NationStates Jolt Archive

I'm about 3/4 of the way through this book, and every time I turn the page I gain more respect for Joe Stiglitz. This has to be the most insightful, balanced critique of globalization I've read to date.

I know there are smarter, better-read folk on NSG than I, so I'm curious to know who else has picked this up and what they thought of it. Stiglitz's central complaint with the IMF seems to be that it's a fundamentally unaccountable body too much in bed with the financial community and not responsive enough to the needs of the states it's meant to serve. I think that's valid, but I don't see how it can be any other way. Is there a way to reform the IMF? Can Bretton Woods be reoriented to it's Keynesian roots? If there is, should it be attempted?

I think that's valid, but I don't see how it can be any other way.


And here we have the exact reason why I accept globalization.


Whether you like it or not, its happening, and its inevitable. You can stall it, you can fight off certian aspects of it, but its going to happen.


Protectionism is the closet to isolationism you can get, and even protectionism only stalls globalization economically.

Stiglitz is god. He, more than anyone else has really gone a long way in exposing Smith's "invisible hand" fallacy.

My take is this it is happening anyways. When i can connect on the internet and get goods from anywhere in the world it is happening.
You can put tariffs and even cut off trade but all that does is simply drives the trade under ground to avoid the tariffs and the like. the only thing to do is accept it and try to make it as just as possible.

people complaining about globalization remind me of old people complaining TV stops kids from reading books.

And here we have the exact reason why I accept globalization.


Whether you like it or not, its happening, and its inevitable. You can stall it, you can fight off certian aspects of it, but its going to happen.


Protectionism is the closet to isolationism you can get, and even protectionism only stalls globalization economically.

I certainly agree that trade, generally speaking, is a good thing. Stiglitz's assessment of IMF policy prescriptions, particularly in East Asia, is that they actually inhibited trade: "Beggar-thyself" policies that focused on restricting imports (hence hurting other states' exports) and building currency reserves that would enable governments to pay their creditors regardless of the social and economic costs in terms of development.

I think it's the model of trade we're pursuing that's flawed. Economic globalization, as it's commonly pitched, employs Smithian assumptions that specialization, economies of scale, and trade interdependence are the pillars of economic prosperity. Do one thing, do it on the grandest scale you can afford, and trade with everyone else for all your other material needs. Under such a system we've marshalled vast resources to produce an historic abundance for a few, but it's accompanied by mounting material inequalities, environmental unsustainability, dispossession and disempowerment for most.

I think we can conceive a better system, one that re-localizes our economic decision-making and acknowledges trade as good for getting the things we can't produce ourselves, but still encourages us to meet our own needs as best we can.

I certainly agree that trade, generally speaking, is a good thing. Stiglitz's assessment of IMF policy prescriptions, particularly in East Asia, is that they actually inhibited trade: "Beggar-thyself" policies that focused on restricting imports (hence hurting other states' exports) and building currency reserves that would enable governments to pay their creditors regardless of the social and economic costs in terms of development.

I think it's the model of trade we're pursuing that's flawed. Economic globalization, as it's commonly pitched, employs Smithian assumptions that specialization, economies of scale, and trade interdependence are the pillars of economic prosperity. Do one thing, do it on the grandest scale you can afford, and trade with everyone else for all your other material needs. Under such a system we've marshalled vast resources to produce an historic abundance for a few, but it's accompanied by mounting material inequalities, environmental unsustainability, dispossession and disempowerment for most.

I think we can conceive a better system, one that re-localizes our economic decision-making and acknowledges trade as good for getting the things we can't produce ourselves, but still encourages us to meet our own needs as best we can.

You are right, and I must confess my limited knowledge on globalization in terms of economics.


When I speak of globalization, I tend to be speaking of political and cultural globalization. Economically, I tend to support protectionist policies.

Keynes was a brilliant economist, but he was also wrong in many ways. His actual ideas for the post-war world had little in common with what actually came out of Bretton-Woods and involved hugely powerful international organisations managing exchange rates and business cycles. Hardly realistic, and given the unequal nature of the world economy, probably not desirable either.

