Dr. Amp throws the finger [x2!] at global capitalism.

After embarking on a fairly lengthy discussion of how Donald Trump should be a hero and not a hate figure of the anti-globalization movement amid violent protests at the recently-concluded G-20 meeting in Hambug, here is something a bit more lighthearted. I've been watching the return of the seminal show Twin Peaks to television after a 25+ year hiatus. Its off-kilter blend of melodrama, tragicomedy, horror, and science fiction has always been appealing to me.

However, what caught my attention in the context of anti-globalization was Dr. Jacoby--he of the different colored glasses--sliding further into madness in the revival. He's turned into some sort of crazed conspiracy theorist who goes by the name of Dr. Amp, selling sh_t shovels to dig ourselves out of the filth of modern life:


Instead of having to listen to the likes of Naomi Klein repeat the same old global corporate takeover shtick, why not have essentially the same message delivered in an entertaining way? I'd rather hear the Dr. Jacoby version any day...at least it's amusing in a self-deprecating (instead of self-important) manner. All the same, this satire points out the shortcomings of this genre of foolishness:

1. Conspiracy - there are vast, unseen forces working against us in so many ways. Once more, the level of coordination implied usually is not demonstrable that there are several actors out just to get the rest of us.
2. Logical inconsistency - going back to the point about Trump, anti-globalization arguments do not usually benefit from having parts that fit together. For instance, if globalization is providing employment to workers in poorer countries "stealing jobs", would they be "better off" if there were no global economic integration and everything consumed in rich countries was made in the US/Europe/Japan/ANZ, etc.? If anti-globalization activists are presumably concerned about the welfare of poor people (especially workers) elsewhere, then why deny them a living wage by "Making America Great Again" and reshoring virtually all manufacturing operations?
3. Profit motive - Selling $29.99 "sh_t shovels" is the entire point of Dr. Jacoby's operations. Yes, he is interested in making money. If you were, say, Naomi Klein, and believed that your work contained the wisdom to right the wrongs caused by capitalism, then why not distribute it for free instead of charging us money and enriching some multi-billionaire like Amazon's Jeff Bezos?

Bottom line: As I've said before, most of these anti-globalization types are in it for the money too. The only difference between them and most of those whom they criticize is that they simply don't admit doing so by adopting self-righteous rhetoric.

Go ask Dr Amp.

G-20 Hamburg protests: why the hate for anti-globalization champion Trump?

For years, anti-globalization protesters have gone out to all sorts of notable economically-related gatherings worldwide, be they G-7, G-8 or G-20 summits; World Economic Forum gatherings; World Bank and IMF meetings; WTO ministerial conferences, and so on and so forth. The boilerplate accusation is that world leaders betray the interests of the common people in favor of a faceless global capitalist class. To this, the common people must stand up for what they believe in. So far, nothing is new here.

What's interesting with the emergence of Donald Trump in world politics is that he espouses much of the same rhetoric: the [American] working class has been hurt by globalization, and therefore globalization should be rolled back to protect the common people from the ravages of world trade. As such, it's always struck me how vehemently opposed anti-globalization campaigners are to Trump when he's actually done much more to stop further economic integration than all of them combined. From single-handedly dooming the Trans-Pacific Partnership to oblivion to refusing to agree that trade protectionism is to be avoided during economic summits, he should be the man of anti-globalization writer Naomi Klein's dreams. But alas, he is not. This Canadian who likes meddling in Yanks' affairs just cannot stop blathering about how awful Trump is. (It's a form of globalization I don't appreciate when some foreigner thinks she's "active" in US domestic politics.)

There are, of course, all sorts of wrinkles here. Coming from the left, the anti-globalization vision of eliminating world trade is complemented by replacing it with folks being self-sufficient in small, sustainable communities. Meanwhile, the Trumpian vision is instead a triumph of American industry making everything that those in the United States wish for and more--to the exclusion of considering everyone else's welfare. Another line of argument is that Trump is only masquerading as a champion of the working class and is actually globalizer in disguise.

Then you also have a panoply of leftist causes that are the exact opposite of what Trump champions. These include climate change, racial tolerance, and so on. But, if you really think about it, Trump may be the one who is *really* anti-globalization in outlook here if the criteria is sheer isolationism. Consider:

• You don't want international cooperation on climate change since, well, it involves representatives of different nations discussing things. A global elite should not be dictating what the free peoples of the world do to their piece of the planet;
• You don't want tolerance of other people with different creeds, colors, or races. If the opposite of "globalist" is "nationalist," then you cannot have a nation-state which when it is largely indistinguishable from all others.

Abhorrent as those ideas may be, they're arguably more consistent with extricating ourselves from the rest of the world. In this sense Trump is the true anti-globalist, whereas those championing all sorts of progressive causes are not, really.

If anti-globalization means going it alone no matter what everyone else thinks, Trump is its best representative.

Anti-globalization activists should therefore celebrate Trump's arrival, full stop, wherever in the world he shows up. The attention he brings to the cause is unrivaled--especially compared to a ragtag group of anarchists and flunky writers like Klein.

A jubilant display of fireworks greets the opening of the ECB's new Franfurt digs.

For an increasingly controversial organization, the ECB opening its new, EUR 1.3B headquarters in Frankfurt was never going to go down well with its critics. Namely, the European left. Having prescribed so much austerity, it doesn't sit well with protesters that relatively well-off central bankers have built such an expensive building. To no one's real surprise, its inauguration has brought a pan-European protest to the usually sleepy German town. Riots have raged as police cars have been set on fire, protesters have been roughed up, and the mood has turned sour:

Dozens of people have been hurt and some 350 people arrested as anti-austerity demonstrators clashed with police in the German city of Frankfurt. Police cars were set alight and stones were thrown in a protest against the opening of a new base for the European Central Bank (ECB). Violence broke out close to the city's Alte Oper concert hall hours before the ECB building's official opening. "Blockupy" activists are expected to attend a rally later on Wednesday. In earlier disturbances, police in riot gear used water cannon to clear hundreds of anti-capitalist protesters from the streets around the new ECB headquarters. 

Call it the European Cup of Anti-Austerity Protests. Moreover, it certainly doesn't look good that "Europe's central bank" has to be ringed with barbed wire to separate it from the folks it supposedly serves:

Organisers were bringing a left-wing alliance of protesters from across Germany and the rest of Europe to voice their anger at the ECB's role in austerity measures in EU member states, most recently Greece. The bank, in charge of managing the euro, is also responsible for framing eurozone policy and, along with the IMF and European Commission is part of a troika which has set conditions for bailouts in Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Cyprus.

A spokesman for the Blockupy movement said the troika was responsible for austerity measures which have pushed many into poverty. Police set up a cordon of barbed wire outside the bank's new 185m (600ft) double-tower skyscraper, next to the River Main.

Uniting Europe has long been an elusive dream for the EU's architects. Ironically, could it be that they may be able to do so if these leftists succeed in getting more Europeans on their side in opposition to the European project? It is certainly a frightening prospect that you cannot rule out.

