Globalization

Things will never be the same again for the West, Joschka Fischer, Germany's former Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor from 1998 to 2005, writes in his new book "The Decline of the West". To him, Brexit and Trump symbolize a profound, irreversible shift that poses an existential threat to both Europe and global order as a whole: "If Trump no longer supports it, today's global order will no longer work." Europe, he recognizes, will be most affected by the coming changes. For years, Fischer admits, Europeans were comfortable operating in the slipstream of US leadership, often criticizing US foreign policy, but always sure that Washington would come to the rescue should things go wrong. "The time of transatlantic solidarity is over, and it won't return after Trump", Fischer predicts. Joschka Fischer

“Since it was created in 1995, the WTO has ruled that every environmental, health, or safety policy it has reviewed is an illegal trade barrier.” -- Public Citizen report, titled 'Whose Trade Organization? Corporate Globalization and the Erosion of Democracy.” (from The Progressive magazine, January 2000, p 8)

"...let me cut to the chase: a global coup d’état has taken place such that governments no longer govern the world, or even their little bits of it. The nation state—yes, even America and China—has been usurped as the pre-eminent unit of power. Save for extreme outliers like North Korea, all governments now share power in a shaky but so far relatively steady balance with the largest of the multinational corporations. No one has asked us, the public, whether we approve of this new arrangement; it happened while we were busy shopping." TheRules.org

"... the huge trade agreements now being negotiated, the Trans-Pacific and Trans-Atlantic pacts. These are being negotiated in secret -- but not completely in secret. They are not secret from the hundreds of corporate lawyers who are drawing up the detailed provisions. It is not hard to guess what the results will be, and the few leaks about them suggest that the expectations are accurate. Like NAFTA and other such pacts, these are not free trade agreements. In fact, they are not even trade agreements, but primarily investor rights agreements. Again, secrecy is critically important to protect the primary domestic constituency of the governments involved, the corporate sector." Noam Chomsky

Globalization had succeeded in unifying people from around the world — against globalization. Factory workers in the United States saw their jobs being threatened by competition from China. Farmers in developing countries saw their jobs being threatened by the highly subsidized corn and other crops from the United States. Workers in Europe saw hard-fought-for job protections being assailed in the name of globalization. AIDS activists saw a new trade agreement raising the prices of drugs to levels that were unaffordable in much of the world. Environmentalists felt that globalization undermined their decade long struggle to establish regulations to preserve our natural heritage. Those who wanted to protect and develop their own cultural heritage saw too the intrusions of globalization. — Making Globalization Work: Stiglitz, 2006, p. 7

"Trade ministers tend to negotiate in secret. Trade agreements are long and complex, and lobbyists work hard to bury in them self-serving provisions that they hope will escape attention. But the basic issues... such as the trade-off between drug company profits and the right to life - are ones that are easy to understand. If the issue of access to AIDS drugs were put to a vote, in either developed or developing countries, the overwhelming majority would never support the position of the pharmaceutical companies or of the Bush administration.

Conflicts over fundamental values are at the center of democratic debate. Critics of globalization charge that globalization has been managed in such a way as to take some of the most important issues out of the realm of public discourse within individual countries and into closed international forums, which are far from democratic in the usual sense of that term. With the voices of corporate interest heard so clearly and strongly, and without the checks and balances of democratic processes, it's not surprising that the outcomes seem so objectionable, so distant from what would have emerged had there been a more democratic process. The most daunting challenge in reforming globalization is to make it more democratic; a test of success will be in how well it succeeds in ensuring that these broader values triumph more often over simple corporate interests."

We want to believe that our own economic success is within our control, but in a global economy, it isn't." Tom Allen Dangerous Convictions.

Global warming has increased global economic inequality (5/14/2019)

‘Kleptocracy Curse’ undermines democracy, threatens global security (8/31/2018)

1,100+ Economists: No Trump Tariffs (5/4/2018)

ANOTHER Corporation Suing Our Government Thanks To Trade Agreements (6/28/2016)

How Global Corporations are Seizing Power (12/3/2015)

FSF: Stop the TPP. Rallies in Washington, D.C. November 14 - 18.

