We need to bring Wall Street to Main Street. This sharpening of official concern reflects the fact that a decade of globalization has allowed a keener dissection of its characteristics. John D. Clark, a development specialist on leave from the World Bank, has argued that globalization was always a highly selective thing. Advocates of free trade really wanted only an unrestrained market for capital. The result has been to maximize returns on capital, while minimizing returns to labor.
Many economists dispute that view.
Without such measures, the distorting effects of the wild premium placed by modern markets on talent and technology seem likely to grow, miring a third of humanity in abject poverty. The other new priority seems to be dialogue. Mr. Wolfensohn spent time Friday with non-governmental organizations including the Bolivian Episcopal Conference, the Coalition for Democracy and Civil Society of the Kyrgyz Republic, and a representative of something called World Vision from Uganda. Questions ranged from corruption to control of multinationals to that Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline. The meeting, in such a setting, amounted to a first.