Luanda is booming

"Angola is now one of Africa’s economic successes—thanks almost entirely to oil. With a population of 20m, it has Africa’s fifth-biggest and fastest-growing economy. Between 2004 and 2008 its GDP surged by an average of 17% a year, topping 22% in 2007. It is the continent’s second-biggest oil producer after Nigeria. Foreign investment is pouring in at a rate of more than $10 billion a year. In the past decade GDP per person is said to have tripled."
--http://www.economist.com/node/21557811

Estonia is booming

It’s the euro zone Jim, but not as we know it.  Sixteen months after it joined the struggling currency bloc, Estonia is booming. The economy grew 7.6 percent last year, five times the euro-zone average.

Estonia is the only euro-zone country with a budget surplus. National debt is just 6 percent of GDP, compared to 81 percent in virtuous Germany, or 165 percent in Greece. Shoppers throng Nordic design shops and cool new restaurants in Tallinn, the medieval capital, and cutting-edge tech firms complain they can’t find people to fill their job vacancies. It all seems a long way from the gloom elsewhere in Europe.

Estonia’s achievement is all the more remarkable when you consider that it was one of the countries hardest hit by the global financial crisis. In 2008-2009, its economy shrank by 18 percent. That’s a bigger contraction than Greece has suffered over the past five years. 

How did they bounce back? “I can answer in one word: austerity. Austerity, austerity, austerity,” says Peeter Koppel, investment strategist at the SEB Bank. After three years of painful government belt-tightening, that’s not exactly the message that Europeans further south want to hear. At a recent conference of European and North American lawmakers in Tallinn, Koppel was lambasted by French and Italian parliamentarians when he suggested Europeans had to prepare for an “inevitable” decline in living standards, wages and job security, in order for their countries to escape from the debt crisis.While spending cuts have triggered strikes, social unrest and the toppling of governments in countries from Ireland to Greece, Estonians have endured some of the harshest austerity measures with barely a murmur. They even re-elected the politicians that imposed them.“It was very difficult, but we managed it,” explains Economy Minister Juhan Parts. “Everybody had to give a little bit. Salaries paid out of the budget were all cut, but we cut ministers’ salaries by 20 percent and the average civil servants’ by 10 percent,” Parts told GlobalPost.“In normal times cutting the salaries of civil servants, of policemen etc. is extremely unpopular, but I think the people showed a good understanding that if you do not have revenues, you have to cut costs,” adds Parts, who served as prime minister from 2003-2004. 

--http://www.cnbc.com/id/47691090

Angola is booming

"Since a peace agreement was signed 10 years ago, Angola has developed into a major African oil producer. In the first quarter of this year, the country produced 1.8 million barrels a day at offshore wells at depths of up to 1,500 meters (4,920 feet). Angola is China's second-largest supplier of the black gold. Its economic growth rates are the envy of the entire continent, partly because it also has rich diamond deposits and fertile soil.

Now Angolans are buying up shares in Portuguese media companies and they are purchasing prime property along the Atlantic beaches as well as luxury real estate in Lisbon and designer clothing. They are also snapping up workers. Close to 150,000 Portuguese have already obtained visas for Angola."
--http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/tens-of-thousands-of-portuguese-emigrate-to-fast-growing-angola-a-833360.html

Brazil is booming

Gross domestic product grew by 2.7pc last year, down from 7.5pc growth in 2010, dragged back by higher business costs and lower industrial output. Economists had forecast a 2.8pc rise in gross domestic product. On a quarter-on-quarter basis, Brazil's GDP grew by 0.3pc in the final three months of 2011, against expectations of a 0.2pc rise.

Despite lower annual growth, economists at the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) said Brazil still managed to take Britain's spot as the world's sixth-largest economy last year, behind the US, China, Japan, Germany and France.

By CEBR's calculations, Brazil's GDP totalled $2.469 trillion (£1.568 trillion) in 2011, while UK GDP was $2.420 trillion.

"Brazil overtaking the UK is an indicator of the shift towards emerging markets in the global economy," said Tim Ohlenburg, senior economist at CEBR. "I think generally Brazil is a country with natural resources, a large productive population, a strong industrial base and so will do very well in years and decades to come. It's only a matter of time before it overtakes Germany and France."

--http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/globalbusiness/9126786/Brazil-overtakes-UK-to-become-worlds-sixth-largest-economy.html

Mexico is booming

I was in Mexico last week. Mexico has many problems, not the least of which is declining oil production, low school graduation rates and drug-induced violence. But on the fiscal front, the country is outperforming the United States. Mexico’s government has developed and implemented better macroeconomic policy than has the U.S. government.

Mexico’s economy contracted sharply during the global downturn, with real gross domestic product (GDP) plummeting 6.2 percent in 2009. But growth roared back, up 5.5 percent in 2010 and 3.9 percent in 2011, with output reaching its prerecession peak after 12 quarters—three quarters sooner than in the U.S. Mexico’s industrial production passed its prerecession peak at the end of 2010; ours has yet to do so.

