invention (i) NICs (newly industrialized countries) (i) Nietzsche, Friedrich (i), (ii) nimby (not-in-my-backyard) attitude (i) NM Electronics (Intel) (i), (ii), (iii) Nobel Peace Prize, and Twitter (i) “noise” (at work) (i) Nokia and corporate managerialism (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi) and Foxconn (i) and specialization (i) and tablet market (i) non-entrepreneurial planning (i) North American Free Trade Agreement (i) Norway, sovereign wealth fund (i), (ii), (iii) not-in-my-backyard (nimby) attitude (i) Obama, Barack (i), (ii) obsolescence see knowledge obsolescence occupational licenses (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) on aging firms and innovation (i) on corporate savings (i) on “diffusion machine” and productivity (i) GDP forecasts (i) on intermediaries and shareholders’ income (i) on pension funds and PPRFs (i) on R&D skill deficiencies (i) on regulatory administration costs (i) on sovereign wealth funds (i) on taxi services (i) OECD countries product market regulation (PMR) indicators (i), (ii) R&D spending (i) start-ups (i) total assets by types of institutional investors (2001–13) (i), (ii) “off-license” sectors (i) “offshore” pattern of innovation (i) oligopolistic (or monopolistic) competition (i) Ollila, Jorma (i), (ii) Olson, Mancur (i) “one percent” (wealthiest group) (i) online services and diffusion of innovations (i), (ii) and recorded economic data (i) and regulation (i) see also internet open source technology, and socialism (i) organic cognition (i) Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development see OECD; OECD countries organization industrial organization (i), (ii) vs. managerialism/technostructure (i) and multinationals (i) and specialization (i) Organization Man (i), (ii) organizational diversification (i), (ii) Osborne, Michael (i) outsourcing (i) ownership see capitalist ownership; institutional owners Palo Alto Research Center (PARC, Xerox) (i) “Panama Papers” story (i) Parisian taxis, and regulation (i) patents, and knowledge obsolescence (i) pay see incomes payment cycles (i) payment technologies (i) pensions and asset management industry (i) and gray capitalism (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) need for reform (i) pension crisis (i) pensioners vs. working-age households incomes (i) and principal–agent debate (i) private pensions (i), (ii) public/state pensions (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v); public pension funds and reserve funds (OECD, 2001–13) (i), (ii); public pension return funds (PPRFs) (i) see also retirement Pepsi (i) performance imperatives (i) performance measurements (i) performance tools (i), (ii) permission-based regulatory culture (i), (ii) permissionless innovation (i) pessimism, and capitalist decline (i) Pessoa, João Paolo (i) Pfleiderer, Paul (i) pharmaceutical sector and price regulations (i)n28 R&D investment (i), (ii) and regulation (i), (ii) Phelps, Edmund (i)n41 Mass Flourishing (i), (ii) Piketty, Thomas (i), (ii) PillCam digestive tract sensor (i) Pippi Longstocking (i) planning and corporate managerialism: planning machines (i), (ii), (iii); strategy (i); uncertainty and risk (i) Cybersyn project (i) and failing companies (i) and globalization (i) non-entrepreneurial planning (i) and regulation (i) and “scientific civilization” thinking (i) and spirit of bureaucracy (i) and Swedish economy (i) plastic cards (i) Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia (i) Plouffe, David (i) PMR (product market regulation) indicators (i), (ii) policy uncertainty, and investment (i), (ii) political romanticism (i) political world and capitalism as borderless space (i) cronyism , (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) dirigisme (France) (i) government intervention vs. liberalism (i) governments and globalization (i) governments and mobile technology (i) gray-haired voters (i) lobbying (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) and regulation: 1980s–1990s policy changes (i); case of taxi services and Uber (i); political romanticism (i); social regulation (i); trend on the rise (i) and sovereign wealth funds (i), (ii), (iii) see also policy uncertainty; politics politics corporate politics (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) end of and digital age (i) populism (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) see also political world populations aging (i), (ii), (iii) decline (i) populism (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Porter, Michael (i), (ii) portfolio theory (i) Portugal, lesser dependence on larger enterprises (i) positioning (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) poverty, and globalization (i) PPRFs (public pension return funds) (i) see also pensions precautionary regulations (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) predictability (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii) see also uncertainty; volatility premature scaling (i), (ii) price index bias (i) Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) on asset management industry (i) on compliance officers in US (i) productivity growth survey (i) on sovereign wealth funds (i) principal–agent problem (i) principal–agent theory (i) prioritizing, and strategy (i) private standards (i) probabilistic decision-making (i), (ii) product market regulation (PMR) indicators (i), (ii) production and computer technology (i) geography of production (i) lean production (i), (ii) and multinationals (i) production costs (i), (ii), (iii) unbundling of: first (i); second (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) see also specialization; supply chains; value chains productivity and containerization (of global trade) (i) and cyclical effects (i) and data economy (i) downward trend (i), (ii) and employment (i) and financial sector growth (i) and foreign operations (i)n46 and globalization (i), (ii), (iii) and ICT intensity (i), (ii) and incomes (decoupling thesis) (i), (ii) key to prosperity (i) low productivity and innovation diffusion problems (i) and market contestability (i), (ii) and multinationals (i), (ii) and regulation (i) and robots (i) total factor productivity (TFP) growth (i), (ii), (iii) and transaction costs (i) UK productivity puzzle (i) professional investment/investors (i), (ii), (iii) see also asset managers professions regulation of (i), (ii) see also occupational licenses profit margins and decoupling (productivity/incomes) thesis (i) and globalization (i), (ii) protectionism (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) public markets and financialization of the economy (i) and mergers and acquisitions (i) public pension return funds (PPRFs) (i) see also pensions public relations campaigns (i), (ii) “put option” (i) PwC see Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) quantitative valuation methods (i) quantum dots (QD) technology (i) R&D (research and development) and corporate net lending (i) and firm boundaries (i), (ii) and multinationals (i) and pharmaceutical products (i), (ii) and policy uncertainty (i) and productivity (i) R&D scoreboards (European Commission) (i), (ii) and regulation (i), (ii), (iii) vs. share buybacks at IBM (i) spending issues (i), (ii), (iii) and sunk costs (i) US R&D investment (i), (ii), (iii) and vertical specialization (i) see also incremental development Rajan, Raghuram (i) rating agencies (i), (ii), (iii) rationalism and globalist worldview (i), (ii) and societal change (i) Reagan, Ronald (i), (ii) real economy, vs. financial economy (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) reallocation of business, and deregulation (i) recorded data (national accounts) vs. real value of improvements (i), (ii) regulation after 1980s–1990s deregulation wave (i), (ii) and bureaucracy brake (Germany) (i) and compliance officers (i) and costs and time lags (i) and decline of capitalism (i), (ii) economic regulation (i), (ii) financial regulations (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) and globalization (i) and gray capitalism (i) and healthcare sector (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) index of regulatory freedom (i), (ii) and industrial policy (i), (ii) and innovation (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi) and labor (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) and lobbying (i) and managerialism (i), (ii) and market contestability (i), (ii) moving-target regulations (i) and multinationals (i) and pensions (i) permission-based regulatory culture (i), (ii) and permissionless innovation (i) and planning (i) and political romanticism (i) and political world (i), (ii) prescriptive vs. proscriptive (i), (ii) private standards (i) and R&D (i), (ii), (iii) and size of companies (i) social regulation (i), (ii) and trade (i), (ii), (iii) see also deregulation; legislation; regulatory complexity/uncertainty regulatory accumulation (i) regulatory bodies (i) regulatory complexity/uncertainty cadmium example (i), (ii) energy sector case (i), (ii) impact on economic growth (i) impact on innovation (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) precautionary regulations (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) regulatory conflicts (i) regulatory/policy uncertainty and investment allocation (i), (ii) rise of regulatory uncertainty (i) see also deregulation; regulation renewable energy see green/renewable energy rent-seeking (i), (ii), (iii) rentier capitalism (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi) rentier formula, resource allocation according to (i) rentiers (i), (ii) reputation management (i) research concept of in corporate world (i), (ii) scientific research (i) see also cancer research; incremental development; R&D Research in Motion (RiM) (i), (ii) retail, and globalization (i) retirement age of (i) savings (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii) see also pensions Ricardo, David, wine-for-cloth thesis (i) rich people vs. capitalists (i), (ii) high-net-worth individuals (i) mass affluent (i) “one percent” (wealthiest group) (i) risk banks’ proneness to (i) and globalist worldview (i), (ii) and uncertainty (i), (ii) Robertson, Dennis (i) Robinson, James (i) robotics/robots and Asimov/science fiction (i) impact of on society (i) and labor (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v); Foxconn example (i) and technology-frustrated generation (i) see also artificial intelligence; automation; driverless vehicles; New Machine Age thesis; technology Rodman, Dennis (i) Rolling Stone (magazine), “Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail?”

