Madison residents love their farmers' markets, windmills, rural
health cooperatives, credit unions and hundreds of other green
businesses, appreciating how they simultaneously benefit the local
economy, environment and civic life. Less appreciated, however, is
the essential role localization plays in promoting global
prosperity, sustainability and peace - the central theme of this
weekend's Future Cities 2009 conference taking place in
Madison.
Dear International Leaders
and Guests,
From The President's Welcome:
Michelle and I look
forward to welcoming world leaders to the wonderful city of Pittsburgh
on September 24th and 25th and we thank the people of Pittsburgh and
Pennsylvania for opening their city as a showcase to the world.
The rage of the
disposed is fracturing the country, dividing it into camps that are
unmoored from the political mainstream. Movements are building on the
ends of the political spectrum that have lost faith in the mechanisms
of democratic change. You can't blame them. But unless we on the left
move quickly this rage will be captured by a virulent and racist right
wing, one that seeks a disturbing proto-fascism.
Labor Day weekend, I flew to Toronto for the annual meeting of the
American Political Science Association. Not surprisingly, complexity,
globalization and unpredictability were themes of the conference.
Globalization has become a catchword to celebrate every aspect of
modern capitalism. Yet globalization has more than one source and can
take many forms. Our future may depend on reshaping the reigning
understanding of globalization.
The
current global downturn, the worst since the Great Depression 70 years
ago, pounded the last nail into the coffin of globalization. Already
beleaguered by evidence that showed global poverty and inequality
increasing, even as most poor countries experienced little or no
economic growth, globalization has been terminally discredited in the
last two years. As the much-heralded process of financial and trade
interdependence went into reverse, it became the transmission belt not
of prosperity but of economic crisis and collapse.
WASHINGTON - Fifty advocacy
organisations are calling on the U.S. Congress to put a stop to
investment funds which purchase heavily indebted countries' debt and
jeopardise the impact of bilateral and multilateral debt cancellation
to over 30 countries.
The groups - which
include the NAACP, the Jubilee USA Network, TransAfrica Forum, the
American Jewish World Service, the United Methodist Church and Africa
Action –are seeking a stop to what they have dubbed "Very Unscrupulous
Loan Transfers from Underprivileged countries to Rich, Exploitive
Funds".
As El
Salvador transitions from decades of conservative rule to the
administration of leftist President Mauricio Funes, the country faces
an international showdown triggered by a restrictive free-trade
agreement between the United States and Central America. Canada's
Pacific Rim Mining Corporation is suing the government for its refusal
to allow it to mine gold in El Salvador's rural north. If Pacific Rim
succeeds in securing the $100 million settlement it seeks, that would
set a troubling precedent.
This is not only the worst global economic downturn of the post-World War II era; it is the first serious global downturn of the modern era of globalization. America's financial markets failed to do what they should have done--manage risk and allocate capital well--and these failures have had a major impact all over the world. Globalization, too, did not work the way it was supposed to. It helped spread the consequences of the failures of US financial markets around the world.
"We
cannot assure our development on our own," stated France's pet dictator
and Africa's longest-serving ruler, Omar Bongo. The Gabonese leader was
talking about national economic development, but he might just as well
have been talking about his own personal economic development.
Transparency International's French chapter singled out
Bongo, who died this month at 73 after ruling his country for 41 years,
for a spectacular misappropriation of state funds.
