Free Republic

October 8, 2008 Why globalisation will yield to regional fiefdoms While we watch the drama of the global banking system slashing its own wrists, the real economy has just arrived at outpatients with headaches Carl Mortished: World Business Briefing While we watch the grotesque drama of the global banking system slashing its own wrists, the real economy has just arrived at outpatients with headaches. There is tummy upset in the West, while a mysterious rash has broken out in the East. In China, steelmakers are in deep trouble, the Olympics are over and the building sector, inflated by huge injections...

Remember the good old days, when the world economy hummed along and globalization seemed exciting? When President Clinton told Americans to stop what they were doing and help him build a bridge to the 21st century? When famous columnists celebrated the fact that The World Is Flat? Well, those days are over. The world economy is teetering. Suddenly globalization seems frightening. Construction on Clinton's bridge has been indefinitely postponed. And apparently the world is no longer simply flat. It's Hot, Flat and Crowded. Future historians will spend careers arguing over when this new era began. They'll have plenty of options....

The bricks are crumbling in the house of global trade and the Brics, those fashionable emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India, China, are crumbling, too, wracked by inflation, slackening growth and the flight of hot money. In Geneva, Kamal Nath, the Indian Trade Minister, was gritting his teeth, doing his best to justify a wrecking operation that has earned him brickbats from all round. He has brought to an end a seven-year struggle for a global trade agreement that would open borders and reduce subsidies and he knows it. However, he was not looking at his negotiating partners, the Brazilian,...

irredentist - One who advocates the recovery of territory culturally or historically related to one’s nation but now subject to a foreign government. [alphaDictionary.com] It must come as a shocking news to all those who preached: “We are one global community, now. We are all the citizens of the world. As freedom and democracy are spreading all over the globe, there will be wars no more.” Despite their dire predictions based on such absurd inventions as “diversity is strength”, “nation states are anachronism in today’s world”, and “a key to peace and prosperity is a lack of border and immigration...

THE UN headquarters on New York's East River was supposed to have been in darkness on Friday night, the diplomats tucked up at home to watch the fireworks of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony. Instead, they were in their offices long into the night. As overhead television screens outside the Security Council showed Russian tanks invading Georgia, Russian and Georgian envoys traded insults. Russia's irritation with Georgia dates to November 2003 when pro-democracy protestors took to the street ADVERTISEMENT s in the so- called Rose Revolution to denounce an election rigged by pro-Moscow politicians. The result was a new election...

When Tesla Motors, a pioneer in electric-powered cars, set out to make a luxury roadster for the American market, it had the global supply chain in mind. Tesla planned to manufacture 1,000-pound battery packs in Thailand, ship them to Britain for installation, then bring the mostly assembled cars back to the United States. But when it began production this spring, the company decided to make the batteries and assemble the cars near its home base in California, cutting more than 5,000 miles from the shipping bill for each vehicle.

Israel, Ireland, and International Law by: Daniel Smith, July 18, 2008 Experts on Middle Eastern nuclear affairs met July 14 at the United States Institute for Peace (USIP) to discuss the September 2007 Israeli airstrike against Syria. Daryl Kimball, Executive Director of the Arms Control Association, described the event as “troubling”; David Albright and Avner Cohen discussed the “strange” and “bizarre” issues surrounding the event. Albright is the President of the Institute for Science and International Security and Dr. Cohen is a Senior Fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Dr. Cohen encapsulated the chief concern among the panelists: the...

It is interesting how, in the aftermath of the past year’s run-up in oil prices, we have been hearing less and less talk of “globalization” from the chattering classes. Why is this? On the surface, there are several reasons. First, the topic high oil prices presents an easy segue to bring up the annointed’s favorite mantra: green technologies and the need to continue de-industrializing America. We can all get high-paying “green” jobs to replace the textile, manufacturing, computer programming, and bio-tech jobs which have been developed in the United States and then shipped offshore. And the high oil prices themselves...

