We live in a world in which financial markets have become completely decoupled from the real economy…

The world’s four largest banks now all reside in one nation: China…

Lines of code are considered more trustworthy than central banks…

In this broad-ranging, deeply researched review of modern banking and financial systems, analysts David Buckham, Robyn Wilkinson and Christiaan Straeuli unpick in parallel the ongoing erosion of trust in capitalist free markets and Western democratic institutions, and the directly related, unprecedented growth of the Chinese banking system. The former is a decades-long tale of intermittent market manipulation, inadequately regulated hubris and outright criminality, which produced the Global Financial Crisis, the most devastating financial meltdown since the Great Depression. The latter, which in various ways mirrors the conditions that led to the Crisis, may well prove worse.

In detailing the unheeded lessons of financial history, the authors reveal how the inconsistently managed tension between free markets and government regulation has led us from depression and regulation to deregulation and crisis. And with incursions into string theory, the mathematics of cryptocurrency and the intricacies of money supply, we discover what happens when an authoritarian command economy fills the moral and ideological vacuum left behind.

In a post-Covid world – in which we are witnessing booming stock markets entirely disconnected from real-world economic hardship, and communist billionaires propagating just as global inequality skyrockets – public trust in the international banking system has never been lower. This is an unprecedented survey of a fraught and complex landscape that has never been more urgent.

This book explores financial trends in the age of financial globalization and explores the changing roles within the global financial industry. At the same time, the book provides a solid foundation for understanding the dramatic process of financial globalization specifically in the emerging Balkans. More elaborately, the book examines financial trends and developments of eight countries in the emerging Balkans defined to include: Albania, B&H, Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Romania. Building on this background, this book addresses issues related to the emerging Balkans in terms of financial development compared with the benchmark of mature economies and highlights issues related to the growing impact of financial globalization, global trade, and FDI flows. It brings the focus onto the recent trends in Intra-Balkan trade liberalization and cooperation through the transition process and on the eve of EU membership. It also assesses progress made in banking development, stock market development, and economic growth and critically examines financial trends in the emerging Balkans and changes in its financial landscape.

The global financial crisis that reached its peak in late 2008 has brought the importance of financial services regulation and supervision into the spotlight.

This book examines the governance of financial services in the EU, asking who governs financial services in the EU, how and why, and explaining where the power lies in the policy-making process. It covers the main financial services: banking, securities, payments systems, clearing and settlement. Addressing the politics and public policy aspects of financial market integration, regulation and supervision in the European Union, this book conducts a theoretically-informed and empirically-grounded analysis of financial services governance from the establishment of Economic and Monetary Union (1999) and the launch of the Financial Services Action Plan (1999), to date. It also assesses the EU responses to the global financial crisis.

Providing a reliable and unique insight into the politics of financial services regulation in the EU based on an extensive programme of interviews with policy makers and stakeholders across Europe, the book will be of great topical interest to students and scholars of European Union studies, political science and political economy.

International mergers and acquisitions play a vital role behind the growth of a company. This book explores the hurdles involved and how to navigate through the review processes set up by national regulatory agencies such as the US Committee on Foreign Investment (CFIUS), the EU Commission, and the Anti-Monopoly Bureau of State Administration of Market Regulation of China (AMB). This book is unique and showcases how to anticipate, develop, and implement successful strategies to support mergers and acquisitions activities, particularly of interest to finance and law students, researchers, and academics.

This new book brings together contributions from recognized experts in trade policy, discussing and evaluating economic integration in the Western Hemisphere, the alternative trade strategies being pursued in this area and Latin American relationships with United States and Canada. These essays provide progress reports concerning the different regional and sub-regional groupings that have developed within the hemisphere and discuss the inter-relationships of Western Hemispheric trading arrangement with the multilateral trading systems. The difficulties encountered in hemispheric trade negotiations and the implications for the countries involved are also considered. This book will be of great interest to students and researchers engaged with international trade and economic policy, as well as policy specialists in business organizations and government.