MarketWatch has more scenes from the battle in Frankfurt.

Save us from those "saving" the Arctic from discontinued plans for oil and gas drilling there.

There has been much hot air--gas, if you will--expended in the past few years over the potential dangers of drilling for oil and gas near the Arctic circle. I myself am not fully convinced about the climate justice in first having Arctic oil reserves made available to human exploration by burning fossil fuels that have played a part is causing polar ice to melt, then obtaining more fuel to shrink the aforementioned polar ice anew. There's even been a high-profile campaign aimed at Lego (of all companies) to get Shell to stop exploring these areas.

The recent plunge in oil prices as massive production continues untrammeled is having interesting effects the world over--including the Arctic. As it turns out, northern climes where it was previously economic to explore and eventually drill way above $100/barrel are no longer so when you have predictions that we will soon have $40 oil at spot prices. So, environmentalists are rejoicing for now in the misfortune that has befallen the evil energy firms who endanger these ecologically sensitive areas with the possibility of oil leaks and so forth:

The Arctic -- spanning Russia, Norway, Greenland, the U.S. and Canada -- accounts for more than 20 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas resources, including an estimated 134 billion barrels of crude and other liquids and 1,669 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. That’s almost as much oil as Iraq’s proved reserves at the end of 2013 and 50 percent more gas than Russia had booked, BP Plc (BP/)’s Statistical Review of World Energy shows.

Yet, explorers seeking a piece of the Arctic prize have been tripped up for years. After spending $6 billion searching for oil off Alaska over the past eight years, Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) in October asked for an extension of licenses as setbacks including a stranded oil rig and lawsuits risk delaying drilling further. Cairn Energy Plc (CNE) spent $1 billion exploring Greenland’s west coast in 2010 and 2011 without making commercial discoveries, and OAO Gazprom (OGZD) has shelved its Shtokman gas field in the Barents Sea indefinitely on cost challenges. 

The militants at Greenpeace, for one, are quite pleased with this turn of events:

Environmental group Greenpeace has occupied oil rigs from Norway to Russia, arguing a spill would cause irreparable damage to ecosystems that sustain animals from polar bears to birds and fish. The possibility that economically marginal fields such as Arctic deposits might be stranded as governments adopt stricter climate policies has also shaken some investors.

The Brent crude benchmark fell 1.9 percent to $45.70 a barrel, deepening losses from the lowest closing price since March 2009. Statoil declined 1.4 percent to 127.3 kroner at 9:50 a.m. in Oslo, extending losses to 35 percent since a June high. 

As oil companies cut spending to cope with falling prices, already costly and risky Arctic projects will fall down the priority list even if crude is expected to recover by the time production starts, Henderson said. Global capital expenditure will probably drop by more than 20 percent this year, according to a Jan. 9 note from Sanford C. Bernstein. Like Statoil, Dong Energy A/S and GDF Suez have returned Greenland licenses because exploration has become too expensive, Danish newspaper Politiken reported.

Until oil prices climb again and these firms begin reconsidering extraction in these marginal regions, I'd save my attention for...other things.

Like other extractive industries, mining elicits much hand-wringing among leftists about labor exploitation, environmental degradation, and the decimation of indigenous cultures in mining communities. As a more practical sort, I appreciate how mining makes modern life possible, from the computers leftists design their accusatory banners with to the cell phones they use to organize the overthrow of bourgeois capitalist scum with. In urbanized societies, there is a squeamishness about where our food comes from (slaughtering animals) and where the raw materials that make modern life possible come from (mining) since we are removed from these activities. Animals bleed and die. Mounds of earth are dug up and disposed to gather tiny nuggets of copper and gold. Deal with it for it's always been that way as we fill the earth and subdue it. I certainly do not doubt there are flagrant violations of acceptable mining practices here and there, but I am not convinced that there is a real alternative to mining at the present despite all its problems. While bleeding hearts leftists always target big, evil MNCs, it also bears remembering that small-scale wildcat miners tend often get a free pass despite having similarly questionable practices since they are "indigenous."

Just recently, I was sent a notice by Elsevier about a new journal of their focusing just on mining-related issues, The Extractive Industries and Society. Reading the first few articles, there is a definite leftist slant to the submissions. Still, Robin Broad offers a fairly interesting take on the whole idea of "responsible mining." Is it a contradiction in terms, or is it something we can actually achieve? She offers a number of different conceptions of the notion before offering her own:

1. The neoliberal definition - To most corporate mining executives and, alas, also to many government officials, mining is responsible if it focuses on maximizing economic growth which, in turn, maximizes economic profits. The idea is that this formula will work to make everyone better off and in the most efficient way. This, of course, is what neoclassical economic theory tells us. In terms of social benefits, this is deemed ‘‘responsible’’ because the economic benefits will – again, in theory – multiply and trickle down to the poor. In terms of environmental impact, the ‘‘environmental Kuznets curve’’ purportedly proves that, at least in theory, as a country grows in economic terms, certain environmental pollutants decrease.
2. The corporate social responsibility definition - A second use of the term ‘‘responsible mining’’ is a slight variation to the neoliberal definition, with the mining firm stating a clear commitment to that other buzzword: ‘‘corporate social responsibility.’’ Typically, this does not involve changing the production process itself. Rather, the corporation commits to using some of its profits to do something ‘‘good.’’ So, for instance, in the Philippines, the Canadian/Australian mining company OceanaGold has committed to ‘‘responsible mining,’’ a pledge which translates into planting trees at nearby sites, contributing to medical missions, and supporting community programmes in education and other areas.
3. The structuralist definition - A third definition of ‘‘responsible mining’’ focuses on ‘‘responsibility’’ from the perspective of who receives the economic and financial benefits of mining. Just as the first definition builds on mainstream economic theory, this third is modern-day structuralism a` la Raul Prebisch (Prebisch, 1950). Structuralists focus on how to generate maximum economic benefits for the South (be it a specific country or the South in aggregate terms) rather than the North. This ‘‘paradigm’’ of responsible mining focuses on increasing the taxes that corporations pay to the Southern government (or doing away with tax holidays). 
4. The fourth The final definition of ‘‘responsible mining’’ is what, in my view, it should really mean: a more comprehensive notion of economically, environmentally and socially responsible mining. Socially, as I have witnessed in the Philippines, Guatemala, and El Salvador, the presence of mining corporations invariably brings conflict and death to previously peaceful municipalities d consent’’ of local communities, especially before any corporate ‘‘contributions’’ are made to local officials or communities. Environmentally, responsibility involves careful assessment – based on full information and by a knowledgeable and objective party other than the mining corporation – of all possible environmental impacts of the mining. This includes an assessment of the impact of all chemicals proposed to be used in the mining process (typically cyanide used to separate gold from the rock), the toxins released by the mining (for example, arsenic is often released in El Salvador and elsewhere) as well as overall ‘‘acid-rock drainage’’, and the broader environmental impacts and risks. 

