I have not posted in the last week because of the death of my sister after a long illness,with all the travels and concerns attendant on that. Death of a loved one is a somber time, with very few redeeming graces except for knowledge of the cessation of suffering for the one who has died and the chance to visit with family. But amid the interminable waits in crowded airport lounges and packed into cramped airplane seats, one does have opportunities to catch up on reading and perhaps to glimpse in the process a little of the larger flow of events.
- item - the January 30th edition of Time Magazine contains a great article titled "Command and Control", by David Rothkopf, on the "great upheaval" throughout the world as corporate capitalism struggles with democracy for global control. He describes a world in which even the 2000th largest global corporation is at the center of more economic activity than many small countries, and corporate values are increasingly at odds with democratic values. It's very worthwhile reading, and he's singing my song. He has a book coming out, titled Power, Inc.: The Epic Rivalry Between Big Business and Government; I'm looking forward to reading it.
- item - a column in the Washington Post, by David Ignatius, titled "Where insurgents and elites meet", describes the current atmosphere and goings on at the Davos Conference, the annual get-together of world power brokers of all stripes where they mull over world problems and seek common approaches. Ignatius reports that they're having forums on topics like "Is Capitalism Failing" and "Global Risks 2012: The Seeds of Dystopia" and are nervously aware that rage against elites is a global phenomenon these days. Ignatius comments that, for example, Chinese leaders are quite sensitive to the fact that a billion poor Chinese with TV's are looking disapprovingly at the goings on of wealthy Chinese. Ignatius perceptively notes that even as the Davos attendees seek solutions to world issues, their very getting together maintains an elite network that further isolates the haves from the have-nots.
- item - a news feed from the New York Times reports that the head of the IMF has diplomatically chided, without explicitly naming it, Germany for a lack of commitment to European union and suggested the IMF might hold back its contributions to the European stability fund unless Europe recognises that continually cutting the budget of governments is not the solution to the financial crisis. Meanwhile the prime minister of Greece charges that the banks have become the enemy of democracy. And in Brussels, "Leaders are expected to bow to mounting evidence that austerity alone risks stoking recession and plunging fragile economies into a downward spiral."
- item - a foreign policy discussion group to which I belong has an annual briefing book issued by the Foreign Policy Association that contains briefings by experts on eight topics of current foreign policy interest. A current briefing in it on the unrest in the middle east notes several times that the common thread for the uprisings across the middle east and around the world is the economic disparity between the very wealthy elites and the rest of the population. A picture included in the briefing shows a middle eastern wall with graffiti scrawled on it, "Thank you Facebook."
Putting, albeit very blearily, all those items together reveals an increasingly strong case for the paradigm shift I've written about, in which the calculus of economics must once more, as it did in traditional times, include the social impacts and ethics of economic transactions, not just the "rational" market considerations. Spring is in the air!
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