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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (19334)	6/7/2007 3:28:33 AM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217975

Europe's comeback as it prepares for decoupled world: expanded over the past 3 years, bringing nations on its Eastern and Southern fringe into the European mainstream. Europe's comeback By Michael Heise \| June 6, 2007 The truth is that Europe is back and very much so. The European Union has expanded over the past three years, bringing nations on its Eastern and Southern fringe into the European mainstream. The EU expansion has spurred on the 15 oldest members, including the nine largest economies at Europe's core, to revamp and reshape their economies to meet the challenges of the global marketplace. Consider these facts: EU-wide growth is forecast to reach 2.7 percent this year, above US levels. Even Germany, long considered moribund, grew at 3.6 percent in the first quarter, proving that a high-wage economy can succeed in today's global markets. Meanwhile, unemployment in Europe continues to decline, to below 7 percent next year. Productivity growth, long Europe's Achilles' heel, was slightly higher than in the United States last year. It is Sweden, once a bastion of Euro-socialist inefficiency, that is now the western continent's leader. It saw its gross domestic product expand 4.4 percent last year, its fastest growth rate since 1999 and considerably faster than the US economy. At the same time, it is running a healthy fiscal surplus. In years past, European policymakers were bitter about the steady drumbeat of criticism from the across the Atlantic, but they must now realize that much of it was well-deserved. Indeed, Europe suffered from inertia, coasting on educational and industrial achievements of the past, and living off its accumulated wealth. This mindset is now largely a thing of the past. Any doubters of Europe's comeback should consider one quintessentially American statistic that powerfully underscores the improved outlook. According to Thomson Financial, Europe's equity market capitalization has now eclipsed that of the United States. Europe's 24 stock markets, including Russia and emerging Europe, now have market cap of $15.72 trillion, a bit higher than the $15.64 trillion market value of the United States. That underscores the sentiment and expectations of investors worldwide about Europe's economic potential and future prospects. What explains the shift and the re-dynamization of Europe? Two points were crucial. First, Europe learned to learn from the United States. Gradual deregulation, greater openness, support for entrepreneurship, moves to stimulate innovation and many of the other policies that have benefited Europe since the start of the decade have been selective imports of the US economic model. Second, Europe at long last embarked on an effort to achieve success in the global knowledge economy -- a challenge Europe very much shares with the United States. The so-called Lisbon Agenda, launched by the European Council in 2000, committed Europe's leaders to boosting investment in research and development, slashing red tape, and knocking down bureaucratic hurdles to launching businesses as well as shoring up the continent's strained social security systems. The main idea is to provide more and better jobs as well as greater social balance. The Lisbon Agenda is finally starting to bear fruit. But while the world has become a competitive marketplace, the revival of Western Europe is by no means a threat to the United States. On the contrary, achieving strong, sustainable economic growth in Europe has been a major goal of Washington's international economic agenda. The 27 nations that make up the European Union, plus several that have chosen not to join but remain closely associated with it, are not only a major market for US exports and the main source of overseas profits for US companies. They are also democratic nations with open, free enterprise-oriented systems in a world where liberal democracy is once more on the defensive. This only underscores the way in which the economies of Europe and the United States are closely intertwined. It also points to the creative potential to push each other to higher levels of performance. At this week's summit of theGroup of Eight industrial nations in Germany, the United States may find some things worth learning from Europe's nascent economic success. For example, Europe's future-oriented Lisbon Agenda includes both social and environmental sustainability as a key component. Countries such as Sweden and the Netherlands are achieving economic growth without sacrificing their social safety nets. With concern about global warming and other environmental issues moving to the top of the international agenda, Europe's efforts in this area could be a template for action on the other side of the Atlantic. Of course, while each country can learn from its peers, it must decide on its own road to prosperity. Michael Heise is chief economist at Allianz and Dresdner Bank in Germany

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (19334)	6/8/2007 12:35:56 AM
From: arun gera	Respond to of 217975

>power grows out of the barrel of a gun and corporate bosses do NOT arrest the police or government people. It's the reverse.> All money is derived out of current or future taxation by the government. The Church used to collect a tithe. The rise of big corporations can almost always be traced back to direct dependence on the government or government policies. Even in capitalist nations, the biggest organizations are/were the military, the postal service, the airways, telecommunications, and the media. If you go back to the early phase of most nations, the first layer of corporations that grow big, do so by supplying stuff to the government. After a while other large corporations are formed by feeding on the first generation of corporations. Microsoft out of the IBM's PC. (Was IBM forced into giving away its PC platform?) Government policy resulted in Fedex and UPS, MCI and Sprint. If the corporations get too big, a strong government can cut them to size (Standard Oil, AT&T, IBM, and recently Microsoft). -Arun