Mutuality has become a topic of debate recently for a whole range of academics and social commentators. The 'demutualisation' of banks and building societies has been partnered by the idea of a 'new mutualism' , forming a set of social values and beliefs, and this collection looks at the manifestations of these trends and the implications for the future.

This book addresses issues in the current literature on corporate finance using historical evidence. In particular it looks at the role of universal banks in relaxing the credit constraints of firms, supervising managers and stabilizing share prices. The key issues is whether the Anglo-American asset based financing is more efective than the main-bank approach used in Germany and Japan. Earlier studies have found that firms with a close relationship with a major bank have high market value compared to book value, although it is difficult to determine whether this is cause or effect

In the early 1990s, the First National Bank of Keystone in West Virginia began buying and securitizing subprime mortgages from all over the country, and quickly grew from a tiny bank with just $100 million in assets to over $1.1 billion. For three years, it was listed as the most profitable large community bank in the country. It was all a fraud. All of the securitization deals the bank entered into lost money. To hide that fact, bank insiders started cooking the books, and concealing that they were also embezzling millions of dollars from the bank. This was all hidden from the bank's attorneys and auditors, federal bank examiners, and even the board of directors of the bank. To keep the examiners at bay, the bank insiders did everything possible to avoid giving them access to documents they were entitled to see, documents they knew would sink their scheme. The head of the bank even went so far as to bury four large truckloads of documents in a ditch on her ranch. Robert S. Pasley explores the failure of the First National Bank of Keystone, the intrigue involved, and the lessons that could have been learned-and still can be learned-about how banks operate, how federal banking regulators supervise financial institutions, how agencies interact with one another, and how such failures can be avoided in the future.

This timely collection of papers probes into the major issues that are at the heart of our current financial market crises. The coverage of banking topics include the changing nature of intra and inter-bank markets, bank lending behavior, risk and risk-taking, the role of liquidity, return and maturity transformation issues. Issues on international financial market volatility and spillover effects are analyzed in detail, and intense discussions on capital adequacy and regulation in banking, and the potential role of banks' activities in the triggering of financial crises provide forward-looking insights.This volume will offer readers current and innovative approaches to assessing extant issues in banking and financial markets. In particular, it provides new ideas about the role of corporate governance institutions as signaling devices in exercising regulatory authority and protection of the shareholders' rights. What this volume covers in breadth, it also delves in depth with critical analyses and commentaries on the possible role of bank lending in triggering international crises, value creation in international joint ventures and the pricing of risk in international financial markets.

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Great Financial Crisis of 2007-2010 exposed the existence of significant imperfections in the financial regulatory framework that encouraged excessive risk-taking and increased system vulnerabilities. The resulting high cost of the crisis in terms of lost aggregate income and wealth, and increased unemployment has reinforced the need to improve financial stability within and across countries via changes in traditional microprudential regulation, as well as the introduction of new macroprudential regulations. Amongst the questions raised are:

Central bank independence is a key issue for political and monetary authorities in many countries. In Institutions and Monetary Policy, Eric Schaling looks at the impact of different central banks on price stability and macroeconomic performance, and their optimal degree of legislative independence.After introducing and surveying the rules versus discretion debate in monetary policy, Eric Schaling then investigates the relationship between domestic monetary institutions and macroeconomic performance. The author compares central bank independence in twelve industrial countries - Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States, Sweden and Switzerland - and prepares an index of his results. The relationship between central bank independence, inflation and output growth is extensively discussed and a series of propositions tested for the same set of countries over the period from 1972 to 1991. Normative issues are investigated in the later part of the book including the optimal degree of central bank independence in relation to, first, the inflation rate and, second, wage formation in a totally unionized economy. Institutions and Monetary Policy will be welcomed by scholars and policymakers concerned with the increasingly important role of institutions in monetary policy and the relation between degrees of central bank independence and political and economic outcomes.

