Missing the economic big picture

Berkeley

I RECENTLY heard former World Trade Organization director-general Pascal Lamy paraphrasing a classic Buddhist proverb, wherein China's sixth Buddhist patriarch, Huineng, tells the nun, Wu Jincang: "When the philosopher points at the moon, the fool looks at the finger." Mr Lamy added that, "Market capitalism is the moon. Globalisation is the finger."

With anti-globalisation sentiment now on the rise throughout the West, this has been quite a year…