exercises in compound storytelling

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Baby Bust: The Demographics of Global Depression

Number of births in the United States, 1934 to...Image via WikipediaI haven't had time to sort this out, but I found an article that articulates my (wait for it) fears regarding the end of the Baby Boom Bubble and its relationship to the current recession.
And here it is: Baby Bust: The Demographics of Global Depression.

This is not a great article; the "Paleolithic Village" example/image is completely unhelpful. But it touches on several items I haven't really seen discussed in this particular way:
  • Any economy is finite. I guess this is obvious, but its implications aren't always clear.
  • One of the implications is that while there's always a shortage of goods (which everyone understands, because this fact is fundamental to the meaning of prices) there are sometimes shortages of consumers.
  • Another is that there can also be a shortage of savers and investors.
  • The Baby Boom is in decline, and leaving its prime working years.
  • This means that apart from the sub-prime-mortgage-driven housing bubble, there's an underlying fundamental shift in the meaning of the single-family home as an investment vehicle.
Now if I could just find someone who would extend this analysis to the New Deal generally.

References to other articles, apparently by the same author, are here.


Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

No comments: