US Ranks Fourth In Global Competitiveness
by ilene - September 12th, 2010 12:46 pm
US Ranks Fourth In Global Competitiveness
Courtesy of JESSE’S CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN
I think the biggest surprise for US readers might be how high the US ranks in global competitiveness, and the countries that rank the highest. And of course there is the absence of China in the top ten. Shocking when viewed through the lens of an artificially managed-to-the-dollar currency pair.
Obviously having low paid and poorly treated workers is not the primary qualification for global competitiveness, at least in this national scaling. But it does seem to be a preoccupation of a significant portion of the Anglo-american crony capitalist elements which have never quite reconciled themselves to the laws against indentured servitude.
GenevaLunch
World Economic Forum Competitiveness Report: US falls to 4th place
10 September 2010
Geneva, Switzerland – Switzerland leads the pack, with Sweden and Singapore in second and third places respectively, and the United States in fourth in the latest edition of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Competitiveness Report, published Thursday 9 September. The US has slipped two places, after being overtaken in 2009 by Switzerland. The WEF attributes the lower ranking to “In addition to the macroeconomic imbalances that have been building up over time, there has been a weakening of the United States’ public and private institutions, as well as lingering concerns about the state of its financial markets.”
The report uses two sources: publicly available data and a survey of business leaders, with 13,500 business people in 139 “economies” queried for this year’s report. It contains more than 100 indicators for each country, part of the detailed country reports. “The survey is designed to capture a broad range of factors affecting an economy’s business climate. The report also includes comprehensive listings of the main strengths and weaknesses of countries, making it possible to identify key priorities for policy reform,” notes the WEF press release on the new report.
Nordic countries remain strong, says the WEF, with four of them in the top 15: Sweden (2), Finland (7), Denmark (9) and norway (14). China “continues to lead the way among the top developing countries” according to the report: it improved two places and is now ranked 27.
North African countries are competing more strongly, with several of them in the top 50.
Switzerland ranked number one in several areas in
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Swiss Minister: UBS At Risk Of Collapse If America Plays Hardball With Tax Evasion Case
by ilene - February 1st, 2010 10:59 am
Swiss Minister: UBS At Risk Of Collapse If America Plays Hardball With Tax Evasion Case
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Courtesy of Vincent Fernando at Clusterstock
Swiss mega-bank UBS could collapse if the U.S. plays hardball with its tax fraud investigations.
If true, it’s a pretty sad admission about the state of UBS right now. Perhaps the end is near for the ‘Swiss model’ of banking, by which we mean Swiss tax evasion services.
"The actions of UBS in the United States are very problematic. Not just because they are punishable but also because they threaten all of the bank’s activities," Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf told Le Matin Dimanche newspaper.
"The Swiss economy and the job market would suffer on a major scale if UBS fails as a result of its licence being revoked in the United States," she said.
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The Chinese Disconnect?
by ilene - October 25th, 2009 2:45 pm
The Chinese Disconnect?
Courtesy of Leo Kolivakis at Pension Pulse
A follow-up to my last comment on the death-defying dollar. In his NYT op-ed column, Paul Krugman writes about The Chinese Disconnect and notes the following:
Many economists, myself included, believe that China’s asset-buying spree helped inflate the housing bubble, setting the stage for the global financial crisis. But China’s insistence on keeping the yuan/dollar rate fixed, even when the dollar declines, may be doing even more harm now.
Although there has been a lot of doomsaying about the falling dollar, that decline is actually both natural and desirable. America needs a weaker dollar to help reduce its trade deficit, and it’s getting that weaker dollar as nervous investors, who flocked into the presumed safety of U.S. debt at the peak of the crisis, have started putting their money to work elsewhere.
But China has been keeping its currency pegged to the dollar — which means that a country with a huge trade surplus and a rapidly recovering economy, a country whose currency should be rising in value, is in effect engineering a large devaluation instead.
And that’s a particularly bad thing to do at a time when the world economy remains deeply depressed due to inadequate overall demand. By pursuing a weak-currency policy, China is siphoning some of that inadequate demand away from other nations, which is hurting growth almost everywhere. The biggest victims, by the way, are probably workers in other poor countries. In normal times, I’d be among the first to reject claims that China is stealing other peoples’ jobs, but right now it’s the simple truth.
So what are we going to do?
U.S. officials have been extremely cautious about confronting the China problem, to such an extent that last week the Treasury Department, while expressing “concerns,” certified in a required report to Congress that China is not — repeat not — manipulating its currency. They’re kidding, right?
The thing is, right now this caution makes little sense. Suppose the Chinese were to do what Wall Street and Washington seem to fear and start selling some of their dollar hoard. Under current conditions, this would actually help the U.S. economy by making our exports more competitive.
In fact, some countries, most notably Switzerland, have been trying to support their economies by selling
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW.