Has Globalization Peaked?

 

 …If historians look back on today's severe downturn

with its crumbling markets, rising unemployment

 and massive government interventions

 they could well be busy analyzing how globalization

 the spread of trade, finance, technology

and the movement of people around the world

 went into reverse…

 

…For generations, the deficits that we have run this past decade

and the trillions of dollars we are spending

now mean we will be highly dependent on foreign loans

 from China, Japan and other parts of the world…

 

 

…In the last quarter of 2008, U.S. GDP dropped by 6.2%...

 the U.K. by 5.9%, Germany by 8.2%, Japan by 12.7%

 and South Korea by 20.8%. Mexico

 

 Thailand and Singapore and most of Eastern Europe

are also in deep trouble

 

In every case, employment has been plummeting

 

 

…So far popular demonstrations

against government policies have taken place

 in the UK, France, Greece, Russia

and throughout Eastern Europe

and the governments of Iceland and Latvia

have fallen over the crisis

 

The Japanese government is offering to help

a broad array of its corporations

but certainly not subsidiaries of foreign companies in Japan…

 

…Western European banks that were heavily invested

in countries such as Hungary, the Czech Republic and the Baltics

have pulled back their credits

causing a devastating deflation throughout Eastern Europe

 

…In the 1930s

when capital flows and trade among countries collapsed

 and every country went its own way

world growth went into a ditch

 political ties among nations deteriorated

nationalism and populism

 combined to create fascist governments in Europe and Asia

 and a world war took place

 

 

 It took at least a generation

 for globalization to get back on track

 

Jeffrey E Garten

Yale School of Management

Held economic and foreign-policy posts

 in the Nixon, Ford, Carter and Clinton administrations

 

If financial markets are mirrors of mass psychology

and many simultaneously experience anxiety, depression, stress

emotional instability, unresolved grief, unemployment, homelessness academic problems, career burnout, sleep disorders

loss of confidence and self-esteem along with feeling deceived

what does the recovery process of a nervous breakdown involve?