LINKS: NGO's & Hollow States, Economic Black Swans, and Transnational Crime

• NGOs fill the gap. Robert Kaplan writes about the Bangladeshi response to a hollow state. "Waterworld" The Atlantic. Here's his key observation (which is important for those of us thinking about bottoms up resilience):

  "NGOs in Bangladesh represent a whole new organizational life-form; thousands of them fill the void between village committees and a remote, badly functioning central government."

• Economic Black Swans. The NYTimes (Peter Goodman and Floyd Norris) has a choice quote on the loss of domestic economic control and the rise of a global economy rife with systemic uncertainty:

  "Huge and complex, the American economy has in recent years been aided by a global web of finance so elaborate that no one seems capable of fully comprehending it. That makes it all but impossible to predict how much the economy can be expected to fall before it stabilizes."

• Transnational Crime. The Economist reviews Roberto Saviano's book, "Gomorrah" on how the Italian mafia has been transformed by globalization.

  "Once a web of mobsters whose most international activity was smuggling cigarettes, the Camorra eases uninspected Chinese goods into Europe and provides loans at usurious rates to the sweatshops that produce many of the elegant garments Italy sells abroad. It imports arms from eastern Europe and exports them to Basque guerrillas. Its various clans launder money through businesses scattered from Taiwan to Brno, from Miami Beach, Florida, to Five Dock, New South Wales."

• A cartoon by Hugh MacLeod (best known for this mantra: "Blogs are a good way to make things happen indirectly") that's applicable to GG thinking.