Globalization and Black America

The global financial crisis has focused attention on the power of unfettered free markets. But for decades now, that power has dealt a bad hand to those on the losing end of the global economy.

From the world’s poorest countries to its richest, whole populations have been battered as once secure jobs disappeared, and with them economic mobility.

Jon Jeter, former Washington Post bureau chief in southern Africa and South America, has seen globalization's impact on the third world. And as an African-American man he’s seen the same forces undoing progress in black America.

This hour, On Point: what globalization has wrought, from South Africa to Chicago's South Side.

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-Jack Beatty, guest host

Guests:

Jon Jeter joins us from New York. He was The Washington Post's bureau chief for southern Africa from 1999 to 2003, and the Post’s bureau chief for South America from 2003 to 2004. He was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His new book is "Flat Broke in the Free Market." In a blog post at powells.com, Jeter describes what led him to write the book.

Joining us from Washington is Arvind Panagariya, professor of economics at Columbia University and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He has worked at the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization. He is author of "India: The Emerging Giant."