Employees at the Pilsen Steel Mill are back to work, having stopped production in the middle of June. Half of the 900 plant’s employees are back at the machines again and the other half will resume within the next month. Full production is planned to start in late November. This was all possible thanks to financial support from the KKCG Investment Group, owned by billionaire Karel Komarek.

Since the mill shut down, the Czech press has been circulating a lot of rumors about the plant going bankrupt, which the Pilsen management has been trying in vain to refute. “The Czech investment group gave us a loan in early October, with which we re-started production,” said Pavel Ratislav, Director of Human Resources for Pilsen Steel. “Production is now gradually gaining momentum. All workflows are controlled by the creditors’ committee which sanctions important changes.”

An aging population and rise in unemployment have brought to light a new negative trend: Social contributions from the working population are no longer enough to pay benefits to pensioners – at least not in the amounts they have grown accustomed to.

Politicians are calling this phenomenon one “worthy of attention,” while pensioners are calling it “a catastrophe.” The first to sound the alarm was the province of Tarragona, where there were 262,550 working people and 154,144 pensioners in 2012. It has always been considered that the ideal ratio was 2:1 – two working people to one pensioner. In Tarragona, that figure is 1.7:1, which has already generated a budget deficit of €250 million per year. The province’s average pension is €826. Tarragona, like the rest of Spain, is accustomed to living well.

The world is changing before our very eyes. Even 15 years ago, it was reasonable to use the word “unipolarity” to talk about the power balance in politics and economics. Benchmarks for success in business were also set by Western companies. The structure of the present world order is much more diverse. The role of the locomotive of economic growth lies with developing countries, and companies that originated there are increasingly conquering heights set by Western businesses. BCG ranked 100 countries with emerging markets that have the chance to determine the shape of the global economy in the coming decades.

In recent years, developing countries have justifiably earned the title “driver of economic progress.” Already, their markets are voluminous and will be even more so in the foreseeable future, thanks to the constantly high rate of economic growth. At the same time, a national accumulation of wealth is taking place, as consumer savings grow in response to the increase in income. Overall, this leads to an improvement in the general welfare of the citizens in those countries. Thus, in 2012, private wealth grew 7.8% worldwide, mostly thanks to developing countries in Asia. Prosperity indicators in Asia (13.8%) and Latin America (10.5%) were significantly higher than the global average. Furthermore, BCG projects that by 2017, developing countries will account for 70% of all increases in private wealth.

For many years, China has been the most populous country on the planet. And the world’s most populous country has gradually become more and more important within the world economy. It is obvious that the country’s territorial and infrastructural needs will only continue to grow. In this light, China’s cooperation with its neighbors is a key issue. WEJ tried to answer the question of what goals China is trying to achieve in cooperating with Russia.

It is believed that when the Chinese pursue joint projects with the Russians, they are mainly interested in territorial space. In fact, the sparsely populated regions of Eastern Siberia would not seem to be the worst choices for Chinese investment. But Moscow is very cautious about the prospects of such investment, perhaps fearing that such projects may whet Beijing’s appetite for more.
 
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly recognized that one of his most important foreign policy achievements is the settlement of Russia’s border dispute with China. Russia has transferred to China an area of 170 square kilometers on the Tarabarov and Bolshoy Ussuriysky islands, at the confluence of the Amur and Ussuri rivers. This territory had been the subject of a serious dispute between the two countries at the end of the 1960s. By solving this old problem, Russia has deprived China of the opportunity to make new demands. At the same time, it has removed an item from the agenda of talks that could have adversely affected the prospects of Sino-Russian cooperation.

Robert Walker, President of the Population Institute in Washington, D.C., told WEJ in an interview about the repercussions of uncontrolled population growth, how overcrowding will affect macroeconomic indicators, and what needs to be done now to keep the situation from losing control.

Mr. Walker, in your view, is the problem of overpopulation on Earth really so overwhelming, or is the scope of the crisis being exaggerated by the media?
Rapid population growth threatens our long-term economic growth and ecological stability. The problem is real, even if some people underestimate it.

Yet according to forecasts by World Population Prospects, which is released every two years by the  UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the most likely scenario is one in which the population declines due to a declining birthrate…
Yes, but this is an understated (conservative) scenario based on the assumption that the global birthrate will continue to decline in the future. According to the “medium variant” population projection issued by the United Nations earlier this year [editor’s note: which developed four scenarios: high, medium, low, and a scenario with a constant birthrate], world population is expected to surpass 9.6 billion by 2050, and 10.9 billion by 2100. This is a conservative projection that assumes that global fertility rates will continue to decline. If fertility rates remain unchanged, world population could surge to 27 billion by the end of the century. Fertility rates, however, are not decreasing as fast as previously hoped in many developing countries, and adolescent pregnancy rates in many areas are on the rise again.

If you travel towards the mountains along the French Riviera, just north of the coast, among the villas, olive trees, and plants that flower year-round is the Sophia Antipolis Technopark, home to the Business Angels. They flew here from all over the world – people who believe in an idea and giving it life.

The American Marilyn Davison lives in a massive complex, located by some seemingly magical set of circumstances on Angels’ Bay in the town of Villeneuve-Loubet, not far from the Sofia Antipolis Technopark. “My husband and I were both invited to join this community. My husband worked for a small American company that has launched activities in Europe. He founded the first company, whose employees have grown over time from one person to 13. Later he worked with distributors all across Europe and the Middle East, even once going to Russia. We started in Brussels, then moved to Nice, then from Nice to Paris, then once again returned to Mougins, and finally settled here in Villeneuve-Loubet.”
“Wonderful people! Great project!” is how Marilyn Davison talks about everyone with whom she has had a chance to work. There are angels all around us, we just don’t notice them. Many such communities exist – in Nice, for example, there is a Mediterranean community, and in Paris there are many as well.