Since then, I learnt more about the economy, and about the DLC, and what Clinton let Greenspan do or did himself at home and his help for the global neoliberal 'revolution', and how the DLC philosophy of power kind of let the basis for the Bush victory be built by the Right, was much worse than what I perceived contemporarily.

As for the current issue, it's good Clinton is talking about the right things, but I feel he is talking hot air - and we don't need words (should the Democrats regain power). Specifically, I think action on global warming does primarily need government action (which Clinton wasn't bold enough for), not civil society.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

Unfortunately, the above is untrue.

First, if some Africans can sell more food to Europe and the USA, that will make only them richer - other Africans will still hunger. The present famine in Niger (yes, that Niger - the yellowcake-producing Niger; Americans would do good to care more about this famine than the Plame case) was not caused by insufficient crop returns, but newly 'liberalised' prices (at Western demand) that made even locally produced food too expensive to buy for many.

Second, while trade in food between Europe and Africa and the poorer part of Latin America is not liberalised, it is still on-going by way of special quotas. (The USA used to attack the EU banana quotas at the WTO.) Who would benefit from trade liberalisation? Not the poorest: the poorest would be out-competed by industrialised agriculture in countries like Brazil and Argentine (or more precisely, by large landowners in those countries who run industrialised agriculture).

Unfortunately, saving the Third World by fair trade is another neoliberal mirage.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

Unfortunately, the evidence is not particularly persuasive. Even the World Bank estimates that removing rich countries' barriers to developing country exports would generate only very small income gains for the latter. When fully removed by 2015, developing countries as a group might experience a gross domestic product increase of 0.6 per cent. Almost all the gains would be concentrated in fewer than a dozen developing countries, and many would actually lose from rich country trade liberalisation in key sectors. The ending of the multi-fibre agreement early this year, for example, has hurt textile exporters across the developing world as super-efficient producers in China gobble up the market.

Moreover, the removal of producer or export subsidies in the west hurts countries that consume large quantities of the subsidised exports. Removing developing countries' own trade barriers may indeed help their exports. But the estimates of large income gains come from trade models that audaciously omit some significant costs and exaggerate the net gains. One such cost is the loss of tariff revenue, which often amounts to 10-20 per cent of government revenue. The revenue has to be made up by alternative taxes (such as sales or income tax), which have their own "distortionary" impact. Another cost omitted by the trade models is the handicap that lack of protection imposes on an infant industry sector. If the theory of comparative advantage worked, people and capital "released" from existing businesses would be re-employed in other, more "efficient" activities. But the theory assumes full employment, and therefore no significant transition costs. It simply assumes the problem away.