Abandoning the World Bank: Pitfalls When Right and Left Agree

In 1994, activist groups mounted a unified campaign against the World Bank and its sister organization, the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The two institutions were then celebrating a half-century in business, having been founded at the Bretton Woods conference near the end of the Second World War. The name of the activist coalition, and its slogan, was "50 Years Is Enough."

The group's call to action against the international financial institutions seemed to come at an inopportune moment. The mid-1990s were high times for corporate globalization. Enthusiasm about the expanding "New Economy" was rising. The Clinton administration placed structures like the World Bank, the IMF, and the World Trade Organization (WTO) at the center of its foreign policy, and the march of economic neoliberalism seemed unstoppable.