World Economy
Faith-based free trade follies
Many bloggers think of Lou Dobbs as a wanker. I have always thought of him as a markets journalist with more than a few interesting things to say.
Can I hear a witness for "faith-based free trade"? Oh yeah, baby, preach it! :
Eye-glazing stuff, international trade. But the consequences of faith-based free-trade will be eye-popping in the disaster it wreaks on our economy and working Americans. The facts are anything but dull: For 30 consecutive years the United States has run a trade deficit, and our trade deficit has surged to record highs in each of the past four years. Our monthly deficits have reached record levels in two of the past three months.
Our current account deficit -- the broadest measure of international trade -- is on track to approach $1 trillion this year. And our current account deficit is almost 7 percent of our nation's gross domestic product, considerably above the threshold at which Federal Reserve studies have acknowledged our economy must make policy adjustments or face major financial crisis. We're borrowing about $3 billion a day just to pay for our imports, and our trade debt now stands at $5 trillion.
We will no longer have to be patient to see the impact of these faith-based policies in free trade. Signs are already beginning to mount that a reckoning is nearing. Our trading partners in Europe are counseling "vigilance" in the currency markets, as their anxiety rises with the value of the Euro against the dollar. For the first time, the Chinese government is publicly expressing its concern about the more than $1 trillion it holds in reserves.
But most disturbing of all are the comments of new Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who said in London Tuesday, "A strong dollar is clearly in our nation's interest and I feel very good today about the strength of the U.S. economy," as the U.S. dollar hit a 20-month low against the Euro. Treasury secretaries are not paid for their candor, but Paulson's rejection of our current reality won't bolster his credibility with either our trading partners or the new Democratic-led Congress.
When I travelled earlier this year to Amsterdam and walked into an H&M store, I was hit by the painful realization that having dollars in my pocket didn't and couldn't get me far in the European city. A sweater that costs me 39 dollars in the US costs me 39 euros in Holland. Fair trade for a bargain seeker? Of course not.
Economics | Free Trade | World Economy | china | Dollar | European Union | Henry Paulson | Lou Dobbs | Treasury Deparment
Middle East Peace: The Grassroots Approach
I have been absolutely horrifed by how the world is decending into chaos, even as our great leader is giving unwanted massages to the German Chancellor, and how so few people can find the compassion and balance to sympathize with Israelis, Palestinians and Lebanese alike. Our world leaders, from Hamas to Kadima to Hezbollah to Bush, are failing. The result is death and chaos. The solution...just may be you and me and a thousand other regular people who care.
Sometime back I began a project that I called an Integrated, Grassroots Development project for East Africa. People responded well to it and one of the beneficiaries was Kiva.org whose efforts to generate microloans to small businesses originally in East Africa, now globally, were greatly aided by the blogsphere. Inspired by this I tried generating interest in a more global effort, which didn't get as much attention. I now want to apply my ideas regarding Integrated, Grassroots Development to the horrible situation in the Middle Easte. If not now, then when? If not us, then who? It is up to us.
Activism | Anti-War | Economics | Environment | Ethnic Hatred | Human Rights | Liberalism | Violence | War | World Economy | Israel | Lebanon | Palestine
CALL FOR ABSTRACTS: The G8's Response to Africa
In my ongoing efforts to generate grassroots involvement in creating a better vision for development in Africa, I am passing this along:
Call for Abstracts
The G8�s Response to Africa: Is it Making a Difference?
November 2006 (exact date TBA)
At the University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA
Deadline: August 1, 2006
http://www.gsc.upenn.edu/programs/ip.php#g8
2005 was a monumental year for addressing issues surrounding global poverty, particularly the problems plaguing Africa. While the Live 8 concerts raised public awareness, the G8 summit at Gleneagles attempted to address and eventually resolve these global matters. This "Group of Eight" nations, which initiated its annual meetings in 1975, has been discussing major issues for the past 30 years. These issues have ranged from the building of safe nuclear power plants in Russia to addressing the imminent dangers of global warming. More recently, their attention has turned to Africa. As in previous years, the 2005 summit discussed the G8 Africa Action Plan which includes: improved governance and the building of effective states in Africa; building peace and creating security across the continent; improving opportunities for good health and education; and finally, increased aid and debt relief. The Millennium Development Goals, intended to be fulfilled in 2015, were also raised to the forefront, with a particular emphasis on: halving extreme poverty and hunger, universal primary education, halting and reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases, reducing child mortality by two-thirds, and cultivating a global partnership for development. Reinforcing these goals, the leaders of the G8 agreed to write off certain national debts, double aid to developing countries, provide universal child health care and education, and universal access to HIV/AIDS treatments.
Economics | Education | Environment | Health | Human Rights | World Economy | Africa
Titty power!
An all-time favorite from our archives,
Madona Latina
You know what really amazes me about this story? That it happened in the Philippines and not the United States. Isn't the developed country supposed to be teaching this to the Third World?
[via 3,738 Mothers Set Breast-Feeding Record - Yahoo! News]:
MANILA, Philippines - Nearly 4,000 mothers set a world record this week for the largest number of women simultaneously breast-feeding their babies in the same place, organizers said.[...]
The event was also held to raise awareness about the benefits of breast-feeding, organizers said.
