Apr 5, 2013

S&P-500 or Bonds?

On March 28 2013 the S&P 500 hit a new record
1,569.19 Up 6.34(0.41%) Mar 28

Key question is of course will 'L'histoire se répète".....???


Now, take a short look at the (above) S&P 500 last decades development.

Let nature do its work by drowning your brain in the unstoppable growth of debt and considering the fiscal cliffs and endless Quantitative Easing  (QE) programs.

Ask yourself... will new QE-X programs really offer any help....

Without any doubt or any complex investment analyses it's clear that we're heading for a Jungfrau's downfall.

The question is not if, but when exactly and how deep?


S&P 500 
Every year Aswath Damodaran, professor  of Finance at the Stern School of Business at NYU, updates the S&P 500 yearly total return and compares it with the yearly performance of 10Y U.S. Treasury Bonds and Treasury Bills.

Last year's (2012) performance comes down to:

- S&P 500 : 15.83%  ('stocks')
- T. Bills               : 0.05%
- 10Y T. Bonds : 2.97%

Let's take a look at a more general summary of his conclusions: 



Difficult Choice
Most financial institutions (pension funds, insurers, investment funds, banks) are at the crossroad of taking difficult decisions. Investing in 10Y Bonds with an artificial and historical low interest rate of around 2-3% with the risk of depreciation in case of raising interest rates, due to inflation or otherwise. Or going for 'risk' by investing in S&P 500 like funds with relatively high risk.......

In order to get more sight at this 'risk' issue, let's take a look at the 10 and 5 years development:



From this quick investigation it becomes painfully clear that - despite whatever the risk free rate may be - all risk indicators (sharpe, Sortino) point out that the risk on s&P 500 stocks is not adequately rewarded. The M2 (Modigliani risk-adjusted performance) indicator expresses that same fact more intuitively by showing a  10y S&P 500 fictive return of 4.2% if we correct the 10Y average performance of 7.9% for the additional risk level of S&P 500 stocks (against the risk level of 10Y bonds).

Sharpe, wider and in detail
As becomes clear from the next historical sharpe chart, the last decade is not really convincing that an S&P

 500 strategy will pay out......



Take a long Breath...
To confidentially execute a S&P 500 investment strategy it takes a period of 17 years (or more) to avoid an average negative return, as the next charts shows.



In practice this implies that mainly pension funds - with long investment horizons of 15 years and longer - can benefit more or less long-term riskless  from a S&P 500 investment strategy.

However, even from a 17-year cycle perspective it's clear we're still in a  long-term downward trend.

Don't worry, if 'math' shows we're out of options, we can always pray!

Links
-  Damodaran Blog: A Sweet Spot for US Equities: Opportunity and Dangers
- Yahoo S&P 500
- Spreadsheet: historical returns S&P 500 - Bonds
- Spreadsheet: S&P-500 Analysis

Mar 25, 2013

Compliance Plus Check

Most often and at a basic level, compliance is perceived and defined as 'regulatory compliance'.

If we comply (act in accordance) with federal or local or local authorities and their requirements, making sure that our company is following all the necessary rules and regulations, we seem done.

Compliance Plus...

However, the regulatory compliance level is only a start. 

It's simply not enough to be 'Supervisory Compliant'. Compliance is more! Much more.....

Let's find out what Compliance Plus represents...


Compliance, a Competitive Tool
In practice, compliance can be a distinctive competitive tool​. Being ahead of regulatory compliance, means that a company defines its own compliance level that not only includes regulatory compliance, but also its own professional compliance level, based on its own specific risk structure. 


Compliance, Part of Risk Management
Moreover, one compliance level higher, compliance also embeds the risk of future change of regulations rules and the not-yet-defined compliance rules of future products and investment strategies that are necessary for a sustainable successful development of your company.

As  regulation changes when the economic of financial circumstances change, regulatory compliance is also a substantial part of risk management. That's why regulatory compliance has to be included in our risk models. 

Compliance Check
To check if your company is compliant at a Compliance Plus Level, simply 


at Symetrics. It takes only two minutes to take this test, as all compliance check boxes are already 'checked' in advance. So if you like 'unticking boxes' instead of 'ticking boxes', here's a splendid opportunity.

Mar 17, 2013

AIFMD Fun of Funds

To prevent future crises, a new European law, the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD)  came into force on 22 July 2011.

