Spike buddy, you are being sarcastic and rude towards Americans with these words. All that has been said to you is that there is no way in Hell that Belgium's are worth 370K Euro's each and 73% of you own your own homes. That is all. Now you say you will post this fact in Dutch? Do you really expect anyone here to know Dutch? Come on dude! Get real! Happy to hear you can speak and read in 4 languages. I guess that makes your intelligence higher than others...
Survey says! Too small of a survey. Might want to survey everyone who lives in the USA. Survey is flawed. Thread over....
Sorry if I sound too bossy. Just want to stay on topic. Not jealous, but sorry. There's going to be a severe recession in the US, many will be hurt. And it will affect the rest of the world too. Except perhaps Africa. Good place to invest? My motive is simply to understand the phenomenon. After all, I'm a speculator.
This is more a discussion of median vs average (mean) than anything else. In year 2000, when mean net worth of an American family was $55,000, the average net worth was $182,381 (in year 2000 dollars). Extrapolating from that, with mean net worth of $93,100 the average net worth would be 308,720 which is not that much different from the Belgium figure. I couldn't find the net average worth for past year quickly enough, so I'll rest with this extrapolation. If you do not understand the difference between median vs mean this whole discussion is useless.
NICE! I have a buddy here at the office who speaks broken dutch (very poorly, but studied it for a year). I'm still interested in seeing the article, and I wonder why they didn't post it on the english side? I hope none of my posts have come across as combative... I'm just really interested in seeing the posssibility of that high a savings rate... mostly just to know it's possible.
Bron : Site "Het Laatste Nieuws" dd 11-05-2006 Belgische gezinnen waren nooit zo rijk Vermogen van gemiddeld gezin was nooit zo groot als vandaag.Het nettovermogen van de Belgische gezinnen steeg in 2005 met 10 procent tot een recordbedrag van 1.382 miljard euro. Dat blijkt uit cijfers van de Nationale Bank.Een gemiddeld gezin heeft dus een vermogen van ongeveer 307.000 euro. Meer vermogen Het financieel vermogen groeide met 8 procent tot 775 miljard. Vooral de waarde van de beleggingsfondsen (+19 pct) en verzekeringsproducten (+18 pct) nam fors toe. Dat is te danken aan de stijging van de beurzen en de grote aankopen van fondsen met kapitaalbescherming en tak21-verzekeringen They talk about AVERAGE not MEAN. I will translate roughly, those who understand dutch can confirm or deny my translation: The text was published in a journal called "Het laatste Nieuws" and was based on a communication from the National Bank of Belgium this month. Belgian families were never as rich as today. The fortune of the average Belgian family was never as big as today. The net fortune of the Belgian families rose in 2005 with 10% to a record amount of 1.382 billion ( 1.382.000 million) euro. This appears from figures published bij the National Bank. An AVERAGE family has a fortune of about 307.000 euro More fortune. The financial fortune grew by 8% to 775 billion euro. Especially the value of investmentfunds (+19%) and insurance products (+18%) increased heavily. This is due to the rise of the stock market and the big buying from funds with capital protection and branch-21 insurances. Edit: savings in Belgium were between 14 and 21% of the netto income the last years. We are in the top of the world when it comes to saving.
In my message above, where it reads "where mean net worth" there should absolutely read "median" not "mean" sorry I was not concentrating on my typing. Kind of renders the point intended useless when I can't hold my thoughts together. Was intending to polarize median vs average because median and mean sound so similar, and got caught in it myself!
Can you show proof that there is going to be a "severe" recession in the US? And how many will be hurt? And how will this affect the rest of the world? Will it affect Belgium? Iraq? Brazil? China? Who?
Well, it's a bit difficult to have "proof" of future events. But with overindebtness so common over there (and also in many other countries), it looks like many millions of Americans will face bankruptcy in the next few years as the asset bubbles are deflating. And a recession in the US of course will affect anybody who exports to the US, which is about every country on this planet.
Well, Belgian exports go for over 70% to our european neighbours, we export only 6.52% to the US. An american recession will affect us, but don't over exagerate the impact. After all 6.52% of our exports can easily be shifted towards other countries. Money and energy markets will be another piece of cake. Predicting is often very difficult. I still remember when Iraq was invaded the first time. Journals mentioned a heavy and bloody war when the Americans would arrive in Kuweit. In reality many Iraqi's were already waving with white flags even before the battle started. So the war was over before he started. The second time the US invaded Iraq everybody thought the job would be done very fast. Well, just look were we are now. Again totally unexpected.