Political power, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, has shifted from the military to the economic arena dominated by the structural adjustment policies imposed by the USA through a network international financial institutions and corporations, effectively forming a de facto world government. The result of this consensus, operating like an "invisible hand", is that apparently governing institutions are not the independent agents they are assumed and claimed to be. Regimes whose policies threaten this consensus are portrayed as radical and unstable enemies of progress, aiming to undermine global order and therefore eliciting legitimate counter-measures of an overt or covert nature.
Increasingly reference to the "global economy" implies the system of global corporate mercantilism where financial flows, terms of trade, and the like are determined by a consensus dominated by super-powers such as the USA. This new economic hegemony is not subject to popular democratic control, despite the global increase in "democracy". It is a system in which profits are privatized and risks are socialized.
The global web of economic power created by national and international industry cartels guarantee home market protection, hunting ground agreements, price fixing, market division and technological accords. These arrangements distort prices of most goods that are traded. Such invisible structures make a virtual mockery of arguments in support of free competition.