ABSTRACT
Our pensions and futures depend on the performance of large corporations with offices or factories flung across dozens of countries – and so future livelihood is dependent on decisions of many managers, the structure of their corporations, the labor available to them, and the policies of the countries where they work. Our buying power depends on the value of our currencies (American dollars, euros) – but that value is shaped by how brokers and investors on international currency markets evaluate American and European policies, and whether their economies conform to investors’ ideals of a “normal” economy. In America, the dot-com bubble and Enron scandal still echo on Wall Street, the “war on terror” increases the budget deficit and insecurities about the global economy, rocketing oil prices hinder growth (but not quite as many feared), and inequality persists – yet the American economy fuels the world and the dollar is closest to a world currency. In the United States and Great Britain, politicians and people discuss welfare programs while ignoring why they were adopted and how reducing them might have done more harm than good – yet “corporate welfare” and CEOs’ enormous salaries merit less discussion. In Russia, former KGB officials battle financial elites (who made their wealth by politics as much as entrepreneurship), and China stands tall but looks over its shoulder as the Indian and Brazilian economies begin to pick up steam.