It's all quite interesting from the perspective of language games, but I am as always more concerned with action than rhetoric. Then again, you might take a constructivist stance is stating that rhetoric surrounding "responsible mining" actually shapes mining practices.

Now this is more like it: diplomatic intrigue, a kooky character, lurid accusations...and American baddies to boot (the last does "Diddley" Bo Xilai one better).

The New York Times has a--how should I put this...piquant account of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London. Living in a rabbit hole of a diplomatic premise just off Harrods (I could bring you there even while stone drunk), it was perhaps inevitable that Ecuador grant him asylum, so no surprises there.

However, there are a number of interesting twists, most obviously that the embassy is heavily watched by British security forces for signs that the Ecuadoreans may attempt to smuggle Assange out of the country. That said, there are several twists and turns that make this story particularly fascinating.

1. While I do appreciate that Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa styles himself as a leftist par excellence and a strong ally of Hugo Chavez who would like nothing more than to embarrass the United States, Correa is not exactly a stickler for media freedoms of the kind Assange champions. Persecution of opposition figures is no the rise, and Reporters Without Borders sees the country in decline with regard to media freedoms. I guess the message Correa is implicitly sending out is that certain media messages are more welcome than others when they mock less welcome characters like Americans.

2. Swedes are, in my experience, generally left-of-centre characters, so I am inclined to give them the benefit of a doubt that the case of Assange has merit. That is, they would not go to such lengths to try a character Swedes are generally sympathetic to if there was no reason for doing so. To be honest, Assange does not exactly strike me as a "normal" chap, either.

3. OTOH, that there are no guarantees that extradition to Sweden may result in a further extradition to the United States over WikiLeaks. At the least, this is the sticking point Ecuadorean officials identify:

The [Ecuadorean] minister said his government had taken the decision after the authorities in Britain, Sweden and the United States had refused to give guarantees that, if Mr. Assange were extradited to Sweden, he would not then be sent on to America to face other charges. The minister said his government had taken the decision after the authorities in Britain, Sweden and the United States had refused to give guarantees that, if Mr. Assange were extradited to Sweden, he would not then be sent on to America to face other charges...

Those close to Mr. Assange have said one reason he does not want to be sent to Sweden is that he fears being charged with crimes in the United States for the release in 2010 of thousands of secret documents and diplomatic cables relating to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as to American relations with other governments. 

An Ecuadorean official said late Wednesday that the British government had made it clear it would not allow Mr. Assange to leave the country to travel to Ecuador, so even with a grant of asylum or similar protection, he would probably remain stuck in the embassy.

Bottom line: The United States has done much to make a martyr out of a dodgy character and a mockery of the quite frankly laughable notion of "Internet Freedom." Meanwhile, Ecuador is probably glad enough to get itself some cheap points from the leftist crowd for harbouring Assange for an extended period. Lastly, the United Kingdom probably wishes the guy never set foot in Blighty since it's a lose-lose situation

Some people never learn. One of the recurring complaints about the so-called anti-globalization movement has been its lack of an actionable and coherent agenda. In many ways, anti-globalization is a step backwards from being a counter-hegemonic force from Marxist thought--many of whose elements it borrows but then mucks up with its own flights of fancy. Occupy Wall Street is even worse. While I certainly don't begrudge those wishing to curtail the influence of certain financial institutions--even mainstream figures do the same--you have to wonder if these all-purpose rants have any chance of effecting anything significant.

Consider the large logical inconsistencies about these all-purpose gatherings to complain about whatever annoys certain folks. For starters:

1. Why is "Wall Street" a target for those concerned with the environment? Financial services are not a carbon-intensive form of economic activity compared to, say, heavy manufacturing of the sort United Automobile Workers protest participants are engaged in and apparently wish to revive Stateside. So, why is "Occupy Detroit" so poorly attended by comparison?

2. What is the purpose of this trendy reference to the "revolutionary Arab Spring tactic" which is no more than a rip-off of the Philippine "People Power" idea of half a century ago? Or, even far before that, Gandhian principles of nonviolent resistance? Examples of successful, relatively bloodless regime change do predate those in today's Middle East.

3. As I always like to point out, the momentary euphoria of regime change alike that in Egypt--these people keep mentioning Tahrir Square--often masks the reality that the alternatives are not necessarily better overall. Witness Egypt's current descent into sectarian violence absent a stabilizing force:

As the exuberance of Arab Spring becomes a faraway memory in the Middle East, a counterrevolution is gaining ground, exploiting the sectarianism that power brokers in the region have long used to keep their populations at bay.

4. Invoking that all-pervasive of conspiracy theories, what does protesting the Afghan invasion have to do with "Wall Street"? As far as I can tell, it's been a money-losing misadventure that those who invaded it are urgently trying to extricate themselves from. Nor is Goldman Sachs in a hurry to set up shop in downtown Kabul, as far as I can tell. If Afghanistan is a money grab, it must be of financial "dark matter."
--------------------

The New York Times has an article which relays similar criticisms. While it's easy to make demands alike "universal employment"--why not add six-figure pay while you're at it--there is a world of difference here between reality and ambition. Heck, they even fail to lay out grand, unachievable designs:

In New York, the demands committee held a two-hour open forum last Monday, coming up with two major categories: jobs for all and civil rights. The team will continue to meet twice a week to develop a list of specific proposals, which it will then discuss with protesters and eventually take to the General Assembly, a nightly gathering of the hundreds of protesters in the park.

Absent anything concrete, it is what it is--a mildly bothersome anarchist movement with the usual leftist sympathizers worldwide. Not that many of its participants necessarily disown the "anarchist" characterization:

In Boston, Meghann Sheridan wrote on the group’s Facebook page, “The process is the message.” In Baltimore, Cullen Nawalkowsky, a protester, said by phone that the point was a “public sphere not moderated by commodities or mainstream political discourse.” An Occupy Cleveland participant, Harrison Kalodimos, is even writing a statement about why demands are not the answer. Joseph Schwartz, a political science professor and an Occupy Philadelphia participant, said he thought the movement’s “anarchist strain” discouraged a demand-making environment.

If these people actually knew what they stood for, perhaps more serious-minded people would pay them some attention. As it stands, leave it to the likes of Krugman to be impressed. Here you have today's rebels without a cause.

I enjoy the writings of Gillian Tett of the Financial Times for a very good reason. In contrast to the usual mindless econo-blather you get from financial journalists and the economists they cover, she is a social anthropologist. Unlike the neat and tidy world of neoclassical economics, processes of trade and exchange have a life of their own bound with messier stuff--seven deadly sins, cognitive limitations, emotional frailties, and so forth. Today, she offers an interesting spin on the notion that a country cannot go bankrupt.



A few years ago I had the displeasure of reading the sophomoric When Corporations Rule the World by David Korten. Supposedly offering an "insider" critique with his PhD from Stanford Business School, it was riddled with amateur nite errors alike comparing corporate revenues with national GDP. Nevertheless, as credit rating agencies belatedly become more fully aware of the dire fiscal situations of any number of industrialized countries, we are faced with a new reality: firms, not countries are safer credit bets. Not only are the former better able to control pensions and other costs, but their footloose nature allows them to go where the money is in a way that nations can't. For, the latter are pretty much stuck with the territory and people they have.



So while corporations may not necessarily "rule" the world in being larger economic entities than countries or in being able to engineer electoral processes worldwide, we may now be able to make a smaller claim: That blue chip, internationally diversified corporations are safer bets than basket cases alike the United States of America. Tett writes:

At the end of last week, trading in the credit derivatives markets [as a proxy for default risk] implied that no less than 70 large US companies are now considered a better credit bet than the American government, according to Markit data. More specifically, the cost of insuring US government bonds against default for five years is currently trading around 50 basis points (meaning it costs $50,000 a year to insure against default for $10m of bonds), while the cost is less than 30bp for companies such as AT&T, New Cingular Wireless and Oracle. The spread for Google, HP, Coca Cola – and, yes, McDonald’s – is also well below the sovereign spread.

While the West saddles their central banks' balance sheets with assets of dubious worth--think of the Federal Reserve's arsenal of mortgage-backed securities or the ECB's purchases of Greek and Portugese sovereign debt--the best-run firms have healthy cash flows and lots of money to burn:

And if you dig into the reasons why those CDS rankings have changed – or why S&P left those four American companies rated above the government – it reveals some fascinating longer-term structural shifts. One way to read this trend is that it presents a verdict on relative levels of corporate governance, and transparency. More specifically, the reason why so many large companies command tight CDS spreads is that investors feel confident that they understand their balance sheets, and that these entities have plenty of cash on hand, and tangible, easily tracked revenues.



Sadly, however, many public entities currently lack that sense of transparency; on the contrary, it is painfully hard to disentangle where the liabilities and tangible assets lie. Hence the high(ish) level of CDS spreads for US Treasuries: although investors know that America is highly unlikely to default on its bonds, the political climate is so volatile that it is hard to predict cash flows. However, a second factor is the issue of globalisation. Most of America’s best-run and healthiest companies these days are not really “American” anymore; on the contrary, they draw a growing proportion of their revenues from outside America’s shores, and hold vast pots of cash overseas.



That gives them the ability to hedge themselves against an American, or Western, economic downturn; or, to put it another way, they can flee, with their cash if economic or political circumstances turn sour. So can many “European” companies; just look, for example, at the global nature of “Greek” shipping lines, or those “Irish” information technology groups. However, that option is not open to public sector entities; for better or worse, their credit risk is tethered to the West.

An important point that I'll get to in the near future is that, as the above begins to hint at, successful American firms do not necessarily benefit America itself as a consequence of the modern nature of globalization and innovation. In other words, what may have been good for GM may have been good for America in the Fifties--but what's good for Google now may not be good for contemporary America. More on this later, but let's just say for now that corporate issues being perceived as safer than sovereign ones may increasingly become the norm and not the exception in short order.

When it comes to flyweight and academically insubstantial commentary, few outdo pseudo anti-globalization author Naomi Klein. Aside from dubious wholesale denunciations of "capitalism" via The Shock Doctrine--as if there were a single all-encompassing version of it--we also have inane economic analyses of trade and other fallacious ramblings.

Today, however, I am here to debunk her earlier work which established her reputation among many of the impressionable and those who simply don't know any better, No Logo. An overly long jumble of rewarmed Marxist critiques of capitalism, it takes aim at branding as an artefact of modernity. But, since penetrating insight is not one of the hallmarks of Naomi Klein-style writing, this suggestion is easy to dispel. Something which unites her sort with those she purports to condemn is the assumption that branding goes hand in hand with contemporary capitalism.

Not so. In my recent research work, I've once again been reminded of this fact by archaeological research which refutes this notion. If we are to take a longer view perspective of things, branding for the purposes of commercial exchange did not originate during the past few centuries of industrialization. Try Iraq circa 4000 BC for instance according to David Wengrow at UCL, our sister University of London institution:

Commodity branding has been characterized as the distinguishing cultural move of late capitalism and is widely viewed as a historically distinctive feature of the modern global economy. The brand's rise to prominence following the Industrial Revolution and the attendant shift of corporate enterprise towards the dissemination of image-based products have been further cited as contributing to the erosion of older forms of identity such as those based on kinship and class. However, comparisons between recent forms of branding and much earlier modes of commodity marking associated with the Urban Revolution of the fourth millennium BC suggest that systems of branding address a paradox common to all economies of scale and are therefore likely to arise (and to have arisen) under a wide range of ideological and institutional conditions, including those of sacred hierarchies and stratified states. An examination of the material and cognitive properties of sealing practices and the changing functions of seals in their transition from personal amulets to a means of labeling mass-produced goods helps to unpack the interlocking (pre)histories of quality control, authenticity, and ownership that make up the modern brand.

I've also borrowed a very interesting edited work entitled Cultures of Commodity Branding by Andrew Bevan and again David Wengrow which expands on the journal article by including several more examples of branding exercises drawn from antiquity:

Commodity branding did not emerge with contemporary global capitalism. In fact, the authors of this volume show that the cultural history of branding stretches back to the beginnings of urban life in the ancient Near East and Egypt, and can be found in various permutations in places as diverse as the Bronze Age Mediterranean, and Early Modern Europe. What the contributions in this volume also vividly document, both in past social contexts and recent ones as diverse as the kingdoms of Cameroon, Socialist Hungary or online EBay auctions, is the need to understand branded commodities as part of a broader continuum with techniques of gift-giving, ritual, and sacrifice. This volume obliges specialists in marketing and economics to reassess the relationship between branding and capitalism, as well as adding an important new concept to the work of economic anthropologists and archaeologists.

There's also an earlier post on the superb Material World anthropology blog from which the image of a seal at the top of this entry is taken.

The main takeaway is that branding and the emergence of global capitalism are not inseparable concepts, with the former having appeared on the scene long before the latter. It is indeed a sad reflection on our age how someone with Geraldo Rivera-like investigative reporting chops and non-existent scholarly chops receives so much attention. Call it the Sarah Palin self-promotion effect. Further investigation, however, easily betrays a characteristic lack of awareness or erudition.

I am sure that had they been on the parade route of a Middle East royal wedding, they'd have met a grislier fate: anti-war, anti-globalization protester Brian Haw and friends have been in the vicinity of Parliament Square--right across the Parliament building--since 2001. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya...Blair, Brown, Cameron...wars and prime ministers have come and gone, but these folks remain a literally immovable fixture of the British political landscape. They even have a fairly elaborate website if you're curious.

