The result of all these developments, according to the official history, is a globalized world economy comparable in its liberality and potential for prosperity only to the earlier 'golden age' of liberalism (1870-1913). Renato Ruggiero, the first director-general of the WTO, solemnly declared that, as a consequence of this new world order, we now have 'the potential for eradicating global poverty in the early part of the next [21st] century - a Utopian notion even a few decades ago, but a real possibility today.'