EIU Country Analysis

FROM THE ECONOMIST The world has never seen population ageing before. Can it cope? UNTIL the early ####s nobody much thought about whole populations getting older. The UN had the foresight to convene a "world assembly on ageing" back in

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT A new eight-year securitisation bond for E£#.##bn (US$###m) was issued by the New Urban Communities Authority in early June, carrying a guarantee by the Ministry of Finance. By the end of

FROM THE ECONOMIST Technology can help uncover dangerous cliques in companies IT IS one of the more unusual cases that Elizabeth Charnock has worked on. Several years ago, Ms Charnock#;s software company, Cataphora, based in California, analysed the contents

FROM THE ECONOMIST Most of the rich world is short of babies IN GERMANY a mother who neglects her children is known as a Rabenmutter (raven#;s mother). Many older Germans slap that label on women with small children who

FROM THE ECONOMIST Storing grain predates agriculture, and may have propelled it THE period when humans stopped hunting and gathering and settled down to become farmers is one of the most important in history. It ranks with the original human

FROM THE ECONOMIST Retirement has got out of hand. HOW much golden leisure can you expect at the end of your working life? The OECD has calculated for how many years people in its member countries are now likely to

FROM THE ECONOMIST See graphic below. SOURCE: The Economist

FROM THE ECONOMIST Many people helped with the preparation of this report. In addition to those mentioned in the text, particular thanks go to Andrew Biggs, David Bloom, Gary Burtless, Mariko Fujiwara, Chiemi Hayashi, Ludwig Kanzler, Jeffrey Kingston, Laurence Kotliko

FROM THE ECONOMIST See graphic below. SOURCE: The Economist

FROM THE ECONOMIST Pensions will have to become far less generous. THE past few decades have been the cushiest time ever to be a pensioner in a developed country. Not only has the world been getting ever richer (at least

FROM THE ECONOMIST The world has never seen population ageing before. Can it cope? UNTIL the early ####s nobody much thought about whole populations getting older. The UN had the foresight to convene a "world assembly on ageing" back in

FROM THE ECONOMIST Getting old before getting rich. THE Beijing Ren Ai Geracomium is set in a drab, dusty village just outside the Chinese capital. Grouped round a pleasant garden, this old people#;s home for about ## residents, aged

FROM THE ECONOMIST Most of the rich world is short of babies. IN GERMANY a mother who neglects her children is known as a Rabenmutter (raven#;s mother). Many older Germans slap that label on women with small children who

FROM THE ECONOMIST Networking websites are booming, but they have not supplanted more traditional business networks FRANCOIS PEROL, the adviser whom Nicolas Sarkozy, France#;s president, controversially appointed in February to head two merging mutual banks, is not known as

FROM THE ECONOMIST The benefits, and the costs, of living longer IT IS written in the Bible#;s Book of Genesis that Methuselah lived to be ###. He held the record, but there seem to have been plenty of other

FROM THE ECONOMIST There is money to be made in the grey market, but it takes thought. WHEN Tokyo residents of a certain age want to go shopping, they head for Sugamo, in the north of the city. The main

FROM THE ECONOMIST Age is creeping up on the world, and any moment now it will begin to show. The consequences will be scary, says Barbara Beck. STOP thinking for a moment about deep recession, trillion-dollar rescue packages and

FROM THE ECONOMIST A way of helping the mentally impaired to give informed medical consent THAT people undergoing medical procedures should give their informed consent might seem simple and uncontentious. But what if a patient has a mental impairment and

FROM THE ECONOMIST Fusty old cliques v high-tech communities: it is a closer contest than you think RUMOUR has it that the former chief executive of one French corporate giant may have enjoyed only the appearance of being in

FROM THE ECONOMIST The benefits, and the costs, of living longer. IT IS written in the Bible#;s Book of Genesis that Methuselah lived to be ###. He held the record, but there seem to have been plenty of other

Barack Obama is too deferential to his former colleagues on Capitol Hill THE easiest way for a president to make his life miserable is to antagonise his fellow politicians on Capitol Hill. Bill Clinton tried to steamroll Congress into passing

Carrots, sticks and now a bullhorn fail to deter North Korea ONE is an ageing North Korean cargo tub with more than one previous owner and a record of weapons trafficking. The other, shadowing the Kang Nam # as it

See graphic below.

