Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine” and Tom Friedman’s “Golden Straitjacket” characterize the policies needed to globalize a country’s economy. Both policies follow similar underlying themes, yet they take entirely different positions on whether or not these policies help or harm a country’s economic development.
The chapter given on Naomi Klein’s “shock doctrine”, discusses the use of “economic shock therapy” to remodel South American economies in the 1970s. The chapter focuses on the coup in Chile led by General Augusto Pinochet and a group of Chilean economists that had been trained at the University of Chicago in the Economics department. The department had been funded by the CIA and advised by Milton Friedman. Friedman, a big believer in ultra
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Countries must strap themselves in this jacket in order to receive the “golden” benefits of free trade and capitalism. Once on, the garment causes countries’ economies to grow and politics to shrink, but also limits the economic policy and government choices of those in power. The only way to get more room to maneuver in the Golden Straitjacket is by growing it, and the only way to enlarge it is by keeping it on tighter. That is its one major trait: the tighter you wear it, the more economic success it produces and the more padding you can then put into it for your …show more content…
According to Chapter 7 in The Lexus and the Olive Tree, “the global market today is an Electronic heard of often anonymous stock, bond and currency traders and multinational investors, connected by screens and networks.” If governments deviate too far from the golden rules, it will cause the herd to stampede away. If it accepts and adopts the “golden rules”, its country is rewarded by investment capital from the international financial markets. When and if a country decides not to bear the Golden Straitjacket, the herd flees and takes all their capital with them. They are able to do this through credit-ratings agencies such as Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s. They are investigators for the Electronic Herd that roam through the worlds economies, constantly looking over countries and identifying those that are slipping out of the
I intend to outline the background of the political circumstances that lead to the coup. This will include Guatemala, the US and the world scene at the time, when anti-communism contended with communism as state ideologies. I will contend that the coup was all but inevitable in the prevailing political climate of 1954. But that still doesn't make it right. We have been finding out for nearly half a century how wrong it was. Opinions have always varied with the positions of their adherents, but I believe there is one thing that can no longer be disputed: the CIA catalyzed a turn for the worse, even to the inhuman, for many Latin American governments by its actions in managing the Guatemalan coup. They provided the essential weapon for the modern national security state, the knowledge of how to organize an efficient apparatus of state repression and terror.
The dispute that throughout “American Exceptionalism”, is an ancient perception of which becomes a well-respected idea that is idealistically important throughout history, it makes what America will become and forever be known as. It reflects on the ideas of foreign policies to become what we call America today; in which it remains the current movement in globalization. Eric Rauchway, Blessed Among Nations, explains that globalizations the movement of the regional economies, societies, and cultures that is combined through a constituent network of communication to lower a violation of social more, which makes America a world-wide leader in combating the cultural violation to these social mores. In our time, it seems that globalization has become an large extent the product of American policies since WWII.
Immediately after Argentina’s military regime was over the newly reinstated democratic government kept its neoliberal economic system and was praised for doing so. Many organizations claimed that Argentina would be the country that would lead other Latin American countries into the future through its use of neoliberal pol...
The date September 11th is not only a date of terror for the United States, but for the country Chile it also marks the anniversary of a new error of fear. On September 11th, 1973 General Augusto Pinochet overthrew President Salvador Allende, a democratically elected socialist. For seventeen years after this Pinochet dictated over Chile and caused for the murder of over three thousand Chileans, the disappearance of over a thousand, and the torture and jailing of tens of thousands more. What might be even more shocking though, is that the United States had a direct contribution to this brutal dictators rise. The United States’ fear of communist nations developing and the ignorance of secretary of state Kissinger to mention the human rights abuses that Pinochet was responsible for, allowed for the United States to assist in the brutal tyranny (Kornbluh 2003, pages 19-22).
Ensalaco, Mark. Chile under Pinochet: Recovering the Truth. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvannia Press, 2000.
But the idea that the United States was involved in Latin America to encourage the creation of democratic institutions that could effectively enact reform and enable public discourse seemed far-fetched given how President Eisenhower and Nixon dealt the coup that followed in 1960. Before President Lemus caused a full-scale revolution with the massacre of the student protesters that was waiting to happen, moderate military officers organized a coup and overthrew the president. While the officers promised to implement the reforms promised by liberal generals in the late 1940s and to hold elections in 1962, Eisenhower “found the promises insufficient,” and “withheld ...
As Americans we have to start to comprehend that the world around us is changing technologically, politically, and economically. In “The Last Superpower” an excerpt from the book The Post American World by Fareed Zakaria published in 2008. Zakaria emphasizes on these changes. Thomas Friedman the author of “The World is Flat” a piece from the book The World is Flat: A brief history of the twenty-first century published in 2005 also emphasizes on the same changes currently happening in the world. Zakaria and Friedman define these changes as globalization. The obvious common ground shared by both authors is their representation of globalization and the effects that it has and will continue to have on modern life. In contrast to sharing the same main topic both authors take a drastically different approach on how the relay their information to the audience. The differences displayed are mainly due to their personal and educational backgrounds, definitions of globalization as well as the individual writing styles of each author.
