Economic Policy on the Podium - Live Blogging Posted by Suzanne Nossel

OK, I'm now a little sheepish to discover that we don't have an economics topic heading created for this blog, but c'est la vie.  The first panel of the day is on economic policy.  Line up is former EPA commissioner Carol Browner, American Prospect founder Bob Kuttner, rising think tank/government star Lael Brainerd and UNDP head Kemal Dervis.  Moderator is Dan Tarullo of Georgetown and the Center for American Progress.

Kuttner is making the pt that the US is multilateral on trade, even when not so on so many other matters.  He makes the point that this serves the interest of elites.  The Bretton Woods process was not just intended to restart the global economy after WWII but also to construct an international system that would facilitate a mixed economy at home so that private capital would not push lowest common denominator tax, wage and regulatory policies.  The US delegated soveriegnty to GATT because we controlled it and it served our goals.

Now he says the principles underpinning the world trade system are actually working to undermine the mixed economy.  Before 1973 the distribution of global income was becoming more equal.  Now all labor/environmental/regulatory/debt relief protections are portrayed as distortions of trade when they are in fact designed to preserve diversified domestic economies.   People who try to raise this are disparaged as protectionists or shills for the oil companies.  When people say that the global market has outrun the nation-state, most people say this approvingly but they shouldn't because the nation state is the locus of democracy and global stability.

He says the next global financial crisis will be the hedge funds (I've thought this for a while - - nothing goes on forever).

This is an interesting point, and - to me - a new way of putting the ciritique of unbridled free trade.