Migration: Who Cares? by: Ben Giles, July 17, 2008 Coming to the conclusion that migration should not be thought of as a distinctly national issue, authors Marie Price and Lisa Benton-Short presented data on their research of metropolitan cities experiencing and influx of foreign-born immigrants. Their new book, Migration to the Metropolis: The Rise of Immigrant Gateway Cities, reveals that 20 major cities across the globe account for 37 million of foreign-born residents. Or, one in five immigrants will choose one of those cities as their end destination. Audience reception to the authors’ July 15 presentation of their book was...

Trade Facilitation by: Ben Giles, July 15, 2008 The Cato Institute’s Daniel Ikenson and World Bank’s Simeon Djankov presented the findings of a new Cato trade policy analysis at the Rayburn House Office Building on July 11. Ikenson’s paper, entitled Protection without Protectionism: Reconciling Trade and Homeland Security, highlights the disconnect between Americans’ perception of the economy and the realities of international trade. “The polls tell us that Americans have soured on trade…” said Ikenson. “It’s because Americans are barraged nightly by reports on the news that they’re losing their jobs and that the economy is imperiled by globalization and...

Last year, more than 20 workers at a factory in Wuxi, Jiangsu province that produces nickel-cadmium batteries for electronic products giant Panasonic were found to be suffering from high levels of cadmium, a toxic and cancer-causing chemical. Two of the workers were diagnosed to be suffering from cadmium poisoning, an affliction high on health authorities' danger list of occupational diseases. Such poisoning is said to be able to cause kidney failure, lung cancer and bone disease. "For the safety of workers and environmental protection, this kind of battery, which is cheap to produce and safe to use but hazardous to...

June 11, 2008 Oil price crisis threatens to reverse globalisation Carl Mortished: World Business Briefing With brutal efficiency, the oil price is beginning to duff up a monster of the 20th century: globalisation. Those great tentacles that gripped our world in a hideous embrace are suddenly weakening and the multinational octopus is looking a bit pale and sickly. The extraordinary rise in the price of crude oil is wrecking outsourced business models everywhere and distance from your customer is no longer merely a matter of dull logistics. Whether you are selling coiled steel or cut flowers, the cost of transport...

Jihad is an ugly word to weak politicians, limp professors and lapdog liberal media who refuse to look at Surah 2:190 in any copy of the Koran and read where every Muslim on Earth gets his marching orders to participate in holy fighting and is clearly commanded that no one but Allah be worshipped. Denial comes so easily for those who noodle aimlessly around recorded facts, or try to change them.

For the first time in history, a genuinely global economic system has come into being with prospects of heretofore unimagined well-being. At the same time - paradoxically - the process of globalization tempts a nationalism that threatens its fulfillment. The basic premise of globalization is that competition will sort out the most efficient, a process that, by definition, involves winners and losers. If there are perennial losers, they will turn to their familiar political institutions for relief. They will not be mollified by the valid proposition that the benefits of global growth far outstrip its costs. Moreover, to remain competitive,...

What's the world's greatest moral challenge, as judged by its capacity to inflict human tragedy? It is not, I think, global warming, whose effects -- if they become as grim as predicted -- will occur over many years and provide societies time to adapt. A plausible case can be made for preventing nuclear proliferation, which threatens untold deaths and collapse of the world economy. But the most urgent present moral challenge, I submit, is most obvious: global poverty. There are roughly 6 billion people now alive; in 2004, perhaps 2.5 billion survived on $2 a day or less, says the...

WASHINGTON—In March, inspectors checking Chinese seafood arriving at U.S. ports made some unsettling discoveries: fish infected with salmonella in Baltimore and Seattle, and shrimp with banned veterinary drugs in Florida. Meanwhile, a shipment intercepted in Los Angeles on March 19 and labeled "channel catfish" wasn't catfish at all, though records don't say what it was. "A lot of those products coming in from overseas, you have no clue as to what is in them," said Paul Hitchens, an aquaculture specialist in Southern Illinois, where cut-rate Chinese catfish are threatening the livelihood of fish farmers. China rapidly has become the leading...

...The globalization paradigm has turned out to be very convenient for politicians. It allows them to blame foreigners for economic woes. It allows them to pretend that by rewriting trade deals, they can assuage economic anxiety... But there’s a problem with the way the globalization paradigm has evolved. It doesn’t really explain most of what is happening in the world. Globalization is real and important. It’s just not the central force driving economic change. Some Americans have seen their jobs shipped overseas, but global competition has accounted for a small share of job creation and destruction over the past few...

