Debating The Global Financial Architecture

Debating the Global Financial Architecture opens up the contemporary debate surrounding the reform of the "global financial architecture." Economists and political scientists explore the economic and technical content of alternative global financial regimes as well as the political processes through which such changes are negotiated. The contributors, though diverse, jointly fear that rapid removal of the remaining controls on private international financial transactions risks systematic crisis. By initiating a cross-disciplinary discussion, they hope to see the politics of global financial design examined more honestly, yet without discarding or devaluing a solid economic analysis of global money and investment flows.

This paper briefly surveys the progress made in various areas of reform of the international financial architecture since the outbreak of the East Asian crisis, and explains the principal technical and political obstacles encountered in carrying out fundamental changes capable of dealing with global and systemic instability. It ends with a brief discussion of what developing countries could do at the global, national or regional level to establish defence mechanisms against financial instability and contagion.

This book deals with the recent problems arising from the growth of financial globalization (i.e. the growing integration of capital markets across national borders), as reflected in the current global financial crisis, and the need to improve what has come to be known as the international financial architecture.

In 2007-2008 the global financial and economic system was in turmoil. This volume focuses on how the global financial architecture was redesigned following the financial crash of 2008. Its central claim is that the reforms constituted a paradigm shift, a move from the dominance of market authority to the re-assertion of state authority over financial markets and actors. The book underscores that the cycle of boom and bust, of crisis response, reform and eventual relapse are not only economic but also conceptual and ideological. Ideas matter in the political and economic calculus of policy making. Economies are underpinned by and linked to ideological narrative, a prevailing policy consensus that places limits on policy actions and options and constitutes a dominant worldview or paradigm. To become real, to be lasting, to impact actual policy choices and market actor decisions, a re-regulatory paradigm shift cannot just be conceptual or ideological. It must also be present in the institutional constructs and policy decisions that flow from the ideological regulatory shift. To gauge the fluctuating strength of the paradigm shift the book addresses the G20 summit process, the creation of the FSB, the policy output of the new forums, for signs of permanency, strength, and possible effectiveness. This work presents important new material on the financial crisis and the regulatory response to it, which will be valuable for researchers, teachers and students alike.

Instability has become global and systemic. Strengthening international institutions and arrangements would reduce the threat of crises and allow those that do occur to be better managed. These proposals take the developing world into account.

More than ten years on from the most intense phase of the global financial crisis, and the collective international response in the G20 summit in London, a ‘new normal’ has emerged with systems in place to mitigate against further banking crises. This updated new edition analyzes this post-crisis international and national regulatory framework and asks whether the current paradigm is fit for purpose as new dangers gestate and develop. This new edition includes a discussion of the impact of the aggressively deregulatory and anti-globalist policies of the Trump administration and its pursuit of an ‘America First’ policy and explores its implications for the regulatory landscape constructed and tended by previous leaders. The author addresses new and future systemic risks, many outside the regulated banking sector, which have grown in importance since 2015. He develops possible future scenarios for the international regulatory architecture, both negative and positive, asking, ‘Are we better prepared for future banking crises?’ New risks, including the COVID-19 pandemic and economic crash, are testing the global system; and the G20, without US leadership, may be failing in this latest most severe crisis of our lifetimes. This book provides a unique narrative explanation drawn from leading actors of key events and policy changes as they unfolded immediately post-crisis. The author builds upon the first edition to capture key developments that have occurred during the past five years, while raising key questions and vulnerabilities, and looking at future risks and challenges that may emerge. This text will be of great interest to students, teachers and researchers of financial frameworks, globalisation and political economy.

Early in the new millennium it appeared that a long period of financial crisis had come to an end, but the world now faces renewed and greater turmoil. This 2010 volume analyses the past three decades of global financial integration and governance and the recent collapse into crisis, offering a coherent and policy-relevant overview. State-of-the-art research from an interdisciplinary group of scholars illuminates the economic, political and social issues at the heart of devising an effective and legitimate financial system for the future. The chapters offer debate around a series of core themes which probe the ties between public and private actors and their consequences for outcomes for both developed markets and developing countries alike. The contributors argue that developing effective, legitimate financial governance requires enhancing public versus private authority through broader stakeholder representation, ensuring more acceptable policy outcomes.