Global situation presents a winter of despair. Global economic growth is not picking up and jobs are not being created. There is a serious conflict situation in Iraq, which can fast deteriorate if Saudi Arabia and Turkey send ground forces, to which Russia's Putin has threatened to use nuclear weapons! Lunacy of ZIRP (zero interest rate policy) and NIRP (negative interest rate policy) is reaching a denouement. Pension funds make assumptions of returns on their funds to judge whether they are under-funded. The assumptions made are 'optimistic' and almost all 50 States in the US are under-funded. A Zerohedge article states that Moody's estimates the under-funding of all pension funds in the US to $2 trillion. They will not be able to meet pension obligations. This will result in social unrest. NIRP has destroyed the returns on their investments. So, a global debt bomb is ticking away because the bonds issued by various Governments and municipalities are likely to fall sharply. Another risk is that, if crude oil prices remain in the $30-40 range, oil producing countries facing huge financial strains would sell equities from their Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs). Global SWFs have some $7 trillion in assets, and, as per SWF Institute, they could end up selling $404 billion of global equity in 2016, up from $213 billion in 2015. Hence global stock markets, are looking at a winter of despair, with factors such as a hard landing in China, tepid economic and job growth, a debt crisis, and huge sale of equities by SWF, not to forget the risk of a West Asian war theatre. The current crude oil supply glut is the birth child of the technology of horizontal fracking. New advances in genomics and nanotechnology are providing hope for discoveries and cures in medicine. Inventions like driverless cars, combined with fantastic ideas such as shared vehicle services like Uber, would make life easier for the individual and a nightmare for automakers. Advances in telecommunication and computing have led Mark Zuckerberg to hold out the possibilities of virtual reality. Advancements in virtual reality would one day make it possible to drastically cut air travel, and hence our carbon footprint. Travel for both business and pleasure would be virtual. Virtual reality, combined with superfast 5G telecom networks, when made commercially viable, would permit robotic surgery from remote locations! Advances in technologies of clean energy from renewable sources are making it competitive with thermal energy. Coal mines are shutting down in developed countries, helping meet carbon emission norms.
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