There is widespread talk of globalization but pundits are deliberately confusing "Globalization" with three separate concepts: Global Trading, the spread of Western Culture and Internationalism. Read on to discover which of these is evil and which is good.
The conventional wisdom is that global trade makes everyone richer and civilises the world, saving millions of people from poverty and ill health. Is this true or has it simply been retold so many times that everyone believes it except a few "Occupy" and "Green" fanatics?
Does international trade make us richer?
If international trade is the principal reason that we are wealthy then countries that have lots of International Trade compared with their GDP should tend to be richer than other countries:
It is surprising that countries where International Trade is an important part of their wealth are not always richer than other countries. In fact, for most wealthy countries, the proportion of their riches that they earn from International Trade doesn't predict how wealthy they are. International Trade by itself does not make you wealthy and you can have a wealthy country that has little International Trade compared with other countries.
This is shocking: above a GDP per head of about $16,000 international trading doesn't make us richer. Once we have enough money to buy any missing raw materials and energy from overseas any further international trade diverts effort from trade inside our economy. Each country has a limited workforce and productive capacity so if half of these are devoted to international trade then that half is lost for internal trade. This means that having obtained the basics from abroad countries can choose whether to focus on international or national trade, either of these options having virtually the same effect on their wealth.
If the proportion of International Trade in an economy does not determine the wealth of the People in a wealthy country perhaps a country can get richer by making a profit from the balance of trade. Perhaps you need to export more than you import to get rich. The graph below shows the relationship between International Trade balance and GDP per head:
It seems that laying up treasure from overseas does increase per capita GDP and a large trade deficit is strongly correlated with low incomes. Making a big profit from overseas trade doesn't necessarily make you rich but making a big loss is definitely linked to being poor. (The UK and USA are not included in the above graph because
International Trade is less than 80% of GDP - the proportions are UK:
58%, USA: 27%).
Does International Trade increase per capita wealth? The graphs above suggest that foreign trade only has a weak effect on GDP in developed economies. If a developed country exports relatively little compared with the size of its economy it can make up the loss of GDP by internal trading. Making a significant loss from international trade may, however, be bad for your wealth. The moral seems to be to avoid large trade deficits but trade surpluses are not essential.
The conventional story is that global trade should be increased as far as possible to lift the poorest countries out of poverty and make us all rich. In reality it looks like global trade may be helping to keep some of the poorest countries poor. The story that unrestricted global trade is the only way forward for the prosperity of the world is false. It is a fiction promulgated by the powerful multinational companies that benefit most from global trade. The reality is that some global trade is good but rampant global trade is unnecessary and can be negative.
In the modern world, apart from a few oil states, being a rich country is a Western cultural phenomenon. If a country has good education and training, low corruption, a continuous stream of stories and propaganda extolling the virtue of wealth, a legal system to create a fair market, a workforce disciplined to attend the workplace, a reward and punishment scheme related to income and a modern infrastructure to support work then the people will indulge in a high rate of transactions and so make money.
Apart from a few oil states the richest countries in the world are Westernised. They have a Western culture. Even China now has many of the trappings of Western culture: China began to get rich after it began to be Westernised.
Global trade is a by-product, an aside, of Western Culture rather than Western Culture ("development") being a by-product of global trade. This conclusion will be amplified below where it will be shown that cultural factors are far more correlated with obtaining prosperity than Global Trading.
Is Wealthy Western Culture a good thing ?
Being "under developed" usually means being corrupt, neglecting the education and welfare of the people and diverting expenditure from the public good to the private pocket. It is widely acknowledged that corruption has a huge effect on prosperity. Here is a graph of GDP per capita versus the Transparency International Corruption Index:
Basically, if you want your country to be poor, and full of suffering then be corrupt and turn a blind eye to corruption. Corruption is the major component of "under development".
Another major factor in developing a Western culture is education and training:
(Notice that the UK gets an extremely poor return on its educational investment)
The absence of corruption and the provision of education are far more related to GDP per capita than export volumes or international trade surpluses.
