"Nikkei index in longest slide since 1965," World News, July 5, 2008.

TOKYO (AP) -- Japan's most-watched stock index has fallen for the 10th straight session -- its longest slide since 1965. Auto and banking shares fell Wednesday as investors remained jittery ahead of U.S. employment data for June and an interest rate decision from the European Central Bank, both due Thursday.

"The market mood is really uncertain right now," said Hiroichi Nishi, general manager at Nikko Cordial Securities in Tokyo. "Everyone is looking outside of Japan for cues."

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John Feffer, "Mother Earth's Triple Whammy. North Korea as a Global Crisis Canary," Japan Focus, Jun 22, 2008.

[Feffer scopes out the extent of the crisis facing the globe but suffers from an odd kind of environmentalist's myopia. The triple whammy he refers to omits the widespread economic de-stabilization that followed the sub-prime mortgage debt crisis in the US and the fact that on many a day Canada's economic numbers are "saved" by high "commodity" prices--meaning gas and oil. Oil producers are thriving because of "windfall profits." The metaphors used to describe these phenomena are out of whack. Still, the possibility that he may be underestimating the depth of the crisis in no way changes his basic point: for a glimpse of the future, imagine North Korea under capitalism. -jlt]

Destruction of rainforests

Gas prices are above $4 a gallon; global food prices surged 39% last year; and an environmental disaster looms as carbon emissions continue to spiral upward. The global economy appears on the verge of a TKO, a triple whammy from energy, agriculture, and climate-change trends. Right now you may be grumbling about the extra bucks you're shelling out at the pump and the grocery store; but, unless policymakers begin to address all three of these trends as one major crisis, it could get a whole lot worse.

Just ask the North Koreans.

In the 1990s, North Korea was the world's canary. The famine that killed as much as 10% of the North Korean population in those years was, it turns out, a harbinger of the crisis that now grips the globe -- though few saw it that way at the time.


That small Northeast Asian land, one of the last putatively communist countries on the planet, faced the same three converging factors as we do now -- escalating energy prices, a reduction in food supplies, and impending environmental catastrophe. At the time, of course, all the knowing analysts and pundits dismissed what was happening in that country as the inevitable breakdown of an archaic economic system presided over by a crackpot dictator.

They were wrong. The collapse of North Korean agriculture in the 1990s was not the result of backwardness. In fact, North Korea boasted one of the most mechanized agricultures in Asia. Despite claims of self-sufficiency, the North Koreans were actually heavily dependent on cheap fuel imports. (Does that already ring a bell?) In their case, the heavily subsidized energy came from Russia and China, and it helped keep North Korea's battalion of tractors operating. It also meant that North Korea was able to go through fertilizer, a petroleum product, at one of the world's highest rates. When the Soviets and Chinese stopped subsidizing those energy imports in the late 1980s and international energy rates became the norm for them, too, the North Koreans had a rude awakening.

Like the globe as a whole, North Korea does not have a great deal of arable land -- it can grow food on only about 14% of its territory. (The comparable global figure for arable land is about 13%.) With heavy applications of fertilizer and pesticides, North Koreans coaxed a lot of food out of a little land. By the 1980s, however, the soil was exhausted, and agricultural production was declining. So spiking energy prices hit an economy already in crisis. Desperate to grow more food, the North Korean government instructed farmers to cut down trees, stripping hillsides to bring more land into cultivation.

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Patrick Bond and Richard Kamidza, "On resistance to the excesses of Western capitalism," Pambazuka News 381, June 18, 2008.

[Failure of the WTO to impose its agenda on Africa has led to a divide-and-conquer strategy in the form of bilateral trade agreements called "Economic Partnership Agreements" (EPAs) by the Europeans. But Africans aren't stupid. A multipolar international order is rapidly replacing The World's Last Superpower and neoliberal globalization is going down like an American sub-prime mortgage. It hasn't worked well in Africa. North Americans, appear to be the last to figure it out. One day, and it won't be long, Africa will be the engine driving the economies of the world. All she needs is to get that foot off her neck. -jlt]

Moving from fear to confidence in rejecting the EU won’t be easy. But a step was taken by Nigerian president Umaru Musa Yar’Adua during his Cape Town visit last week, unilaterally announcing the end of Shell’s hell in Ogoniland: “There is a total loss of confidence between Shell and the Ogoni people. So, another operator acceptable to the Ogonis will take over.”

[Recent]

HOW EUROPE UNDERDEVELOPS AFRICA AND HOW SOME FIGHT BACK

In even the most exploitative African sites of repression and capital accumulation, sometimes corporations take a hit, and victims sometimes unite on continental lines instead of being divided-and-conquered. Turns in the class struggle might have surprised Walter Rodney, the political economist whose 1972 classic “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa,” provided detailed critiques of corporate looting.


In early June, the British-Dutch firm Shell Oil – one of Rodney’s targets - was instructed to depart from the Ogoniland region within the Niger Delta, where in 1995 Shell officials were responsible for the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa by Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha. After decades of abuse, women protesters, local NGOs and the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) gave Shell the shove. France’s Total appears next in line, in part because of additional pressure from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta.

Across the continent, exploitation by other European capitalists and politicians has become so extreme that something has to break. Although it was six months ago that the European Union’s ultramanipulative trade negotiator, Peter Mandelson, cajoled 18 weak African leaderships -- including crisis-ridden Cote d’Ivoire, neoliberal Ghana and numerous frightened agro-exporting countries -- into the trap of signing interim “Economic Partnership Agreements” (EPAs), a backlash is now growing.

An Addis Ababa conference from June 9-11 brought officials from the African Union and a few African states together with critical academics and scholar-activists allied to the Council for the Development of Social Science Research (CODESRIA). It’s extremely rare to find genuine coincidence of interests, and even possible strategic agreement, between these camps.

“We can’t continue to deal with incompetent, weak, corrupt, supine governments,” explained Dot Keet of the Alternative Information and Development Centre in Cape Town. “But these are not factors of the same order of magnitude. The domination of African countries by neocolonialism and the subordinate stance by African governments are not the same. We must be clear where the main driving force comes from: outside Africa. We have to tackle the source.”

The conference host, CODESRIA director Adebayo Olukoshi, provided a visionary strategy in the spirit of Nkrumah, calling for a united Africa. Pretoria-based Nigerian academic Omano Edigheji insisted on this happening “in the context of transformative social policies” in the leading countries, in contrast to the Washington Consensus. Added Zambian trade union leader Austin Muneku, “This should be integration from below, by the people and their organisations, not from above by elites.”