Dr. Nicholas Alipui, UNICEF representative to the Philippines, said breast-feeding can help curb malnutrition in children under two years old, provide children with antibodies to fight diseases and boost the country's economy because families save on infant formula.
Breastfeeding | Food | Health | Motherhood | Poverty | World Economy | UNICEF | United Nations
Free Market Fraud
Let's begin with capitalism, a word that has gone largely out of fashion. The approved reference now is to the market system. This shift minimizes --indeed, deletes-- the role of wealth in the economic and social system. And it sheds the adverse connotation going back to Marx. Instead of the owners of capital or their attendants in control, we have the admirably impersonal role of market forces. It would be hard to think of a change in terminology more in the interest of those to whom money accords power. They have now a functional anonymity.
But most of the people who use the new designation --economists, in particular-- are innocent as to the effect. They see nothing wrong with their bland, descriptive terminology. They pay no attention to the important question: Whether money "wealth" accords a special power. (It does.) Thus the term innocent fraud.
Economics | Markets | World Economy | John Kenneth Galbraith
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Cleaving the movement : the fiction of good and bad immigrants
One thing that I've found unsettling, though, in listening to coverage about the protests thusfar, is this "good immigrant/bad immigrant" rhetoric that's present in what some people are saying, protesters and organizers alike. This morning, while listening to NPR, I heard one woman speak about how Latino immigrants aren't doing anything to harm this country, that they "love America" and just want to become good, hard-working Americans. Then I heard one organizer, speaking at one of the rallies, say something like this: "Nineteen people hijacked planes and participated in the 9/11 attacks, and not one of them were named Gonzales, Rodriguez, or Santiago. But you can bet that many of the people dying serving their country in Iraq are named Gonzales, Rodriguez, and Santiago" so on and so forth.
I understand that much of this is in response to the whole immigration debate getting wrapped up in worries about "national security" - how the specter of terrorism seems to make allowances for all manner of discrimination, racism and xenophobia, and how countless immigrants are nonsensically made to suffer because of it. However, it definitely seems like a very bad, very problematic move to buy into this sort of dichotomy that pits "good" immigrants or "good" brown folks (here, Latinos) against "bad" ones (apparently people of Arab or Middle Eastern descent - because, you know, the actions of individuals become the responsibility, the fault, the burden of their entire race and religion.) Latinos, like all other immigrants to the United States, deserve to be treated with respect and dignity and are entitled to certain rights and protections because they are human beings, not because they're good, flag-waving*, American-loving immigrants. No one is illegal, no matter whether your name is Juan or Mohammed, Gonzales or Atta.
Activism | Civil Rights | Culture | Economics | Immigration | Justice | Law | Politics | World Economy
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Whose profitting from the bird flu hysteria?
"We live in poverty, without any basic facilities and no one coming to enquire about our problems. All of a sudden all the television crew, media persons and doctors wearing surgical masks are roaming our dirt roads to collect more statistics. Our chickens were our only source of income and now they have destroyed even that. Is this what is called governance?"
Economics | Health | Markets | Poverty | World Economy
Were Freedom and Patriotism Different Then? Immigration Ire and Irony
Irony with my coffee and newspapers, bleah.
Our Lesson for the Day is immigration taking kids out of school. Right. But here's a story badly cast as gifted kids needing more program funding, when
the real story is the counterproductive irony of gifted young schoolkids spending the last 15 years getting excited to be out of school (with all their parent volunteers in tow) to take the same old field trip to Ellis Island, to study polite, curated, circumscribed history exhibits they can discuss and be tested on, someday write college essays about -- while the raw immigrant drama of THIS century, the one shaking our country to its policy and political foundations, plays out in all its culturally not-so-well-planned, technically if not dangerously criminal, decidedly unacademic, constitutionally muddled glory in and out of the neighborhood schools and streets of the opposite coast.
"People are taking it to a whole other level," said [high school student]Laura Avitia. "I don't think they know why we were protesting."
At least she's learning SOMETHING about real life then . . .I heard on cable news last night that a middle school near Denver has banned not just flags or t-shirts sporting slogans but all red, white and blue fabric, not just flags but clothing. Unmarked socks and sweaters. On pain of expulsion. Freedom? Go Team USA.
Civil Rights | Demographics | Economics | Education | Identity | Immigration | Rhetoric | Schooling | TV | World Economy | France | Mexico
1% and red?
The latest from Bono :
[via Bono Sees Red - Jan 26, 2006 - E! Online News]:
The U2 frontman, Time co-Person of the Year and all-around good guy turned up Thursday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to unveil a partnership with several big companies that will sell a brand called Red. The label will adorn Armani and Gap clothes, Converse sneakers and even an American Express card, with one percent of the profits earmarked for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.Flanked by Italian fashion designer Giorgio Armani and various suits from the other companies, Bono hailed the private sector for their support and raising awareness at a critical time when governments have been slow to tackle the problem.
"This is really sexy to me. It is sexy to want to change the world," the 45-year-old Irish rocker told reporters.
So basically luxury goods companies are going to use cheap labor, cheap materials to create products they will mark-up 300% and then only give back 1% to charity?
American Express | Armani | Business | Converse | Economics | Justice | Markets | Poverty | The GAP | World Economy | Bono | Global Fund | Product RED