In our article about the National Theatre#;s production of "Phedre" ("Serried ranks", June ##th), we stated that Racine wrote the play in iambic pentameters. The meter was, of course, alexandrines.

Greek demands to get back the Elgin marbles risk stopping a better idea: museums lending their treasures THERE is much to be said for moral clarity. Greece is insisting that the British Museum surrender the marble sculptures that Lord Elgin

A way of helping the mentally impaired to give informed medical consent THAT people undergoing medical procedures should give their informed consent might seem simple and uncontentious. But what if a patient has a mental impairment and his doctor does

Many people helped with the preparation of this report. In addition to those mentioned in the text, particular thanks go to Andrew Biggs, David Bloom, Gary Burtless, Mariko Fujiwara, Chiemi Hayashi, Ludwig Kanzler, Jeffrey Kingston, Laurence Kotliko, John Llewellyn, Lu

See graphic below.

After a long period of inactivity, China#;s equity market reopens IT IS like a downpour after a drought. In #### and early ####, hundreds of Chinese companies worked feverishly with accountants and bankers to prepare for initial public offerings

A sports broadcaster#;s demise should trouble regulators as much as fans IN IRISH folklore Setanta was a mighty hero, as skilled and fearsome with hurley and ball as with the sword--until he met evisceration and a bloody end

Barack Obama was elected in part to fix America#;s health-care system. Now is the time for him to keep his word DIAGNOSING what is wrong with America#;s health-care system is the easy part. Even though one

The car firms behind the big teams have taken the wheel at the racing series IT WAS ##am in Paris, but high noon for Formula One racing. On June ##th at the grand headquarters of the Federation Internationale de l

Montreal#;s mayor under pressure BACK in the ####s and ####s Montreal was notorious in Canada for municipal graft. Recent allegations in Quebec#;s largest city remind some of those days. The police have five separate investigations under way into

New efforts to reverse centuries of abuse IT IS high season for a sliver of sand in Portage, Indiana. A pretty visitors#; centre sells ice cream. Lake Michigan shimmers in the sun. And beside the beach is a roaring steel

Will the Obama administration#;s reforms of the financial system hurt retailers and manufacturers with lending arms? THE talk had become so fevered that on June ##nd Jeffrey Immelt, General Electric#;s embattled boss, sent out a memo to all

A row with China points to fraying tempers DESPITE the periodic sighting of green shoots elsewhere in the economy, the landscape of global trade remains resolutely bare. The World Bank said on June ##nd that world-trade volumes, reeling from

The recession hit late but hard in Washington state WASHINGTONIANS like to point out that they are home to the largest building, by volume, in the world, a Boeing hangar in the Puget Sound north of Seattle. But Boeing and

Britain looks westward for tips on tarting up its towns ACRES of flourishing weeds adorn derelict docks and warehouses on Edinburgh#;s northern shoreline by the river Forth. Two years ago city planners were busily drawing up ##-year projects

Retirement has got out of hand HOW much golden leisure can you expect at the end of your working life? The OECD has calculated for how many years people in its member countries are now likely to be drawing their

After an abrupt about-face, an agency frets about its footprint IF ANYONE suggested the World Bank did not take global warming seriously, its bosses would bristle: only last October, they would point out, the institution issued a "strategic framework

America#;s health care is the costliest in the world, yet quality is patchy and millions are uninsured. Incentives for both patients and suppliers need urgent treatment NO ONE will be astonished to hear that health care costs more in