Praise for "International Economic Indicators and Central Banks"

"Anne Picker's "International Economic Indicators and Central Banks" is a tour de force. It brings together a wealth of information, explanation, and guidance, which has hitherto only been available from disparate and frequently obscure sources, and does so with great clarity and authority. It will be an invaluable resource not only for investors but for all others involved in the fields of finance and economics."
--Donald R. Anderson, OBE FRSE (UK), International Economics Advisor, formerly chief economist, Courtaulds Group

"Picker's book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date guide to the workings of key central banks, and to the economic data that informs their thinking and policy formation. The book should be required reading for those with more than a passing interest in financial markets and monetary policy formation."
--George Worthington, Chief Economist, Asia Pacific, Thomson-IFR (Australia)

""International Economic Indicators and Central Banks" is an invaluable guide for anyone doing business overseas or investing in international markets. It is thorough and precise enough for professional economists yet readily accessible to business people and investors. Anne Picker is not only an excellent communicator who demystifies central bank operations and technical economic indicators; she is also a top-notch economist with extensive experience in analyzing them. Don't read any international economic analysis without this volume close at hand."
--David A. Levy, Chairman, The Jerome Levy Forecasting Center

This book tells the story of how financial markets have evolved over time and became increasingly more complex. The author, a successful and experienced trader, who among other things won the 2015 battle of the quants futures contest held in New York, shares how one can navigate today's dangerous financial markets and be successful. Readers at all levels will benefit from his analysis and many real life examples and experiences. The coverage is broad and there is considerable discussion on ways to stay out of trouble, protect oneself and grow one's assets. The author was the first one to do turn of the year January effect trades in the futures markets starting in the beginning of S&P 500 futures trading in 1982. That has been successful and the author explains his ideas and experiences from the beginning in simple markets to the current, very complex markets we have in 2017.The author discusses the various ways that traders and investors lose money in the financial markets. Many examples are provided, including Long Term Capital Management, ENRON, Amarath, Neiderhoffer's funds and many major companies such as Lehman Brothers, Society Generale, Saloman Brothers. This is invaluable to understanding ways to avoid such losses.The author discusses great investors, their methods and evaluation and the authors' work with several of them. Risk arbitrage and mean reversion strategies are described through actual use. Asset-liability models for pension funds, insurance companies and other financial institutions devised by the author are described. The author uses racetrack bias ideas in behavorial finance in trading index futures and options. Large stock market crashes that can be predicted are discussed with several models of the author and others. Many mini crashes including the January-February 2016, Brexit, Trump and French elections that are plausible but largely unpredictable are described and how they were dealt with successfully.Along with ways to deal with them, investment in top quality racehorses, oriental carpets, real estate and other interesting investments are covered. The author was instrumental in viewing racing as a stock market. The ideas are used by the top racing syndicates as well as hedge funds.The book proceeds by weaving these aspects of the financial markets in the modern era into a story of the author's academic, professional and personal life. This is told through the people he met and worked with and the academic and personal travel he had all over the world this past half century. The text is simply written with details, sources and references in the notes of each chapter. Details of various important events and how they evolved are described. There are numerous color and black and white photos in the text plus graphs, tables etc. in the notes to tell the story. The teaching and research into various financial and gambling markets takes the reader to interesting places around the world. These include the US and its many stock market ups and downs, Japan when they were ruling the financial world and then they collapsed, the UK visits with lectures, teaching and research work at their great Universities including Cambridge and Oxford, Europe with many activities in France, Italy, Germany and other places, to Asia including discussions about travels to Persia, Turkey, Singapore, Korea, China, Afghanistan, Russia and other countries. Also discussed are visits to U.S. universities including Chicago, MIT, Berkeley, UCLA and Washington. His work with horse racing syndicates took him to Australia and Hong Kong. Crises like those in Greece, US housing and internet and the flash crash are discussed.

This book examines the transformation of the state in Central and Eastern Europe since the end of communism and adoption of market oriented reform in the early 1990s, exploring the impact of globalization and economic liberalization on the region's states, societies and political economy. It compares the different policies and national strategies adopted by key Central and Eastern European states, including the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia, showing how initial internally oriented strategies of market reform, privileging domestic sources of investment, had by the late 1990s given way to externally oriented strategies emphasising the promotion of competitiveness by attracting foreign investment. It explores the reasons behind this convergence, considering the influence of internal and external forces, and the roles of interests, institutions and ideas. It argues that internationalization of the state is forged in the processes through which domestic groups linked to transnational capital attain domestic influence necessary to shape state policy and strategy. These groups - the comprador service sector in particular - constitute and organize political, social and institutional support of the competition state in the region. Overall, this book not only provides a detailed account of the political economy of post-communist transformation in Central and Eastern Europe, but also the processes by which states adapt to the forces of globalization.

