The marketplace has always been at the heart of India–exuberant bazaars brimming with local hawkers and traditional wares and foods. But the country’s old-fashioned markets may soon be eclipsed by the towering “free market” of globalization, as multinational superstores push the government to open the gates.

The India Cabinet wants to enable businesses with 51-percent foreign direct investment to enter India’s retail sector–basically inviting in big box behemoths like Wal-Mart under the banner of efficiency and consumer choice. But many Indians aren’t buying it.

The weaknesses in a recent paper on concentration of corporate control do not detract from its central point. A tiny number of economic actors have power to influence a vast amount of wealth.

One of the tradeoffs made by the US administrations to gain support for entering into Free Trade Agreements is that these agreements impose certain standards on the parties – to protect the environment, human rights and union rights.

So what will the Obama administration do when the terms of one of those agreements are blatantly violated?

I wonder if someone can sketch out for me a vision of America as an economic superpower with no jobs other than finance and the low-wage service sector, with a hollowed-out industrial base, and with its largest corporations replacing jobs at home with jobs overseas. It may make sense to those individual companies, but I’m straining to see how it makes sense for the mass of workers in this country.

As of tonight, there is still no word on AngryArabiya’s father, brother-in-law and husband –or her uncle who was arrested three weeks ago. She wrote last night: This will b one of the most difficult nights of my life, wat condition is my wonderful & kind husband in. I close my eyes & I see [...]

The International Monetary Fund fell into wide spread disrepute following its bungled management of the international financial crisis of 1997-1998. Economist Joseph Stiglitz in his book Globalization and its Discontents laid them out on the dissecting table. They have generally been seen as the enforcement agent of the global neoliberal regime imposing programs of control and fiscal austerity on struggling developing nations. As the agent of the industrial nations of the global north imposing their economic will on the global south, the whole thing had a definite flavor of neo-colonialism.

At the point in the World Cup when five South American teams had made it to the knockout round and European teams like Italy and England performed badly, I wondered whether this year’s Cup would be a kind of revenge on the IMF. All these South American countries that had spent much of the 80s and 90s struggling with onerous debt crises were winning. Teams from Europe, which is now being subjected to similar austerity measures, were losing or failing to qualify. I thought the Cup might end up marking a symbolic shift of dignity away from Europe at a time when Europe is being treated as South America once was.

In an announcement that portends misery for much of the world’s citizens (and I’m only slightly exaggerating), the G20 communique will include a pledge from the largest nations on Earth to halve their budget deficits by 2013. Coming at a fragile time for the global economy, this descent into austerity could lead to a return to recession or worse.

I was 18, skinny, out of money and in New Orleans for the first time after some Appalachian adventures and a visit to Nixon’s D.C. I faked a cocky walk into a French Quarter piano bar and stayed until closing time when the brunette singer in a sequined costume gown took pity on me. We [...]

BP supplies the Vampire Squid with ink.