An overly developed competitive streak can cause trouble. But the US, knocked from the top spot in the World Economic Forum's report on global competitiveness, may still feel peeved. Switzerland, which the US just finished berating as an offshore tax haven, rose one slot to top the table by the slightest of margins. The WEF report aims to capture the determinants of productivity and long-run prosperity, with weightings varied to reflect a country's stage of development. The US, however, seems to have fallen foul of a shorter-term reaction to the past year's events.
The US still enjoys continued leadership in business efficiency and innovation, areas heavily weighted in computing developed nations' scores. It also, of course, leads on sheer size – including government indebtedness, which continued to pull the US down. Then there is the role of the public sector. The US has always done poorly when it comes to the perceived effectiveness of the state, especially when compared to northern European nations. That belief worsened slightly this year.
The big change in the US's standing, though, came in all areas concerning financial markets. These, though, are largely dependent on volatile responses from business leaders in each country, rather than hard numbers, so they often reflect a respondent's perception of reality rather than reality itself. A post-crisis backlash among survey participants is clearly evident in questions about overall financial market sophistication, where the US fell from 9th to 20th place as South Africa, for example, shot from 24th to 5th. At 108th of 133, the US is also sandwiched between Tanzania and Venezuela for the soundness of its banks. Finally, it ranks several notches below Zimbabwe for the ease of raising money on the stock market; given the billions of dollars raised on the US stock market this year, that is absurd.