Economic Overviews

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.

Today’s infographic looks at where GDP growth will come from in the next 15 and 30 years...(the Asia-Pacific region, which currently makes up only 4.8% of the world’s middle-class spending, will balloon to become the biggest spender by far in 2030 at 32.6%, while North America, by comparison, will only increase from 5.5% to 5.8% during that period) and population and life expectancy projections for 32 countries. What does the future hold for your country?

This article looks at U.S. GDP, the federal minimum wage, the average hourly wage and the adjusted monetary base in terms of the price of gold. It reveals what the situation really looks like - and it is not a pretty sight.

A lot has happened to the global economy over the last 35 years. The forces of economic liberalization, globalization, and the rise of the multinational corporation have all left their mark...[Check out the dynamic Voronoi diagram below showing how] the GDP (total market value of all goods and services produced in a country for a given time period) of each of the world's largest countries have grown or contracted relative to others from 1980 to 2015.

Switzerland tops the Global Competitiveness Index for the seventh year in a row while Singapore beats everyone but Switzerland for the fifth consecutive year. Guess which country holds steady in third place? Read on to find out which other countries cracked the top 10 in this most recent survey.

Outright financial collapse, chaos and most probably war is not only in sight, it is imminent and unavoidable now. What we are looking at now is "the FINAL FLUSH" of the Western financial system. Here's why.

19 of the 23 poorest countries in the world are located in Africa. The DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) is the poorest with its citizens earning on average $394.25 a year (compared with Qatar where people earn an average of $105,091.42 a year). Afghanistan is the first non-African country (10th place) and also the first country where the average annual income passes the $1,000 threshold ($1072.19). Here's the complete list.

An in-depth report on global innovation has been co-released by Cornell University, INSEAD, and the World Intellectual Property Organization covering a total of 141 countries that make up 98.6% of global GDP. The report uses innovation inputs and outputs to create an overall Global Innovation Index with a score for each country. Rather than comparing all countries together, we decided to look at Canada and the United States to see which of the 49th parallel neighbours is the most innovative country. Here it is!

Qatar, Luxembourg and Singapore are the three richest countries in the world. HERE's a list of the top 23 such countries.

Today's market and economic conditions strongly suggest that tomorrow the following events will unfold.