From above, many African elites have succumbed to what Olukoshi terms trade-balkanisation, following the lead set by colonial pigs in the 1884-85 Berlin conference that so irrationally carved up the continent. Since 2002, the EPAs have supplanted the agenda of the gridlocked World Trade Organisation, just as bilateral trade deals with the US, China and Brazil are also now commonplace.

A united Europe deals with individual African countries in an especially pernicious way, because aside from free trade in goods, Mandelson last October hinted at other invasive EPA conditions that will decimate national sovereignty: “Our objective remains to conclude comprehensive, full economic partnership agreements. These agreements have a WTO-compatible goods agreement at their core, but also cover other issues.”

Those other “Singapore” issues (named after the site of a 1996 WTO summit) include investment protection (so future policies don’t hamper corporate profits), competition policy (to break local large firms up) and government procurement (to end programmes like South Africa’s affirmative action). These were removed from the WTO by African negotiators during the Cancun summit in 2003, but have re-emerged through EPA bilaterals.

Says Zimbabwean anti-EPA campaigner Nancy Kachingwe, “These are not trade agreements, they’re structural adjustment programmes. It’s about policy and all sorts of other controls, and the impacts are the same.”

Europeans’ regular abuses of donor power include threats of trade preference withdrawal if EPAs are not signed. European capital has made its own needs clear: not only access to cheap commodities, as was enjoyed under the Lomé Convention, but also unrestricted African market access, protection from potential restrictive public policies, and a buffer from Chinese competition.

According to Gyekye Tanoh of Third World Network in Accra, “The key thing for Mandelson is to gain exclusive preferential market access. Europe is gaining 80% of our markets in exchange for what is effectively just 2% of theirs.”

Already, says Tanoh, “The effect of trade liberalisation on African agriculture is a disaster, with only one sector anticipated to grow: agro-processing. That’s the one that most easily invites European capital to scale up investments in joint ventures. Agricultural output would only increase by 1%, our studies show. But the big contradiction is in the export of cash crops, at a time of severe pressure on food products.”

African farmers’ ability to sell on the local market will be undercut by rapid trade liberalisation that opens the way to surges of cheap, often subsidised imports. Women are most adversely affected.

As Walter Rodney observed, “It is typical of underdeveloped economies that they do not -- or are not allowed to -- concentrate on those sectors of the economy which in turn will generate growth and raise production to a new level altogether, and there are very few ties between one sector and another so that, say, agriculture and industry could react beneficially on each other.”

Earlier allegedly “developmental trade” strategies, such as the EU’s “Everything But Arms” deal, haven’t worked, because of strict rules of origin and serious supply-side constraints. There is simply no capacity in African firms to penetrate Europe given this continent’s small production runs and high transport costs.

As Keet suggested, it therefore may be time to question trade itself -- not merely the mythical “export-led growth” shibboleth -- in part because climate change will soon invoke hefty taxes on ships (whose dirty bunker oil sends vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere). Yet EPAs will require an even greater African investment in port infrastructure and other management costs necessary to facilitate trade.

Added Senegalese scholar Cherif Salif Sy, “Most of Africa has an electricity crisis, and yet to get economies of scale for European agro-processing companies if they locate in Dakar, they require vast amounts of electricity. And they come with the power to demand a lower price, which puts much more stress on our grid and causes the price to go up for local buyers, and the supply to be redirected.”

African firms cannot compete in this sector, as they lack the brand names, skills and marketing structures that European companies enjoy. The same firms have also no access to EU support in the forms of straight subsidies, tax incentives, research and development funding or concessional credit.

As a result, African countries face unreliable provision of public utilities (electricity and water); poor public infrastructure (run down roads and railways); rapidly fluctuating exchange rates and high inflation; labour productivity problems arising from poor education, health and housing provision; vulnerable market institutions (such as immature financial systems); and poorly-functioning legal frameworks. The EU has no interest in reversing such fundamental structural economic challenges.

From early on, African civil society movements – especially the African Trade Network - called on elites to halt the negotiations.

But it has not been easy to develop a strong coalition, as Third World Network director Yao Graham concedes: “Unions have been too syndicalist, while our justice movements have been exhausted fighting structural adjustment. The local private sector has been absent. But in some regions, like West Africa, agricultural producers have been well organised and opposed to EPAs. Links to the Caribbean are weak. But we are working behind enemy lines with progressive allies in Europe, including within the Brussels parliament.”

Graham points to the surprising resistance to EPAs from the South African government, especially deputy trade minister Rob Davies – in the wake of the 2004 departure for another ministry by former trade minister Alec Erwin (so effective a free trader that he was once endorsed for WTO director in Foreign Policy journal).

Nigeria is another crucial state, one which is publicly pro-EPA but nevertheless slowed the process down and refused Mandelson’s pressure to sign an interim deal.

According to Graham, “It should be possible to shrink the EPA agenda to nonreciprocal market access to goods, and no more. This we can win in coming months.”

His colleague Tanoh says that inspiration comes to the campaigners from Korea: “The Seoul government is backing down – and cabinet has resigned - when protesters attacked US beef imports, and they reversed their trade deal.”

African social movements will have to strengthen considerably to have that degree of influence on elites. “Can a corrupt government represent you when it negotiates with outside actors?” asks Nairobi-based pan-Africanist intellectual Tajudeen Abdul Raheem. “In most cases their negotiating position is aimed at maximising their personal or familial interests.”

Hence, remarks Bernard Founou-Tchuigoua of the World Forum for Alternatives in Dakar, “In these agreements there is inherent corruption, in their very substance. We don’t want these.”

Rodney might agree, as he criticised “the minority in Africa which serves as the transmission line between the metropolitan capitalists and the dependencies in Africa ... The presence of a group of African sell-outs is part of the definition of underdevelopment. Any diagnosis of underdevelopment in Africa will reveal not just low per capita income and protein deficiencies, but also the gentlemen who dance in Abidjan, Accra and Kinshasa when music is played in Paris, London and New York.” (And now, with EPAs and the WTO, add Brussels and Geneva.)