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Sovereign wealth funds are growing at a whopping 24% a year, and could grow at that pace for at least the next three years, surpassing the economic output of the U.S. by 2015, according to a study released Monday. New data from financial analysis firm Global Insight showed that sovereign wealth funds racked up a combined $3.5 trillion in 2007. The largest funds were fielded by China, with $1.2 trillion, Russia and Kuwait, but could soon be outpaced by up and coming funds in Nigeria and Oman, the report said. Funds from developing countries are advancing...

Is the world reverting to a struggle between great powers? Or is the democratising spirit of 1989 still alive? NO, democracy is not: Robert Kagan YES, democracy is winning: Robert Cooper Excerpt:The assumption that the cold war was won as an inevitable consequence of the superiority of liberalism failed to recognize the contingency of events—battles won or lost, social movements successful or crushed, economic practices implemented or discarded. The spread of democracy was not merely the unfolding of certain ineluctable processes of economic and political development. The global shift towards liberal democracy coincided with the historical shift in the balance...

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a notice Monday reminding reactor license applicants and nuclear power plant operators to prevent counterfeit parts from posing a safety concern. The notice cites two counterfeit valves at the Hatch facility near Baxley, Ga., of which NRC learned in November 2007, and one of these was installed as a cooling water pump discharge stop check valve on Hatch Unit 2. Catawba, a facility in Rock Hill, S.C., removed four circuit breakers from its stock after checking and being unable to confirm their authenticity, according to the notice, which stresses that none of these items was...

I. In the early 1990s, optimism was understandable. The collapse of the communist empire and the apparent embrace of democracy by Russia seemed to augur a new era of global convergence. The great adversaries of the Cold War suddenly shared many common goals, including a desire for economic and political integration. Even after the political crackdown that began in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and the disturbing signs of instability that appeared in Russia after 1993, most Americans and Europeans believed that China and Russia were on a path toward liberalism. Boris Yeltsin's Russia seemed committed to the liberal model of...

If you had to define “globalisation” with an image, what would it be? A container ship from China stuffed with toys and T-shirts? A programmer tapping at a keyboard in Bangalore? A plane circling gloomily over Heathrow airport? Most people’s pictures of globalisation are to do with economics, technology and business. But before markets, modems and manufacturers could do their work, political changes had to take place. The foundations of the globalised business world are political – and so are the biggest threats to the system. The challenge to the globalisation consensus comes from below. Political elites in the US,...

'Terror and Consent': brilliant, contrarian By James E. McWilliams SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN Sunday, March 30, 2008 During the course of a long, intellectually demanding narrative, "Terror and Consent" pivots on several paradigm-shifting claims. One of them, which appears in the introduction, stands out for its humanitarian implications: "During the era of twentieth century industrial nation states ... 80 percent of the dead and wounded in warfare were civilians." For Philip Bobbitt, a distinguished lecturer and senior fellow at the University of Texas and a law professor at Columbia University, this is more than a gee-whiz factoid. It's the basis...

As the Democratic presidential campaign marches on, its most alarming public policy issue is Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's antitrade advocacy. As liberal leaders, they are of course for higher income taxes, greater federal spending, and rapid withdrawal of American forces from Iraq. But passionate protectionism illustrates the pro-government, anti-market philosophy that is the core of their beliefs, and it reflects the seriously wrong direction in which they will take America if one of them becomes our next president. International trade is good for the U.S. economy. It creates jobs to produce the products America exports, provides workers for foreign...

As the dollar skids, dropping earlier this month to a 12-year low against the yen and another record low against the euro, U.S. exports are surging. That is providing a lone bright spot in an otherwise-gloomy economy and distinguishing this downturn from the last recession. When the U.S. faced recession in 2001, the greenback's value was riding high relative to other currencies, which hobbled exporters. This time, the opposite is occurring. Exports have already helped to counteract the impact of the beleaguered housing market. Over the past six quarters, exports have contributed, on average, nearly one percentage point to economic...