Naomi Klein’s No Logo states that corporations have been championing globalization using the reasons that globalization allows U.S. consumers to benefit from cheaper products produced abroad, while developing nations benefit from the economic growth stimulated by foreign investments. The generally accepted belief is that governmental policies should be established in favor of the corporations to facilitate the trickling down of corporate profits to the end consumers and workers abroad. Klein, however, contends that globalization rarely benefit the workers in the developing countries.
The world is ever changing and has been that way even before humans dominated Earth. However, what we are interested in for this topic is in the last few decades where globalization has had an impact in the early 21st century, making the world "flat". The phrase that the world has become flat is a metaphor for viewing the world level in terms of commerce and competition, meaning a level playing field where everyone has an equal opportunity. However, opinions are divided on how much globalization has actually impacted the world as a whole. Critics argue that Friedman’s term "flat" is grossly exaggerated as his view is from an American perspective. This paper investigates major arguments for both sides.
By the fall of 1981, the Argentinean government under the leadership of General Galtieri and the military junta was experiencing a significant decrease of power. Economical...
In an interview with the Peterson Institute, Rodrik claims he is trying to create “a new narrative to shape the next stage of globalization, and to address the imbalance between the national scope of governments and the global nature of markets”, in many ways, this book does just that. As previously stated, Rodrik has diagnosed a “Political Trilemma of the World Economy”. The first point is that of Hyperglobalization, which is the ambitious agenda of “economic liberalization and deep integration” (17). In other words, it is a rapid and w...
In this world corporations can move their operations to any country they want with no loyalty to that nation, only in the interest of their profits. Some corporations such a Nike even go as far as using a country broken political system to rig the market and rob the workers of their rights. As Nike became more wealthy and powerful, they decided that the American political standard was not working in its favor. Thus they decided that moving operations to countries with below minimum wage and nonunions, such as Vietnam; could help them make as much profit while essentially robbing citizens of their democratic birth rights. This is a term is used by many in the know of this global economy by ‘the Golden straitjacket”. It is a practice that states that if a country is to be competitive in this global economy they must bend to the demand of these powerful investors, who have the power to influence a nation's economy, then what begins to happen is these countries essentially lose their democratic rights to be in the race ...
The case studies and examples in his book support key theoretical arguments; but the primary deficiency is it doesn’t have real life examples that elaborate on the theories. The book’s youngest audiences are undergraduates, and it is intended to educate and guide them towards the true meaning of globalization. No matter how explicate the theory is, it is very important to support it with specific examples. In chapter one Dicken points out “There is real danger of resource exhaustion in specific areas…geopolitical complication that access to localized resource (like oil, for example) may be restricted from time to time by states within whose territory it is located.”(Dicken2007 p.25) Imbedding an example such as “When the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo removed about 25% of the worlds daily crude oil from the market ─ oil prices increased significantly.” (McPherson) brings additional insight and understanding to a significant issue or event. Dicken’s writing style doesn’t emphasize on examples. They are the cornerstone of good reasoning, drawing pictures and allowing the reader to relate and receive an enhanced view of his arguments.
From 1971 to 1980, the author worked as an ‘Economic Hitman’ (EHM) for the consulting firm Chas. T. Main, Inc. (MAIN). His role was “to cheat countries around the globe out of billions of dollars... to encourage world leaders to become part of a vast network that promotes U.S. commercial interests. In the end, those leaders become ensnared in a web of debt that ensures their loyalty” (p17). This was accomplished by the production of economic projections that would persuade the World Bank and other international organisations to lend money to these countries. After this money was spent on developing infrastructure in the countries in question – the contracts for which went to U.S. companies – they were left with large amounts of debts which they could not hope to repay. This in turn left these countries beholden to the United States’ economic and political interests, creating a ‘global empire’ controlled by “corporations, banks and governments” (Preface, p xiii). Perkins refers to this collusion of interests as the ‘corporatocracy’, and it is they who devised and carry out this strategy. The goal is not only to increase economic growth, both for the U.S. and the corporations themselves, but “to perpetuate and continually expand the system” (Preface, p xiii).
In conclusion, Dani Rodrik believes that globalization works best when it is not pushed too far. This allows domestic governments to hold on to some authority over trade alongside policy-making space. Free-market trade going unchecked through hyper globalization would present a problem because people undermine the regulations that citizens are so used to being protected by. This would lead to a problem concerning legitimacy. One solution would be to impose a set of regulations among all countries, but that would be advantageous to some and disadvantageous to others, making it an unfair solution. Creating policy-making space provides governments with some ability to keep trade legitimate as globalization expands.