My favourite placard obviously remains "CAPITALISM ISN'T WORKING." Despite being a rather unpleasant eyesore at first, at least some Londoners may have come to view the so-called Peace Camp as a tourist attraction in its own right. Although Parliament Square was fenced out a few months ago, Brian Haw and a number of his hardcore holdout Peace Camp buddies remain on its perimeter. And so it has proven that their lasting power is again validated as today, as billions of persons around the world focussed their eyes on Central London, they remained in its midst. This despite the best efforts of Tory PM Cameron, Home Secretary Teresa May, and Mayor Boris Johnson to eject them prior to the wedding:

Prince William and Kate Middleton will be driven past anti-war campaigners and rag-bag of other protestors on Parliament Square after a failure by the combined might of David Cameron, Boris Johnson, Theresa May and Westminster City Council to get them moved in time for the royal wedding. The unsightly collection of placards, sheds and tents will remain in place on the day of the royal wedding, yards from the entrance to Westminster Abbey. The cars carrying the bride and groom will pass alongside Parliament Square on the way to the Abbey.

The Prime Minister and the Mayor of London have both made it clear in the weeks and months leading up to today’s event, which will be beamed to millions around the world, that the so-called “peace camp” would be dismantled. Mrs May created a specific amendment in the Police Reform Bill to deal with the protestors but that has still to become law. Westminster City Council is hopeful that legal action next month will result in the protestors' removal, but it will be too late to stop the environment around the Abbey being disfigured by the signs and daubed slogans.

While you may not agree with their message in its entirety, you have to admire the persistence of this ragtag bunch. Neither the passage of a decade nor the combined might of the British political establishment has dislodged them. In a way, they are as British as the royal wedding as their dogged persistence demonstrates the fabled "stiff upper lip."

UPDATE: Brian Haw and the rest claim they were harassed some more today ("Day 3618") for good measure; the pictures of them along the parade route say a lot nonetheless. Watching the footage, the BBC cuts out as soon as Wills & Kate's carriage reach Parliament Square [!] I wonder why. Brian Haw gets the last hee-haw.

In this day and age, let's just say economists have an image problem. Likely as a consequence of being cheap and selfish as a rule, economists are usually adjudged among the least attractive of academics. While their political perspectives vary, something that unites your Milton Friedman with your Paul Krugman is a certain wussiness that's difficult to transcend. That few economists predicted the global economic crisis--and indeed are culpable of to no small extent--does them no favours, either.

From a prototypically wussy profession, let's moved to a tougher one that actually requires brains as well as brawn. And, in keeping with the times, it's also become open to men and women. It is generally recognized that British police are the best in the world. But, an even more select cadre of British police are British riot police. While it too suffers from image problems, the main difference is that the ire directed towards them is usually the fallout from others' actions. The ironic thing that binds riot police to economists is that economic prescriptions protesters are displeased with are often the cause for riot police to be deployed. For instance, British students trashing parliament towards the end of last year--including quite a few LSE students, I know--had to be...calmed down. Ask the son of multimillionaire Pink Floyd frontman David Gilmour about becoming overexuberant.

While coming home from work the other day, I caught a very interesting article on the drills you must undertake to become a riot policeman in the Evening Standard. Let's say it doesn't involve inputting data into SAS or STATA or any such like. Rather, it involves reacting when folks start throwing stuff at you:

Every five weeks hundreds of police officers who have volunteered to join the Met's [Metropolitan Police] Territorial Support Group line up to face a barrage of petrol bombs, other missiles and verbal abuse from colleagues in order to prepare them for the real thing. Criticism of the Metropolitan Police's handling of recent demonstrations in the capital has been severe. But training for such duties is arduous and regular.

I joined officers in the group at the Met's public order training centre in Gravesend and, like them, donned riot gear weighing three and a half stone, grabbed a shield and prepared for action. The session began, as always, with the so-called shield run. Officers sprinted around a replica town centre in full riot gear and carrying a 5ft 6in shield. The 500-yard course had to be completed in under two minutes and 45 seconds.

Then training began in earnest. The men and women practised drills while facing a hail of flaming missiles. In tight formation the unit marched through the streets, clearing tight alleys and balconies like those of a typical London housing estate. Each officer had to stand firm as protesters hurled masonry, barriers and metal poles towards them.

Engulfed in flames and with bricks raining down on me, I could see nothing through the smoke. Glass shattered as petrol bombs hit my riot shield. I held my breath and closed my eyes, waiting for the choking fumes to disperse, eventually opening them to see a masked man sprinting towards me wielding another blazing bottle.

Someone behind bellowed the order: "Forward!" Reluctantly I raised my shield and headed towards the threat.

In an odd but real sense, the fates of economists and riot police are very much intertwined. In the larger scheme of things, though, the eggheads have far more potential to muck things up than the often reluctant enforcers. A petrol bomb for your thoughts, my dear?

In case you missed it, the twin protests of the G8 and G20 summits recently held in Toronto, Canada were rather violent given the relatively quiet anti-globalization protests of the past few years. Even after spending massive sums on ensuring summit security, Toronto or "New York Run by the Swiss" as some of its adherents call it was hit hard:

The site of the weekend's Group of 20 leaders' meeting was rocked by some of the most violent protests to hit a global gathering in recent years, despite one of the most lavish security outlays in summit history. Bands of activists ran through the city's downtown Saturday, bashing windows and setting several police cars ablaze, halting public transit and prompting officials to lock down hospitals and a major shopping mall. Police responded with teargas and pepper spray, arresting nearly 600 people over the weekend, in addition to 32 detained before the summit began.

The violence had Canadian politicians and police wringing their hands after the country spent around $1 billion on security for the G-20 and a back-to-back Group of Eight summit in rural Huntsville, three hours to the north. Those precautions included a 20,000-strong security force in Toronto and a 2.4-mile-long chain-link fence surrounding a "Yellow Zone" that enclosed the area where the G-20 leaders met.

$1 billion spent on security? I am speechless. But, as the Canadian flag with the maple leaf replaced with a ganja leaf suggests in the clip above, these spontaneous outbreaks of anti-globalization sentiment are still as incoherent as before, diluting the movement (if there ever was one).

There must be something in the water in Cambridge. I'm certain you remember the Bush in Iraq-inspired shoe throwing incident when Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao visited that world-famous university. Now, the photo above is from an event held there commemorating the launch of George Soros' Institute for New Economic Thinking, where IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn was one of the keynote speakers. There's even footage of this fairly bourgeois hooliganism if you're interested.

The more important point, however, is that Dominique Strauss-Kahn is also keen on distancing himself from Washington Consensus-style strictures. From the text of his Cambridge speech, here is his "that was then" part:

Let me begin with a brief description of the pre-crisis [read: Washington in plain language] consensus as it relates to monetary policy, fiscal policy, and financial regulation.

First, monetary policy. Low and stable inflation was considered the primary, if not exclusive, mandate of central banks. After the high-inflation experience of the 1970s, central bankers were keen to establish their reputation as being “tough on inflation”. This position was given intellectual rigor by the New Keynesian model, which held that constant inflation is the optimal policy choice for keeping economic growth at the potential rate. So, keeping inflation low and stable was the best way to secure optimal economic performance.