"Superclass — The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 379 pages, $26), by David Rothkopf: It's not just trade and finance that's being globalized these days, it's sheer power — the power of about 6,000 distinguished people to get big things done across national frontiers, says author David Rothkopf. Trouble is, he complains, this "Superclass" isn't helping 2 billion powerless people who get along on $2 a day or less. He warns that unless those 2 billion get a voice, globalization will be in danger. The 6,000 are a scattered lot. Americans know...

New Deals in the Developing World ECONOMIC ACTIVITY between Africa and Asia is booming like never before. Business between the two continents is not new: India's trade with Africa's eastern and southern regions dates back to at least the days of the Silk Road, and China has been involved on the continent since it started investing there, mostly in infrastructure, during the postcolonial era. But today, partly as a result of accelerating commerce between developing countries throughout the world, the scale and pace of trade and investment flows between Africa and India and China are exceptional. (Throughout, Africa is used...

Blair to teach 'faith and globalisation' at Yale University JAMES TAPSFIELD TONY Blair is to further his interest in religion by teaching classes on "faith and globalisation" at the prestigious Yale University in an initiative linked to the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, due to be launched later this year. Academics at Yale School of Management and Divinity are working with Mr Blair to finalise details of the course. A source close to the former prime minister said he was "delighted" to be taking on the new challenge. The Connecticut university's president, Richard Levin, said staff were "honoured" Mr Blair would...

The German government's purchase of data stolen from a Liechtenstein bank has reinvigorated longstanding debates about privacy, law enforcement and international relations. Much of the fallout has followed predictable patterns. Some argue that Germany's richest citizens should be brought to justice for failing to comply with the tax laws, while others point out that it is unseemly for a nation to spy on a peaceful neighbor. The conflict between Germany and Liechtenstein also has triggered a broader debate about tax competition and the role of so-called tax havens. The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is trying to use...

CONFER: The candidates and American jobs Lockport Union-Sun & Journal “It’s the economy, stupid.” That phrase, made famous by James Carville for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign 16 years ago, still rings true to this day. It always has and always will. When it comes to selecting who will run our nation voters are more often than not predominantly concerned with the economy and its impact on their livelihoods. Other issues, as important as they may be, take on a secondary importance to the individual. In the last presidential election George W. Bush won solely based on national security, but that...

THE COMEBACK OF THE GERMAN DINOSAURS Industry Returns as Economic Engine By Christian Reiermann The comeback of German manufacturing contradicts the notion that the future belongs to the service industry. Manufacturing firms are currently the engines of growth in the German economy, even for the service sector. These days Michael Walter, 43, often finds himself committing what would normally be considered sacrilege in the business world: He's turning customers away before they can even place an order with him. "I simply have to tell them that I won't be able to help them until later, says Walter, the CEO of...

While facets of a proposed NAFTA Superhighway may indeed fall within the myth category, the idea is not really a laughing matter. Certainly, anything that prompts 43 congressmen, including three presidential candidates, to co-sponsor a resolution decrying it must have a grain of truth to it. History is replete with examples of far-fetched notions -- like putting a man on the moon -- turning into reality. And the idea of seamless travel encompassing the United States, Mexico and Canada is anything but fanciful. Inquiries about the NAFTA Superhighway have taken on a life of their own. Congressmen are hearing about...

In the 17th century, global cooling, which for many years was called "the Little Ice Age," affected everyone from herring fishermen to Rembrandt and Johannes Vermeer. Over about 150 years, cooling transformed Europe. As temperatures fell, canals froze over, grain prices increased, fortunes were made and lost, nations rose and declined. Indirectly, the same process even stimulated the beaver trade in New France, establishing the economy of Canada before it became Canada. Timothy Brook, a professor of Chinese history at both the University of British Columbia and Oxford, best known for his work on the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), wants to...

Turn on the TV today, and you could be forgiven for thinking it’s 1999. Democrats and Republicans are bickering about where and how to intervene, whether to do it alone or with allies and what kind of world America should lead. Democrats believe they can hit a reset button, and Republicans believe muscular moralism is the way to go. It’s as if the first decade of the 21st century didn’t happen — and almost as if history itself doesn’t happen. But the distribution of power in the world has fundamentally altered over the two presidential terms of George W. Bush,...

