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插图：With the London summit of the G20 just two months away, Gordon Brown haslaunched a new offensive in support of free market globalization. Speaking in therarefied air of the Davos world economic forum, the prime minister pleaded for acontinuation of the "open, free market, flexible" approach to globalization that he haschampioned over the past dozen years. Back in the real world, he attacked as"indefensible" the wave of industrial action by British workers whose jobs have beensacrificed to the market flexibility he applauds. The perils of protectionism have beenenlarged upon by many commentators, with differing degrees of lurid detail. Yetrejecting Brown' s free market model of globalization does not entail an instant return tothe 1930s or the reappearance of Adolf Hider, as some would have us believe.On the contrary, suggesting that the solution to today' s economic turmoil is anotherdose of open, free market, flexible globalization fails to appreciate the root causes of thecurrent crisis. What the world needs now is a completely new approach to solving theproblems of the global economy, not more of the same. The globalization program of thepast 30 years has been based precisely on the liberalization and deregulation of existingmarkets, plus the creation of new markets where none existed previously. TheWashington consensus —— and its Swiss variant, the Davos consensus —— entailed theenforced opening of many emerging economies to international competition, thewidespread privatization of public services and state-owned enterprises, as well as newfreedoms for banks and other financial institutions to boldly go where no one had gonebefore.We are already witnessing the chaos caused by such financial deregulation on agrand scale. Yet despite the growing consensus on the need for re-regulation to correctthe errors of the past, Gordon Brown persists in calling for the rapid conclusion of theDoha round of world trade talks, which include their own subset of negotiations to openup and deregulate financial markets still further. These negotiations could entail theremoval of prudential regulations which protect many developing countries from sufferingeven greater fall-out from the financial crisis. Thankfully, an outbreak of acrimoniousfinger-pointing between trade ministers at Davos has once more torpedoed the prospect ofnegotiations being resumed any time soon.

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