Unholy Trinity: The IMF, World Bank and WTO

Front Cover
Zed Books, 2003 - Business & Economics - 250 pages

Our lives are all affected by three hugely powerful and well financed, but undemocratic, organizations: the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. These institutions share, with minor differences, a common ideology. They aggressively promote a very particular kind of 'corporate' capitalism, neoliberalism, giving free rein across the world to the interests of a small number of huge, undemocratic and largely unregulated transnational corporations.

This book presents the history and fundamental ideas of this economic ideology. Describing each member of the 'unholy trinity', it shows how neoliberalism hijacked the IMF, World Bank and WTO in relation to their global financial, development and trade management roles. Instead of their original clearly defined, circumscribed and even benign responsibilities, they have now become the financial policemen of a global economy characterized by mounting extremes of rich and poor and recurrent instability.

The story of the mounting opposition to these 'Bretton Woods' institutions is told. And the book concludes with a trenchant review of the various ideas now being canvassed not simply for their radical reform, but for alternative principles that might guide a very different form of globalization.

From inside the book

Contents

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VII
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VIII
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IX
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X
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XXXIII
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XXXIV
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XXXVII
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XXX
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About the author (2003)

Richard Peet is Professor of Geography at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA. He obtained his PhD at the University of California in 1968. He was the Editor of the journal, Antipode, from 1970 to 1985 and Co-Editor of Economic Geography between 1992 and 1998. His published books include: Radical Geography: Alternative Viewpoints on Contemporary Social Issues (1977) Global Capitalism: Theories of Societal Development (1991) Modern Geographical Thought (1998). Richard Peet is Professor of Geography at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA. He obtained his PhD at the University of California in 1968. He was the Editor of the journal, Antipode, from 1970 to 1985 and Co-Editor of Economic Geography between 1992 and 1998. His published books include: Radical Geography: Alternative Viewpoints on Contemporary Social Issues (1977) Global Capitalism: Theories of Societal Development (1991) Modern Geographical Thought (1998).