Economic Overviews

2016 is looking like the year in which all economic policies fail as they play out in an environment where all the other major economies are also rolling over and the U.S. Fed has just begun a tightening cycle. That makes 2016 a uniquely scary year.

Some amazing revelations regarding the percentage of children living in poverty in various countries around the world. Shameful!

Today, swimsuit models, hemlines, and even Twitter all have somethingswimsuit 2015 to say about the economy - if we know what to look for - and MarketWatch examined 13 unusual economic indicators, concluding from the evidence that the outlook is mixed.

China has increasingly poured billions of dollars of foreign direct investment capital into Africa..and is now invested in 46 of 54 African countries, mainly with a focus on metals, energy, and infrastructure...Investments in 2015 up until June have totaled $17.8 billion, and are on pace to reach $42 billion by the end of this year. The infographic below will help you visualize China's investment in China.

Each year we score countries on how corrupt their public sectors are seen to be by capturing the informed views of analysts, business people and experts in countries around the world. The resultant Corruption Perceptions Index sends a powerful message and governments have been forced to take notice and act. How does your country score?

Who is going to pull the global economy out of its funk? No one knows, but it’s not going to be China – regardless of how many more times the central bank is going to tweak its policies and cut interest rates. That’s what China’s trade fiasco is saying.

There have been reports of Westerners eating at a decent restaurant, a hotel room, and hiring a prostitute all for under $5US. In other words, the Venezuelan economy has utterly ceased to function, except through black market transactions involving dollars.

Canada's economy is suffering badly and could well be sliding from its current state of recession into outright depression due to the following 6 factors:

We believe, more than ever, in the inevitability of an economic collapse sometime around October as a number of black swans on the wing head our way. Let me explain why that is likely the case.

Future business activity will reflect the over-indebted state of the U.S. economy and the world & the inability of the Federal Reserve to initiate policies to promote growth in this environment. If that’s not a pithy, spot-on summary of our sorry situation, I don’t know what is! The details are provided within.