The things wrong with the IMF aren't really due to politics. Contrary to popular belief, the American government doesn't tell the IMF what to do. The actually valuable criticisms aimed at the IMF are related to the difficult nature of the things they're supposed to do. If a currency is collapsing, causing the economy to go with it, you can either directly respond to the former or the latter. The IMF has in the past gone for the former, demanding that governments get their budgets in order, increase transparency in the economy and free things up to international investors, hence stabilising the currency. As a short-term measure to stop the collapse, they also argue for big increases in interest rates. But all of these are counterproductive to stop the slide in the real economy caused by the currency/financial crisis. Stiglitz has been of the opinion for years that the IMF should concentrate on the real economy instead. You can make good cases either way, hence why the debate is ongoing. Unfortunately many people who end up commenting on this debate, or quote Stiglitz on the IMF, haven't got a clue about the actual substance and nature of the problem and instead try to make it look like it's got something to do with American "imperialism".

Anyways, Stiglitz is obviously an excellent economist, though like Krugman his popularity (and perhaps the belief to have to provide a counterweight to pro-market arguments in the media) makes him a bit too political at times for my liking.

Here's some more stuff: http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,590028,00.html

. If a currency is collapsing, causing the economy to go with it, you can either directly respond to the former or the latter.

I find it interesting that you conflate the strength of a currency with the strength of the economy. Given the emphasis most people put on manufacturing as central to a prosperous economy, one would assume the opposite to be true, no?

I find it interesting that you conflate the strength of a currency with the strength of the economy. Given the emphasis most people put on manufacturing as central to a prosperous economy, one would assume the opposite to be true, no?
That depends, it's a matter of degrees. The Asian Crisis is the classic example.

The Tiger economies were heavily based on exports. To help with that, most used a fixed or pegged exchange rate regime, which kept its currencies lower than they would otherwise have been, much like China does now. That requires the government to cut the supply of the domestic currency in the international market, in reality that means being ready with an extra supply of US dollars to exchange at the pegged rate, so that nobody would want to exchange the currencies in a private market at a lower rate.

At the same time, the banking systems in these countries were in a nasty shape. They were making loans to manufacturing and real estate assets not really by checking the worthiness of these assets, but because government policy was to help the economy by providing easy credit. So manufacturing companies got cheap and easy loans with basically no checks or balances (especially when they had friends in government), and banks had their loans guaranteed by the government should they go bad. So the banks lent like hell - but they had to get the money for this somewhere, which meant they accessed international capital markets to do it. This meant that they had big amounts of debts denominated in US dollars, with the incoming repayments in their domestic currencies from often questionable investments.

There was a bit of a slowdown in the US and a sharper one in Japan. At the same time, the real estate bubble in Thailand began to burst. The government there decided to bail out a big developer who had a lot of debt in US dollars, and used its own foreign currency reserves to do it. This aroused the attentions of investors (and contrary to popular belief, that included vast numbers of the citizens of these countries) who for the first time in years started to look at the underlying quality of the bank debts and the economies of the Tiger countries as a whole. It turned out most of them were doing a lot worse than investors had thought, so they wanted to get out. They took their money and moved it out of these currencies, driving them down rapidly. In fixed rate regimes, that can be particularly bad because you don't get a smooth fall, but a rapid plunge as soon as the government's reserves of US dollars run out. That's the collapse I was talking about.

So then you have banks trying to repay these dollar-denominated loans with their crappy domestically-denominated investment income, which won't work of course. The further the domestic currency falls, the larger the amount they have to repay. So you get bank failures on a massive scale. The government can't really intervene, either because it has already used up its foreign currency reserves, or doing so would deplete them completely. Basically like Iceland now.

So they have to get US dollars from somewhere, and the only place to get them is the IMF. The IMF looks at the country and says "you have a massive problem with your government finances, your banking sector looks like shit, your entire economy is opaque and ruled by industrial conglomerates with ties to the government and your interest rates are low - of course people want to take their money out". So the IMF prescribes a set of measures that tries to stop the currency crisis and ensures the loan gets paid back: more transparency, less government-induced moral hazard (hence, few if any bail-outs), high domestic interest rates to get people to send their money back into the country and balancing the government budget (hence the privatisations and cuts to social spending the IMF is particularly hated for). That may stop the currency crisis (within the IMF the debate is particularly about the timing of these various measures), but it's really no good for the domestic economy, which is now in a slump because all the banks are crashing and manufacturers dependent on credit are on the brink (especially in South Korea, where the banks and manufacturers were essentially roled into one massive corporate entity). Normally you'd want to cut interest rates and start fiscal stimulus measures, ie increase government spending. That's what developed countries tend to do, because their downturns don't come with currency collapses.

