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On the one hand, the global financial crisis has reverberated around the world. Millionaires are canceling or curtailing their spending which in turn affects the spa owners, household staff, boutique owners and others who service their needs. A poll in the Washington Post stated that many individuals are anxious about their future. Foundations have suffered losses and are cutting back on the amount and number of groups they are funding. The reasons behind the collapse seem complicated and obtuse.
Yet, in reality, there are as simple as the old adage “don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” The aggregation of banks from many to few is a lesson we should have learned before–there is security in diversity. By concentrating banking with a few large firms, the risks are also concentrated. As the Youtube video of Taleb and Mandelbrot (two brilliant thinkers) describes, the very process of globalization has led to a network effect (but not in a good way ).
In this case, interdependence makes the global financial system more vulnerable because risks are shared in complicated ways and mathematically, the overall effect is much larger. While networks and the effects they can have are usually considered desirable, as the butterfly effect (articulated by Mandelbrot) shows, one seemingly unrelated act can have a rippling effect throughout a system.
Many economists are looking to Keynsian economics and massive stimulus to resuscitate the economy and avert a depression. Others are pressing for increased trade talks and a revival of the Doha Round. A recent Foreign Affairs article proposes that the IMF and WTO coordinate more, particularly around currency issues. Yet, the diagnosis of the problem may be wrong.
While Keynsian economics makes sense and may contain the current crisis; the larger issue remains: we are now living in a networked global financial system. We need to have a better understanding of the system itself and seek new, innovative thinking about ways to remake the system to encourage pro-poor growth and mitigate risks rather than pool them. Encouraging a new Doha Round and relying on past economic formulas is not the answer.
As Rachel Maddow reports, the Bush Administration is seeking to add a broad new “right of conscience” ruling that would permit medical facilities, doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other healthcare workers to refuse to participate in any procedure they find morally objectionable, including abortion and possibly even artificial insemination and birth control. Rachel Maddow interview on reproductive rights ruling
For more than 30 years, federal law has dictated that doctors and nurses may refuse to perform abortions. The new rule would go further by making clear that healthcare workers also may refuse to provide information or advice to patients who might want an abortion. This ruling is being interpreted so broadly by the outgoing head of Health and Human Services that reproductive health advocates say that it could encompass the workers who clean the instruments, as well as pharmacists, counselors and others.
The “morning-after” pill, a form of emergency contraception is the target of much of the pro-life movement’s ire. The pill prevents an embryo from implanting in the uterus.
As written, the ruling could apply to nearly 600,000 workers including 58,000 pharmacies. While abortion is a difficult subject and President-elect Obama has characterized in that way, he has also said that he would support a woman’s right to choose. Following his election, President Obama could overturn this ruling but would have to post new regulations, open the proposed regulation for public comment for a number of months and then issue a final ruling.
Of course, every person has the right to their own view on abortion, contraception, and other forms of family planning. However, if that viewpoint infringes on the health and safety of a patient, then the issue moves from one of medical ethics to one quite literally at times of life and death.
The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) called for limits on the “conscience clause” and cited several of examples of problems with the clause. In one case, a Texas pharmacist rejected a rape victim’s prescription for emergency contraception. In California, a physician refused to perform artificial insemination for a lesbian couple. (In August, the California Supreme Court ruled that this refusal amounted to illegal discrimination based on sexual orientation.) And in Nebraska, a 19-year-old with a life-threatening embolism was refused an early abortion at a religiously affiliated hospital.
President-elect Obama has already promised to overhaul the healthcare system in this country. As he does so, I hope that he will ensure that reproductive health and family planning care are affordable and accessible to women and men in the U.S. It is unfortunate that in its waning days, the Bush Administration is trying once more to undermine that goal.
I have oft been accused of looking for the silver lining in everything. I am no Suzy Sunshine but I do believe that looked at from the right perspective, problems can catalyze change. In fact, when things are going well, it is often hard to mobilize individuals, let alone policymakers to enact change. “Don’t fix it if it ain’t broken,” or “Leave well enough alone” typifies this mindset among the public and politicians.
Well, now it is broken–the global financial system, that is–broken, broke down, and working families are going broke trying to save their homes or curb their spending at a time when food prices are increasing faster than they have since the 1990s.
Recently the U.S. convened a summit with the G-8 and the G-20 to discuss to resolve the crisis and restore the global economy. Yet, the crisis is already having far-reaching effects, from increasing migration of Mexican workers from the U.S. back too Mexico, to impending social strife in Asia as the export-dependent Asian countries begin to feel the economic slowdown as a result of the crisis (Johnson, Tim, Washingon Post, 11-19-08). Yet, another article noted that while China has now exceeded the U.S. as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases (Cha, Ariana Eunjung, Washington Post 11-19-08) the country has an unexpected opportunity to remake itself into a cleaner, greener economy. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has promoted a “Global Green New Deal” that will make environmental technologies the new growth industry to jump start the economy. Economists and others note that during economic lean times, consumers reduce energy spending and other costs which means that fossil fuel use may fall.