One of the key constraints to accelerated economic performance in developing countries is, in the authors' view, the absence of strong, dynamic financial systems. Many, if not most, developing countries suffer from repressed financial systems. Thus the most important step in effecting the development of capital markets is to lay a foundation of sound macroeconomic and regulatory policies conducive to financial sector development. This book presents an approach to financial sector reform composed of financial sector diagnosis, policy and institutional targeting, macroeconomic reforms, bank regulation and supervisory reform, and privatization. The work also presents criteria to help decision-makers apply the approach. The issues and approaches presented are as relevant to the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe and such transitional countries as Brazil and Mexico as they are to developing countries. The authors begin with an introductory discussion of the two-pronged strategy of financial reform and privatization and then, in chapter 2, provide an overview of developing financial systems. Chapter 3 discusses the public/private debate. Chapter 4 is devoted to financial sector liberalization, and chapter 5 goes on to discuss the privatization of financial institutions. A framework for financial reform and privatization is presented in chapter 6, and chapter 7 provides concluding comments. In addition, a series of case studies are presented in the appendix. These case studies demonstrate the methods and strategies used to address financial sector reform in Bangladesh, Chile, Guinea, Jamaica, Mexico, and the Philippines. This book will be useful to financial and development experts and to policy makers in countries amenable to changing their financial systems. It would also be appropriate for courses in international economics, international banking, international monetary issues, international finance, and economic development.

Containing Fritz Machlup's papers on international finance spanning thirty years, this volume includes pieces translated into English for the first time. Focussing on the theme of the balance of payments, the work is structured as follows: Foreign Exchanges and Balance of Payments, The Effects of Devaluation, Gold and Foreign Reserves, Capital Movements and the Transfer Problem. An introduction to each section by the author is included.

This volume presents current developments in the field of finance from an emerging markets perspective. Featuring most of the contributions presented at the second International Conference on Economics and Finance (ICEF-2020), Goa, India, this volume serves as a valuable forum for discussing financial performance and well-being, economic policy uncertainty, efficiency of commodity markets and various recent trends in the banking and financial sector. It provides an analysis of the current state of the financial sector and proposes solutions to challenging topics including bankruptcy, audit quality and liquidity crises. Popular topics such as cryptocurrency, stock market volatility and board governance are also covered.

This volume establishes a theoretical framework for exploring the role of host state legal systems (courts and bureaucracies) in mediating relations between foreign investment, civil society and government actors. It then demonstrates the application of that framework in the context of the south Indian city of Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore). Drawing on the 'law-and-community' approach of Roger Cotterrell, the volume identifies three mechanisms through which law might, in theory, ensure that social relations are productive: by expressing any mutual trust which may hold actors together, by ensuring that actors participate fully in social life and by coordinating the differences that hold actors apart. Empirical data reveals that each of these legal mechanisms is at work in Bengaluru. However, their operation is limited and skewed by the extent to which actors use, abuse and/or avoid them. Furthermore, these legal mechanisms are being eroded as a direct result of the World Bank's 'investment climate' discourse, which privileges the interests and values of foreign investors over those of other actors.

This book tells the story of how financial markets have evolved over time and became increasingly more complex. The author, a successful and experienced trader, who among other things won the 2015 battle of the quants futures contest held in New York, shares how one can navigate today's dangerous financial markets and be successful. Readers at all levels will benefit from his analysis and many real life examples and experiences. The coverage is broad and there is considerable discussion on ways to stay out of trouble, protect oneself and grow one's assets. The author was the first one to do turn of the year January effect trades in the futures markets starting in the beginning of S&P 500 futures trading in 1982. That has been successful and the author explains his ideas and experiences from the beginning in simple markets to the current, very complex markets we have in 2017.The author discusses the various ways that traders and investors lose money in the financial markets. Many examples are provided, including Long Term Capital Management, ENRON, Amarath, Neiderhoffer's funds and many major companies such as Lehman Brothers, Society Generale, Saloman Brothers. This is invaluable to understanding ways to avoid such losses.The author discusses great investors, their methods and evaluation and the authors' work with several of them. Risk arbitrage and mean reversion strategies are described through actual use. Asset-liability models for pension funds, insurance companies and other financial institutions devised by the author are described. The author uses racetrack bias ideas in behavorial finance in trading index futures and options. Large stock market crashes that can be predicted are discussed with several models of the author and others. Many mini crashes including the January-February 2016, Brexit, Trump and French elections that are plausible but largely unpredictable are described and how they were dealt with successfully.Along with ways to deal with them, investment in top quality racehorses, oriental carpets, real estate and other interesting investments are covered. The author was instrumental in viewing racing as a stock market. The ideas are used by the top racing syndicates as well as hedge funds.The book proceeds by weaving these aspects of the financial markets in the modern era into a story of the author's academic, professional and personal life. This is told through the people he met and worked with and the academic and personal travel he had all over the world this past half century. The text is simply written with details, sources and references in the notes of each chapter. Details of various important events and how they evolved are described. There are numerous color and black and white photos in the text plus graphs, tables etc. in the notes to tell the story. The teaching and research into various financial and gambling markets takes the reader to interesting places around the world. These include the US and its many stock market ups and downs, Japan when they were ruling the financial world and then they collapsed, the UK visits with lectures, teaching and research work at their great Universities including Cambridge and Oxford, Europe with many activities in France, Italy, Germany and other places, to Asia including discussions about travels to Persia, Turkey, Singapore, Korea, China, Afghanistan, Russia and other countries. Also discussed are visits to U.S. universities including Chicago, MIT, Berkeley, UCLA and Washington. His work with horse racing syndicates took him to Australia and Hong Kong. Crises like those in Greece, US housing and internet and the flash crash are discussed.

