Blowing in the Wind | Germany's Renewable Energy Devolution

After two decades of Green Craze, Global Warming Doom, and hundreds of billions of Euros of subsidies,
how much of Germany's energy consumption is actually supplied by its solar and wind parks?
Less than 3 percent (HERE + HERE)

Demographics as Destiny

Business Insider (Nov 30, 2015) - What the size of the world's workforce will be like in a decade is well predictable, since the future workers have already been born. Demographics have long been a key determinant of potential growth rates, but the change in the global population over the next few years is unprecedented. Japan's population started to shrink in the mid-1990s and Germany's started shrinking around the year 2000, but the world's most populous country, China, is now seeing its working-age population shrink for the first time. Though the overall global population will continue to grow for some time yet, the growth of the working-age population is slowing down pretty much everywhere. That's relevant for a bundle of reasons. Around the world there will be fewer workers to support a growing number of retirees. But it also has some economists expecting significant pressure on wages.

The sea of red and pink across the advanced world means contraction, no growth,
or slow growth. Only in a belt of the developing world (in Africa particularly)
is there any substantial expansion coming by 2020. Credits: HSBC (Nov 2015)
Enlarge

If employers have to fight for a group of workers that is growing more slowly, or even declining, they will need to encourage people to move, and their labour will be more valuable. Some countries, like Japan, Russia, and parts of Europe, have already entered the stage that the rest of the world is going into — and they've struggled with it. In Japan, slowing economic growth has made the county's ever-expanding pile of public debt more and more difficult to deal with, and the working-age population has already declined by 11.1% in the past 20 years. Smaller populations mean less demand and less potential output. More retirees relative to the number of working-age people means more fiscal pressure: greater expenditure on healthcare and less tax income. Globally, although working-age populations are still growing, HSBC expects global potential growth to be 0.6ppt lower per year over the next decade compared with the past decade given these demographic changes. Not great news for heavily indebted economies (see also HERE).

Martin Armstrong's Political Economy | 72 Year Cycle of Political Change

"Bretton Woods took place in 1944. Adding 72 years brings us to 2016. This model has been
uncanny in predicting political change." (recent interview HERE)

Martin Armstrong (Jan 8, 2013) - Where does the Political-Economy Model stand right now for the West? The answer to that question is the epic turn appears to be 2016. Bretton Woods took place in 1944. Adding 72 years brings us to 2016. This model has been uncanny in predicting political change incorporating the same frequency for volatility. The Russian Revolution of 1917 was right on target with the fall of the Berlin Wall 72 years later in 1989. This strongly warns that this wave in the Economic Confidence Model due to peak 2015.75, will be extremely important. This is the time frame we have been looking at for the past 30 years for the next Sovereign Debt Crisis. Certain trends simply cannot be sustained beyond 72 years without change. 

"High Treason" - Federal Republic of Germany established May 23, 1949 + 72 Years = 2021

This time that change is coming by dragging the politicians by the hair cave-man style. How intelligent people just cannot see the problem with borrowing perpetually and never having any intention of paying off the debt, it’s simply unimaginable. The previous cycle turning in 1872 and that led to what is known as the “long depression” of the 19th century everyone concedes lasted for 26 years. This is why the real estate model is 78 years. It too is closely aligned with political turmoil that always brings structural change [...] Consequently, we are looking at 2014 for the beginning of a rise in separatism and civil unrest around the West. Then we see 2016 and the start of a nasty economic decline. We could see things get real bad during the 2016-2020 phase. That may actually be the bottom in the European economic meltdown (see also HERE)

Martin Armstrong (Oct 17, 2015) - Each country has its own unique cycle. There was a very major turning point in France that nearly became a revolution [in May 1968]. Even Charles de Gaulle secretly left France for a few hours after fearing for his life and a revolution [...] The French socialist state is now collapsing under Hollande. Civil unrest will erupt moving into 2017 and then there is the risk of another major cultural revolution as the youth do not share the same values as the socialistic elites who are in control. We will see that risk erupt by 2020 or 51.6 years from the May 1968 cultural revolution (see also HERE)

The Demographic Crash of Civilizations

The current world population of 7.3 billion is expected to reach 8.5 billion by 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100, according to the latest UN-World Population Report. However, the most important development of the twenty-first century is likely to be the great extinction of peoples, nations, cultures and civilizations. The so called ‘developed world’ is failing to attend to the most elementary task of any successful civilization: raising children. Civilization, culture, social harmony and economic prosperity rest upon the indispensable pre-condition of simple physical existence. The failure to reproduce renders all other achievements irrelevant. 