But because Mandelson is squeezing so hard, he may be single-handedly breaking the links between elites. Led by Senegalese and Malian politicians, most of the African officials at the conference agreed with the left intelligentsia that dangers now arise of: - regional disintegration (due to EU bilateral negotiations and subregional blocs) and internecine race-to-the-bottom competition:

- Threats of not only deindustrialisation but further EU penetration of the African services sector;

- Increasing social polarisation (including along gender lines), and the rise of parasitical classes; and

- Much greater gains for some sectors of the capitalist class: owners of plantations, mines and oil fields; commercial circuits of capital; and financial institutions.

Even Botswana’s former (conservative) president, Festus Mogae, admitted in 2004, “We are somewhat apprehensive towards EPAs despite the EU assurances. We fear that our economies will not be able to withstand the pressures associated with liberalisation.”

Moving from fear to confidence in rejecting the EU won’t be easy. But a step was taken by Nigerian president Umaru Musa Yar’Adua during his Cape Town visit last week, unilaterally announcing the end of Shell’s hell in Ogoniland: “There is a total loss of confidence between Shell and the Ogoni people. So, another operator acceptable to the Ogonis will take over.”

In Paris, Total’s Christophe de Margerie reacted: “We have people who work over there ... who are unfortunately more and more often subjected to major aggressions (or being) kidnapped. We are asking ourselves the question (about whether to follow Shell).”

MOSOP held a victory march in Port Harcourt, and its information officer, Bari-ara Kpalap, thanked Yar’Adua, yet also promised more agitation in the Niger Delta “until the government took more practical and sincere steps to genuinely address the problems of the area”. As all agreed, booting European exploiters was the necessary first step.

Patrick Bond directs the University of KwaZulu Natal Centre for Civil Society in Durban, where Richard Kamidza is doing a doctoral degree.
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Lawrence Solomon, "Darlington reactors are not really new," Financial Post, June 16, 2008.

The NDP completed Darlington A in 1993, a decade late, for $14.4-billion, almost six times the initial estimates. Hydro then went bankrupt in what was called 'the biggest corporate financial meltdown in Canadian history.' Darlington A was one of the last nuclear reactors to be built in the western world...

[...]

Ontarians, in fact, thought they had stopped it in 1985 when they threw out the Tory government of the day in favour of David Peterson's Liberals, who had promised to stop Darlington. By 1985, Darlington was wildly late (its planned completion date had been 1983) and wildly over budget (the $3.5-billion that had then been spent exceeded the project's estimated $2.5-billion price tag of 1978). Rather than stop the bleeding, the Liberals instead voted to complete Darlington.

Ontarians again thought they had stopped Darlington in 1990, when they threw out the Liberals in favour of the New Democratic Party of Bob Rae, who had campaigned on a promise to impose a moratorium on nuclear power. By then, Darlington's costs had soared to $12.9-billion and was close to completion. The NDP completed Darlington A in 1993, a decade late, for $14.4-billion, almost six times the initial estimates. Hydro then went bankrupt in what was called "the biggest corporate financial meltdown in Canadian history."

Darlington A was one of the last nuclear reactors to be built in the western world -- Ontario was slower than most in recognizing the foolhardiness of relying on nuclear. Now Ontario is poised to become one of the first western jurisdictions to return to nuclear, despite Darlington's role in the province's demise -- Hydro's nuclear program cost the province its AAA credit rating and Ontarians are still paying off Hydro's stranded debt of $20-billion.

[...]

Nuclear's uncontrollable costs, in fact, have been a constant over its history in Ontario and they remain a constant elsewhere in the western world. France -- the only country to go full bore for nuclear -- has found nuclear to be so ruinously expensive that it's bringing its old oil-fired stations back into service, some of which were built in the 1960s.

In Finland, the first western country to have actually begun construction on a new nuclear plant in recent years, delays proved so serious that, two and a half years after the start of construction, the project had fallen behind schedule by more than two years. The project is already 50% over budget. Cost estimates for other nuclear plants that are being considered have soared even more.

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"The financial crisis: An interview with George Soros," New York Revie of Books, May 15, 2008.

Recommended by Charles Coughlan

Anne Woodruff interviewed George Soros in the New York Review of Books about his new book The New Paradigm for Financial Markets.

So the idea that somehow in the second half of this year the economy is going to improve I find totally unbelievable.

Woodruff: So how long will this last?

Soros: Well, it depends on when the authorities wake up...

Judy Woodruff: You write in your new book, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets,[1] that "we are in the midst of a financial crisis the likes of which we haven't seen since the Great Depression." Was this crisis avoidable?

George Soros: I think it was, but it would have required recognition that the system, as it currently operates, is built on false premises. Unfortunately, we have an idea of market fundamentalism, which is now the dominant ideology, holding that markets are self-correcting; and this is false because it's generally the intervention of the authorities that saves the markets when they get into trouble. Since 1980, we have had about five or six crises: the international banking crisis in 1982, the bankruptcy of Continental Illinois in 1984, and the failure of Long-Term Capital Management in 1998, to name only three.

Each time, it's the authorities that bail out the market, or organize companies to do so. So the regulators have precedents they should be aware of. But somehow this idea that markets tend to equilibrium and that deviations are random has gained acceptance and all of these fancy instruments for investment have been built on them.

There are now, for example, complex forms of investment such as credit-default swaps that make it possible for investors to bet on the possibility that companies will default on repaying loans. Such bets on credit defaults now make up a $45 trillion market that is entirely unregulated. It amounts to more than five times the total of the US government bond market. The large potential risks of such investments are not being acknowledged.

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Thomas Friedman, The democratic recession, NYT, May 7, 2008.

The term “democratic recession” was coined by Larry Diamond, a Stanford University political scientist, in his new book “The Spirit of Democracy.” And the numbers tell the story. At the end of last year, Freedom House, which tracks democratic trends and elections around the globe, noted that 2007 was by far the worst year for freedom in the world since the end of the cold war. Almost four times as many states — 38 — declined in their freedom scores as improved — 10.

What explains this? A big part of this reversal is being driven by the rise of petro-authoritarianism. I’ve long argued that the price of oil and the pace of freedom operate in an inverse correlation — which I call: “The First Law of Petro-Politics.” As the price of oil goes up, the pace of freedom goes down. As the price of oil goes down, the pace of freedom goes up.

“There are 23 countries in the world that derive at least 60 percent of their exports from oil and gas and not a single one is a real democracy,” explains Diamond. “Russia, Venezuela, Iran and Nigeria are the poster children” for this trend, where leaders grab the oil tap to ensconce themselves in power.