But is education and integrity in public and private life only achievable through Global Trade? Clearly not, the correct sequence of events seems to be to achieve a society with little corruption, lightly regulated markets and good education etc. then global trade will follow on as a part of general trade transactions.
Large-scale Global Trading does have some adverse effects. Developed (Westernised) countries have become dependent on overseas resources, some of them acquiring food, minerals and energy that is produced from an area that greatly exceeds that of the developed country.
This
use of the land of other countries as part of your own prosperity
produces an "ecological footprint" that exceeds your fair share of the
world's resources.
Highly overpopulated countries such as the Netherlands, Singapore and the UK will always require an ecological footprint in excess of their own land but most countries are just exploiting large areas of the world because it is cheap to do so.
So is global trade a "good thing"? The consideration of ecological footprint suggests it may be a bad thing because it consumes resources at a greater rate than is possible within the borders of a country. The consideration of International Trading at a deficit also suggests global trade may impoverish a country.
Global trade only appears to be a "good thing". It appears to be a good thing because those countries that have a high value of global trade tend not to be corrupt, have good education, the rule of law etc.. However, this is a confusion of cause and effect. It is the absence of corruption that provides the fair trade and legal systems that permit a country to expand its economy and experience some of this expansion as a rise in global trade value.
Large scale global trade is not necessarily a bad thing but where countries have an excessive ecological footprint or a large trade deficit these factors should be corrected.
Is Globalization a good thing?
Large scale global trade is not the same as "globalisation". Globalisation is the transmission of Western culture to other countries. Indeed, trade only grew rapidly after Western countries developed a culture to permit and nurture it. Large scale global trade occurs as a by-product of Western culture.
The pillars of Western culture are the rule of law, education, low corruption and representative government. These all seem like good things. However, they seem like good things to you and me, who are products of Western culture, so we should be very wary before launching a jihad to Westernise the world.
Whilst globalization may appear to be a "good thing" this is not in any way the same as suggesting that rampant global trade is a "good thing". Global trade and globalization are not the same, they are two different processes.
Is Global Trade and Global Free Trade Necessary for Globalization?
The unexpected answer to this question is NO! There is no evidence that global trade creates globalization, rather the spread of Western culture, known as globalization is what creates global trade. So why are we under such pressure to liberalise global trade? In particular why are we under such pressure, in the name of globalisation, to liberalise trade between countries that have already been globalised and are already prosperous, such as the UK, USA, EU etc.?
The answer is simple, multinational corporations are involved in global trade and "liberalising" global trade suits them. It increases their business volume and influence. Indeed, global trade is very much the trade of multinational corporations. Multinational corporations are falsely cloaking themselves in the positive effects of globalisation when they are truly only interested in money and power for themselves and, by claiming globalisation as their achievement, they are claiming a moral high-ground that is not their own.
I would prefer a mature world where, for example, Islamic countries can become free from corruption and have good education but limit penetration by western fashions and media if they so desire. There is no reason why tariffs and even bans on certain types of trade should not be used by independent states to maintain many elements of their indigenous cultures. An open commitment to huge amounts of global trade is not essential for prosperity and global trading can be moulded by countries as they see fit (once they have over $16000 GDP per capita).
That said, there is no doubt that sudden dislocations in global trade have a disastrous effect on the global economy and national economies. Sudden dislocations of any type are bad for economies in the short term. (Brexit will be a smooth transition because for most trade between the UK and EU the tariffs are very low).
Internationalism and the War against Nations.
The greatest proponents of Global Trade are the multinational banks. Especially Goldman Sachs. They lobbied throughout the late twentieth century to undo the regulations that had been put in place to stop global contagion of financial disasters like the 1929 crash.
What the banks achieved was not globalization but a dangerous interdependence of the financial systems of the world. Of course, predictably, the global financial system crashed again in 2008.