Second, fiscal policy. In the decades preceding the crisis, fiscal policy had taken a back seat to monetary policy, for various reasons: skepticism about the effects of fiscal policy, based largely on Ricardian equivalence arguments; concerns about lags and political influences in the design and implementation of fiscal policy; and the need to stabilize and reduce typically high debt levels. In addition, automatic stabilizers were considered sufficient to allow fiscal policy to respond to changes in the economic cycle.

Third, financial regulation and supervision. Here, the focus was on the soundness of individual institutions and markets, and aimed at correcting market failures stemming from asymmetric information or limited liability. Broader macroeconomic implications of financial sector risks were largely ignored. Given the enthusiasm for financial deregulation, the use of prudential rules for cyclical purposes was generally considered an improper interference in the functioning of credit markets.

And now here are the "lessons" he perceives. First, there are limits to deregulation:

We have also learned that financial regulation can have a major macroeconomic impact. Regulatory weaknesses, including in the perimeter of regulation and supervision, allowed significant risks to build up, and enabled the bursting of the U.S. housing bubble to turn into a major global crisis. And, once the crisis started, rules aimed at guaranteeing the soundness of individual institutions worked against the stability of the system. For instance, mark-to-market rules, coupled with constant regulatory capital ratios, forced financial institutions into fire sales and deleveraging.

Next, with a nod to the Gordon Brown of old and his "golden rule," he now reserves praise for countercyclical spending--provided that countries accumulate enough during fat times to spend during lean times.

Let me turn now to the lessons for fiscal policy. The crisis has placed countercyclical fiscal policy back at center stage. With monetary policy having reached its limits, a fiscal response was essential to tackle the downturn. In addition, because it was evident that the recession would last a long time, fiscal stimulus could have a powerful impact, despite implementation lags. Here, I am proud to say that the Fund played a pivotal role in its early call for a sizeable global fiscal stimulus.

A key lesson from the crisis is therefore that building up fiscal space in good times is very important, to allow sufficient space for fiscal stimulus in crisis times. What does this mean for fiscal adjustment in the period ahead? Unfortunately, the required adjustment is formidable. Public debt in the advanced economies is forecast to rise by about 35 percentage points on average, to about 110 percent of GDP in 2014. Reversing this increase will be a tremendous challenge—let alone reducing debt below pre-crisis levels, which may be needed to leave enough fiscal space to tackle future crises.

All I can say is, "fat chance of that." Demographic trends really work against greatly improved fiscal trajectories for wealthy countries. I think it's more likely that these countries will invariably copy the US example and flood the world with IOUs in typical American fashion. Boycotting patronage of this riffraff is the real solution, but I'll save that story for later. As before [1, 2, 3], I am also disconcerted by the still-unexplained change of heart from a time when mostly poor countries were in trouble alike during the Asian financial crisis to when developed ones are. Was Washington Consensus-style "fiscal austerity" and "belt-tightening" good enough for everybody else...except Washington itself? Bob Marley had this double talk sorted out long ago: See de 'ypocrites, them a-galang deh! It almost makes you mad enough to smoke ganja and grow dreadlocks.

One thing that I, the protesters, and the IMF can ultimately agree on is this: the best thing is for countries to manage their finances well enough to avoid the Washington-based lender--kindler, gentler version or not.

UPDATE: Dominique Strauss-Kahn had this to say to the protesters:

His speech was interrupted by a handful of protestors, complaining that the IMF was exacerbating global economic problems. “That was the old IMF – haven’t you read the press,” Mr Strauss Kahn replied to the protestors before they were ushered out of the Great Hall at King’s College, referring to the Fund’s role in championing fiscal stimulus and expansionary policies during this crisis.

Precisely, this is where both sides get it wrong. First, these protesters not being a particularly informed group, they weren't clear on who was suffering from what. Second, Strauss-Kahn once more fails to address the criticism of double standards and indeed buttresses it: the "old IMF" of the Washington Consensus for poor countries, and the "new IMF" of kinder, gentler advocacy for rich ones. Sorry, DSK, but I'll stick with Bob Marley.

On 27 October 2009, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa came to speak at the LSE. Brandishing the classic repertoire of Latin American firebrands, he denounced American imperialism, the Washington Consensus, neoliberalism, neoclassical economics, free trade, "kicking away the ladder," and so forth. While I do not have particular issues with several of these denouncements--I've made some myself--it is worth comparing how rhetoric compares with reality. The text of his speech is available online, as are a podcast and video. Still, I kind of wonder why one needs a PhD in Economics from a fine institution like the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to recycle this masters-level anti-globalization repertoire. Yet, what's passable for a master's-level essay is certainly not what one expects from somebody who should know better.

More importantly, Correa's bog-standard class warfare stylings seems--in classic populismo fashion--to have backfired on him. If you will remember, one of the first things Correa did upon assuming office was default on governments he deemed as not being legitimate debts. While I too would like to try this trick sometime if I had country of my own, the financial community is apparently none too impressed. As a consequence of this action, Ecuador has been locked out of international capital markets. Like in Venezuela, populismo has not only trumped economics--something Correa should know about--but common sense: he who burns his bridges had better be a good swimmer. Now, faced with a large revenue shortfall in light of declining oil prices--Ecuador is the second largest oil exporter in the region after Venezuela--the country has sought the comfort of, er, the Washington-based lender the Inter-American Development Bank whose principal funder is of course the United States:

Ecuador may cut government spending as it struggles to cover a $4.2 billion budget shortfall after a debt default shut it out of credit markets, Fitch Ratings said. President Rafael Correa could slash planned investments aimed at boosting oil production after halting payments in December 2008 on $510 million of bonds and in March on $2.7 billion of notes, Fitch analyst Theresa Paiz said yesterday in a telephone interview from New York. “There could be a sharper adjustment in the budget and cuts to capital expenditure,” Paiz said. “External borrowing is pretty much off the table.”

Correa defaulted on Ecuador’s 2012 and 2030 global bonds, saying the securities were “illegitimate” and “illegal.” Ecuador, which depends on oil exports for about a quarter of its revenue, may post economic growth of 1.5 percent this year after gross domestic product shrank 2.3 percent in 2009, according to Fitch. Ecuador may be able to narrow its budget shortfall if oil prices continue to rise and the country receives financing from multilateral lenders, Paiz said. Crude oil prices have almost doubled to $79.30 a barrel from a year ago as a global economic recovery boosts energy consumption.

Corporacion Andina de Fomento, a Caracas-based a multilateral lending institution, approved a $200 million loan for Ecuador last week, and the Andean nation may receive $350 million from the Inter-American Development Bank, Finance Minister Maria Elsa Viteri said Feb. 12 in a statement on the president’s Web site.

Correa has also tapped Ecuador’s state-run Social Security Institute to fund projects ranging from oil exploration in the Amazon to hospital building, according to statements on the president’s Web site.

The digital webpage of this government trumpeting Correa's "citizen's revolution" confirms these details--Ecuador's ambassador to Washington has [shhh] gone to the Yanqui capital with begging bowl in hand. Some were hopeful that Correa could be another Lula instead of another Hugo, but the latter scenario seems to have panned out. Correa has even raided Social Security funds to pay for pet projects, so Ecuadoreans pinning their hopes on future disbursements have further reason to worry as external sources of funding dry up.

