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What's really at stake in Seattle
Economists speak out on the issues behind the World Trade Organization summit and the street protests.
By Alicia Montgomery, Daryl Lindsey and Fiona Morgan
[12/02/99]

And then there were four ...
Ralph Nader will announce his campaign for president on the Green Party ticket in January, joining those on the Republican, Democrat and Reform tickets in next year's race for the White House.
By Micah L.Sifry
[12/02/99]

"Tear gas sucks"
I was minding my own business when the Seattle cops gassed me.
By Zach Works
[12/02/99]

A no-win situation
Nonviolent protesters get hit from both sides at the WTO conference in Seattle.
By L.A. Kauffman
[12/02/99]

If he can make it here ...
Arizona Sen. John McCain's toughest opponent in the New York primary is not George W. Bush, but the state's Byzantine process for qualifying for the ballot.
By Andrea Bernstein
[12/02/99]

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Even the most optimistic might raise an eyebrow at one deal that went down behind the barricades during the Battle of Seattle this week.

Also Today The great straddler Free trader Clinton veers left in Seattle. But will his act be enough to keep Al Gore's Democratic Party intact? By Todd Gitlin Trapped and torn Locked in by a chain of protesters, I wanted to kick myself. My kids were at home and I was about to be pummeled for all the wrong reasons. By Lisa Guide Wild in the streets What better place to find a hottie than at a riot conveniently taking place in my neighborhood? By Annie Culver

As critics besieged the third ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization, the leaders of the world's most powerful financial institutions -- the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund -- took another small step toward consolidating their global power with that of the burgeoning WTO.

"We shall build on the strong collaboration between our three organizations to enhance the capacity of developing countries -- to foster their economic and social development," a joint statement released Tuesday declared, "and we will continue to work together closely, under our Cooperation Agreements, to help them increase the coherence of economic policy-making."

Drafted in the flowery form of understatement that is the lingua franca of trade negotiators, the Seattle statement obscures its functional significance. Confidential memoranda distributed within the World Bank and leaked by the Center for Economic and Policy Research provide a far more revealing view of the institutions' shared interests.

A 1998 report states: "The globalization of economic activity has made it useful to put the existing structures of cooperation on a more formal basis." A 1999 paper concludes: "The intertwining of the development and trade agendas provides important opportunities to cement our shared commitment to making the international trade regime an effective path to development and poverty alleviation."

WTO Director-General Mike Moore flatly denies all accusations that the organization is forging any world order. The former prime minister of New Zealand asserted: "The WTO is not a world government, a global policeman, or an agent for corporate interests."

But critics of the powerful institutions see New World Disorder in the making.

"The IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization are in the process of creating an international iron cage," says Walden Bello, an economist who heads Focus on the Global South, a Bangkok-based think tank. Bello fears the fund and the bank will become de facto enforcers of WTO policy.

Under current provisions, when two member countries can't settle a trade dispute, they take their quarrel to a WTO dispute settlement panel in Geneva. Many of the WTO's 134 member nations complain that the dispute system is already rigged in favor of big countries, especially the United States, since it allows the victor to impose trade sanctions against the other country. While a U.S. trade sanction could smash a small nation's exports, the same sanction applied by a developing country wouldn't make a dent in the massive Western economy.

Bello and other critics fear that in the near future, this inequality would be widened through cooperation among the three institutions. In addition to punitive sanctions, small nations that dare to defy the U.S. or the European Union could be denied loans by the World Bank or could become the victims of endless structural adjustments imposed by the IMF.

IMF spokesman William Murray accused Bello and others of blowing the so-called "cohesion" agreements out of proportion, saying that coordination is both benign and necessary.

"You don't want competition among the institutions," Murray said. "Otherwise, if a country doesn't like what the World Bank or the IMF says, it would simply go to the other institution -- like a child shopping for favors between his parents."

Stanford University economics professor Gerald Meier said such collaboration is inevitable. "The World Bank and IMF are working much more closely together with the WTO now. Many of their financial problems have a trade component, so it's only natural," Meier said.

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