The dreams of "leaving it up to the market" or of returning to a politically neutral gold standard cannot succeed because the nature of the monetary system has a profound impact on the interests of powerful groups and states. Affected groups and states will always try to intervene in the operation of the system to make it serve their interests.

A market is not politically neutral; its existence creates economic power which one actor can use against another.

Many critics see international trade as a form of cultural imperialism that must be strictly controlled.

The world economy diffuses rather than concentrates wealth.

The core of the Marxist critique of capitalism is that although the individual capitalist is rational (as liberals assume), the capitalist system itself is irrational.

In short, the elimination of the financial legacy of Reaganomics could force the United States to make some exceptionally difficult choices indeed.

The competitive nation-state system, with all its capacity for good and evil, is spreading in the Third World and is transforming that world.