>Doug, I don't understand what Bhagwati is getting at when he says the
>"Quad", i.e. rich, countries are starving the WTO and that it's not their
>preferred institution. Who pushed to create it? The rich countries, n'est
>pas?
Yes, but Bhagwati's point is that they have a hard time dominating it the way they dominate the WB & IMF. That it's entire budget is less than the IMF's travel budget is an amazing factoid. The Quad tried, in conjunction with some of the larger "developing" countries, to dominate the process in Seattle, through the private "green room" negotiations, but the smaller countries got pissed and threatened to walk out, which is one of several reasons the talks collapsed. I figured that since Bhagwati knows this stuff very well, his observation was worth getting out to a wider audience (the vast LBO subscribership!).
I'm going to run excerpts from our interview with him in the next issue - there's lots of good stuff in there.
Doug