Essay - Bold New World an Analytical Book View of This 1996...

Bold New World

An analytical book view of this 1996 prediction ***** William Knoke

The financial industry, which includes the investment banking community represented by the author of this text, is often depicted as merely reacting to global and political changes in ***** ********** environment, rather than driving them forward. However, William ***** uses the political platform of Bold New World, his 1996 prognostication, to predict the decline ***** the modern nation-state as a source of politic*****l, ethnic, tribal authority amongst people ***** the first as well ***** ***** developing worlds as well as to forecast the development of modern, multilateral and multinational capitalism. Alas, 1996 is a long way a***** from 2004, but it is interesting to see the author's point of view ***** a 'where we stood then' ideological st**********.

Knoke ********** that in the coming years, he say multi-locals with relatively small operating costs in the form of headquarters and staff salaries, ***** than mult*****ational organizations ***** to the helm of the world community. Often these organizations would be economic rather than political in nature. For instance, Knoke ********** the European Community and the EEU as opposed to the UN should hold sway in Europe. Indeed, ***** ***** still has some credence, as ***** United Nations h***** diminis*****ed in importance since the United States has adopted more ***** ***** of a 'go it alone' policy since the administration of the second George Bush.

Thus, Knoke seems oddly prescient in that assertion. However, he also stated that t***** price ***** capital, labor, and raw materials would play diminishing roles in the ***** economy during the years ahead. Today, we see the catastrophic effect on global ec*****omic confidence that ***** been played by ***** crude oil prices. If anything, OPEC's resurgence of dominance is proof of how raw materials continue to remain important in the geopolitical discourse of *****.

Knoke is on slightly surer ground as he predicts the contraction and dem*****e of influence of multinational central banks ***** o*****r deposi*****ry institutions, as the World Bank has retracted in its influence. However, when he predicts the end of gigantic corporations because of regionalization, he neglects to consider the formidable force and potential of the Internet. Of course, corporations may become smaller within the next ten years as the world grows more multipolar in its political structure. But mult*****ational corporate entities today are actually e*****ier to form through ecommerce, than they ever were before. The role ***** technology is given short shrift in the ***** as it relates ***** commerce, oddly enough, ***** ***** author's 'day job,' although he does curiously predict that the developing Global Village's children will become a database, thanks to ***** *****, as more and ***** private information about the *****'s citizens *****s available online. Still, identity **********, the purveying of mail-order brides and ***** for adoption via the World Wide Web makes such an apparently specious ***** speculative contention *****m less far-fetched than it initially seems.

How*****, there is a ***** contradiction at the hear