Abstract Recent research suggests that globalization is a myth. Far from taking place in a single global market, most business activity by large firms takes place in regional blocks. There is no uniform spread of American market capitalism nor are global markets becoming homogenized. Government regulations and cultural differences divide the world into the triad blocks of North America, the European Union and Japan. Rival multinational enterprises from the triad compete for regional market share and so enhance economic efficiency. Only in a few sectors, such as consumer electronics, is a global strategy of economic integration viable. For most other...

It is a commonplace now in certain circles that the era of the West is over. We are soon to be supplanted by the growing powers in Asia. Everyone knows about the pro-globalization, anti-American slant to the annual Davos conference in Switzerland. In another, similar conference in Dalian, China, (billed as the Asian version of Davos) one reporter stated that “several people described the United States as the Great Britain of the 21st Century and nobody disagreed..” And super-investor (and Soros crony) Jim Rogers is on record too, as quoted in Business Week: ”This is the China century," says Jim...

Health Authorities Check 44 Passengers On Flight From India To Chicago CHICAGO (STNG) ― Forty-four American Airlines passengers in 17 states -- including Illinois -- are being tracked down for testing after U.S. health authorities learned a woman on a flight from India to Chicago was suffering from a drug-resistant form of tuberculosis, officials said Friday. The 30-year-old Sunnyvale, Calif., woman was diagnosed with the deadly disease in India in August, authorities said. She was a passenger on Flight 293 from Delhi to O'Hare Airport to San Francisco on Dec. 13. "She certainly knew she had TB," said Dr. Marty...

A 30-year-old Sunnyvale woman, recently back from a stay in India, is in an isolation unit at Stanford Hospital with a tough-to-treat strain of tuberculosis, and health officials are scrambling to find any people with whom she may have come into close contact. The woman, whose name has not been released, was reportedly diagnosed with multidrug-resistant TB while in India and was being treated for the disease before she returned to the Bay Area on Dec. 13. "She was sick when she got on her airplane," said Joy Alexiou, a spokeswoman for Santa Clara County's Public Health Department...."She finally made...

India likes to trumpet its corporate successes, and this week the emerging global power had plenty to shout about with the appointment of Indian-born Vikram Pandit to head troubled financial giant Citigroup. But even as it celebrated, India Inc. was also up in arms over perceived slights to its ability to run two of the world's most prestigious brands. India's currency comes of age, spurring complaints among exporters and bringing cheer to wealthy globetrotters First, a group of U.S. Jaguar dealers said they opposed the possibility that Ford, Jaguar's owner, might sell the British luxury car brand to an Indian...

THERE'S a two-word answer to Lou Dobbsism, defined as the terror that immigration and free trade are destroying the American middle class. One is "innovation." And the second is "investment." Innovation - the continued development of new products and techniques - has been and will be America's opportunity to stay ahead of global competition. And innovation requires investment - in research, education and health care - to keep U.S. companies and workers competitive. Three new tracts, by "New Democrat" economists Edward Gresser and Robert Shapiro, and by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine, counter Dobbsian pessimism with the case for...

Critics have long believed environmentalists were planning global domination. The problem with making a credible case against such an ambitious plan was simple: no environmental leader had published one. Yet conflicts over global warming, world trade, multinational corporations, population control, sustainable futures, and transnational government left little doubt that environmentalists in fact shared the unspoken aim of wielding supreme power over a green future. But there was no proof. For years, critics, lacking hard evidence, were reduced to piecing together a jigsaw puzzle of suspicious environmentalist actions - funding from huge charitable trusts, ties to the broader "progressive" community, and...

U.S. Manufacturing Obituaries Premature by: Heyecan Veziroglu, December 03, 2007 Instead of mischaracterizing the significance and meaning of the U.S. trade deficit and assuming that the loss of 3 million manufacturing jobs four years ago requires a tough response today, policymakers should try to attain a better understanding of the condition of U.S. manufacturing, Cato Institute policy analyst Daniel Ikenson pointed out in a Capitol Hill briefing that the think tank held recently. While the U.S.-China trade deficit for goods and services combined has been growing at approximately 23% per annum, the United States remains the world’s most prolific manufacturer,...

