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Why globalisation will yield to regional fiefdoms [regionalization on the rise]
Times of London ^ | 10/08/08 | Carl Mortished

Posted on 10/07/2008 8:30:25 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster

October 8, 2008

Why globalisation will yield to regional fiefdoms

While we watch the drama of the global banking system slashing its own wrists, the real economy has just arrived at outpatients with headaches

Carl Mortished: World Business Briefing

While we watch the grotesque drama of the global banking system slashing its own wrists, the real economy has just arrived at outpatients with headaches. There is tummy upset in the West, while a mysterious rash has broken out in the East.

In China, steelmakers are in deep trouble, the Olympics are over and the building sector, inflated by huge injections of public money, is subsiding. The symptoms of too much capacity and too little demand are beginning to show up in disputes with iron ore suppliers and sudden export surges to the United States as the Chinese resources industry chases dwindling demand for metal in Western markets.

The price of steel is tumbling worldwide as construction markets sag and motor manufacturers cut volume targets. ArcelorMittal, the world's biggest steelmaker, has cut back production from Kazakhstan and Ukraine, big steel exporters, by up to 20 per cent. In London, the price of steel billets on the London Metal Exchange, a gauge of the temperature in the Asian and Mediterranean construction markets, has fallen by 60 per cent since July. Corus, the Anglo-Dutch steelmaker recently acquired by Tata, of India, gave warning this week that European markets were soggy.

In the past China might have muddled through a period of soggy markets, grabbing market share from rustbucket American and European steelmakers. They could shift product at prices that barely cover costs while blustering their way through the protests and anti-dumping litigation.

(Excerpt) Read more at business.timesonline.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Extended News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: commodities; fuelcost; globalization; regionalization
So the underlying assumption is that oil price could fall but not fall enough to make long-distance transportation economically viable. The same is with other natural resources as iron ore. The falling worlwide commodity demand means that the commodity demand curve has shifted to the left . Cartel and oligopoly would jack up price to offset their revenue loss, from the effect of falling demand, exploiting inelastic commodity demand curve

This could be certainly the near-term prospect. Would it lead to some major power to blowing its top? Such as China?

1 posted on 10/07/2008 8:30:25 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
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To: TigerLikesRooster; Uncle Ike; RSmithOpt; jiggyboy; 2banana; Travis McGee; OwenKellogg; 31R1O; ...

Ping!


2 posted on 10/07/2008 8:31:29 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster (kim jong-il, chia head, ppogri, In Grim Reaper we trust)
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To: TigerLikesRooster

Most interesting.


3 posted on 10/07/2008 8:41:29 PM PDT by Ciexyz
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To: TigerLikesRooster
We are heading towards the same political conditions as the 1930's--the rise of competing interests and political extremism caused by the economic downturn can only have one unhappy outcome: world war. And this time, with all those nuclear-tipped missiles out there the entire world will be in flames in a matter of hours.
4 posted on 10/07/2008 8:45:53 PM PDT by RayChuang88
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To: TigerLikesRooster
Thanks for the article. I needed something other than politics and gloom and doom wall street news.

The cost of transportation is an important aspect of determing where to build. In the beer industry, many beers from around the world are now brewed closer to the US, and some in the US, as specified in licensing agreements. This is not regionalization, but rather, streamlining in a global economy.

I don't see us moving to regionalization in the longer term. There will be some countries that will place large tariffs on goods that will cause small pockets of regionalization, but that will be to their detriment. Rather, we will see more streamlining within the global marketplace. The current stock prices will cause a number of mergers and acquisitions that will have a long term benefit.

5 posted on 10/07/2008 8:52:43 PM PDT by mlocher (USA is a sovereign nation)
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To: TigerLikesRooster

Regionalization sounds like a good thing to me.


6 posted on 10/07/2008 8:56:12 PM PDT by Ciexyz
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To: TigerLikesRooster

Interesting. This is what is predicted in the book The Sovereign Individual. The authors believe there might even be a return to city-states and other forms of political organization. The nation-state hasn’t been around that long, and I don’t see why it would last forever.

Regions of freedom loving conservatives? The idea has certainly been discussed.


7 posted on 10/07/2008 9:17:14 PM PDT by Pining_4_TX
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To: TigerLikesRooster

It isn’t “regionalism”. That is a false argument of the internationalist, who claims that the opposite of international blocs is regionalism. As if that is the only situation that can exist.

