It's the Economy! (Stupid)

"A universally helpful and insightful book. I particularly liked the straightforward charts and summary points. It should be a reference manual for everyone interested in the US economy."

David Gamble
Former Chief Executive
British Airways Pension
Investment Management Ltd

(excerpt from the book...)

Throughout this book I've referred to the "new global economy", and in the first chapter I described what I meant by this term. But describing something is never as effective as presenting a visual presentation of what I mean. For that, an expansion on the definition of the "new global economy" is necessary. Heretofore, global economic competition was waged mostly by private companies based in a sovereign state--sometimes with the aid of that sovereign state--against other companies from different sovereign states. In this process the "sovereignty of the state" ruled; that is, the economic pursuits of the private companies accrued to the general benefit of the state in which that company was domiciled. Below is the political definition of "sovereignty":

"Sovereignty is the claim to be the ultimate political authority, subject to no higher power as regards the making and enforcing of political decisions. In the international system, sovereignty is the claim by the state to full self-government, and the mutual recognition of claims to sovereignty is the basis of international society."

While no doubt our leaders and those of other countries still view this definition as valid, nonetheless the development of the new global economy is breaking up this definition significantly. Not only has the establishment of the European Union superseded this definition in many ways, but the development of the private sector has literally outgrown the geographical and political confines of the nation-state to where the on-going power and "sovereignty" of that state is being challenged by these new global economic forces.

Consequently, the private sector is rapidly dissolving any economic notions of sovereignty that still remain the world. While the USA, as the largest economy in the world, has been more immune than most in the past, this is no longer true. Indeed, one of the major points of this book is to awaken America's national leaders and decision-makers to the realities of the new global economy and how the implications affect the national economic security of the nation. While it is understandable that most of us still view issues of sovereignty in terms of the geographical delineations of the nation-state, this remains true only in political terms. In economic terms a nation-state is just another "economic entity" in the new global economy and it is on a par as an economic entity with other entities in the private sector that co-occupy this new global economy.

On pages 222 and 226-229 is what I immodestly call the "Hale 200 Index of Global Economic Entities". This is a co-mingled ranking of the top countries ranked by GDP, the top 50 financial institutions ranked by assets, the 50 largest global money managers ranked by assets under management (that is, funds held in trust by the managers to maximize the returns), and the top 50 companies in the world ranked by market value. The result is a ranking of the Top 200 Global Economic Entities in the world.

(...more in the book)