Financial markets across the Arabian Peninsula have gone from being small, quasi-medieval structures in the 1960s to large world-class groupings of financial institutions. This evolution has been fueled by vast increases in income from oil and natural gas. The Financial Markets of the Arab Gulf presents and analyzes the banks, stock markets, investment companies, money changers and sovereign wealth funds that have grown from this oil wealth and how this income has acted as a buffer between Gulf society at large and the newfound cash reserves of Gulf Cooperation Council states (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain) over the last fifty years. By assessing the development of institutions like the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority, the Public Investment Fund and the National Bank of Kuwait, The Financial Markets of the Arab Gulf evaluates the growth of the markets and provides a detailed, critical, snapshot of the current form and function of the Gulf's financial markets. It argues that the markets have been controlled by various state institutions for socio-political reasons. In particular, the Saudi state has used its sophisticated regulatory regime to push for industrialization and diversification, which culminated in the Vision 2030 plan. The UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman have also been strongly involved in establishing modern markets for similar purposes but have done so through different means, with varying results, and each in line with what has been considered their respective comparative advantages. Along with critically surveying these institutions and their role in global finance, the book also presents case studies depicting transactions typical to the region, including the highly profitable documentary credits of commercial banks, the financial scandal of certain financiers and their regulatory arbitrage between Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, a review of the Dubai's trade miracle, and an assessment of the value and importance of the privatization of Saudi Aramco.

The World Bank is one of the most important and least understood major international institutions. This book provides a concise, accessible and comprehensive overview of the World Bank's history, development, structure, functionality and activities.

These themes are illustrated with a wide variety of case studies drawn from the Bank's international activities. Also discussed are the controversial challenges that the Bank now faces in the light of the criticism from campaigners and NGOs.

International in scope and written by a leading young Post-Keynesian economist, this book focuses on the working of money and payments in a multi-bank settlement system within which banks and non-bank financial institutions have been expanding their operations outside their countries of incorporation.

Departing from conventionally held beliefs, Sergio Rossi sets off from a positive analysis of the logical origin of money, which is the essential principle of double-entry book-keeping through which banks record all debts and credits for further reference and settlement and provides theoretical and empirical advances in explaining money endogeneity for the investigation of contemporary domestic and international monetary issues.

Showing that both money and banking have profound implications for real economic activities, this innovative work is essential reading, not only for scholars in monetary economics, but also for professionals concerned with monetary policy and payments system issues.

This book presents the lifelong and ongoing research of Lawrence H. Officer in a systematic way. The result is an authoritative treatment of such issues as market structure and economic efficiency where more than one characteristic of a commodity is priced, both in general and in application to shipping conferences; financing of the United Nations and International Monetary Fund; monetary history of the UK and US; and central-bank preferences between gold and dollars, The book first examines multidimensional pricing, defined as pricing when a commodity or service has several characteristics that are priced. The second part is concerned with country-group conflicts in the United Nations and International Monetary Fund. The book then takes a fresh look at historical experiences of monetary-standard upheavals and the final part considers a crucial time (1958-67), during which central-bank gold-dollar decisions were power-politically determined.

