According to Wiki, the world’s largest economies in 2007 were:
United States - 13,807,550
Japan - 4,381,576
Germany - 3,320,913
China (PRC) - 3,280,224h
United Kingdom - 2,804,437
France - 2,593,779
Italy - 2,104,666
Spain - 1,439,983
Canada - 1,436,086
Brazil - 1,313,590
Russia - 1,289,535
It’s a little old I think (China having overtaken Germany), but it doesn’t matter so much. Which of these nations are weathering the financial crisis the best? Which will come out relatively strengthened, and which will be sent down the list as a result of the crisis?
My immediate guess would be Canada and Brazil are doing the best. Japan, Italy and Spain and perhaps UK the worst.
Scandinavia together is about number 8 or 9 on the list of the largest economies. If we ignore Iceland, which is totally fucked, I think they are doing relatively fine. All have small national debts, and budget surpluses (Norway massive) which should make stimulus packages possible and a large public sector will take some of the sting out of the downturn. Although there are problems. Norway must feel the low oil prices and Denmark is heavily dependent on foreign trade and has one of Europe’s worst real estate bubbles.
Canada is relatively unexposed to the credit problems, but we’re extremely dependent on the Americans wanting to buy stuff from us. They don’t seem to want to at the moment, which is pretty much the entirety of our economic problem.
Canada is actually in quite good shape. We’ve been paying down our debt for years, and although our left-wing parties threatened to bring down the government unless we had our own ‘stimulus’, it’s still relatively small - $35 billion dollars. Alberta is weakening, but still posting positive growth and is still the strongest economy in North America, and perhaps even in the world.
Our biggest problem is that the U.S. is our largest trading partner and a gigantic influence on our economy. So we go wherever the U.S. goes, but we’re positioned to ride it out a little better.
The US is better economically developed than the others in your list, and is pumping vast amounts of dollars into the economy. Bloomberg Politics - Bloomberg Almost $10 trillion has been added to the economy so far. According to Bloomberg this is enough to pay off 90 percent of all mortgages.
So I’m going for the US being the best off in this worldwide crisis. Iceland is ruined. The UK is going to be very badly off. If the US keeps pumping money into the economy, then the whole world will be better off than otherwise.
Can you elaborate on this? There’ll be a General Election next year, and there will be major jamborees in 2012 (Olympics, QE2’s Diamond Jubilee, 30th anniversary of Falklands, 200th anniversary of War of 1812).
The IMF has already listed us as likely to be among the worst hit because of our economic dependence on finance rather than making stuff. Also our deregulated approach to the banking sector left it more exposed.
Our housing market was also dreadfully over-inflated.
And as you say - we are still committed to the ridiculous Olympic bid and being lied to on a daily basis as to the true cost.
GNP and growth projections for all countries are subject to manipulation and wishful thinking, but probably nowhere so much as China. Official growth is projected to 8% - other analysts say China already has negative growth. Also China needs 8%+ growth just to provide jobs for those millions entering the work force every year.
If all you need is pump vast amount of dollars into the economy, why don’t you pump in $20 trillion – and pay off all mortgages and buy everyone a Cadillac? Or $100 trillion? What comes after trillion?
Those additional $10 trillions on top of your already ballooning deficits and underfinanced state obligations will have to be paid back some day. Do you think your children will relish the thought of slavering to pay off their parent’s debt?
Or rather. It’s not like hyper-inflation hasn’t been seen elsewhere before.
I’m not saying China is doing worse than the USA. Just that it is widely accepted that official statistics coming out of China should be taken with a big helping of salt. Because of manipulation and because it’s simply not that easy to measure the overall economic growth of 1.3 billion people.
Maybe it’s growing 8%, maybe it’s in recession. Some commentators I have read say that things like fall in the Chinese oil consumption and electricity usage point to the economy being in recession. Official Chinese deny such allegations: China stats chief defends GDP figures as reliable
Why do you think Chinese officials would have to deny that they are massaging their numbers if there was not a number of people out there that thought so?
btw. There are also many who thinks the USA is manipulating their numbers. For example, a good part of the US GNP derives from some number given to the supposed rental value of living in ones own house. Absolutely no actual extra value is produced here. Just living in your own house props up the GNP numbers. I say bullshit.
