Walden Bello

The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation has just concluded its annual summit in Honolulu, once President Obama's home turf. It will probably be most remembered for the traffic jams it created in the Waikiki Beach area, to the consternation of residents and tourists alike.

APEC's continuing existence is a puzzle to...

The progressive dilemma at this time of political crisis is not one of vision. We have identified the key fundamental values needed to construct an alternative to the abundantly discredited neoliberal world older. But on a tactical level we have failed to translate these values into a political program compelling...

My apologies to T. S. Eliot, but September, not April, is the cruelest month. Before 9/11/2001, there was 9/11/1973, when Gen. Pinochet toppled the Allende government in Chile and ushered in a 17-year reign of terror. More recently, on 9/15/2008, Lehman Brothers went bust and torpedoed the global economy, turning...

Cafés are full in Athens, and droves of tourists still visit the Parthenon and go island-hopping in the fabled Aegean. But beneath the summery surface, there is confusion, anger and despair as this country plunges into its worst economic crisis in decades.

The global media has presented Greece, tiny Greece,...

The issue of corruption resonates in developing countries. In the Philippines, for instance, the slogan of the coalition that is likely to win the 2010 presidential elections is "Without corrupt officials, there are no poor people."

Not surprisingly, the international financial institutions have weighed in. The World Bank has...

With the Doha Round of negotiations of the World Trade Organization in limbo, the heavy hitters of international trade have been engaged in a race to sew up trade agreements with smaller partners. China has been among the most aggressive in this game, a fact underlined on January 1, 2010,...

As the self-appointed economic guardians of the world and thousands of protesters converge on Pittsburgh for the third summit of the Group of 20 (G20), expectations are low that a breakthrough will take place in the form of a coordinated action to address the global economic crisis.

French President Nicolas...

The current global downturn, the worst since the Great Depression 70 years ago, pounded the last nail into the coffin of globalization. Already beleaguered by evidence that showed global poverty and inequality increasing, even as most poor countries experienced little or no economic growth, globalization has been terminally discredited in...

One of the most significant consequences of the collapse of neoliberal economics, with its worship of the "self-regulating market," has been the revival of the great English economist John Maynard Keynes.

Not only do his writings make Keynes very contemporary. Ther is also the mood that permeates them, which evokes...

Will China be the "growth pole" that will snatch the world from the jaws of depression?

This question has become a favorite topic as the heroic American middle class consumer, weighed down by massive debt, ceases to be the key stimulus for global production.

Although China's GDP growth rate fell...

As goods pile up in wharves from Bangkok to Shanghai, and workers are laid off in record numbers, people in East Asia are beginning to realize they aren't only experiencing an economic downturn but living through the end of an era.

For over 40 years now, the cutting edge...

It came together spontaneously, the rally at Lafayette Park across from the White House, even before the concession speech by John McCain. The crowd was multiracial, but the vast majority was white. And young. Lustily cheering "O-BA-MA, O-BA-MA," they were from a generation aching for a reason to hope. These...

Reposted from Foreign Policy In Focus

Many on Wall Street and the rest of us are still digesting the momentous events of the last 10 days. Between one and three trillion dollars worth of financial assets have evaporated. Wall Street has been effectively nationalized. The Federal Reserve and the...

Reposted from Foreign Policy In Focus

Despite the glitter that surrounded both the Olympics in Beijing and the Democratic National Convention in Denver, the messages coming to Asia from the two events were very different

From Beijing the message was, to put it in the words of one...

While drafting the so-called Bali Roadmap during the UN Conference on climate change last December, delegates faced a painful choice. They could specifically mention the necessity of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 25-40% by 2020 and face the possibility of a U.S. walkout from the negotiations. Or they could...

From Foreign Policy In Focus, June 3, 2008

Biofuel production is certainly one of the culprits in the current global food crisis. But while the diversion of corn from food to biofuel feedstock has been a factor in the meteoric rise in food prices, the more basic problem...