The new directive has to be implemented before 22 July 2013 and will also apply to non-EU fund managers if they ares managing or marketing an AIF to investors in the EU.

It is believed that the directive will reduce the number of non-EU managers operating within the EU.

AIF's assets and risk management
Although the AIFM-Directive has many new demands (appoint independent valuer, custodian, disclosure) we'll focus here on the requirement to ensure an independent evaluation of the AIF's assets and risk management.

AIFMD Risk Management Obligations
  • Every AIFM needs to have an adequate documented risk management policy, covering all possible risks faced by the AIFs
  • Every AIFM has to set quantitative and qualitative risk limits for each AIF for all possible kind of risks 
  • An AIFM's Risk Measurement Procedure should include requirements for: backtesting, stress-testing, scenario analyses and the rules should describe remedial action plans when limits are breached. 

So far so good, peace of a cake, you would think. Unfortunately: NO!

1. In-depth market risk assessment: too complex and not adequate
An adequate in-depth market risk assessment of AIFMs AIFs actually requires a full 'fund of funds' transparency of the portfolio of the (AIF) funds.

The problem is that full 'fund of funds' transparency does not exist yet, nor can it finally be fully obtained. It's simply too complex:
  • undefined systemic risks are often beneath the analyse surface
  • (re)hedged risks could be part of a fatal unknown or unapparent self-reference hedge cycle
  • in-depth 'fund of funds' management is time consuming and presumes that risk profiles of sub-funds are available, when in practice they are often not

To illustrate the desperate, funny and useless efforts that are made to tame the 'fund of funds' issues within the AIFMD, just take a look at the next quote from the AIF Handbook draft 2013 :

Section 5-iii-1, Alias 'Fun' of Funds
"Any proposed investment by a Qualifying Investor AIF into another investment fund must be clearly disclosed.
Disclosure must focus on the implications of this policy regarding 
increased costs to unitholders (i.e. the fact that fees will arise at two or, in the cases where the underlying fund it itself a fund of funds, three levels – the Qualifying Investor AIF, the underlying fund of funds and the underlying funds in which the underlying fund of funds invests) and the resultant lack of transparency in investments."

I hope you're still with me after all this fund of funds of funds of funds fun..... ;-)

Thus, in-depth market risk assessments in a non transparent market are inadequate and may potentially result in ill-founded or even erroneous conclusions (e.g.' false safety').

Market Risk Assessment
The adequacy of an AIFMD's Market Risk Assessment could be roughly defined as:

MRA-Adequacy = ADTQ x RPQ x RMQ


With: ADTQ= Asset Data Transparency Quality, RPQ= Risk Policy Quality and RMQ = Risk Model Quality.

Just let your colleague rate your ADTQ, RPQ and RMQ on a ten point scale. If the outcome MRA-Adequacy is lower than 800, consider your test as inadequate.

As transparency also includes full sub-cycle  'fund of funds' transparency, often ADTQ will not score high enough for an adequate test outcome.

Example
Suppose an AIF consists of 30% 'fund of funds' with minor risk information regarding the sub-funds.All other scores of the AIF score well (10). In this case the test adequacy score is 700 (= 7 x 10 x 10) . Conclusion: the quality of your risk assessment is insufficient for drawing robust conclusions.

2. Alternative: Strategic Market Risk Assessment
Instead of - come what may - trying to get to the endless bottom of a 'fund to fund' construction, a more strategic risk assessment approach -  as an alternative -could work out much more effective. A strategic market risk assessment that assesses the nature, risk and policy of a AIF and its investments and that implicitly takes into account non-linear risks, the presence of systemic risk, a large number of weighted and not-weighted economic scenarios, stress tests and fat tail risks.

The Secret of the Chef
Many (hedge) funds have only a limited transparent investment policy or an investment policy that  - for whatever reason -is regarded as 'The Secret of the Chef'.

In these kind of funds 'full disclosure' will end in a lot of degrees of freedom in 'risk policy' and corresponding mandates.

It's important to realize that the more degrees of  freedom in 'risk policy' a manager of a fund has, the more risk will emerge in the above formulated alternative assessment.

New alternative market risk models?
Key question is: are there new models that can assess investment strategies and portfolios in a systemic risk environment and on basis of non-linear modeling.

The answer to this question is : Yes, very soon!

