Today's article marks one year since the Sunday Stabroek series on globalisation began. It is a measure of the richness of this topic that there is so many areas left to be covered. Over the coming weeks the series will focus more directly on how globalisation is impacting on Guyana and the Caribbean. To celebrate the first anniversary year this week's article will reflect on whether or not international events over the past year support or contradict the principal theses advanced so far in the series.

Distinguishing features

To begin with, it seems clear that what was originally labelled as the most distinguishing economic feature of globalisation, still remains intact. That feature is the rapid rise of international production (i.e., the production and sales of TNCs) and international trade relative to global output, with the former (TNC production) growing faster than the latter (international trade). This has made economies worldwide more open. It has also reinforced the historical concentration of global output, consumption, and wealth into fewer and fewer hands.

This feature has depended a great deal on economic policy and rapid technological progress. In the case of the former, countries have continued the trend toward liberalisation. Many goods, and in particular services, which were felt would always remain principally in the public sphere are now being commercially produced. In Guyana we see this in the rise of private companies producing such services as security, postal, medical, and education. Liberalisation has been heavily focussed on financial services, which has created severe problems of global financial instability.

Technology

In the case of technology, progress continues to be astonishing. In the past year, technologies like stem cell research, the completion of the mapping of the human genetic code, and deep space travel have taken our breath away, with their awesome potential. At relatively simpler levels as well, computers have continued to advance, and information processing has reached new heights. Transport and communication are also being revolutionised.

Business Cycle

Over the past year another feature of globalisation that has held true has been that the global economy continues to expand through the ups and downs of the business cycle. A year ago, some economists and business pundits were predicting that a "new economy" had been created. The long period of sustained growth in the USA, coupled with theoretical advances in macroeconomic management, had led them to argue that globalisation had broken the back of the business cycle. In other words it was now possible for a market economy to have continuous growth without recession, depression, or inflation. However, as we saw a few months ago in this series times have changed. The priority economic concern today is how to avoid a global recession, stemming from recession in the USA and other industrialized economies. Whereas a year ago the phrase "the miraculous new economy" captured the economic headlines, over the course of the past year, "economic downturn and recession" has replaced it.

Markets and equity

Another thesis of this series is that markets do not provide equity. This is not their purpose. The primary purpose of markets is efficiency, narrowly measured as maximizing individual consumer satisfaction and individual firm/enterprise profits. Equity can only be provided through deliberate social intervention. Experience has shown that reliance on 'trickle down' is too costly in terms of individual pain and suffering as well as social instability and disorder. Over the past year global markets have continued to widen the gaps between rich and poor as recent United Nations data so eloquently show.

Finance and corruption

The explosive growth of financial markets and private capital markets worldwide continued over the year, despite continued fall out from the Asian crisis of the late 1990s. However, in the face of economic uncertainty, financial markets have become 'bearish.' This year's stock market declines in the USA and Europe have taken a huge bite out of the gains made in earlier years. The fear of 'contagion' as these conditions spill over into other financial markets is now a major preoccupation of the world's central bankers.

At the same time corruption and illegalities linked to private global financial flows seem to have risen alarmingly. Both in poor and rich countries alike, scandals have struck at the highest levels of political office. In Latin America alone several recent Presidents are in the courts over such offences. Global responses to this by the rich industrialized countries have targeted small states with offshore financial operations as the major conduit for illicit funds. This has put enormous pressure on Caribbean states that rely on this business. Over the past year it has emerged however, that the problem is more complex than this. There are some who now argue that it is an insoluble problem, mainly because its rectification would require levels of intervention into the private lives of citizens, which would be politically unacceptable in western-style democracies.

Multi-dimensional

Globalisation has also continued to be a complex, multi-dimensional phenomenon as was argued in the very first article. While the focus of the series has been on the economy, its effects on the social, political, and environmental spheres are equally fundamental. At the political level this can be seen in the growing concentration of power and authority in the hands of one hegemonic state, the USA. Emerging challenges to its supremacy lie far into the distant future. At the social level the HIV/AIDS disease shows the impact of lifestyle and behavioural patterns on the well-being of a population. The rapid spread of information globally and the ease of transport has made such challenges universal in scope. This example can be multiplied in many areas where social pathologies of global scope have emerged, for example, crime, violence, and discrimination by race, gender, and political affiliation.

In the sphere of the environment, we had spent several weeks of the series contemplating the "fraying web of life." Over the past year, the stresses placed on earth's ecosystems have increased, without commensurate action to redress past reversals. In this sense therefore, the "doomsday scenario" remained intact over the past year.

In conclusion we can still assert one year later that globalisation, while it brings with it opportunities for progress, also carries within it the potential seeds of our collective destruction. Which option will eventually emerge should not be left to the blind forces of the market. Too much is at stake. Human intervention that is visionary, purposeful, and committed to the ideals of justice, equity, and fair play is the only hope for our collective survival and development.