Commentary by Bart Kruitwagen

President of Gefira

Probably few people heard about AEGEE, European students’ Forum. In 1985 it was founded by Franck Biancheri, who by the way is also the co-founder of GEFIRA. He had the brilliant idea to build a trans-European organization without national levels, thus students had to think and organize themselves in a total different way. AEGEE was from the beginning extremely successful and soon reached 10.000 members throughout Europe. I was proud to be a member of its Board of Directors alongside Franck, who became my good friend up until his death in 2012. We were and always would be strong believers in a united Europe but for sure were always very mistrustful of the EU.

In the first years we obtained the support of all great European leaders like President Mitterand of France, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and many others. They listened to our suggestions and demands and so the Erasmus project came to life. A program that changed profoundly the way students looked at Europe and fellow Europeans and probably is the best program for European integration to date. Continue reading →

The world population is growing fast. However, the nations in Japan, South Korea, Europe, Russia and the US are shrinking rapidly. China is the last man standing, its working-age population, those who consume and produce the most, started to contract years ago.

For more information on the topic see the comprehensive analysis in the latest issue of Gefira Bulletin (#20).

While mainstream economists believe all cultures are the same, history tells a different story. There is no second China, and Africa’s population can double or quadruple. History teaches us that this continent will not contribute significantly to the growth of the global economy. A shrinking population in itself does not negatively affect the wealth of a nation; however, it is detrimental to the global financial and banking system. To understand how the demographic winter will put an end to economic growth forever, we have to look at China’s urbanisation. Continue reading →

Some economists indicate that world developers and investors are facing a real estate boom. The same experts predict that the market will eventually overheat. However, demographic indicators and the ongoing migration from rural areas to cities seem to forecast something different: the increase in the number of urban dwellers will continue to fuel the boom though it can take on a slightly different character than financiers imagine. Especially when Chinese investors are interested in building empty cities all over the globe. However, these new buildings are simply not affordable to the rapidly growing population. The Chinese developers try to sell the new projects in Egypt, Nigeria and Ghana to a customer base in Europe and East Asia which, as the Gefira research team findings show, is shrinking at an incredible pace while those who only consume wealth in Africa and the Middle East are growing as weed. Investors and politicians who missed this trend will be wiped out by the end of the next decade and the same fate lies in store for real-estate investors.

In the middle of the 21^th century the earth will be inhabited by almost 10 billion people,of which urban dwellers will make up almost 70%.For comparison, the current urbanization rate is 55%, which means that urban areas are inhabited by over 4 billion people. In just over three decades the number of city dwellers will increase by 3 billion. Continue reading →

Though the official data shows that Italy’s population was growing until 2015 and according to a Eurostat projection it will stabilize within the next decades, the number of indigenous citizens is shrinking with an astonishing pace: every year by a quarter of a million, and this decline will accelerate. That means that the projected demographic growth can only be achieved by mass migration from Africa and Central Asia. Currently most migrants in Italy are from Romania but that number is declining rapidly. There will be less and less migration from other European countries because all European nations are in a dramatic demographic decline and because due to the prolonged Italian economic crisis the country is not a prime destination for people from other European states.

If the official Eurostat forecast is correct, then within 60 years or, taking into consideration the current pace of migration even sooner, 50% of Italy’s inhabitants will be of African or Asian descent. The figures found by our demographic-research team are by far not unique and government statisticians have the same numbers. Not only are the Italian and European authorities fully aware of this, but they seem to be executing a re-population program on such a monumental scale that will dwarf the Swedish mass migration experiment. Continue reading →

A glance at history

The beginnings of monetary union can be traced back to attempts to unify the coin standard. Emperor Augustus successfully unified the coins in the Roman Empire – for over 400 years the gold coins were minted almost exclusively with the seal of the Roman Emperor. The fall of the Roman Empire, caused among other things by its multiculturalism and multinationality, led to the disintegration of the state and to the deterioration of the coin value through a lower proportion of gold or silver. Until the 19^th century, the fragmentation of the right to mint coins to the regional rulers led to the fact that the profit resulting from the creation of money from the difference between metal value and production costs and the value of the coins issued was no longer allocated only to a feudal ruler. In the 19^th century, completely new methods of creating money emerged for the ruling classes – paper standards were gradually introduced. The paper standard should no longer be based on gold or silver parity, but should be secured by appropriate policy of the central bank, especially by influencing interest rates. In the 19^th century, monetary unions were developed, on which the idea of the euro was based. All failed. Continue reading →

In the coming ten years eighty percent of the G20 countries will be facing an unprecedented population decline that will change the global economy profoundly. Economists and financial planners had better be aware of the coming demographic collapse in the so called developed world. Successful economies are literally on a path to extinction while those doing terribly are growing like weeds. The UN population projections are far too optimistic and have little to do with reality. The extreme low fertility rates in industrialized nation contradict the UN rosy-coloured forecasts. The South Korean government’s prognosis shows that within seven years the country’s population will start to shrink and, if the trend holds, the nation will go extinct in the far future. South Korea’s demographic collapse coincides with that of China; Japan is already shrinking at an incredible pace. The world’s second, third and eleventh economies will see their working force and consuming base becoming smaller and smaller, and somehow renowned analysts see no problem. As a rule of thumb, the working-age population, the group that produces and consumes the most, started to shrink ten years earlier. Continue reading →