One World, Ready or Not

One World, Ready or Not, William Greider, Simon and Schuster, 1997

Greider takes on a daunting task in this book: explaining the global economy. He talks about the huge global oversupply of production capacity, forcing companies on a never-ending search for more markets for their goods. He explores the downward pressure on wages, causing companies to move from country to country looking for the lowest wages to pay their workers. On the subject of airplanes, for example, China, the world's largest single market, is requiring a piece of the technology to make airplanes as a condition of any airplane purchase; the same sort of thing is happening in other industries. When a corporation moves into a new country, government suppression of labor unions, violently, if necessary, is usually part of the bargain.

The author also explores a whole host of other issues: currency speculation, the bond market, government deficits, globalization from the worker's point of view among them.

Greider does a great job explaining concepts that may be unfamiliar to most Americans. This is not an easy book to read, but in these days of global economic turmoil, this book is required reading.