OECD Snapshot Country Statistical Profiles for 2009 are NOW Available for its 30 Member Countries plus Six Large Non-Member Economies

Do NOT believe everything you read in the media. To fully understand this world, it pays to look at hard facts available online.

In this vein, one should now look at the Country Statistical Profiles for 2009 which have just become available from the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD). As written at the OECD:

• "The Country Statistical Profiles provide, for each of the 30 member countries, and, to the extent possible, for the 6 big non-member economies (Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Russian Federation and South Africa) and the accession countries Chile, Estonia, Israel and Slovenia, a broad selection of indicators, illustrating the demographic, social, economic and environmental developments. The user can easily compare each indicator for a country with those of other OECD countries."

Current country profiles are available for Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, Brazil, Chile, China, Estonia, India, Indonesia, Israel, Russian Federation, Slovenia, and South Africa.

The OECD informs us that these statistics are a STAT EXTRACT for each country since:

• "[t]his statistical profile, updated yearly, is a snapshot of data selected from more than 40 statistical databases available on SourceOECD, our online library. The red i's in the second column provide links to the sources of the data, where more up-to-date data and longer time series can be found."

The OECD stats are quite a bit more soberly realistic than a lot of the sensational hype pandered in newspapers, radio and television.