How I Became a Quant: Insights From 25 of Wall Street's Elite by Richard R. Lindsey, Barry Schachter

Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, Andrew Wiles, Antoine Gombaud: Chevalier de Méré, asset allocation, asset-backed security, backtesting, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Black-Scholes formula, Bob Litterman, Bonfire of the Vanities, book value, Bretton Woods, Brownian motion, business cycle, business process, butter production in bangladesh, buy and hold, buy low sell high, capital asset pricing model, centre right, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, computerized markets, corporate governance, correlation coefficient, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency risk, discounted cash flows, disintermediation, diversification, Donald Knuth, Edward Thorp, Emanuel Derman, en.wikipedia.org, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, full employment, George Akerlof, global macro, Gordon Gekko, hiring and firing, implied volatility, index fund, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, Ivan Sutherland, John Bogle, John von Neumann, junk bonds, linear programming, Loma Prieta earthquake, Long Term Capital Management, machine readable, margin call, market friction, market microstructure, martingale, merger arbitrage, Michael Milken, Myron Scholes, Nick Leeson, P = NP, pattern recognition, Paul Samuelson, pensions crisis, performance metric, prediction markets, profit maximization, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, QWERTY keyboard, RAND corporation, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, Richard Feynman, Richard Stallman, risk free rate, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, seminal paper, shareholder value, Sharpe ratio, short selling, Silicon Valley, six sigma, sorting algorithm, statistical arbitrage, statistical model, stem cell, Steven Levy, stochastic process, subscription business, systematic trading, technology bubble, The Great Moderation, the scientific method, too big to fail, trade route, transaction costs, transfer pricing, value at risk, volatility smile, Wiener process, yield curve, young professional

And there are many other models that have been developed in the last 30 years: Ross’s Arbitrage JWPR007-Lindsey 148 April 30, 2007 17:52 h ow i b e cam e a quant pricing model of 1976, the Fama and French factor models of the 1990s, Grinold and Kahn’s Fundamental Law of Active Management in 1989 and its subsequent refinement in 2002 (for transfer coefficients), and the Black-Litterman model of 1990 for asset allocation. The economics of the financial markets are still being discovered and defined, and it is the quants who are leading the way. Managing the Outcome As I look forward to new economic challenges in the financial markets, the single largest issue globally is the growing pension crisis. In the United States, the Social Security system faces bankruptcy sometime around 2050. Many defined benefit plans are shutting down or being handed over to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. In addition, the aging Baby Boomers are finally getting ready to retire and head off into a well-deserved sunset.

