This new force looks to Europe for inspiration. As a result, the governors of globalization–the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Trade Organization–are no longer led by the United States, but by consensus, similar to the European Union. The global rules are getting tougher, cracking down on multinationals that order mass layoffs or grow too powerful for local comfort. As multinationals find it more difficult to operate in some nations, the growth in world trade is slowing. European trustbusters recently ordered Microsoft to break up, on the grounds that its monopoly is a threat to humanity. Microsoft has little choice but to comply, or retreat from Europe and from all its Latin American and Asian commercial allies, too. Global capitalism is now truly continental.
