Onward March of Globablization Heralded, Criticized at Nobel Conference

The bad news is the good news: globalization is here, now, and there is no stopping its advancement. That was the take home message from some of this country’s most prominent economists at Gustavus Adolphus College’s 36th Nobel Conference, titled “Globalization 2000: Economic Prospects and Challenges,” October 3rd and 4th in St. Peter, Minnesota.
“Globalization will not be rolled back,” declared Joseph Stiglitz, Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution and former chief economist for the World Bank. “The changes in technology, transportation, communication have lowered barriers,” he noted. “The question is, how do we channel globalization, make it a force for good, for reducing poverty?” He noted that IMF staff, with whom he met the week before in Prague, still did not understand the protest messages from Seattle last December.
Stiglitz, a reformer, seeks to make more democratic the operations of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. “Globalization can be redirected only if voices of protest are heard. That is the challenge facing citizens in the coming years,” he said. He believes the World Trade Organization’s agenda is “decidedly unbalanced,” favoring industrial countries. Like the other economists speaking, Stiglitz believes a properly managed globalization can lift the poor out of poverty.
Robert Mundell, 1999 Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences laureate, a traditionalist, advocated enlarging “fair trade and extending NAFTA to the whole western hemisphere.” In his view, growth will decrease poverty — a larger pie will increase the income of the poor. Mundell acknowledged that growth involves inequality. He embraced trickle-down economics supporting policies that make the rich richer, seeing benefits for everyone in the long run.
The globalization debate has economists on one side, non-economists on the other. John Cobb Jr., retired from Claremont’s School of Theology, cited reports that show countries adopting IMF polices with lower, not higher rates of growth, increased foreign debt, and forced reductions in social expenditures to service loans. “We are directly impoverishing the poor as a result of these policies,” Cobb said.
Cobb criticized the mid-1980s “Washington Consensus” between the IMF and World Bank, United Nations organizations controlled by the United States. They determined foreign assistance would be based on “trade, not aid,” he said. Loans for economic development are now the dominant means of support, not grants or aid directed at human needs. Much of the leadership of the world has “decided that the economy is the most important thing,” he said, “and have organized life in pursuit of wealth. This is true on the national and international level.”
Cobb objected to the “Wall Street Model” at home, which is based on investments and raising interest rates in response to a fast growing economy, to suppress wages, which hurts lower paid workers
Cobb told the audience at the Lutheran-based college that “Christians cannot be silent on the worship of wealth.” He believes that economic growth has been raised to the level of religion and dominates our lives.
The American economists seemed oblivious to non-economic issues and unable to leave their numbers and analyses behind. Neither Stiglitz or Harvard’s Jeffrey Sachs believed that individual farmers or working people in the U.S. have been hurt by globalization, though Sachs admitted “there are pockets of hurt in an economy of 270 million people.
Michael Sohlman, a Swedish economist and executive director of The Nobel Foundation, saw beyond economics. He contended the world’s only true “global” issues are global warming and the widening hole in the ozone layer. No other issue affects all of us, he said. Speaking like a diplomat, he warned of narrow special interests and suggested people judge who is working for the general interest. Ask “for whose good” are policies being championed, he said.
Amitai Etzioni, sociologist at the The George Washington University, ended the conference with his post-dinner lecture Wednesday evening. He challenged people to address large issues. “We need globalism of our social, moral, and political institutions. We should think of moral globalism parallel with economic globalism,” he said. Etzioni noted that economic and technological forces have overpowered people throughout history.
The only way to face the future successfully, Etzioni believes, is for the nations of the world to come together with true loyalty and commitment to shared global values. “We must engage in moral dialogues,” he said, “bringing our values and hold profound conversations of what is right and wrong.” This is now working best on a people to people basis, not at the government level, he noted, citing the international movement to ban land mines.
Globalization has arrived. Yet to be known is how the people of the world are going to respond. Are the values that inform us and on which we base global policy going to be dollars and cents and economic indicators or will they be moral and ethical beliefs?