As American troops prepare to leave all the towns, Iraqis are getting nervous BARACK OBAMA#;s administration has promised to withdraw all American troops from all of Iraq#;s towns by the end of this month. As the deadline looms

The effort to improve German universities still has a long way to go THE IG FARBEN building in Frankfurt has a history. This is where Zyklon B gas, used at Auschwitz, was invented and Dwight Eisenhower later worked. Now it

Storing grain predates agriculture, and may have propelled it THE period when humans stopped hunting and gathering and settled down to become farmers is one of the most important in history. It ranks with the original human exodus from Africa

The world has never seen population ageing before. Can it cope? UNTIL the early ####s nobody much thought about whole populations getting older. The UN had the foresight to convene a "world assembly on ageing" back in ####, but that

A debate rages about the nature of clerical rule THE Koran is the word of God, which every Muslim must follow, but its commands can be hard to interpret. So people should submit to the rule of a properly trained

The Supreme Court opens the door for updated racial voting laws IT IS one of America#;s greatest laws, and one of the least understood. The Voting Rights Act of #### forced Southern states to let black Americans vote. In

And an intemperate defence of prohibition EVER since George Bush senior launched "the war on drugs" in earnest two decades ago, Latin American governments have been more or less willing belligerents. That was partly because of the carrot and stick

A brutal offensive brings Asia#;s longest civil war closer to its end GOVERNMENT troops advance. Terrorised villagers flee. Rebels fight back. For six decades this has been the rhythm of warfare in eastern Myanmar, where ethnic-Karen insurgents fight

See graphic below.

The latest proposal for a big mining merger runs into opposition IN MINING, it seems, opposites do not attract. On Monday June ##nd Anglo American, a mining firm listed in London and Johannesburg, sent Xstrata packing, after the Swiss firm

Or reform going into reverse? LUNCH is a ladle of chilli with rice, cornbread, salad and a slab of chocolate cake. The Seventh-Day Adventist soup kitchen in Glen Burnie, Maryland, serves a hot meal each Tuesday to anyone who

In America, orders for durable goods rose by #.#% in May after a similar increase in April. Encouragingly, businesses seem more willing to invest, with orders for capital goods rising #.#% in the month. Sales of new homes

Street anger may be fizzling, but infighting at the top could yet harm the regime more AFTER just a week of heart-stirring popular defiance has Iran#;s new-found spirit of liberty already been broken? The demonstrations in the

WERNER HERZOG#;S #### film, "Fitzcarraldo", was inspired by a would-be rubber baron who hauled a boat over a Peruvian mountain to harvest an inaccessible forest of rubber trees because he wanted to build an opera house in the

Hedge-fund giving is proving surprisingly resilient THIS has been the worst year or so in history for the hedge-fund industry, with many funds suffering deep losses and record numbers of them going out of business. Yet some leading

Victims of a warming world may be caught in a bureaucratic limbo unless things are done to ease--and better still, pre-empt--their travails THE airstrip at Lokichoggio, in the scorched wastes of north Kenya, was once ground zero

Pensions will have to become far less generous THE past few decades have been the cushiest time ever to be a pensioner in a developed country. Not only has the world been getting ever richer (at least until very recently

No other German politician comes close to matching her popularity. How does she do it? And what does her ascendancy say about her country? WHAT oratory is to Barack Obama, the photo-opportunity is to Angela Merkel. In a red

Better than billed, but British teeth are still causing trouble A DODGY accent and startling false teeth were all that was needed to turn Canadian actor Mike Myers into the British super-spy Austin Powers. In "The Simpsons", a television

Prehistoric monsters may not have been as monstrous as once believed DINOSAURS--terrible lizards, to translate their name into English--were big. Of course, there were many small ones, too. But what caught the public imagination in the ##th century

The government takes on a "walking prison" WHEN the French government decided in #### to ban the Muslim headscarf in state schools and other public buildings, it set off a heated debate over religious expression and women#;s rights in

