Free Republic

Country Comparison :: Current account balance This entry records a country's net trade in goods and services, plus net earnings from rents, interest, profits, and dividends, and net transfer payments (such as pension funds and worker remittances) to and from the rest of the world during the period specified. These figures are calculated on an exchange rate basis, i.e., not in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms.

"Zounds!" offered one of the wags with whom I regularly converse. The Ph.D. economist was offering his very technical assessment of the "blue-ing" of Pennsylvania. "Given how 'blue'...the two major population centers ... are and the control of the Legislature they have...the likelihood of addressing the horrendous statist policies in PA shrink with every resident who heads south in search of opportunity," he said. Indeed, Pennsylvania, the birthplace of an America founded on liberty and independence, is suffering from an astounding progression of collectivist economic stupidity that only will invite more government dependence and tyranny. And, oh, yes, more voting...

CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez plans to implement price controls on medicine and food, his latest effort to rescue Venezuela's economy wrecked by an opposition strike that Monday entered its ninth week. Products already in short supply from the strike — such as milk, meat, flour, rice, pasta, bread, baby formula, tuna and sardines — will be under price controls, government minister Ramon Rosales told Monday's El Nacional newspaper. "So that these (currency) controls do not hurt the poor, we will institute price controls," Chavez said Sunday in Porto Alegre, Brazil, at the World Social Forum. His comments came...