Analyses of how health system priorities should be set in resource-poor settings are routine in the health ethics and policy analysis literature. Less attention is devoted to asking why some settings are resource-poor and others not. Asking this question must be considered a central task of global health research. Comparison of the relatively meager resources devoted to improving the health of the poor with the sums routinely mobilized for other purposes serves as a basis for ethical reflection and a route into necessary questioning of power imbalances in the world economy. The 2008 financial crisis and related developments underscore the urgency of such questioning, and the value of research and advocacy collaborations (for example, between the human rights and public health research and practice communities) focused specifically on the destructive consequences of the global marketplace for health.