Now hold on to your seats: Mexico actually has a federal budget! We haven’t had one for almost three years. Furthermore, the Mexican Congress has imposed a balanced-budget rule and the discipline to go with it, so that even with the deviation from balance allowed under emergencies, Mexico ran a budget deficit of only 2.5 percent in 2011, compared with 8.7 percent in the U.S. Mexico’s national debt totals 27 percent of GDP; in the U.S., the debt-to-GDP ratio computed on a comparable basis was 99 percent in 2011 and is projected to be 106 percent in 2012. Imagine that: The country that many Americans look down upon and consider “undeveloped” is now more fiscally responsible and is growing faster than the United States. What does that say about the fiscal rectitude of the U.S. Congress?

Here is the point: As demonstrated by the relative and continued, inexorable outperformance by Texas—which is affected by the same monetary policy as are all of the other 49 states—the key to harnessing the monetary accommodation provided by the Fed lies in the hands of our fiscal and regulatory authorities, the Congress working with the executive branch. As demonstrated by the fiscal posture of Mexico, a nation can effect budgetary discipline and still have growth.

--http://www.zerohedge.com/news/shocked-dallas-feds-fisher-perplexed-wall-street-fetish-qe3-and-its-addiction-monetary-morphine

Detroit is booming

"Auto sales are growing so fast that Detroit can barely keep up.  Three years after the U.S. auto industry nearly collapsed, sales of cars and trucks are surging. Sales could exceed 14 million this year, above last year's 12.8 million. The result: Carmakers are adding shifts and hiring thousands of workers across the country. Carmakers and parts companies added more than 38,000 jobs last year, reaching a total of 717,000. And automakers have announced plans to add another 13,000 this year."

Read more: Detroit automakers adding thousands of workers as sales surge - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/commented/ci_20058336

Poland is booming

"Poland is finding its own path through the EU crisis.  It is one of the few EU countries that did not suffer from the financial crisis.  It is the only of 27 EU nations to avoid a recession in 2009.  Poland’s financial system is stable and the stock exchange is one of the healthiest in the EU.
Polish exports grew more than 3.5-fold from 2000 to 2010 and Polish companies are the low-cost suppliers for many of Germany’s export companies.  Poland is Germany’s largest trading partner.  For Germany, trade with Poland exceeds trade with Russia, Spain, or Japan, and German exports across the Polish border have doubled since Warsaw joined the EU in 2004.  The Ernst & Young Report ranks Poland number sevenon its list of attractive global investment locations.  And Poland’s co-hosting the European Soccer Championships this summer will surely enhance this global reputation and increase capital infusion infrastructure projects, and travel related industries will continue to attract capital.
Poland is one of the few European nations with substantial domestic energy production.  It sits on shale gas reserves, which the Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates is 187 trillion cubic feet (approximately 5,3 trillion cubic meters) – more than 200 times annual consumption, which could last for over two centuries.
Poland’s 39 million citizens provide for robust domestic demand of goods and services.  The Polish Zloty has insulated the economy from Euro woes and kept Polish exports competitive.  Warsaw’s banking regulations prevent foreign banks from taking capital out of its Polish subsidiaries to cover losses elsewhere, resulting in relative calm in Poland’s credit markets.   Finally, the Polish workforce is young and educated, and those who emigrated following Poland’s EU accession have returned home to a country that provides them with better opportunities."
--http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2012/02/14/european-union-crisis-view-poland/

New energy boom

http://www.npr.org/2011/12/02/142695152/oil-boom-puts-strain-on-north-dakota-towns
"North Dakota has a low 3.5 percent unemployment rate and a state budget with a billion dollar surplus. That's because of a major oil boom in the western part of the state, a discovery of at least 2 billion barrels to be gained by fracking — the controversial process of injecting fluid deep into underground rock formations to force the oil out. The find could be the largest ever in the lower 48 states. It's expected to make North Dakota the third largest producer of oil after Alaska and Texas."

http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_19333957
Anadarko Petroleum Corp said today [November 14, 2011] it estimates there are between 500 million and 1.5 billion barrels of oil in Colorado's Wattenberg Field in Weld County.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/306542-shale-oil-is-the-new-energy-boom-in-the-u-s

The Niobra Shale Formation Geography
The Niobrara Shale formation covers parts of four western states – Wyoming, Colorado, South Dakota and Nebraska:
Geologists have known about the oil in Niobrara for about 80 years. But no one ever thought it could be recovered economically… until now. Like the Barnett, Fayetteville, Marcellus, Haynesville and Bakken – the Niobrara is another shale play that’s been known about for some time.
But it’s only recently that some of the major exploration and production companies shifted capital and drill rigs to explore the Niobrara.
And it’s only since the advent of hydraulic fracking and horizontal drilling that it’s possible for this formation to be exploited for the oil and natural gas it contains.
http://news.yahoo.com/thanks-fracking-north-dakota-midwests-own-little-saudi-205949554.html