But international business has not been as simple as monitoring trade between nations. Companies have thrived. They've outgrown the wildest visions that trade legislators and politicians had in mind back in the 1940s in terms of the speed and scope of commerce. Technology has given companies limitless and instantaneous communications at rapidly decreasing costs. Companies have truly gone global, building networks that often involve hundreds of countries.
Companies continue to merge, consolidate, restructure, and metamorphose.
In the 1990s, alliances, cooperative branding, manufacturing, and multiple mergers, matched by huge leaps in communication technology, helped to birth the web-like global network. Now, the top 100 companies control one-third of the world's assets while employing just one percent of the workforce worldwide. Companies like General Motors and Wal-Mart are bigger than most developed nations. As a matter of history, it is governments that moderate economies. They are the social safety nets.