In the UK EU referendum American banks such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citibank were the major funders of the StrongerIn campaign. (See The Funding of StrongerIn and US Bank that runs the Remain campaign in the EU Referendum). They see the EU as a major component of their desire for global trading freed from regulation by Nation States (see Note 3).
Industrial multinationals such as car makers Volkswagen, Siemens etc. would very much like to move their plant and workforce to where it is most profitable. These industrial multinationals, like the Banks, require the removal of financial borders but are also lobbying for the removal of borders in general so that trade, plant and workforce can be relocated as desired. They wish to be entirely liberated from control by local workers, communities and national governments.
These attempts to remove borders are about a network of multinationals trying to free themselves from control by individual nations. This is not globalization, it is Extreme Internationalism. Internationalism was originally a good thing. It involved a number of international institutions that could mediate between Nations. The Western Allies institutionalised Internationalism after WWII:
Unfortunately the Multinationals have realised that this upper layer of governance is easier for them to control than individual National Governments and are continually lobbying for the expansion of the powers of these institutions and also for the creation of new institutions such as TPP and TTIP.
Those who lead the Internationalists have promulgated a belief amongst their followers that Nation States are nothing more than reservoirs of racism that elevate their own ethnicity above all others. The truth is very different, Nations are organised groups of people who operate an economy and social system based on a particular area of land. They have cultures and economies that are usually dynamically adapting to local conditions and to the relationship between the locality and the world at large. Nations are the diverse socio-economic organisations that are essential for the flowering of humanity. Without Nations most differences will disappear. Independent Nations are a "good thing": they saved the world from the ideology of fascism in the 20th century. Nations are the cradle of diversity. It is ideologies that are evil, especially empire building, Internationalist ideologies like fascism or communism. Most of the Nations of the world cooperate with each other. They trade, they allow people to move freely between countries for tourism and business and have devised treaties to lower the chance of conflict.
Nations are the only bodies that can oppose Multinational Corporations. This is why Extremist Internationalists favour the transfer of most macroeconomic power to supranational bodies. Their pet politicians such as Tony Blair (retired to JP Morgan) and George Osborne (Blackrock) partly justify their support for Internationalism and the creation of supranational governance (such as the EU) by saying that it is the only way to control the multinationals but what they really mean is that transferring government to supranational entities removes control of the multinationals by the People. Internationalism has become the same as the liberation of multinationals from responsibility towards the People.
Internationalism is also the endorsement of the Chinese model of capitalism. In this model an imperial government convinces itself that all that matters is that the people have sufficient material wealth to provide the consumption to maintain large corporations (and the power of those who own and run them). This is also the imperative of the global government envisaged by the Multinationals and Bankers and such a government would eventually be run by Chinese crooks rather than US crooks.
Of course, we all benefit from global trade as well as the global traders but they must not hold us to ransom. As was shown above, when GDP per head exceeds about $16,000, Nations can take or leave global trading as they see fit (so long as they do this slowly). Nations must be controlled by the People through their representatives, not by a network of unaccountable, greedy people who float around the world. There is no substitute for National government, don't let the multinationals and their "liberal elite" lackeys in their broadcast media take you in. When they talk about supranational government and international regulatory bodies what they mean is a layer of government that they control whilst dis-empowering you. There is no such thing as a "citizen of the world" because a person who dodges their responsibilities to those who must settle is a citizen of nowhere.
The battle lines are drawn. The antagonists are the People, located in territories called Nations against the floating population of networked employees and lackeys of multinational companies - the Internationalists who, nowadays are all Internationalist Extremists. The stakes are high. The Internationalists desire to wrest control away from nations and place it in supranational bodies that they control.
The EU Referendum cleared the air because the multinationals and global investment banks broke cover, they believed that they would have an easy victory and came out publicly in support of Internationalism (see Funding of the StrongerIn Campaign and Note 1). It is increasingly evident that the multinationals have been coordinating their attack on ordinary people: the US based Council on Foreign Relations ( Membership List), Davos and the EU Elite pressure group, the Bilderberg Group, are all sharing planning (see Note 1).
