Walmart vs. Unilever & Danone | Stock Discussion Forums

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes
Walmart vs. Unilever & Danone

An SI Board Since November 2003

Posts	SubjectMarks	Bans
6	1	0

Emcee: Ann Corrigan	Type: Unmoderated

Introduction Compact

They all stink with a capital S:

A "Must-Read" Book on Globalization: the Ultimate Insider’s Tale
"Globalization and Its Discontents," by Joseph E. Stiglitz, W.W. Norton, NYC, 2002
This book is "must reading" for anyone seriously interested in the debates over global trade and finance. Here’s why.

Stiglitz was chief economist at the World Bank (and a former World Bank senior vice president) in the late 1990s. He won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics and served on the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton. Stiglitz was involved in some of the biggest decisions made about the new global economy during the past decade. He the ultimate insider.
In readable, down-to-earth language, Stiglitz directly challenges some of the main economic theories guiding U.S. business and government policy. He argues these theories are wrong, inherently anti-worker and economically destructive -- and should be abandoned. (NOTE: Stiglitz gets into his economic critique more deeply — and with a greater focus on labor — in a very important speech available at the following web site. This is a fairly technical economics lecture, but the core message should be clear to most people willing to stick with it. See: worldbank.org )
Stiglitz also rips the manner in which economic globalization is taking place. He says, flat-out, that the super rich — the international financiers and bankers — have hijacked the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and are using it to squeeze billions of dollars from poor and developing nations and to force these countries to accept foreign factories and other types of investment. Instead of an IMF that creates jobs and improves global living standards, we an IMF that funnels money to the rich while destroying jobs and pushing millions of people into poverty, overseas and here at home.
When one of the world’s top economists levels such fundamental criticisms against "free market" economics and echoes so many of the complaints unions have raised about the "new world order," people should sit up and take notice!

Unions and progressive economics are neither "out of the mainstream" or obsolete, as the Political Right loves to say. Major changes are needed in the structure of the U.S. and world economy and — as this book proves -- many in the mainstream and inside the economic elite understand that this is true.

Before turning to some excerpts from his book, I should add that many readers will disagree with Stiglitz on some key points. He is, after all, a mainstream economist, not a hard-core trade unionist. However, it is precisely his mainstream status that has allowed him first-hand knowledge of things only a true insider could know.

Stiglitz on the IMF as a tool of the super rich: "The IMF (International Monetary Fund) is pursuing the interests of the financial community…Simplistic free market ideology provided the curtain behind which the real business of the ‘new’ mandate could be transacted … [The IMF] may not have contributed to global economic stability, but it did open up vast new markets for Wall Street." IMF policies "reflect the colonial mentality."

‘Free’ trade and job destruction: ‘Free trade’ is supposed to force a country to move its resources from less-productive uses to more productive uses. "But moving resources from low-productive uses to zero-productive uses does not enrich a country, and this is what happened all too often under IMF programs. It is easy to destroy jobs and this is often the immediate impact of trade liberalization. IMF ideology holds that new, more productive jobs will be created as the old inefficient jobs that have been created behind protectionist walls are eliminated. But that is simply not the case."

Anti-globalization protests: "It is the trade unionists, students, environmentalists — ordinary citizens — marching in the streets of Prague, Seattle, Washington and Genoa who have put the need for reform on the agenda…Those who labored in the developing countries knew something was wrong…but they had no way to change the rules or to influence the international financial institutions that wrote them."

‘Free market’ economics:" Modern free market theory (also known as neo-liberalism or neo-classical economics) is based on mathematical models that look pretty on paper, but simply do not work in the real world. Even worse, the Political Right is pushing highly simplistic and radical forms of free market theory -- what Stiglitz derides as "free market fundamentalism" -- that are even further divorced from reality.

The equations of free market economics balance out only if all following conditions are met. But as Stiglitz points out, in the real world none of these conditions are ever met:

Perfect information: Workers and businesses have complete knowledge at all times of all current market conditions, economy-wide, including: all job openings, wage and benefit rates, prices, supplies of labor and raw materials, output, inventories, profits and productivity.
Perfect mobility: Workers and businesses are free at all times to relocate, take any job and exit or enter any market they choose.Perfect competition: In free markets, no business monopolies, unions or government regulations affect the economy. Things like unemployment, inflation, poverty, recession, financial fraud and dangerous working conditions are impossible and cannot exist in the free market.
Perfect equality of bargaining power: Workers and businesses enjoy a perfect balance of power. In the free market, no employer (or union) has the ‘upper hand."
A quote from his lecture: "The fundamental propositions (of neoclassical economics) were all but designed to undermine the rights and position of labor…We should be clear: workers in much of the world have grounds for suspicion."

To see a New York Times review of "Globalization and its Discontents" go to:

lists.essential.org

Go to reply# or date (mm/dd/yy):

Reply	Message Preview	From	Recs	Posted
6	Hey Tim, You'll be interested in knowing that a local couple is suing Walma	Ann Corrigan	-	1/9/2004
5	Yes, Tim I agree with your assessment of what has changed the country in recent	Ann Corrigan	-	12/2/2003
4	If you look at how we as a country grew, manufacturing and retail. How the U.S.	Tadsamillionaire	-	12/1/2003
3	Tim, WMT is the most notorious but it's not only judges who are allowing com	Ann Corrigan	-	12/1/2003
2	In 1999, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. was battling to prevent the Union of Food and Comm	Tadsamillionaire	-	11/27/2003
1	Wal-Mart's anti-worker lawyers went bust with their legal maneuvering, inclu	Tadsamillionaire	-	11/27/2003

Go to reply# or date (mm/dd/yy):