Its the Global Economy Stupid

I start my journey by asking a simple question... What is the global economy? I hear that buzz word used so often it makes my head spin. I see it mentioned in print everywhere. I hear the pundits proclaiming the virtues or ills of a worldwide marketplace on cable news programs nightly. Why all the fuss?

Before I can start walking the road to understand global trade I need some type of roadmap. I decided to begin by gaining an understanding of the definition of "The Global Economy" with a Google search which returned twenty five million, five hundred thousand results in 0.31 seconds.

I found an article at: http://www.ericdigests.org/1993/global.htm that has some good information. One of the first things I learned is that the global economy is nothing new... In fact it has been around for hundreds of years. Okay, now I'm confused. Every where I look I see messages about the "new economy" or the "emerging global economy" and the like. If it isn't new, then why all the buzz?

It appears I'm not the only one questioning this. Erik Rauch who has a website at: http://swiss.csail.mit.edu/~rauch/misc/globalization/ thinks the whole globalization thing is overrated at best, and horribly exaggerated at worst. I'm not sure I agree 100% with him, but that could be out of ignorance more than anything. The plot thickens.

I wonder half jokingly if there is some shadowy group out there pushing the global economy thing for some underhanded purpose... hmmm We'll this is not a consipircy blog so I'll just leave that alone for now.