FRONT PAGE: "Walmart takes aim at supply chain cost: Drive to increase global purchasing; Retailer seeks to cut supplier companies," by Jonathan Birchall, Financial Times, 4 January 2010.

Best to check out my partner Steve DeAngelis's blog post on this article, which really caught my eye, especially the stuff about how Walmart intends to rationalize its purchasing of food (the usual Protestant Reformation of cutting out middlemen and seeking a direct relationship with producers).

Locals will naturally decry the death of middlemen, who add nothing but cost and waste and complexity, but this sort of manufacturer-to-retailer bonding will define the next great wave of globalization's tightening up.

Why? Because there's such immense inefficiency there to root out.