18 September 2017 Long-Term Asset Return Study: The Next Financial Crisis at them by turning on the monetary and fiscal spigots which have arguably allowed each crisis to be solved but only via an increase in global debt and pushing the problem on to someone else in the future. In terms of demographics, the working age share of the population troughed at the end of the 1970s in the large DM economies and we have seen a surge of workers since (Figure 30). At the same time China coincidently decided to integrate itself into the global economy for the first time in many centuries. The net impact of both these trends was to massively depress DM wage inflation right up to the current day (Figure 29). In turn this helped ensure that inflation was on a naturally downward path over the past 35 years and thus allowing policy makers to aggressively intervene whenever any problems arose in the financial system or global economy. The lack of inflation pressure encouraged intervention rather than creative destruction. This in turn increasingly allowed more and more excess to build up in the system as each crisis ended with the stock of global debt higher relative to output than before it struck. Figure 29: YoY Real wage growth V. Figure 30: Total and Working Age (15-64) population in millions - China (left) and OM aggregate (right) 1.600 1.300 1.100 900 700 500 000 1.400 1,200 1,000 800 Ex10 400 2017 1950 1970 1990 2010 2030 2050 2070 2090 1950 1970 1990 2010 2030 2050 2070 2090 —Total population him) —Working Age Population (nril SOOCO 00.41:he Ow* Mre f IMPopuitson —Total population (min) —Working Age Population front Had inflation not been controlled by external factors it's debatable whether central banks and governments would have had the same freedom to oil the wheels of excess over the past few decades. So whilst we have laid a large amount of blame for a higher frequency of crises on the collapse of precious metal currency syste