The global economy is suffering from severe shortage of demand. In developed economies that shortfall is explicit in high unemployment rates and large output gaps. In emerging market economies it is implicit in their reliance on export-led growth. In part this shortfall reflects the lingering disruptive effects of the financial crisis and Great Recession, but it also reflects globalization's undermining of the income generation process.

Earlier this month, Congress took up a major trade package that includes free-trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea. All these pacts are flawed in their own way, but none is more problematic than the proposed deal with Colombia, which would reward a political elite that has long repressed labor unions and could devastate that country's rural farmers.

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Call it recycling opportunity. After their failed bid to host the 2004 Summer Olympics, Stockholm city leaders decided to turn a would-be sports village in the Hammarby Sjostad district into one of the world's most successful eco-villages. The practices of powering buses with biogas, recycling rainwater for irrigation and using organic waste for fertilizer spread to other districts of Sweden's largest city. Today the city's water is so clean that fishermen actually stand on bridges in the central business district, catching fresh salmon and trout.

The U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, stalled in Congress since the George W. Bush Administration signed it in 2006, is likely to be voted on by legislators this summer as part of a broader trade package that also includes the pending pacts with Panama and South Korea.