The economy of Luxembourg is dependent on the banking and industrial sectors. Luxembourgers enjoy the highest per capita gross domestic product in the world. Luxembourg is seen as a diversified industrialized nation, contrasting the oil boom in Qatar, the major monetary source of the southwest Asian state. Although Luxembourg in tourist literature is aptly called the "Green Heart of Europe", its pastoral land coexists with a industrialized and export-intensive area. Luxembourg's economy is quite similar to Germany's. Luxembourg enjoys a degree of economic prosperity rare among industrialized democracies. In 2009, a budget deficit of 5% resulted from government measures to stimulate the economy the banking sector, as a result of the world economic crisis; this was however reduced to 1.4% in 2010. For 2017 the figures are as follows: Growth 4.6%. In 2013 the GDP was $60.54 billion of which services, including the financial sector, produced 86%. The financial sector comprised 36% of GDP, industry comprised 13.3% and agriculture only 0.3%.

Banking is the largest sector in the Luxembourg economy. In the 2019 Global Financial Centres Index, Luxembourg was ranked as having the 25th most competitive financial center in the world, third most competitive in Europe after London and Zürich; the country has specialised in the cross-border fund administration business. As Luxembourg's domestic market is small, the country's financial centre is predominantly international. At the end of March 2009, there were 152 banks in Luxembourg, with over 27,000 employees. Political stability, good communications, easy access to other European centres, skilled multilingual staff, a tradition of banking secrecy and cross-border financial expertise have all contributed to the growth of the financial sector; these factors have contributed to a Corruption Perceptions Index of 8.3 and a DAW Index ranking of 10 in 2012. Germany accounts for the largest-single grouping of banks, with Scandinavian and major US banks heavily represented. Total assets exceeded €929 billion at the end of 2008.

More than 9,000 holding companies are established in Luxembourg. The European Investment Bank—the financial institution of the European Union—is located there. Concern about Luxembourg's banking secrecy laws, its reputation as a tax haven, led in April 2009 to it being added to a "grey list" of nations with questionable banking arrangements by the G20, a list from which it was removed in 2009; this concern has led Luxembourg to modify its tax legislation to avoid conflict with the tax authorities of European Union Members. For example, the classic tax exempt 1929 Holding Company was outlawed 31 December 2010, as it was deemed an illegal state aid by the European Commission. A key event in the economic history of Luxembourg was the 1876 introduction of English metallurgy; the refining process led to the development of the steel industry in Luxembourg and founding of the Arbed company in 1911. The restructuring of the industry and increasing government ownership in Arbed began as early as 1974.

As a result of timely modernization of facilities, cutbacks in production and employment, government assumption of portions of Arbed's debt, recent cyclical recovery of the international demand for steel, the company is again profitable. Its productivity is among the highest in the world. US markets account for about 6% of Arbed's output; the company specializes in production of large architectural steel beams and specialized value-added products. There has been, however, a relative decline in the steel sector, offset by Luxembourg's emergence as a financial center. In 2001, through the merger with Aceralia and Usinor, Arbed became Arcelor. Arcelor was taken over in 2006 by Mittal Steel to form Arcelor-Mittal, helmed by Lakshmi Mittal, the largest steel producer in the world. Government policies promote the development of Luxembourg as an audiovisual and communications center. Radio-Television-Luxembourg is television broadcaster; the government-backed Luxembourg satellite company "Société européenne des satellites" was created in 1986 to install and operate a satellite telecommunications system for transmission of television programs throughout Europe.

The first SES Astra satellite, the 16-channel RCA 4000 Astra 1A, was launched by the Ariane Rocket in December 1988. SES presently constitutes the world largest satellite services company in terms of revenue. Tourism is an important component of the national economy, representing about 8.3% of GDP in 2009 and employing some 25,000 people or 11.7% of the working population. Despite the current crisis, the Grand Duchy still welcomes over 900,000 visitors a year who spend an average of 2.5 nights in hotels, hostels or on camping sites. Business travel is flourishing representing 44% of overnight stays in the country and 60% in the capital, up 11% and 25% between 2009 and 2010. Luxembourg's small but productive agricultural sector is subsidized by the EU and the government, it employs about 1–3% of the work force. Most farmers are engaged in meat production. Vineyards in the Moselle Valley annually produce about 15 million litres of dry white wine, most of, consumed within Luxembourg and in Germany and Belgium on a lesser scale.

The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2017. Inflation under 2% is in green. Establishing accounts depends on the size of companies, referring to three criteria: total of the balance sheet, the net amount of the turnover (net, such as it

Krissy Nordhoff is an American Christian musician, who plays a Christian pop style of worship music. She has released two studio albums, Downpour in 2007, both with ICC Records, she was awarded with a GMA Dove Award, for her songwriting on "Your Great Name", where it won Worship Song of the Year at the 43rd GMA Dove Awards. Nordhoff was born Kristen Lynn Stora on June 24, 1974, in Michigan, she suffered with Lyme disease in 2002 where she got a tick bite in 1999, but she has since made a full recovery from illness. Nordhoff's music recording career commenced in 2004, when her first studio album, Thank Him, was released on November 1 2004 by ICC Records, her subsequent studio album, was released on September 10, 2007, with ICC Records. She won a GMA Dove Award, for Worship Song of the Year at the 43rd GMA Dove Awards, due to her songwriting of her songwriting on "Your Great Name", performed by Natalie Grant on her 2010 studio album, Love Revolution, she is married to Eric Nordhoff, where together they reside in Franklin, attending Gateway Church located in their hometown, with their three children, two sons and a daughter.

