Both transnational direct investment and indirect investment grew rapidly, while official development aid stagnated or began to shrink. When the Swedish government slashed social programs in the late 1980's and the German government pulled back from its impressive social democratic guarantees in 1995-96, the last remaining bastions of the Keynesian consensus fell. Global social inequality has grown enormously in parallel with inequality within invidual countries. New and emerging diseases threaten life and health. Food stocks have sunk to a very low level.
Environmental crises loom.
The Japanese and the continental Europeans tended to support these moves, preferring a more interventionist state than the Anglo-Saxons. A number of UN offices and agencies played a leading role in this campaign, including the International Labor Organisation, the World Health Organisation and the Center for Transnational Corporations. Later, leadership to some extent passed to the newly-established Human Development Report , launched in 1990 under the tutelage of Pakistani development expert Mahbub Al Haq. UN initiatives for the environment likewise staked out a critical position. The British and U.S. governments were not persuaded, as they deepened their commitment to neoliberalism.