Category Archives: Globalization

New Zealand, Fresh From Its Service to Mexican Drug Lords, Helps Out the Russian Mafia

It appears that New Zealand’s company incorporation regime has soiled itself, lavishly, again. This time, the Russian mafia appear to be involved.

UNCTAD as the Battleground for Role of the State, Trade Policy

We’ve featured past Real News Network segments on the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. UNCTAD has increasingly become a forum for struggles between advanced economies and developing economies over what the rules of the road should be in trade. UNCTAD was early to call the benefits of financialization into question, and has also been taking issue with the comparatively small take countries in the “south” get from extended supply chain production. This, needless to say, is a vision that is a direct challenge to how multinational like to conduct their affairs, so it should be no surprise that the big, rich countries are trying to bring UNCTAD to heel.

Michael Hudson: Paul Krugman’s Economic Blinders

By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His new book summarizing his economic theories, “The Bubble and Beyond,” will be available in a few weeks on Amazon.

Paul Krugman is widely appreciated for his New York Times columns criticizing Republican demands for fiscal austerity. He rightly argues that cutting back public spending will worsen the economic depression into which we are sinking. And despite his partisan Democratic Party politicking, he said from the outset in 2009 that President Obama’s modest counter-cyclical spending program was not sufficiently bold to spur recovery.

Satyajit Das: The European Debt Crisis Redux

By Satyajit Das, derivatives expert and the author of Extreme Money: The Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives – Revised Edition (2006 and 2010). Jointly posted with Roubini Global Economics

The half-life of solutions to Europe’s debt problem is getting ever shorter.

Recent hopes have relied on the ostensible success of the European Central Bank’s (“ECB”) LTRO – Long Term Refinancing Operation, more appropriately termed the Lourdes Treatment and Resuscitation Option.

New York Times Details Widespread Bribery in Wal-Mart Mexico and Top Executive Coverup

The Grey Lady has an amazingly detailed, must-read account of corruption at the highest levels of Wal-Mart.

Yanis Varoufakis on Ringfencing Europe

Yanis Varoufakis gave an energetic, pointed, and insightful talk at the INET conference in Berlin. His message was that the efforts by European authorities were misguided, in that they were seeking to ringfence individual countries, when it was the Eurozone as a whole that needs to be shored up. And he contends this can be done now without special approvals.

Robert Cowley, 2nd Baron Ardwhallan: an Unauthorized Web Biography (II)

By Richard Smith, spelunker of the Web. We started Robert Cowley’s web bio here and this is the second installment. We will be in Mayfair, London, or on the Gold Coast of Australia, and the story involves a dead Daily Mail journalist, a great racing driver, and a bad racing driver: a very bad one, […]

Wolf Richter: Deep Trouble at the Core of the Eurozone

In France, new vehicle registrations are plunging: -17.8% in December, -20.7% in January, -20.2% in February. French automakers suffered the most. PSA Peugeot Citroën -29.2% and Renault -28.5%. The German auto industry is still basking in last year’s glow of record worldwide sales and profits, and record bonuses for their beaming employees. But in January registrations edged down, and in February they collapsed brutally. And it’s just the beginning.

ECB President Draghi Declares War on Europe’s Social Safety Nets

I’m late to the remarkable interview given by ECB president Mario Draghi to the Wall Street Journal. I find the choice of venue curious, since the Financial Times has become the venue for top European politicians and technocrats to communicate with English speaking finance professionals.

But Draghi’s drunk-on-austerity-Kool-Aid message was a perfect fit for the Wall Street Journal.

Wolf Richter: François Hollande Versus the German Dictate

The Eurozone debt crisis has frayed a lot of nerves, particularly among Greek politicians, whose country is on the verge of bankruptcy, and German politicians, who no longer trust Greek politicians—they’d willfully misrepresented deficits and debt in order to accede to the Eurozone and had continued to do so up to insolvency. But now a far bigger confrontation at the very core of the Eurozone is visible on the horizon. And it may bring epic changes.

What to do About Apple and Fraud Friendly Manufacturing in China?

Former banking regulator and white color criminologist Bill Black gives an unvarnished view of the behavior of Apple and other technology companies in dealing with suppliers in China. He does not buy the idea that the US is powerless to do anything about work condition in China and provides some concrete suggestions.

Wired’s Embarrassing Whitewash of Foxconn

Wired’s Joel Johnson has written a stunning bit of PR for Foxconn, now-controversial supplier to the consumer electronics industry, duly wrapped in credibility-enhancing guilt over Western materialism.

The article, “1 Million Workers. 90 Million iPhones. 17 Suicides. Who’s to Blame?” pretends to be about Foxconn’s factories. But Johnson admits he’s a tech toy writer who apparently has no knowledge of manufacturing. Yet he’s remarkably uninhibited in using his fantasies and abject ignorance as a basis for making sweeping generalizations about the Taiwanese powerhouse. For instance:

Daniel Alpert: Tinkerbell Economics – The Confidence Fairy, Pixie Dust and a Sleeping Dragon

By Daniel Alpert, the founding Managing Partner of Westwood Capital. Cross posted from EconoMonitor

While we may be hours away from a partial (and certainly a stopgap) agreement in the talks among the Greek government, the troika and private sector creditors, it is doubtful that a deal will emerge in a fully constructed fashion that will survive its application in the real economy.

It is likely that the only common view amongst participants in the various talks is a desire to try to avoid a disorderly default. Beyond that there is a severe disconnect fostered by parallel realities that seem unable to intersect. Accordingly, a deal that can hold up both in the streets of Greece and in the markets is both illusive and unlikely. Here’s why I think so.

Recently I have had opportunities to meet with and question senior members of the economics establishment within the German government and the broader German intelligentsia. Our meetings were held under Chatham House rules so I can’t name names, but – after several meetings with policy delegations from Germany over the past 60 days – I am prepared to sum up what appears to be the pretty-universally-held German policy position as follows (my apologies if the below evidences some degree of frustration – but these encounters leave me quite chagrined):

Philip Pilkington: Are the Irish People to Blame for Reckless Borrowing?

By Philip Pilkington, a journalist and writer living in Dublin, Ireland

Recently the Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny pandered to his base once again by saying that the Irish people are to blame for the current state of their economy due to reckless borrowing undertaken during the boom years. I refer not to his base in Ireland, of course — their opinion has hardly mattered since the election — I refer instead to his base among the international financial community. For it is these people that need Kenny’s confession because it is their economic model that has been proved false by the Irish crisis — and so a mea culpa is needed from the victims so that they can avoid the responsibility that they know they bear.