…

For example, exotic derivatives trading desks get a lot of quantitative attention, but the risk exposures of exotic derivatives desks are dwarfed by the credit exposures at the same banks, which are only now receiving quant attention thanks to the requirements of Basel CAD (Capital Adequacy Directive) II. In turn, these credit exposures are dwarfed by those of pension fund portfolios, which are run by amateur trustees with advice from actuaries who know little about finance (hence, the pensions crisis). Quants congregate in derivative valuation, yet there are other areas of finance that are crying out for decent models. Yes, the problems seem “fuzzy.” The first reason for this is we haven’t solved them yet! Before Black, Scholes, and Merton showed people how to do it, option valuation was a fuzzy problem, too.

Clock of the Long Now by Stewart Brand

Albert Einstein, Brewster Kahle, Buckminster Fuller, Charles Babbage, Colonization of Mars, complexity theory, Danny Hillis, Eratosthenes, Extropian, fault tolerance, George Santayana, Herman Kahn, Internet Archive, Jaron Lanier, Kevin Kelly, Kim Stanley Robinson, knowledge economy, Lewis Mumford, life extension, longitudinal study, low earth orbit, Metcalfe’s law, Mitch Kapor, nuclear winter, pensions crisis, phenotype, Ray Kurzweil, Robert Metcalfe, Stephen Hawking, Stewart Brand, technological singularity, Ted Kaczynski, Thomas Malthus, Tragedy of the Commons, Vernor Vinge, Whole Earth Catalog

Rosabeth Moss Kanter, On the Frontiers of Management (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1997), pp. 281-2, 284. CHAPTER 23, GENERATIONS 1:50 Yet, each person’s portion of chronos—our lifespan—in fact has been increasing dramatically. The statistics in this paragraph come from: Marshall N. Carter and William G. Shipman, “The Coming Global Pension Crisis,” Foreign Affairs (November 1996), p. 98; Laura Carstenson, Stanford Alumni Magazine (March 1998), p. 48; and John W. Rowe, Robert L. Kahn, Successful Aging (New York: Pantheon, 1998), pp. 3, 6. 1:51 “When you live a really long time, it changes everything.” Bruce Sterling, Holy Fire (New York: Bantam, 1996), p. 36. 1:52 “Once an angry man dragged his father along the ground through his own orchard . . .”

The Nowhere Office: Reinventing Work and the Workplace of the Future by Julia Hobsbawm

8-hour work day, Airbnb, augmented reality, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Cal Newport, call centre, Cass Sunstein, collective bargaining, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, David Graeber, death from overwork, Diane Coyle, digital capitalism, digital nomad, driverless car, emotional labour, future of work, George Floyd, gig economy, glass ceiling, global pandemic, Google Hangouts, Greensill Capital, job satisfaction, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, means of production, megacity, Neal Stephenson, Ocado, pensions crisis, remote working, San Francisco homelessness, Second Machine Age, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snow Crash, social distancing, solopreneur, Steve Jobs, systems thinking, TED Talk, The Great Resignation, the long tail, the strength of weak ties, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, Upton Sinclair, WeWork, work culture

These three identities determine what workers expect to take from office life and – just as importantly – what they should be expected to bring to it. These groups span the uniquely broad intergenerational cohort active in working life today, from those who were born around 1945 and are ending their careers but are often still working (and thanks to the global pension crisis many either won’t or can’t retire); the ‘boomers’ and those they work alongside in Generation X; the digital natives of Generation Y (millennials) and Generation Z.14 In under a decade they will be joined by the Alphas, those currently still in school but approaching the age of sixteen when they can be counted as belonging to the workforce.

The Numbers Game: The Commonsense Guide to Understanding Numbers in the News,in Politics, and inLife by Michael Blastland, Andrew Dilnot

Atul Gawande, business climate, confounding variable, correlation does not imply causation, credit crunch, happiness index / gross national happiness, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), moral panic, pension reform, pensions crisis, randomized controlled trial, school choice, very high income

The fault here is not with numbers and the inevitable way that they must bully reality into some semblance of orderliness. It is with people, and our tendency to ignore that this compromise took place, while leaping to big conclusions. Is this a mere tabloid extravagance? Not at all: it is commonplace, in policymaking circles as in the media. When, amid fears of a pension crisis, the British government- appointed Turner Commission published a preliminary report in 2005 on the dry business of pension reform, it said 40 percent of the population was heading for “inadequate” provision in retirement. With luck, your definitional muscles will now be flexing: what do they mean by “inadequate”?

Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity by Charles L. Marohn, Jr.

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, A Pattern Language, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, anti-fragile, bank run, big-box store, Black Swan, bread and circuses, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, call centre, cognitive dissonance, complexity theory, corporate governance, Detroit bankruptcy, Donald Trump, en.wikipedia.org, facts on the ground, Ferguson, Missouri, gentrification, global reserve currency, high-speed rail, housing crisis, index fund, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, low interest rates, low skilled workers, mass immigration, megaproject, Modern Monetary Theory, mortgage debt, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, paradox of thrift, Paul Samuelson, pensions crisis, Ponzi scheme, quantitative easing, reserve currency, restrictive zoning, Savings and loan crisis, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, trickle-down economics, Upton Sinclair, urban planning, urban renewal, walkable city, white flight, women in the workforce, yield curve, zero-sum game

It solved the immediate problem, I got paid, and – of course – there was the assumption that the prosperity we anticipated in the future would take away any pain our future selves would experience meeting that obligation. Nobody ever analyzed why there were cash-flow problems in the first place. This is the same logic that underlies the public pension crisis, and it’s why it’s so intractable. During difficult budget cycles, government employees voluntarily agreed to give up salary and benefit increases. In exchange, they received promises of increased future pension benefits. This was perceived as a great exchange because, of course, the economy was going to continue to grow, the future would be more prosperous than the present, and there would be far more resources to pay those pensions when they came due.

