Canada may well be the best managed country in the world. At the moment their politicians seem sane and the underpinnings of their economy are solid. Back that up with their natural resources abundance (including unpolluted fresh water!) and this is a long term prosperity equation.
I feel obliged to point out the highly engineered economics of Canada.... Most of which has been able to absume debt for the past while, servicing it with resource and inflation backed (real estate) investments. As soon as investors get a taste of deflation, the jig is up. http://caps.fool.com/Blogs/ViewPost.aspx?bpid=399573&t=01009681967192983678
Soaring costs force Canada to reassess health model http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100531/hl_nm/us_health
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a8Hls7QsusYg&pos=3 Canada first G7 to raise rates.
Compared to the US, Canada looks rock solid, in my opinion. I've been thinking about accepting a position with my company in Toronto for a while now as an expat.
Hate to break it to my fellow-Canucks: Canada is especially vulnerable to a slow-down in global trade from teetering juggernauts. As goes America and the EU, so goes the rest of the world (save China). Canada gets lumped in with the rejects, albeit, we've got a lower debt-to-GDP (~80%) that affords us a year or two of Government pump-priming if and when the wheels come off. That won't be enough and Canada will have to take it's medicine too. Anyone care to hazard a guess on the size of Canadian FIRE compared to GDP? That's the real ticking time-bomb here, gents. Outsource manufacturing, import speculative flipping and underwriting, and we've "innovated" another ponizified economy just North of the Border!
So so far I have you pegged at being bearish on the economy of every single country so far... So tell me, where are YOU putting your money?
China seems rich only bc they are not overwhelmed with social programs, the gov't is not truly elected unlike in a westernised political set up where there is a need to satisfy voters with popular programs even when the coffers are empty. This often lead to policies that provide short term benefits but detrimental to the country's economy long term wise