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America the gutted is a 10-month global investigation of the shrinking American middle class. For more from the series, visit GlobalPost.
America, decoded. Check out GlobalPost for an upcoming series on the middle class around the world.
The average Canadian household is wealthier than the average US household for the first time in history, according to a new report.
According to data from Environics Analytics WealthScapes, the net worth of the average Canadian household has crept up over the last five years. In 2011 the average Canadian household was worth $363,202, while the average American household’s net worth was $319,970, Slatest reported.
The Globe and Mail notes that the main reason for the disparity in wealth is related to the phenomena of the 2008 economic crisis and the collapse of the US housing market.
Because house prices in the US have plunged, the real estate held by Canadians is now much more valuable than that held by Americans (worth over $140,000 more on average). Canadians hold more than twice as much real estate as Americans, according to the Globe and Mail.Once mortgages are factored in, Canadians have almost four times as much remaining equity in their real estate.
Americans do have more liquid (non-real estate) assets than Canadians.
Canadians also seem to have a leg up in their ability to make money. According to the Atlantic Wire, Canada’s unemployment rate has fallen to 7.2 percent, while America’s remains stagnant at 8.2 percent.
More from GlobalPost: Family net worth drops 40 percent in US
BERLIN, Germany — It’s a problem many other European countries would dearly love to have.
Germany, Europe’s economic powerhouse, is in the throes of a skills shortage. With the lowest unemployment level in two decades, firms are finding it increasingly difficult to find well qualified workers.
That’s right: In a world where millions of talented people are hopelessly idle, a shortage of qualified workers threatens Germany’s economic performance.
In fact, Frank-Jürgen Weise, the head of Germany’s Labor Office, recently warned that the skills squeeze could hinder the German economy more than the debt crisis.
According to the German Chamber of Commerce (DIHK) this is among companies’ biggest concerns at the moment. “Every third company we surveyed said that they saw the skills shortage as one of the biggest risks to the development of their business over the next 12 months,” Stefan Hardege, head of the DIHK’s labor market unit, told GlobalPost.
Many sectors are hit, he explained, but companies that rely on engineering and other technical skills — the core of Germany’s powerful export economy — are particularly affected.
The problem is already costing a fortune. About 92,000 engineering jobs were not filled last year, leading to an estimated loss of about 8 billion euros, according to a study published in April by the German Engineering Association (VDI) and the Cologne Institute for Economic Research (IW).
Latin America’s biggest economy, Brazil, is betting on vast offshore oil treasures to leapfrog ahead of the world’s top crude producers. But sometimes the obstacles seem too huge for the country to reach its ambitious targets. Meanwhile, the fuel-guzzling United States hopes that a friendly country like Brazil will help wean it off an unhealthy dependency on other, drama-prone oil suppliers. Will Brazil fit the bill?
Myanmar: How American products slip through sanctions
YANGON, Myanmar — Great fanfare accompanied Coca Cola’s recent announcement that, after six long decades, the beverage behemoth would return to Myanmar, Southeast Asia’s pariah on the mend.
More from GlobalPost: Coca Cola to do business in Myanmar
In announcing the decision to enter the country, formerly titled Burma, Coke’s CEO didn’t squander the opportunity for drama. Coca Cola, he said in a press release, would refresh Myanmar just as it did Germany after the Berlin Wall fell and Vietnam after it resumed ties with America.
You might assume that, because the US has long forbid American businesses from doing business with Myanmar, its citizens have lived in a world devoid of Coca Cola. Not quite.
Shops in Myanmar have sold Coke and other American staples for years. Skirting the law is inefficient but quite simple: licensed manufacturers in neighboring countries produce more than they need and sell them to third-party distributors in Myanmar. The sticker price is then jacked up to account for the hassle.
Though US sanctions were just suspended, the old workaround is very much in effect. While on assignment in Yangon, Myanmar’s commercial capital, I ventured into a supermarket with a goal: spot the most iconic American products on the shelves.
First up, Coca Cola. The cans were produced in Thailand and priced at 55 cents per can. Its lemon-lime counterpart, Sprite, was produced in Singapore.
Next up, the astronaut’s choice: Tang! A 400 gram bag sells for $1.60. One aisle over, the supermarket displayed Pantene Pro-V shampoo (a Procter and Gamble product) and Heinz reduced-fat mayonnaise. Both were manufactured in Thailand.
But the choice find was Budweiser, beer of patriots. This was produced not in Thailand or Singapore but the American heartland: St. Louis, Missouri. From there, it was imported by a licensed Cambodian distributor that passed the bottles on to Myanmar.
But ducking embargoes hasn’t come cheap. The price of one 12-ounce Bud? $2.30.
More from GlobalPost: In Myanmar, clunkers make room for Chinese mini-cars
Who says the universe doesn’t have a sense of humor?
Or, at least, a grim, twisted, very dark and slightly profane sense of humor.
That’s the case on European bond markets today, where there’s very little left to do but laugh.
Here’s the back story:
You might think that the election victory yesterday in Greece by the New Democracy party would at least give a little relief — even temporarily — to the serious debt problems across Europe.
With Greek voters narrowly supporting the pro-bailout party — you might reasonably conclude — the chances of a disorderly Greek exit from the euro zone would decrease.
An unruly “Grexit,” of course, would put further pressure on Spain, Italy and other debt-ridden countries across Europe.
It would also unnerve the global financial system, as banks just about everywhere hold European debt.
So, phew, the pro-bailout party wins and Greece and the EU get a little more time to figure this mess out.
But check out the chart above on Spanish 10-year bonds today, which our friends at Business Insider have brilliantly dubbed “The Spanish 10-Year Yield Middle-Finger Formation”:
As the chart above illustrates, the yield — or put another way the rate at which investors are willing to accept for betting money on the Spanish government right now — surged to a record 7.2850 percent before falling back later in the day.
The result: a giant middle finger, or as Business Insider writer Eric Platt put it:
“Perhaps this is the bond market’s way of saying that the elections solved nothing.”
New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman also had some smart — if less visually appealing — things to say today about the Greek election.
Krugman takes the long view, placing blame not (entirely) on Greece, but rather on the very structure of European Monetary Union:
“No, the origins of this disaster lie farther north, in Brussels, Frankfurt and Berlin, where officials created a deeply — perhaps fatally — flawed monetary system, then compounded the problems of that system by substituting moralizing for analysis. And the solution to the crisis, if there is one, will have to come from the same places.”
So let’s assess:
The election in Greece settles nothing, and Europe — and potentially the rest of the global economy — lurches onward in what increasingly feels like a slow motion fiscal and political train wreck.
Ah, Europe.
Sometimes I just feel like flipping you the 10-year Spanish Yield chart.
