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CBS News Correspondent Eric Engberg says "I scream, you scream, we all scream" about the IMF and the World Bank, but asks whether all the ruckus about them is on the mark.

Ben and Jerry's, born in a Vermont garage under the direction of two flower grown-ups determined to run a virtuous, environmentally friendly company, is now just another division of the global giant Unilever. Demonstrators at the big protest against a globalizing economy this week are able to stop off at one of Unilver's latest acquisitions near DuPont Circle, and there fortify themselves with a scoop or two of "Cherry Garcia" or "Pulp Addiction" on a waffle cone.

If they take the occasion to mourn the seemingly relentless advance of corporate power, they should also take into account that the great ice cream takeover does not appear to have been the result of a nefarious international conspiracy to corner the "Chunky Monkey" market. Rather, good old fashioned non-global capitalism - the desire of shareholders to earn more on their investments - seems to have been the driving force behind the sale. Increasingly, as the airplane, the computer and human ingenuity combine to integrate the world's economy, forces like these are rolling right over national boundaries just as ocean waves do. And we know that it doesn't matter how many people march against the ebb and flow of the sea, they are not subject to repeal.

That brings us to the organization which your Reality Check correspondent, having sat bleary eyed through some past meetings of the International Monetary Fund - impenetrable to anyone lacking at least a PhD in finance - would have placed at the very bottom of any list of organizations that should be required to stand in the dock and respond to the charge that it is in the forefront of a secret cabal aimed at world domination.

On the other hand, the International Monetary Fund may have been asking for trouble just by selection of that name. It sure sounds grandiose. Could be sinister. Could be a threat to the redwoods. Could be Big Brother. Remember the Trilateral Commission? Let's give the IMF a quick Reality Check.

Is the IMF now...or has it ever been...in charge of the world economy? No. Not even its worst enemies think that. It loans money to poor countries who are such bad risks other banks won't touch them. The G-7, the Western economic powers, underwrite the loans and pretty much run the show. The U.S. can and has dictated IMF policies, but not the other way around on matters the U.S. ares about.

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Is the IMF bad for the poor, as its critics suggest? Joseph Nye, Jr., Dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, agrees that it is true many people in the nations where IMF loans money are poor. But it is important to remember that "poverty was the starting point for their economies. It is not right to say that globalization or the IMF caused the poverty." Nancy Birdsall, a former vice president of the Inter-American Development Bank now with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, argues, "The World Bank and the IMF are the only powerful vehicles available to make global governance work for the poor. If you do away with them you are throwing out the baby with the bath water."

Has the IMF made foolish mistakes? By the boatload. All experts acknowledge it failed to see the big Asian economic meltdown coming in the mid-90's, and that failure led to a near catastrophe. A lot of money was wasted in Russia, much of it because the U.S. insisted.

Has the IMF done good things, as well? Yes. During the Mexican peso crisis in 1995, the U.S. was able to prevent a serious crisis by pushing IMF resources into the breach. This was a classic use of the Fund as a fire department for economic emergencies. In this case, it was our neighbor's house that was on fire, and everyone was glad the IMF was available.

Dean Nye of the JFK School cites current loans the Fund has made to Ecuador as a worthy rescue project, noting, "No one else would loan them money."

Is the IMF controversial? Very. But in the past, the criticism has come from the right, not the tree-hugging, social justice demanding left. Doubtless, many of the marchers who tramp to the barricades would be surprised to know that they are joining such previous IMF bashers as William E. imon, Walter Wriston, Steve Forbes and House Majority Leader Dick Armey. The criticism from the right is that anytime an international agency doles out money it imperils the freedom of markets to make their own decisions.

One of the most controversial jobs the IMF undertakes is that of scold to poor countries, and that may be one reason why social justice activists find it such an inviting target. When the IMF loans money to a country for some development project it often imposes a lot of rules on how the government of the recipient nation must change its ways in order to keep the loans coming. The rules are frequently designed to damp down inflation or prevent the money from going to corrupt public officials or questionable government welfare schemes.

Experts who have watched the IMF's strategy over the years say that the IMF, by being the economic policeman, provides cover for government officials in the borrowing countries to take actions they might be afraid to undertake otherwise. If some popular government giveaway program is killed, the indigenous government can deflect the blame to the IMF, and not have to face the backlash from its own public.

Taking the blame, it appears, is something the IMF will just have to learn to do in a world where humans are having to run at top speed to stay abreast of the phenomenon some would like to establish as the millennium's official bogeyman: "Globalization."