Bourque calls this "High Oil Fosters Petro Dictators." This is not "market failure." It's market dysfunction, i.e., the market operates according to principles which make it, far from an "invisible hand" that inevitably guides us in directions we need to go; on the contrary, we may need for the market's invisble hand to be slapped from time to time. Left alone, the market will provide all the motivation necessary for corruption and other forms of criminal behaviour.

There are some other caveats that need to be made here. Several NGOs employ very subjective methodology without the kind of challenge that once was traditional in academic circles. Freedom House is one; Transparency International, another.

Amnesty International was once open to the criticism that they directed their campaigns against say non-OECD countries. That has changed. But a similar systemic criticism of TI's bias against small time corruption compared to the blind eye it turns toward multi-billion dollar corrption in the US raises questions about where else.

I call these "methodological" because they are pervasive. Like attitudes, they reproduce themselves in human organizations where they are then able to grow like compound interest.

Definitions of democracy remain contested, all the more since the critical US/EU sabotage of the Hamas election (2006). Much remains to be seen in the wake of the Maoist victory in Nepal. Liberal (capitalist, shock) democracy is clearly just one kind. Freedom is great, but greed is not good.

So identifying Russia, Venezuela, Iran and Nigeria as dictatorships while the US, UK, Israel and Turkey are lauded as democracies raises serious questions among the spectators who stand to lose the most from these prejudices--not because we own them but because we are subjected to them. All the signs indicate that our grand children will bleed to preserve them.

Meanwhile, what about Kazakhstan? Equatorial Guinea? Saudi Arabia? Turkmenistan is about gas more than oil, but then so is Russia.

Americans like to be able to say things like "there is no more disgusting leader in the world today than Mugabe." But what does that give you? It provides one of the chief apologists for Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and the Iraq disaster (to mention just a few) with some undeserved moral altitude.

Welcome to the ditch, Thomas. The time may be coming for the US to learn a little humility. It has never been an American virtue. It may just be that the world needs humility from the US even more than it needs democracy.

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James Cumes, "The Black Death of financial collapse," Asia Times online, April 10, 2008.

[A former member of the sinking ship's crew--from Australia this time--recommends the lifeboats. He makes frequent use of the term Ponzi. -jlt]

The financial and economic crisis now upon us is by far the most menacing of the past century - even more so than the Great Depression of the 1930s. It is not just a "subprime" crisis; it is systemic - affecting the entire financial system. It is also global, affecting various countries in various ways but affecting them all. In achieving a certain "globalization", we have been uniquely successful in globalizing collapse, chaos and misery. It is a globalization which, in our short-sighted negligence, we never envisaged.

[...]

The speculative, Ponzi mania spread especially to Anglo-Saxon countries and to other developed countries in lesser degree. Australia took to "free" markets, "free" trade, free-floating currencies, deregulation, privatization, globalization, derivatives, hedge funds, private equity, wildcat mortgages and leverage-without-limit as a duck to water. Consumerism raged. Industry was gutted. Debts ballooned. The value of the currency fell at home and abroad. Despite low-cost imports, inflation flourished. In 2008, the Australian dollar can perhaps buy as much in real terms as five or 10 cents did in 1969. [In Canada, coffee was a dime in 1973. Refills were free. -jlt]

[...]

Will the Rudd government this time listen to the Americans and the likes of US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke? If they do, catastrophic outcomes might not be in short supply.

Our only real hope lies in clear, independent thinking by those not too steeped in the flawed policies responsible for our current crisis. We must see clearly that fundamental, comprehensive financial and economic reform is imperative. We must adapt that fundamental reform to our own needs, as the John Curtin and Ben Chifley governments did between 1941 and 1949. As we did then, we must simultaneously try to guide the international community out of the calamitous course that has evolved since 1969, and return it to the goal of stable, peaceful, global change which, as a primary objective, we pursued between 1945 and 1969.

While we embark on this journey, a high level of political volatility in Canberra is inevitable....

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James Cumes is a former Australian ambassador to the European Union and Australian representative at the United Nations. He is the author of among other works The Human Mirror: The Narcissistic Imperative in Human Behaviour.

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Chernobyl and the "superstitious distrust of genetic modification"

Feature

This is the last time World Report will appear as a segment on Nelson Before Nine. I was getting ready to commemorate the anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster (April 26, 1986), when one of my correspondents in the Midnight Research Network mailed me an article from The Economist which he called “The looming global food crisis.”

For those who may not be familiar with it, The Economist is a rich person's Time magazine that's produced in the UK.

Several decades ago, when I still had a day job and was even then searching for an unbiased publication on international affairs, I subscribed to The Economist for several years.

It presents a lot of good information in a lively writing style. It's also a megaphone for what eventually became known alternately as neoliberal globalization or the Washington consensus or market fundamentalism.

I like to think I am more mature now and better able to hold up to such arm-twisting while I still get the information I am looking for. Nevertheless, The Economist was so ideologically encumbered that I finally let my subscription lapse even though I could still afford it.

So I was surprised when this article's anonymous author claimed that “the food crisis of 2008 has revealed market failures at every link of the food chain.”

Hardcore market fundamentalists believe that markets are self-correcting which is why they should be left alone—laissez-faire etc. The concept of “market failure” is an oxymoron. It makes no sense, to believers in the “invisible hand of the market,” an image Adam Smith only used once or twice, but which is frequently used among capitalism's extremists.

Two sentences on, The Economist judges that “In general, governments ought to liberalise markets, not intervene in them further.” So their market fundamentalism returns after an all too brief exile. Market failure evidently has a special meaning when it's used in The Economist.

The article explains, “Food is riddled with state intervention at every turn, from subsidies to millers for cheap bread to bribes for farmers to leave land fallow. The upshot of such quotas, subsidies and controls is to dump all the imbalances that in another business might be smoothed out through small adjustments onto the one unregulated part of the food chain: the international market.”

Still, over the last few decades, The bandwagon corporate globalization and trade has had a bumpy ride. Post-Soviet Russia was nearly destroyed by a western notion of freedom that some have described as a corporate bill of rights. Argentina, Mexico, and Japan took enough of a beating that China has decided, with considerable success, to buy into the market economy on its own terms, not those of neoliberals.

By the end of the article, it was clear The Economist was squirming.

