Responses to the Questions

Responses to the Questions

Question 1:

In one word: China. China has only emerged into the world market in the last 30 years, and has become a major player. Chinese workers will work in worse conditions for less pay than workers in almost any other country. China has since become a major exporter, and has started to take control of a large slice of the world economy.

Additionally, the Chinese are doing things with economics that the rest of the world has never tried. Because they have such a booming market economy, they are able to do things like charge the world's first export tariff, a tax exacted from their own businesses that ship out a certain good (in this case, bamboo chopsticks) to a certain country (Japan). This is a radical new solution to the problem of limited resources.

Question 2:

Poverty and inequality are two of the worst characteristics of globalization. Globalization policies have increased the inequality between third world countries due to the introduction of overseas companies that make an unfair competition with local businesses, they can not offer the same prices, services, etc. that multinationals can offer. As a consequence has emerged a feeling against globalization in many sectors of the population all over the world and it is the cause of the anti-globalization movement which is the answer to the inequality and an increased poverty caused by globalization.

Question 3:

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) are international organizations that were created primarily to be of assistance for the growth and development of Third World Countries by providing financial assistance and facilitating development programs. However, the IMF and WB have failed to meet their role to the developing countries. Instead of making things easier, the loans and programs the IMF and WB have made lead to a debt crisis. In order to pay the amortization and accumulated interest from the debts to the IMF and WB, the developing countries use a significant amount of their export earnings or are forced to decrease their imports or seek more external borrowing. This critical situation greatly hinders the developing countries to accomplish their growth and development plans.

The documentary showed three different instances on how the IMF and WB had created more damage than assistance to the developing countries. The first example was in Ghana where in the IMF granted them a loan with the condition that there will be major economic changes and the removal of government subsidies. This resulted to lower levels of living for the people of Ghana because they could no longer afford their basic needs since the government subsidies they used to benefit from were used to pay off their debts. The next case was in Brazil who owes the WB the most amount of money. Brazil is a country with enormous resources but they do not have the proper economic policies. The WB has allowed Brazil to loan from them even if they know that the country will most probably not be able ...