The biggest of the big: Why US is world's No. 1 economy

Christian Science Monitor ^ | June 12, 2003 | Financial Times

[tvn]

Microsoft is the world's largest company by market value, overtaking General Electric to reclaim that title in the latest annual ranking by London's Financial Times (FT) newspaper.

As usual, US firms dominate the FT 500 list, taking up 240 spots. And despite a collective 23 percent decline in value in 2002, they are worth a combined $7.16 trillion, making the US far and away the world's biggest economy.

Only one other nation, Britain, tops the $1 trillion mark.

The FT top 10 countries in terms of market capitalization:

1. US

2. Britain

3. Japan

4. France

5. Switzerland

6. Germany

7. Italy

8. Canada

9. Netherlands/Britain (jointly based companies Royal Dutch/Shell Group, Unilever, and Reed Elsevier Group)

10. Spain

[tvn]

An excellent chart to serve as a reality check and to counter the overly simplistic and purposely misleading "It's the ecomnomy stupid" type of attacks.

[Mind-numbed Robot]

This seems to me to also be a good counter to those who are constantly bemoaning free trade and our trade deficit with a few countries. China is not even in the top ten.

[fhayek]

France is fourth? I am a bit suprised by that.

[Yardstick]

France is fourth? I am a bit suprised by that.

Me too. How can the lazy, unionist French possibly be productive enough to have an economy that ranks in the world's top five?

[9999lakes]

Those who say the white man is the curse of the planet, as Susan Sontag said recently, need to see this chart.

[fhayek]

Well, before we get to far along in this discussion of the master race, I believe that most of China's companies are still state owned, and therefore not traded on a stock market.

[MichiganCheese]

I'm sure it has more to do with capitalism and a relatively free market.

[Mind-numbed Robot]

Well, before we get too far along in this discussion of the master race, I believe that most of China's companies are still state owned, and therefore not traded on a stock market.

I did not realize it was talking about stock value alone. I thought it was talking about asset value and total worth. (I am not part of the master race discussion.)

[RadioFR]

Unspun with AnnaZ
June 12th, 2003 -- 7pmP/10pmE

with Special Guest Hostess
Diotima

Hilliaryious!
(and continued Schadenfest*)

We'll be catching up with the DC Chapter of Free Republic and Hilliary!'s "book" tour.

* The Unspun Schadenfest continues due to this!

Plus as always

Boneheaded Lie-beral Quotes and this week's CRB

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[budanski]

The Japanese are considered white?

[arkfreepdom]

Democracies kick a##.

[Joe Hadenuf]

France is fourth? I am a bit suprised by that.

If I am not mistaken, California's economy alone, is larger than France......

[Torie]

Did you say master race? Someone, and someone "respectable," not some low life here on FR, has disagreed with that:

"We are treated by the Americans with a mixture of patronizing pity and contempt. They treat us worse than they do any other country in Europe. They undermine our political and commercial influence all over the world . . . . They really are a strange people. Perhaps the mistake we make is to continue to regard them as an Anglo-Saxon people. That blood is very much watered down now; they are a Latin-Slav mixture, with a fair amount of German and Irish. They are impatient, mercurial, panicky."

Harold Macmillan, British PM and some other things.

Everybody has a diagnosis for what ails us. What this country needed was the steady and calm hand of pure Anglo Saxons, say like the Clintons, which is what caused this great nation of ours to leap ahead economically above the fray despite the watering down of the blood lines. And there you have it.

PS: I think Macmillan has the portions wrong; they were certainly wrong when he said it, and they are still wrong, but whatever. The problem is really the German and Irish, with the Scotch Irish being the worst.

PPS: I just finding these little gems, these gleaming toys of history.

[SevenDaysInMay]

THE reason our USA is under attack is because, with GW's win in 2000, we are now out of step with world socialism's movement. Kyoto's economic suicide pact went unratified, 95:0. The Clintons' 5th column work went unfinished.

Islamists war against us will cost us hundreds of billion$ every year from 9/11 on. That should slow down our economic mircle so the EU can trade favors with the oily Islamists.

[Brett66]

I doubt France can maintain their rank for long. It looks like they're in a hastening downward spiral, not just an economic one either.

[kuma]

We're a Republic *^_^*

[ggekko]

It is impossible to know how large China's economy and it companies are at this poin in time since most of the Government economic statistics are highly suspect with the skew to the upside being highly dubious.

China's currency is at least 30% undervalued based upon the purchase power parity model. This has allowed China to accumulate large foreign currency reserves but China has not generated sustained internally generated investment. If foreign investors ever pull back from China because of a political crisis the Chinese economy will become highly vulnerable to collapse.

[Citizen of the Savage Nation]

If I am not mistaken, California's economy alone, is larger than France......

It is, with half the people.

[Joe Hadenuf]

That's what I thought. Thanks.....