Again, the problem is not coming up with the correct answer but asking the right question. What do you mean by productive, for instance?

If you mean that farmers here are unable to keep their prices as low as huge multinational agricultural conglomerates do, there are reasons for that that have nothing to do with farmers not being productive: one is, the conglomerates usually end up exerting a quasi-monopolistic hold on the market; another is, foreign agriculture is heavily subsidised. Then there’s the semantic question. What does productive mean? Productive for whom? By what standard? If you are a capital-poor, labour-rich country, using more people in agriculture is not unproductive, it’s the best use of your resources. Using high-tech equipment which does away with people is, in those terms, a highly unproductive use of your resources.

Is globalisation good for the man on the street? Will it remove poverty?

Globalisation isn’t any one thing. That’s one of the important points we make in the book. And whether it’s good for you depends on where you stand. Obviously, it’s been good for people with stock portfolios who’ve found slim pickings in the US market. They now have the option to jump into some red-hot emerging market with a click of the mouse.

It’s good for hedge-fund managers and bankers who can spin a loss in one country into a gain somewhere else. It’s been good for consumers in many countries because it’s brought cheap manufactured goods to our homes that would have cost us much more if they’d been home-made. It’s been good for high-tech workers in emerging markets who can sell their skills to the highest bidder. It’s been good for multinationals that can now cut their costs by outsourcing a lot of their grunt work, and even R&D, to countries with low wages. If you belong to those groups, then of course, globalisation is good for you.

But what if you’re not one among the winners? What if you’re a middle or low level worker in the West who now has to compete with wages in the third world? What if you are a worker in the third world who isn’t lucky enough or skilled enough to get work with a multinational but has to work at much lower wages for a local company? You’re doing the same work, you’re paying the same expenses, but you’re not getting the same wages. What if you are a small farmer put out of business by Monsanto or Archer Daniels Midland? What if you live on a fixed income in the tropics and all the water around you has been sucked up by businesses? You now have to pay for expensive bottled water out of your savings and your savings are being eaten up by soaring inflation.

And that’s still the middle class. What happens if you belong to the 800 million or so of the non-middle class in India? How do you survive if you can’t afford water, not just food? When the rents of even the most squalid tenements are soaring because Goldman Sachs or some other company is gobbling up commercial space. What happens then? Where do you go? You can’t emigrate – the western nations are tightening up their immigration laws. And you don’t have the money, anyway. You’re cornered then, aren’t you? And if there isn’t an economic solution, can you be blamed if you reach for the political one?

Should free movement of people precede free movement of capital?

Theoretically, labour should be as free to move as capital. But theory, as we write in “Mobs” is one thing. Practice is a whole different thing.

The theory is that labour is a factor of production, like capital. The practice is that labour is sweaty, smelly, comes in colours and shapes that other people don’t like, and takes a lot of time and money to move from one place to another, whereas a euro or a dollar smells crisp and fresh no matter where it comes from.

And it moves at lightning speed across computer terminals. However, many colours it’s printed in, it’s always green and good. Money is an abstraction of labour, it’s a refinement of the work of flesh and blood people. It’s the cogito ergo sum in another form. You can manipulate it easily, move it around, play with it, phony up the numbers, disappear it. You can’t disappear flesh and blood. At least not easily…..or without the Human Rights people showing up with legal papers.

So, of course, free movement of people should precede the free movement of capital. But it doesn’t, and probably never will. So the simpler thing is to restrain the movement of capital, or at least, slow it down and strip search it a bit.

Are stock markets true barometer of the economy?

They are one kind of barometer. But there are many others. GDP numbers, consumption levels, production numbers, education levels, nutrition and health, wage levels etc. And again, which one you pick depends on what kind of a reading you’re taking. The stock market is like the colour in your cheek. It’s going to show what state you’re in fairly accurately most of the time. Most of the time, it’s a sign of good health.

You have a little glow because you’ve been running to catch a bus, or standing out in the sun too long, maybe, but otherwise you’re fine. Nothing wrong. But then there are those other times, when that flush means you’re sick.

Sometimes it could even signal a death rattle. In short, the stock market could be up because there’s a healthy boom and people are making more and investing more…..or it could be up because the country is in intensive care and the central bank has given it a transfusion of credit.

Right now, many people think the global economy is on its sick bed, running a high fever. The only question is if the sickness is manageable or fatal.

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