“There is an occasional exception to the rule that governments should keep out of agriculture.”

Keep in mind, these are "rules" that, when the occasion suits, are presented as if they were rules of the universe the way gravity and electromagnetism follow an inverse square rule. Are there exceptions to gravity or electromagnetism? Are we meant to believe that food is some remote cosmic construct like a quark or a black hole that doesn't quite fit the principles of Newtonian mechanics? Who decides these exceptions? God or The Economist?

More likely, the exceptions occur when they are convenient to buttress a failing theory, a theory that always was intended to guarantee the profits and privileges of a few at the expense of the rest.

Governments, The Economist's self-appointed rule-maker allows, “can provide basic technology: executing capital-intensive irrigation projects too large for poor individual farmers to undertake, or paying for basic science that helps produce higher-yielding seeds. But be careful” The Economist commands.

“Too often,” it says, “as in Europe, where superstitious distrust of genetic modification is slowing take-up of the technology—governments hinder rather than help such advances” (Economist The silent tsunami Apr 17 08).

It was that bit about the “superstitious distrust of genetic modification” that brought me back to my original subject: Chernobyl.

Back in the night of April 25 and the morning of the 26th, 1986, the operating crew of reactor number 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in what is now Ukraine planned a test to find out if the generators could produce enough energy to keep the coolant pumps running in the event of a loss of power until the emergency diesel generator was activated.

Operators deliberately switched off the safety systems in order to keep the test run from being interrupted. For the test, they powered the reactor down to 25 per cent of its capacity.

In the words of the Chernobyl dot info website maintained by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation as an international platform on the longterm consequences of the Chernobyl disaster “This procedure did not go according to plan: for unknown reasons, the reactor power level fell to less than 1 per cent. The power therefore had to be slowly increased. But 30 seconds after the start of the test, there was a sudden and unexpected power surge. The reactor's emergency shutdown (which should have halted the chain reaction) failed.

Within fractions of a second, the power level and temperature rose many times over. The reactor went out of control. There was a violent explosion. The 1000-tonne sealing cap on the reactor building was blown off. At temperatures of over 2000°C, the fuel rods melted. The graphite covering of the reactor then ignited. In the ensuing inferno, the radioactive fission products released during the core meltdown were sucked up into the atmosphere. (3.7; 22.3)

The fire burned and radioactive emissions continued out of control for 11 full days with disastrous consequences for workers and members of the local community. A flood of information is available from numerous sources, each representing its own interests. "Even more serious is the effect that this situation has had on aid programmes: many major organisations and key countries have been reluctant to act because they do not have reliable information...." (Chernobyl.info).

Chernobyl was not an isolated incident. As a nuclear accident, it helped to dim the public's memory of Three Mile Island, a reactor in Harrisburg, Pennasylvania where a similar accident had been narrowly averted 7 years before in 1979. (March 28). The town of Harrisburg had been evacuated. Nuclear scientists said the Chernobyl reactor was a bad design, nothing at all like American designs or the CANDU. It did turn out the Hanford N-reactor was nearly identical to Chernobyl No. 4 except that it had been designed to produce plutonium for bombs instead of electricity.

In those days Chernobyl—and Three Mile Island--were just the most recent in a growing chain of environmental disasters initially concealed and then disputed by both interested governments and corporations. The Love Canal, the Mobro garbage barge that wandered the Caribbean for months seeking a place to dump its load--also the Khian Sea. The Exxon Valdez oil spill, the Cuyahoga River near Cleveland that burst into flames. The list goes on. The sinking of the Kursk, the death of the Aral Sea.

Five years before Chernobyl, on Dec 2-3, 1984, a toxic gas leak in Bhopal, India had killed some 10,000 people overnight. Bhopal survivors are still trying to reach a settlement that would deliver compensation to what remains of their families.

Meanwhile, Chernobyl, Bhopal, and Three Mile Island had brought back memories of Thalidomide. Thalidomide was first made available to patients as a prescription for morning sickness and sleeplessness on October 1, 1957. It became available in "sample tablet form" in Canada late in 1959 and was licensed for prescription use on April 1, 1961.

Taken during pregnancy, it caused startling birth malformations, and death to thousands of babies. Birth defects included: deafness, blindness, disfigurement, cleft palate, many other internal disabilities, and the disabilities most associated with Thalidomide known as phocomelia.

Around the world, victims of the drug Thalidomide and their families entered into or threatened legal actions and were eventually awarded settlements. However, in Canada no case ever reached a trial verdict. Families were forced to settle out-of-court with gag orders imposed on them not to discuss the amounts of their settlements.

From where I sit, what The Economist likes to call a “superstitious distrust of genetic modification,” looks more like a rational caution based on decades of miserable experience with denial and deceit from both government and corporate sources. It's true that the case against genetically modified crops has a lot of gaps and speculation. But that isn't the point.

Chernobyl, Bhopal, and Thalidomide symbolize something profoundly wrong with the relation between government, industry, innovation and the public. This isn't news. Post-World War II organizations like the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Physicians for Social Responsibilty, and Union of Concerned Scientists are well aware and actively provide much needed leadership. It may be we are on the threshhold of an era when publications like The Economist, amusing themselves with the public's “superstitious distrust of genetic modification,” will find their own patronizing attitude blowing back in their faces. Where have they been for the last sixty years?Recommend this Post

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Event: Luis Arce, "Bolivia's Economy: Challenges and Successes in the post-IMF era"

In the past two years, Bolivia has engaged in the re-nationalization of its natural resources, let its IMF agreement expire, and has now completed negotiations on a new Constitution. At the same time, a vocal minority of wealthy elites have objected to many of these changes - particularly to the attempted re-distribution of natural gas and oil revenues among various departments - and have made various secessionist demands upon on the federal government. Because of its status as poorest country in South America, its powerful social movements, and unique political scenario, the future of economic development and stability in Bolivia have larger implications for the region.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research is sponsoring an event featuring Bolivia's Minister of Finance, Luis Arce on

Bolivia's Economy: Challenges and Successes in the post-IMF era

with Mark Weisbrot, economist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research

Monday, April 14, 2008
11:00 am - 12:00 pm

at the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Conference Center
1800 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20036

If you are going to be in the Washington, DC area and would like to attend, the event is free and open to the public. Please RSVP here.Recommend this Post

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Exxon loses court decision, Center for Economic and Policy Research.