You show those neoliberal Yanks, Rafael Correa...by borrowing from Washington? Like Chavez, Correa's revolucion is fuelled almost solely on high oil prices which he probably should be wishing are on the rise again. You certainly don't need a PhD in Economics to figure out that, after you kick your creditors in the balls, external funding won't be forthcoming. Colour me unimpressed.

Sometime ago I read an exceptionally bad anti-globalization book by David Korten entitled When Corporations Rule the World. Ridden with factual errors such as the corporate revenues versus GDP apples-and-oranges fallacy, it was, to say the least, a laborious read. The anti-globalization movement claims to be environmentally friendly unlike the folks they criticize, but all I can say is that I am hugely appalled that so many trees were cut to print this amateur nite rubbish. At any rate, I was reminded of this amateurish screed while reading the latest summary statistics from the WTO's annual International Trade Statistics report for 2009.

The above chart caught my eye depicting the growing share of intrafirm trade in US service exports. America is, of course, by far the world's largest exporter of services. What is noticeable here though is that while the ultimate share of intrafirm trade in US service exports is growing, the base it starts with is relatively low. Trade is certainly not yet becoming the exclusive domain of monolithic corporations divvying up their operations worldwide for its inevitable corporate conquest. Certainly, it's nothing to set the anti-globalization set afire, though they're welcome if they want to give it a try. When Intrafirm Services Trade Rules the World doesn't have the same snap IMHO.

Without further ado, here is the accompanying the writeup:

The globalization of business and the firms’ increasing ownership of different stages of the production process have increased the role of intermediate goods in merchandise trade over the last decade. A similar fragmentation of production has been emerging in the field of services. The United States has recorded an increasing share of trade between multi-nationals and their majority-owned foreign affiliates, growing from 21.5 per cent to more than a quarter of its total trade (27.5 per cent) in 2007 (covering only nonbank affiliates, and excluding transportation services and travel).

It bothers me that debate in political-economic matters is often dominated by those who blabber the loudest without necessarily having anything meaningful to say. Sometime ago, our friends at IPE@UNC rightly took exception to those who wrote about such things without any formal social science training. Although journalists would generally fall into this camp, some are clearly better informed than others about matters as to defy blanket categorization. On one hand, you have top-drawer commentators like Paul Blustein (formerly of the Washington Post and now of the Brookings Institution) who add behind-the-scenes color to the headlines. On the other hand, you have tabloid-ready reporters who by default adopt a hyperventilating tone--think of the Daily Telegraph's Ambrose Evans-Pritchard or our favorite whipping girl, Naomi Klein.

Like in real life, tabloid fare generally outsells respectable material. Unfortunately with Naomi Klein, you get a heavy dose of false analogies, outright misrepresentation, and--in this case--economic fallacies. Again using the case of journalists, the better ones bother to understand what they are writing about--it's that simple. As an educator, I like using Naomi Klein as Exhibit A in willful ignorance. It should not bother me if students adopt a critical anti-globalization stance. What I am paid to make sure of, though, is that they make good arguments in doing so, and there are quite a number of plausible ones as I'm sure you're all aware.

Today, however, we feature yet another tragicomic mental lapse in typical Kleinite fashion. In a recent gathering, Jagdish Bhagwati came across Naomi Klein and was astounded to hear the following as a reason for a decline in trade:

One fallacy must be dismissed, however. In an exchange with Naomi Klein, who is a fount of many economic fallacies (underlining how economics is a difficult subject with excessive free entry by the ignorant), she was celebrating the growing demise of “globalization” because higher energy costs had become a tax on transportation and hence on trade. I pointed out that higher fuel costs would affect production costs of traded goods as well; and if the differential in production costs of traded goods between the exporting and the importing countries widened, that could offset the increased transportation costs and serve to increase, not diminish, trade.

This episode once again demonstrates that ideological blinders tend to distort reasoning and hinder one's ability to seek better information. It probably never occurred to Klein that an increasing amount of trade happens without incurring shipping costs--it's called "outsourcing" or the cross-border supply of services in formal terms. Moreover, many high value-added products are not bulky and do not incur considerable shipping expense. Historically low shipping rates aside, it is mostly bulky, low value-added products that would be affected during energy price rises.

Returning to Bhagwati versus Klein, it is very easy to see what Professor Jagdish means. Take a gander at this table:

During the first time period before fuel prices soared, let's say making 1 widget domestically cost $140: $40 was made up of a unit of energy and $100 of other costs like labor. If the same widget were bought from abroad, it would cost the same $140 as the foreign producer's more efficient production processes meant it only consumed half as much energy ($20), offsetting higher production costs for other inputs ($110) and the shipping expense ($10 or a quarter of an energy unit here). During the first time period, we are indifferent to making the widget at home or buying it from abroad since either would cost the same.

However, let's move to the second time period in our exercise. A unit of energy has increased from costing $40 to $140. Producing at home has gone up to $240 to reflect the $100 increase for an energy unit. Buying from abroad has become more expensive as well: energy costs have gone up by 250% to $70 while shipping expenses have similarly increased to $35 for a total of $215. So, did increases in shipping costs kill off trade Naomi Klein style? The answer should be plain enough for everyone to see: instead of reducing trade, trade is now more likely to occur since it is relatively less costly to buy from abroad than to make at home ($215 vs. $240) whereas either option cost the same before.

You should be able to use your own numbers to explain what Bhagwati is saying. You can elaborate and improve its realism by adding price elasticities of demand, etc. The point remains that this simple explanation is beyond the grasp of someone like Klein who would benefit more from keeping you deliberately uninformed. At the end of the day, this is what education is about: to give students the tools to understand the world around them and not to reinforce the ignorance propounded by so many. Rest assured that there are those who prefer the latter and even enjoy peddling it at your expense. A mind is a terrible thing to waste, indeed.

This is getting ridiculous. In December, an ASEAN summit that was supposed to be held in Thailand was derailed when anti-Thaksin supporters waylaid the proceedings. Now that Thaksinite influences have been purged from the government, we find another ASEAN gathering there canceled because pro-Thaksin supporters stormed the proceedings. Overwhelming numerous riot police and trashing the convention center are no small achievements. My best advice to ASEAN: do not hold any more meetings in Thailand for the time being.

The FT's Gideon Rachman is reliably entertaining and insightful; I've had him on our blogroll from day one. However, I must say tsk-tsk for him missing the most interesting point concerning the recently derailed ASEAN summit: How is it that a thousand lousy protesters can shut down a major international conference? Contrary to Rachman's description, this was far from a "mass demonstration." Aside from the Southeast Asian crew, there was Chairman Hu Jintao of the "G2" (US and China); Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia; and Prime Minister Taro Aso of Japan. They came, they saw, they went home.

