Good afternoon. This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, March 2nd.

Johann Norberg, previously a fellow at Timbrough, a Swedish free market think tank, is now the

globalization expert at the Center for New Europe in Brussels. His book in defense of Globalization expert at the Center for New Europe in Brussels. His book in

Defense of Global Capitalism had been translated into English and was published to

wide acclaim. He gave the keynote address at the Cato Club 200 retreat in 2006. The speech has been

reprinted for the winter 2007 edition of Cato's letter. In today's podcast

Johann will be speaking about, well, that speech.

Reading your book in defense of global capitalism and your numerous writings and your recent Cato's letter,

it's pretty clear to me that you are a staunch defender of free markets and globalization.

But how can you always present such an unqualified and optimistic defense to a very hotly debated issue?

Well, I think that one of the reasons might actually be that I haven't always believed in these things. I didn't

used to believe in modern industrial society and big business and things like that.

So I never took it for granted. I never took anything for granted, but really thought there were so many problems with it.

And then I'm just so convinced by the facts, by what's going on in the world, when we can see so clearly how mankind has actually

created the best living standards that the world has ever seen.

Just look around for a minute. We can see that around 50 people, more than 50 people are being lifted out of extreme poverty every minute around the clock.

And then every minute while we're talking, reading, working, we can see that our life expectancy is being increased by 15 seconds

or something like that.

So we see something amazing happen.

For all its faults, for all its problems, free markets and globalization is creating a wonderful world.

You live in Sweden, a country known for its generous social democratic policies.

How would you say the welfare state has impacted living standards there?

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