So Stiglitz says: you're prescribing a medicine that we know is bad for the patient, and which no developed country would willingly adopt. Are you insane? And the IMF says: if we lend them money and they don't do anything to stop the currency crisis, they will bleed that money away in a matter of months and nothing will have been fixed.

You can take a stance either way, as I said there are arguments for and against on both sides. But that's what the debate about the IMF should be about, rather than stupid notions of American dominance and poor countries being raped by speculators and debt repayments.

I find it interesting that you conflate the strength of a currency with the strength of the economy. Given the emphasis most people put on manufacturing as central to a prosperous economy, one would assume the opposite to be true, no?

No. If your currency is crap, people don't want it, and it becomes more expensive to purchase what you need. If your currency is strong, you can purchase what you need for less actual wealth outlay. It doesn't matter how strong your manufacturing sector is if your local ducat can't buy jack.

Plus, manufacturing is only one way of making a strong economy. Australia has largely built it's on Raw Materials production; Hong Kong, on throughput trade.

Stiglitz is god. He, more than anyone else has really gone a long way in exposing Smith's "invisible hand" fallacy.
Actually, he's just particularly visible in public. He shared his Nobel Prize for example with two other guys who did research in the same field.

When I speak of globalization, I tend to be speaking of political and cultural globalization. Economically, I tend to support protectionist policies.
Which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Stiglitz doesn't support protectionism in principle, nor does Krugman (and Krugman's area of research was precisely the sort of globalisation/economies of scale/regionalisation Veblenia was talking about). No economist does.

That's because economists, regardless of their ideological view are first and foremost scientists, and the academics in particular actually have a strong commitment to the scientific method, however limited you may think their tools are. The problem is that economists get listened to the most on the issues they most disagree on, but don't get listened to at all on the things on which there is consensus.

Which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Stiglitz doesn't support protectionism in principle, nor does Krugman (and Krugman's area of research was precisely the sort of globalisation/economies of scale/regionalisation Veblenia was talking about). No economist does.


Well then luckily for me this is not my primary concern.

And I support limited protectionist policies. For example, Im more for quotas than tariffs (which just screw everything up).


My goal when I came in here was to discuss political and cultural globalization. Then I noticed thats not what the topic was geared towards.

Plus, manufacturing is only one way of making a strong economy. Australia has largely built it's on Raw Materials production;

As has Canada. But the argument is generally (at least in my circles) that raw materials eventually run out, whereas manufacturers can always purchase inputs from somewhere. Ergo it's better to produce "value-added" manufactured goods than to be a hewer of wood and/or drawer of water.

That depends, it's a matter of degrees. The Asian Crisis is the classic example.

The Tiger economies were heavily based on exports. To help with that, most used a fixed or pegged exchange rate regime, which kept its currencies lower than they would otherwise have been, much like China does now. That requires the government to cut the supply of the domestic currency in the international market, in reality that means being ready with an extra supply of US dollars to exchange at the pegged rate, so that nobody would want to exchange the currencies in a private market at a lower rate.

At the same time, the banking systems in these countries were in a nasty shape. They were making loans to manufacturing and real estate assets not really by checking the worthiness of these assets, but because government policy was to help the economy by providing easy credit. So manufacturing companies got cheap and easy loans with basically no checks or balances (especially when they had friends in government), and banks had their loans guaranteed by the government should they go bad. So the banks lent like hell - but they had to get the money for this somewhere, which meant they accessed international capital markets to do it. This meant that they had big amounts of debts denominated in US dollars, with the incoming repayments in their domestic currencies from often questionable investments.

There was a bit of a slowdown in the US and a sharper one in Japan. At the same time, the real estate bubble in Thailand began to burst. The government there decided to bail out a big developer who had a lot of debt in US dollars, and used its own foreign currency reserves to do it. This aroused the attentions of investors (and contrary to popular belief, that included vast numbers of the citizens of these countries) who for the first time in years started to look at the underlying quality of the bank debts and the economies of the Tiger countries as a whole. It turned out most of them were doing a lot worse than investors had thought, so they wanted to get out. They took their money and moved it out of these currencies, driving them down rapidly. In fixed rate regimes, that can be particularly bad because you don't get a smooth fall, but a rapid plunge as soon as the government's reserves of US dollars run out. That's the collapse I was talking about.

