--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote: > Rakesh
was very upset that no one on the Socialist
> Register list
> responded to this piece by Meghnad Desai.
Weird piece. Lord D. seems to be of the opinion that the WTO is all about capital flows, which puts him slightly off message to begin with. I think he's factually wrong on the question of whether the UN and IMF have ever censured the USA.
But I'm really posting to point out that Bhagwati doesn't agree that the WTO is necessarily good for the poor, and indeed in this letter to the FT seems to be expressing pretty severe misgivings about the process of globalisation:
http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/article.html?id=010220001132&query=bhagwati
I've got a lot of sympathy for his position (rather like Rakesh's own, I think), of having started out as an unashamed cheerleader for free trade in goods, then gradually realising that all your cohorts are interested in marching on to free capital flows, global intellectual property, MAI, etc, etc (but never free global labour markets -- laissez-faire, but not laissez-passer). My guess is that within five years, Bhagwati will be on our side.
d^2
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