George Soros On Globalization

The world today is linked more closely than ever before, yet the rapid integration of international financial markets and the growth of transnational business have not been matched by a corresponding development of our social and political institutions. Even before September 11, 2001, it was clear that not everyone was happy with globalization: violent protests have become a regular feature of international summit meetings, and many people have expressed their strong opposition to policies that they see as enriching the rich at the expense of workers, the environment, and traditional culture. In this pathbreaking new book, Soros not only identifies the problems but also puts forward practical proposals to make the system work better. In a thoughtful analysis of our existing international financial and trade institutions, Soros shows that while they aid wealth creation they fall short in providing other public goods. Soros deplores an unwitting coalition between market fundamentalists on the far Right and antiglobalization activists on the far Left bent on destroying the international institutions we have and calls for a different coalition that would work to reform and strengthen those institutions. The missing element, the centerpiece of the new architecture, is the use of Special Drawing Rights for the provision of development assistance and public goods on a global scale. In a powerful concluding chapter, Soros assesses the United States' role in the world after September 11. The United States, he cautions, cannot secure its own prosperity and the safety of its people through the raw and unilateral exercise of power; peace and security can be won only through international cooperation. As the world economy has been transformed in the 1990s and early 2000s, no individual has grappled with the social and political implications of globalization more intensely than George Soros. From his unique position as a leading financier, a major international philanthropist and a thoughtful critic of the global capitalist system, Soros has sought to promote "open societies" as a necessary complement to the expansion of markets.