Marijuana Use and Cannabis Industry Statistics

Is Grexit really possible? Poll data and greek elections forecast

   On Sunday Jan 25, the parliamentary elections in Greece will take place. Today the Greek political field consist mainly of all shades of red and brown, and some recent polls shows the left-radical party SYRIZA may get the majority (151) of seats in parliament in a result of the upcoming elections. However, every poll has a margin of error, and individual poll results can be outliers. To make more reasonable estimate, it is better to use average data from all surveys conducted from January 1 by different polling firms that were collected on this Wiki page.

According to the forecast, most likely, SYRIZA will get 146 seats in parliament, which would not give it an absolute majority, but will give an opportunity to get a majority in coalition with some of the smaller parties.

   Such a possibility worries observers who fear a sharp reversal of Greek policy towards rejection of the Euro currency and exit from the European Union (so called Grexit), despite the fact that SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras recently stated that it has no such plans.

Thoughts on ECB

  European austerity policy created environment in which low growth rates in most indebted countries coincides with deflation and relatively high borrowing costs. To break this vicious circle somehow what mr. Draghi as head of monetary authority can do? Stimulate economic growth with QE is only he can do, it seems. If QE will large enough it could lower borrowing costs even more and lead economies on the path of growth at last, creating some inflation at the same time... I am long EUR in medium term

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Billionaires & Paupers. Global inequality and the Forbes

According to data prepared by Oxfam International for Annual Meeting in Davos, in 2014th the wealth of 80 world's richest people exceeded total wealth of more than 3 500 000 000 (three and half billions) people belonging to bottom 50% population of the world by incomes. If growing inequality trend, which got a fresh start since 2009, continues, then top 1% of world population will be wealthier than bottom 99% by the end of next year.

For now, 80 richest billionaires have net worth of about 1.9 trillion dollars and the richest in 2014 according to Forbes was Bill Gates, with net worth of $76 billion. Next one is Carlos Slim from Mexico ($72 bln) and the third is Spanish businessman Amancio Ortega ($64 bln).

Ongoing armed conflicts 2015

Since 2014 the armed conflicts and wars have killed more than 214 000 people. Approximately one third of all victims - about 77 000 - claimed the war in Syria. 40 000 of casualties are on account of one of the bloodiest wars of nowadays that are not so often mentioned in media - the Civil war in South Sudan. The war in Ukraine which began in 2014 already took at least 4 843 human lives. Some of ongoing conflicts lasts for years and decades, such as LRA insurgency, Katanga insurgency, Kivu conflict and other wars in Democratic Republic of Congo with more than 407 000 in their total death toll, internal conflict in Burma (Myanmar) ongoing since 1948, or raging drug wars in Mexico, taking about 5000-10000 victims annually.

Manufacturing & inflation

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Inlation, Disinflation & Industrial Production

Disinflationary trend in developed economies, started about 2011, continues. As latest World Bank's Data shows, inflation in developed world in December was at lowest levels since 2008-2009 financial crisis and its clearly going to enter the deflation zone soon. But industrial production, in general, keeps growing, though at a slower pace. In some countries the picture is quite different. E. g., stagflation environment (industrial production contraction accompanied by high inflation rate) can be noticed in India, Indonesia, Brazil & Russia last months. Also, Japan somewhat stagflationary. Recent developments of situation in Ukraine looks like catastrophe (double-digits contraction in industrial production).

Global Muslim population & projections

Do you know which countries are homes to most people of the Muslim population of the world? If you think that this is the Middle East - you are not right. Actually, largest Muslim country is Indonesia - about 205 millions of people who affiliated with Islam lives there. The next are Pakistan and India and on 4th place is Bangladesh. The overall Muslim population of the world increased from 1990 to 2010 by more than 600 million. And by 2030, according to the estimates of Pew Research Center, there will be about 2,2 billions of people, who affiliated with Islam and they will be about 26% of total world population.

It is interesting that if to speak about not absolute increases, but about changes in shares of Muslims in the population of one or another country (the so called islamization process), most of such changes going to happen up in Europe (especially on the north) and Canada (look at the third map to observe the past and future changes).

Retail gasoline prices by country

World oil prices continue to fall, and the price of gasoline too, but gasoline prices are differs across countries by a huge amounts. Some countries subsidize gasoline, others, on opposite, have significant tax burden. Most expensive gasoline (in nominal USD terms) is in the Italy, Netherlands, Norway and Hong Kong - about 1.86 USD per liter as of 12 Jan 2015. And the cheapest one is in the Venezuela, whose citizens drive their cars almost for free (only 2 cents per liter). But what is "expensive" and "cheap"? Incomes of people by country differs too. And if to bring gasoline prices to a common denominator taking income levels into account, the picture changes. Thus, in United States monthly GDP per capita equals about 7120 liters of gasoline and in Iran, for example, where nominal USD price is "cheap" (0.26$/l.) for 1 monthly GDP per capita you could buy 4.4 times less gasoline - only 1621 liter. Europe citizens, on average, can buy about 2-3 times less gasoline for their incomes than residents of US. And the poorest (in terms of gasoline purchasing power) - some African countries (their citizens gasoline purchasing power more than 300 times less than US, as shown on the map and ranking gadget).

Employment & Unemployment

With an unemployment rate of 5,6%, according to BLS estimates from the latest payroll report, the economic situation in the US perfectly match the targets of the US Federal Reserve System on unemployment (near 6%) and an inflation rate (about 2%). It is interesting that some other countries (China, for example), fits into that criteria well enough too (look at the first bubble chart). It has to be said that unemployment rate of 6% does not mean that only 6% of the adult population do not work. In fact, speaking about US, more than 40% of adults is not employed (look at that employment to population ratio indicator from the World Bank data, showing overall burden on earners). And the "unemployment rate" shows only the fraction of the actually not employed who want to work and are looking for a job (according to International Labour Organization "unemployed person" definition). The number seems large, but compare it to one of the Greece, Spain or Italy, where the majority of working age population earns nothing. No wonder to see the debt of those countries skyrocketed.

