Can Globalization Fail? Lessons from History
Wednesday, April 26th, 2006Around the world there are growing rumbles about globalization, and these rumbles are not confined to activist anti-globalization movements. In East Asia, the financial crisis of 1997 left a jaundiced sense of globalization, though robust economic recovery has tempered that. Globalization’s standing has also been badly damaged in Latin America by the meltdown of the Argentine economy in 2000 and successive financial crises in Brazil in 1999 and 2001. In Europe, new fear about globalization is surfacing in a range of countries. In Poland it has taken the form of concern about foreign capital taking over the Polish banking system, and foreign takeover fears also permeate France and Italy. In France and Germany, working people link globalization with pressures to dismantle the social democratic state. (more…)