Posted on May 23, 2009 - by Venik
Swiss Humor
The IMD – a Swiss business college situated on the shore of Lake Geneva popular among Russian nouveau riche – recently published a glossy report ranking “competitiveness” of national economies.
Reading the preamble to the report one may be very impressed by the advanced methodology used by IMD’s researchers. Everything looks very proper and scientific. It is not until you get to page 17 of the report and run face-first into a chart of the most competitive national economies that a boring financial report suddenly puts a smile on your face.
Source: IMD, Switzerland
More of a smirk, really. Apparently, the most competitive of national economies is the one dragging the rest of the world into an economic recession: the US economy. To arrive to this groundbreaking conclusion, the IMD specialists probably had to count all the nationalized banks and lending institutions, as well as bankrupt airlines and automotive giants. How else would the US be at the top?
And of course, when you think about America’s top ten economic competitors, Finland, Denmark and Switzerland immediately come to mind. Well, they do if you are a researcher at a Swiss business school. Speaking of school, back in Russia my physics teacher always insisted that we include measurement units in every step of our calculations.
You see, if the problem you are working on requires you to determine the speed of an object when it reaches the bottom of the hill and the units you get at the end of your calculations are kilograms, then you know you screwed up, even if the rest of your deductions appear to be very logical. Perhaps these Swiss researchers should consider a similar methodology to avoid the discomfiture of placing their own country next to the US on the scale of economic competitiveness.
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