Chapter 22 talks a lot about the United States as a global superpower, primarily in an economic sense. There are a lot of figures and statistics about the United States involvement in the economy but overall they say that while the United States has been the hegemony with global GDP and with trade since around WWII, when it overtook Britain. It also talks about how the United States is possibly being overtaken as the hegemony by China or will be in the coming years. The transition of the U.S. overtaking Britain went pretty smooth because we were allies but there are a lot of theories as to how this possible new transition of economic power will go because China and the U.S. are far from being allies. I also like how this chapter covers the effect the U.S. has on other countries just because of the power they hold and not because of conscious action they take but because everything the U.S. does has an effect on everyone else.
Chapter 27 is a lot similar to chapter 2 in that most of what is said is about how globalism isn’t an inherently bad thing, it is the way people choose to abuse their power that makes globalism unfair and favors the rich more. This chapter also starts talking about the IMF and the ways that this organization abuses their power and ability to help out other countries financially to force them to follow their rules in order to gain help.
Chapter 33 focuses more on the effect the IMF has had on other countries, specifically developing ones that don't benefit from having power and money like the U.S. does. When countries need financial help it is more often than not the IMF that steps in to provide that help. But it doesn’t come for free, countries have to make a lot of changes to their economy in order to gain financial help from the IMF. For developing countries, the ones who are often the ones who need this help from the IMF, the rules that they are forced to follow set them up long term for even worse financial hardships. The changes they are forced to make to their economies make them more globalized, this ends up being great for richer countries, but weakens their own economies way more in return.
1 comment:
I really liked how you summarized each chapter. They felt very straight to the point/topic of all 3 chapters. I think bringing up the possibility of China overtaking the US. Since they are a long way from becoming allies, it makes sense that that is a possibility, and I'm glad you brought it up. I also liked how you transitioned from chapter 27 to 33, as they are in common since they both talk about the IMF, but in different ways.
Post a Comment