Man is a political animal. It’s his economics that cause the trouble.
By Michael Carroll
September 2001
Institutional Investor Magazine
The ongoing crisis in Argentina has riveted the financial world’s attention, but it’s hardly the world’s only hot spot. Japan remains moribund, Europe is slumping, and the U.S., that great engine of ‘90s prosperity, continues to sputter. All this is casting doubt on many accepted verities, from the promise of the Internet (which changed everything but the business cycle) to the open markets’ gospel for economic development. Globalization, which the Internet and International Monetary Fund/World Bank policies have served in their own ways, is under attack by forces whose ideology and objectives aren’t always clear or consistent to outsiders. This month, Senior Writer Deepak Gopinath interviews one of the people challenging the Washington consensus, Njoki Njehu, director of 50 Years Is Enough: U.S. Network for Global Economic Justice and experienced protestor at multilateral events.
Each September, heading into the biggest of these multilateral meetings, the annual IMF/World Bank sessions (this year in Washington, D.C.), Institutional Investor has assessed attempts to improve global financial stability. In this issue our writers chronicle countries’ varied efforts to deal with worsening economic conditions and weakening orthodoxies.
In Peru, in his first interview since taking office, newly elected President Alejandro Toledo outlines to Contributing Editor Lucy Conger his efforts to create a “market economy with a human face.”
In Argentina, Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo assures Staff Writer Jenny Anderson that his plans for budget-cutting can still save his beleaguered country.
In Brazil, analysts tell contributor Judith Evans that Luiz Inàcio (Lula) da Silva, a left-wing candidate, has a very good chance of becoming the country’s next president, succeeding Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
Meanwhile, Senior Writer Gopinath notes that IMF chief Horst K,hler is reluctantly embracing the big bailouts that he planned to eliminate (page 77). And then there’s the three-year-old European Central Bank, trying to assert its independence while learning how to formulate and communicate its response to a drooping currency and Euroland’s first economic slowdown.
Everyone’s looking for a new model, or a way to refine the old one. U2 lead singer Bono, at least, is consistent: He continues his debt-relief campaign. But you don’t need a rock star to know which way the wind blows.