Banking, Politics and Global Finance presents an innovative, micro-political examination of the US banking system's response to the ongoing globalization of financial markets. This approach contrasts sharply with earlier studies which have emphasized the macro-structural aspects of politics through concentrating on elements of stability and consistency in the policy responses by advanced industrial countries to external economic pressures. By micro-political analysis of policy making, this book reveals a multitude of changes in the interests, coalitions and power constellations among private and public sector actors and institutions in the US financial system, in the absence of any macrostructural adjustment. These changes have opened alternative channels for policy making leading to substantial adjustments in the regulatory framework governing US financial markets. Using detailed discussion of the unsuccessful attempts to repeal the law that separates commercial from investment banking - the Glass-Steagall Act - and the successful raising of the capital standards of US commercial banks, Dr Reinicke's book also explains why the same policy network can respond very differently to an external economic challenge - a phenomenon usually neglected in the literature on comparative political economy.

This book sheds new light on the role played by European banks in the economic colonization of much of the globe. Based on previously unused archival material, it examines the origins and development of imperial banking systems. Contributors utilize new developments and methodology in business history to explore a broad range of countries including Cuba, Brazil, Portugal, South Africa and Algeria. The central topic of interest in this book is the institutional history of central, issuing and rediscounting banks. While much attention has been paid to the British, Dutch and French banks and financial instituions, this book is unique in its focus on colonial and overseas banking. Using a range of case studies, this book highlights both the immense variety and cohesion that defined colonial banking practices. This book will be of interest to researchers concerned with international finance and banking and economic history.

The 2008 financial crisis has severely shaken confidence in liberal economic theory and policy. However, the sharply divergent experiences of the six Anglo-Saxon 'liberal market economies' (LMEs) suggest that the reality is not so simple. This book traces the evolution of liberal capitalism, from its rebirth amidst the challenges of the 1970s to its role in the genesis of the 2008 crisis - and debates the assumptions underpinning the liberal capitalist paradigm. Close examination reveals variety within liberal capitalism. Not only was there the familiar, "hands off" libertarian approach adopted by the US, UK and Ireland, but more bounded, better regulated and apparently more stable varieties of economic liberalism also emerged, through the more pragmatic approach taken by Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The evidence is compelling. Whereas the American, British and Irish financial systems were severely damaged by the crisis, those of Canada, Australia and New Zealand proved more robust. This volume explores the degree to which these divergent experiences were a result of better and more intensive supervision, differences in business or political culture, broader commitment to social norms, and the pace of liberalisation. Detailed comparative case studies reveal fundamental differences in the economic and political environments in which economic liberalisation took place, in approaches to finance and in the degree to which it was seen to be an engine for growth. The book concludes that this had a major influence on the evolving economic and financial systems, and consequently, their relative resilience when confronted with the challenges of the 2008 crisis.

With twenty-one years' experience in the investment bond business, Raymond uses his experience in this study to demonstrate the key issues related to state, county, municipal and district bonds through the use of the most recent data of the time. Originally published in 1923, this version was republished in 1936 to ensure that all figures and arguments were up-to-date. This title will be of interest to students of Business, Economics and Finance.

Is money precious and scarce, necessitating iron fiscal discipline? Must the government always balance the books or risk ruin? Or is money, in fact, a flexible tool that can be used to mobilize our collective resources to serve those who need them? In this book, leading Modern Money Theory (MMT) advocate Randy Wray explains that the only real constraints on public policy are physical resources, technological capacity and political will: but never money. He shows how modern sovereign governments spend by keystroking money to bank accounts. While taxes serve other important purposes, they do not - contrary to popular belief - fund spending. If we recognize this, and totally reframe how we think about money and debt, we can marshal our national wealth to make us all richer, eliminate unemployment and "look after our own." We can make money work for us - the US. This book's account shows how MMT can become a new American political and economic orthodoxy, replacing the dominant conservative framework forever. It is essential reading for all progressives.

This study is the first in a decade to provide an overview of banking in Brazil. It is argued that the big three federal banks have long provided essential policy alternatives and, since the liberalization of the industry in the 1990s, have realized competitive advantages over private and foreign banks.

The recent banking crisis has brought into question the business model used by most large banks. This collection of essays explores the success of 'alternative banks' - savings banks, cooperative banks and development banks, using case studies from around the world and discussion of both the historical and theoretical context of banking practices.

Based on both theoretical and empirical approaches, the essays in this volume emphasise the role of ethics in a globalized economy.