Symetrics, a brand new company in the Netherlands is developing an investment decision support and assessment system called SyMath, that is based on nonlinear modeling, grasps systemic risk and includes future crises. SyMath will be on the market mid 2013.



Until then will have to assess AIFMs with pen and pencil... ;-)


Links, Used Sources


Feb 26, 2013

NOT Discriminating is NOT possible

Tomorrow I'll be discussing the borders of solidarity as a panel member at an actuarial congress (VSAE)  for econometricians in The Hague (The Netherlands).

In a Dutch interview preceding the congress, two students asked me:

"The  Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has decided that the use of gender as a risk factor by insurers should not lead to individual differences in premiums and benefits.
What is your opinion?"

My short answer was :

NOT Discriminating is 
NOT Possible

Examples
Let me illustrate this 'quantum quote' with two examples.

Example I: Gender Neutral Car Insurance 
  • It's scientifically proven that women are better drivers, have just as much car accidents as men, but cause less damage. That's a fact and that's why car insurance for women is cheaper than for men. 
  • As from December 21, 2012, European insurers are not allowed to 'discriminate' anymore by gender, implying equal car insurance premiums for men and women. 
  • If insurers calculate this premium as the weighted average of their portfolio, women are obliged to pay (much) more premium than before and also more than actually and actuarially necessary regarding their gender group. 
  • Therefore women are de facto discriminated, although the genuine intention was NOT to discriminate!
  • Not only women, but also insurers are discriminated as they now will be faced with anti-selection: Relatively more men will choose an insurance cover, as car insurance premiums for men have become less than the premium corresponding with the expected damage for their gender group. Insurers will therefore face a loss on car insurance. 
  • Based on solvency legislation, the insurer will (next) be 'forced' to increase the average weighted premium. This - in turn - is at odds with the measures envisaged by the European Court. 
  • A similar kind of reasoning applies also for unisex rates for pension and life insurance.
  • The upcoming (2014) US health care law will also prohibit “gender rating”. However, gaps persist in most states. There seem to be no signs of insurers that have taken steps to reduce them.

The conclusion must be that discrimination regulation is carried too far.

 'Over-Solidarity' as in this case has nothing to do with real solidarity and is in nobody's interest; it has become 'Anti-solidarity'.

The proposed measures - no matter how well intended - have a opposite effect and should be reconsidered on basis of the question: are the discriminating effects before the new legislation more or less than after?

We've got to stop discrimination due to over-discrimination and anti-discrimination!

Insurance Rating Fallacy: Gender anti-discrimination laws are superseded 
Prohibiting "gender", "marital status" and "age" as rating elements doesn't solve anything.

Modern rating systems based on data mining (Google history), social media (premium quoting on basis of: your smart-phone that captures and shares your drivingstyle with the insurer) and neural networks are "black boxes" that quote insurance premiums in such a way that every client can get individually quoted on bases of his 'profile'.


That 'profile' doesn't have to contain any of the forbidden discriminating elements (nor direct related) to get satisfactory results for clients as well as insurers. Although there are also simple (e.g. Bayesian-Classification) techniques to derive a clients gender from other non-discriminant related variables (e.g. height, weight and foot-size determine gender quite accurately) in an insurers direct or indirect related data base, insurers and their actuaries would end up in an unwanted ethical dilemma by using these direct-related techniques.

Another illustrative and strong example of determining your gender on bases of - at first sight - non-gender-related information is Hacker Factor's "Gender Guesser"  that attempts to determine an author's gender based on the words used. Try  "Gender Guesser" for yourself HERE. Take a part of an email you've written (more than 300 words), copy-paste it to Gender Guesser and notice how gender Guesser will probably determine your gender without any problem in a split of a second!


These simple techniques show that the developed anti discrimination legislation is superseded and has become irrelevant for insurers and their clients to come anyhow to an adequate and ethical responsible rating policy on basis of neural networks or social media related information, such as information from smartphones that transmit your driving style information to the insurer (why not, if you have nothing to hide?).

Example 2:.Women on Boards: Commission proposes 40% objective
The European Commission has proposed legislation with the aim of attaining a 40% women presence objective in non-executive board-member positions of publicly listed large companies.
Currently, large boards are dominated by men (85% non-executive, 91% executive).

No matter how welcome and needful women are on board level, forcing such a development makes no sense and will have an adverse effect.

