The IMF announces the world economy is in crisis and globalisation is under threat. So we must have more globalisation.
Hmmm…so a world economy based upon globalisation of finance, labor and trade is failing and has been for a decade due to globalisation and the IMF wants more…and the BBC peddles that narrative for them…opposing the ‘little englanders’ and Trumps of the world who apparently want to close down all trade with other countries.
Remember it was Gordon Brown who told us one reason we had the Crash was because he failed to realise how interconnected the world was and that events in one place had effects elsewhere as well.
Gordon Brown has admitted he made a “big mistake” over the handling of financial regulation in the run-up to the banking crisis of 2008.
The former prime minister told a US conference he had not realised the “entanglements” of global institutions.
He said: “We set up the FSA [the City regulator] believing the problem would come from the failure of an individual institution. That was the big mistake.
“We didn’t understand just how entangled things were.”
So it is in fact globalisation that is the problem ‘some might say’.
The BBC however thinks that Brexit is the problem….Brexit which wants to, according to the BBC, close off all trade with the world and stop all immigration.
Seriously you couldn’t make it up…a supposedly expert BBC programme dedicated to business and finance, Wake up to Money, was telling us that Brexit is a threat to world trade [apparently ‘protectionism has raised its ugly head‘]when we know that a major narrative from the Leave camp is that Brexit will mean more world trade as the UK seeks out new markets and trade deals outside the EU.
WUTM [36 mins in…goes on for a while] didn’t mention Brexit for a while as it talked about ‘the threat’ to globalisation. I knew it would though and I waited and waited, first a subtle, indirect allusion to Brexit [the risks to business if there is a ‘bit of a movement’ for certain sectors to be trading elsewhere in the world] and then bingo the floodgates opened and Brexit was blamed for all the ills of the world. A very one-sided and obviously biased towards ‘globalisation’ and anti-Brexit programme painting a totally false picture of what Brexit means claimng that it is opposed to global trade when in fact it is global trade it champions. Good old BBC…accurate, truthful and balanced as always.
Globalisation is a myth. It is an excuse for big businesses to import cheap third world labour and for extreme left fascists/Marxists to replace the indigenous European social structures of the West which they hate for being successful for hundreds of years. If if was truly “global” we’d be seeing South American, Asian, and African countries takes their fair share of migrants, but they never do, because they know it’s simply sensible to protect their own before being burdened by other people. The EU is an insular, protectionist unit that strangles the life out of any country looking to succeed with tariffs and free movement, yet trying to leave this failing bloc – the slowest of all in recovering from the recession – to stand on our own two feet in the wider world makes us ‘little Englanders’ to the loathsome, hate-filled, ignorant liberals.
Globalisation is a myth. It is an excuse for big businesses to import cheap third world labour and for extreme left fascists/Marxists to replace the indigenous European social structures of the West which they hate for being successful for hundreds of years.
And yet, it is just over two decades since, in what seems the very recent past, that I recall the Socialist Worker banners and Marxist banners being held alongside anti globalisation banners.
At least the far left had a sort of logic that properly understood their enemy and knew that globalisation was going to be bad for the UK workforce.
What changed I wonder?
What I do recognise now is a far left that has become a cult, a reason for reason itself, where the actual logic of their being has become redundant.
I am not sure what you are using as your definition to disprove globalisation, however, I would argue that far from being a myth, globalisation is the main driver for everything good / bad that impacts us all.
Globalisation is in my opinion all about geo economics and allowing companies / countries to invest anywhere they wish. Globalisation has been around in various forms since the bronze age, it has been called ‘Empires, Federations and of course Unions, each of these entities aimed for the same objectives – to increase trading markets, harmonise currencies and get the best possible deal for themselves.
To increase your wealth you need to enter new markets, impose your culture on others, push your policies and guarantee that your currency trades at a premium…this is globalisation.
It has always been there and it always will.
Many years ago I watched a program produced by an American economics professor explaining the dynamics of global economics and their interactions with each other.
His major point was that systems outside the then communist block are self adjusting providing trade barriers and tariffs are not used to protect unprofitable businesses and industries.