The Global Auction: The Broken Promises of Education, Jobs, and Incomes by Phillip Brown, Hugh Lauder, David Ashton

active measures, affirmative action, An Inconvenient Truth, barriers to entry, Branko Milanovic, BRICs, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, classic study, collective bargaining, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, deskilling, disruptive innovation, Dutch auction, Ford Model T, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, future of work, glass ceiling, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, immigration reform, income inequality, industrial cluster, industrial robot, intangible asset, job automation, Jon Ronson, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, market bubble, market design, meritocracy, neoliberal agenda, new economy, Paul Samuelson, pensions crisis, post-industrial society, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, QWERTY keyboard, race to the bottom, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, shared worldview, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, stem cell, tacit knowledge, tech worker, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, trade liberalization, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, vertical integration, winner-take-all economy, working poor, zero-sum game

Such evidence led Jared Bernstein and Heidi Shierholz from the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute to conclude that these losses in coverage in high-quality jobs are a reminder that occupational upgrading—the shift to jobs higher up the occupational ladder—does not ensure higher rates of health insurance coverage. “No one is immune to the slow unraveling of the employer-based system.”25 Britain also has a pension crisis from which those in middle-class occupations are not immune, although a high quality National Health Service reduces the need for company-provided health insurance. In 1995, 5 million people remained in final-salary programs with a guaranteed proportion of their final salary in retirement, similar to the defined benefit pensions in the United States.

The Greed Merchants: How the Investment Banks Exploited the System by Philip Augar

Alan Greenspan, Andy Kessler, AOL-Time Warner, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bonfire of the Vanities, business cycle, buttonwood tree, buy and hold, capital asset pricing model, Carl Icahn, commoditize, corporate governance, corporate raider, crony capitalism, cross-subsidies, deal flow, equity risk premium, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, high net worth, information retrieval, interest rate derivative, invisible hand, John Meriwether, junk bonds, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, Michael Milken, new economy, Nick Leeson, offshore financial centre, pensions crisis, proprietary trading, regulatory arbitrage, risk free rate, Sand Hill Road, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, statistical model, systematic bias, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Chicago School, The Predators' Ball, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transaction costs, tulip mania, value at risk, yield curve

Despite the strong macro-economic performance of the last quarter century, the benefits have by-passed a large part of the population, even in the United States where just 13,000 taxpayers receive more than 3 per cent of all income and the national poverty rate is one in eight.1 For many in the working population, despite twenty years of rising stock prices and pay, a pension crisis seems inevitable. Depending on your point of view, increased productivity in America and Britain is either an economic miracle that vindicates the system or a myth created by the spin doctors.2 Just as the market economy is a mixed bag, so too with the investment banks. Their importance is often exaggerated and their faults are obvious, but their vital role has enabled them to ride out the storms.

The New Economics: A Bigger Picture by David Boyle, Andrew Simms

Abraham Maslow, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, Apollo 11, Asian financial crisis, back-to-the-land, banking crisis, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bonfire of the Vanities, Bretton Woods, capital controls, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, collateralized debt obligation, colonial rule, Community Supported Agriculture, congestion charging, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, Crossrail, delayed gratification, deskilling, digital divide, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, financial deregulation, financial exclusion, financial innovation, full employment, garden city movement, Glass-Steagall Act, green new deal, happiness index / gross national happiness, if you build it, they will come, income inequality, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jane Jacobs, John Elkington, junk bonds, Kickstarter, land bank, land reform, light touch regulation, loss aversion, mega-rich, microcredit, Mikhail Gorbachev, Money creation, mortgage debt, neoliberal agenda, new economy, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, oil shock, peak oil, pension time bomb, pensions crisis, profit motive, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, Ronald Reagan, seigniorage, Simon Kuznets, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, systems thinking, the long tail, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, wealth creators, working-age population

(Note: this proposal has been put into practice in a basic form by the UK government and is known as ‘quantitative easing’.) 166 THE NEW ECONOMICS 8 Innovations for productive and secure savings (a): Introduce a ‘People’s Pension’ to provide secure savings vehicles for retirement Attempts to leverage private sector cash to pay for schools and hospitals have repeatedly been exposed as bad deals for the public. At the same time we now have a pension crisis. People in Britain are seeing their life savings destroyed by the fallout from the credit crisis. In 2003, nef proposed the idea of a ‘People’s Pension’; its approach gives people more control over where their savings go and what they are invested in. It proposes an adaptable model more insulated from market turbulence than orthodox pensions schemes.

The Weightless World: Strategies for Managing the Digital Economy by Diane Coyle

Alan Greenspan, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, blue-collar work, Bretton Woods, business cycle, clean water, company town, computer age, Corn Laws, creative destruction, cross-subsidies, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, dematerialisation, Diane Coyle, Edward Glaeser, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, financial deregulation, flying shuttle, full employment, George Santayana, global village, Great Leap Forward, hiring and firing, Howard Rheingold, income inequality, informal economy, invention of the sewing machine, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, labour market flexibility, laissez-faire capitalism, lump of labour, Mahbub ul Haq, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, McJob, Meghnad Desai, microcredit, moral panic, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, new economy, Nick Leeson, night-watchman state, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, pension reform, pension time bomb, pensions crisis, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Snow Crash, spinning jenny, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the market place, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, Tobin tax, Tragedy of the Commons, two tier labour market, very high income, War on Poverty, winner-take-all economy, working-age population

The money has to come from other taxes or borrowing, of course. There is no way round the fact that the transition will make the public finances worse before it makes them better. Despite the catch, most of the industrial countries will probably end up introducing something similar. Even in Britain, where there is no looming pensions crisis in terms of government finance because of the capping of the state pension and introduction of private pensions in the 1980s, there is still interest in reform because of fears that people are simply not saving enough towards their old age. It is an optional system, and millions will end up on unsatisfactory state pensions whose value will have been eroded because they The Weightless World 160 are linked to prices rather than earnings.