From experience I can tell that women who really qualify for board level positions, are very unhappy if they are appointed under the vigor of gender legislation and not on basis of their acknowledged competences.

This is perhaps a sign that women who really qualify feel discriminated by this new proposal. Proposals should better emphasize on stimulating women presence on board level and take away old boys network principles.

Conclusion
Anti discriminating legislation often results in the exact opposite of what is intended. Legislation is often superseded, should be carefully evaluated on its effects and certainly reconsidered if the discriminating effects after applying the new legislation increase.


Used Sources and Links

Humor: Actuarial Creativity

As actuaries we've studied a lot in life. And to keep up with actuarial science we'll probably keep studying until our personal mortality rate hits us finally in the back.

Although study brought us to the top of financial and statistic modeling, there's a small but fatal risk that we become so engrossed in our work that we loose our creativity or ability to solve things in a simple way.

Test

To test whether you're still a creative 'simplist', let's do a short 3 question test. Here it is:

Question 1
 "Show how it is possible to determine the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer."



If you think you've solved this high school level problem, go to the next question

Question 2
 "Solve question 1 with another method."

If you think you've solved this problem as wel, go to the final question

Question 3
 "Solve question 1 with 4 other methods."

Evaluation
Although actuaries never give up, there's a slight chance you had to surrender and are longing for the answer.
In that case (only), read further for the answer.

Answer: The Barometer Fable
Bob Pease (Nat.Semi.) records the story of the Physics student who got the following question in an exam: "You are given an accurate barometer, how would you use it to determine the height of a skyscraper ?"

  1. He answered: "Go to the top floor, tie a long piece of string to the barometer, let it down 'till it touches the ground and measure the length of the string".

    The examiner wasn't satisfied, so they decided to interview the guy: "Can you give us another method, one which demonstrates your knowledge of Physics ?"
     
  2.  "Sure, go to the top floor, drop the barometer off, and measure how long before it hits the ground……"

    "Not, quite what we wanted, care to try again ?"
     
  3. "Make a pendulum of the barometer, measure its period at the bottom, then measure its period at the top……"

    "..another try ?…."
     
  4. "Measure the length of the barometer, then mount it vertically on the ground on a sunny day and measure its shadow, measure the shadow of the skyscraper….."

    "….and again ?…."
     
  5. "walk up the stairs and use the barometer as a ruler to measure the height of the walls in the stairwells."

    "…One more try ?"
     
  6. "Find where the janitor lives, knock on his door and say
    'Please, Mr Janitor, if I give you this nice Barometer, will you tell me the height of this building ?"


Find more than 140 solutions and read the original famous Barometer Fable, as published in 1968 in an article  by Alexander Calandra.

Warning!
Keep in mind that not every method leads to satisfactory results.
An uncertainty analysis of determining a building height using a barometer, developed by Israel Urieli, shows that this method is not accurate at all!

So the surprising news is that the first two alternative methods mentioned above are more accurate than the method you learn at high school.

Finally
It's always best when you can solve an (actuarial) problem in more than one way and the outcomes point in the same direction. The more a specific solution comes to front by applying different methods and/or data, the more confident you can be that the outcome is robust.

Used Sources

Feb 5, 2013

Supervision on Supervision

On February 1 2013, the Dutch Minister of Finance, in close consultation with the Dutch Supervisor 'De Nederlandsche Bank' (DNB), announced he nationalized the Dutch Bank-Insurer SNS Reaal.

Intervention was necessary to prevent grave threats to the Dutch financial stability and economy.

This intervention shows again that the European stress tests fail, as was already predicted in a Quartz article called "Forget the stress tests: Europe’s banks are a worrisome mystery" on October 2, 2012. Risk managers have to to a better job. Work to be done!

Role of the Supervisor
The intervention also raised the question about the role of the Dutch supervisor DNB in this debacle. Officially the (Dutch) Minister of Finance is responsible for the supervision on the national supervisor. In practice this role is delegated to the national 'Supreme Audit Institutions' (SAIs).



A special  European Committee Working  Group assessed the scope of the mandate of Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) and its proper functioning with respect to the main financial supervisor  (FSA)  for
prudential oversight on banks.

Thirteen (of the twenty seven) European countries participated in the SAIs research.