So then you have banks trying to repay these dollar-denominated loans with their crappy domestically-denominated investment income, which won't work of course. The further the domestic currency falls, the larger the amount they have to repay. So you get bank failures on a massive scale. The government can't really intervene, either because it has already used up its foreign currency reserves, or doing so would deplete them completely. Basically like Iceland now.

So they have to get US dollars from somewhere, and the only place to get them is the IMF. The IMF looks at the country and says "you have a massive problem with your government finances, your banking sector looks like shit, your entire economy is opaque and ruled by industrial conglomerates with ties to the government and your interest rates are low - of course people want to take their money out". So the IMF prescribes a set of measures that tries to stop the currency crisis and ensures the loan gets paid back: more transparency, less government-induced moral hazard (hence, few if any bail-outs), high domestic interest rates to get people to send their money back into the country and balancing the government budget (hence the privatisations and cuts to social spending the IMF is particularly hated for). That may stop the currency crisis (within the IMF the debate is particularly about the timing of these various measures), but it's really no good for the domestic economy, which is now in a slump because all the banks are crashing and manufacturers dependent on credit are on the brink (especially in South Korea, where the banks and manufacturers were essentially roled into one massive corporate entity). Normally you'd want to cut interest rates and start fiscal stimulus measures, ie increase government spending. That's what developed countries tend to do, because their downturns don't come with currency collapses.

So Stiglitz says: you're prescribing a medicine that we know is bad for the patient, and which no developed country would willingly adopt. Are you insane? And the IMF says: if we lend them money and they don't do anything to stop the currency crisis, they will bleed that money away in a matter of months and nothing will have been fixed.

You can take a stance either way, as I said there are arguments for and against on both sides. But that's what the debate about the IMF should be about, rather than stupid notions of American dominance and poor countries being raped by speculators and debt repayments.

Hmm...Interesting, although not a debate I'm fully prepared to enter. Certainly not with an entire bottle of wine in me.

And I support limited protectionist policies. For example, Im more for quotas than tariffs (which just screw everything up).
There is no difference between quotas and tariffs, except that one provides government revenue and the other doesn't. Both end up with consumers paying more for foreign goods, reducing competition in the process and leading to a dead-weight loss as well as a wealth transfer to domestic producers, away from foreigners and domestic consumers.

Krugman's theory of trade and regionalisation of production just held it that an initial cause will lead to a clustering of people and productive capacity, providing a different sort of economies of scale that outweighs other geographical concerns. As a lecturer once said to me: the reason the US has a big aircraft industry isn't so much that the US is naturally a better place to build aircraft, but because of the way expertise and productive capacity was created in WWII for basically non-economic reasons. Hence why Krugman thinks the government can be this initial cause to build an industry: a subsidy here, a protective measure for an infant industry there. But he himself says quite openly that this is first and foremost a theoretical model, and that this assumes a government that then knows when to drop such protectionist measures and let things be, which he doesn't think is particularly likely particularly in the Asian countries were such measures were used extensively.

If you're up for it, here's a summary of his academic work which gave him the Nobel Prize this year: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2008/ecoadv08.pdf

*leaves thread for now because the level of economic debate/discussion is way over his head*

If you're up for it, here's a summary of his academic work which gave him the Nobel Prize this year: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2008/ecoadv08.pdf

Im always up to learn, though I may not understand it.


Ill book mark this and read it at another date, considering its late (early) over here in the states and Im sleepy.


It might be best to just ignore my ramblings, Im lousy at economics:p

I don't like the UN because it's a fundamentally unaccountable body too much in bed with the refugees of third world nations and not responsive enough to the needs of the states and people it's meant to serve. Seriously, if you're in the UN you can rape a child in front of a large crowd and avoid ever going to court because everyone from the Secretary General to the General's secretary has diplomatic immunity and don't have to answer to anyone.

The United Nations
http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/6175/pedobear13mn5.jpg
Pedobear approved.

Anyways, Stiglitz is obviously an excellent economist, though like Krugman his popularity (and perhaps the belief to have to provide a counterweight to pro-market arguments in the media) makes him a bit too political at times for my liking.

Clarify what you mean by "too political", please. I'm not sure what you mean by that given that economists belong to political ideologies and therefore its natural for them to promote their particular ideology.

