Dear Carmelo
you poses two issues. The use of neo-Mercatlist policies by some developing countries and the rising debt in many of these countries.
Personally I consider the adoption of special and differential treatment for developing countries an opportunity for them to make a first step to enter the international markets without being immediately wiped out by most advanced and emerging economies. Here of course I think of low Income Countries in particular. The crucial but difficult thing is if countries are able to have joint policies at the regional level. Think of East Africa Economic Community; if these countries could negotiate special trade rules as a group they could have better chances of taking advantage of their trade relations with High Income economies and with China.
Different is the case of emerging ecobnomies which are alreday growing quite fast and are in an Upper Middle Income status. here of course the advanciong protectismo could be damaging in particular because of the possible rise of state-firms cohalition and concentration of power.
In general I have no objections to policies which defend coutry and regional interests of the poorest countries and of policies and instruments which are designaded to re-balance economic powers.
II do agree that many emerging economies in Asia, but also some Low Inocme countries in africa, now suffer from excessive indebtedness, but this again ask for a separation between development finance, clearly geared to improve GDP growth rates in the poorest countries an speculative activities. AS the 1997-98 Asian crisis has shown the latter can easily enter the picture and generate bubbles even in fast growing economies

Dear Maria
I think pension funds are a typical example of mismatch between the goal which is clearly long run and the day-to-day actions which are necessary in order to achieve that goal. True part of the funds of pension funds are invested in long run realtively safe assets: triple A bonds, but on the other hand these funds cannot rely only on low yield type of assets hotherwise returns would be minimal. Thus they too must engage in ‘trading’ buying and selling different assets, includiong long-run ones like 10 years bonds.
Pension funds are a case inwhich it migh make sense to have a separation between speculative funds and more prudent funds; the sort of separation I advocate for development funds. Coomercial baks/funds on one side, investment banks/funds on the other. One could say that in practice you could put your savings into funds which are rick averse/speculatibe in different degrees, but the problem is that in today finance this separation is not always clear as the crisis as shown. Regulation has been the answer, but a very timid one; I think separation qould be better. Of course pension funds manage a lot of savings, thus this separation could lead to decrease in more speculative financial activites.

With best regards.

Many thanks for your itneresting paperthat highlights financial mercantislism as a main feature of globalization.

Regarding your sentence ” Pension funds have a long-term contract with their clients who save now in view of more
consumption capacity in the future. However, in order to guarantee a future income to their
customers the pension funds must continuously shift savings across different types of investments,
in order to yield an annual return at least similar to those of their competitor”

I would like you to clarify the role that pension funds in the context of financial mercantislism.

Maria