A Global New Deal?

Two items suggesting the possibility. First is this excellent piece from Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect, which sets out a strong case for the inevitability of global economic regulation (he is particularly interesting on the increasingly global scope of big labor). Meyerson draws on the old New Deal analogy, which is a powerful one — up to a point.

The very idea of a global New Deal would be altogether preposterous but for the fact that the return of prosperity may depend upon it. But then, the same once could have been said of a national New Deal, too. Finally, just as the creation of the national New Deal depended upon Roosevelt, the creation of a global one will depend upon Obama — a figure who seems uniquely suited to voice not just the nation’s but the planet’s aspirations. The world — its citizens and its economy — awaits him.

But where Roosevelt had an institutional framework to work with (the federal government), Obama doesn’t. And where Roosevelt made sense (from a democratic legitimacy perspective) as the innovator, it’s not so clear that Obama qualifies, since he’s not President of the World.

Second is a proposal from William Grieder in The Nation of a “global recovery compact.” Grieder notes, as have many others, that a stimulus package will be leaky, in the sense that there’s little to stop the money from being put to work outside the US: “Obama’s stimulus program might restart factories in China while leaving US unemployment painfully high.” Grieder argues that won’t work, for us or for China, insofar as US spending has to be the “main engine that pulls the global economy out of the ditch.” So he seems to suggest that China and other countries should agree to protectionist measures on our part, as part of a grand bargain.

This seems more farfetched. But both items supply further evidence that global institutional solutions are entering the mainstream policy frame.