Ha-Joon Chang Loathes Globalization

Well, not really, but he does loathe the way a lot of countries view globalization.

We just published an interview I did with the economist Dr. Ha-Joon Chang, whose recent books include Bad Samaritans and Kicking Away the Ladder. He spoke at Stanford last year and I was lucky enough to catch up with him, as he's based at Cambridge University in the UK.

I got the interview posted at a new authors' website. Contact me for a print issue of NOW, and you read it in there as well.

Dr. Chang believes that rich nations such as the US are inherently hypocritical when they argue for free trade and a level playing field. He contends that they built their wealth under no such principles. His books and my interview are very high-level and non-technical, but for those who wish to dive deeply into his dismal science work, it's easy enough to find.

The relevance of Dr. Chang to me is that globalization is here to stay, and is really not an intellectual principle so much as a practical reality that reflects our highly connected, round world of fluid capital flows--and more important--communications of a sophistication that was unimaginable as recently as 15 years ago.

Plus, he told a really funny joke during his presentation at Stanford, in an accent that he knows remains thick and which just added to the merriment!