Michel Barnier, the EU's chief Brexit negotiator, reported to the Council on Foreign Relations on July 10th 2018, two days after the Chequers meeting that produced the famous "White Paper" on Brexit. The control is informal because the Multinationals are all entirely in agreement that their objective is to increase the prosperity of Multinationals. They must be stopped. There is nothing inevitable about transferring power to multinationals, they can be stopped. Global trade can continue seamlessly after the multinationals are defeated but it will be largely returned to being controlled by committees of Nations rather than committees of corporate CEOs and their apparatchiks.
...........................................................................
Note 1: No, its not Reptiloid Aliens, the Bilderberg Group is just old fashioned power and influence. It was formed by the European Movement specifically to further European Union and Transatlantic Cooperation. Those who followed the EU referendum in the UK will have noticed the prominent roles played by Goldman Sachs, Bloomberg, RyanAir, the BBC, the FT, the Economist etc. in actively backing the Remain campaign. Indeed all of these are still fighting vigorously for the Referendum to be overturned by the UK remaining in the Common Market (EU name: Single Market). They all met at the Bilderberg Meeting a couple of days before setting up the Britain Stronger In Europe campaign in 2015:
The Bilderberg group operates by delegating areas of interest to members or groups of members. Jozef Retinger, who set up the Bilderberg group, described its method of operation:
"We decided, however, that none of the new ideas and initiatives would be developed by the group, but that they should be passed on to some persons or organization who could further develop them." (The Bilderberg Group by J. Retinger
This provides deniability and can be highly successful:
"A meeting in June in Europe of the Bilderberg Group - an informal club of leading politicians, businessmen and thinkers chaired by Mr Davignon - (EU Commissioner) - could also "improve understanding" on future action, in the same way it helped create the euro in the 1990s, he said. "EU Observer
US Investment Banks Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan led the financing of the Remain campaign and were followed by Citibank and other US Internationalist corporations. Bloomberg, the FT, the Economist, the BBC are all still fighting a desperate rear guard action against the the UK - all these media corporations are on the attendee list above for the secret June 15th 2015 Bilderberg Meeting.
This is not a conspiracy theory, it is the actual history of the EU Referendum. Bilderberg was set up by Retinger to nurture, finance and lobby for the growth of the EU. The Bilderberg Group did meet to discuss the Referendum. Its members did form the principle pro-Remain group and finance it. They are still piling on the pressure in the UK media and forming mercenary organisations to get their own way. There is no conspiracy, the Multinationals are out in the open and fighting to restore their influence, they and their floating population of apparatchiks were so near to power they are horrified to have had it snatched away by Brexit.
These multinational Internationalists do not care for the People. They desire a world where they can move their factories from place to place at the stroke of a pen without any regard for the People, can acquire trained staff without any expense to themselves, can force nations to compete with each other for tax breaks, can move their wealth without hindrance and so on. Extremist Internationalists really are the enemies of the People.
The Post-Marxist Left are also Internationalists, believing that the destruction of the Nation State will usher in a socialist revolution. They genuinely believe that they will be able to set the agenda in a world where Multinationals and their lackeys have power! (See The Labour Party Plans Progressive Internationalism.., A Labour Leader Needs to Champion the Party's Internationalist Values etc. etc.). The Far Left never get it right, they will never take power from the Multinationals and they always end up with the tyrants in charge.
The reason that the Multinationals and the far Left both back Extremist Internationalism is that they are both corporatists.
Note 2: The more alert reader may have spotted that the total trade figures (imports+exports) exceed 100% of GDP for many countries. This is due to a mixture of entrepot activities (simply importing then re-exporting goods), the use of imported parts in exports, use of countries as tax havens with most profits being taken abroad etc. The GDP figures for countries exclude much of this activity so "total trade" is not a component of GDP and can exceed it.