White House Releases Text of the TPP (11/5/2015)

Uruguay Shows the Way by Leaving Secret Trade Deal (9/17/2015)

TPP: The Case For Treason (5/31/2015)

Here’s how much corporations paid US senators to fast-track the TPP bill (5/27/2015)

What is TPP ?

Broken Promises: Decades of Failure to Enforce Labor Standards In Free Trade Agreements

Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP): Job Loss, Lower Wages and Higher Drug Prices

The secretive sovereignty-subverting Trans-Pacific Partnership (4/21/2015)

Trade Agreements Rigged to Protect Capital From Democracy (3/12/2015)

Wikileaks releases Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, Investment Chapter (3/27/2015)

Trade Deals Will Supplant Democracy with Corporate Tribunals, Warn Critics (3/12/2015)

Congress Is Poised to Introduce a Bill to Fast Track TPP so It's Time to Act Now.

The TPP Must Be Defeated (12/30/2014)

WikiLeaks Releases Secret Draft of World Trade Agreement That Prevents Bank Regulation (6/20/2014)

TPP: Corporate Tool of the 1%

A Corporate Coup in Disguise (10/1/2013)

Secret "Free Trade" Negotiations Will Gut Regulations, Further Enrich Multinationals and Big Financial Firms (5/4/2013)

The Coming Global Explosion: Michael Klare (4/21/2013)

Twelve Reasons Why Globalization is a Huge Problem (2/22/2013)

Why So Secretive ? The Trans-Pacific Partnership as Global Coup (11/25/2012)

About the TPP

It is, to say the least, unusual for Republicans to back Obama, but they did for the TPP.

The TPP was drafted in secret by mostly corporate representatives bound by non-disclosure agreements.It has been reported as completed, but the countries involved still need to ratify the treaty for it to apply to that country. There is still time to resist the negative impact on the Public Domain, within each country. The near-final text, with analysis, is available at [WikiLeaks].

Proceeds from prior trade agreements have mostly gone to the very top, while wages have stagnated, so it is not surprising that Wall Street wants it while Labor and NGO's do not. Investor rights are protected at the expense of health, safety, environment regulations. In Mexico, a company wanted to put a toxic waste dump in the middle of town, voters didn't allow it, so the company must be compensated for lost profit.

Opposition to the TPP is very broad and includes Nobel Prize winning economists Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman as well as a long list of environmental and public interest groups. (See signatures to this letter

Stiglitz points out that trade agreements do not bring prosperity if we are not investing in education, infrastructure, or research. See the Stiglitz talk on youtube.

It puts corporate interests ahead of the public interest. That's why Republicans favor it.

Thank Congressman Courtney for opposing it.

The Collapse of Globalization (3/28/2011)

The G20: A Global Menace Invented by Larry Summers By Naomi Klein - June 25th, 2010

With Global Capitalism Exposed as a Sham, All the Global Elite Have Left Is Pure Force (9/22/2009)

Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winning author in his book Making Globalization Work.

Globalization has obvious, serious problems for practically everyone.

The TPP gives corporations supremacy over governments, including our own. It undermines what is left of democracy.

It has been extremely regressive. Virtually the only winners have been multinational corporations, the losers are the vast majority. Stiglitz suggestions in "Making Globalization Work" should be acted on immediately.

By way of contrast, see the Project for a New American Century.

The WTO we could have had.

The Seattle Turning Point for the WTO

Holly Sklar: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management

Global Imbalance - an imminent dollar crisis (video lecture 57 minutes.)

America, The Environment, & The Global Economy (a Syllabus)

Globalization Marches On (3/26/2010)

Vandana Shiva Lecture (video about 1 hour and 15 minutes)

A Citizens Guide to the WTO (pdf)

European Social Forum 2008 17-21 September 2008, Malmo, Sweden

About Empire

The Secret Global Corporate Coup

Video

The good news is that the eradication of global poverty is possible.

Life and Debt: Globalization in Jamaica (see this video on-line.)

Susan George is a political economist and author of more than a dozen books. CinemaLibreStudio has produced a documentary called Speaking Freely: (Vol 2) of her that explains in a way that the nightly news will not.