Published: 12/02/07, 11:48 PM Globalization and the Maccabees by Benny Katz Hellenism - the globalization of the ancient world It was a few days before Chanukah when the World Trade Organization convened in Seattle for their 1999 Ministerial Conference. The aim of this conference was to launch a new millennial round of trade negotiations that would expand their global monopolies and further exploit laborers around the world. An organization I headed at the time traveled to Seattle to hook up with other groups in order to take a stand and shut down the conference. Anti-globalization activists from all across America...

"The Democrats are better at understanding the impact of globalization on working people in America. The wages that have been arrested and halted in their growth, while, you know the boys in investment banking are making 10 times the average income of an American. I think the Democrats understand the consequences of it more than the Republicans and, frankly, another disagreement I've got with Republicans is that they are compulsive interventionists. They seem to have learned nothing and forgotten nothing from what happened in Iraq when they are talking about doing the same thing in Iran." -- Pat Buchanan, November...

Once there was a majority in favor of liberal immigration policies, but apparently that’s not true anymore, at least if you judge by campaign rhetoric. Once there was a bipartisan consensus behind free trade, but that’s not true anymore, either. Even Republicans, by a two-to-one majority, believe free trade is bad for America, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll. Once upon a time, the fact that hundreds of millions of people around the world are rising out of poverty would have been a source of pride and optimism. But if you listen to the presidential candidates, improvements in the...

At a John Deere plant here, bright green tractors bound for Brazil, Russia and China roll off assembly lines. Global demand for tractors is good, and that's been good for Waterloo. Yet over the last couple of years, workers and voters in this blue-collar manufacturing outpost -- and throughout Iowa -- have grown decidedly downbeat about globalization. Trade has become such a hot subject that Democratic presidential candidates seeking support in Iowa's influential Jan. 3 caucuses are turning into trade skeptics, and the issue is splitting traditionally free-trade Republicans. Iowa's ambivalence is all the more remarkable because the state is...

London, Nov 17 - In a bold new twist to globalised trade, the British retailer Marks & Spencer is to deliver curry to India. Ten days after announcing major investment plans in India, Marks & Spencer said it will sell its 'Made in Britain' curry sauces and a canned curry at the M&S food hall in Delhi - one of 12 stores the company runs in India. M&S curry sauces are popular in Britain where Chicken Tikka Masala is often described as the national dish. Like shipping coals to Newcastle, the Creamy Tikka marinade to be sold in Delhi will...

Capital flows have become globalization's Achilles heel. Over the past 25 years, devastating currency crises have hit countries across Latin America and Asia, as well as countries just beyond the borders of Western Europe -- most notably Russia and Turkey. The economics profession has failed to offer anything resembling a coherent and compelling response to currency crises. International Monetary Fund (IMF) analysts have, over the past two decades, endorsed a wide variety of national exchange-rate and monetary-policy regimes that have subsequently collapsed in failure. They have fingered numerous culprits, from loose fiscal policy and poor bank regulation to bad industrial...

Burlington, Ia. — Republican Fred Thompson told potential supporters on Sunday that he’s running for president as a champion of ideals held by all Americans: a strong national defense, adherence to the rule of law and a market economy. “And immigration laws that actually work,” Thompson said at the outset. “That’s not just a Republican idea, I don’t think.” Speaking at Big Muddy’s restaurant in Burlington, the former Tennessee senator said he would be able to secure the votes of independents in a general election. Thompson criticized what he called Democrats’ insistence on infusing government into everything. “Would you trust...

It’s no secret that the dollar is on a downward spiral. Its value is dropping, and the Fed isn’t doing a whole lot to change that. As a result, a number of countries are considering a shift away from the dollar to preserve their assets. These are seven of the countries currently considering a move from the dollar, and how they’ll have an effect on its value and the US economy. 1. Saudi Arabia: The Telegraph reports that for the first time, Saudi Arabia has refused to cut interest rates along with the US Federal Reserve. This is seen as...