How to manage the global economy - and, more fundamentally, whether humanity wishes it to go in an ever more market-oriented, transnational corporation-dominated, and capital-footloose direction - is the most important international question of our time. In this short and trenchant history of those bodies -- the World Bank, IMF, WTO, and Group of Seven -- which have promoted this economic globalization, Walden Bello:

- Points to their manifest failings;

- Examines the major new ideas put forward for reforming the management of the world economy;

- Argues for a much more fundamental shift towards a decentralized, pluralistic system of global economic governance allowing countries to follow development strategies sensitive to their own values and particular mix of constraints and opportunities.