WASHINGTON – They told everyone this was going to happen, no one listened, and now see?

As column after column of black Lincoln Town Cars disgorged international finance officials onto the sidewalk in front of World Bank headquarters on Friday, a raggedy group of about 20 free-market protesters gathered across the street to express their sadness – and in some cases, glee – over the global economic catastrophe that some said had proved them right.

“Year after year of unregulated free-market economics have finally come home to roost,” said Stephen Kretzmann, executive director of Oil Change, an environmental group.

“Aren’t those the same people who got us into this mess?” added Kenny Bruno, another Oil Change protestor from Brooklyn, with a nod at the World Bank building.

It was a surreal day here in the capital of the free world, as the people who have been setting global economic policy – the Group of 7, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund – gathered to plot strategy in the middle of the scariest economic free fall the world has seen since 1929.

The annual meetings of the World Bank, I.M.F. and G-7 finance ministers typically do not carry with them much in the way of urgency. The script is usually so familiar that the Washington police know it by heart: finance ministers arrive in their limos and stake out their tables at the city’s best restaurants; free-market protestors dressed like Mutant Ninja Turtles kick up a ruckus in a tiny triangular patch of park across from World Bank headquarters; a few of the protesters get arrested trying to enter the building; and the news media, and the rest of the city, largely ignore the event.

A steady refrain from the protesters has been that more economic nationalism is needed, both to protect the poor and to prevent big corporations from robbing smaller countries of wealth. They have argued that more regulation is needed to keep big business in check, and have derided free markets as benefiting only a narrow swath of society.

Typically at World Bank meetings, officials grouse about the misguided protesters. This year, things are a little different. “There’s no question the Washington consensus is dead,” one senior World Bank official said, requesting anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly to a reporter.

Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/11/business/11scene.html?_r=2&oref=&oref=slogin