The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State by John Micklethwait, Adrian Wooldridge

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Admiral Zheng, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Asian financial crisis, assortative mating, banking crisis, barriers to entry, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, bike sharing, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, British Empire, cashless society, central bank independence, Chelsea Manning, circulation of elites, classic study, Clayton Christensen, Corn Laws, corporate governance, credit crunch, crony capitalism, Deng Xiaoping, Detroit bankruptcy, disintermediation, Disneyland with the Death Penalty, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Etonian, failed state, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Gunnar Myrdal, income inequality, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", junk bonds, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, Kodak vs Instagram, labor-force participation, laissez-faire capitalism, land reform, Les Trente Glorieuses, liberal capitalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, Michael Milken, minimum wage unemployment, mittelstand, mobile money, Mont Pelerin Society, Nelson Mandela, night-watchman state, Norman Macrae, obamacare, oil shale / tar sands, old age dependency ratio, open economy, Parag Khanna, Peace of Westphalia, pension reform, pensions crisis, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, popular capitalism, profit maximization, public intellectual, rent control, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, road to serfdom, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, school choice, school vouchers, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, Skype, special economic zone, TED Talk, the long tail, three-martini lunch, too big to fail, total factor productivity, vertical integration, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, Winter of Discontent, working-age population, zero-sum game

It is easy to poke holes in the Asian model—and we poke a lot of them in this book. Singapore is very small. China’s governmental efficiency falls apart at the local level. So far the emerging world has not seized the opportunity to leapfrog ahead that technology has presented it with. Brazil is heading toward a pension crisis that could dwarf even those in Greece and Detroit. India may have a few of the most innovative hospitals in the world, but it has some of the lousiest roads and laziest politicians. But do not be fooled into thinking that the emerging world is miles behind. The bureaucrats at CELAP are right: The days when the West had a monopoly on clever government are long gone.

The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class by Guy Standing

8-hour work day, banking crisis, barriers to entry, basic income, behavioural economics, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, bread and circuses, call centre, Cass Sunstein, centre right, collective bargaining, company town, corporate governance, crony capitalism, death from overwork, deindustrialization, deskilling, emotional labour, export processing zone, fear of failure, full employment, Herbert Marcuse, hiring and firing, Honoré de Balzac, housing crisis, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, independent contractor, information security, it's over 9,000, job polarisation, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, labour market flexibility, labour mobility, land reform, libertarian paternalism, low skilled workers, lump of labour, marginal employment, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, means of production, mini-job, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, nudge unit, old age dependency ratio, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, pension time bomb, pensions crisis, placebo effect, post-industrial society, precariat, presumed consent, quantitative easing, remote working, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, rising living standards, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, science of happiness, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, technological determinism, The Market for Lemons, The Nature of the Firm, The Spirit Level, Tobin tax, transaction costs, universal basic income, unpaid internship, winner-take-all economy, working poor, working-age population, young professional

They need the money; they fear being out in the street, as a ‘bag lady’ or ‘bag man’. Their desperation makes them a threat to others in the precariat, since they will take anything going. And, whether groaners or grinners, old agers are being helped to compete with youth in the precariat, as governments react to the combination of the pension crisis and the perception that in the longer term there will be a labour shortage. First, governments are offering subsidies for private (and some public) pension investments. Fearing spiralling pension costs, governments have introduced tax incentives for private pension savings. These are inegalitarian, as are most subsidies.

Future Files: A Brief History of the Next 50 Years by Richard Watson

Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, bank run, banking crisis, battle of ideas, Black Swan, call centre, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, cashless society, citizen journalism, commoditize, computer age, computer vision, congestion charging, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, deglobalization, digital Maoism, digital nomad, disintermediation, driverless car, epigenetics, failed state, financial innovation, Firefox, food miles, Ford Model T, future of work, Future Shock, global pandemic, global supply chain, global village, hive mind, hobby farmer, industrial robot, invention of the telegraph, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, knowledge economy, lateral thinking, linked data, low cost airline, low skilled workers, M-Pesa, mass immigration, Northern Rock, Paradox of Choice, peak oil, pensions crisis, precautionary principle, precision agriculture, prediction markets, Ralph Nader, Ray Kurzweil, rent control, RFID, Richard Florida, self-driving car, speech recognition, synthetic biology, telepresence, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Turing test, Victor Gruen, Virgin Galactic, white flight, women in the workforce, work culture , Zipcar

Social unrest Government and Politics 93 created by a global economic downturn is one possibility; a domestic banking crisis brought about by the sheer weight of bad loans is another. I strongly believe that ageing is still the most significant trend overall, although it is not entirely inconceivable that any resultant pensions crisis could be solved by a sudden and unexpected rise in fertility rates. Beyond these observations, much has stayed the same. Russia is still on a course for demographic oblivion, with around half its population disappearing by the year 2050, and politicians are still getting away with taxation by stealth — most notably by forcing people to pay for things they have already paid for once through taxation, or by fining people for relatively minor legal infringements (for example, councils fining households for overflowing rubbish bins, caused in part by the rubbish not being collected frequently enough).