Coping with the politics of austerity TAXES are unpopular, and so are public-spending cuts. Democracies may thus have an innate tendency to run up budget deficits. How to control the politicians#; urge to splurge? In Greek mythology the song

The Irish government is unpopular--but may still win a Yes to the Lisbon treaty THE Lisbon treaty has not changed since Irish voters decisively rejected it a year ago. Yet Ireland#;s prime minister, Brian Cowen, is confident of

Silvio Berlusconi#;s business empire faces leaner times WHEN Silvio Berlusconi, Italy#;s prime minister, bought AC Milan, the football team he had supported as a boy, in ####, it seemed a dream come true. But the team, for many

Xstrata#;s all-share offer to Anglo American for a "merger of equals" was forcefully rebuffed by Anglo#;s board. Big investors in Anglo urged it to keep the door open to a sweetened deal, which would create the world

Ian King wants to transform the way the world#;s third-biggest defence company does business ON JUNE ##th last year, just six weeks after Mike Turner, the chief executive of BAE Systems, had been detained on arrival in America

Ralf, Baron Dahrendorf, thinker and politician, died on June ##th, aged ## AS A man who spent his life defining and defending liberty, Ralf Dahrendorf treasured the moment when he first felt that "visceral desire not to be hemmed in

The Tories#; new allies are a motley crew NOT fascists, but not obvious soul mates either: that is a fair summary of the politicians invited on June ##nd to join Britain#;s Conservatives in a new grouping in the European

An apparent fall in cocaine production conceals the remarkable resilience of an illegal industry A YEAR ago when the United Nations#; annual survey showed a rise of ##% in the area planted with coca in Colombia in ####, the government

Technology can help uncover dangerous cliques in companies IT IS one of the more unusual cases that Elizabeth Charnock has worked on. Several years ago, Ms Charnock#;s software company, Cataphora, based in California, analysed the contents of e-mails

"THE British Constitution has always been puzzling and always will be," Queen Elizabeth II was once overheard saying. Until recently it was a puzzle that ##% of Britons would happily have left unsolved. But public disenchantment with established politics was

A mini-pogrom in Ulster has shocked Britain. But a legal battle with the far right is brewing on the mainland RACIST bogeymen leered out of newspaper pages in both Britain and Northern Ireland this week. On the mainland, the

The retail and wholesale prices of heroin in America have fallen dramatically since the early ####s. One gram of heroin in the retail market cost $### in ####, the lowest price since UN records began in ####. The $## margin

Networking websites are booming, but they have not supplanted more traditional business networks FRANCOIS PEROL, the adviser whom Nicolas Sarkozy, France#;s president, controversially appointed in February to head two merging mutual banks, is not known as a champion of

But they had hoped for more from the new president "WE#;RE getting impatient, and we#;re getting concerned," says Pamela Brown of Marriage Equality USA, a gay-rights organisation. "Rhetoric isn#;t going to work." Barack Obama was a

Fusty old cliques v high-tech communities: it is a closer contest than you think RUMOUR has it that the former chief executive of one French corporate giant may have enjoyed only the appearance of being in charge. His talented

Balancing reconciliation with justice may be impossible. A tiny bit of either would be nice FOR several weeks a neat former schoolteacher has sat in a Phnom Penh dock, detailing before the tribunal how meticulously he used to carry out

Getting old before getting rich THE Beijing Ren Ai Geracomium is set in a drab, dusty village just outside the Chinese capital. Grouped round a pleasant garden, this old people#;s home for about ## residents, aged from ## to

There are not enough brave politicians, honest officials and well-trained police to fight India#;s Maoist insurrection SQUATTING on a string bed in Hariharpur, a hamlet of West Bengal#;s West Midnapur district, Chhatradhar Mahato does not seem a

