... [The] balkanization of the global economy is deeply stagflationary, and it is coinciding with demographic aging, not just in developed countries but also in large emerging economies such as China. Because young people tend to produce and save, whereas older people spend down their savings, this trend also is stagflationary.

BBC Radio 4's You & Yours has found evidence suggesting loans were paid to director Charles Smethurst and his family. We have seen documents suggesting investor money was used to pay for fashion shows, television stations, beauty products, parties and rent.

Taken together, the report is a potential early flare from the business community that a rebound during which 11 million jobs were refilled in four months could be petering out.

"This report is an illusion of progress at a time when we needed accelerating gains in the labor market. The number of jobs added this month is just not enough," said Nick Bunker, economic research director at job placement site Indeed. "This report is massively concerning. We are not where we need to be, nor are we moving fast enough in the right direction as we head into fall."

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Companies increasingly are indicating that they may not survive without persistent growth and additional aid. About one-third of small- and mid-size businesses indicated to PNC that they would close in a year or less absent a change in conditions, said Gus Faucher, the bank's chief economist.

"The low-hanging fruit has been picked, and the job market recovery will slow further going forward," Faucher added in a note. "A surge in coronavirus cases in late 2020 could lead to further business closures. An inability to pass additional fiscal stimulus -- including aid to households, small and mid-size businesses, and state and local governments -- is another downside risk."

The program's trustees had projected earlier this year that the trust funds would be depleted in 2035, but that did not take the coronavirus pandemic into account.

It would be the first time the estimated insolvency date was within a decade since the crisis of the 1980s, which prompted several changes, including raising the retirement age, said Shai Akabas, the center's director of economy policy.

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The [depletion] projection depends heavily on when the economy is estimated to recover. If the economy bounces back quickly, under a V-shaped recovery, the depletion date would be 2034, according to the Penn Wharton Budget Model. But a slower U-shaped recovery would accelerate that by two years to 2032.

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The situation is even more dire for the Medicare trust fund, which its trustees projected earlier this year would run out of money by 2026, not taking into account the pandemic.

If employment and payroll tax revenues follow the same pattern as the Great Recession and its aftermath, the hit to the Medicare trust fund could be $175 billion between 2020 and 2023, according to an estimate by experts at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank. That would accelerate the depletion date by three years.

The U.S. added 1.76 million jobs in July despite a resurgence in coronavirus cases that forced many states to pause or reverse their economic reopening plans. The unemployment rate fell to 10.2%, but was still higher than at any point during the 2008 financial crisis.

In a joint statement after the jobs report release Friday, Pelosi and Schumer said the data shows "that the economic recovery spurred by the investments Congress has passed is losing steam and more investments are still urgently needed to protect the lives and livelihoods of the American people."

Democrats have insisted on extending the jobless benefit long term at $600 per week. The White House has made several counteroffers, reportedly proposing extra payments of $400 per week into December.

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The Chairman of the world's premier securities regulator evidently is unaware a decade-plus of private equity investing by so-called "well-managed" pensions has resulted in increasingly disappointing, not to mention inflated and unauditable performance results. Warren Buffett, arguably the world's most respected investor, recently escalated his criticism of private equity firms.

At last year's Berkshire Hathaway BRK.B annual meeting Buffett stated, "We have seen a number of proposals from private equity firms where the returns are not calculated in a manner that I would regard as honest... If I were running a pension fund, I would be very careful about what was being offered to me."

Chairman Clayton and DOL may think they know more about the risks and rewards of private equity investing than Buffett. They don't.

This stunning wealth gap between the races has persisted, in good times and bad, for the past 70 years. It did not get better after the civil rights era legislation was passed in the 1960s or during the Obama administration.

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"As long as we have racial wealth gap, we're going to have a problems with race," said Patrick Mason, an economics professor at Florida State University.

"The wealth gap is one of the reasons there are protests today," said Linwood Tauheed, a professor of economics at The University of Missouri-Kansas City and the president of the National Economics Association.

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"African Americans are dissatisfied with the way things are -- that's not new for us-- but now you find young college students dissatisfied with their future."

You could use that money to start a business.  You could use it to consolidate debt or payoff student loans.  You could use it to buy a second home or maybe a motorhome.  You could use it to pay capital gains taxes... or settle a lawsuit. You could use it for absolutely anything.

