Protectionism On The Rise, Be Afraid!

Update: March28, 2009

Protesters, police go online in G-20 battle

By CNN’s Simon Hooper

LONDON, England (CNN) — Social networking Web sites are set to play a crucial role in protests ahead of next week’s G-20 meeting of world leaders in London as demonstration organizers and police use Twitter and Facebook as key sources of real-time information and intelligence.

Metropolitan Police leaders have warned that the city faces an “unprecedented” wave of protest in the run-up to Thursday’s summit talks on the state of the global economy and are set to deploy huge numbers of officers to maintain public order.
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March 27, 2009

As I have said on many occasions I am not an economist just a simple man on the street guided by intuition, common sense and history.
In the past couple of weeks I have been seeing a move by many countries that bodes ill for all. I speak of protectionism. Day by day more and more economist are beginning to sound the alarm and express concern of this latest trend away from free trade.

After they met in Washington last November, G20 leaders said that they had united to support open markets.
From The Economist print edition

Well, talk about a bunch of crap! It seems they did a lot of talk about open markets but no sooner the meeting was over they started measures towards protectionism. They should heed the lessons of history.

COMPARISONS to the Depression feature in almost every discussion of the global economic crisis. In world trade, such parallels are especially chilling. Trade declined alarmingly in the early 1930s as global demand imploded, prices collapsed and governments embarked on a destructive, protectionist spiral of higher tariffs and retaliation.
From The Economist print edition

Many economist are warning about this move towards protectionism but the question is will the G20 members heed their warnings?

UNLESS January was a strangely synchronised blip, trade is collapsing much more rapidly than people had realised before (see our Leader). The World Bank has very helpfully been putting together data for as many countries as release their data, and the January data look pretty scary indeed.
The Economist
As I have said I am not an economist but it would seem that more and more of them are taking my view of where this is all heading namely another Economic Depression and this one will more than likely be more devastating than the last. The G20 would do well to take the advice of the experts and beware of closing borders to free trade. History has shown that once that happens war is right around the corner!