President-elect Obama has a chance to use this crisis as an opportunity to rethink and renovate–to grow the green economy in the U.S. and promote technology and investments that will provide jobs and growth in developing countries as well. There will be naysayers who argue that we can’t afford this at this time. But, to the contrary, I would say we can’t afford not to rethink our global system and use the crisis to fuel a new type of greener growth.
One of Barack Obama’s pledges was that he would open up the federal government for the public. As a bona fide policy geek, I can’t tell you how excited I am at the thought of getting to read federal register notices, draft regulations, and submissions on the policy and regulatory impact of proposed laws or statutes.
Now, I realize that many of you may have stopped reading after that last sentence, or are at least frightened at this point. However, what I find truly frightening is how the Bush Administration restricted public access to documents over the past eight years. A bipartisan group wants the Obama administration to reverse the Bush administration’s policy on public access to government records.
The combination of increased security following September 11th and Bush Administration directives was a sharp drop in the access that the public, nonprofits, and others had to regulatory issues, administrative meetings, and more. While it wasn’t exactly a Star Chamber, the Bush administration sought to retain rather than release information whenever possible.
While I will wager that not everyone will be sitting up nights waiting to learn when they can submit public commentary about a regulation; the principle of open government is fundamental to an active, participatory democracy. Information is important and good policy-making involves gathering disparate and sometimes conflicting information and sifting through it to arrive at a policy position.
It involves broad consultations with experts and non-experts alike. Many community organizers are experts in how new rules might impact the citizens in their area. Many NGOs have issue and policy expertise to offer that can guide the development and application of regulations as well as raise issues that may not have been considered by those developing the policies. And many citizens without expertise may be affected and may care deeply about the outcome and should have the ability to express their ideas to those whom they have elected.
President-elect Obama and Vice-President Biden have a site, www.change.gov, where people can share their stories from the election, comment on ideas, view information about the transition and more. It is a good first step in realizing President-elect Obama’s goal of a government that is open and accountable. Just as this election signals a change and commitment to re-engaging the world; President-elect Obama’s change.gov website and other overtures signal a commitment to transparency and an invitation to continue to participate and engage in and with our government so that it truly is in the words of Abraham Lincoln “a government of the people, by the people and for the people”
If it is not already obvious, the financial crisis, despite bailout efforts, is having now not a ripple but perhaps a tsunami affect in other parts of the world as well. As globalization proponents say, markets are now integrated—which on the negative side means that a crisis in one place will have ramifications in other places as well.
Mexico is experiencing the impact of the financial crisis in a very real way—a loss of income for poor families in the country. Many Mexican men and women have migrated to the U.S. both legally and illegally. Many migrants work in service jobs in the U.S. with many Mexican men employed in the construction and landscaping fields.
The financial crisis in the U.S. has slowed construction jobs throughout the country and many middle-income families are scaling back expenses such as landscaping. The Mexican unemployment rate in the U.S. is hovering at about 7.5 percent compared with 6.1 percent for the general workforce.
However, many Mexican migrants send money (often called remittances) to their extended families in Mexico. In fact, remittances are the second largest source of foreign income—exceeded only by oil reserves.
According to the Center for Advanced Research and Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS), 8 percent of poor families in Mexico depend almost entirely on that cash flow to survive, and will find themselves in a critical position as a result of the drop in remittances. A recent Inter-American Development report stated that remittances “are a key poverty reduction tool, as more than 57 percent of remittances are used to purchase daily necessities such as food, clothing and shelter.” Yet remittances have fallen by 12.2 percent since August 2008.
As workers in the U.S. stop sending money, extended families in Mexico begin to make different healthcare choices as this Financial Times article explains.
Now, as someone who uses anything I can get my hands on to feel better—be it herbal or homeopathic medicines, acupuncture, massage, or western pharmaceuticals, I don’t think it is a bad thing that people are using medicinal plants and carrying that traditional indigenous knowledge of local plants forward.
The problem is one of choice, or rather lack of choice. I can choose to use herbal remedies, but if those are not working, I can buy an over-the-counter remedy, or go to see my doctor (as one of the lucky Americans with good health insurance) and get prescription medication. The problem is when people turn to these remedies for lack of choice. What other things will people have to forgo because they can no longer count on remittances.
