Overpopulation and Increased Lifespan This current day situation is taking an increasing toll on people graduating from colleges in the West. There are enough statistics to show that the recent graduates are bearing the brunt of the current economic slowdown. Unemployment is much higher for the younger age groups and wages are much lower. Many […]
Wind Energy is the largest renewable energy source in the globe right now (if you don’t count in hydro and nuclear energy). The total installed wind energy capacity exceeds the solar and biomass capacity by quite a margin at over 200 GW . The recent surge in wind energy installations has been from China which put up almost 40-50% of the global wind turbine installations in 2010 and 2011. Now China has surpassed every other country to become the largest wind energy country in the world with over 60 GW. While Europe earlier led by Spain, Denamark and Germany used to lead in wind capacity, they have been comprehensively overtaken by the Middle Kingdom in the last couple of years. USA comes in next but still far below its potential while the rest of the world has started to pick up now. India is the 5th largest country and has been steadily putting up around 2-3 GW of wind capacity each year.
The relentless rise of Chinese telecom equipment and OEM companies has massacared telecom jobs in the West with major companies like Nokia, Alcatel and others firing in the thousands. Note Huawei and ZTE have become the nemisis of the telecom equipment makers which are showing losses in the last few years. These companies are not managing to compete with the low cost engineer advantage of the Chinese firms . Nokia is also firing thousands in its western factories in Poland and other places as it moves production to Asian factories. Note while Nokia has become unprofitable to other causes like Apple and Android, low cost phones from Asia is the biggest factor in its demise as well.
Global Stock Brokers across continents are either firing hundreds of workers or are totally closing down. The reasons for this downsizing of operations by brokerages is
a) The Financial Industry has become too large to the size of the global economy particuarly in countries like USA
b) The reduction in risk and capital means that big financial companies are reducing and selling their operations
c) The Broking Sector has seen a Peak in 2008 and now the only place to go for the next few years is Down
Apple recently reported astounding financial results in which profits grew by an awe inspiring 50% on a huge basis with Net Profits Margin of 30% which is crazy for a company of Apple’s size. It generates massive cash flows and has over $100 billion in its cash war chest. While there are a number of reasons which makes Apple one of the most successful and profitable companies in world history, the global oversupply of labor is one of the chief reasons which is overlooked at .
The Financial Industry will shed another 150,000 jobs according to Richard Bove, an analyst at Rochdale Securities LLC . Royal Bank of Scotland the bankrupt UK bank that was taken over the British government is going to kill a number of investment banking divisions and will fire 3500 people. RBS has already fired thousand before in wholesale and corporate banking . Now RBS will completely exit from a number of divisions like M&A, Cash Equities etc. which will mean thousands of firings . In an environment when financial jobs are scarce , this means that the fired thousands will have a tough time getting into the workforce again.RBS is going to fire 3500 people in addition to 2000 already announced. This would bring down the 24,000 pre crisis headcount by almost 45% .