Protectionist dominoes are beginning to tumble across the world

I have mixed feelings about reading this. On one hand it certainly sounds very bad and I fear this might be getting ugly. On the other hand I wonder if this sort of news is meant to manipulate us more into a panic. But either way this doesn't look good.

I note that you found your story in a UK paper.

That should tell you something.

sometime in the late Clinton years.

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There has been much talk lately of America's Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which set off the protectionist dominoes in 1930. It is usually invoked by free traders to make the wrong point. The relevant message of Smoot-Hawley is that America was then the big exporter, playing the China role. By resorting to tariffs, it set off retaliation, and was the biggest victim of its own folly.

Britain and the Dominions retreated into Imperial Preference. Other countries joined. This became the "growth bloc" of the 1930s, free from the deflation constraints of the Gold Standard. High tariffs stopped the stimulus leaking out.

It was a successful strategy - given the awful alternatives - and was the key reason why Britain's economy contracted by just 5pc during the Depression, against 15pc for France, and 30pc for the US.

Could we see such a closed "growth bloc" emerging now, this time led by the US, entailing a massive rupture of world's trading system? Perhaps.
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the dead body just doesn't know it yet

Globalism can die a horrid death for all I care.

Anglo-american capitalism. What is "globalism" but a grand word for a vile and viciously traitorous civil war against the people of the country.

The UK was poor in the forties and fifties, yet buses had conductors, as well as drivers and inspectors. Amazingly, human telephonists were used very widely. There was no endless succession of recorded messages telling you to press various buttons; Every corporation, including government departments didn't require recourse to a premium phone number to contact them;even when you were enquiring about a contemplated purchase; school playing-fields were not sold off to developers, hospitals had quarters to accommodate trainee nurses. The list is endless.

No doubt, the significance of it can all be explained away, but, be that as it may, the first priority of every government should be the fullest employment and fair remuneration for all. A far more equitable distribution of the nation's income is long, long overdue. And it looks like the correction is on its way.

The last thing they want are nations that want out of globalization. Self-sufficient nations don't need loans and "restructuring"

Their greed may be the death of them...and good riddance to both them and "globalization"(AKA- legalized economic rape)

The owners have stolen too much. It is time for the people to take it back.

possess so much material wealth that they could sell it to the "have nots" without even feeling a pinch--except in their egos. This is provided, of course, that we are able to put the unemployed back to work so they have money to buy from the "haves" whatever they need in the form of material goods.

Now some economist will shoot down my theory, I'm sure.

next door.

Central and South America need to be allowed to develop, and eventually the whole of the Americas would represent a mega-economic bloc. Although, God willing, consumerism would no longer be blindly pursued.