Clarify what you mean by "too political", please. I'm not sure what you mean by that given that economists belong to political ideologies and therefore its natural for them to promote their particular ideology.
He makes the same mistake Krugman makes. He wants to educate people on his views, which is fine. His views are heavily influenced, indeed largely the product of, his academic work, which is also fine.

But because the public doesn't really understand his academic work, he has to take shortcuts, make statements that he doesn't support in public. Which is not fine, because most people don't know that he's doing it. So here is an economist making unsupported assertions in line with a certain political ideology - sound familiar? It's not helping the discipline's credibility in public at all.

Whether you like it or not, its happening, and its inevitable. You can stall it, you can fight off certain aspects of it, but its going to happen.


I don't disagree with you, but that statement sounds rather fatalistic. Also keep in mind that there are different kinds of globalization. If done properly, globalization can actually contribute to a more stable and safer world.

I tend to support protectionist policies.
Why? (In all honesty)

I don't disagree with you, but that statement sounds rather fatalistic.
Economic globalisation is just a word we use when people trade across borders on a global scale. As long as there exists the technology to facilitate such trades, you really can't stop it. It's just like any anti-market legislation: supply and demand don't go away because you outlaw a good or fix a price by law. People just keep trading, except now it's called the "black market". And secondly, since market mechanisms provide a more efficient means of allocating resources and distributing information, people will find that as soon as there is another jurisdiction where it is not supressed, living standards there will rise faster than at home, so immediately there is this pressure to relax the barriers to market processes, which is only exacerbated by the ability of companies and individuals to move to this other jurisdiction if they want. It takes a very committed government to do what it takes to prevent this: building walls and basically sealing borders to people, goods and services. Not the liberal paradise most globalisation critics have in mind.

So basically, the drive towards globalisation can be halted or reversed temporarily (as was done post-WWI), but not actually stopped. And it necessarily will take the form of trading between entities trying to maximise their profits or welfare to the best of their knowledge, so really, all these alternative ideas about globalisation are basically poorly thought out and wishful thinking.

He makes the same mistake Krugman makes. He wants to educate people on his views, which is fine. His views are heavily influenced, indeed largely the product of, his academic work, which is also fine.

But because the public doesn't really understand his academic work, he has to take shortcuts, make statements that he doesn't support in public. Which is not fine, because most people don't know that he's doing it. So here is an economist making unsupported assertions in line with a certain political ideology - sound familiar? It's not helping the discipline's credibility in public at all.

What statements has he made that he doesn't support in public? Otherwise it sounds like every economist ever who has had any political leanings.

Economic globalisation is just a word we use when people trade across borders on a global scale. As long as there exists the technology to facilitate such trades, you really can't stop it. It's just like any anti-market legislation: supply and demand don't go away because you outlaw a good or fix a price by law. People just keep trading, except now it's called the "black market". And secondly, since market mechanisms provide a more efficient means of allocating resources and distributing information, people will find that as soon as there is another jurisdiction where it is not supressed, living standards there will rise faster than at home, so immediately there is this pressure to relax the barriers to market processes, which is only exacerbated by the ability of companies and individuals to move to this other jurisdiction if they want. It takes a very committed government to do what it takes to prevent this: building walls and basically sealing borders to people, goods and services. Not the liberal paradise most globalisation critics have in mind.

So basically, the drive towards globalisation can be halted or reversed temporarily (as was done post-WWI), but not actually stopped. And it necessarily will take the form of trading between entities trying to maximise their profits or welfare to the best of their knowledge, so really, all these alternative ideas about globalisation are basically poorly thought out and wishful thinking.
Really well said, the bolded part.

I find something interesting, speaking about globalization. One claim that alot of Leftists like to make is that globalization = the explotation by the Rich countries of the developing world......and while that is totally debatable in itself, isn't said 'explotation' (let's call it that for a moment) anyway beneficial to the developing world? I mean since the end of the Cold War and the emergance of the American Hyper-Power and the finalization of the global capitalist market (which was being contested the entire cold war), hasn't the developing world improved ridiculously from what it used to be before the extreme globalization that we've seen since the end of the cold war? Are not Asia, Latin-America and even Africa better off than they were? It would seem to me that they are, by a long shot.

It seems that many a leftist on a crusade against Western/Rich/White explotation is only looking at the present situation through horse-blinders, if you will...without looking at the big picture, the long run and the recent history that would show a positive correlation between the developing world and globalization.

