More than 200,000 California state employees were expected to stay home without pay amid the state’s fiscal crisis. Dubbed “Furlough Fridays,” Governor Schwarzenegger mandated the 10% cutback in hours across the state’s public sector.
Distinguished geographer David Harvey joins host Harry Kreisler for a discussion of how the analytic tools of geography and Marxism can contribute to our understanding of the new imperialism.
This talk forms part of the UC Berkeley Series: “Conversations with History”.
George Friedman: “When a country becomes of fundamental strategic importance to the world’s leading power, that has a real consequence.”
Mr. Friedman is predicting that the US-Polish strategic relationship will bode well for Poland and its prospects are akin to those of South Korea post 1960 where the US nurtured South Korea leading to an economic takeoff.
The U.S. lost 598,000 jobs last month, the biggest decline in 34 years. The recession is now affecting almost every major country around the world.
Roben Farzad, a senior writer and columnist for BusinessWeek magazine, joins Martin Savidge to discuss when and how the global economic downturn will bottom out, economic lessons from history and why countries like India and Brazil are faring relatively well compared to the U.S.
On Thursday, February 5, 2009, President Barack Obama delivered remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast then, he signed an executive order establishing the new White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. In a short video, Executive Director Joshua DuBois explains how the office will operate and what role faith-based and community groups have to play in the economic recovery.
I am wholly uncomfortable with this initiative. It’s welfare for Churches.
Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Carla Robbins, deputy editor of The New York Times, join Martin Savidge to discuss the weeks top stories: The accelerating war effort in Afghanistan, developments in Iran, and Russia’s importance in both areas.
A presentation from the Davos World Economic Forum summarizing four possible scenarios through 2020 for the global financial system. The four scenarios are:
1) Financial Regionalism. Under this scenario, the world by 2020 is divided into three major trading blocs: the European Union, the “Democratic Trade Alliance” led by the United States and its free trade partners supposedly in the Western Hemisphere, and the “fast-expanding Eastern International Economic Community. This scenario foresees a world where goods and services flow freely within each region but barriers between are high.
2) Re-engineered Western Centrism. This scenario envisions a Bretton Woods II that resets a global monetary system marked by increased financial regulation that provides for uneven global development and stagnation in emerging markets. This scenario predicts a regular string of economic crises. The presentation concludes that this approach is a stop-gap measure that will require a Bretton Woods III.
3) Fragmented Protectionism. This scenario predicts a retreat from globalization first in the United States as its recession lingers forcing an economic populism. According to the Davos Set, economic protectionism will lead to a break down of the international order if not outright war over resources. For the Davos Set, this is the worst case scenario and thus it is painted blacker. The truth is that we have already seen a new race for resources. Daewoo Logistics has negotiated a 99-year lease on some 3.2 million acres of farmland on the impoverished island of Madagascar in order to secure long-term food security for its home South Korean market. China has been scouring across Asia, Latin America and Africa in search of resources to feed its growing industrial base. In the past decade, Myanmar, Sudan and Zimbabwe have emerged as clientelistic states of China. Earlier this month, it was learned that two Japanese corporations are seeking to develop Bolivia’s vast lithium reserves in an effort to secure access to one of the key metals in the evolution of batteries and energy storage. This week, Russia lend energy-rich Kyrgyzstan $2 billion, wrote off $180 million in debt and add gave outright another $150 million in aid on the condition that Kyrgyzstan close the US air base in the country.
4) Rebalanced Multilateralism. This scenario envisions a “global financial ecosystem” under a restored International Monetary Fund, now based in Singapore, reflecting a power shift in the world’s economic forces to the East. This scenario foresees greater global co-operation including harmonization of regulations, still uneven, but moving in the direction that provides a stable global investment climate.
The underlying assumption, of course, made by the Davos Set is that neo-liberal economic policies that include free trade, harmonization of regulations and tariffs (a race to the bottom), flexible labour markets, the free flow of capital, the sanctity of contracts and increased financialization and securization are the summum bonum that will to unparalleled asset creation.
Under each of these scenarios, created by some of the world’s most well-connected, the prospects for the United States indicate a decline of American economic power. My own view is that we are heading for a period of sustained deflation the likes of which the world hasn’t seen since the Panic of 1873. There is clearly a crisis of global capitalism. The neo-liberal economic model has run its course but it is not clear what will replace it. A few years ago, I would have place my bet on neo-conservativism, which combines the neo-liberal economic model with an authoritarian state but it seems that, at least for now, the neo-conservative agenda came undone in the crucible of Iraq. A return of the embedded liberal state, as we once enjoyed, does seem feasible but at the same time it would be unrealistic to believe that the prosperity once enjoyed is again a matter of destiny. To be blunt, our future prosperity requires breaking the tyranny of oil.
I was struck by the fact the President used that phrase the other night in Williamsburg. It demonstrates to a subset of a global elite of scientists, academics and policy makers that the President understands that in the long-term our economic prosperity is tied to the creation of an economy not wholly based on fossil fuels. That the President uttered those three little words -tyranny of oil- is a fact that should not be lost on the progressive community. Obama, it seems, does get it. Or perhaps, more accurately, understands the urgency of the moment.
The latest abduction of three Red Cross members last month have joined a series of high-profile kidnappings in southern Philippines, and raised the concerns of the local population.
Al Jazeera’s Marga Ortigas reports from the island of Sacol, near Zamboanga.