And so we have news of Hugo Chavez banging on the revolutionary drum for the umpteenth time in the wake of the latest G-20 meeting:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ridiculed the G-20 summit's attempts to deal with the global financial meltdown, saying that the "values of capitalism are in crisis" and capitalism "has to end." Speaking to Venezuelan state television late Thursday, Chavez said the United States and Britain are "the most guilty" for the financial crisis sweeping the globe because of the financial model "they've been imposing for years."

"It's impossible that capitalism can regulate the monster that is the world financial system, it's impossible," Chavez said. "Capitalism needs to go down. It has to end. And we must take a transitional road to a new model that we call socialism."

The Venezuelan leader's comments came during a trip to Iran. In recent years, Chavez and Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — both well-known for their anti-U.S. rhetoric — have boosted economic and political ties.

Then again, the same Hugo Chavez is keen on, er, drumming up investment from Japan and China (nevermind why these countries would like to participate in the Bolivarian revolution despite the omnipresent threat of expropriation):

“Japan is a country that consumes a lot of oil, and wants to diversify its sources,” Chavez said today in comments broadcast by state television. “Also, Japan has gigantic reserves of money, and I think they’re interested in investing.”

Venezuela, the fourth-biggest supplier of foreign crude oil to the U.S., will likely see a 4 percent contraction in gross domestic product this year, according to Morgan Stanley. Private investment has declined in recent years, as Chavez has nationalized oil, steel, cement, telephone and electricity companies.

“This meeting in China will be very important,” Chavez said today. “Its impact is going to be felt for the next decade.”

Somehow, I'd be a helluva lot more convinced if Chavez weren't seeking new outlets for Venezuelan oil from two of the very countries participating in the G-20 meetings. Like most anti-globalization rhetoric, Hugo's is fake from the get-go. A new of socialism? Even a certain Mr. Geithner is more communistic

And so the world is awash with protests over the upcoming G-20 meeting. In London just yesterday, they were 35,000 strong--not a bad showing. I will soon post at greater length about the G-20's prospects--more hopeful than you'd probably expect--but for now let us cover the sideshow. A criticism many have had of the so-called anti-globalization movement has been its rather scattershot agenda, throwing together anarcho-syndicalists, deep ecologists, neo-primitivists, rioters, party animals, etc. into the mix. Same here. If you think this world is run pretty poorly by the axis of spending (Barack Obama, Gordon Brown, and someone TBA), you'd be pretty hard-pressed to see an improvement from these guys. As usual, their challenge is lame and unfocused.

Now, as I've learned, academia is certainly an interesting place filled with all sorts of characters you'd be hard-pressed to find elsewhere. Even by American standards, British academia is, well, downright weird. Where else can you find it common for unreconstructed Marxists to teach...in business schools? Pinko Business Management--now there's a course offering for you (full of the inherent contradictions of capitalism, no doubt). As the death place of Herr Marx, Britain has long been teeming with those convinced that the downfall of capitalism is right around the corner. Certainly, the current time is a fruitful one to strike a chord for change especially with the ham-fisted handling of the subprime crisis in the US and the UK.

I found it rather amusing when Professor Chris Knight of the University of East London--formerly a "polytechnic" akin to a community college in the States--got suspended for getting into the anti-globalization spirit. Here are some choice statements that got him into trouble:

"We are going to be hanging a lot of people like Fred the Shred [former RBS Chairman Fred Goodwin] from lampposts on April Fool's Day and I can only say let's hope they are just effigies...To be honest, if he winds us up any more I'm afraid there will be real bankers hanging from lampposts and let's hope that that doesn't actually have to happen.

"They should realise the amount of fury and hatred there is for them and act quickly, because quite honestly if it isn't humour it is going to be anger. I am trying to keep it humorous and let the anger come up in a creative and hopefully productive and peaceful way.

"If the other people don't join in the fun - I'm talking about the bankers and those rather pompous ministers - and come over and surrender their power obviously it's going to get us even more wound up and things could get nasty. Let's hope it doesn't."

Is Professor Knight trying to incite a mob riot? I really think not as he just got caught up in the spirit of the moment. As you'll gather from his website, his PhD thesis was on "Menstruation and the origins of culture. A reconsideration of [Claude] Levi-Strauss's work on symbolism and myth." From what I gather, it has something to do with lunar activity--hence the graphic on his website. Is this chap Carlos the Jackal II? No tampon jokes please, but I doubt it. It's more likely that he's just another timid academic in the ever-popular leftist, Noam Chomsky-wannabe mold.

This op-ed from the Sunday Herald asks the right question: if a million protesting Britain's imminent participation in the Iraq invasion did basically nothing, what more this march or even the larger one planned on April 1? The University of East London certainly has made more of this nonsense than warranted. Last I heard, Professor Knight was wandering around alone. So much for solidarity. If this guy is a troublemaker, then Paul Schaffer really leads the world's most dangerous band. I fear him far, far less than a real public menace like Boy George.

Truly independent regimes do not exist outside the minds of anti-globalization fantasists. Indeed, there are still goods which need to be procured from the outside world even in cuckoo land, North Korea. The question then becomes, "How do you earn foreign exchange while keeping a lid on corrosive foreign influences?" I had been planning to blog on this but got waylaid a bit. A few weeks ago, I posted about North Korea making a gambit to attract foreign investment via its Kaesong Industrial Complex. Some (brave or foolhardy?) South Korean enterprises have set up shop there. However, the most recent iteration of the US/South Korea "Key Resolve" war games prompted the hermit regime to shut down the border crossing to South Korean workers returning home from Kaesong. So much for the new era of cooperation North Korean officials boast about for investors in Kaesong. Here's an op-ed from the English language version of the Chosun:

After effectively holding around 720 South Korean workers prisoner in the Kaesong Industrial Complex since Friday, North Korea on Monday allowed 453 of them to return home. But there have been major difficulties in running the industrial complex as North Korea prohibits the entry of South Korean workers and raw materials and other goods. If the situation persists until Friday, when the "Key Resolve" joint military exercises between South Korea and the United States comes to an end, 90 percent of the factories in the complex are expected to shut down. North Korea has used the joint military drills as an excuse to impose the unilateral ban...

Yet North Korea's sudden treatment of South Korean officials as hostages, taking issue with a joint South Korea-U.S. military drill that has been taking place annually for a decade, raises serious questions whether it can be treated as a reliable business partner. The head of one South Korean business in the complex lamented in a media interview, "We are not toys North Korean authorities can play with." It is outrageous of North Korea to use the Kaesong Industrial Complex as leverage to exert political pressure on South Korea.

Even when North Korea launched a missile and tested a nuclear device in 2006; when the U.S. government took issue with the influx of dollars into the communist country; and even when a South Korean tourist was shot and killed in the Mt. Kumgang resort, the Kaesong Industrial Complex operated normally. Despite mounting criticism from within, the South Korean government kept the complex open, since it symbolized cooperation between the two Koreas.

Talk about "political risk." The place is practically shut down. I guess Lotte World isn't setting up shop anytime soon in the DPRK.