Do as we say, not as we do
While Lula's Brazil kowtows to the free market, Blair's Britain only pretends to do so

Democracy in Brazil both won and lost on Sunday night. It won because, for the first time in its history, the nation chose a man of humble origins and radical views to be its president. It lost because that man is now forbidden to be radical. The strictures imposed by the capital markets and the International Monetary Fund prevent him from intervening in the economy or commissioning the new social spending so desperately needed by the poor. Instead, he must follow the economic model to which all governments must adhere: a model that subordinates democracy to the free market.

This, at any rate, is the story the world is telling itself, and the story which all those of us who are unhappy with the way the world is run have endlessly reiterated. Over the past few months I have begun to see that it is, in one respect, quite wrong. There is not a single economic model, universally applied. There are two models. One of them is the market fundamentalism to which the poor nations have been forced to submit. The other is the way the rich world lives.
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thanks to also not found in nature

'Snookered''

A few years ago, Canada, Mexico and the United States signed a document known as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA); it became effective in 1994. It was touted [if you're familiar with the legal term 'touting,' you'll know I've chosen the right word here] as the savior of the North American economy. It was going to reduce or remove all those horrid barriers to the free exchange of goods and services between various jurisdictions. We would all prosper; life would be grand; and we would all eventually die at ripe old ages in splendid luxury. Even more importantly, it was going to defend us against those Eurobastards who had made such large strides toward an economic union that was at least partly designed to challenge the financial clout of North America.

Since it was government and the business community doing the touting, the usual suspects rose up in righteous anger against this expected rape of the people and their resources. Labor, leftist, and social activist groups predicted chaos, more losers than winners, and a crystallization of more wealth into pockets that were already full to overflowing.

Guess who was right?
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thanks to wood s lot