Thursday, February 1, 2007

Global economic boom

In today’s National Post Terence Corcoran documents the boom in the world’s economy over the past 10 years. Selected highlights:
...the last 10 years have generated relatively steady growth and a globalizing world economy that promises more to come.
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...dark spots on the map, notably in Canada, where annual real growth over the last five years has lagged behind the United States. Yesterday's reports demonstrate Canada's problem: In the last quarter of 2006, U.S. growth hit 3.5% while Canada will be lucky to get 1%.
[...]
United States has been growing at almost 1% more per year over the last five years than Canada.
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...a gap that should highlight the need for significant reform of tax and regulatory policy from the New Government in Ottawa and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty in particular.
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A month or two ago, China was thought to be on the verge of sliding into a slower growth track. Now the country is expected to grow by more than 10% next year.
[...]
The last decade is also one that has operated under the greatest global free trade period in many decades. Most trade barriers to growth have been removed.
Notwithstanding Canada’s lagging performance relative to the U.S. global economic growth is good news for nearly everyone but anti-globalization radicals, global ‘justice’ flim-flam artists and of course environmentalists and other assorted global warming hysterics. For them economic good news brought about by capitalism and free trade is generally considered bad news. It runs counter to socialist economic theory (actually most reality runs counter to socialist theory). And naturally global economic growth means more CO2 in the atmosphere.

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