WORLD SHRINKS, CHASM GROWS.

Byline: DAVID KRONKE TV Critic

ANOTHER CAUTIONARY tale concerning our global economy popped up over the weekend - McDonald's is suing a woman in Chile for $1.25 million for suggesting one of their burgers gave her son food poisoning.

The lawsuit - which McDonald's offers to withdraw should the woman sign a document stating the fast-food behemoth wasn't responsible for her son's illness - was chilling in its subtext: Speak out against us and we'll make your life miserable. A government official even ate a burger at the restaurant to demonstrate solidarity with this corporate giant. In this era in which economics usurps the power of politics, who's running things in Chile? Hint: It's no longer the government.

Whether or not everyone's computers or brains can handle it, the global economy seems to be running on DSL - transactions occur before anyone can make sense of what has transpired. There are simply too many diversions to absorb, and opportunists everywhere are cashing in - in a world in which the INS renews terrorist visas, why wouldn't a debacle as earth-shaking as Enron sneak under our noses?

Trying to make sense of all this is ``Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy,'' a pretty astounding documentary miniseries. For one thing, it manages to make economics absorbing, at times even riveting, and generally easy to understand even if you have trouble balancing your checkbook. For another, it's amazingly concise, cramming a dizzying array of information, history, debate and global perspective into a mere six hours - the same length as Stephen King's last haunted-house miniseries.

Based on the book of the same title by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Daniel Yergin with Joseph Stanislaw, and produced by William Cran with Yergin, the documentary is two years in the making and includes interviews with leaders from 20 countries on five continents, including Bill Clinton and Dick Cheney, as well as economists, power-mongers and those affected by the actions of the powerful. The title, ``Commanding Heights,'' comes from a speech by Lenin referring to key industries that dominate the economy.

Tonight's episode somehow manages to cram a century of world economic history into a breezy two hours. It tells us of two theories, created by men who were, in fact, fellow professors at Cambridge University during World War II, and how they pretty much defined the 20th century.

John Maynard Keynes argued that governments should somehow manage the economy; Frederick Von Hayek suggested that market forces perform best outside of the grip of governmental regulation. Clearly, Keynes' theory worked in the middle part of the century, as President Franklin Roosevelt lifted the country from the Depression with sundry programs; Hayek's supposition appears to have kick-started the most recent economic boom.

The film fudges a bit: Tonight, it credits Ronald Reagan with turning around America's economy in the '80s, and not until the third episode does it list many of the adverse effects his prescription had on the country. It also trumpets deregulation in a number of industries, without noting the confusing and costly mass of problems it has caused in a few industries that might be better off with some form of regulation. In general, interviewees on this issue argue from standpoints of insanely micromanaged regulation and rudderlessly amoral deregulation - certainly, moderation could exist to prevent us from the corporate corruption that, deregulatory champions notwithstanding, somehow still seems to exist.

In episode two, ``The Agony of Reform,'' the economic reforms of Chile, Russia and Poland in the past decade or so take on the intrigue of a political thriller, rife with corruption and violence. Economists, faced with social unrest in some countries, are given insane schedules to develop economic plans: What they devise is called ``shock therapy,'' which resurrects the victim but at grave cost to individuals throughout the countries.

That free-market economics ``seemed unconcerned with fairness,'' as one economist puts it, is glanced upon in the first two episodes and explored in greater detail in the third, ``The New Rules of the Game.'' Before, it simply has been observed, ``The gap between rich and poor widened - and stayed that way.'' ``The gain was worth the pain'' was a constant refrain - coming from, of course, those not actually feeling the pain.

The third episode marks the frenzied absurdities created by the global economy - for example, an entire city built in Thailand, financed by American money, that helped spark an Asian financial crisis and even affected our economy for a time. No one has ever moved into that white elephant, and the guy who came up with the idea is now a sidewalk vendor in Singapore.

Protests at the World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle in 1999 and elsewhere are mentioned, with only a vaguely patronizing attitude toward those who are tilting at the colossal windmills of globalization. But the attacks of Sept. 11 warn us, we're ultimately told, that a clash between the haves and have-nots is not yet out of the question if the disparity is not dealt with by the haves.

The series, by the way, is sponsored by companies who profit handsomely from globalization.

COMMANDING HEIGHTS: THE BATTLE FOR THE WORLD ECONOMY - Three and one half stars

What: Six-hour documentary miniseries on the evolution of the global economy and its future after Sept. 11.

Where: KCET.

When: 9 p.m. Wednesdays through April 17.

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Photo:

In 1947, Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, left, and M.K. Ghandi debated the economic direction of the new nation, an argument examined in PBS' look at globalization.