How to Own the World: A Plain English Guide to Thinking Globally and Investing Wisely by Andrew Craig

Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, asset allocation, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Black Swan, bonus culture, book value, BRICs, business cycle, collaborative consumption, diversification, endowment effect, eurozone crisis, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Future Shock, index fund, information asymmetry, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Long Term Capital Management, low cost airline, low interest rates, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, mortgage debt, negative equity, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, passive income, pensions crisis, quantitative easing, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Russell Brand, Silicon Valley, smart cities, stocks for the long run, the new new thing, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Yogi Berra, Zipcar

This is why one of the top hedge funds in the world I visited recently stresses that their stated aim is to try and consistently make 1 per cent per month, every month. Over time this seemingly modest ambition will yield significantly better results for their investors than for investors in racier hedge funds who try and “shoot the lights out” every year. How can we have a pensions crisis when you can turn £5,000 into £1 million with such relatively modest returns? COSTS ARE KEY Crucially, please note the huge differences that a small change in the percentage return can make over time. For example, over twenty years the difference between making 12 per cent and 10 per cent is nearly £76,500, and this is when using these reasonably small numbers.

The Human City: Urbanism for the Rest of Us by Joel Kotkin

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alvin Toffler, autonomous vehicles, birth tourism , blue-collar work, British Empire, carbon footprint, Celebration, Florida, citizen journalism, colonial rule, crony capitalism, deindustrialization, demographic winter, Deng Xiaoping, Downton Abbey, edge city, Edward Glaeser, financial engineering, financial independence, Frank Gehry, gentrification, Gini coefficient, Google bus, housing crisis, illegal immigration, income inequality, informal economy, intentional community, Jane Jacobs, labor-force participation, land reform, Lewis Mumford, life extension, market bubble, mass immigration, McMansion, megacity, megaproject, microapartment, new economy, New Urbanism, Own Your Own Home, peak oil, pensions crisis, Peter Calthorpe, post-industrial society, RAND corporation, Richard Florida, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Seaside, Florida, self-driving car, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, starchitect, Stewart Brand, streetcar suburb, Ted Nelson, the built environment, trade route, transit-oriented development, upwardly mobile, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl, Victor Gruen, Whole Earth Catalog, women in the workforce, young professional

“Hollywood Needs More than Window Dressing and Bogus Claims to Boom Again,” City Watch, http://www.citywatchla.com/archive/2787-hollywood-needs-more-than-window-dressing-and-bogus-claims-to-boom-again. PLOTNICK, Robert D. (2009). “Childlessness and the Economic Well-Being of Older Americans,” The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences 6, doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbp023. PLUMRIDGE, Hester. (2012, June 7). “Europe’s Pension Crisis Yet to Come of Age,” Wall Street Journal, http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303296604577450483946387736. POLLET, Thomas V., KUPPENS, Toon, and DUNBAR, Robin I.M. (2006). “When Nieces and Nephews become Important: Differences between Childless Women and Mothers in Relationships with Nieces and Nephews,” Journal of Cultural and Evolutionary Psychology, no. 4, doi: 10.1556/JCEP.4.2006.2.1.

Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism by Anne Case, Angus Deaton

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, basic income, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Boeing 737 MAX, business cycle, call centre, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, company town, Corn Laws, corporate governance, correlation coefficient, crack epidemic, creative destruction, crony capitalism, declining real wages, deindustrialization, demographic transition, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Edward Glaeser, Elon Musk, falling living standards, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial engineering, fulfillment center, germ theory of disease, income inequality, Jeff Bezos, Joseph Schumpeter, Ken Thompson, Kenneth Arrow, labor-force participation, Les Trente Glorieuses, low skilled workers, Martin Wolf, meritocracy, Mikhail Gorbachev, obamacare, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, pensions crisis, pill mill, randomized controlled trial, refrigerator car, rent-seeking, risk tolerance, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, trade liberalization, Tyler Cowen, universal basic income, working-age population, zero-sum game

Pavel Grigoriev, France Meslé, Vladimir M. Shkolnikov, et al., 2014, “The recent mortality decline in Russia: Beginning of the cardiovascular revolution?,” Population and Development Review, 40(1), 107–29. 25. Robert T. Jensen and Kaspar Richter, 2004, “The health implications of social security failure: Evidence from the Russian pension crisis,” Journal of Public Economics, 88(1–2), 209–36. 26. Angus Deaton, 2008, “Income, health and wellbeing around the world: Evidence from the Gallup World Poll,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 22(2), 53–72. Chapter 9: Opioids 1. Stephen R. Platt, 2018, Imperial twilight: The opium war and the end of China’s last golden age, Knopf. 2.

Arrival City by Doug Saunders

agricultural Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, Boeing 747, Branko Milanovic, call centre, credit crunch, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, foreign exchange controls, gentrification, ghettoisation, Gini coefficient, guest worker program, Hernando de Soto, Honoré de Balzac, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, informal economy, Jane Jacobs, Kibera, land reform, land tenure, low skilled workers, mass immigration, megacity, microcredit, new economy, Pearl River Delta, pensions crisis, place-making, price mechanism, rent control, Silicon Valley, special economic zone, the built environment, The Chicago School, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, upwardly mobile, urban planning, urban sprawl, white flight, working poor, working-age population

