World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

Credit Suisse has published its annual report on global wealth, and the report has both good and bad news.  The good news is that the creation of wealth has been robust:  “…it seems likely that personal wealth has recently been rising at the fastest rate ever recorded.”   The report estimates that personal wealth reached $263 trillion in 2013.   The bad news is that wealth has grown considerably faster than income.  The ratio of wealth to income has reached levels that mimic the levels just before the Great Depression.  The report notes that ” abnormally high wealth income ratios have always signaled recession in the past.”   Europe and North America together account for 67.1% of all the personal wealth in the world. Since income is a better determinant of spending than is wealth, the growing concentration of wealth/income ratios should signal a problem of lack of demand in the market.

Indeed, median incomes in the US have declined by 9% over the last quarter-century when adjusted for inflation.

The World Health Organization has estimated that, unless the outbreak is brought under control, the world could face 10,000 new infected cases a week by the end of this year.  As of today, 4,447 people have died out of  8,914 cases.  Most of those cases are in West Africa, but it is clear that the virus will spread to other countries in the world.  There have been three cases in Germany and two in the US.

No matter what the issue is in world politics, there is always a back story.  Sometimes we know the back story; sometimes we do not.  There have been some secret documents released by the British government indicating that in the 1950s, Britain was thinking about granting Hong Kong independence, in much the same way it granted independence to Singapore.  However, the Beijing government, under the leadership of Mao Zedong, squashed the plan, telling the British that it would be considered an unfriendly act.  Obviously, the Beijing government wished to enjoy the economic benefits of Hong Kong, even at the expense of Hong Kong remaining a British colony.