#1. REASON TO SAY NO TO GLOBAL GOVERNANCE:
Global Central Bank corruption, fraud and abuse with no accountability
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United States Number 2
Old Models Must Change For Economic Recovery To Be Sustainable
Switzerland tops the overall ranking in The Global Competitiveness Report 2009-2010.
The United States falls one place to second position, with weakening in its financial markets and macroeconomic stability. Singapore, Sweden and Denmark round out the top five.
European economies continue to prevail in the top 10 with Finland, Germany and the Netherlands following suit.
The United Kingdom, while remaining very competitive, has continued its fall from last year, moving down one more place this year to 13th, mainly attributable to continuing weakening of its financial markets.
The rankings are calculated from both publicly available data and the Executive Opinion Survey, a comprehensive annual survey conducted by the World Economic Forum together with its network of Partner Institutes (leading research institutes and business organizations) in the countries covered by the Report.
Download full report here
China Journal
How China is changing - and changing the worldDollar Gets Roughed Up In Unusually Heated World Economic Forum Panel
Among the more interesting moments of the World Economic Forum that wrapped up Saturday in Dalian occurred on the final morning, when a panel on Asia’s foreign-currency exposure turned into an unusually contentious discussion on the future of the U.S. dollar.
In front of CNBC cameras, Yu Yongding, an academic who was formerly an advisor to the Chinese central bank, got the discussion off on a decidedly bearish tone for the dollar, with strong criticism of public finances in the U.S.
“The U.S. has been running a current account deficit for more than 26 years now, and they are accumulating huge foreign debt, and now they are running huge budget deficits. According to very optimistic estimations, within ten years, they will continue to run budget deficits,” he said.
Yu said he strongly supports a proposal by People’s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan to develop of a new international reserve currency based on Special Drawing Rights, a kind of synthetic currency created by the International Monetary Fund in the 1960s. But he acknowledged that the SDR cannot replace the US dollar “at this stage.”
Click here to read entire Wall Street Journal article
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World Economic Forum Competiveness Report drops US to #2
San Diego Economy ExaminerMark Vargus
The World Economic Forum has produced a new study on the competitiveness of each of the worlds many nations. This report is available as a nearly 500 page pdf file, and shows some surprising elements as they downgraded the US from the most competitive economy in the world to second behind Switzerland.
And competitiveness is important as the report writer notes in the first pages as he writes:
Competitive economies are those that have in place factors driving the productivity enhancements on which their present and future prosperity is built.
And this has been the great advantage the US has maintained in the economic world and part of why the US economy is bigger than the combined economies of Japan and China (the nations with the #2 and #3 economies by annual GDP). Actually you could add in Germany (#4) and the UK and only barely beat the US. But the report indicates that the economists of the World Economic Forum are worried about the situation in the US.
Their analysis is simple, but elegant and they note:
We define competitiveness as the set of institutions, policies, and factors that determine the level of productivity of a country. The level of productivity, in turn, sets the sustainable level of prosperity that can be earned by an economy.
It’s a good point. And plays into the analysis.
Click here for entire San Diego Economy Examiner article
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