Three aspects were analyzed:
  1. Mandate: Has the local SAI a mandate to audit the supervisory role?
  2. Access:  Has the local SAI actually access to audit bank files of the supervisor\supervisor
  3. Test: Did SAI successfully test the completeness of the bank files

Here are  that are disappointing results of the work group for the main 11 countries:


Yes* = Yes , with condition of confidentiality

Conclusion
Although a general approach of (SAI) supervision on (Supervisor) seems useless and even silly, it's clear that the current supervisory grip and transparency is undeniably inadequate.

In this case, we certainly need a strong supervision on national supervisors in Europe to prevent accidents like SNS. In other words: Back to the old 'Four Eyes Principle'...


Finally
In a letter to the Dutch  House of Representatives the Dutch SAI states:
"The Council of Ministers agreed to the introduction of a European supervisory mechanism for banks, with a central role for the ECB, on 13 December 2012. 

To safeguard the information position of the European parliament and the member states, the European Court of Auditors should be able to audit the supervision exercised by the ECB.

The European Court of Auditors' current mandate does not allow it to do so. This creates an audit gap at European level: arrangements are not in place for the independent audit of the ECB's organisation and exercise of its 
supervisory tasks and authority. "

Links
- State of the Netherlands nationalises SNS REAAL
- Forget the stress tests: Europe’s banks are a worrisome mystery
Points for consideration in the Dutch House of Representatives
- Points for consideration in the Dutch House of Representatives (Dutch)
- 4 Eyes Principle Cartoon

Jan 28, 2013

U.S. Inflation 1666-2012

As promised, a nice Mathematica overview of U.S Inflation history.

View and play around with these inflation data to 'grasp' inflation long and short term behavior...

Download the Mathematica CDF player if you haven't already, it's well worth it....

If you can't load the application on this blog, or the panel range becomes wider than the width of the blog column, go here: Stand alone U.S. Inflation website




Jan 20, 2013

SMPLFCTN

As an actuary, you probably grew up with that famous quote of Einstein:

Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible,
But Not Simpler.

However, as 'Quote Investigator' shows, there is no direct evidence that Einstein crafted this aphorism...

Hmmmm.... Never mind.... as this quote is clearly redundant and therefore can be simplified....

So, it's enough to stick to the subjective concept of 'keep it simple'.....

'Simple', simply means 'easy to understand'.  

If we would try to present or explain something 'too simple', we are in fact making it harder to understand and therefore 'more complicated'.

Example
If we try to explain that we can estimate the area of a circle (approx. 3.14159...; radius=1) in practice by a n-sided polygon, a three year old child ;-) will buy your simplification in case of  a 12-sided polygon.




Oversimplified, or Worse: Desimplified
In case of a square (4-sided polygon), he'll probably raise his eyebrow, as you oversimplified the topic. And in case of a triangle you'll probably have lost him completely. You desimplified and thereby complicated your case to the opposite of what you untended : a clear understanding.



Simplification Criterion
Keep in mind that, like in the case above, you must develop a criterion when you simplify things. In the above example, a criterion could (e,g) be that the area of the polygon shouldn't differ more than 10% of the original circle and must have a relative simple (round) answer. This criterion would lead to a 12-sided polygon as an adequate simplification example.


And of course, we have to test this ex-ante 12-sided criterion in practice by means of a questionnaire.


Simplification is Complicated
However, 'simplification' as process, is not simple at all. In practice simplification can be used to reduce things that are:
  1. complicated (not simple, but knowable) or 
  2. complex (not simple and never fully knowable) 
In an article called 'Simplicity: A New Model',  Jurgen Appelo tries to simplify the complex world of simplicity linked concepts. He states that simplification means 'make understandable', which means moving it vertically, from the top of the model to the bottom in the following Appelo-illustration.

Anyhow, there's much to learn about simplicity related topics.....   

Let's finish with an excellent example of a need for simplification : 

Simplifying 'Complexity of financial regulation'
In an excellent presentation, Executive Director Financial Stability of the Bank of England,  Andrew Haldane, pleas and argues to simplify financial regulation.

It turns out that the growing number of regulation rules and principles (e.g. Basel III) has an adverse effect on taming the crisis.

Also 
the traditional Merton-Markowitz approach that assumes a known probability distribution for future market risk and enables portfolio risk to be calculated and thereby priced and hedged, offers no help to solve the current crisis.
Haldane concludes that "More simple regulation  based on 'Optimal choice under uncertainty' is necessarily. Haldane concludes:

"Modern finance is complex, perhaps too complex.  Regulation of modern finance is complex, almost certainly too complex.  That configuration spells trouble.

As you do not fight fire with fire, you do not fight complexity with complexity.  Because complexity generates uncertainty, not risk, it requires a regulatory response grounded in simplicity, not complexity. 


Delivering that would require an about-turn from the regulatory community from the path followed for the better part of the past 50 years.  If a once-in-a-lifetime crisis is not able to deliver that change, it is not clear what will.  


To ask today’s regulators to save us from tomorrow’s crisis using yesterday’s toolbox is to ask a border collie to catch a frisbee by first applying Newton’s Law of Gravity.
"


Haldane's (2012) presentation called 'Ensuring Long-Term Financial Stability', or more popular 'The dog and the frisbee', is a breakthrough in managing, modeling and controlling Risk and financial future results. It's a MUST read for actuaries and board members in the financial industry.

Finally
From now in, actuaries can simply start 'helping' as a border collie!

Sources/Links
- The dog and the frisbee
- Risk models must be torn up
- Mathematica: Play with Polygons
- Einstein's Simple Quote Investigated
- Complex versus Complicated
Complicated vs complex vs chaotic
- Simplicity a new model

Jan 18, 2013

From Economic Scenarios to Informed Guesses

Defining a long term investment strategy build on one chosen economic scenario is reckless.

As crystal ball gazing is no option, defining strategies on more (multi based) economic scenarios makes more sense, but often ignores the underlying forces that drive those economic developments.

And precisely these elemental forces are the drivers for a dynamic investment strategy.

Informed Guesses

What remains as next best solution, is to define an investment strategy on basis of what is called 'Informed Guesses'.

This implies that a strategy is not just build on professional guessing (statistical & actuarial modeling; Monte Carlo, etc). The key to success in the approach is this word 'Informed'...


As board members of financial institutions can not delegate or outsource their investment strategy, they have no other option than to inform themselves about the economic, social,  psychological, financial and statistical underlying forces and to formulate a dynamic investment strategy based on those basic forces.
 
Global Trends 2030
An excellent example of mapping these future driving forces is a December 2012 report published by the U.S. National Intelligence Council (NIC) called 'Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds'.

The NIC report does not seek to predict the future, which would be an impossible mission. Instead, it provides a framework that stimulates thinking about our world's rapid and vast geopolitical changes. Resulting in possible global future directions and implications during the next 15-20 years. 

The report defines 4 mega trends and 4 potential worlds:

Mega Trends 
  1. Individual Empowerment and the growth of a global middle class 
  2. Diffusion of Power from states to informal networks and coalitions
  3. Demographic changes, growing urbanization, migration, and aging
  4. Increased demand for food, water, and energy. 

Potential Worlds
  1. Stalled Engines
    Most plausible worst-case scenario: Increasing risks of interstate conflict. The Us draws inward and globalization stalls. 
  2. Fusion Most plausible best-case outcome. Collaboration of China and the Us, leading to broader global cooperation.
  3. Gini-Out-of-theBottle
    Inequalities explode as some countries become big winners and others fail. Inequalities within countries increase social tensions. Without completely disengaging, the Us is no longer the “global policeman.” 
  4. Nonstate World World driven by new technologies, nonstate actors take the lead in confronting global challenges
 
Let's take a look at some interesting charts from this report:

I. Asia's dominant growing consumer power...
 

II. U.S.-Asia's  combined World Power...


III. Europe, GDP Dominant in 2030 ?


IV. U.S.GDP, Any way : Going down...

Conclusion
"Global Trends 2030"is an interesting and relevant document for investment planning, that I would recommend to read, to draw your own conclusions.

A more general conclusion - as stated by NIC - could be that we are heading for a transformed world, in which “no country – whether the US, China, or any other large country – will be a hegemonic power.”

No matter what trend or potential world, one thing seems inevitable:
the influential power of the U.S. that's vital for our world's economy will decline.....


Success with defining new investment strategies!

Bye the way.... Actuaries help you out on your investment strategy:






Sources/Links:
- Escher Image from Freakingnews
- Escher: Hand with Reflecting Sphere (1935)
- Zero hedge: The world in 2030
- World in 2030 (original report (2012)