While there is no easy answer for this problem, more than 360 U.S. academics who work on Latin America wrote a letter to Senator Obama, asking him, should he win the presidential election to support more equitable and sustainable economic development in Mexico, Central America, and throughout the region as an appropriate response to immigration concerns in the United States.
Whoever wins the presidential election will have an enormous financial crisis to grapple with. I hope that the next president can look beyond our borders for both impacts and solutions to address this crisis.
Marceline White
Okay, flashback to the 80s (or maybe it was the 90s) but there was a song by The Eurythmics ‘ Annie Lennox and the incomparable Aretha Franklin. Now, watching the video, I can see how dated it seems and how earnest and oversimplified the message may appear to be.
While gender issues may seem “so last century” to some women in the U.S., for many others here and in low-income countries, liberation and equity remain elusive goals. I was thinking of the song because I participated in the $2 a Day Challenge that AID held last Friday. After I ended my challenge, I went with friends to see a play which talked about gender issues and “how to be a woman” or “be a man” in today’s society. What are the roles, the expectations, the pressures, the incentives within our culture? What are the norms within other cultures?
Today, women in the U.S. still earn approximately 76 cents to every dollar earned by a man. This is true even when they are working in the same field and have the same educational attainment as their male peers. Recent studies from Cornell (2005) and Carnegie Mellon (2007) indicated worsening trends: the Cornell study found that women with children were less likely to be hired and if hired would be paid a lower salary then male applicants, while male applicants with children were likely to be offered higher pay than women with children or people without children. The Carnegie Mellon study t found that women who applied for jobs were not as likely to be hired by male managers if they tried to ask for more money, while men who asked for a higher salary were not negatively affected.
In other parts of the world, these disparities among others persist. Women’s wages lag behind men’s in many occupations and women are often sought out by employers because they lack other income-generating opportunities, so they are more likely to accept a lower wage for their labor.
While women’s situations are often heterogeneous and race, ethnicity, class, religion, age, and geography may all affect a woman’s access to opportunities and skills development; in many ways, women regardless of their situations have much in common: violence. Women experience sexual assault and domestic violence throughout the world. The confluence of rape as a tool of war, child-marriage, wives inability to negotiate safe sex with their unfaithful husbands, and the economic need for women to pursue sex work have contributed to the increased feminization of the spread of HIV-AIDS.
Women also share other traits—as mothers, they are fiercely committed to improving their children’s lives. Getting more money into the hands of a woman is a sound investment—it goes straight into improving her children’s diet, access to health care, and to education Conversely , men spend a portion of their extra income on alcohol, gambling, and other pleasurable pursuits. Once women learn their rights and are given a chance to use their voices, these voices ring out on their own behalf as well as for others.
When I finished my $2 a Day Challenge, I had a great time going to the Global Giving site and deciding where to place my donation. Not surprisingly, I chose a group trains Rwandan women in leadership and non-profit management training, start-up funding and twelve months of support to establish their own organizations to advance women’s rights.
These women are doing it for themselves with some support of women and men abroad. As the mother of a small boy, I hope to raise him in a world where gender issues really will be passe’.
Marceline White
Tonight the presidential candidates debated domestic issues. Given the global financial crisis that has led to devastating losses in the U.S. and has roiled markets around the world, a great deal of the discussion focused on the national economy.
Yet, Senators Obama and McCain both mentioned trade agreements as an avenue for job creation and for jump-starting the economy. Senator Obama took issue with the poorly enforced labor and environmental regulations in some trade pacts while Senator McCain argued for ratification of the Colombia free trade agreement despite human rights violations in the country.
Despite the promise of international trade to “lift all boats” and benefit the poor; in reality, it is the working poor—both in the U.S. and around the world—who have been stranded by trade agreements. In the U.S., trade agreements have meant the loss of well-paid jobs for manufacturing and service workers. The jobs that are available to displaced workers in the U.S. tend to pay less with worse conditions.
In other countries, although workers may gain jobs as the result of trade agreements, often these jobs do not pay enough or provide opportunities to advance to lift families out of poverty. And the workers, the majority of whom are women, try to save what little they have left to invest in better food for their children, better health care, or another year of school.
On Friday I will take AID’s $2 A Day Challenge. As a single mother I will be with my son who is off of school that day. Trying to explain to him that we can’t afford to buy fruit snacks that day is going to be painful. Cooking for him and going without food myself (as women do throughout the world) will pain us both. As I spend Friday doing without, I will think of the women and men working so hard here and around the world who do this everyday. And I know that we need to do better by and for all of them. One thing we can do is promote fair trade—by giving consumers a choice of products we can ensure that farmers and workers earn a living wage for their efforts rather than poverty wages.