222–23. 5 Dilip Ratha, “Revisions to Remittance Trends 2007,” in Migration and Development Brief 5 (World Bank, 2007). 6 For a moving account of the psychological effects of this mass family displacement, see Fan Lixin’s film Last Train Home. 7 A new social security system launched by Beijing in December 2009 will take many years to implement and may prove fiscally impossible to apply fully. See Howard W. French, “Pension Crisis Looms for China,” International Herald Tribune, Mar. 20, 2007; Ariana Eunjung Cha, “In China, Despair Mounting among Migrant Workers,” The Washington Post, Mar. 4, 2009. 8 James Kynge, “China’s Workers Enable Village Consumer,” Financial Times, Feb. 26, 2004. 9 Rob Young, “China’s Workers Return to Cities,” BBC News, Sept. 8, 2009. 10 Michael Lipton and Qi Zhang, “Reducing Inequality and Poverty During Liberalisation in China: Rural and Agricultural Experiences and Policy Options” (Brighton: PRUS Working Paper no. 37, 2007); OECD, “Review of Agricultural Policies—China” (2005). 11 Ran Tao and Zhigang Xu, “Urbanization, Rural Land System and Social Security for Migrants in China,” Journal of Development Studies 43, no. 7 (2007): 1,309. 12 Srijit Mishra, “Farmers’ Suicides in Maharashtra,” Economic and Political Weekly, Apr. 22, 2006. 13 Debarshi Das, “Persistence of Small-Scale, Family Farms in India: A Note,” The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development 16, no. 3 (2007); Srijit Mishra, “Agrarian Scenario in Post-Reform India: A Story of Distress, Despair and Death” (Mumbai: Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, 2007). 14 Katy Gardner, “Keeping Connected: Security, Place and Social Capital in a ‘Londoni’ Village in Sylhet,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 14 (2008). 15 Tasneem Siddiqui, “Migration as a Livelihood Strategy of the Poor: The Bangladesh Case,” in Regional Conference on Migration, Development and Pro-Poor Policy Choices in Asia (Dhaka: RMMRU, 2003). 16 Katy Gardner and Zahir Ahmed, “Place, Social Protection and Migration in Bangladesh: A Londoni Village in Biswanath” (Brighton: Development Research Centre on Migration, Globalisation and Poverty, 2006).

Innovation and Its Enemies by Calestous Juma

3D printing, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, autonomous vehicles, behavioural economics, big-box store, biodiversity loss, business cycle, Cass Sunstein, classic study, clean water, collective bargaining, colonial rule, computer age, creative destruction, CRISPR, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deskilling, disruptive innovation, driverless car, electricity market, energy transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, fail fast, financial innovation, global value chain, Honoré de Balzac, illegal immigration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invention of movable type, invention of the printing press, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, loss aversion, Marc Andreessen, means of production, Menlo Park, mobile money, New Urbanism, Nicholas Carr, pensions crisis, phenotype, precautionary principle, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, refrigerator car, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, smart grid, smart meter, stem cell, Steve Jobs, synthetic biology, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, technological singularity, The Future of Employment, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Travis Kalanick

., Blending of New and Traditional Technologies (Dublin: Tycooly, 1984); and Nathan Rosenberg, “Technology and Employment Programme on Technology Blending,” Working Paper, World Employment Programme, 1986. 75. Paul Bellaby, “Uncertainties and Risks in Transitions to Sustainable Energy, and the Part ‘Trust’ Might Play in Managing Them: A Comparison with the Current Pension Crisis,” Energy Policy 38, no. 6 (2010): 2624–2630. 76. Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (New York: Free Press, 1996). 77. Guido Möllering, “The Nature of Trust: From Georg Simmel to a Theory of Expectation and Suspension,” Sociology 35, no. 2 (2001): 403–420. 78.

Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth by Andrew Smith

Apollo 11, Apollo 13, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, Charles Lindbergh, cuban missile crisis, Dennis Tito, Dr. Strangelove, full employment, game design, Gene Kranz, guns versus butter model, Haight Ashbury, Jeff Bezos, low earth orbit, Mark Shuttleworth, Mars Rover, Marshall McLuhan, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Naomi Klein, Neil Armstrong, Norman Mailer, nuclear winter, orbital mechanics / astrodynamics, overview effect, pensions crisis, Ronald Reagan

” And all before we even reach the Little Ice Age, which gripped Europe for four hundred years from the mid-1400s and may be implicated in the persecution of witches, the French Revolution and the mysterious sublimity of Antonio Stradivari’s violins, and Schmitt’s unsettling doubt about the theory that global warming is human-induced. (He thinks we might have more to fear from the fact that periods of warming are often followed by rapid cooling: interestingly, current NASA scientists profoundly disagree with him.) We roam at length through the looming pensions crisis – the world’s most unsexy issue back in 1980 when Jack tried to bring it to a reluctant Senate’s attention (precipitated by our old friends the Baby Boomers, who will die with the rare distinction of having royally pissed off their parents and progeny in equal measure); and over the careerism, venality and bias toward incumbents that Schmitt encountered in the Senate, where “there’s no competitive races anymore … the gerrymandering … if an incumbent decides to run for reelection, they’ve got a ninety-eight per cent chance of winning, and it’s been that way for decades.”

The Euro: How a Common Currency Threatens the Future of Europe by Joseph E. Stiglitz, Alex Hyde-White

"there is no alternative" (TINA), "World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, battle of ideas, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy and hold, capital controls, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, cashless society, central bank independence, centre right, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, currency peg, dark matter, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, disintermediation, diversified portfolio, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, financial innovation, full employment, George Akerlof, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, Growth in a Time of Debt, housing crisis, income inequality, incomplete markets, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, investor state dispute settlement, invisible hand, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, light touch regulation, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market bubble, market friction, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, neoliberal agenda, new economy, open economy, paradox of thrift, pension reform, pensions crisis, price stability, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, the payments system, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, transaction costs, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, Washington Consensus, working-age population

The worry is that attempts to regulate, to prevent such abuses, will now become a cross-border dispute, with the German government (and therefore the Troika) taking the side of the oligarch/German partnership against the public interest. 31 In the case of Greece, the historically tense relationship with Turkey makes cutbacks in military spending especially difficult, even though when Georges Papandreou was foreign minister, there was a serious rapprochement. 32 See John Henley, “ ‘Making Us Poorer Won’t Save Greece’: How Pension Crisis is Hurting Its People,” Guardian, June 17, 2015. 33 Matthew Dalton, “Greece’s Pension System Isn’t That Generous After All,” Wall Street Journal, February 27, 2015. 34 Whether part of the formal or implied contract is of secondary concern. 35 There is an exception: when pensions have been gratuitously increased after the work has been done.

Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business by Rana Foroohar

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, Alvin Roth, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, bank run, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Big Tech, bonus culture, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, buy and hold, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carl Icahn, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, centralized clearinghouse, clean water, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, computerized trading, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, data science, David Graeber, deskilling, Detroit bankruptcy, diversification, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, electricity market, Emanuel Derman, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial intermediation, Ford Model T, Frederick Winslow Taylor, George Akerlof, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Greenspan put, guns versus butter model, High speed trading, Home mortgage interest deduction, housing crisis, Howard Rheingold, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, index fund, information asymmetry, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, Internet of things, invisible hand, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", John Bogle, John Markoff, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market design, Martin Wolf, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, new economy, non-tariff barriers, offshore financial centre, oil shock, passive investing, Paul Samuelson, pensions crisis, Ponzi scheme, principal–agent problem, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, Rana Plaza, RAND corporation, random walk, rent control, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, scientific management, Second Machine Age, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, technology bubble, TED Talk, The Chicago School, the new new thing, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, Tobin tax, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, trickle-down economics, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Vanguard fund, vertical integration, zero-sum game

Amazingly, there is more debt in the world today than there was before the 2008 financial crisis—the difference is that now governments have even more debt than the financial sector.42 That means governments will not easily be able to take up the slack from the markets and provide a retirement safety net for citizens. Indeed, governments not just in the United States but everywhere will increasingly be looking to cut social programs and benefits rather than augment them (just look at what’s happening in Europe today). This adds further fuel to the fire of the pension crisis. Finally, retail and institutional investors are beginning to understand how badly they’ve been fleeced by the asset management business. The year 2014 was a particularly dismal one for active fund managers—more of them failed to beat the market benchmarks than at any time in the past thirty years.

Profiting Without Producing: How Finance Exploits Us All by Costas Lapavitsas

Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, borderless world, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, computer age, conceptual framework, corporate governance, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, disintermediation, diversified portfolio, Erik Brynjolfsson, eurozone crisis, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, false flag, financial deregulation, financial independence, financial innovation, financial intermediation, financial repression, Flash crash, full employment, general purpose technology, Glass-Steagall Act, global value chain, global village, High speed trading, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, inflation targeting, informal economy, information asymmetry, intangible asset, job satisfaction, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, liberal capitalism, London Interbank Offered Rate, low interest rates, low skilled workers, M-Pesa, market bubble, means of production, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Network effects, new economy, oil shock, open economy, pensions crisis, post-Fordism, Post-Keynesian economics, price stability, Productivity paradox, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, savings glut, Scramble for Africa, secular stagnation, shareholder value, Simon Kuznets, special drawing rights, Thales of Miletus, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tobin tax, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, transaction costs, union organizing, value at risk, Washington Consensus, zero-sum game

Langley, Paul, The Everyday Life of Global Finance: Saving and Borrowing in America, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Langley, Paul, ‘Financialization and the Consumer Credit Boom’, Competition and Change 12:2, pp. 133–47, 2008. Langley, Paul, ‘In the Eye of the “Perfect Storm”: The Final Salary Pensions Crisis and the Financialization of Anglo-American Capitalism’, New Political Economy 9:4, 2004, pp. 539–58. Langley, Paul, World Financial Orders: An Historical International Political Economy, London: Routledge, 2002. Lapavitsas, Costas, ‘The Banking School and the Monetary Thought of Karl Marx’, Cambridge Journal of Economics 18:5, 1994, pp. 447–61.

The State and the Stork: The Population Debate and Policy Making in US History by Derek S. Hoff

affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Alfred Russel Wallace, back-to-the-land, British Empire, business cycle, classic study, clean water, creative destruction, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, demographic transition, desegregation, Edward Glaeser, feminist movement, full employment, garden city movement, Garrett Hardin, George Gilder, Gregor Mendel, Gunnar Myrdal, guns versus butter model, Herman Kahn, immigration reform, income inequality, income per capita, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, Jane Jacobs, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, labor-force participation, Lewis Mumford, manufacturing employment, mass immigration, New Economic Geography, new economy, old age dependency ratio, open immigration, Paul Samuelson, peak oil, pensions crisis, profit motive, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, road to serfdom, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Scientific racism, secular stagnation, Simon Kuznets, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, Tragedy of the Commons, trickle-down economics, urban planning, urban sprawl, W. E. B. Du Bois, wage slave, War on Poverty, white flight, zero-sum game

Because anticipated demand governs risk-taking, entrepreneurs would be more reluctant to take risks and existing firms less likely to make long-term capital investments. As a result, the normal turnover inherent in a market economy would no longer be absorbed by growth elsewhere, making the economy less adaptable and exacerbating downturns.90 And the coming increase in the number of elderly might engender a pension crisis.91 In the end, however, Reddaway concluded that the “economic outlook [of a slightly declining population] must be regarded as at least potentially favorable. Provided we can learn how to take advantage of it, the new situation should enable us to raise our standard of living at least as rapidly as in the past.”92 The “overriding proviso” to this “optimistic conclusion” was that the British (or any other) government must solve the unemployment problem, which, in his view, a declining population could possibly exacerbate.93 Herein lay the rub of SPK: population decline need not be a significant problem, provided states assumed more of the burden of maintaining aggregate demand.