Global Economy

Even if the agreements reached at the G-7 Tokyo economic summitshould fall apart, NAFTA not pass Congress and GATT founder on European resistance, there is no way the world economy can be undone -- unless the world gives up on economic growth. And because the ineradicable flip side of the world economy is global migration, there also is no way it can be stopped.As these twin dynamics gain ground, the vision of European unity fades, along with giant regional economies in Europe, East Asia and North America.

I take issue with much of Lane Windham's recent commentary ("If not labor unions, then what?" Jan. 29) beginning with the fundamental premise that it was the unions that provided us with economic redistribution. Like many other academicians, Ms. Windham confuses correlation with causation throughout her thought process. The simple presence of unions in the United States during our rise as the undisputed economic world leader does not establish them as the cause of a better or fairer distribution of wealth.

The business press paints the Federal Reserve as omnipotent. Maybe once it was. But events are likely to prove it has lost some of its mojo. The nation's central bank controls a smaller piece of the global economy than in the last severe recession, in the early 1980s. And it no longer influences the price of oil as it once did. Those seldom-acknowledged facts make its job more difficult, and the outcome of its efforts to fight inflation or keep the country out of a bad recession more uncertain.

Young people and their parents are rightly nervous these days about the economy. Many wonder whether their investment in a college education will pay off. Such worries are overblown. College graduates continue to do far better, even in this difficult economy, than those who never go to college. The new global economy, in fact, requires far more people to have much higher levels of education than ever before. Given the current economic angst, students and their parents tend to focus too narrowly on which college major will result in the best first-job chances for employment and decent wages.

When considering our economic crisis, remember this: The yet unborn and those now too young to vote won't be paying off the debts piled up by the "Greatest Generation," the Baby-Boomers they sired, members of Gen X or any of their other predecessors. Predicting how the future will play out is a fool's game, but I make the above prediction with great confidence. If you haven't yet grasped it, government debt in the U.S., Europe and Japan has grown to such heights that it is literally unrepayable.

THE EXPANDING global market, the author writes, "has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All long-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed."They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life-and-death question for all civilized nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe.

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. -- The PBS series Commanding Heights has brought the drama and sweep of the 20th-century economy to the American public in a thoughtful and entertaining package. Yet the most important idea it conveyed slipped in and out of the show within the first 10 minutes. Viewers were treated to a brief glimpse of life a century ago, enough to show we are not living in the initial globalization but in the sequel. The hammer blows of two world wars, the Depression and rampant protectionism shattered the first global economy so completely that international trade did not regain its former importance until sometime in the Carter or Reagan presidencies.

FINALLY, China expects the World Trade Organization meeting in Geneva this week to decide on its admission to the global economy. Some tariff reductions and increases in trade have already begun, in anticipation of that happening in early 2002. This movement coincides with diplomatic activity. China's foreign minister is coming to Washington this month to help prepare a state visit there by President Bush in October. China does not agree to U.S. national missile defense, and the Bush administration has not accepted Chinese missile modernization, but each is willing to discuss the other's ideas.

PARIS - Finance officials from the world's leading industrialized nations met yesterday to coordinate efforts to promote economic growth and to gird the global economy against the shocks of a potential war in Iraq. But the Group of 7, facing similar divisions over Iraq that have split other international institutions, skirted plans that would deal with the negative economic effects of a war. Instead, the nations issued a more general statement about addressing a sagging global economy.

WASHINGTON -- The World Bank announced yesterday a $1.8 billion environmental-loan program for Mexico, a down payment on the multibillion-dollar border cleanup that would occur if the North American Free Trade Agreement is approved."

Regardless of who wins the U.S. presidential election today, one thing seems certain: Americans are about to learn the same hard lessons recently visited upon the French and the British. That is, whoever ends up being elected head of any given political system will be required to work within the confines of current global economic forces. Candidates can promise all the economic changes they want within their particular national bubble, but nothing will actually change without the blessing of the global market gods.

It would seem that we're now at the stage of global economic lunacy where the worldwide socialist slide is so far gone that the president of Russia is lecturing the world, and particularly Europe, about the risks of socialism. Speaking at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in Vladivostok, Russia, Vladimir Putin promoted the merits of free-market economics. He said that by pulling the former Soviet satellite states into its sphere after the fall of the Iron Curtain, Europe chose to take responsibility for subsidizing their economic well-being.

Europe is in recession. Portugal, Italy and Greece are basket cases. The British and Spanish economies have contracted for the last two quarters. It seems highly likely that France and Germany are in a double dip as well. Why should we care? Because a recession in the world's third-largest economy (Europe) combined with the current slowdown in the world's second-largest (China), spells trouble for the world's largest (that's still us). Remember, it's a global economy. Money moves across borders at the speed of an electronic impulse.

In keeping with your editorial regarding the nation's dysfunctional political system and how to impacts our place in the global economy ("Crisis made, averted," Sept. 28), I have a tidbit to add. Getting ready for a trip, I got out three blazers to pack. Because of your editorial it suddenly came to me to check the labels in these blazers. One label says it was made in Poland, one says Vietnam, and other Indonesia. Contributors all to our government's new economic problems, and, believe it or not, horrendous taking away of money that should go to our government in taxes.

When considering our economic crisis, remember this: The yet unborn and those now too young to vote won't be paying off the debts piled up by the "Greatest Generation," the Baby-Boomers they sired, members of Gen X or any of their other predecessors. Predicting how the future will play out is a fool's game, but I make the above prediction with great confidence. If you haven't yet grasped it, government debt in the U.S., Europe and Japan has grown to such heights that it is literally unrepayable.

I read with great concern that the Maryland Distinguished Scholar program is being phased out, likely for good. This grant helped put me through college at a time when my parents had very little money to send me. They were not poor — my father was a rural mail carrier in Carroll County. Yet I was the fifth of six children and the only one to go to college. I had to do it myself if it was going to happen, and getting good grades in school and working hard allowed me make my own destiny, in no small part thanks to this scholarship.

Administrators and instructors from nearly a third of Baltimore County's public schools brainstormed about creative strategies yesterday with business and government leaders. About 100 principals and teachers attended the event, a conference on innovation organized by the Regional Manufacturing Institute of Maryland. The institute and the county school district have formed a partnership to impart to educators the trends of the global economy and to help them prepare students for future job markets.

Wall Street has been developing a better appreciation for classic smokestack businesses for the past two years, as the U.S. economy has revived and as China and other emerging economies have stoked demand for raw materials and all sorts of industrial goods. Lately, however, appreciation of commodity-related stocks has given way to near-panic buying. Some investors who paid no attention to these issues for a decade or longer - if ever - now seem willing to pay any price to get into them.

As an educator, I feel concern about the ability of American students to compete on a global scale. The Maryland General Assembly voted to make Maryland the 11th state to provide in-state tuition rates to illegal immigrants. With recent news about the United States trailing international leaders in education and in light of President Obama's emphasis on education reform in his State of the Union address, this legislation is one way for us to combat the "brain drain" phenomenon occurring in the United States.

There are some challenges so large that we can only address them together; things like harnessing the job creating potential of innovation, improving public safety and public education, and restoring the health of the Chesapeake Bay. As we reminded ourselves during this week's inaugural activities, we are "One Maryland," and we can only move forward by working together. In this new global economy, we are in a fight for our economic future. Some states will win, and some states will lose.