Multinational Monitor Editor's Blog

By most accounts, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is genuinely passionate about reducing global poverty.

But he is not willing to challenge the structures of the global economy that generate poverty, or the corporations that build, benefit from and maintain those structures.

Nor, apparently, is he immune to gimmicky notions of corporate leadership to support development, or the lure of high-profile summits to shed light on new plans to do -- very little.

The nations of the world are currently debating how to design new medical research and development (R&D) mechanisms to serve the twin goals of promoting innovation to meet the particular needs of developing countries and ensuring that important medicines are accessible to people in the developing world, regardless of their income.

A successful conclusion to ongoing negotiations at the World Health Organization (WHO) -- scheduled to conclude at the end of this week -- could yield dramatic public health benefits in the years and decades ahead. Long-ignored research needs of poor countries might be addressed. Important new products might become affordable for all patients, not just those who live in rich countries or happen to be wealthy. New collaborative systems of conducting R&D might yield scientific breakthroughs for emerging public health threats that might otherwise be delayed, or never occur.

Big Pharma is watching the WHO talks with trepidation. The brand-name pharmaceutical companies are open to new government resources being invested to find treatments for diseases endemic to developing countries -- this represents a new business opportunity, after all. But they fear losing their pricing prerogatives, including to charge exorbitant rich country prices in middle-income countries. The companies are also very concerned that new R&D mechanisms may displace the global patent-monopoly system around which they have built their business models -- and which enable them to earn enormous profits.

In an effort to direct the WHO negotiations away from bolder measures that would advance public health objectives but might threaten its parochial interests, the industry is deploying the diverse set of instruments in its policy-influencing toolbox.

Can the world settle on a medical research and development (R&D) system that develops medicines and other products to meet priority health needs and makes those products available on an affordable basis?

Developing a strategy to meet these twin goals is the task of World Health Organization (WHO) negotiations in their final phase this week.

For 30 years, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank have remade much of the developing world according to a market fundamentalist ideology.

The results -- measured by lost wealth, stunted social indicators, depletion of natural resources and trashing of the environment, rising inequality and concentration of income, damage to indigenous communities, or many other standards -- have been catastrophic.

Can the ongoing harm be undone?

Yes.

Consider one very small example, with not-so-trivial consequences: the case of school fees in Kenya.

Have things changed at the International Monetary Fund? Or is the world just witnessing yet another in a long series of global economic double standards?

IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn says that the "need for public intervention" to address the global financial crisis "is becoming more evident." Strauss-Kahn has urged for a global fiscal stimulus, writing that, "Timely and targeted fiscal stimulus can add to aggregate demand in a way that supports private consumption during a critical phase." The IMF has announced its support for the fiscal stimulus plan in the United States -- a country with significant budget deficits and massive foreign debt.

The support for government intervention runs directly counter to the IMF's longstanding support for strait-jacketing governments in poor countries, by demanding "structural adjustment" -- a series of market fundamentalist, corporate-friendly policies, including hyper-restrictive macro-economic policies.

So far, there is little evidence that the IMF is changing the way it operates in developing countries. But maybe the times are changing, whether the IMF likes it or not.

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

If the United States makes progress in closing the black-white income gap at the same rate it has since King was assassinated, there will be income equality in 537 years. If the racial wealth divide closes at the same rate as it has since 1983, it will take 634 years before African-American families have the same wealth as whites.

And that's the optimistic way of looking at things.

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

If the United States makes progress in closing the black-white income gap at the same rate it has since King was assassinated, there will be income equality in 537 years. If the racial wealth divide closes at the same rate as it has since 1983, it will take 634 years before African-American families have the same wealth as whites.

And that's the optimistic way of looking at things.

Philip Morris International today starts business as an independent company, no longer affiliated with Philip Morris USA or the parent company, Altria. Philip Morris USA will sell Marlboro and other cigarettes in the United States. Philip Morris International will trample over the rest of the world.

