ABSTRACT
I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interest of organizations, specifically banks and others, was such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders. Alan Greenspan, US Congress, October 2008
Why is this theme important? The present juncture is an in-between condition. The old hegemony is no more, its frailties pose growing risks and a new constellation isn’t available yet. Current trends can be read in two ways, towards recalibrating the old order, or as the emergence of new logics, which can be simplified as a tale of two scripts. One scenario is global plutocracy with American capitalism and financial markets in the West back in the lead, EM joining the club, and the G20 as the de facto governing board of the IMF. An instrument for achieving this is the discourse of global rebalancing, which functions as a hegemonic ideology and policy framework. A scenario way on the other end of the continuum is emancipatory multipolarity, considering that countries that represent the majority of the world population have come to the global head table (G20) and initiate new international institutions. That the rise of EM is a major turn in globalization is not controversial (Chapter 1); the question is what this bodes for global restructuring and whether it holds an emancipatory potential, which is highly controversial.