Public credit was controversial in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England. It entailed new ways of thinking about the individual in relation to the State and was for many reasons a site of cultural negotiation and debate. At the same time, it required commitment from participants in order to function. Some of the debates relating to public credit, whose success was tied up in the way it was represented, find their way into contemporary fiction - in particular the eighteenth-century novel. This book reads eighteenth-century fiction alongside works of political economy in order to offer a new perspective on credible commitment and the rise of a credit economy facilitated by public credit. Works by authors such as Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, and Frances Burney are explored alongside lesser-known fictional texts, including some early it-narratives and novels of sensibility, to give a fully rounded view of the perception of public credit within England and its wider cultural and social implications. Strategies for representing public credit, the book argues, can be seen as contributing to the development of the English novel, a type of fiction whose emphasis on the individual can also be read as helping to produce a certain type of person, the modern financial subject. This interdisciplinary book draws from economic history and literary/cultural studies in order to make connections between the development of finance and an important facet of modern Western culture, the novel.

China's shadow banking has been a top issue in the past few years. Scholars, policymakers, and professionals around the world are seeking deeper insight into the subject, and the authors had unique insight into the sector through their positions high up in the regulatory apparatus. "Regulating China's Shadow Banks" focuses on the regulation of shadow banks in China and provides crucial information to demystify China's shadow banking and associated regulatory challenges. This book defines "shadow banking" in the Chinese context, analyzes the impact of shadow banking on the Chinese economy, includes a full-scale analysis on the current status of Chinese financial regulation, and provides valuable advice on the regulation of China's shadow banks.

Since 2000, the Gulf Coast states - Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida - have experienced a series of hurricanes, multiple floods and severe storms, and one oil spill. These disasters have not only been numerous but also devastating. Response to and recovery from these unprecedented disasters has been fraught with missteps in management. In efforts to avoid similar failures in the future, government agencies and policy practitioners have looked to recast emergency management, and community resilience has emerged as a way for to better prevent, manage, and recover from these disasters. How is disaster resilience perceived by local government officials and translated into their disaster response and recovery efforts? Ashley D. Ross systematically explores and measures disaster resilience across the Gulf Coast to gain a better understanding of how resilience in concept is translated into disaster management practices, particularly on the local government level. In doing so, she presents disaster resilience theory to the Gulf Coast using existing data to create county-level baseline indicators of Gulf Coast disaster resilience and an original survey of county emergency managers and elected municipal officials in 60 counties and 120 municipalities across the Gulf States. The findings of the original survey measure the disaster resilience perceptions held by local government officials, which are examined to identify commonalities and differences across the set of cases. Additional analyses compare these perceptions to objective baseline indicators of disaster resilience to assess how perceptions align with resilience realities. Local Disaster Resilience not only fills a critical gap in the literature by applying existing theories and models to a region that has experienced the worst disasters the United States has faced in the past decade, but it can also be used as a tool to advance our knowledge of disasters in an interdisciplinary manner.

This book provides a comprehensive account of the theory and practice of takaful, which is an Islamic alternative to insurance. The concepts are explained using real-life case studies, calculations, and exhibits to aid in reader learning and reflection. Takaful, both as an academic subject and as well as practice, is growing particularly in the world leading financial and learning hubs such as in the UK and the USA and countries with large Muslim populations in Asia, Africa, and Middle East.

Recent failures and rescues of large banks have resulted in colossal costs to society. In wake of such turmoil a new banking union must enable better supervision, pre-emptive coordinated action and taxpayer protection. While these aims are meritorious they will be difficult to achieve. This book explores the potential of a new banking union in Europe. This book brings together leading experts to analyse the challenges of banking in the European Union. While not all contributors agree, the constructive criticism provided in this book will help ensure that a new banking union will mature into a stable yet vibrant financial system that encourages the growth of economic activity and the efficient allocation of resources. This book will be of use to researchers interested in Banking, Monetary Economics and the European Union.

