There were once hopes thatglobalisation would benefit all, both in advanced industrial countries and the developing world. Today, the downside of globalisation is increasingly apparent. Not only do good things go more easily across borders, so do bad - including terrorism. We see an unfair global trade regime that impedes development and an unstable global financial system in which poor countries repeatedly find themselves with unmanageable debt burdens. Money should flow from the rich to the poor countries, but increasingly, it goes in the opposite direction.

What is remarkable about globalisation is the disparity between the promise and the reality. Globalisation seems to have unified so much of the world against it, perhaps because there appear to be so many losers and so few winners. The Panglossian view of globalisation, that it would automatically benefit all, has impeded the ability to address its failures. Young French workers ask how globalisation is going to make them better off - if, as they are told, they must accept the resulting lower wages and weakened job protection. Growing inequality in the advanced industrial countries was a long predicted but seldom advertised consequence: full economic integration implies the equalisation of unskilled wages throughout the world. Although this has not (yet) happened, the downward pressure on those at the bottom is evident. Unfettered globalisation actually has the potential to make many people in advanced industrial countries worse off, even if economic growth increases.