The reality is that nations exist for very good reasons, and they have existed for 6,000 years for very good reasons. That nations have a life cycle in the vast majority of cases in no way undermines this reality.

Only since the 19th Century have people foolishly believed that they could eventually sweep aside nations and replace them with multi-national blocs, eventually to form a world government. And like with most other aspects of this belief system, it has no real justification, only starry-eyed admirers.

Even blocs are a silly notion. They either represent a core, dominant nation, with subordinate allies or subordinate colonies, or they are thoroughly independent nations united only by having a common enemy. Canada and the US are very friendly, but the idea of sharing a government is mutually repulsive. The single result of this would be Canadians becoming Americans and Canada ceasing to exist. Not a bloc, but the last gasp of Manifest Destiny.

France and Germany are trying very hard to act like a single nation, but scratch the surface, and they are French and German, and see the other as always and forever foreigners.

Could even Taiwan and China reunify, or has a brief difference of years made them forever separate? Germany reunited, but Germany had always been German. While the Chinese on Taiwan think of themselves as Chinese, the Taiwanese do not share that view.

So don’t assume regionalism will prevail. It might be an intermediate step in the breakup of the EU, as groups of nations band up against other groups of nations. But don’t assume it has any more cohesion than the Holy Roman Empire, which existed for a thousand years, yet only ruled for less than 20, right at the start.

Because there were very good reasons for the nations within it to be nations.


8 posted on 10/07/2008 9:17:59 PM PDT by yefragetuwrabrumuy
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To: yefragetuwrabrumuy
Whatever the official version of regionalization is, in reality, it is nothing more than an close alliance of nations sharing same interest. In this case, economic alliance. Members are neighbors to one another, and they have closer contact and receive better treatment.

That is all. I don't see Koreas, Japan, and China becoming one big superstate, even though to Westerners, "They are all same over in E. Asia."

Intellectuals cannot impose world government top-down, according to their taste. That has been their dream for close to 200 years, and it is not going to survive. The only way that this could emerge would be centuries of political and economic forces consistently pushing states close together. That is, it would be the natural end product of evolution over long time, not willful actions of small band of human beings. That is the only way this can come about.

9 posted on 10/07/2008 9:36:12 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster (kim jong-il, chia head, ppogri, In Grim Reaper we trust)
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To: yefragetuwrabrumuy

“France and Germany are trying very hard to act like a single nation, but scratch the surface, and they are French and German, and see the other as always and forever foreigners.....”

The current financial illustrates this point.

A pan-European rescue package was vetoed by Germany because, essentially, they don’t want to pay for the profligacy of Italians.

So much for the European “moment”.


10 posted on 10/07/2008 9:46:43 PM PDT by ggekko60506
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To: Pining_4_TX
city-state....ever been to San Francisco, Berkeley, Boulder, Madison...

Real bastions of the people's will.

11 posted on 10/08/2008 5:01:37 AM PDT by pointsal
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To: TigerLikesRooster
Seems to me that in a world where energy sky rocketed, food the same, and governments siphoning more from corporations and the worker, there's no where else to turn but to the concept of 'dependent, self sustaining local economies'.

This was the case 50-60 years ago in the US. Then, corporations sucked up the competition to centralize operations, distribution, raw material contracts, etc.

In a sense, the best plan at the time due to the abundance of cheap energy.

That, my FRiend, is no longer the case.

Global markets are 'cooling', 'correcting', way too fast at this time....it's gonna get much worse....the controls and attempts to prop up aren't working other than for the government here seizing more control.

12 posted on 10/08/2008 5:03:00 AM PDT by RSmithOpt (Liberalism: Highway to Hell)
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To: TigerLikesRooster

Thanks for the ping.


13 posted on 10/08/2008 7:14:17 AM PDT by GOPJ (Derivative traders HAVE MADE MORE MONEY THAN EXISTS - Bailouts & rate cuts to ZERO won't work.)
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To: pointsal

Well, yes, but there could certainly be cities or regions that consist of groups of like-minded conservatives. It would be wonderful if San Francisco, Berkeley, Boulder, and Madison became city-states. Then they could sink on their own.


14 posted on 10/08/2008 2:19:32 PM PDT by Pining_4_TX
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To: TigerLikesRooster

Could be, or could be the start of a one world Empire attempt.

Either way is possible if this keeps up.


15 posted on 10/08/2008 6:25:31 PM PDT by redgolum ("God is dead" -- Nietzsche. "Nietzsche is dead" -- God.)
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