ABSTRACT
As Jill catches the morning news before rushing to work, she learns of violence in the Middle East, protests against budget cuts in some debtriddled European country, and new export data from China. The latest numbers from financial markets in New York, London, Frankfurt, and Singapore scroll across the bottom of the screen. On her morning commute, she fills up her car – a South Korean brand – with gasoline that originated in Venezuela. At the office, she hears rumors about jobs in the firm being outsourced to India. Jill spends the morning banging away on an office computer that was assembled in Guangdong, China, but that includes components from a dozen different countries. A conference call during the afternoon brings together marketing directors from Brazil, South Africa, Italy, and Indonesia. On the way home, she stops to pick out a toy produced in Vietnam for her son’s birthday. The take-out dinner she enjoys that night was prepared by a chef who recently emigrated from Hong Kong. As Jill catches up on Facebook before bed, she scrolls through wall posts updating her on the lives of friends from half a dozen different countries.
