8.3: Investment and Finance

There is also globalization of investment and finance. International currency trading has reached $5 trillion a day, reducing the power of the central banks of the large nation-states. Investors routinely buy foreign financial investments, so that when the U.S. mortgage market and Wall Street crashed in 2008, banks, local governments and other investors all over the world suddenly found themselves losing 50% or more on toxic American paper. The Euro’s problems and China’s stock market downturn caused drops in markets all over the world. China, the world’s biggest pork producer and consumer (it is the only country with a strategic reserve of frozen pork), bought Smithfield, America’s largest pork producer. Movie deals depend on financing from pre-sales in many countries. Hollywood co-produces films with Chinese companies (and accepts Chinese Communist Party ’suggestions’ on content) to gain access the Chinese market, the largest in the world. Nigerian con artists contact U.S. prospects by email. Japanese money finances Korean competitors of Japanese companies. The billions of dollars that immigrants send to their home countries to help their families is far more than all government foreign aid combined. In some countries, this is the largest industry.

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