Resources: Globalisation, state and deregulation, Corner House Briefing Paper

10 results

A (Crumbling) Wall of Money

Financial Bricolage, Derivatives and Power

Nicholas Hildyard

9 October 2008

39. Financial entrepreneurs created a 'shadow banking system' over the past 30 years to circumvent regulation and to offload risk onto others, relying on 'derivatives' and 'securitisation'. They generated easy credit that fuelled a boom in corporate mergers and acquisitions across the United States and Europe, and that enabled companies involved in mining, biofuels, private health care, water supply, infrastructure and forestry to expand their activities significantly. When the pyramid of deals came tumbling down, however, the public had to bear the costs.

39. Wall Money

Taking it Private

The Global Consequences of Private Equity

Kavaljit Singh

17 September 2008

37. Private equity has become an integral part of the world's financial system, creating a new type of corporate conglomerate that is reshaping the way business is conducted. It poses new challenges to labour unions, NGOs and community groups because of its influence on taxation policy, corporate governance, labour rights and public services. These challenges are especially clear in Asia, which private equity firms are targeting since the "credit crunch" took hold. Private equity's vulnerabilities, however, may provide opportunities to address public concerns.

37.PrivateEquity

Too Many Grannies?

Private Pensions, Corporate Welfare and Growing Insecurity

Richard Minns with Sarah Sexton

1 May 2006

This briefing outlines the different ways in which countries have financed both social security for older people and economic production. It describes the rise of the private model of pensions and the influence of pension funds on capital flows around the world. It then summarises and critiques the main justifications given for expanding private pension schemes, and analyses the motivations of the groups that perpetuate this model.

35.Grannies

Angry Young Men, Veiled Young Women

Constructing a New Population Threat

Anne Hendrixson

2 December 2004

34. 'Youth-bulge' theory refers to the large proportion of the world's population under 27 years old who are supposedly prone to violence. Images of angry young men of colour as potential terrorists and veiled young women as victims of repressive regimes support the theory. The implied threat of explosive violence and explosive fertility provides a rationale for US military intervention and population control initiatives in other countries and justifies government surveillance of Muslims and Arabs within US borders.

34. Veiled

Corruption, Governance and Globalisation

Lessons from the New Thailand

Dr Pasuk Phongpaichit

14 December 2003

Corruption in Thailand has been neither pervasive nor incompatible with economic growth. It is centred on a big business-politics complex whose rise has gone hand-in-hand with globalisation.

29.Thailand

Financial Market Lobbying

A New Political Space for Activists

Mark Mansley and Nicholas Hildyard

30 January 2002

Lobbying financial markets has become a major way of halting or lessening the impact of environmentally-damaging and socially-inequitable projects. This briefing provides several case studies, traces the rise of ethical shareholding, and explores the limits and potential pitfalls of financial market activism.

25.Financial Market Lobbying

Exporting Corruption

Privatisation, Multinationals and Bribery

Susan Hawley

30 June 2000

Growing corrpution throughout the world has resulted from the rapid privatisation of public enterprises. Multinationals, supported by Western governments and their agencies, are engaging in corruption on a vast scale in North and South alike. Donor governments and multilateral agencies such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund frequently put forward ‘good governance’ agendas to combat corruption, but their other actions send different signals about where their priorites lie.

19.Bribes

Internal Conflict

Adaptation and Reaction to Globalisation

Mark Duffield

31 January 1999

Many internal wars in Africa, Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, far from representing societal breakdown, can be seen as a rational response on the part of rulers (and would-be rulers) to ensure their economic and political survival in a context of globalisation and the changing nation-state.

Missing the Point of Development Talk

Reflections for Activists

Larry Lohmann

31 August 1998

“Third World development” seldom achieves its stated objectives and is repeatedly discovered to be based on false assumptions. Although discredited, however, it has survived and flourished. This briefing asks to what extent development’s critics have inadvertently increased both its longevity and its capacity to produce falsehoods and failure. Forging an effective critical activism requires reexamining the dynamic between development projects and their opponents, helpers and beneficiaries.

MISSING THE POINT.pdf

The Myth of the Minimalist State

Free Market Ambiguities

Nicholas Hildyard

31 March 1998

The practical outcome of free-market policies has not been to diminish the state’s power -- but to redirect it in favour of transnational interests. Thus the power of many Northern states to intervene in the economic and social affairs of other countries has increased. Resistance to the “free market state” is growing, as is the demand that the state’s powers be used to protect the interests and rights of citizens, not corporations.