what's the value of so many global relations to everyone now? Some countries may find it more safe to turn away from trade balances and monetary tricks

Hmm. Well, I would not dismiss so readily disruption by MNC actors to capital formation and "self-sustainability" that might arise from solidarity in captured labor/consumer markets. Complimenting Chris's description of conventional corporate structures is their geo-political instrumentality in maintenance of colonial institutions. That is legal as well as extralegal collusion among local "partnership" groups to oversee property rights. The corporation is a vehicle for free-radical economic benefit unlike the apparatus of --and paradoxical rationales for-- observing "national" accounts.

Here's an angle on the Decoupling Debate I noticed only this morning as reviewed by James Petras. The mechanics should look as familiar as any word by Ms Klein.

The Great Land Giveaway | BAR | 3 Dec 2008

The process of agro-imperial empire building operates largely through political and financial mechanisms, preceded, in some cases, by military coups, imperial interventions and destabilization campaigns to establish pliable neo-colonial `partners' or, more accurately, collaborators, disposed to cooperate in this huge imperial land grab. Once in place, the Afro-Asian-Latin American neo-colonial regimes impose a neo-liberal agenda which includes the break-up of communal-held lands, the promotion of agro-export strategies, the repression of any local land reform movements among subsistence farmers and landless rural workers demanding the redistribution of fallow public and private lands. The neo-colonial regimes' free market policies eliminate or lower tariff barriers on heavily subsidized food imports from the US and Europe. These policies bankrupt local market farmers and peasants increasing the amount of available land to `lease' or sell-off to the new agro-imperial countries and multinationals. The military and police play a key role in evicting impoverished, indebted and starving farmers and preventing squatters from occupying and producing food on fertile land for local consumption.

Once the neo-colonial collaborator regimes are in place and their `free market' agendas are implemented, the stage is set for the entry and takeover of vast tracts of cultivable land by the agro-imperial countries and investors.

As well exporting, at will, middle-managers (technocrats!) to sites around the world in which they have difficulty establishing substantive interest. What really caught my attention though was mention of this report, detailing transnational real estate "hedges" even as OECD price supports are collapsing.

Over 100 cases for offshore food production | GRAIN | October 2008

Five trading conglomerates dominate Japan's food and agribusiness market: Mitsubishi, Itochu, Mitsui, Marubeni and Sumitomo. They are involved in purchasing, processing, shipping, trading and retail. They mostly focus on serving the needs of the domestic Japanese market. But because that market is ageing and shrinking, growth has to be found elsewhere.

Japan's food corporations are moving overseas (to capture new markets) and upstream (towards production). Marubeni and Mitsui, and to a lesser extent Mitsubishi, aim to join the ranks of the world's top grain traders, on a par with Arthur Daniels Midland and Bunge. (Cargill, they reckon, is too far ahead.) They are buying up and building huge new facilities and operations in Europe, the US and Latin America. Marubeni recently bought eight grain-storage facilities and two warehouses in the US for US$48m. This way, it can bypass the market and buy soya beans and maize directly from US producers. Securing a foothold in China, where ADM, Bunge and Cargill are not that strong, is now a real strategic priority for these firms.