New York Times: Job Losses Pose a Threat to Stability Worldwide

I always love when the mainstream media catches a theme with such lag.... the following article hits on themes we were addressing in the 1st half of 2008: protectionism & social acrimony. We are already seeing this increasing sharply both domestically and abroad. Another sexy theme that investors were using to drive up certain stocks ... "decoupling" firmly debunked.

• From lawyers in Paris to factory workers in China and bodyguards in Colombia, the ranks of the jobless are swelling rapidly across the globe. Worldwide job losses from the recession that started in the United States in December 2007 could hit a staggering 50 million by the end of 2009...
• High unemployment rates, especially among young workers, have led to protests in countries as varied as Latvia, Chile, Greece, Bulgaria and Iceland and contributed to strikes in Britain and France.
• Just last week, the new United States director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, told Congress that instability caused by the global economic crisis had become the biggest security threat facing the United States, outpacing terrorism. “Nearly everybody has been caught by surprise at the speed in which unemployment is increasing, and are groping for a response,” said Nicolas Véron, a fellow at Bruegel, a research center in Brussels that focuses on Europe’s role in the global economy.
• In emerging economies like those in Eastern Europe, there are fears that growing joblessness might encourage a move away from free-market, pro-Western policies, while in developed countries unemployment could bolster efforts to protect local industries at the expense of global trade. (count on it) Indeed, some European stimulus packages, as well as one passed Friday in the United States, include protections for domestic companies, increasing the likelihood of protectionist trade battles.
• “This is the worst we’ve had since 1929,” said Laurent Wauquiez, France’s employment minister. “The thing that is new is that it is global, and we are always talking about that. It is in every country, and it makes the whole difference.”
• In Britain, refinery and power plant employees walked off the job last month to protest the use of workers from Italy and Portugal at a construction project on the coast. Some held up signs highlighting Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s earlier promise of “British jobs for British workers.”
• In France last week, President Nicolas Sarkozy agreed to supply low-interest loans of 3 billion euros, or $3.86 billion, each to PSA Peugeot Citroën and Renault in exchange for an agreement not to lay off French workers.
• To a greater extent than in past European downturns, highly trained white-collar workers are pounding the pavement, too.
• Even India, whose startling rise to the forefront of the global economy was portrayed in the hit movie “Slumdog Millionaire,” has hit a wall. About 500,000 people lost jobs between October and December 2008, according to one recent analysis.
• Many newer workers, especially those in countries that moved from communism to capitalism in the 1990s, have known only boom times since then. For them, the shift is especially jarring, a main reason for the violence that exploded recently in countries like Latvia, a former Soviet republic.

[Jan 29: CNN - French Take to Streets to Protest Against Economic Solutions]
[Dec 22: WSJ - Protectionism on the Rise]

WSJ: Nationalism and Protectionism Continue to Accelerate Across the Globe; including the U.S. (another of our long held predictions now is coming to fruition - protectionism and social acrimony) also UKTimes Online: Dawn of New Age of Industrial Unrest and NYT: British Unions Stage Walkouts Over Use of Foreign Workers