Hi John I like the blog. I found the Hitler / Mussolini paaellrl to the death investigation of Quaddafi pretty amusing. On the Gen Xer point above I heard another perspective. There is a book called The Age Curve which lays out the demographic changes in this country over the last century. Ken Gronbach (I think) is the author and a demographer we had him speak at a group I work with. He considers demographers more accurate than economists because economists make predictions based on assumptions and demographers count heads.One of the points of the book is that there are 12% fewer gen x’ers (born 1965-1985) than there were boomers (born 1945-1965). There were so many boomers they couldn’t get jobs and they started businesses. Recruiting was intense and competitive (I can relate, born in ’59). Some of the lazy rap given to gen xer’s is not totally fair they came into a market with more jobs (thanks to the boomers, and a couple of bubbles) and there were fewer of them. If you consider some % of any population unemployable (or at least well below average) then when Xers came into the job market, this end of the population found work, often repeatedly. Might be worth a read. He also has some interesting perspectives on the long term effect of population management in China. MP