Earth to Washington — Limit private acts in public interest

Regardless of the consequences for the economy, U.S. corporations and banks remain free to move jobs and production whenever and wherever corporate strategy dictates.

Government can stop this by forcing them to serve the broader national interest. This is not as radical as it sounds. Every other leading industrial nation does it, one way or another. They impose limits on corporate strategy — either in formally binding ways or through political and cultural pressure, thus ensuring that good jobs and the best value-added production remain at home.

William Greider is writing in “The End of Free-Trade Globalization.”
Excerpting, editing by Carolyn Bennett

“The political fray obscures the fact that the basic economic problem is larger than any single nation and stalks the global trading system itself. There is a huge hole in the world—a massive loss of demand. …Financial collapse and recession, with falling income, defaulting debt and rising unemployment, made the hole.”

The U. S. Government in other times “would have stepped in to impose policy solutions and create market demand as the global system’s buyer of last resort, but this time Goliath is gravely weakened — in economic strength and political authority.…

“Sensing the risk of a larger breakdown, nations have begun taking protective measures — ‘Every man for himself.’ The center is not holding.”

“We have reached the endpoint of globalization as we have known it.”…

 [The] United States is tapped-out.

“Goliath has fallen and cannot get up. ....”

Sources and notes

“The End of Free-Trade Globalization” (William Greider), November 4, 2010, also in November 22, 2010 edition of The Nation magazine, http://www.thenation.com/article/15
Also: “William Greider on G-20 and trade; Ali Gharib on Iran and Wikileaks,”
CounterSpin November 12, 2010, http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4193848/end-free-trade-globalization

William Greider is a 40-year veteran reporter, author  and national affairs correspondent for The Nation magazine. He has also been an on-air correspondent for six documentary films for PBS Frontline. His latest book is Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country. It “describes the epic turning point in our nation’s history driven by financial crisis, economic deterioration and other fundamental adversities,” http://williamgreider.com/about

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