Globalization

Without smart investments, high unemployment will be permanent

Robert Reich — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 06:04:00 PST

Most ideas for creating more jobs assume jobs will return when the economy recovers. So the immediate goal is to accelerate the process. A second stimulus would be helpful, especially directed at state governments that are now mounting an anti-stimulus package (tax increases, job cuts, service cuts) of over $200 billion this year and next. If the deficit hawks threaten to take flight, the administration should use the remaining TARP funds.

Is the Dubai World debacle the new Lehman?

Andrew Leonard — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 08:47:00 PST

Good news! It's Monday morning, and global stock markets aren't dissolving into a downward spiral of panic and despair (at least not yet). Two hours after the opening bell, the Dow is down a paltry 30 points, and more importantly, Asian markets performed well starting the week -- Japan's Nikkei ended up nearly 3 percent.

Peak globalization

Andrew Leonard — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 09:47:00 PST

Wishful thinking or apocalyptic doom forecasting? Fred Curtis, an economist at Drew University, has put together a mashup of peak oil, global warming, and patterns in global trade liberalization and arrived at the principle of "Peak Globalization." (Found via Globalisation and the Environment.) A double whammy of higher energy costs and extreme climate events will disrupt global transportation patterns, reversing the historical trend towards greater and greater levels of global trade and forcing a process of "relocalization" -- "The major implication is that supply chains will become shorter for most products and that production of goods will be relocated closer to where they are consumed, although this will happen neither quickly nor easily."

Obama, China and wishful thinking on jobs

Robert Reich — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:18:00 PST

President Obama says he wants to "rebalance" the economic relationship between China and the U.S. as part of his plan to restart the American jobs machine. "We cannot go back," he said in September, "to an era where the Chinese ... just are selling everything to us, we're taking out a bunch of credit-card debt or home equity loans, but we're not selling anything to them." He hopes that hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers will make up for the inability of American consumers to return to debt-binge spending.

"The End of Poverty?": How the rich steal from the poor

Andrew O'Hehir — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:13:00 PST

So here's the real question about capitalism, the one nobody really wants to face: Does it create gross inequality as an unfortunate byproduct of its energy and dynamism -- or is gross inequality itself, between rich and poor, between the industrialized North and the underdeveloped South, the principal product of capitalism over the last five centuries?

We are what we trade (and how we trade it)

David Sirota — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 06:07:00 PST

Trade and globalization -- when not referencing blockbuster sports transactions or raucous street protests, debates over these abstract terms can give Ambien and Jack Daniel's a run for their money as a cure for insomnia. Of course, that's the problem -- the rules governing what we buy and sell are now playing such a decisive role in almost every major policy that we're falling asleep at our peril.

America the superpower melts down

Michael Klare — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:29:00 PST

Memo to the CIA: You may not be prepared for time travel, but welcome to 2025 anyway! Your rooms may be a little small, your ability to demand better accommodations may have gone out the window, and the amenities may not be to your taste, but get used to it. It's going to be your reality from now on.

McDonald's to Iceland: You're the biggest loser

Andrew Leonard — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:01:00 PDT

How did our world become so screwed up that a decision by McDonald's to close three restaurants in Iceland is deemed by the international press an embarrassment so great that it must merit blanket coverage?

Can't find a job? Try China

Andrew Leonard — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:05:00 PDT

Two data points on China and jobs:

Michele Bachmann's insecurity complex

Andrew Leonard — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 11:38:00 PDT

Just because Michele Bachmann is crazy doesn't mean she doesn't have a right to be worried about the U.S. dollar. She isn't alone -- bond investors are worried about the dollar, China is worried about the dollar, Brazil is worried about the dollar, Europe is worried about the dollar. The dollar is the de facto "reserve currency" of the world -- 64 percent of the world's official foreign exchange reserves are held in dollars. If the dollar suffers a precipitous loss in value, a lot of people will get hurt.

