Getting it right with life expectancy
Can we be a little more responsible about the life expectancy figures we're quoting? "The current life expectancy is 77 for men and 81 for women" it says on the BBC website. So this means that a retirement age of 66 would mean men working for over 40 years...
Regime change at BP
It has been announced that Barack Obama is to meet the chairman of BP. Given the different roles that the chairman and chief executive of an organisation have, it is interesting that the US President wants to meet the former rather than the latter. The...
An infinite number of economists
There is a well-known theory that if you give an infinite number of monkeys a typewriter each, then eventually one of them will produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. Would they also produce the complete works of John Maynard Keynes (or Adam...
Does duration matter?
Duration is often thought of as important concept for pension schemes. It is generally known that pension scheme liabilities can have very long durations, and that if the durations of their assets and liabilities differs then it is exposed to duration...
The real issue with Moody’s and mortgages
In his evidence to the US Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Warren Buffett has rejected criticism of Moody's, saying that they made the same mistakes that everyone else in relation to the housing market crash. This ignores the nature of the mistakes made...
A new type of vaccine for breast cancer
By acting on a patient's own cells rather than an infectious agent, the successful trials of a new breast cancer vaccine in mice offer an important possible development in cancer treatment. Vaccines are usually used to prevent infectious diseases. They do...