A British court ruled against Exxon Mobil in its dispute with Venezuela's state-owned oil company PDVSA today, tossing out a $12 billion asset freeze Exxon Mobil had requested. Exxon Mobil claimed it had sought the injunction to ensure that funds would be available should it win its dispute with Venezuela over compensation for its stake in a project in the Orinoco basin.

Judge Paul Walker summarized the ruling by saying Exxon Mobil failed to show that there was an urgent case for freezing PDVSA's assets, and said he would explain his reasons in full on Thursday. Exxon Mobil, which also pushed asset freezes in courts in the U.S. and the Netherlands, has said it will not appeal the ruling. The court also ordered Exxon Mobil to pay PDVSA $765,300 to cover legal costs within 21 days and lawyers for PDVSA announced plans to seek damages related to the freeze from Exxon Mobil.

"This ruling makes sense, since there is a case pending before the World Bank's arbitration court (ICSID), so there is no reason for a national court to resort to injunctive relief until the arbitration is complete," Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said. "The purpose of injunctive relief is to prevent irreparable harm to the plaintiff. There is no evidence that PDVSA would refuse to pay Exxon just compensation for its assets in Venezuela."

Weisbrot also said, "Exxon's legal actions therefore appear to be more of a political strategy of harassment to strengthen its bargaining position, which the London high court rejected."

Mark Weisbrot is the author of numerous papers and articles on Venezuela and Latin America available at www.cepr.net, including "The Venezuelan Economy in the Chavez Years" and "Latin America: The End of An Era" and he frequently appears in the media to discuss economic and political changes in the region.Recommend this Post

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Economic show and tell: facts to reflect upon.

When Bush was inaugurated in January 2001, the euro was trading at 94 cents and gold cost $266 an ounce. Now they are trading at $1.52 and $985 an ounce.

Peter Morici , a professor at the University of Maryland School of Business and former chief economist at the US International Trade Commission, sees those price changes as “a plain vote of no confidence in the Bush-Bernanke economic model.”

The dollar is cheap these days becasuse international investors have fled the dollar for gold and euros because Ben Bernenke, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, has no plan that would require US banks to fix their business practices and resurrect the market for bonds backed by bank loans.

Morici traces the problem to a trade deficit that has doubled under Bush. The deficit must be financed either by attracting foreign investment to new productive assets in the United States or by selling currency, bank deposits, Treasury securities, bonds and the like to foreigners. The latter claims on the US economy now total about $6.5 trillion.

“That floods world financial markets with US dollars and paper assets that function much like US dollars - what economists call liquidity. And, it evokes an iron law of the universe. If you print too much money, it won't have any value.

Until recently, most of that borrowed purchasing power was put into the hands of US consumers by large Wall Street banks. Essentially, through mortgage brokers and regional banks, those Wall Street banks loaned Americans money to buy homes and refinance their mortgages. In turn, the banks got the cash needed by bundling mortgages, as well as auto loans and credit card debt, into collateralized-debt-obligations - bonds backed by consumer promises to pay - for sale to fixed-income investors, hedge funds and others.

"The bankers could get reasonably rich on this scheme, but they got greedy. Last summer, we learned that the banks were not creating legitimate bonds. Instead they sliced, diced and pureed loans into incomprehensibly arcane securities, and then sold, bought, resold and insured those contraptions to generate fat fees, big profits and generous bonuses for bank executives.

"Now investors ranging from US insurance companies to Saudi royals are not much interested in buying bonds created by large US banks, and the banks can no longer make loans to many creditworthy consumers and businesses. Without credit, the US economy cannot grow and prosper” (Morici ATol Mar 7 08).

China's role in this catastrophe is often mistaken for unlimited power. Morici points out that “Cheap imports from China have chased millions of Americans from manufacturing jobs, as the US purchases from the Middle Kingdom exceed sales there by nearly five to one.”

Another ATol economic analyst, Chan Akya, concludes that

“Chinese exporters [will] first lose their major market and have to start firing people, while a belated widening of the currency trading band will keep local asset prices as well as food relatively unaffordable for millions of people."

Although Akya expects China's GDP growth to continue between 6 and 8 percent for the next five years, Mao's iron rice bowl will break. Akya expects price controls from the government and political upheaval from the Chinese people.

This is already beginning to happen in other parts of Asia. Marwaan Macan-Markar reports from Bangkok that the global price for rice is so high that the World Food Program is telling East Timor to look for local suppliers.

Akya expects that “first the US and then Europe with Japan all slide into negative economic growth.”

Akya expects that the coalition government of India will not survive the next elections which will happen in 12 months. The government has allowed its currency to rise mainly to control inflation at home. Growth, he believes, will decline to 5-7%.

For Akya, the dollar isn't just cheap, it's dead.

The US government is now forcing the IMF to sell its gold holdings in hopes that some holder of gold will be provoked to buy US dollar-denominated assets instead. Akya expects this strategy to backfire. New losses for the IMF will “leave the institution at a new nadir of relevance as far as the emerging financial order is concerned.”

Looking for a substitute reserve currency, Akya rules out the euro because he sees Europe as a “purveyor of dangerously overpriced goods to an overtaxed population.”

“As sellers of commodities, Middle Eastern nations could never get their currencies as reserve holdings for processing nations such as Asian countries. For much the same reason, countries in Africa and South America are rendered irrelevant for this purpose” (Akya ATol Mar 4 08). Recommend this Post

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"US recession will hurt major US trading partners, projections show," Center for Economic and Policy Research (Washington, DC).

Mexico, Canada, Central America and Caribbean Will Be Hardest Hit; South America Less Affected by U.S. Slowdown

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Major U.S. trading partners in the Western Hemisphere will experience a significant economic slowdown as the U.S. economy heads into recession, according to projections from the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Countries in the Americas that are more heavily dependent on the U.S. import market will be hardest hit, such as NAFTA partners Mexico, Canada, and CAFTA partners Honduras, and Nicaragua. Most South American nations will generally fare better than Central America and the Caribbean will, due to their lower proportion of trade with the U.S.

"A number of U.S. trade partners have seen trade expand during the 'good times' of economic expansion and rising U.S. trade deficits," said CEPR Co-Director and lead author of the paper, Mark Weisbrot. "But now there's a downside, and the countries more dependent on exporting to the U.S. are going to feel the crunch."