Public health advocates have worried and speculated over the past year about what this move may mean, but Philip Morris International has now removed all doubts.

The world is about to meet a Philip Morris International that will be even more predatory in pushing its toxic products worldwide.

The chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Deborah Platt Majoras, is leaving her job. She's going to become vice president and general counsel for Procter & Gamble (P&G).

Should it raise eyebrows for the head of the leading U.S. consumer protection agency to leave and take a job with the largest consumer products company?

Not in Washington, D.C.

As part of a national day of action, hundreds of people marched in downtown Washington, D.C. this morning to protest five years of the Iraq war and occupation. They blocked traffic and sought to highlight the Washington institutions that have enabled the long-running, criminal and disastrous war.

A group of protesters gathered outside of the American Petroleum Institute (API), for what was called a celebration of an expected announcement that API will change its name to the Alternative Power Institute.

There have been few experiments as reckless, overhyped and with as little potential upside as the rapid rollout of genetically modified crops.

Last month, the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), a pro-biotech nonprofit, released a report highlighting the proliferation of genetically modified crops. According to ISAAA, biotech crop area grew 12 percent, or 12.3 million hectares, to reach 114.3 million hectares in 2007, the second highest area increase in the past five years.

No one blinks when the editor of a magazine called Multinational Monitor (that's me) suggests that multinational corporate interests diverge from and frequently contradict those of regular people.

But it's another matter when the questioning comes from BusinessWeek.

"Multinationals: Are They Good for America?" is the cover story in the current issue of the weekly chronicler of business. The answer to the question, from BusinessWeek's chief economist Michael Mandel, is a little bit of "on the one hand, on the other hand," but the ultimate conclusion is: Not particularly. The article emphasizes that the success of U.S.-based multinationals -- the corporate sector best positioned to handle a U.S. recession and benefit from the declining dollar, because it sells so much in other countries -- is not doing much to help the U.S. economy, by the measures that matter most.

There was a time, not so long ago, when U.S. governmental hypocrisy on human rights and corporate interests was at least acknowledged.

But now it seems that the Bush administration has so degraded society's standards, and Big Business so routinely claims that it is bound by no ethical standard except to make money and follow the law -- even as it aims to define that very law, and then frequently flouts the remaining legal restraints -- that the hypocrisy is no longer even acknowledged.

At his news conference yesterday, George Bush angrily said they he could not and would not meet with the new President of Cuba, Raul Castro, because of Cuba's human rights record. Then, eight minutes later, he explained how excited he was to visit China for the Summer Olympics -- a visit during which he will meet with Chinese President Hu Jintao. Just a month-and-a-half ago, the same George Bush visited with the Saudi King Abdullah, having a grand time with the King on his extravagant ranch.

Won't talk to Castro. Conferring with Hu. Relaxing with King Abdullah. Hmm.

Here's one thing everyone should be able to agree upon from George Bush's State of the Union address: "We have unfinished business before us."

Apart from that, it's a little difficult to credit much of what he said.

"So long as we continue to trust the people, our nation will prosper, our liberty will be secure, and the state of our Union will remain strong," he concluded.

But the state of our Union is anything but strong. Consider these snapshots:

Every year, the Heritage Foundation, in conjunction with the Wall Street Journal, dutifully churns out its annual Index of Economic Freedom, a ratings guide to countries' relative corporate hospitality.

The book-length report makes a quite modest global media splash every year. A Lexis search shows the 2008 report, issued last week, garnered (mostly quite short) stories in New Zealand, Australia, China, Russia, Thailand, Bahrain, the United Kingdom, India, Ireland, the Philippines, Poland, Singapore, Ukraine, Taiwan, Korea, the United States, Zimbabwe, and various wire services. If past years are any guide, over the course 2008, the report will likely be referenced several times in the Wall Street Journal editorial pages, and in various other publications. Not bad, but not earth-shattering.

The Index of Economic Freedom is significantly more important than this news coverage suggests, however.