The scale of this activity is surprising until you consider that multinationals need to set up reservoirs of goods in each continent for rapid distribution. International trade appears far more important than it really is because a Japanese car will appear as an export in Japan, an import and export in, say, Germany where the distributor is based, and an import in France where it is finally purchased. The same car is counted four times in the total figures for global trade.
Note 3: The possibility of long term balance of payments deficits in the Single Market and Eurozone is of particular interest to the banks because they make huge profits out of re-cycling the surpluses of Germany, Netherlands etc. into debts in the Southern European countries and, to some extent, in the UK. The UK can free itself from this process by balancing its current account but the Southern Eurozone countries are destined to become regionalised within the EU with whole industries being relocated to the North.
Written 8/2/2017
The conventional wisdom is that global trade makes everyone richer and civilises the world, saving millions of people from poverty and ill health. Is this true or has it simply been retold so many times that everyone believes it except a few "Occupy" and "Green" fanatics?
Does international trade make us richer?
If international trade is the principal reason that we are wealthy then countries that have lots of International Trade compared with their GDP should tend to be richer than other countries:
 |
| International Trade Value does not simply add to GDP - see Note 2 for an explanation. |
This is shocking: above a GDP per head of about $16,000 international trading doesn't make us richer. Once we have enough money to buy any missing raw materials and energy from overseas any further international trade diverts effort from trade inside our economy. Each country has a limited workforce and productive capacity so if half of these are devoted to international trade then that half is lost for internal trade. This means that having obtained the basics from abroad countries can choose whether to focus on international or national trade, either of these options having virtually the same effect on their wealth.
If the proportion of International Trade in an economy does not determine the wealth of the People in a wealthy country perhaps a country can get richer by making a profit from the balance of trade. Perhaps you need to export more than you import to get rich. The graph below shows the relationship between International Trade balance and GDP per head:
Does International Trade increase per capita wealth? The graphs above suggest that foreign trade only has a weak effect on GDP in developed economies. If a developed country exports relatively little compared with the size of its economy it can make up the loss of GDP by internal trading. Making a significant loss from international trade may, however, be bad for your wealth. The moral seems to be to avoid large trade deficits but trade surpluses are not essential.
The conventional story is that global trade should be increased as far as possible to lift the poorest countries out of poverty and make us all rich. In reality it looks like global trade may be helping to keep some of the poorest countries poor. The story that unrestricted global trade is the only way forward for the prosperity of the world is false. It is a fiction promulgated by the powerful multinational companies that benefit most from global trade. The reality is that some global trade is good but rampant global trade is unnecessary and can be negative.
In the modern world, apart from a few oil states, being a rich country is a Western cultural phenomenon. If a country has good education and training, low corruption, a continuous stream of stories and propaganda extolling the virtue of wealth, a legal system to create a fair market, a workforce disciplined to attend the workplace, a reward and punishment scheme related to income and a modern infrastructure to support work then the people will indulge in a high rate of transactions and so make money.
Apart from a few oil states the richest countries in the world are Westernised. They have a Western culture. Even China now has many of the trappings of Western culture: China began to get rich after it began to be Westernised.
Global trade is a by-product, an aside, of Western Culture rather than Western Culture ("development") being a by-product of global trade. This conclusion will be amplified below where it will be shown that cultural factors are far more correlated with obtaining prosperity than Global Trading.
Is Wealthy Western Culture a good thing ?
Being "under developed" usually means being corrupt, neglecting the education and welfare of the people and diverting expenditure from the public good to the private pocket. It is widely acknowledged that corruption has a huge effect on prosperity. Here is a graph of GDP per capita versus the Transparency International Corruption Index:
 |
| Data plotted by Wonky Thoughts |
Another major factor in developing a Western culture is education and training:
The absence of corruption and the provision of education are far more related to GDP per capita than export volumes or international trade surpluses.
But is education and integrity in public and private life only achievable through Global Trade? Clearly not, the correct sequence of events seems to be to achieve a society with little corruption, lightly regulated markets and good education etc. then global trade will follow on as a part of general trade transactions.
