Friday, December 11, 2009

A matter of both fairness and balance

The President of France Nicolas Sarkozy and the Prime Minister of Britain Gordon Brown co-authored an opinion article in the Wall Street Journal on December 9 titled "For Global Finance, Global Regulation: Proposals that deserve consideration include taxes on financial transactions and 2009 bank bonuses"

That tempts me to extrapolate on their rationale and ask why not global (uniform) regulations for trade and for business in general? Why not for labour laws?

Globalisation is in crisis these days, IMO. One of the main reasons is that it remains largely irrelevant to the average citizen of this world as well as the average (micro or SME) company. Why? One of the reasons, IMO, is that for a company to be active outside its "home" country/economy, it has to face different laws on almost everything in different "foreign" markets/countries.

I have argued before that globalization of capital and goods (and to some extent Services) needs a) to be coupled with globalization of the job market (at least between WTO member countries and for the citizens/workers of these countries) and b) be balanced by global governance. In other words, a global economy needs a global political counter-dimension. Otherwise, it becomes an opportunity for speculation and "economic piracy", in that it makes things very difficult even for large law abiding companies and easy for business "pirates" who use this chaos of national regulations and laws as a platform for avoiding any regulation.

That compared to the current state of globalization either a) more - full globalization or b) less globalization even a return to "economic fortress" models of the past would IMO make more sense and work for the average company and the "average citizen".

Thus, IMO, a Global Parliament and a global government are not only a matter of fairness but also a matter of balance.

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