Germany just had an economic growth of 2% (mainly based on growing exports to China and India), a shrinking population size and in the future a huge need of qualified workers.

OTOH the debts of the PIIGS will be paid by the little tax payers. :(

> I would also suggest you shoot for a country that still has their own currency or better yet is not in the European Monetary Union

Which can only mean a Scandinavian country, Switzerland or Britain.

But with the exception of the oil rich Norway, the economy of those countries is deeply connected to the Euro Zone.

Furthermore Britain has huge debts and is a coming candidate for the PIIGS zone, Ireland and Iceland just copied the non industrial "New Economy" model of growing Banks, mainly selling air as money ... to the Euro zone.

Industrial production is shrinking since Thatcher, at least Britain has some oil and gas in Scotland and a lot of trading connections with the former Empire.

So from the perspective of working conditions, salary, number of free days, social security, health system and price of living, I would rather recommend one of the continental "germanic speaking" countries.

With the exception of Germany you could easily live there without speaking anything else than English.

With the exception of Germany you could easily live there without speaking anything else than English.

For the German speaking part of Switzerland that might be true, don't try it in the French or Italian speaking parts.

And you'll probably find it much harder to participate in non-work activities and mingle with the locals if you do not speak, or at least understand, the local language.

Sorry I was meaning all German speaking countries when saying Germany. (no nationalism intended, mainly thinking in media clusters)

The situation in Alemanic Switzerland shouldn't be better than average Germany, even worse because confronted with a variety of German dialects.

> And you'll probably find it much harder to participate in non-work activities and mingle with the locals if you do not speak, or at least understand, the local language.

Exactly what I meant. You can easily survive only speaking English in Germany but you will sooner or later be socially isolated to other expats.

In Scandinavian and Dutch TV movies aren't dubbed but subtitled, people are constantly trained in English as a second language - at least passively.

(at least thats the cliché, never really tried it myself)

I have an English cousin living in Amsterdam and her Dutch is really basic... and as far as I know she and her husband are mainly hanging around with workmates.

Cheers Rolf

I would also suggest you shoot for a country that still has their own currency or better yet is not in the European Monetary Union because it's not clear if the Euro will survive the current financial crisis and if it does what it will look like (e.g. it could end up being a smaller union led by Germany)

The general view once you get away from the mainstream media is EU has kicked the can down the road, meaning that e.g. Greece will very likely be a problem again in the near future.

So let me see if I have this right. I should be paying attention to the MSM, even though they failed to predict the financial crisis and continue to miss[report] important details and generally lag a couple months behind several more well informed blogs (when they do report something blogs were covering)??

And I should ignore sites like Calculated Risk that predicted the housing market collapse before it happened? Ditto for sites like naked capitalism that were discussing problems with derivatives, CDS's, shady accounting, etc. back in e.g. 2007??

And Simon Johnson, the former Chief Economist of the IMF who has testified before Congress (about the current financial crisis) multiple times -- no credibility there either? Look for his posts on The Baseline Sceanrio.

And the Financial Times, generally considered to be the best and most credible publication on economics -- I should ignore that too?

And Nobel Prize Laurette Professor Paul Krugman? He has decades of articles and several years worth of blog posts that show he has a proven track record. A lot of people don't like him, especially "economists" focused almost entirely on ideology over substance, but we can actually go back and see what he said back then vs. now to see who was right. For example a year ago many "economists" where warning about bond vigilantes and hyperinflation because bond rates went up a small amount. Meanwhile Professor Krugman was concerned about deflation. Well, a year later, there has been no hyperinflation and no bond vigilates destroying the market. In fact, bond rates dropped a fair amount. Meanwhile deflation a la Japan's Lost Decade (which has been more than a lost decade) seems much likely now than ever!! Though perhaps the most important and sobering article he written as of late is Defining Prosperity Down. Well worth a read.

As a side note, anyone looking for a good summary blog site, check out Professor Mark Thoma's Economist's View. He often links to the blogs I mentioned above along with several others, making it a great jumping off place.

Anyway, as empirical evidence has shown, there are several blogs that provide accurate information, reporting and serious commentary. If you want to get a better feel for what's really going on, then that's where you need to turn to these days. If you think you are getting accurate reporting from the MSM, then barring a few exceptions, you are sadly mistaken.

Elda Taluta; Sarks Sark; Ark Arks

As a side note:

The situation of US-states like California ain't any better than of the PIIGS.

The difference is that overall the per capita debt in the €-zone is considerably lower than in the $ or £ zones!

It's already clear that countries like Germany and France will pay for others €-debts, but for sure not without considerable change in economic policy.

So lets talk about the dollar or pound crisis ... and about when the Renminbi will get it's own key and currency symbol on our keyboards ...¹)

Cheers Rolf

1) oops, it (¥) already happend! :)

A snippet from an internal "Introduction to investment banking" course in a huge investment bank earlier this year:
Instructor: Who thinks the euro will survive with the same list of countries using it till the end of the year?
Pupils: (not a single hand up)
Instructor: Right, me neither.

P.S.:I don't really think though that Ireland belongs to the same group with the rest of the PIGS.

I don't really think though that Ireland belongs to the same group with the rest of the PIGS.

Well, they aren't in the same group as PIGS. But they're close. That's why there are PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain), PIIGS (PIGS + Ireland) and PIIGGS (PIIGS + United Kingdom).

It's interesting where these groupings come from?

According to most sources I've found, (Eg. gdp.v.national debt), Italy is far more indebted that any of those 4(5(6)). And at the peak of the crisis (june09), the UK comes out better than USA, Canada, Germany or France.

Do you have better sources?

---

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.

"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".

In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.

RIP an inspiration; A true Folk's Guy

Ireland went on a big fiscal austerity kick early on, yet despite all of that investors in the 10-year bond market (where higher rates correspond to less confidence) actually favor Spain, which has been dragged kicking and screaming into fiscal austerity. So I do not see how you can exclude Ireland from the picture when the best measure of market confidence shows Ireland slightly worse off than Spain. You just don't hear about it as much, plus any contagion is expected to spread from Greece to Portugal and Spain first.

Elda Taluta; Sarks Sark; Ark Arks

That's only part of the story. First ... the investors probably believe Ireland it less important than Spain and therefore less likely to be saved by other European countries in case of real problems. And second ... both Ireland and the PIGS had been overspending. But while Ireland economy used to grow fairly quickly and they just failed to accommodate to the slowdown quickly enough, Greece and other PIGS were overspending for years and years and their growth had been ... little. Their problems are chronic.

Or maybe not. I ain't no economy guru :-)

Jenda
Enoch was right!
Enjoy the last years of Rome.