Hong Kong And Singapore Pass US In Competitiveness
For the first time in 16 years, the US is not the most competitive nation in the world. The IMD World Competitiveness Center, which measures 58 economies put Singapore and Hong Kong ahead of the US for 2010. But not…
The US should be encouraged by China’s ranking–No. 18 with a rating of 82.182. The mainland’s lack of sophisticated technology and highly advanced manufacturing capacity cause a headwind to its economy that may take years to overcome. Germany, Canada, Sweden, and Taiwan all place above China. Ireland, the UK, France, and Korea were not far behind.
The data indicates that if the US can improve GDP growth and make a dent in high unemployment, it will move back into the top spot and perhaps do so by a large margin. “Creditworthiness” is part of the IMD measurement process, so a drop in the US deficit would also improve the US rank. Not surprisingly, the agency said that high debt levels hurt competitive ranks for Italy, Portugal, Iceland, and Greece. These nations not only have large deficits, but they are highly unlikely to be able to repair their economic problems.
“The quality of debt depends both on the collateral and the capacity to repay. In short, countries such as Greece, Portugal and Spain have a credibility problem today not only because they have a debt crisis, but also because they lack the means to adequately repay (growth rate, current account balance, investments abroad, etc).”, the IMD said The US, at least for now, is not in that category.
Douglas A. McIntyre
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Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
