Globalism, the answer key that isn't

Jon Jeter was the Washington Post's bureau chief in southern Africa (1999--2003) and South America (2003--2004). He spoke from his home in Brooklyn.

Q. Did this book grow out of your reporting in Africa and Latin America?
A. I think I was predisposed to write about poverty - ever since covering the police beat in Minneapolis in the late '80s - but my time as a foreign correspondent deepened my understanding. In South Africa and Zambia I began to connect what I was seeing there and what I saw growing up in the Midwest and in Detroit as a young reporter.

Q. What does a poor resident of an American city have in common with a poor person in sub-Saharan Africa?
A. Disturbingly, a lot. One of my last trips in Africa was to Angola after the civil war where peasants were being moved out of the capital to make room for luxury developments. In American cities, living space for working-class people - black, white, Latino - is being sold off. It's the same idea: squeezing poor people into small areas that resemble Bantustans. One woman in Washington D.C., told me that "it feels like an occupation." She's never been to Palestine or Iraq, but that is what displacement feels like to her.

Q. Did you immediately identify globalization as the major cause of what you witnessed?
A. That came gradually. I am not an economist. But I began reconciling what economists told me with what I saw in Africa and then Argentina. I reached Argentina just as its economic crisis exploded, and I really grasped the impact of a corrupt monetary policy.

Q. Isn't globalization a way out of poverty for, say, China's rural population?
A. I hear that argument all the time, and if it were true for most people worldwide that would be great. But that's not what's happening. It's not factories sprouting up everywhere. It's Southeast Asia with most factories paying wages that are probably not comparable to what our parents and grandparents made when they migrated to Detroit, Chicago, New York, and other cities. The withering of factories is the defining image of globalization.

Q. But isn't globalization a natural development of capitalism?
A. That's a contrived argument for a rigged system. Consider what's happened globally in the last 30 years. Low inflation, high profits, unemployment, falling wages. It is clearly a system designed to benefit bondholders and bankers. The idea that globalization is inevitable recalls the idea of Manifest Destiny, of American imperialism as God's will. What's more, we have the perverse spectacle of America's first black president speaking during the campaign about his reluctance to extend relief to defaulting homeowners because that would incur moral hazard. Yet he never speaks about moral hazard when it comes to bankers and those who are chiefly responsible for what's happened.

Q. Is there a villain here?
A. All over the world, you see governments and politicians that have, in many ways, been bought by money that is toxic to the political system. So the villains are everywhere. They are Democrats, Republicans, former liberation heroes, former trade unionists, black and white, former liberals, staunch conservatives.

Q. You include personal stories in this book, but not your own. Why?
A. The people in this book, I think about them every day. I was privileged that they invited me to their homes, and this is the least of what I owe them, to tell their stories in a fuller, more human way than I could as a reporter. Also they are all a lot more interesting than I am.

Q. Was it sometimes disturbing, returning to your hotel after such encounters?
A. Always. I remember a woman in Mozambique telling me her story, and I guess I had a pained look on my face; it was guilt, empathy. And she said "My child, don't worry, the worst is over; we're still here." I was often overwhelmed by the people's struggles but energized by their strength and resilience.

Q. Do you see alternatives to globalization?
A. Yes, particularly in South America. This book is not an argument for any one system, but what you see in Venezuela and Chile - both with deep economic problems but doing better than their neighbors - is not ideology but messy, complicated economies intended to highlight their strengths economically and minimize weaknesses. There are real attempts to expand the economy in a way that helps the greatest number of people in their respective countries.

Anna Mundow, a freelance journalist living in Central Massachusetts, is a correspondent for the Irish Times. She can be reached by e-mail at ama1668@hotmail.com.