Book Report on Unholy Trinity: The IMF, World Bank and WTO - Peer Review

Richard Peet as a Professor in Geography, wrote the book “Unholy trinity The IMF, World Bank and WTO” which received various praises. It is referred to as a terrific book although it is not that terrifying in consideration to the original sense of the word. The objects of its critique are not that stimulating for people far from being experts. Through reading and editing of several books, Richard wrote this book which is theoretically sophisticated, politically committed, full of devastating one-liners, thoroughly engaged, empirically rich, and analytically incisive thus considerably enlivening a reader. In his writing, he employed reminiscent energy through the use of live performances from a team of highly talented musicians. The performances were not only live in tackling a dynamic set of institutions or issues with huge contemporary significances, but also in enhancing a collaboration outcome between Richard Peet, graduate authors, and the seventeen graduates at Massachusetts, Worchester, and Clark University.

This book contains six chapters which explore the hegemonic relations through which and how the IMF, the World Bank, and WTO began their institutional life in July 1944 at Bretton Woods NH which regulates and governs the contemporary global economy. The first chapter discusses the horrible contradiction between how “beautiful opportunities of the humanitarian potential of globalization and the existing neoliberal globalization that cannot know its faults, no matter how disastrous their consequences” (Peet, 2009) evolved. Richard introduces a sensitive and imaginative reading from Foucault, Gramsci, and Marx with much effects in exploring the global hegemonic neo-liberal emergency in discoursing policies which the authors manifest in taking “the form of the conquest of practicality by committed expertise” (Peet, 2009). With such conquests, they claim globalism and neoliberalism have to re-enact perpetually because the regulatory institutions have inherent contradictions which operate within the neo-liberal economy. For instance, such inconsistencies should not only have strategic practice and be played out day-to-day but also leave institutions opening critiques from both sides.

Chapter two establishes a critical interpretation of conditions of concentrated power as well as the common interests of the dominant Western European and North American states. It also offers an elaboration of the United States willingness to assume leadership for the establishment of political practices of Bretton Woods processes. Richard Peet explains the regime which had emerged and other things, how to work out transposes of national Keynesianism into an international stage. The chapter is much detailed and shows how US hegemony was sustained and asserted when insisting on issues of conditionality across institutions in Bretton Woods. It is a practice and insistence of geo-economy, and geopolitical power that has from then proved to be damaging the global developments. The power is against Keynes wishes to locate the IMF and IBRD across Washington DC and not New York. However, this chapter frees conspiratorial if it is not masculinist upon the change theories.

Chapter three focuses on an evaluation of the IMF, the World Bank, and WTO. It takes ups at least two-thirds of the book text thus offering detailed economic, political, and historical critiques in a wide range of practices and issues. Richard Peet claims that IMF treatments are the most extended because it is probably the powerful only single non-state institution across the world. Therefore, it means disbanding this institution unless reverted to its original roles as a place of making deposits of surpluses which can be withdrawn during hard currency times in the economic emergencies as well as discontinuing of escalating functions as a lender in imposing damaging and austere conditions. WTO closely follows IMF as an awful organization which is run by a board of directors with a secretariat which propagates rightist elitism in a guise of consumer populism. It seems this relativities also reflects the intensity of each institutions critique. However, through its policy-setting conditions and direct loans, the World Bank becomes the essential developed institution across the world from which Peet sees some hopes although if it democratizes with powers delegated to those who live in attempts of influences and distractions from IMF.

In Chapter four the author expresses how the World Bank or just “the International Development Association (IDA)” and “the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD)” came to be as a result of after war reconstruction of Europe. “It operates as a development agency under the mission statement which says our dream is a world without poverty” (Peet, 2009) by lending client countries over US$17 billion per year. Peet also says that this bank sets conditions through which it further allows disposal of billions, in grants and loans flowing to the Third World as well as post-communist countries. The authors also claim that the main aim of the bank was to achieve the objectives of making scientific-industrial progress benefits available to underdeveloped countries as a part of the cold war. Lending reforms of these structural adjustments are the primary means of carrying the political beliefs to economic practices. The chapter also discusses the types of policies required in achieving faster growth in the development of third world countries. However, “the turn of millennium development goals saw the neoliberal policy discourse where the institutions take a liberal turn of the debt relief and development goals” (Peet, 2009).

Chapter five offers an exploration of “the World Trade Organization which is a formal institutionalized General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade version (GATT), signed by over twenty-three governments in 1947” (Peet, 2009). This institution focus on regulating international trade in services and goods through the use of systems with different rules and objectives laid out in different agreement articles among member governments. Richard says this institution operates within the changing discourse in emphasis over time consistently advocating the liberalization of trade which is the freeing of the international movement of commodities as well as services from government restraints. Throughout the chapter, this author expresses the importance of freeing trade activities from some tariffs, and other governmental restrictions allow competition as well as “markets to function more freely at international levels thus leading to rapid economic growth benefiting everyone” (Peet, 2009). However, the main point does not focus on personalities, but indeed trade produces economic growth as well as higher incomes for developing countries through a review of the trade policies.

Chapter six and the final section explores the global financial capitalism and crisis of governance. For instance, Richard outlines that International Financial Institutions (IFIs) which forms the focus of the broader societal system of capitalism in this book. It acts as a summary of the detailed discussions on a particular institution governed in looking of what changes the global nature of capitalism. Their intersections of the universal tendencies create unreality of distance in dealing with crises with superficially even if their intensity deepens. The author argues that the new social capitalism looked on the worldwide scene in an economic and cultural abundance liked as a sign of modern global times by stricken public. However, from this chapter, it is clear that the key factors causing such secular changes in class incomes were a more significant divergence in ownership of the wealth, in bank accounts, mutual funds, life insurance, as well as the purchase of stock and bonds.

These chapters have an intriguing feature of exploring the geographies, discourse circuits of production, performance, and dissemination. For example, Peet says that in institutions hierarchies of persuasion centers activities which organize the spatial flow of policy discourses resulting in a series of articulations between regional, universal and discursive formations (Peet, 2009). Through such a series, this book can show how the circuit construction takes place. Additionally, the book runs several themes such as finance power throughout together with its geographies which are crucially formative. It means that the dominant hegemonic in most institutions production is within cultural-political economic centers of the symbolic output located in financials instead of political capitals.

References Peet, R. (2009). UNHOLY TRINITY: The IMF, World Bank, and WTO. Second edition. London. New York: Zed Books.