Suiting Themselves

by Beder, Sharon

• ISBN13: 9781844073313
• ISBN10: 1844073319
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-05-24
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Best-selling author Sharon Beder unleashes a penetrating exposé of how corporations are crafting the global agenda for their own benefit at the expense of billions of people, the environment and democracy. In this brilliantly researched exposé, 'communications Rottweiler' Sharon Beder blasts open the backrooms and boardrooms to expose how the international corporate elite dictate global politics for their own benefit. Beder shows how they created business associations and 'think tanks' in the 1970s to drive public policy, forced the worldwide privatization and deregulation of public services in the 1980s and 1990s (enabling a massive transfer of ownership and control over essential services) and, still not satisfied, have worked relentlessly since the late 1990s to rewrite the very rules of the global economy to funnel wealth and power into their pockets. Want a globalized and homogenized world of conflict, poverty and massive environmental degradation run by a corporate oligarchy that wipes its feet on democracy? Or a democratic world, where poverty is history, companies work for people and clean water is a right not a privilege you pay for? Beder's message is clear--it's your world, and it's time to fight for it.

Table of Contents

List of Boxes, Figures and Tables	vii
List of Acronyms and Abbreviations	ix
Acknowledgements	xiii
1 A Corporate Class	1	(8)
2 National Influence	9	(30)
3 International Coercion	39	(20)
4 Washington Consensus Down Under	59	(24)
5 From Public Service to Private Profit	83	(26)
6 The Trade Agenda	109	(18)
7 Trade in Services	127	(26)
8 Coercing Trade Agreements	153	(20)
9 Deregulating Investment	173	(18)
10 Globalization Versus Democracy	191	(28)
11 Conclusion: The Triumph of Corporate Rights	219	(6)
Bibliography	225	(26)
Index	251