And surely the 1998 IMF recap debate -- amongst critics that is -- was not about more or less globalisation, but rather between left attacks on the institution's neolib ideology and the banking interests it represented (and ordinary people it kills), in contrast to the right's concerns over institutional wasteage/corruption, IMF promotion of statism, and waning yankee power (and maybe slightly about NY banks getting bailouts). The right had more (hundreds more) congressional votes and therefore both refunded the IMF last October and also made it yet more vicious, more expensive and shorter-term in orientation.
Which says to me, don't do alliances with Trent Lott, Pat Buchanan and the like, because if you aren't bringing more to the table than Saunders, De Fazio and Kucinich, you will lose in a terribly unsatisfying way. Spend the time and energy on building the base to demand full defunding of the IMF and World Bank, starting with getting your pension fund, university endowment and the like to boycott Bank bonds. (Brad isn't listening now and wouldn't get it anyhow; but others out there do?)
On 17 Dec 99, at 13:23, Brad De Long wrote:
> The main complaint from, say, India is that under the WTO the first
> world hasn't taken the steps they promised to take to open their
> markets--they have followed the letter and not the spirit. The main
> complaint from the steelworkers and the turtle-lovers is that under
> the WTO too many people get to export to the U.S.
>
> It's like the great IMF refunding debate or the peso support
> package--half the critics saying that things should be more
> globalized, and half the people saying that things should be less
> globalized...
>
> Brad DeLong