In your review of George Magnus’ The Age of Ageing: How Demographics are Changing the Global Economy and Our World (London: John Wiley and Sons, 2009) you suggest that all those concerned with the “demographic time bomb” resulting from the combination of growing longevity and falling fertility fall into three categories: those who claim that this is just another Malthusian scare that can be easily sorted out; those who preach gloom and doom; and those who, like our author, crunch the numbers and come up with sensible ideas about ways and means to avert the worst (“Graying Globe,” January 3, 2009). But a couple of paragraphs later you point out that all the sensible ideas proposed in the reviewed book must be implemented right away, which is rather hard to imagine in the world gripped by deep recession or even depression. Would you not agree that you, too, fall quite comfortably in the gloom-and-doom category?