The paper, "The Economic Impact of a U.S. Slowdown on the Americas," by Mark Weisbrot, John Schmitt, and Luis Sandoval, shows that U.S. trade partners could experience significant drops in exports and GDP - a decline in exports between 11 and 15.5 percent (5.9 - 8.3% of GDP) by 2010 for Honduras, and a 10.4 - 15.1% export drop (2.9 % - 4.1% of GDP) for Mexico. Canada's GDP is projected to decline by between 2.8% and 4 % by 2010, as exports fall off by a measure of 9.5 - 13.5 %.

This reduction could push some of the United States' major trading partners into recession. Growth in both Canada and Mexico, for example, slowed sharply in 2001, during the last U.S. recession, with real GDP growth in Mexico slipping to zero for that year. The last U.S. recession was relatively short (March to November 2001) and mild in terms of lost output. The next (possibly current) recession in the United States will likely be worse.

Meanwhile, countries that are less dependent on the United States as a market for their exports, or more reliant on domestic demand, will see smaller impacts of the U.S. recession on their total exports and national GDP.

The economic slowdown in the United States is likely to be associated with a reduction in the size of the U.S. trade deficit to a more sustainable level over the long run. In recent years, the demand for imports created by a rapidly growing U.S. economy provided an important boost for many U.S. trade partners. The U.S. built up trade deficits during this period, which peaked at 5.8 % of GDP in 2006, but these deficits cannot be sustained over the long-term. A recession in the U.S. is likely to accelerate the process of reducing the U.S. trade deficit.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research is an independent, nonpartisan think tank that was established to promote democratic debate on the most important economic and social issues that affect people's lives. CEPR's Advisory Board of Economists includes Nobel Laureate economists Robert Solow and Joseph Stiglitz; Richard Freeman, Professor of Economics at Harvard University; and Eileen Appelbaum, Professor and Director of the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers University.
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The largest discussion on homelessness and poverty in Canada marks 6 years, CKUT (Montreal)

This year's Homelessness Marathon will broadcast live from the streets of Montreal on Wednesday, February 20th, starting at sunset and running all night long until sunrise on Thursday, February 21st.

What is the Homelessness Marathon?

The sixth annual Homelessness Marathon will once again serve up 14-hours of people-powered radio, broadcasting from outside of the Native Friendship Center of Montreal (St. Laurent & Ontario) beginning at sunset. With the goal of being a consciousness-raising event, the Marathon will provide an opportunity for homeless people & their supporters to take to the airwaves, and allow a nationwide discussion on homelessness issues and possible solutions. The Homelessness Marathon is annually carried by more than 30 radio stations. Listeners are invited to call-in with their questions or comments toll-free at 1.866.763.4136.

2008 Topics

Set to broadcast WED February 20th, 5pm (EST)

:: HOUR/HEURE 1, 5pm / 17h - Homelessness by Numbers / L'itinérance en chiffres

:: HOUR/HEURE 2, 6pm / 18h - Disabilities in the streets / Être sans-abri avec un handicap physique

:: HOUR/HEURE 3, 7pm / 19h - Indigenous Hour / L'Heure autochtone

:: HOUR/HEURE 4, 8pm / 20h - Les réfugiéEs dans la rue / Refugees and homelessness

:: HOUR/HEURE 5, 9pm / 21h - A critical look at services / Un regard critiques sur les services communautaires

:: HOUR/HEURE 6, 10pm / 22h - Poverty on the move - from downtown to the suburbs / La chasse aux pauvres, du centre-ville aux quartiers aux banlieues

:: HOUR/HEURE 7, 11pm / 23h - theater in the streets / Théâtre dans la rue

:: HOUR/HEURE 8, Midnight / Minuit - OPEN MIC Rants, Poetry, and Music on the Streets / MICRO OUVERT Declamations, chialage, poésie et musique sur la rue avec/with CKUTs Off the Hook

:: HOUR/HEURE 9, 1am / 01h - Policing poverty / Judiciarisation de la pauvreté

:: HOUR/HEURE 10, 2am / 02h - racisme et pauvreté dans la rue / racism and poverty in the street

:: HOUR/HEURE 11, 3am / 03h - literacy and education in the streets / analphabétisme et éducation dans la rue

:: HOUR/HEURE 12, 4am / 04h - Homelessness and working / Travailler et vivre dans la rue

:: HOUR/HEURE 13, 5am / 05h - Physical and Mental Health on the Street / La santé mentale et physique dans la rue

:: HOUR/HEURE 14, 6am / 06h - homeless nation hour of power / L'heure du pouvoir

For more information, contact

(Français) Sophie Vaillancourt, 514.448.4041 x6788
(English) Gretchen King, 514.448.4041 x6788 Recommend this Post

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FEATURE"A year in context, part 1/2: Is it the end of the world?" September 11, 2007.

Back in 1969, I had a gig as a photographer on a project that produced a preliminary scan of pollution along the Fraser River. We stopped at communities along the way—Abbotsford, Hope, Lytton, Lillooet, Quesnel, Williams Lake. When we got to Prince George, our host took us down to a sandy spot at the side of the river.

We sat down and made ourselves comfortable. It was the end of a long day. He lit up a joint, and as he reached it slowly in my direction, said, “So, is it the end of the world?”

Looking back over the last year, the main theme of World Report has been multipolar realignment, the return of a multinational world order.

Multipolar realignment is a shift, real or anticipated, from a world order dominated by the “sole remaining superpower” to one in which leadership must be shared. It is—or would be--a new balance of power.

Is it really happening? What does it or will it or is it likely to look like? As an end point, a multipolar world order would be one in which no single state was able to achieve (or impose) its will without the cooperation of the other powers.

The defining dynamic of a shift to such an order would be a decline in the effectiveness of the “sole remaining superpower” accompanied by an increase in the power of one or more nations or groups.

We would expect this realignment, if it is happening at all, to proceed in the manner of a hiistorical evolution. It's progress would be ragged and uncertain. For every eight steps taken in one direction, seven will go in the other, with some events too ambiguous to interpret one way or the other.

I have some biases I should be clear about. Two years ago, I said that the term “superpower” is “borderline gibberish.”

I said that in 2003,

“Everyone, including the President, whose public speech is heavily laced with such linguistic junk food, called the US 'the world's only superpower.' People all across the political spectrum asked what country was next on America's hit list, as if nothing could prevail over US military might.

It was a delusion. But it was, in those days, a very common delusion.”

