Posted on 07/16/2009 5:26:45 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
United Nations has called for a return to state-led "industrial policy" for poorer countries in what amounts to a rejection of the free-market thinking that has dominated global institutions for the last 30 years.
Supachai Panitchpakdi, head of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), said the financial crisis had exposed the deep failings of growth models adopted in Africa, the Pacific, and parts of Asia, usually under pressure from the West.
"Some advanced countries may be seeing an end to the crisis but it's still darkness at the end of tunnel for the least developed, and many of them are going backwards. We're talking about a billion malnourished people," he said in London.
Capital flows to poorer states and export earnings have together collapsed by $2 trillion (£1.22 trillion) since the credit crunch began. "This is an alarming trend, and it's not a result of their own doing," he said.
Mr Supachai said the world had spent some $5 trillion on financial support since the crisis began but almost nothing has reached the most vulnerable countries. "There is very little trickle down," he said.
While Eastern Europe has been rescued by the International Monetary Fund, the world's 49 "least developed countries' (LDCs) are too poor to meet the loan conditions.
UNCTAD said market ideology has distorted the structure of farming in many of these countries over the years and prevented them creating light industries and processing needed to move up the manufacturing ladder. "The market-led reforms since the early 1980s have, to a large extent, failed to correct this deep-seated weakness," said the agency's annual report.
Decrying a "false dichotomy" between the virtues of the free market and the alleged vice of state dirigisme, it said there is much to learn from the calibrated "industrial policies" of
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
There hasn’t been any “free-markets” anywhere in my lifetime
Fine I’m sure Americans will take to a black market pretty quickly.
I wish we could close it, and sell that valuable real estate.
I think it’s time for Americans to overthrow the UN. Or at least throw them out of our country on their asses. They are out to destroy American sovereignty. We need to stop them.
International bankers at work.The people have called their BLUFF!They are nervous.
Right - China and India have economies that continue to thrive in the current recession and millions in those nations are moving from poverty to middle-class status. Both nations, not coincidentally, have opened up their economies. And the UN thinks they should abandon that and go back to the failed socialism and statism that gave them nothing but misery for decades. Who, aside from Obama and the Democrats, would believe this nonsense? Socialism is a great idea to people who’ve never lived in one. Those who have know better.
Agreed, and bailouts have nothing to do with capitalism nor do they have any place in a free market.
They’re silently hoping for the destruction of the US as well.
We are the comrades now thanx to O don’t ya think?
HUH?
Isn't that what a state run system does......KILL small business and tax everyone to death?
Get the flippin UN out of our country .... NOW!
There is a pattern with these international bankers after all I’ve watched them for 30 years and their agenda.
You can’t be alone in your assessment and foresight. Why has no one exposed it?
Africa was better off as colonial land.
Imbeciles.
The concept of “economic development” occuring in the absence of free markets is akin to something like believing that you could grow vegetables in your garden much more successfully if you removed all the soil and water.
People don’t read.Carroll Quigley was on the money.
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