Large-scale Global Trading does have some adverse effects. Developed (Westernised) countries have become dependent on overseas resources, some of them acquiring food, minerals and energy that is produced from an area that greatly exceeds that of the developed country.
Highly overpopulated countries such as the Netherlands, Singapore and the UK will always require an ecological footprint in excess of their own land but most countries are just exploiting large areas of the world because it is cheap to do so.
So is global trade a "good thing"? The consideration of ecological footprint suggests it may be a bad thing because it consumes resources at a greater rate than is possible within the borders of a country. The consideration of International Trading at a deficit also suggests global trade may impoverish a country.
Global trade only appears to be a "good thing". It appears to be a good thing because those countries that have a high value of global trade tend not to be corrupt, have good education, the rule of law etc.. However, this is a confusion of cause and effect. It is the absence of corruption that provides the fair trade and legal systems that permit a country to expand its economy and experience some of this expansion as a rise in global trade value.
Large scale global trade is not necessarily a bad thing but where countries have an excessive ecological footprint or a large trade deficit these factors should be corrected.
Is Globalization a good thing?
Large scale global trade is not the same as "globalisation". Globalisation is the transmission of Western culture to other countries. Indeed, trade only grew rapidly after Western countries developed a culture to permit and nurture it. Large scale global trade occurs as a by-product of Western culture.
The pillars of Western culture are the rule of law, education, low corruption and representative government. These all seem like good things. However, they seem like good things to you and me, who are products of Western culture, so we should be very wary before launching a jihad to Westernise the world.
Whilst globalization may appear to be a "good thing" this is not in any way the same as suggesting that rampant global trade is a "good thing". Global trade and globalization are not the same, they are two different processes.
Is Global Trade and Global Free Trade Necessary for Globalization?
The unexpected answer to this question is NO! There is no evidence that global trade creates globalization, rather the spread of Western culture, known as globalization is what creates global trade. So why are we under such pressure to liberalise global trade? In particular why are we under such pressure, in the name of globalisation, to liberalise trade between countries that have already been globalised and are already prosperous, such as the UK, USA, EU etc.?
The answer is simple, multinational corporations are involved in global trade and "liberalising" global trade suits them. It increases their business volume and influence. Indeed, global trade is very much the trade of multinational corporations. Multinational corporations are falsely cloaking themselves in the positive effects of globalisation when they are truly only interested in money and power for themselves and, by claiming globalisation as their achievement, they are claiming a moral high-ground that is not their own.
I would prefer a mature world where, for example, Islamic countries can become free from corruption and have good education but limit penetration by western fashions and media if they so desire. There is no reason why tariffs and even bans on certain types of trade should not be used by independent states to maintain many elements of their indigenous cultures. An open commitment to huge amounts of global trade is not essential for prosperity and global trading can be moulded by countries as they see fit (once they have over $16000 GDP per capita).
 |
| Tariffs have little effect on growth in the long term |
Internationalism and the War against Nations.
The greatest proponents of Global Trade are the multinational banks. Especially Goldman Sachs. They lobbied throughout the late twentieth century to undo the regulations that had been put in place to stop global contagion of financial disasters like the 1929 crash.
What the banks achieved was not globalization but a dangerous interdependence of the financial systems of the world. Of course, predictably, the global financial system crashed again in 2008.
In the UK EU referendum American banks such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citibank were the major funders of the StrongerIn campaign. (See The Funding of StrongerIn and US Bank that runs the Remain campaign in the EU Referendum). They see the EU as a major component of their desire for global trading freed from regulation by Nation States (see Note 3).
Industrial multinationals such as car makers Volkswagen, Siemens etc. would very much like to move their plant and workforce to where it is most profitable. These industrial multinationals, like the Banks, require the removal of financial borders but are also lobbying for the removal of borders in general so that trade, plant and workforce can be relocated as desired. They wish to be entirely liberated from control by local workers, communities and national governments.
