The lesson of last week's elections in the United Kingdom, which brought a resounding victory for the incumbent Conservative government, is simple, says Steve Forbes, editor-in-chief of Forbes Media.

"Growth works," he writes on Forbes.com.

"The Scepter’d Isle’s economy is growing faster than that of any other developed country, including the U.S. and much ballyhooed Germany. London has some idea of how to achieve economic expansion, and, clearly, Washington, Tokyo and the EU do not."

The U.K. economy grew 2.8 percent last year, compared to 2.4 percent for the United States and 0.9 percent for the eurozone.

The Conservative U.K. government has cut 1 million government jobs during its five-year reign, Forbes notes. And it has reduced corporate and personal income taxes.

But here at home, "the U.S. government has made no structural progress in line with the U.K.’s," Forbes says.

"Instead, Washington has raised taxes, ballooned the national debt and battered the economy with a tsunami of regulations. The Federal Reserve has crippled the credit markets with its quantitative easing and suppression of interest rates."

Speaking of the Fed, it is highly unlikely to raise interest rates before September and possibly not before next year. But eventually it will act.

In general, that's not a good thing for stocks, which have enjoyed a tasty six-year bull market thanks largely to the Fed's low-rate policy.

But some stocks can benefit from rate hikes.

"A group of companies, namely the discount brokers like Charles Schwab (Ticker: SCHW), E-Trade (ETFC) and TD Ameritrade (AMTD), actually stand to win when interest rates move higher, because much of their business is tied to collecting interest on cash that’s highly sensitive to short-term rates," writes Matt Krantz of USA Today.

That conclusion is based on the paper's analysis of data from S&P Capital IQ and RBC Capital Markets.

Some Internet brokers earn more from collecting interest on un-invested cash in investors' accounts than from trading commissions.

"Investors anticipating rising interest rates ought to consider discount brokers," RBC analyst Bulent Ozcan wrote in a report obtained by USA Today.

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