Thursday, November 16, 2006

Globalization and Its Discontents

There are a couple of economics related books I've read recently. Joseph E. Stiglitz's Globalization and Its Discontents is a good critical survey of the practices of the IMF and the World Bank during the 80's. Stiglitz points out that the inflexible policies of these institutions contributed a lot to the Asian Economic Crisis. Moreover, the Russian transformation to capitalist economy was managed quite badly -- continuing corruption and oligarghy were some of the results.

Naomi Klein's No Logo is a bit different, more popular and features quite a bit of the people who are the discontents of globalization; fair trade activists, anti-commercial graffitti artists etc. Sometimes a bit unfocused, but the discussion about sweat shops in the Philippines is especially good (and quite famous).

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