Without action, public pension and health systems will not be sustainable over the long-term. Our grandchildren would face unsustainable public debt and sharp tax increases that could stifle growth and reduce their economic well-being, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

It is not often that the public gets a clear picture of how the state views the people. That view slides on a spectrum from servant to master. The ideal state serves society: it provides public goods and redistributes national income to ensure social justice and stability. The state is an abstract, however; it actually is composed of thousands of citizen agents. Those agents can turn the state into the master of the people in order to collect money for the benefit of an intertwined class of bureaucracy, politicians and lobbyists.Two recent policies may convince them to the point of resistance. Read the report... 

The recently published WEF Global Energy Architecture Performance Index Report 2016 points to the strengths of countries beyond the usual suspects, with for example Albania (17th) and Paraguay (21st) boasting fully decarbonised electricity generation. The world’s largest economies still struggle to achieve balanced high performance in their energy systems. With the exception of France (4th), none of the 12 largest countries by GDP made it into the top 10 performers. The Czech Republic scores well for energy access and security. In the category nitrous oxide emissions in energy sector, the country ended up at the very bottom.

According to the International Labour Organization (ILO) recent World Employment Social Outlook, although global unemployment rates will rise globally, the unemployment will continue to fall in virtually all the Eastern European countries belonging to the European Union, and especially so in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia. Conversely, joblessness is projected to increase until 2017 in the Russian Federation, as well as in neighbouring economies, such as Belarus, which are negatively affected by the economic contraction in the Russian Federation. More employment issues, news inside.