What statements has he made that he doesn't support in public? Otherwise it sounds like every economist ever who has had any political leanings.
He's become a bit of a regular on Jim Lehrer's Newshour, maybe you could watch that from time to time (or go back and look at transcripts). The point is that his public persona doesn't match the intellectual rigour and commitment to impartiality that his academic persona has shown.

It seems that many a leftist on a crusade against Western/Rich/White explotation is only looking at the present situation through horse-blinders, if you will...without looking at the big picture, the long run and the recent history that would show a positive correlation between the developing world and globalization.
Of course for developing countries there is a positive correlation between trade liberalisation and economic growth, no significant correlation between it and income inequality and a strong negative one between it and the number of people living in absolute poverty. But that doesn't excuse unfair trade practices or the complete disregard for all acceptable rules of behaviour shown by some companies in poor countries (the primary resource sector in particular, though it's rapidly gotten better the past decade).

Globalisation critics have some valid arguments, and talk about the overall benefits of globalisation doesn't necessarily defeat those. What people on the pro-globalisation side should be doing is defeat the wrong arguments about wage inequality etc, but accept the correct ones - and then perhaps actually try and rectify these with as much vigour as the critics do, since politicians aren't listening to either group, but lobbyists and "they took our jerbs" types instead.

But that also presumes globalisation critics who are willing to accept that a Chinese person earning a tiny fraction of what an American earns is not actually wrong. Some would be, others wouldn't.

He's become a bit of a regular on Jim Lehrer's Newshour, maybe you could watch that from time to time (or go back and look at transcripts). The point is that his public persona doesn't match the intellectual rigour and commitment to impartiality that his academic persona has shown.


Of course for developing countries there is a positive correlation between trade liberalisation and economic growth, no significant correlation between it and income inequality and a strong negative one between it and the number of people living in absolute poverty. But that doesn't excuse unfair trade practices or the complete disregard for all acceptable rules of behaviour shown by some companies in poor countries (the primary resource sector in particular, though it's rapidly gotten better the past decade).

Globalisation critics have some valid arguments, and talk about the overall benefits of globalisation doesn't necessarily defeat those. What people on the pro-globalisation side should be doing is defeat the wrong arguments about wage inequality etc, but accept the correct ones - and then perhaps actually try and rectify these with as much vigour as the critics do, since politicians aren't listening to either group, but lobbyists and "they took our jerbs" types instead.

But that also presumes globalisation critics who are willing to accept that a Chinese person earning a tiny fraction of what an American earns is not actually wrong. Some would be, others wouldn't.
Indeed and noted.

And I actually have to go eat but there are a few major things I'm gonna run by you later. I had a bit of a political/philosophical breakthrough. Be prepared to hopefully have your mind blown.

And yes, I said your mind, you dirty German bastard lol ;)

i agree with globaliziation but i like quiality goods not plastic 1 day flings

I find something interesting, speaking about globalization. One claim that alot of Leftists like to make is that globalization = the explotation by the Rich countries of the developing world......and while that is totally debatable in itself, isn't said 'explotation' (let's call it that for a moment) anyway beneficial to the developing world? I mean since the end of the Cold War and the emergance of the American Hyper-Power and the finalization of the global capitalist market (which was being contested the entire cold war), hasn't the developing world improved ridiculously from what it used to be before the extreme globalization that we've seen since the end of the cold war? Are not Asia, Latin-America and even Africa better off than they were? It would seem to me that they are, by a long shot.

It seems that many a leftist on a crusade against Western/Rich/White explotation is only looking at the present situation through horse-blinders, if you will...without looking at the big picture, the long run and the recent history that would show a positive correlation between the developing world and globalization.

You do realize that many "leftists" support globalization, but they do have some problems with how it is actually done. Stiglitz mentions in most developed nations trade barriers are higher for developing nations than other developed nations. Krugman has long said that bad jobs and low wages are better than no jobs with no wages.


He's become a bit of a regular on Jim Lehrer's Newshour, maybe you could watch that from time to time (or go back and look at transcripts). The point is that his public persona doesn't match the intellectual rigour and commitment to impartiality that his academic persona has shown.

It is surprising to that his public persona is different, ie less demanding, than his academic one? I'll try to catch the show sometime.