Stepping Stones to a ‘Free-Market’ Global Economy

Abstract

The process of developing a global economy, operating largely as a single entity and increasingly directed by a powerful group of international business and political leaders who share a common view of how it should operate, has inevitably spawned a number of institutions, forums and gatherings which reinforce that unity of approach. It is no accident that this approach dominates the thinking of the major institutions that have the power to intervene in national economic policies. Joseph Stiglitz has tellingly revealed the extent to which the assumptions and attitudes that have underpinned the policies enjoined by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) reflect the ‘Washington consensus’.¹