I think Singapore always runs a surplus. A large one on a per capita basis given their small population.
Hmm... strict bank secrecy that is unless they employ any disgruntled I.T. workers who download account holder data and sell it to other interested countries (e.g. Liechtenstein and UBS case). You can pretty much throw out bank secrecy without better internal controls at these banks.
OK, I think some of the info may be listed here: http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/countries.cfm I think the relevant figures are listed under 'Fiscal Freedom' and 'Freedom from Government' If so, then Canada doesn't have a balanced budget. Click on it and you will see 'overall tax revenue as a percentage of GDP was 33.5 percent,' 'government spending equaled 39.3 percent of GDP' Beware, these people are corporate funded though, and some major factors quoted are not my idea of real free market values. They haven't got a clue for example about what is going on with private property rights. One reason there are no balanced budgets is that there are no countries without central banks any more. They want a moneylender's society. Even Switzerland dropped the Franc's ties to gold five years or so ago. The politicians go to the central banks for more counterfeit money to spend. Saves arguing with the poeple over tax rises. The top of the banking pyramid love this - enormous loans without much risk and all they have to do is 'print' or add some zeros on the computer. Some of that 'dissipates' (ie is stolen from us) through inflation and currency depreciation as it dilutes the money already in circulation. I'm no expert on the details, but also money is loaned rather than just given to the governments as well as favoured corporations through favoured merchant banks. So you get a nice (for them) cartel that permeates everything over time.
It's hard for me to tell exactly what everyone is int'd in, but if it's current account balance, you can get that from the economist. FE, Singapore=24.8%, Russia=8.9% and Taiwan=6.2% (as a % of GDP) and Brazil and Canada are positive but barely. The US is -5.6% and Ireland is -2.7%. All of this you can see on the Economists' Fact Sheets: http://www.economist.com/countries/Ireland/profile.cfm?folder=Profile-FactSheet If you are talking about a Balanced Budget, you'll want to use a different sheet from the same site that they call Economics Data: http://www.economist.com/countries/Russia/profile.cfm?folder=Profile-Economic Data Go nuts...
You'll see, I think rather quickly, that Switzerland/Singapore/Taiwan/Norway are among the best run countries that come to mind right away - I think you'll find their numbers outstanding. Of course, the USA is among the worst at least in terms of CAB and Deficits (for a large country). Russia, Brazil and China are also quite good in the sense of these two metrics. The only BRIC that is not is India. India compares with, say, France or another mildly negative country...
This is true, but Norway, Russia, Brazil, and China are all heavily dependent on exports, and thus could go thud in a heartbeat.
Norway particularly would worry me with their heavy reliance on oil. I haven't heard any mention of their suffering from "dutch disease" i.e. a decline in the manufacturing sector due to the riches of discovering a vast natural resource. I guess Russia would suffer from that too potentially. Maybe balanced budgets now, but if there's a problem with supply/demand of the natural resource, poof. The population wouldn't tolerate having their social safety net cut back even if it could no longer be funded.
Russia is an interesting one actually: there's a very large supply of very highly educated people. And some would argue, though, that they've left those people behind to build an "Energy State". Russia has too large of a population to sustain the entire populace off of energy alone so they must figure out a way to expand their business reach beyond energy. A great example of this is the car industry: foreigners are kicking the rear of domestic manufacturers: http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=11496858
singapore has been running large surpluses for a number of years, although for 2008-2009 they probably will have a slight deficit. their "secret"? don't spend wildly on military. their military is defensive only.
if your "disgusted" with your country why don't you move to china or IRAQ, or anywhere in the middle east? i bet they would love to have you