These attempts to remove borders are about a network of multinationals trying to free themselves from control by individual nations. This is not globalization, it is Extreme Internationalism. Internationalism was originally a good thing. It involved a number of international institutions that could mediate between Nations. The Western Allies institutionalised Internationalism after WWII:
Those who lead the Internationalists have promulgated a belief amongst their followers that Nation States are nothing more than reservoirs of racism that elevate their own ethnicity above all others. The truth is very different, Nations are organised groups of people who operate an economy and social system based on a particular area of land. They have cultures and economies that are usually dynamically adapting to local conditions and to the relationship between the locality and the world at large. Nations are the diverse socio-economic organisations that are essential for the flowering of humanity. Without Nations most differences will disappear. Independent Nations are a "good thing": they saved the world from the ideology of fascism in the 20th century. Nations are the cradle of diversity. It is ideologies that are evil, especially empire building, Internationalist ideologies like fascism or communism. Most of the Nations of the world cooperate with each other. They trade, they allow people to move freely between countries for tourism and business and have devised treaties to lower the chance of conflict.
Nations are the only bodies that can oppose Multinational Corporations. This is why Extremist Internationalists favour the transfer of most macroeconomic power to supranational bodies. Their pet politicians such as Tony Blair (retired to JP Morgan) and George Osborne (Blackrock) partly justify their support for Internationalism and the creation of supranational governance (such as the EU) by saying that it is the only way to control the multinationals but what they really mean is that transferring government to supranational entities removes control of the multinationals by the People. Internationalism has become the same as the liberation of multinationals from responsibility towards the People.
Internationalism is also the endorsement of the Chinese model of capitalism. In this model an imperial government convinces itself that all that matters is that the people have sufficient material wealth to provide the consumption to maintain large corporations (and the power of those who own and run them). This is also the imperative of the global government envisaged by the Multinationals and Bankers and such a government would eventually be run by Chinese crooks rather than US crooks.
Of course, we all benefit from global trade as well as the global traders but they must not hold us to ransom. As was shown above, when GDP per head exceeds about $16,000, Nations can take or leave global trading as they see fit (so long as they do this slowly). Nations must be controlled by the People through their representatives, not by a network of unaccountable, greedy people who float around the world. There is no substitute for National government, don't let the multinationals and their "liberal elite" lackeys in their broadcast media take you in. When they talk about supranational government and international regulatory bodies what they mean is a layer of government that they control whilst dis-empowering you. There is no such thing as a "citizen of the world" because a person who dodges their responsibilities to those who must settle is a citizen of nowhere.
The battle lines are drawn. The antagonists are the People, located in territories called Nations against the floating population of networked employees and lackeys of multinational companies - the Internationalists who, nowadays are all Internationalist Extremists. The stakes are high. The Internationalists desire to wrest control away from nations and place it in supranational bodies that they control.
The EU Referendum cleared the air because the multinationals and global investment banks broke cover, they believed that they would have an easy victory and came out publicly in support of Internationalism (see Funding of the StrongerIn Campaign and Note 1). It is increasingly evident that the multinationals have been coordinating their attack on ordinary people: the US based Council on Foreign Relations ( Membership List), Davos and the EU Elite pressure group, the Bilderberg Group, are all sharing planning (see Note 1).
Michel Barnier, the EU's chief Brexit negotiator, reported to the Council on Foreign Relations on July 10th 2018, two days after the Chequers meeting that produced the famous "White Paper" on Brexit. The control is informal because the Multinationals are all entirely in agreement that their objective is to increase the prosperity of Multinationals. They must be stopped. There is nothing inevitable about transferring power to multinationals, they can be stopped. Global trade can continue seamlessly after the multinationals are defeated but it will be largely returned to being controlled by committees of Nations rather than committees of corporate CEOs and their apparatchiks.
...........................................................................