In my opinion, the President's use of language hasn't improved in the last four years. But the number of people who share the delusion that a big, expensive army is invincible seems to be declining.

By 2005, with the mission still not accomplished, the perception was beginning to take root “that Washington could be opposed effectively without incurring unacceptable costs" (Weinstein and Bendersky Realignment Jun 20 05).

This inevitably led to whispers that Uncle Sam's ability to become “the unquestioned political and military arbiter of the globalizing world economy” was less than you might expect from such an amazing collection of military hardware.

Indeed, the status of the US as the world's sole remaining superpower comes from three sources: military, economic and political dominance.

Viewed in this way, one of the most important events of the last twelve months was the Chinese test of an anti-satellite weapon in January. The test brought the possibility of asymmetrical warfare to outer space, a special worry to Americans and Canadians who believe that space has not already been “weaponized.”

According to John Pike, a satellite expert at globalsecurity.org, "Our space assets are the first asset on the scene....

"They are absolutely central to why we are a superpower; a signature component to America's style of warfare" (qtd Brooks Bulletin Jan 18 07).

But the trouble had started before that. By this time last year, the official cessation of hostilities in the Lebanon war (July 12 to August 14) had taken place nearly a month before on August 14, 2006. Here was yet another war that appeared to demonstrate that an army could establish full spectrum dominance, and still lose the more important political war both abroad and at home.

The collapse of domestic support for Israeli PM Ehud Olmert was certainly striking. But much bigger surprises came from Fouad Siniora, the Lebanese Prime Minister.

Siniora is a strong supporter of the western influence in Lebanon and is even described by some as a puppet of America. But as President Bush found out last month when Hamid Karzai described Iran as “a helper and a solution” indeed as “a supporter of Afghanistan, in the peace process that we have and the fight against terror and the fight against narcotics in Afghanistan" the puppets seem to be acquiring minds of their own.

In a series of press conferences during the war in Lebanon, Siniora repeatedly called attention to the Palestinian refugees' right of return. He also repeated that sooner or later Israel would have to establish friendly relations with its neighbours and one time expressed the view that Lebanon would be the last Arab state to recognize Israel.

In Afghanistan, all three pillars of American dominance—military, economic and political—are on the line. More, the future of NATO is in question. Former Indian diplomat to the region M K Bhadrakumar observes

“it was apparent to anyone that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was a divided house and that the United States' old European allies didn't share its apparent intention to turn Afghanistan into a client state under a NATO flag from where US power projection into the Persian Gulf and the Middle East and South Asia and Central Asia would become possible” (ATol May 19 07).

By this time last year, it was clear that the Taliban, which had been driven from the field in 2002, was back in force.

Last year was the worst for Canadian troops, and it seemed that 2007 might be even worse yet. That hasn't turned out to be the case. Canadian casualties for 2007 are slightly lower than for 2006. The Taliban's spring offensive that was talked about all winter didn't materialize.

Even so, we do not appear to feel threatened by the Taliban. For whatever reason, the reconstruction of Afghanistan has not gained traction with Canadians as a great national project.

Nagging NATO didn't put any more troops in the field either.

Bhadrakumar again: quote

“There is an Afghan opinion building up over the imperative of an intra-Afghan dialogue leading to genuine power-sharing. But the US and NATO pretend they aren't seeing the groundswell of opinion.

Their emphasis is on the existential challenge posed by [the] Afghan war to NATO's global role. They look over the Afghan ridge toward the new cold-war horizon. Meanwhile, the US is inexorably losing its monopoly over conflict resolution in Afghanistan. And regional powers include some that are against the open-ended presence of NATO forces.”

Blaming Pakistan has shaken Musharraf's hold on power, but it doesn't appear to have made Pakistanis glad at the prospect of Americans flying missions into their country.

In fact, the whole matter of air support for NATO forces has been identified as the main cause of the increase in civilian casualties inflicted by NATO forces.

The economic source of the US status as the world's sole superpower is scarcely more secure than the military one. In October, former Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank delivered a 700-page report that called climate change "the greatest and widest ranging market failure ever seen" (Oct 30 06).

A few days later, a study published in Science magazine concluded that at the rate species were being lost there would be no more viable fish or invertebrate species available to fisheries by 2050. Another market failure requiring intervention since the results also showed that these trends are still reversible.

Economic dominance of institutions like the IMF and the World Bank are in decline because China and Venezuela have emerged as alternate sources of development funding.

Cold War analysts keen to see the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as a new version of the Warsaw Pact have seized on joint military exercizes and the presence of Iran as key features. But it's more complex than that and we're getting short of time. Suffice it to say for the moment that the SCO is another alternate source of funding and energy cooperation for countries of the region.

The WTO negotiations known as the Doha Round are also in trouble. Whether you think all this superpower in decline stuff is bad news or good, there have been some developments that run in the other direction that might make a good starting point for next week.

So is that the end of the world? Maybe not. My Prince George friend and I were not ready to embrace a secular version of the apocalypse, until after we had examined a few other catastrophes of varying scope—say the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Great Depression, and the Fall of the Roman Empire.

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FEATURE"Agenda 2007," January 8, 2007.

What to expect from 2007? This morning, World Report looks at slowing globalization and responses to it in Latin America and Africa--with a short afterward on the election coming this year in Pakistan.

Last week, World Report moved temporarily to the Tuesday morning "Nelson Before Nine" where we discussed prospects for 2007 in an interview format with Donna MacDonald. We touched on the execution of Saddam Hussein, climate change, upcoming elections in France, Pakistan, and possibly Canada. And we waxed philosophical about the benefits of minority government and the possible end, for the time being, of unilateralism in American foreign policy.

The world may be shrinking, but it’s still a big place to cover in 12 minutes. So this week we pick up where we left off. Nothing in depth or fine-grained, just a brief consideration of the big chunks on what looks like the agenda for 2007 so far.

The economy is likely to continue to be characterized by increasing geopolitical instability, increasing energy prices (not just oil), declining home prices and rising inflation.

The Doha round of WTO talks has fizzled. Although there will almost certainly be some attempt to reignite them, the WTO and the neoliberal model of globalization have been exposed as a model with limited success in some countries and disastrous consequences in many others. Opposition continues to grow worldwide.

This is significant beyond the implications for global trade. Some analysts are saying that the FTAA is all but dead in Latin America. There will be some bilateral trade agreements negotiated, but the re