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Globalization

Greece On Fire: The EU's Economic Dresden

The fires in Greece are an EU/euro Dresden: a direct result of requiring the Greek government to end its brush-clearing program and slash government employment and infrastructure

Sell The Lexus, Burn The Olive Tree

Globalization and its Discontents
I was getting myself measured for a straitjacket when I received an urgent message from Bolivia.
The jacket was Thomas Friedman’s idea. He’s the New York Times columnist and amateur economist who wrote The Lexus and the Olive Tree, which is kind of a long, deep kiss to globalization. I was in Cleveland to debate Friedman at the Council on World Affairs meeting in May 2001. Globalization, he told the council, is all about the communications revolution. It’s about the Internet. It’s about how you can sit in your bedroom, buy shares in Amazon.com and send e-mails to Eskimos all at the same time, wearing your pajamas.

Greg Palast On Globalization

by Lloyd Hart
On one of the best trips I have ever taken to New York City in which I started the filming of a documentary on globalization, I had no idea what to expect from the protests that were about to take place over the arrival of the World Economic Forum as it made it’s hasty retreat from it’s mountain hideaway in Switzerland to what it thought was sacred corporate ground in New York City. I did however have a good idea what I could expect from Gregory Palast

Who Shot Argentina?The Finger Prints On the Smoking Gun Read 'I.M.F.’

And news this week in South America is that Argentina died, or at least its economy. One in six workers were unemployed even before the beginning of this grim austral winter. Millions more have lost work as industrial production, already down 25% for the year, fell into a coma induced by interest rates which, by one measure, have jumped to over 90% on dollar-denominated borrowings.

States Deregulate Energy at Their Peril – from The New York Times

While reporters ogled celebrities at Barbra Streisand’s bungalow during the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles, there was a real display of populism 100 miles to the south in San Diego. There politicians have enrolled two million citizens in a scary economic experiment. This year, San Diego became the first city in California to experience the end of state regulation of electricity prices.

Of Blackbeard and Bill Gates Rip-off Software and CDs, Price-Rigged Pig Feed, Human Rights Abusers – a US Network is now on to them all

For The Observer/Guardian UK
You want to be a billionaire? Answer this one: What do Blackbeard, the Butcher of Croatia and Bill Gates have in common?
While the money clock ticks away, let me tell you about my weekend. I spent it at the Sheraton Hotel in Brussels, watching the guests shuttle between rooms. It looked a little like love, but maybe it meant nothing more to them than a couple nights of fun. There was Steve Ballmer, new CEO of Microsoft, and a thousand of his closest commercial and government friends, meeting under the guise of the ‘European Business Summit’.