Note 1: No, its not Reptiloid Aliens, the Bilderberg Group is just old fashioned power and influence. It was formed by the European Movement specifically to further European Union and Transatlantic Cooperation. Those who followed the EU referendum in the UK will have noticed the prominent roles played by Goldman Sachs, Bloomberg, RyanAir, the BBC, the FT, the Economist etc. in actively backing the Remain campaign. Indeed all of these are still fighting vigorously for the Referendum to be overturned by the UK remaining in the Common Market (EU name: Single Market). They all met at the Bilderberg Meeting a couple of days before setting up the Britain Stronger In Europe campaign in 2015:
 |
| Bilderberg 2015 Meeting |
The Bilderberg group operates by delegating areas of interest to members or groups of members. Jozef Retinger, who set up the Bilderberg group, described its method of operation:
"We decided, however, that none of the new ideas and initiatives would be developed by the group, but that they should be passed on to some persons or organization who could further develop them." (The Bilderberg Group by J. Retinger
This provides deniability and can be highly successful:
"A meeting in June in Europe of the Bilderberg Group - an informal club of leading politicians, businessmen and thinkers chaired by Mr Davignon - (EU Commissioner) - could also "improve understanding" on future action, in the same way it helped create the euro in the 1990s, he said. "EU Observer
US Investment Banks Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan led the financing of the Remain campaign and were followed by Citibank and other US Internationalist corporations. Bloomberg, the FT, the Economist, the BBC are all still fighting a desperate rear guard action against the the UK - all these media corporations are on the attendee list above for the secret June 15th 2015 Bilderberg Meeting.
This is not a conspiracy theory, it is the actual history of the EU Referendum. Bilderberg was set up by Retinger to nurture, finance and lobby for the growth of the EU. The Bilderberg Group did meet to discuss the Referendum. Its members did form the principle pro-Remain group and finance it. They are still piling on the pressure in the UK media and forming mercenary organisations to get their own way. There is no conspiracy, the Multinationals are out in the open and fighting to restore their influence, they and their floating population of apparatchiks were so near to power they are horrified to have had it snatched away by Brexit.
These multinational Internationalists do not care for the People. They desire a world where they can move their factories from place to place at the stroke of a pen without any regard for the People, can acquire trained staff without any expense to themselves, can force nations to compete with each other for tax breaks, can move their wealth without hindrance and so on. Extremist Internationalists really are the enemies of the People.
The Post-Marxist Left are also Internationalists, believing that the destruction of the Nation State will usher in a socialist revolution. They genuinely believe that they will be able to set the agenda in a world where Multinationals and their lackeys have power! (See The Labour Party Plans Progressive Internationalism.., A Labour Leader Needs to Champion the Party's Internationalist Values etc. etc.). The Far Left never get it right, they will never take power from the Multinationals and they always end up with the tyrants in charge.
The reason that the Multinationals and the far Left both back Extremist Internationalism is that they are both corporatists.
Note 2: The more alert reader may have spotted that the total trade figures (imports+exports) exceed 100% of GDP for many countries. This is due to a mixture of entrepot activities (simply importing then re-exporting goods), the use of imported parts in exports, use of countries as tax havens with most profits being taken abroad etc. The GDP figures for countries exclude much of this activity so "total trade" is not a component of GDP and can exceed it.
The scale of this activity is surprising until you consider that multinationals need to set up reservoirs of goods in each continent for rapid distribution. International trade appears far more important than it really is because a Japanese car will appear as an export in Japan, an import and export in, say, Germany where the distributor is based, and an import in France where it is finally purchased. The same car is counted four times in the total figures for global trade.
Note 3: The possibility of long term balance of payments deficits in the Single Market and Eurozone is of particular interest to the banks because they make huge profits out of re-cycling the surpluses of Germany, Netherlands etc. into debts in the Southern European countries and, to some extent, in the UK. The UK can free itself from this process by balancing its current account but the Southern Eurozone countries are destined to become regionalised within the EU with whole industries being relocated to the North.
Written 8/2/2017
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