Director | February 12, 2009
After decades suffering from dumping of agricultural products by Big Agriculture, African farmers have organized against World Trade Organization and International Monetary Fund policies that impoverish them. Their website is at ROPPA.info. Free trade is protectionism for the rich. If you still worry about free trade versus protectionism, an analysis of world food markets by […]
Director | February 5, 2009
How are people responding to the global economic crash? Tom Engelhardt gathers local news reports on murders, suicides, and other extreme personal responses to financial reversal. Reuters reports on food scavengers in France. Bloomberg reports that the two global banks, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, will not be subject to salary and bonus regulations as […]
Director | February 2, 2009
German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced at Davos that she was on board with Gordon Brown’s call for a new world financial order. Merkel appears to be retreating from her stance of panicked nationalism after the global market crash. Sounds downright cheerful about globalism now. Bad news for Germany. Vladimir Putin also pulled his punches in […]
Director | January 29, 2009
The Herald Tribune reports on France’s general strike yesterday, with up to 2.5 million protesters in the streets across France. One irony of this demonstration is that most of the workers who walked off the job were government bureaucrats, those whose jobs are safest. Why aren’t U.S. workers protesting in the streets? There are plenty […]
Director | January 28, 2009
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown again announced yesterday that the global financial crisis was an opportunity to organize a new world financial order. See the story, and reaction, at the Daily Express. Brown expects to announce the outline of the new order in April at the G20 summit.
Director | January 27, 2009
Timothy Geithner was confirmed as U.S. Treasury Secretary yesterday. The vote was 60-34 in the Senate. Some Senators expressed disapproval that Geithner failed to pay self-employment taxes for two years while working at the International Monetary Fund. See the story at boston.com, and read a few of the comments below the story. This is what […]
Director | January 26, 2009
The Telegraph reports that thousands of British children are being recruited by special marketing agencies to peddle consumer products to their friends. Children are being recruited to set up websites and administer questionnaires to their classmates. MacDonald’s, Coca-Cola, and Mattel are among the well-known corporate names paricipating in these tactics. Children as young as five […]