Surprise: Rich women still having babies

Andrew Leonard — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 09:57:00 PDT

Here's what HTWW believed until this morning: Rapid economic growth in the developing world was the key to slowing down, or possibly even stopping, global population growth. Why? Because in rich, developed nations, birth rates tend to decline.

Foreign investors snap up African farmland

Horand Knaup and Juliane von Mittelstaedt — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 03:01:00 PDT

Every crisis has its winners. A group of them is sitting in the Stuyvesant Room at the Marriott Hotel in New York. The conference room, where the shades are drawn and the lights are dimmed, is filled with men from Iowa, São Paulo and Sydney -- corn farmers, big landowners and fund managers. Each of them has paid $1,995 to attend Global AgInvesting 2009, the first investors' conference on the emerging worldwide market in farmland.

You like us! You really like us!

Mike Madden — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 09:24:00 PDT

WASHINGTON -- What a difference an election makes: Nearly every country in the world has a more favorable opinion of the United States now that President Obama has taken over the White House from that other guy who used to have the job.

Ready or not, here comes China

David Sirota — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 05:18:00 PDT

GUIYANG, CHINA -- Before planning for and making the transglobal trek to the most populous country on Earth, I knew mainland China mostly through television and movie screens. My sinologists were Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Egg Shen, the crotchety shaman from "Big Trouble in Little China" -- a Cabinet of advisors who left me, ahem, unprepared for my voyage east.

Iraq, the world's oil pump

Michael Klare — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:16:00 PDT

Has it all come to this? The wars and invasions, the death and destruction, the exile and torture, the resistance and collapse? In a world of shrinking energy reserves, is Iraq finally fated to become what it was going to be anyway, even before the chaos and catastrophe set in: a giant gas pump for an energy-starved planet? Will it all end not with a bang but with a gusher? The latest oil news out of that country offers at least a hint of Iraq's fate.

When will the recovery begin? Never

Robert Reich — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 03:16:00 PDT

The so-called green shoots of recovery are turning brown in the scorching summer sun. In fact, the whole debate about when and how a recovery will begin is wrongly framed. On one side are the V-shapers who look back at prior recessions and conclude that the faster an economy drops, the faster it gets back on track. And because this economy fell off a cliff late last fall, they expect it to roar to life early next year. Hence the V shape.

Goodbye to cheap oil

Michael Klare — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 03:20:00 PDT

Every summer, the Energy Information Administration of the U.S. Department of Energy issues its International Energy Outlook (IEO) — a jam-packed compendium of data and analysis on the evolving world energy equation. For those with the background to interpret its key statistical findings, the release of the IEO can provide a unique opportunity to gauge important shifts in global energy trends, much as reports of routine Communist Party functions in the party journal Pravda once provided America's Kremlin watchers with insights into changes in the Soviet Union's top leadership circle.

The future of manufacturing: Can we live without GM?

Robert Reich — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 12:02:00 PDT

As president of General Motors when Eisenhower tapped him to become secretary of defense in 1953, “Engine Charlie” Wilson voiced at his Senate confirmation hearing what was then the conventional view. When asked whether he could make a decision in the interest of the U.S. that was adverse to the interest of GM, he said he could.

The future of manufacturing: Workforce education

Robert Reich — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 11:30:00 PDT

Symbolic analysts have been hit by the current downturn, just as everyone else has. But over the long term, symbolic analysts will do just fine -- as long as they stay away from job functions that are becoming routinized. They will continue to benefit from economic change. Computer technology gives them more tools for thinking, creating and communicating. The global market gives them more potential customers for their insights.

A fresh new dawn for trust-busters

Andrew Leonard — Mon, 18 May 2009 15:28:00 PDT

"Silicon Valley companies are bracing for a tough new phase of antitrust scrutiny," report Don Clark and Jessica E. Vascellero in the Wall Street Journal, "responding to signs of heavier enforcement by the Obama administration and continued pressure from abroad."