Capital controls: “The new normal” (Part I)

Ilene Grabel

Like many progressive economists, I’m addicted to economics and business news. These days one phrase is repeated constantly—“The new normal.” Indeed, National Public Radio’s show, “Planet Money” recently featured a story on this omnipresent phrase.  The new normal is shorthand for features of a dismal new economic reality to which the (investing) public must adjust. The new realities of our era include lower rates of return on stocks, bonds and real estate; larger government budget deficits which precipitate higher inflation rates; sluggish (and even negative) rates of growth in rich countries; and a shift in economic (and political) power to the world’s dynamic developing countries.

But another new normal has flown in under the pundit’s radar screen. This new normal is the proliferation of capital controls, which are being implemented rather widely across the developing world.

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Korea-US trade deal would outlaw capital controls

Following up on Kevin Gallagher’s Triple Crisis post on the proposed US-China investment treaty, Gallagher has outlined in a recent column in The Guardian how the pending Korea-US Free Trade Agreement would prevent the Korean government from doing precisely what it is now doing to manage the financial crisis: control the flow of foreign currencies.

“South Korea will join the growing group of nations that have recently resorted to currency controls in the wake of the global financial crisis. As a rash of new research has shown, such controls are legitimate tools to prevent and mitigate financial crises.

“Yet if the pending South Korea-US free trade agreement that the US just agreed to expedite at the G20 meetings had been ratified by now, South Korea’s actions would be deemed illegal.

“As the Obama administration works to put Bush-era trade policy behind and forge a ’21st century trade policy’ it should fix this flaw that could be fatal to South Korea’s financial stability….”

Read the full Guardian column.

Climate Change: Are People the Problem?

James K. Boyce

There is no doubt about it: people are changing the Earth’s climate. The evidence for what scientists call “anthropogenic climate change” is overwhelming, notwithstanding the obfuscation efforts of the climate change denial industry kept on life-support with infusions of corporate money.

But to say that our emissions of greenhouse gases are causing climate change is not to say that every extra person automatically multiplies the problem. Nor does it imply that population control is the ultimate solution – a view espoused by some on the Malthusian fringe of the environmental movement.

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Offshore Oil Drilling and Hurricane Risks

Frank Ackerman

It’s time to stop blaming BP – alone. At least four other oil companies hired the same firm to write their plans for handling spills in the Gulf of Mexico. They ended up with nearly identical plans, complete with thoughtful concern about impacts on walruses. The CEO of ExxonMobil called it “unfortunate” and “embarrassing” that the plan included walruses, which have not been present in the Gulf region for millions of years.

On the other hand, according to U.S. Rep. Ed Markey, the oil industry’s standard plan for Gulf spills never mentions hurricanes or tropical storms, which do appear in the region on an annual basis. This makes perfect sense under only one interpretation: the oil companies were certain that accidents never happen. If there are no oil spills, your spill response plan can talk about unicorns, and no one will be the wiser.

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Gold Fever: Global investor search for “safe haven” makes indigenous Guatemalan communities unsafe

Lyuba Zarsky

In the indigenous, western highlands of Guatemala, a rebellion is swelling against the forces of global capitalism. Well, at least against its palpable manifestation—an open pit gold and silver mine owned and operated by the Canadian company Goldcorp.  The mine is seen as early warning of what could be a storm of foreign mining companies: the Guatemalan government has granted some 300 mining concessions, over 90% of them near indigenous communities. On June 18, some 12,000 indigenous people streamed into Huehuetenango to give a message to a visiting UN Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Rights:  “No to mining, yes to life”.

Goldcorp inherited the Marlin mine when it acquired Glamis Gold back in 2006. Since then, Goldcorp has emerged as the industry’s “growth leader” .   Its 2009 Annual Report boasts a five-year average return to shareholders of 21.2%–nearly double that of its “senior” competitors.

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G20: Where no side wins

C.P. Chandrasekhar

There is only one message that comes out of Toronto, where the G20 summit has come to an end. The formation, ostensibly created to reflect changing power equations in the world economy, serves no purpose. It has turned out to be one more talking shop in which agreement to disagree is presented as a consensus.

The disagreement that matters today concerns the near-global rush to reduce public debt by curtailing government expenditures. Occurring so soon after the Great Recession this policy stance is threatening a second recessionary dip.

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The WTO and the Financial Crisis

Kevin P. Gallagher

On Tuesday, June 29 the World Trade Organization’s Committee on Financial Services will hold its much anticipated session on the WTO and the financial crisis.  Developing countries should follow this session with great scrutiny.  The WTO has claimed that it played no negative role in the financial crisis.  However, research by the IMF and the UN suggest otherwise.

Work by independent economists, the IMF, and the World Bank has shown that those nations that capital account liberalization is not associated with economic growth in developing countries.  Indeed, developing nations need to cross a minimum threshold of institutional development before such liberalization can help spur growth.

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Europe and the Return of Class Conflict

Matías Vernengo

Almost two decades ago, Francis Fukuyama, at the peak of the hubris and arrogance of neoliberal thinking, famously suggested that history had ended.  The unfolding of the European crisis may finally prove him wrong.  It is true that the failures of the Washington Consensus during the 1990s led to a revival of the left in Latin America, starting with the election of Chávez in 1998.  However, I would venture, risking being a bit Eurocentric, that political changes in the periphery are seldom capable of having global effects in the same way as changes in the center of the capitalist system.

On the other hand, the crisis of the euro, and the adjustment measures taken by the European countries may prove more significant as a way of bringing back the old coalitions that were instrumental in building the Welfare State.  There are at least two elements in the rescue packages implemented in Greece and Spain that are particularly wrongheaded and will have a terrible social impact.

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Cut Hypocrisy First, Not Tariffs: The Key to Breaking the WTO Deadlock

Timothy A. Wise

Trade officials in the Obama Administration have made it abundantly clear that they will move forward in the WTO’s Doha Round of negotiations only if the larger developing countries agree to open their economies more to U.S. exports.  As Kevin Gallagher pointed out on the Triple Crisis Blog (“Obama’s New Trade Agenda”), the administration’s trade policies, and its announced goal of doubling U.S. exports, backtrack from those of the Bush Administration, renege on the basic principles of the Doha Development Round, and undermine precisely the kind of multilateralism President Obama claims to stand for.

Such intransigence does not bode well for the WTO, nor does it give much hope that the Obama Administration will use the current TransPacific Partnership negotiations to forge what it promises will be a “21st century trade agreement.”

Clearly, a creative new approach is needed to break the trade deadlocks. I offer a modest proposal here: Instead of negotiating reductions in tariffs and farm subsidies, it’s time to negotiate reductions in hypocrisy.  I call it the Hypocrisy Clause, which mandates phased reductions in “trade-distorting hypocrisy,” with the greatest reductions coming from the most developed hypocrites.

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Global Economic Crisis: Policy Responses in Developing Countries

Mehdi Shafaeddin

The global economic crisis is a wake-up call for developing countries, particularly low-income ones, to reconsider their long-term industrial and development strategies as the short-term counter-cyclical macroeconomic policy tools available to them are very limited. It is not going to be easy, but it is necessary. Some selective import restrictions under the “balance of payments clause” of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and capital controls would be helpful, but not sufficient. A debt moratorium, debt forgiveness and other concessional financial flows are urgently needed, and will help, to provide low-income countries with some temporary relief. But what is essential for their long-term development is to increase their capacity to take the risk of external shocks and instability in export earnings. To do so, a different development and industrial strategy is required to diversify and upgrade their structure of production and trade.

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