March 15, 2012
In the Clutches of the Casino Creditors
The Parasites of Big Finance
by RALPH NADER

Morning after morning, New York City based casino capitalists trade with Greece and the latest rumors from Western Europe on their minds.

What will affluent Germany do to bail out the collapsing, debt-ridden country of Greece? Will France go along with those plans? Will the massive injection of liquidity by the European Central Bank help the banks to behave in ways that help Greece, among other countries? Day after trading day, the U.S.

Why? Greece is a country of just over ten million people with a GDP smaller than that of New Jersey. But because it is closest to the fiscal cliff, financial observers fear a domino effect. If Greece defaults badly, it could pull Portugal, Spain, Ireland and then possibly Italy closer to financial disaster.

And what is the chain that binds Greece to these nations and then to larger countries in the EU and across the Atlantic to the U.S.? It is the deep, interdependency brought about by corporate globalization and its massive financial speculators, piling derivatives such as credit default swaps and other intricate pyramids of bets, on additional bets. These are the banks, hedge funds and other financial entities that pool other peoples’ money into ever-more abstract and complex betting or gambling instruments of parasitic, big finance.

Not that much has changed since the Wall Street collapse of 2008 other than the renewed “Wall Street” belief that you, the taxpayers, will be forced once again by your government to bail out even larger financial giants who are so interlocked as to be “too big to fail.”

Traders making speculative money from speculative money, traded in trillions of dollars, now hold hostage the real economy wherein people make money from providing needed or wanted goods and services. The fate of American workers, their pensions and the real businesses that employ them, rests on the globalized dominoes that a teetering Greece could set in motion. This is the craven logic of a global casino economy, driven by split-second computerized algorithms and camouflaged by the phony theory of “free trade” which is really corporate-managed trade.

The U.S. does not need to be shackled by the global corporatists to what may happen in Greece or Spain or Portugal. We should be less dependent on financial economies abroad and more self-reliant and independent of the global economy’s dangerously contagious risks.

That is why the more community-based economic activity there is in our country – credit unions; renewable, efficient energy; community health clinics; community food markets, etc. – the more insulated we will be from global seismic ravages. Those same community economies would have helped shield the Greek people from the wily clutches of Goldman Sachs and other aggressive casino creditors.

Unfortunately, the intellectually impoverished presidential and Congressional campaigns never propose ways to extricate our country from the octuple straitjackets of global speculators. The two-party political tyranny – Republican and Democratic – is too busy kneeling before the check-writers of imperious corporatists to stand up for the people whose votes they strive to secure.

As U.S. citizens struggle, Wall Street and Washington worry about Greece.

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer and author of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us! He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press.

Bibliography

The Stiglitz Report: Reforming the international Monetary and Financial Systems in the Wake of the Global Crisis: Joseph Stiglitz

Globalization and Technocapitalism, The Political Economy of Corporate Power and Technological Domination: Luis Suarez-Villa

Global Imperialism and the Great Crisis, The Uncertain Future of Capitalism: Ernesto Screpanti

Failure to Adjust, how Americans got left behind in the Global Economy: Edward Alden

People Before Profit, The New Globalization in an Age of Terror, Big Money, and Economic Crisis: Charles Derber

In Defense of Globalization: Jagdish Bhagwhati

Why Globalization Works: Martin Wolf

Manifesto for a new World Order: George Monbiot

The Unfair Trade: Michael J. Casey

The World is Curved: David M. Smick

The War for Wealth, The True Story of Globalization, or Why the Flat World is Broken: Gabor Steingart

The Bush Agenda, invading the world one economy at a time: Antonia Juhasz

One World, Ready or Not: William Greider

WTO: Lori Wallach

Alternatives to Economic Globalization: Edited by John Cavanagh and Jerry Mander

The Case Against The Global Economy and FOR a Turn Toward the Local: Edited by Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith.

The Selling of 'Free Trade': Nafta, Washington, and the Subversion of American Democracy: John R MacArthur.

The Case Against Free Trade, GATT, NAFTA, and the Globalization of Corporate Power: Earth Island Press