September 4, 2013
AESTHETICS MATTER:
U.S. reverses slide in competitiveness (Virginia Harrison, 9/04/13, CNNMoney)
The United States has been named the world's fifth most competitive country as growing confidence in the country's financial system helped reverse a four year slide down the leader board.In the World Economic Forum's annual Global Competitiveness Report released Wednesday, the U.S. climbed two places to take fifth spot. Switzerland retained its number one ranking, with Singapore, Finland and Germany rounding out the top five.The WEF rates a country's competitiveness based on its performance in 12 categories, including quality of institutions, infrastructure, financial market development and higher education and training.America's rise this year was "down to a perceived improvement in the country's financial market as well as greater confidence in its public institutions," it said."The de-leveraging process in the banking sector continues to show positive effects on the stability and efficiency of the country's financial markets."
Big deficits don't matter in themselves, economically, but they do have a psychological effect. Any time you have a peace dividend and you can rapidly close wartime deficits people will believe that institutions are working better.
Posted by Orrin Judd at September 4, 2013 7:31 PM
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