Euro-crats

While reading the Financial Times on a flight from Brussels to Minneapolis on October 19th I clipped a graphic entitled, "The World's Most Traded Stocks", for producing a future posting which I am finally completing today. The most traded stocks for 2005 - with their respective industry classifications added by me - included:

1. Google -- tech
2. Microsoft -- tech
3. Intel -- tech
4. Exxon Mobil - energy
5. Cisco Systems - tech
6. Apple Computer - tech
7. Valero Energy -- energy
8. BP - energy
9. ENI -- energy
10. Amgen -- pharma
11. Ebay -- tech
12. Citigroup -- financial
13. GE -- tech and financial
14. Total -- energy
15. Wal-Mart -- retail
16. Vodafone -- tech
17. Dell -- tech
18. Nokia -- tech
19. Telefonica -- tech
20. Pfizer -- pharma

Now by arranging these 20 stocks by "classification" the tally count becomes:

Tech -- 11
Energy - 5
Pharma - 2
Financial - 1
Retail - 1

In addition the Financial Times noted that 14 out of these 20 Stocks are AMERICAN and 2 of these stocks are British.

These statistics and trends in the hyper-dynamic American economy highlight for me the complete failure of the European Union's much-heralded "Lisbon Agenda" which is explained by the BBC as being:

"When European leaders met at a summit in Lisbon in March 2000 they set the European Union the goal of becoming 'the most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy in the world' by 2010." (Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4373485.stm)

This central planning by the European Union's (EU) leaders thus has five (5) years left to achieve its lofty goal of overtaking the US economy in terms of employment and economic growth. The current President of the European Commission (the EU's executive body) Jose Manual Barroso articulated the failure of the the EU's industrial policy process known as the Lisbon Agenda via the following statement:

"We are now half-way through the process and the results are not very satisfactory. The implementation of reform in Member States has been quite scarce. The reform package consists of 28 main objectives and 120 sub-objectives, with 117 different indicators. The reporting system for 25 Member States adds up to no fewer than 300 annual reports. Nobody reads of all of them." (Source: http://europa.eu.int/growthandjobs/intro_en.htm)

The EU should replace its central planning exercises with tax cuts and regulatory relief to harness the dynamic power of "destructive capitalism" to produce new jobs for Europeans.

Bon chance,

Todd