Free trade.

Editor,

"Free trade" is a propaganda phrase global capitalists use to obfuscate and sugar coat what it really is: transnational capital flows without controls.

Controlling the movement of capital limits international investors' and multinational financial institutions' profits; eliminating controls gives these entities the "freedom" and the "liberty" to suck profits out of local economies for reinvestment elsewhere -- at the expense of the communities from which profits are removed.

"Free trade" is also a set of rules that stipulate that, to participate in the global investment racket, developing economies must (a) privatize essential services and natural resources, (b) curtail spending on social programs, and (c) relax labor and environmental protections. This minimizes labor and other societal costs for multinational corporations and conscripts increasing millions of people into the burgeoning "army of the unemployed".

Disempowering workers and liberalizing international capital flows drives wages -- and labor and social protections -- toward zero world-wide, including in the developed economies: a clever trick to distribute wealth from the poor to the rich, which the corporate press, through ignorance or complicity, blithely promotes.