Worldwide polls show that benefits of globalization and costs of deglobalization are generally misunderstood across the globe (“Turning Their Backs on the World,” February 21, 2009). But this is not because the economics of the movement of goods and services, capital, and people are poorly understood; rather, this is because these are systematically misrepresented by politics. Take for example one of your “small countries which went into business that grew in globalization’s wake, like tourism,” where I happen to be living at the moment. When the going was good, the politicians waxed poetic about the unparalleled beauty of the land, which fully “explained” the throngs of visitors, as well as the boom in real-estate prices. The proverbial industriousness of their people was not left out, either, in spite of the fact that little but tourism was there to boast about. Now the same politicians snarl about the global economic crisis made in America, and they are urging everyone to buy local products only. In short, it would take an awful lot of economics to fight off the noxious effect of politics in this small country among countries. Boom or bust, the politicians do their best to make economics unpalatable, if not also odious, to their constituencies.