"Unholy Trinity"

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how the book "Unholy Trinity" by Beate Born and Richard Peet uses the ideas of power, political interest, hegemony, responsibility and the power of practicality to examine three global governance institutions: The International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO). It looks at how the book argues that the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO impose a virtually synonymous set of neoliberal economic policies on countries the world over and how the policies are imposed as conditions for loans in time of crisis, as qualifications for debt relief, as part of development assistance for countries much in need and as requirements for membership in vital international trade agreements.

Outline
Introduction
Globalism and Neoliberalism
Emergence of a Global Economic Regime
Bretton Woods
The IMF
The World Bank
The World Trade Organization
Conclusion

From the Paper:

"The rise of neoliberalism culminated with the Reagan government in the United States and that of Margaret Thatcher in Britain, along with the fall of the Soviet Union and the fading of social democracy and new liberalism as alternatives to unbridled capitalism. These governments not only shifted their own countries' policies toward laissez-faire but used their control of the major Bretton Woods institutions to impose their policies on the rest of the world. So nowadays, neoliberalism is generally seen as synonymous with the "Washington Consensus," the dominant policy view at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the U.S. Treasury at the end of the 20th century and the start of the 21st."

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