His example was the rise and fall of Japan. Japan had cheap well trained labour and a good industrial base. As their trade took off in the 1960’s so they eroded car and electronics manufacturing in the West. However as time progressed better conditions in Japan increased living standards and wages and the value of the Yen increased until there came a point where their products were no longer cheap and desirable. He chided the USA for trade barriers on vehicles and steel.
They reached the zenith and now like all mature economies they are having to re-invent themselves. They are still struggling but the balance started to swing back to the USA as the value of the US Dollar wained against the Yen.
Globalisation means different things to different people…. but it is not a myth.
In trade terms it is predicated on moving imports and exports around the world..this requires cheap fuel to keep transport costs down.. this makes energy producing countries powerful and able to use fuel costs to increase their global influence….Arab muslim oil producers are making full use of this factor.
A wealth distribution map of the world shows some “regions” as more affluent than others, this is interpreted by some as reason to use global governance structures (UN, WTO and various “so called” NGOs) to equalise levels of affluence around the world by migration streams (and the resulting remittance streams channelling money away from the affluent regions toward the poorer regions).
Manufacturing costs can be reduced by switching mass employment (and the resultant wages) away from “affluent regions” (Western Europe, USA, Australasia) hence the drift of employment in manufacturing and services to low labour cost “regions”. Hence manufacturing of good like clothes and steel and service call centres have “gone East” to where the labour is cheap and plentiful. Affluent regions manufacturers can only compete by moving their operations offshore or by reducing wages for workers in affluent regions.
Global interests are organised and run by a multi-racial and multicutural “elite” whose primary duty is profit for Globalised business and governmental interests. People outside the elite are interchangeable production and consumption units, who can be allowed to flow around the globe seeking work and consumption opportunities in much the same way as any other commodity such as money or goods.
Globalisation does not allow “national interests” to impede its operations, therefore there is little or no place for “national interests” or borders which are seen as blocks to the free movement of commodities (including people. The left are the useful idiots of globalisation mistaking it for internationalism. Globalisation actually ruthlessly exploits people and pits them against each other as individuals competing for work and resources on a global scale.
Resistance to globalisation, requires cultures and nations to assert themselves and to defend their own interests by producing its own fuel for example, or by seeking to retain employment and consumption opportunities within its own borders and for their own people.
Hence the globaliser friendly BBCs anguish about the potential of fracking which has already made America less dependent on its Saudi “allies”.
Splendid catch Alan.
I noted quite a long piece on the Ten O Clock Views by that black economics bloke-Kamal Ahmed was it?
He was wandering that familiar bit of rustbelt that they love to show, by way of angry embittered white grumps who blame Bush AND Obama for the rust they have to live in.
I turned the sound down-and needed to hear nothing-every cue, angle and claptrap nostrum was in full show as Kamal emoted like Joss Acland. What a ham!
It`s fun to write the script, time how long Trump gets a pasting while Hillary (well, her shills-she` going for the disabled vote in being very ill)-gets the caring brow, the anxious mother clips.
Yes-when regulation isn`t working, sex education isn`t having an effect, global warming isn`t doing what it`s meant to: and the Euro is crashing and burning?
What do we need?…MORE of same, as practiced by more committed people.
More laws, more bullying, more threats and more research to suit their agenda.
Being ex Commies-they seem to think that it doesn`t work because those who enact it are half-hearted and haven`t done enough of it and in a more doctrinaire way.
Communism would have worked fine-but it wasn`t enforced enough.
Hence the Euro disaster-where building any give, any fire escapes is an admission that it might go wrong and need alternative routea…wussy thinking, do or die.
But that`s the Left for you-unthinking, thick and happy to enforce RSI on anybody but their own.
Globalisation or Death…but only the losers and the ordinary and the law-abiding get the “death bit” of the lollipop,
Lauren Southern gives a coherent account of globalism
The EU is a European focused customs union with significant tariffs against other trade areas, such as African farmers while subsidising EU farmers. Can the BBC explain in what way that helps global trade?