Wolfowitz at the World Bank: An Empire without a Global Economic Policy?

A momentum to break open debtors' prisons that the Washington Consensus built in the global south has been building up, demonstrated by Argentina's ability to compel 75% of its creditors to accept 35 cents on the dollar. The nomination of Paul Wolfowitz for WB presidency can only invigorate the global justice movement, which will have an inviting target at the IMF and the WB's 2005 Spring Meetings on April 16-17 and their 2005 Annual Meetings on September 26-27 -- both in Washington D.C. At the same time, the Wolfowitz nomination, like John Snow's performance, underscores the empire's lack of global economic policy. To be sure, there is no lack of clarity in the domestic business agenda, but all elements of the domestic agenda (the class action "reform," the bankruptcy "reform," the medical malpractice liability "reform," tax cuts, Social Security privatization, etc.) either do nothing to defuse or make bigger ticking economic time bombs -- the ballooning housing bubble, mounting consumer debts, the credit bubble, the widening current account deficit, rising oil prices, the falling dollar, and so on -- that may go off any time.