Five charts to start your day

The US economy has risen above its European allies over the last 20 years

Good morning and hope you had a good weekend. I can’t quite explain just how significant the first chart is. US economic growth may not have been as robust as some emerging markets.

Countries like China have, over the last 20 years, outpaced the US and caught up relatively in terms of GDP. In fact, China is projected to overtake the US in economic size in the coming years, followed by India.

However, we have to remember that the US is a vast, highly developed, and mature economy. It’s easy to grow rapidly from a low base, but it is not so easy to advance when you are the world's largest economy. So, we have to look at the US relative to other developed market peers, such as those in Europe.

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1. The US economy has grown more than many other European countries

Source: Financial Times

What you can see in this chart from the Financial Times is that the US economy has clearly outpaced its European counterparts. Unlike the US, Europe is a fragmented and loosely aligned bunch of states, which lack the same level of economic integration as the US.

In the US, it is far easier to marshal resources in a country where states are federally aligned, where there is true and unfettered freedom of labor movement, and where you can communicate in the same language.

What I like the most about this chart is how they have separated the UK and eurozone. The UK is, of course, no longer a member of the EU, nor has it ever tried to adopt the euro. Draw your own conclusion from this and the state of the rest of Europe.

Coming up:

2. Rolex prices over the last 50 years

3. The top ten fishing nations in the world

4. Mexico has an enormous soft-drink addiction problem

5. Chinese holdings of US long-term treasury securities

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