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That is the lowest level since 1972.

Its trade deficit has been shrinking — down 28 percent for the first 10 months of this year,

“From 2008, we suddenly realized that we had lost a lot of competitiveness and needed to work very hard to improve things, particularly in terms of labor issues and logistics,

Over all, Spain’s unit labor costs — a measure of productivity — are down 4 percent since 2008, according to Eurostat, the European statistics agency.

In a related measurement, the most recent Eurostat data put Spain’s average hourly labor cost at 20.60 euros which was well below Germany’s 30.10 euros and France’s 34.20 euros.

The car sector employs 280,000 people in Spain, including parts suppliers, and accounts for a tenth of the country’s economic output. About 85 percent of the industry’s workers are on long-term contracts.

Even if driven much farther, 150,000 kilometers, an electric car’s CO2 emissions will be only 28% less than those of a gasoline-powered car. During the car’s lifetime, this will prevent 11 tons of CO2 emissions, or about €44 of climate damage.CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphGiven the size of the subsidies on offer, this is extremely poor value. Denmark’s subsidies, for example, pay almost €6,000 to avoid one ton of CO2 emissions. Purchasing a similar amount in the European Emissions Trading System would cost about €5. For the same money, Denmark could have reduced CO2 emissions more than a thousand-fold.

He says it doesn’t make sense that the stock market has held up as well as it has amid the Fed’s debt purchases and its policy of maintaining short-term interest rates near zero, a measure taken in a crisis that is supposed to be over.

“How do you know there has been an economic recovery and the patient is breathing normally when it’s in an oxygen tent?”

“It will be extremely difficult for the U.S. economy to escape its Great Recession hangover with this poor profits backdrop,” Mr. Edwards wrote. “Indeed it leaves the economy extremely vulnerable to adverse shocks,” like declining growth in Asia.

“We’re keeping a very close eye on China,” Ms. Patterson said. “If there are signs that it’s slowing more than we expect, that would hurt our view of emerging markets and worsen the outlook for developed markets due to contagion” because of the increasing importance of China in the global economy.

American real estate companies and European banks, for instance — but he is keeping 13 percent of his fund in cash because of a dearth of attractive investment choices.

Mr. Morris finds a wider array of opportunities. He likes shares of consumer-discretionary companies, which provide the products and services that people want but do not need. The sector includes businesses as diverse as hotels, carmakers and clothing stores.

“You can’t just unwind quantitative easing, with all of its distortions, and achieve stability without some pain along the way,” he warned. “What that pain is, when it happens, that’s where the uncertainties lie. The margin to maneuver is getting less and less with the passage of time.”

Import terminals are being built to receive liquefied natural gas (LNG) from places such as Qatar and Nigeria.

Added to that, Europe is contractually obliged to continue taking delivery of Russian gas. Bernstein makes the point that Gazprom has about 120 bcm of take-or-pay contracts – with companies such as ENI, Edison and RWE – that require Europe to continue paying about $50bn for Russian gas. Many of these stretch way beyond 2020.

“Gazprom has heard it all before,” said Jonathan Stern, director of gas research at the Oxford Institute of Energy Studies. “For the past 20 years Europe has been trying to diversify away from Russian gas and failed.”

Any reduction in imports from Russia thanks to Europe’s diversification strategy “is not a prospect for the next few years,” he said. “And by that time I think Russia will find alternative gas export markets, especially in an environment of strong Asian demand for gas.”

Experience in Eastern Europe, where energy prices had to be increased substantially in the 1990’s, demonstrated that simple measures – such as better insulation, together with maintenance and repair of the region’s many long-neglected central heating systems – yield a quick and substantial payoff in reducing energy intensity.

What Rwanda and other African countries lack are the modern, tradable industries that can turn the potential into reality by acting as the domestic engine of productivity growth.

there is a pride for the local consumer to see a sticker that says ‘Made in Tokyo,’

Cook is looking to give Apple some good news.

A Dell factory in Winston-Salem, N.C., for which Dell received $280 million in incentives from the government, was shut in 2010 (Dell had to repay some of the incentives).

In 1998, President Bill Clinton visited a Gateway Computer factory outside Dublin to cheer the role of American manufacturers in the rise of a “Celtic Tiger” in technology.That plant was shut in 2001, when Gateway elected to save costs by manufacturing in China

As cheap as a Chinese assembly worker may be, an emerging trend in manufacturing, specialized robots, promises to be even cheaper. The most valuable part of the computer, a motherboard loaded with microprocessors and memory, is already largely made with robots. People do things like fitting in batteries and snapping on screens.

Many other chip companies design their own products and have them made in giant factories, largely in Taiwan and China. Computer screens are made in Taiwan and South Korea, for the most part.

The special glass used for the touch screens of Apple’s iPhone and iPad, however, is an exception. It comes primarily from the United States.

More recent products, laptops and notebook computers, were in many cases originally assembled in China, and they are still largely made there. So are most smartphones and tablets. Every week, H.P. sends a group of cargo containers filled with notebooks to Europe.