A landmark event for the baby boomers

As the repeated failures of would-be stockmarket seers have shown, making predictions about the future is a dangerous game. There is, however, one prediction that we can make with absolute certainty: 2011 will represent a landmark year for the retirement systems of much of the developed world. Happily, we don’t need a crystal ball or a set of tarot cards to make that deduction – it’s simply a matter of demographics. In demographic terms, the significance of 2011 is hard to overstate. Across the West, the next 12 months will see the first members of the baby boomer generation, that massiv...