Want to know why US businesses are losing? Ask the World Bank

On Monday, Bret Stephens wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal called “Doomed to Stagnate.” The article was predicated on a little-known annual survey by the World Bank known as “Doing Business,” a document that ranks the business climate of nearly every nation around the world.

Most Americans might expect the largest capitalist economy in the world, the United States, to lead the pack — but they’d be wrong. In fact, most Americans might be surprised to learn that not only are we not on top, but we have become less economically competitive in the world since Obama took office.

Re: “Read the article.”

I did read the article.

I can also read a stock chart.

Last 8 Years - S&P 500 - Up 175%

Last 8 years - Nasdaq 100 - Up 300%

How many of the seven countries in front of the USA had better stock market performance?

I don't know, probably none of them, but I'll check later when I have time.

How many of the seven countries in front of the USA deliberately imported 10 million, low skill, Third World, LEGAL immigrants over the last eight years?

That I do know - none of them.

None of what you say changes the fact, which is laid out in simple unemotive prose, that doing business in the US has gotten harder in the past eight years. I am not sure why you react so defensively to a report that urges the US to cut back on sclerotic bureaucracy and free up business from ever-more entangling red tape.

The report is hardly urging the imposition of Trotskyism after all.

The US economy is growing but that does not change the fact that it will eventually stop growing if government makes it harder and harder for businesses to do business.

There is no reason why it should be taking longer to get a construction permit or to enforce a contract, these are basic business tools and no advanced economy can remain so if it makes these things more difficult.

The article describes the report as “little known”, this may be so in the US but in developing countries this report is used as a benchmark for governments trying to encourage investment.

If the US is piling on ever more and more third world-style bureaucratic hassles and costs while third world countries like Indonesia or Brazil start slashing their red tape, well take it from me, it won’t be long before the third world countries become more developed and the US becomes more third world.

That seems like common sense to me.

Re: “I am not sure why you react so defensively to a report that urges the US to cut back on sclerotic bureaucracy and free up business from ever-more entangling red tape.”

I totally support a free market laissez-faire business environment, and I come from five generations of small business owners.

In my original Comment, I challenged the veracity of the World Bank data and their political motivation.

If a publicly owned, for-profit, international bank compiled this survey, it would be much more believable.

In the mean time, I think America has the best corporate business management in the world, and I think the market value of our public corporations verifies my belief.

Re: “The stock market is mostly Fed QE and algorithms pumping up the numbers.”

Sorry, I disagree.

Algorithms certainly influence short term volatility, but over an eight year period, their influence is too small to measure.

And QE in the Euro Zone is much more dangerous than Fed QE because Euro commercial banks are forced to buy Euro sovereign debt at insanely low rates - like the Italian 10 Year Bond, which currently yields 1.82%.

I certainly agree that the USA market could have a sharp correction.

But, I also think that USA public companies are the best managed public companies in the world, and, in general, I think that current USA stock prices are within historical norms.

The World Bank is the enemy.

“A careful analysis of the money trail shows that the driving force behind the push for world government today is the power of multinational cartels: media, food, grain, industrial, mineral, oil and pharmaceutical, and their interlocking international prime banks operating through the Trilateral financial centers of London, New York and Tokyo, globally operating from the smaller hub of Basel-Zurich-Geneva.

Since 1990, when George Bush brought the phrase “New World Order” out of the closet (it was Adolf Hitler’s pet phrase first) we have entered a new phase. The push for world government of, for, and by the transnational cartels is on in earnest. The globalists, being thoroughly multi-partisan, have continued to implement the agenda of their New World Order under Clinton, even while utilizing the right-wing in America to attack Clinton as a “socialist.” This scenario has had the net effect of moving the whole dialectic further in the direction of universal fascism.

The multinationals have co-opted the language of Internationalism and are hastening the demise of nationalism because they wish to “globalize” the economies of all nations and “Balkanize” nation-states, breaking them down into provinces or bio-regions, the better to loot them of their mineral resources. This is the real explanation for the horror that has overtaken the former Yugoslavia.

Oil profits and mineral revenues are not all that is at stake. Iraq was targeted in the Gulf War because the Globalists must divide, conquer, or co-opt the Arab nations, who form the main bloc of resistance to the implementation of their intended new global money-system.

This will be a dollar-denominated, computer-monitored, debit-card, bar-code credit system, further institutionalizing the myth of the international debt structure and binding the peoples of the world to fascistic economic bondage. No one will be able to buy or sell without a credit number. The First World finance capitalists are out to impose “dollar imperialism” and the hegemony of the multinational cartels upon the whole world. Liberals, who look to the UN as a panacea, are largely ignorant of the economic realities of the World Bank/IMF, the core financial institution under the UN umbrella. The capital pool of the IMF, the prime banks of the First World, are privately owned corporations which have franchised themselves to create “credit money” out of thin air. These banks utilize the IMF as a front to exact interest back in raw materials from the Third World-a sophisticated development of paper neo-colonialism in the electronic age.

The “New Age” movement is being promoted as a “soft” or counter-cultural wing (essentially, the spiritual liturgy) of the New World Order in order to co-opt elements of society who are concerned with environmental issues and are opposed to imperialist aggression, but who have accepted the dialectic that globalism is the positive antithesis to nationalism, and that nationalism, not finance, is the cause of all wars.

Stanford Research International (SRI) in Menlo Park, the largest think tank on the West Coast, does contract research for the CIA, Bechtel, Kaiser, and 400 other corporations. SRI is actively promoting “New Age” consciousness. SRI was founded in 1946 by Stephen Bechtel of Bechtel Corporation, the biggest military-industrial contractor in the world. Bechtel also funds the Hoover Institution at Stanford, which promoted Ronald Reagan for president. The symbiotic relationship between SRI and the Hoover Institution, as the “left” and “right” wings of Bechtel is an example of how the power elite, through their co-opted think tank academics, are employing the Hegelian method (thesis-antithesis-synthesis) to create conflict and change, and implement by degrees their “New World Order,” also called the “New Age.” This is what is known as dialectics.”

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.