Must See Video: James Goldsmith Slams Glabalization--in 1994

Back on August 12, I posted a Friday Rant entitled "A Half-Century at the Local Tire Factory in a Globalizing World," in which I recounted the rise and decline of the Goodyear factory in my hometown that employed my father. In the post, I recounted how my father got laid off for about six months in 1986 during a hostile takeover attempt of Goodyear by British financier Sir James Goldsmith. I really didn't know much about Goldsmith, but I always assumed he was a pure capitalist predator, a forefather of the kind who dominate Wall Street and the corporate world today.

So I was quite taken aback when reader C0SMIC_N0MAD alerted me to a video from the Charlie Rose show dated November 15, 1994, in which the aforementioned Sir Goldsmith schools the host on the DANGERS of globalization, specifically NAFTA and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The sickening part is that while Rose and Clinton Administration flack Laura D'Andrea Tyson cheerlead free trade, Sir Goldsmith accurately predicts how the agreements were going to destroy America's working and middle classes.

The whole video is worth watching, but the money quote for me comes at around the 11:20 mark where Sir Goldsmith says to Rose that the with the agreements, "there is a divorce between the interests of major corporations and of society."

Indeed.