Category Archives: Globalization

The G20 St. Petersburg Summit: Bubbles, Casinos, and Inactivity

By Sameer Dossani, an advocacy coordinator at ActionAid International, a development NGO dedicated to ending poverty. Cross posted from Triple Crisis

While much of the media coverage around the G20 leaders summit has been about the failure of international diplomacy in Syria, the formal agenda was around one issue: growth. But focusing on growth is a bit like treating strep throat with asprin. You may alleviate some of the symptoms, but you’re not treating the source of the problem.

Gaius Publius: Are We Having “Bank Deregulation” Crises or “Unrestricted Capital Flow” Crises?

Yves here. For the last four years, we’ve been highlighting research that has found that high levels of international capital flows are strongly associated with frequent and severe financial crises. Gaius describes how more economists are endorsing this idea, and how the proposed trade deals, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the US-EU trade agreement, will only make matters worse.

David Dayen: Productivity Rose 7.7% Post-Great Recession; Workers Have Seen None of It

I’ve said this before in other venues, but this really is the chart that explains modern America:

How the Pending Trans-Pacific Partnership and EU-US Trade Deals Will Gut National Regulations, Hurt Budgets, and Undermine Sovereignity

Yves here. We’ve written from time time about the latest plans underway to further degrade the lives of ordinary citizens in order to fatten the bottom lines of major multinationals, namely, two major US-led international trade pacts. Even though the US media has given these pending deals scant attention, they represent a far-reaching effort to restructure basic legal and regulatory frameworks.

Michael Klare: The Third Carbon Age – Drop the Fantasy of a Coming Era of Renewable Energy

Yves here. To put none too fine a point on it, the most important steps to reduce carbon emissions would be a Marshall plan level effort to reconfigure living and resourcing arrangements so as to reduce energy demands, and to go particularly aggressively after the worst polluters (for instance, the cars you see spewing fumes, are surprisingly large contributors to total emissions from automobiles). But it’s much easier to go the Easter Island route and keep carrying on more or less as before until you hit insurmountable constraints.

Fiscal Crises: Coming To A City Near You?

The sad fact of the matter is that Detroit suffers today from international trade and international financial policies of the past two decades that many leading international economists embraced.

James Galbraith on Social Breakdown and Financial Stress in Europe and Why the Word “Stimulus” Needs to be Banned

Yanis Varoufakis provided the English translation of a new interview with James Galbraith published in Suddeutsche Zeitung. Galbraith focuses on institutional arrangements, the need for restructuring and reform, and constraints on growth.

TransPacific Partnership to Let Foreign Investors Gut Regulations, Keep Big Ag Subsidies

Only a small part of the TransPacific Partnership is about trade as such. Most chapters are on other issues, like services, investment, government procurement, disciplines on state-owned enterprises and intellectual property.

Joining the TPP or similar free trade agreements will mean the country having to make often drastic changes to existing policies, laws and regulations, which will in turn affect the domestic economy and society.

Wolf Richter: Blinded By Optimism, German Economy Now Below Stall Speed

The financial crisis was brutal for Germany, but the recovery was steep. A key element is the relentless drive to export. But the German “success recipe” looks to be losing its luster.

Beware, the Borderless Tax Man Cometh

Yves here. Readers presumably know that the US departs from the practice of pretty much every country in the world in taxing its citizens on worldwide income. Spain is breaking new ground in making citizens and residents declare foreign assets…which most see as a precursor to taxation. And of course, a move to tax out of country income or assets will increase the interest of countries to do more intensive snooping into the financial affairs of their inhabitants.

Will Snowden Revelations About Spying on Foreign Governments Undermine the European and Pacific Trade Talks?

Despite all the consternation in the US about Edward Snowden’s revelations about the extent and intensity of snooping in the United States, it isn’t clear that the surveillance industry is even breaking a sweat. But the government and public uproar in Europe about US snooping on its supposed allies may change that pronto.

Advocates Oppose Senate Immigration Bill Over Escalation of Border Militarization

This segment focuses on some elements of the Senate bill that appear to be under the radar as far as media coverage is concerned. First is that the bill does not provide a path to citizenship for a significant portion of the current illegal immigrant population (frankly that’s been a feature of past immigrant “reform” bills too; the Hispanic community may have been promised more than it was ever going to have delivered on this front). Second is that is includes a large budget to militarize the border with Mexico.

South Africans Plan to Protest Obama’s Crimes Against Africa During Presidential Visit

An Obama tour of Africa is likely to provide a marker of he is perceived in the rest of the world, although any negative reports are unlikely to get much play in our lapdog media. But since Obama was shunned in the recent G-8 conference, it’s going to be interesting to see how his African hosts muster up the appearance of enthusiasm during his visit.

Yanis Varoufakis: The Death of Direct Bank Re-capitalisation: Europe’s (Newest) Day of Shame

The idea was to de-couple the banking from the debt crisis. The reality is that they propose to do nothing of the sort. And deposits are now officially at risk.