the globalization folly
A globalized economy is an ultimate manifestation of hypermodernism and its paradigm of mega-everything. At that insane scale things are crazy-remote, crazy-complex, crazy-opaque, and crazy-perverted.
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1996
The greatest political debate of our time is about the blind rush towards a single global economy, its consequences for jobs, democracy, human well-being and cultural diversity, and its impact on the natural world that sustains us. Its effects will be profound and irreversible, but globalization itself is not inevitable. In The Case Against the Global Economy, 24 leading economic, agricultural, cultural and environmental authorities, drawn from across the world, argue that free trade and economic globalization are producing exactly the opposite results to those promised. From a detailed analysis of the new global economy, its structures and its full social and ecological implications, they show how it is undermining our liberty, our security and our well-being, and is devastating the planet. First published in the USA in 1996, in an edition focused on North America, the book won the American Political Science Association award for the Best Book in Ecological and Transformational Politics. This completely revised and updated international edition presents a passionate and persuasive case for the need to reverse course, away from globalization and towards a revitalized democracy, local self-sufficiency and ecological health.
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2024
https://mishtalk.com/economics/is-globalization-dead-two-views-brad-setsers-and-mine/
It’s hard to think of massive debt everyone funded by printed dollars (yuan, yen, euros) nearly everywhere, as “excess savings”. I define savings as “Production — Consumption” and I struggle to define printing dollars or yuan as either “production” or “savings”. However, I agree with Michael Pettis that we do have a massive global imbalance, hyper-financialized as a direct result of the end of the gold standard and China’s (also Germany’s) explicit policies.
Germany is feeling the pain of reversal now. And China refuses to do anything to alleviate the imbalances. Under a gold standard the US could not have these deficits without losing its gold or jacking up interest rates. Now, there are no global curbs in place.
As a result of China’s policy, Chinese consumers are subsidizing US consumers to the benefit of Chinese exporters, US (global) consumers, and the detriment of Chinese consumers and US businesses. Tariffs have not done a thing. All we have accomplished is to increase trade frictions to the melting point.
Michael Pettis: “Surging US fiscal debt is needed mainly because the alternatives — surging US unemployment or surging household debt — are worse.” That trio of alternatives led to terrible fiscal policy under every president, inept Fed policy, tariffs by Trump and Biden, nonsense like the Inflation Reduction Act, and calls for more military spending by both parties because hardly anybody remotely understands what’s going on or why.
Globalization may not be “dead” but it’s increasingly perverted rather than alive and well.
The current path is unsustainable. But I have no idea how long it can or will continue. No one else does either.