Who wouldn't want an Uncle Hecm?  The answer is no one.

See also HELOCs Are Bad for Older Homeowners. Better Options Exist.

These very different men share remarkable, unflattering similarities. Each is ill briefed, hazy on the facts and implications of his policy proposals, uneasy under scrutiny and belligerent when challenged.

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Mr. Corbyn may believe, delusional though it is, that he really can restructure British capitalism overnight without damaging the economy. His stubborn moral certainty means he's deceiving himself along with everybody else. Most politicians, of course, have ambitions beyond their competence and dreams they can't deliver.

Mr. Johnson is playing another game entirely. Amoral and power-hungry, he's lying with knowledge, calculation and abandon. He and his advisers have made a ruthless and sinister decision -- to subvert and smash up British political culture. They have learned from the successes of the Vote Leave campaign, which Mr. Johnson fronted, and, it seems, from Team Trump.

The old assumptions -- that truth matters, that lies shame the liar, that in a democracy the press and the public must have a right to interrogate those who seek the top jobs -- have all been swept aside by the Tories' conviction that in an inattentive, dissatisfied, cacophonous world, victory will go to the most compelling entertainer, the most plausible and shameless deceiver, the leader who can drill home a repetitive and seductive incantation. Facts and details will be irrelevant so long as voters feel a politician is on their side.

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The pessimism about the deep seated problems in the global economy contrasts with more upbeat signals coming from financial markets, where investors are increasingly betting on an upswing next year depending on the latest twists in trade talks.

Migration patterns worsen these trends. A growing percentage of young people now dream of city life, but their preferences inadvertently reduce their political clout: "18 percent of rural residents are 65 or older versus 15 percent in suburban and small metro counties and 13 percent in cities," the Pew Research Center reported last year. Millennials, concentrated in metropolitan areas, are the predominant generation of potential voters in only 86 congressional districts, while boomer voters predominate in 341. By 2040, 70 percent of Americans are expected to live in the 15 most populous states; that would mean that 70 percent of America will be represented by only 30 senators.

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The other critical divide is the economy. The boomers who came of age in the 1950s and '60s benefited from boom times while millennials and Generation Z have been dogged by the aftermath of the mortgage meltdown, an underwhelming recovery and Gilded Age levels of inequality. One generation enjoyed a comparatively high minimum wage, affordable college tuition and reasonable costs of living; for everyone after, stagnating wages, ballooning student debt and unaffordable housing have become the norm.

"Millennials are less well off than members of earlier generations when they were young," a 2018 report by economists from the Federal Reserve Board bluntly states. Other economists have shown that a household headed by someone born in 1970 has a quarter less income and 40 percent less wealth than one headed by a comparable person born in 1940. In contrast, between 1989 and 2013, only the cohort of families headed by people at least 62 saw an increase in median wealth. Older people are more likely to own property, stocks and other assets -- and, consequently, to prefer policies that will keep the values of those assets high. No wonder so many young people have pivoted left, rejecting conventional wisdom about the virtues of unfettered capitalism.

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The next recession--this year, next year, whenever it comes--will likely make that Millennial disadvantage even worse. Already, Millennials have put off saving and buying homes, as well as getting married and having babies, because of their crummy jobs and weighty student loans. A downturn that leads to higher unemployment and lower wages will force Millennials to wait even longer to start accumulating wealth, making it far harder for them to accumulate any wealth at all. (Compound interest is magic, after all.) Their trajectory, already terrible, might get even worse.

And Millennial suffering won't just hurt Millennials. There is accumulating evidence that the economy is more sclerotic and slower-growing than it might be if the Millennials were able to buy homes, have families, start businesses, and spend like other generations--if the young were not existing just to pump up asset values for the old. Which reminds me--there's one generation that might fare even worse than Millennials: Generation Z.

The report went on to tell people that they needed to save their own money for retirement because the pension fund wouldn't be able to make ends meet.

This terrified a lot of Japanese workers and pensioners.

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Prime Minister Shinzo Abe apologized for the report, calling it "inaccurate and misleading."

And Finance Minister Taro Aso-- himself a pensioner at age 78 (though in typical Japanese form he looks like he's 45)-- simply un-published the report.