World Cup Update -- 9 Games to Go

Again, no time to do full team lists.  Two pretty boring games tomorrow unless you are a fan of one of the teams.  The Brits will give you odds of 2 to 9 that Argentina will get past Switzerland, and they will give you odds of 4 to 9 that Belgium will take out the USA.  So two more big favorites tomorrow.

Here's the tale of the tape for the four competitors:

ARGENTINA:
Population:  41.7 million
2014 GDP (est.):  $404.5 billion (29th)
Per capita GDP:  $9,640
Fun Fact:  Argentina's name comes from a legendary treasury of silver thought to be hidden in the mountains of South America.

SWITZERLAND:
Population:  8.0 million
2014 GDP (est.):  $693.5 billion (20th)
Per capita GDP:  $86,145 (4th)
Fun Fact:  Perhaps the most famous line in English about Switzerland is from Orson Wells's character in The Third Man:  "You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance.  In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."  While the rest of the movie was written by Graham Greene, that line was written by Wells himself.

BELGIUM:
Population:  11.1 million (76th)
2014 GDP (est.):   $534.8 billion (23d)
Per capita GDP:  $47,787 (17th)
Fun Fact:  Officially, the British entered World War I because they were defending the neutrality of Belgium, just as they had promised in a treaty of 1831.  Belgium had been invaded by Germany because that was the fastest way for German troops to reach Paris.  (This fact isn't really "fun," but it is interesting.)

UNITED STATES:
Population:  318.3 million (3d)
2014 GDP (est.):  $17.5 trillion (1st)
Per capita GDP:  $54,980 (9th)
Fun Fact:  The United States currently holds the Olympic Gold Medal in men's and women's basketball, the Olympic Silver Medal in women's hockey, the Curtis Cup in women's amateur golf, the President's Cup in men's professional golf, the Olympic Gold and Silver medals in the decathlon, and the Olympic Gold Medal in Ladies' Gymnastics.  But we stink at curling.