Since 1975 the countries now in the euro zone have given birth to just one company currently among the world’s 500 biggest (ironically it is from Spain: Inditex); by contrast California alone has created 26.Someone suggested "this said it all". The Economist is recommending "shock therapy" for the Euro Zone.
Wince
The Economist is well respected. When I was in "college"♠ we had a subscription to a weekly news magazine each year, taken out of our pay. One year it was The Economist, a thin paper edition, befitting its traveling from England, unlike now, with the electrons flowing readily for printing in the US.
Regards — Cliff
♠ I have to put college in quotes for my Brother Lance, who is dubious that I ever really had a college experience.
In Germany, the "Mittelstand" is reverently and universally recognized among Germans as where it's really at, and I think we here in our own country cherish stats that show fully half of our employment and economic strength comes from small businesses. Measuring "innovation" by the emergence of corporate behemoths is disingenuous at best. If they had a point to make, I'd have wished they'd have used a relevant example. California, not for nothing, is the single biggest failure among our state governments, and it's counties, cities and towns are failing as well.
ReplyDeleteI would have liked to see The Economist state how many of those 26 CA companies still exist.....or at the least...continue to exist in CA. My own guess is "Zero." CA is the North American equivalent of Greece.
ReplyDeleteBIG business would not be big were it not for small and medium sized businesses who go nameless in the splashy corporate proclamations. All those little nuts, bolts, wires, harnesses, etc. are the progeny of little businesses...and the efficacy of those subcomponents of the BIG product is quite likely from some nameless guy in some backwater town who looks at what he is doing or making and says, "There is a better way." There really is more truth to this than romance. When you fly crammed between to "healthy" people in a Boeing 737....you are being transported by a living collection of tiny little parts glued together by the big integrator...Boeing.