Meet the Secretive Committees that Run the Global Economy

globalAndrew Gavin Marshall  – There exists an overlapping and highly integrated network of institutions, committees and secret meetings of ad-hoc groups that collectively run the global economy. This network consists of finance ministries, central banks, international organizations and the various conferences and confabs that bring them together. This network is responsible for facilitating global financial diplomacy and managing the architecture of global financial governance. In short: it is the most powerful and informal political structure in the world.

With the United States at the center of the system, the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve Bank are the two most important American institutions in global financial governance – and the Treasury Secretary and Federal Reserve Chairperson are the world’s two most powerful financial diplomats. Both institutions are headquartered in Washington, D.C., just down the street from the headquarters of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank Group, two global financial bodies created in 1944 to manage the world economy on behalf of the rich Western nations that founded them.

Twice a year, the IMF and the World Bank host large international conferences. The Spring Membership Meeting, typically held in April, and the Annual membership meeting draw a crowd consisting of most of the finance ministers and central bank governors from the IMF’s 188 member nations, representing the Fund’s Governing Board. They descend on D.C. where the meetings are typically held (though occasionally they are hosted in other countries as well), and draw scores of journalists, academics and thousands of bankers and financiers who are eager to meet, greet, wine, dine and make deals with the political decision-makers of the global economy.

The top five shareholders of the IMF (United States, Japan, Germany, France and U.K.) reflect the membership of an ad-hoc group of finance ministers that began meeting in 1973, thereafter known as the Group of Five (G-5). At the time, U.S. Treasury Secretary George Shultz described the group as “a channel for informal and very frank communication on monetary and other issues, both of a long-term and more immediate character.” But the G-5 was hardly the first of such groups. Continue reading