Khor on the Global Economic Meltdown: “We Could Have One Billion More People in the Developing World

[seemslikeadream]

http://i1.democracynow.org/2009/2/17/martin_khor_on_the_global_economic


Martin Khor on the Global Economic Meltdown: “We Could Have One Billion More People in the Developing World Plunging into New Poverty Because of this Crisis”

President Obama is scheduled to sign the $787 billion economic stimulus plan into law at a ceremony in Denver today. Tomorrow in Phoenix, Obama is expected to tackle the home mortgage crisis and roll out a plan to stem the huge rise in foreclosures. While there has been much discussion in the media on the state of the US economy, what about the rest of the world? From Greece to Guadeloupe, from Italy to Indonesia, from Chile to China, from Egypt to India, countries across the globe are feeling the heat of the recession that started over a year ago in the United States. We speak to economist Martin Khor of the Third World Network based in Malaysia.



.......


MARTIN KHOR: You see, when you’re a poor country, you know, and you don’t have efficient industries, then you have to protect your domestic industries from cheap imports coming in, especially the cheap imports that are subsidized. Now we are finding in the financial crisis a big hypocrisy, in that the rich governments, like the United States, are telling the rest of the world to continue to open up their economies when the US is pumping trillions of dollars of subsidies to their companies which would otherwise have failed.


So if our developing countries are to open up our markets, we will find failed motor car companies, as in Detroit, being able to sell their cars more cheaply abroad because of the subsidies given to them; failed banks like Citibank will be able to invade developing countries, where our banks, our local banks, are also going to fail, but we don’t have trillions of dollars to prop up our failed banks, and we don’t want the failed banks of the United States or Europe or Japan to come and invade our territory.


So this “Buy American” clause in the stimulus package, you know, you are going to spend an extra $800 billion through public expenditure, much of it will be in public works and so on, but if the products, the steel and the manufactured products that go into these projects, have to be sourced from the United States itself, then this will block out products coming from Asia or from Africa or from Latin America, and therefore add onto the gloom that we are already facing with the collapse of our exports.

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. Just maybe those billion people in the developing world are unsupportable

by what the planet and humankind can provide.

[seemslikeadream]

2. some people use more than their fair share though, don't they?

ok it's one in the morning and I made a spelling mistake :eyes:

[The_Casual_Observer]

3. And what would that fair share be?

[bird gerhl]

4. You've got it the wrong way around.

The billion or so people in the "developed" world are the unsupportable ones. They eat too much and they work too little. Let's throw them to the wolves instead, shall we? Sound fair?

[seemslikeadream]

5. Thank you

sounds fair

[The_Casual_Observer]

6. You & the sanctimonious do-gooders first, okay?

They need more help turning the rain forests into charcoal, it sounds right up your alley.

[seemslikeadream]

7. Example of who I was referring to

Citi Execs Takes Care Of Their Own


http://www.dollarsandsense.org/blog/2009/02/citi-execs-takes-care-of-their-own.html


Citi Execs Takes Care Of Their Own
by Dollars and Sense

Citigroup, Inc (parent of Citibank) lost $18.7 billion last year, laid off 39,000 employees, and took $52 billion in government bailout money, but that hasn't stopped them from honoring their commitments to their former directors.

Bloomberg reports that Roberto Hernandez Ramirez (incidentally, the 7th richest Mexican) will continue to be reimbursed for private air travel, an executive secretary, a private office, and personal security (which all told cost about $2.6 million in 2007) after he steps down as a company director.

Hernandez joins other former Citi CEOs Sanford "Sandy" Weill, John Reed, and Charles "Chuck" Prince who also continue to receive similar perks.

[leftstreet]

8. Reminds me of "Confessions of an Economic Hitman"

by John Perkins

GIVE US YOUR RESOURCES!!

[seemslikeadream]

9. I don't look to Hudson, Whitney and the other writers I quote or positively reference to find out

http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2009/02/fucking-raping-you-to-death-real-fun.html

A further point, which I will be amplifying in the Tribalism series: I don't look to Hudson, Whitney and the other writers I quote or positively reference to find out what I myself think, or to discover what the "authorities" recommend that I should think (if I wish to be regarded as a "serious" person, among other things). I've arrived at my own perspective through years of painstaking reading and thought, more reading and more thought, and endlessly challenging and refining my own views. I quote Hudson and Whitney here because they agree with me (in the sense that my own analysis and theirs reach the same general conclusions), not the other way around.

Yes, arrogant, if you wish to describe it that way. I recommend you try it at the earliest opportunity. As I say, the Tribalism series will have much more on these issues.