It’s no secret that the global trading infrastructure is, in reality, somewhat complex. At the same time, there are certain elements of the whole system which can essentially be simplified using analogies (so that the average person can understand things better). For starters, depending on who you talk to, global trade is either perfect “as is” or a hopelessly corrupt and rigged affair (just look at currencies and precious metals and/or investigate the LIBOR scandal to learn how global interest rates have been manipulated for a very long time by some of the world’s most powerful people). In other words, it would seem that where you are sitting inside of it tends to strongly inform whether or not you, as an individual or group, actually end up benefiting from it or not. On its face, global trading is a wonderful thing though, allowing people across the world to become more connected and gain access to increasingly hard-to-find goods and services.
Of course, on its face, The world of global trading is just a means of trading goods between countries and nations, but once you delve deeper into it you begin to realize that (from an absolutist mathematical perspective) it currently doesn’t exist to generate more equality and growth internationally, but to centralize profits and erect “aggregation points” which in turn seek to create even more wealth transferring and class disparity (i.e. – the rich get richer and the poor become poorer). Specifically, the following items are typically exchanged:
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Goods
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Capital
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Services
Obviously these elements can be used to either benefit or manipulate domestic markets in various ways too, thus allowing for broader international / foreign policy objectives to be achieved (or not). Each individual country typically allots a certain portion of their GDP (gross domestic product) to global trade too, which again, further complicates things when you add business and political motivations to the equation. Likewise, the following items tend to have a marked effect on global / international trade as well:
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Industrialization
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Technology
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Transportation
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Globalization
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Multinational Corporations
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Outsourcing
Again, such factors will radically affect the “how, when, where and why’s” of trading internationally, with one or more of them often melding together to create extremely intricate situations. For instance, if a wealthy country’s multinational corporations price their own domestic labor force out of the market and turn toward outsourcing, then the people of that particular nation tend to suffer and a gradual slide downward economically is likely the end result. The reason for this is simple – people need wages and income to be more active consumers, if the funds aren’t there, commerce can’t take place, obviously.
Global trading can be quite a wonderful thing, actually, uniting nations and territories in ways that one might never imagine and allowing access to goods from around the globe. However, it can also be used as a weapon too, where corrupt systems, central banks and financial networks (criminal conspiracies) abound, allowing a small and select group to run the system like a casino (where the “house” always wins). Furthermore, if you’re still unsure as to how or why people label central bank policies / actions as little more than “ponzi schemes”, watch this video.
