economist John Maynard Keynes’ vision of the WTO

An interesting bit of history about the World Trade Organization that could have been created, prior to being tainted by greed.

Here’s an excerpt of the article “Alternative Finances” that had been printed in the English version of Monde Diplomatique:

“The economist John Maynard Keynes came to the postwar table with an innovative project for the future of world trade, which he called the International Trade Organization (ITO), supported by an international central bank, the International Clearing Union (ICU). The ICU was meant to issue a world currency for trade, the bancor. Why the ITO and the ICU never materialized, and what would have changed if they had, forms a sobering story from which we can learn. It tells us that, in a rational world, it would be possible to construct a trading system serving the needs of people in both North and South.

With an ITO and an ICU, we could have had a world order in which no country could run a huge trade deficit (the United States deficit stood at $716bn in 2005) or the huge trade surplus of contemporary China. Under such a system, crushing third world debt and the devastating structural adjustment policies applied by the World Bank and the IMF would have been unthinkable, although the system would not have abolished capitalism.”

and another interesting article from UTNE Reader May/June 2008 issue “The Pursuit of Square Footage”