A revolting crime has renewed protests against Indian rule OUTSIDE Shakeel Ahmed Ahangar#;s house in Shopian, an apple-growing hub in the Kashmir valley, mourners gather. Spying a foreign journalist, they yell "Azadi!" (`"Freedom!"). The battle-cry of Kashmiri

A new tribute to the Parthenon AS GREECE#;S first Socialist culture minister in ####, the late Melina Mercouri, a flamboyant actress best known for playing a golden-hearted prostitute in a film called "Never on Sunday", decided to make

Fire and brimstone at a Lincolnshire sulphur plant TROUBLE at a Lincolnshire oil refinery has triggered wildcat strikes, now in their second week, at engineering sites across the country. Discontent in the industry runs deep, and not only because of

Reforms relaunched and new ministers, but the same ambiguous president THIS was to be the moment that Nicolas Sarkozy relaunched his reforms for the second half of his five-year term. On June ##nd, in a ceremony with all the

Age is creeping up on the world, and any moment now it will begin to show. The consequences will be scary, says Barbara Beck STOP thinking for a moment about deep recession, trillion-dollar rescue packages and mounting job losses

New rules designed to make money funds safer do not go far enough BRUCE BENT, a money-market-fund pioneer, liked to say the industry should aim to bore you into a sound night#;s sleep. That was before it

MOST of the people who devote themselves to chronicling the history of Anatolia during the first world war fall into one category or another: those determined to prove that the Armenians suffered genocide, and those determined to prove the opposite

Most of the rich world is short of babies IN GERMANY a mother who neglects her children is known as a Rabenmutter (raven#;s mother). Many older Germans slap that label on women with small children who go out to

The search is on for the ideal book about the financial crisis THE credit crunch may have caused a bust in the economy but it has created a boom in financial publishing. It seems as if every journalist or academic

A Chinese oil firm buys an exploration outfit willing to drill almost anywhere MOST firms making an acquisition want, at the very least, to buy assets protected by strong legal systems in stable countries. But when it comes to buying

For many of the world#;s big commercial banks, #### was a rotten year. The ## largest losses were made by American and European outfits, four of them German. The Royal Bank of Scotland, Citigroup and Wells Fargo suffered a

Depression may be linked to how willing someone is to give up his goals CLINICAL depression is a serious ailment, but almost everyone gets mildly depressed from time to time. Randolph Nesse, a psychologist and researcher in evolutionary medicine at

Magnetic microspheres could have a range of colourful applications A FEW years ago Yadong Yin was experimenting with tiny beads that changed colour when a magnetic field was applied to them. This was interesting but, as the beads floated around

The authorities may succeed in quelling the street demonstrations. But the crisis is far from over, especially as the ruling clergy quarrel among themselves THE roller-coaster that liberal-minded Iranians boarded as they agitated en masse against a suspect

Employees are proving stoical in the face of pay cuts and compulsory unpaid leave BACK when times were better and the newspaper industry wasn#;t fighting for dear life, reporters at the Cleveland Plain Dealer would regularly grumble at the

Can Asians replace Americans as a driver of global growth? ASIA#;S emerging economies are bouncing back much more strongly than any others. While America#;s industrial production continued to slide in May, output in emerging Asia has regained its

Protecting China#;s innocents from smut, violence and the Dalai Lama THE internet is full of stuff of which China#;s government disapproves. Yet there are ###m Chinese internet-users. Keeping the two apart has embroiled the Chinese authorities in

If competition in banking leads to too much risk-taking, the right remedy is better supervision RICKY GERVAIS, a comedian, tells a story about an anxious flight. When informed that the airline no longer offered newspapers to passengers, in order

There is money to be made in the grey market, but it takes thought WHEN Tokyo residents of a certain age want to go shopping, they head for Sugamo, in the north of the city. The main street, Jizo-dori

In our analysis of France#;s European election (June ##th) we described Eva Joly as Franco-Swedish. In fact she is Franco-Norwegian. Sorry