Taming Global Financial Flows: Challenges and Alternatives in the Era of Globalization: A Citizen's Guide

The global financial system, this book argues, is in serious trouble. Public figures as diverse as George Soros and the British Chancellor of the Exchequer have been calling for reform. Financial liberalization has created an absence of effective regulation over the almost unimaginable sums involved in currency speculations, new financial products, offshore financial centres, secretive hedge funds and shifts of 'hot money' to emerging markets. The result is a degree of volatility in financial markets which threatens the orderly running of national economies. The issues of financial globalization and the need to regulate global capital flows have, as a result, moved centre stage. This book explains and analyses the constantly changing and complex world of global financial flows, and calls for radical reforms in a system that is now more susceptible to the whims of market sentiment than the economic policies of governments. The author recommends certain guiding principles in order to create a more stable international financial architecture and proposes a series of concrete measures. This most timely and useful follow-up to his very successful previous book, The Globalization of Finance: A Citizen's Guide, contributes greatly to public understanding of what is involved and to the possibilities of effective action by people's movements campaigning for a more just and sound financial system. Written in a non-technical manner, this book makes the ongoing debates accessible to the non-specialist reader. It will be particularly useful for students of finance, banking and development, as well as for all those interested in issues relating to global financial regulation.