Drawing on numerous interviews with high-ranking and founding members of the European Central Bank (ECB), Karl Kaltenthaler identifies and explains the factors that shape the bank's domestic and international monetary strategies. As at all institutions, politics are very much involved in policy-making at the ECB. Kaltenthaler finds that instead of being unconcerned with how the bank's policies impact the citizens of the Eurozone, the central bankers desire to keep the economy healthy. This desire is driven by the central bankers' two primary personal preferences: to appear competent to as much of society as possible and to maintain broad political support for their operational independence. The policy-making model that offers the best roadmap to a healthy economy is that of the German Bundesbank. To secure the long-term needs of the economy, the decisionmakers in the ECB have created a model that attempts to replicate the Bundesbank's success at the European level and to lend credibility to their own policies. Offering unprecedented access to the internal decisionmaking at the ECB, Policymaking in the European Central Bank will interest readers who want to understand this important European institution.

In the collective psyche, a financier is a capitalist. In managerial capitalism, the notion of the 'manager' emerged, and the role of the manager was distinct from the role of the 'owner'. Financial capitalism is similarly underpinned by financiers who are not the holders of the financial assets they buy, sell, trade or advise upon. Finance at Work explores the world of financiers, be they finance-oriented CEOs, CFOs, financial journalists, mergers and acquisitions' advisors or wealth managers. Part I investigates the professional trajectories of members of corporate boards and financialisation as the dissemination of financial logic outside its primary 'iron cage'; Part II responds by studying financiers at work within financial occupations or financial operations involving external actors; while Part III pursues the issue of financial boundaries by seeking out the way financial logic crosses these boundaries. Part IV takes back the hypothesis of differentiations within finance presented in Part I, and analyses the internal boundaries of asset management, wealth management and leveraged buyout (LBO) acquisitions. This book is essential reading for researchers and academics within the field of finance who aim to understand the 'spread of finance' in contemporary societies.

Understanding Credit Derivatives and Related Instruments, Second Edition is an intuitive, rigorous overview that links the practices of valuing and trading credit derivatives with academic theory. Rather than presenting highly technical explorations, the book offers summaries of major subjects and the principal perspectives associated with them. The book's centerpiece is pricing and valuation issues, especially valuation tools and their uses in credit models. Five new chapters cover practices that have become commonplace as a result of the 2008 financial crisis, including standardized premiums and upfront payments. Analyses of regulatory responses to the crisis for the credit derivatives market (Basel III, Dodd-Frank, etc.) include all the necessary statistical and mathematical background for readers to easily follow the pricing topics. Every reader familiar with mid-level mathematics who wants to understand the functioning of the derivatives markets (in both practical and academic contexts) can fully satisfy his or her interests with the comprehensive assessments in this book.

With original archival documents and interviews from the US and Europe, Michelle Frasher brings the reader into the negotiating room with American, German, and French officials as they confronted the collapse of the Bretton Woods monetary system and made decisions that affected the course of European integration and the contemporary neoliberal order. She identifies crisis as the catalyst for change in international monetary policies, but argues that the causes of crisis originated from a multitude of factors such as market speculation, American hegemony, institutional flaws, and ideational conflicts among the leaders themselves. Far from a planned and consensual process, this book shows that the transformation to neoliberalism was riddled with discord and fret with trial and error. She argues that the resulting currency regime allowed governments to entrench themselves in national interests and facilitated the "marketization" of the state, where states have became both clients and participants in the financialized global economy-to the detriment of international stability. Frasher's is the first work to connect the 1960s and 1970s to the difficulties of inter-state and inter-market cooperation that have plagued the system in the last decades, and it puts the 2008 debacle into historical perspective.

Drawing on numerous interviews with high-ranking and founding members of the European Central Bank (ECB), Karl Kaltenthaler identifies and explains the factors that shape the bank's domestic and international monetary strategies. As at all institutions, politics are very much involved in policy-making at the ECB. Kaltenthaler finds that instead of being unconcerned with how the bank's policies impact the citizens of the Eurozone, the central bankers desire to keep the economy healthy. This desire is driven by the central bankers' two primary personal preferences: to appear competent to as much of society as possible and to maintain broad political support for their operational independence. The policy-making model that offers the best roadmap to a healthy economy is that of the German Bundesbank. To secure the long-term needs of the economy, the decisionmakers in the ECB have created a model that attempts to replicate the Bundesbank's success at the European level and to lend credibility to their own policies. Offering unprecedented access to the internal decisionmaking at the ECB, Policymaking in the European Central Bank will interest readers who want to understand this important European institution.