International Law

World Bank Chief Asserts World Trade Has Fallen

An update to our earlier post on the contraction of credit used for international trade:

According to Mr. Zoellick, the onset of the [credit] crisis caused a "stunning" decline in global trade. "And we believe that you could find in 2009 that you could have an actual decline in world trade, which would be the first time since 1982," Mr. Zoellick said.

Speaking at a briefing during the Group of 20 meeting of finance ministers and central bankers in Sao Paulo, Mr. Zoellick said that one of the primary drivers in the drop-off was a big gap in trade finance. The World Bank recently moved to expand a trade finance facility to $1.5 billion, up from $1 billion, that could be expanded further to help offset the gap.

Read the rest here.

According to Mr. Zoellick, China is a country that could move forward with a financial stimulus package.

Which, in fact, they have just announced.

Both the Chinese and American governments have asserted through massive market invasions their great goodwill as final protector of the People. We can posit that Chinese decision-makers are intent upon bolstering their own private business interests, which will suffer without a stimulus, and with tamping down root causes of social disorder. It is only natural that the single biggest investor in capital infrastructure in China -- it's government -- would also move massively to expand its involvement.

But who would ever have thought that Americans would act to nationalize banks and invest vast sums of taxpayer money into private non-banking enterprises? Isn't something very wrong here? We in America trod a dangerous path of ever-expanding federal government, a behemoth bureaucracy that blots out the sun while claiming the light as its own. Those who grow it larger, accompanying their aggrandizement with language at once fearful and promising, contribute to the starvation of everyone who does not need a handout from the King to live and thrive.

Full post as published by Asia Business Intelligence on November 09, 2008 (boomark / email).