Luxembourg citizens voted in an election last year. But as The Economist has noted, “48% of those who live there were not allowed a ballot-paper.”

This is because a great many immigrants live in Luxembourg, but few of them quickly become citizens — which means few can vote.

According to the Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX):

The growth of corporate credit in China has been excessive in the last five years. This credit boom is related to a substantial increase in investment after the Great Recession.

In the United States, the “debt crisis,” as Nassim Taleb called it, has not been corrected by corporations pursuing an intelligent strategy to reduce their debt. Chinese companies, however, have been following suit. Their profitability is deteriorating more and more. Some believe that the Chinese corporate debt is akin to a mountain; others, to a time bomb.

Amidst the current social and political turmoil in Venezuela, a discussion over what could drive a foreign military intervention in the country has been making headlines lately. To my surprise, Venezuela’s oil reserves ( the largest in the world ) are among the top reasons people believe the US Government would be after. However, the current shape of the oil industry and the way the market is behaving suggest otherwise.

“Germany has plunged into unprecedented political chaos,” a headline dramatically proclaimed in the prestigious international Foreign Policy magazine in the wake of the German elections in fall 2017. As different parties negotiated for months to find a majority to govern, the writer of the piece, Paul Hockenos from Berlin, felt that the bad results for the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) showed that “Merkel’s train wreck raises the question of her ability to lead the party and the nation.”