Prosperity, war, birth control, decadence, exploitation, austerity, abortion
and degradation reflected in the age structure of the German population 1910,
1970, 2009 and 2060 (HERE)

Take Germany for an example: The total population counts some 82 million, the current fertility rate is 1.43 and keeps declining. Out of the 82 million, some 17 million have a recent ‘immigrant background’, some 22 million are pensioners. Germany's impressive ‘work force’ still counts some 40 million, while the neoliberal gulag of the Schroeder-Merkel regime produced an impoverished human junk heap of 11 to 18 million people. Eight million adults between 18 and 65 of age are unable to sustain themselves, are either jobless or working-poor, trapped in exploitive lease labor contracts, One-Euro-Jobs, part-times jobs, mini-jobs, and other odd Hartz-schemes. Half a million Germans are homeless, many of them children. Organized slavery entertained by the remaining tax payers. The average income laborer tributes two thirds of his gross income to a ruthless government that dished out 400 billion Euro to zombie-banks, and rips-off 100 million Euro every day to pay interest for the ‘public debt’. In this environment around 650,000 children are born each year (one third with 'immigrant background'), as compared to 840,000 yearly deaths, giving an annual shortfall of about 200,000. In other words, while over-aging and impoverishing dramatically, Germany loses the equivalent of a mid-sized city each and every year. In fact official German projections indicate that the total population will shrink to between 65 and 74 million by 2060, depending on annual net migration of 100,000 to 400,000. Obviously, the derailed reproduction of the natives (one out of three women never bears children; some 200,000 abortions every year; several hundred thousand homosexuals; etc.), along with genocidal immigration policies, population reduction and population replacement will essentially extinguish the historic German nation within this century. This general trend and time frame equally apply to almost all other European nations.

The all season disaster recipe from the Pentagon's cookbook:
NATO-engineered regime changes and civil wars, stimulated mass migration and
ensuing colonization of global venture lumpen-proletariat and refugees amongst
30 million jobless and 120 million poor native Europeans (HERE + HERE + HERE)

Today the global average fertility rate is 2.3, and 80% of the world population lives in countries where women have on average fewer than 3 children. This means the global fertility rate is barely higher than the replacement fertility, and the increase of the world population is primarily due to the increasing length of life. In 1960 China’s fertility rate was 6.1. Now it has dropped to 1.6. In Iran, the fertility rate in 1985 was 6.3; now it is down to 1.9. In Thailand, the fertility rate was 6.14 in 1955, 3.92 in 1985, and is 1.49 today. The problem with the ‘developed world’ is not only that it is broke but that it is old and barren. Fertility rates are mostly way below replacement levels, many nations are over-aged and have reached the demographic point of no return. Globally the lowest fertility rates occur in the most modernized areas of Asia: China (1.55), Japan (1.40), South Korea (1.25), Taiwan (1.11), Hong Kong (1.04), Macau (0.91), and Singapore (0.80). Extinction level rates are also prevalent among Southern European countries and former Soviet states: Portugal (1.52), Spain (1.48), Italy (1.42), Greece (1.41), Poland (1.33), Ukraine (1.30), etc.

In Africa, children under age 15 account for 41% of the population in 2015 and young persons aged 15 to 24 for a further 19%. Latin America and the Caribbean and Asia, which have seen greater declines in fertility, have smaller percentages of children (26 and 24 %) and similar percentages of youth (17 and 16%). In total, these three regions are home to 1.7 billion children and 1.1 billion young persons in 2015.
 

Source: UN DESA

Source: CIA World Factbook

Source: CIA World Factbook

Keep Russia and Germany Separate and in Conflict | Prime U.S. Objective

Plain and simple: HERE & HERE & HERE

In his speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, George Friedman, head of the private 'shadow CIA' Stratfor, outlined the prevention of a German-Russian alliance as the prime geopolitical U.S. foreign policy objective since 1871: "Keep Russia and Germany separate and in conflict."

"The German Question is now coming up again." Friedman's solution: "Cynical, not moral. But it works!", for the third time within a century.