Compare the countries and see the historical trend in unemployment rate and employment population ratio on the graph below the page.

The year of commodities fallen

Last year not only prices of oil have fallen, but also for other commodities. For example, iron ore & rubber prices decreased more than 30%, Coal, Soybeans, Rapeseed & Palm oil about 20-25%. Common reasons that explain the fall of commodity prices include the rise of the USD (due to rising interest rate expectations), the economic slowdown in China, cost cuts induced by a fall in fuel price. But some foods, like beef, chicken meat and coffee showed significant uptrend. Also, some grain prices were rising, especially by the end of the year. Apparently, commodity markets are influenced by their own factors (such as harvest, shipping and warehousing situation, local export bans or changes in taxation etc.) and not only macroeconomic ones.

Explore the last and historical trends in various world commodity prices with Knoema viz gadgets and newly updated World Bank Commodity Price Dataset.

Sovereign default probabilities

Last year was challenging for petro-states. Due to the drop in oil prices is not only devalued their currencies, but their bonds fell and probabilities of default risen. Most notable trend was rise in default probability of Russia, that has less government debt, but been under pressure of sanctions has limited access to world financial markets. Its default probability (as implied by market prices and spreads of credit default swaps) has tripled from the year ago (check the chart by selecting the country from the ranking list on the left).

Notes: presented data are annual probabilities of sovereign defaults derived from Credit Default Swaps (CDS) spreads by Deutsche Bank Reserach team for various recovery rate assumptions. For most countries data as for 29 Dec 14 - 2 January 15 presented on barchart and the map. For a few countries data is some outdated, latest available number are introduced (check corresponding dataset and the graph). Assumptions about recovery rate (percentage of notional value repaid in event of default) highly affect implied default probabilities (the higher the assumption about the recovery rate, the higher the implicit default probability) and therefore they must be taken into account. The data provided for common assumtions of 40%, 25% and 60% recovery rates, for another assumptions see the corresponding dataset. For more information on underlying computation of default rates from CDS spreads see DB technical note

How much for the war? World military expenditures over time

United States, despite the cuts in military spending during Barack Obama presidency, remains the military leader of enourmous size, though US military expenditures share in GDP relatively low, compared to some countries (Middle East in particular, as shown on ranking gadget).

Explore the country and regional trends on historical line chart by selecting the country in the ranking list or easily identify countries, which increase the military expenditures share in GDP, on the world map and the barchart at the page bottom. Such increases sometimes may precede military conflicts (e.g., look at the Georgia 2007 or Ukraine 2013).

Plane crash statistics

On Sunday 28 Dec'14 an AirAsia plane Airbus 320 flight number QZ8501 with 162 people on board lost contact with ground control and crashed in Java Sea. It was the third large aircraft catastrophe by number of casualties in 2014 year. Overall death count in 2014 reached the number of 1329 people, but it was not a "record" year. In fact, 2014 year was 59th by rank of fatalities in the plane crash accidents in history.
See the list of all 2014 plane crashes in the table or analyse almost 100-year history of aircraft accidents in the historical line chart at the bottom of the page. All data comes from Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives, Geneva.

World markets and currencies performance, 2014

    2014 was a challenging year for world markets and for world currencies too. Almost every currency in the world was devalued (more or less) compared to US dollar. Russian ruble (-42%) and Ukraine hryvnia (-47.5%) became "champions" (due to political conflict between those states). UK Pound Sterling and Pakistani Rupee were the strongest. Among the developed markets US was the best (+12.8% price return year-to-date). European markets were, mainly, disappointing (in USD terms, at least). In the emerging world Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Philippines, Kenya, India, Argentina and some other markets showed exciting 2-digits growth. The worst was, again, Russia (45% loss but in USD terms only).

Meteorite falls

   On January 1 started the first meteor shower this year (Quadrantids ), which will be visible until January 10. Next meteor shower - Lyrids will be active from April 16th to 25th.
   Last year 4 meteorite falls was observed: Jinju in South Korea , Kuresoi in Kenya , Tinajdad and Tirhert in Morocco. Overall count of meteorites found last year totalled 373 with summary mass about 650 kilos (look at pie charts). And the largest meteorite ever found on Earth was the Namibian Hoba  which weighted 60 tonnes! Close one (58 tonnes) is Cape York from Greenland  found in 1818. And the next one is Campo del Cielo from Argentina first found in 16th century (50 tonnes) . Check the table of largest meteorites found below the page and sort the columns to find out largest by epoch or by country.
  Every meteorite has a name and you can name one by yourself if you find it! Most of the finds is occurs in West Africa and Antarctica, but falls observed more often in other regions (check the map). All data presented based on information from the Meteoritical Society's Meteoritical Bulletin Database.

Global terrorism map and trends

Since 1970 there was more than 266 000 people killed in terrorist attacks. The total number of people injured during terror incidents - about 355 000. This century overall number of fatalities in terrorist attacks are more than 125 000 with about 220 000 people injured, and 2013 year made an (anti) record in overall terrorist activity (see the chart below the page). Most notable long-term trend in terrorist incidents was the increase of terrorism in Middle East, North Africa & Asia and decrease in North America and Europe. Whether last act of terrorism in France will mark the beginning of a new tendency? Hope its not.