The World Trade Organisation has recently held its summit. Their aim was to skulk in Qatar in the Gulf of Arabia, as far as they could get from the 'teamsters to turtles' coalition against all that is wrong about capitalism. An important part of their agenda has been the General Agreement on Trade in Services - GATS, due to come into by the end of 2002. But what is GATS and why do we need to fight it?
British capitalism is ill equipped to escape the huge downturn in world capitalist economic activity. The world is not going to recover quickly from the economic recession of 2001. Gordon Brown's proclamation of the end of "boom and bust" will be exposed for what it is.
Michael Roberts, our economics correspondent looks at the prospects for the world economy in the year 2002. Barely a year ago, the world's leading economic and financial organisations and most economists predicted that the U.S. economy would grow by 3.5% in 2001 and by a similar rate in 2002. Considering that new data show an economy that is rapidly deteriorating right across the board, a final outcome of less than zero growth until year-end 2001 presently seems the best bet. The question now is not whether the world is in recession but how long it will last and how deep it will be. And yet optimism reigns in the stock markets as we start the New Year. This is the optimism of fools.