While in the fields of politics and culture cosmopolitanism is still regarded as a virtue to which patriotism is a threat that tends to be met with distrust, an almost inexorable shift in values in the opposite direction is currently taking place in the world of economics. Globalisation, celebrated until recently as the germ cell of a worldwide village community, and even the surmounting of national borders within the EU, is being branded as callous neo-liberalism by voices from both the right and the left of the political spectrum. Instead, maintaining the last remnants of national sovereignty is proclaimed to be a patriotic duty and, with trade barriers now largely ineffectual, the main focus has switched to the issue of defending national corporations from the clutches of foreign investors.
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