Studio albumsThank Him Downpour Official website

Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and pianist. His compositions include songs, solo piano works, chamber music, choral pieces, operas and orchestral concert music. Among the best-known are the piano suite Trois mouvements perpétuels, the ballet Les biches, the Concert champêtre for harpsichord and orchestra, the Organ Concerto, the opera Dialogues des Carmélites, the Gloria for soprano and orchestra; as the only son of a prosperous manufacturer Poulenc was expected to follow his father into the family firm, he was not allowed to enrol at a music college. Self-educated musically, he studied with the pianist Ricardo Viñes, who became his mentor after the composer's parents died. Poulenc made the acquaintance of Erik Satie, under whose tutelage he became one of a group of young composers known collectively as Les Six. In his early works Poulenc became known for his high spirits and irreverence. During the 1930s a much more serious side to his nature emerged in the religious music he composed from 1936 onwards, which he alternated with his more light-hearted works.

In addition to composing, Poulenc was an accomplished pianist. He was celebrated for his performing partnerships with the baritone Pierre Bernac and the soprano Denise Duval, touring in Europe and America with each, making many recordings, he was among the first composers to see the importance of the gramophone, he recorded extensively from 1928 onwards. In his years, for decades after his death, Poulenc had a reputation in his native country, as a humorous, lightweight composer, his religious music was overlooked. During the 21st century more attention has been given to his serious works, with many new productions of Dialogues des Carmélites and La voix humaine worldwide, numerous live and recorded performances of his songs and choral music. Poulenc was born in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, the younger child and only son of Émile Poulenc and his wife, Jenny, née Royer. Émile Poulenc was a joint owner of a successful manufacturer of pharmaceuticals. He was a member of a pious Roman Catholic family from Espalion in the département of Aveyron.

Jenny Poulenc was from a Parisian family with wide artistic interests. In Poulenc's view, the two sides of his nature grew out of this background: a deep religious faith from his father's family and a worldly and artistic side from his mother's; the critic Claude Rostand described Poulenc as "half monk and half naughty boy". Poulenc grew up in a musical household, he took piano lessons from the age of five. Other composers whose works influenced his development were Schubert and Stravinsky: the former's Winterreise and the latter's The Rite of Spring made a deep impression on him. At his father's insistence, Poulenc followed a conventional school career, studying at the Lycée Condorcet in Paris rather than at a music conservatory. In 1916 a childhood friend, Raymonde Linossier, introduced Poulenc to Adrienne Monnier's bookshop, the Maison des Amis des Livres. There he met the avant-garde poets Max Jacob, Paul Éluard and Louis Aragon, he set many of their poems to music. In the same year he became the pupil of the pianist Ricardo Viñes.

The biographer Henri Hell comments that Viñes's influence on his pupil was profound, both as to pianistic technique and the style of Poulenc's keyboard works. Poulenc said of Viñes: He was a most delightful man, a bizarre hidalgo with enormous moustachios, a flat-brimmed sombrero in the purest Spanish style, button boots which he used to rap my shins when I didn't change the pedalling enough.... I admired him madly, because, at this time, in 1914, he was the only virtuoso who played Debussy and Ravel; that meeting with Viñes was paramount in my life: I owe him everything... In reality it is to Viñes that I owe my fledgling efforts in music and everything I know about the piano; when Poulenc was sixteen his mother died. Viñes became more than a teacher: he was, in the words of Myriam Chimènes in the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, the young man's "spiritual mentor", he encouraged his pupil to compose, he gave the premieres of three early Poulenc works. Through him Poulenc became friendly with two composers who helped shape his early development: Georges Auric and Erik Satie.

Auric, the same age as Poulenc, was an early developer musically. The two young composers shared a similar musical outlook and enthusiasms, for the rest of Poulenc's life Auric was his most trusted friend and guide. Poulenc called him "my true brother in spirit". Satie, an eccentric figure, isolated from the mainstream French musical establishment, was a mentor to several rising young composers, including Auric, Louis Durey and Arthur Honegger. After dismissing Poulenc as a bourgeois amateur, he relented and admitted him to the circle of protégés, whom he called "Les Nouveaux Jeunes". Poulenc described Satie's influence on him as "immediate and wide, on both the spiritual and musical planes"; the pianist Alfred Cortot commented that Poulenc's Trois mouvements perpétuels were "reflections of the ironical outlook of Satie adapted to the sensitive standards of the curre