The discourse on globalization has become polarized. Proponents consider globalization as the silver bullet for targeting growth in the world economy and for poor countries specifically, while opponents see it as the poisoned arrow of exploitation and impoverishment of the Third World. Splendidly edited, The Asymmetries of Globalization deals with the 'what' and 'how' but primarily with 'why' globalization has most often negative outcomes for developing countries. It breaks new ground in approaching globalization not only as trade commodities, but also as trade in positional goods ('decommodified trade.') The two novel and munificent forms of post-Ricardian decommodified trade, trade in services and trade in hard currency in the form of currency substitution, are sculpted in the introductory chapter as the foundation of the systematic asymmetries of globalization. The analytical approach of introducing 'positional goods' in the form of decommodified trade, in the discource on globalization, is original. It is also timely in a situation where the tail of trade in 'services' has grown enough to wag the traditional trade-in-commodities dog of globalization. The balance of the chapters in this volume constitute a tapestry of case studies that elaborate and empirically investigate the causes of systematic asymmetries of globalization. The book's appeal transcends economics to make it also highly useful to students across the disciplines of sociology and political science, especially in the fields of international political economy and the politics of international trade. It will certainly enlighten all those working in the general areas of globalization, poverty and economic development.

The European Union is creating a Financial Union with a European Banking Union and a Capital Markets Union in reaction to lessons learned from incomplete financial markets integration, the Global Financial Crisis and European Sovereign Debt Crisis. This book critically analyses these projects for a more integrated, resilient and sustainable financial system at a time when the United Kingdom as the member state with the most developed capital markets and the leading global and European financial center, the City of London, is leaving the Union. Neoliberal financial globalization and markets integration policies have led to finance-led capitalism that caused the crises. By building on pre-crises integration ideas, the Union revives and expands the reach of capital markets-based financing and shadow banking. The book discusses the consequences of deeper integration and the future of European financial centers advocating an alternative financial markets integration based on theories explaining finacialization and finance-led capitalism.

As globalization continues apace, market segmentations are diminishing, distance is shrinking and the boundaries between nation states are becoming increasingly blurred. National economies are closely interlinked through manychannels and we rarely view things from a single country's view, adopting a global perspective instead. It is therefore imperative to understand how the world economy functions. This book utilizes up to date empirical evidence to illuminate the mechanics of the world as a single entity. The author explores the properties of the world economy, the diverse mechanisms of interdependence, shocks and disturbances, economic processes and structures, and the institutional arrangements that guide these processes. Key topics covered include: world GDP, growth and global product and factor markets China as a new global player the roots and impact of financial and currency crises the performance of the developing countries over time (which have gained, which have lost?) conflicts between the national interest and global concerns (protectionism, locational competition for mobile factors of production, environmental issues) the institutional arrangements for the world economy (IMF, WTO). The World Economy: A Global Analysis will be essential reading for students studying the world economy from the perspective of economics, finance, business and politics.

Microfinance is defined as the financial services offered to the poor for the purpose of promoting small-scale enterprises, and as such it is one of the most important topics in development studies and a burgeoning area in economics. This volume provides a much-needed historical, political and economic dimension to the current knowledge on microfinance. Collectively, the contributors chart the relationship between the prevailing popularity of microfinance and the consolidation of neoliberal economic ideology worldwide. They demonstrate how microfinance, as a market-friendly approach to development, coincides with the global trend towards diminishing the role of the state in economic development, basic healthcare, education and welfare. The articles in the volume focus on the empirical analyses of the experience of microfinance in women's everyday lives, but rejects the connection between microfinance and women's empowerment so often imputed in literature. This book offers regional, cultural and other explanations for variable assessments of microfinance and empowerment. It fills a huge gap in published microfinance literature and will be of great interest to postgraduates and professionals in the fields of economics, international finance and banking.

The global economy has experienced four waves of rapid debt accumulation over the past fifty years. The first three debt waves ended with financial crises in many emerging and developing economies.

Wales has one of the highest concentrations of Japanese manufacturing investment in Europe. It provides a case study for examining the economic and social impact of this investment, which is often perceived as being very different from existing foreign investment. The book evaluates this case study, looking at the attraction of Japanese capital to Wales, its impact on the Welsh economy, upon employment, management practice, industrial relations, the community, and upon the Japanese themselves. First published in 1993, this title is part of the Bloomsbury Academic Collections series.

China is engaged in a major evolutionary economic change. Foreign direct investment (FDI) participation has been and will continue to be the driving force behind this change well into the next century. This book presents to Western business and legal communities a comprehensive picture of the prevailing Chinese foreign investment climate. More important, it provides keen insight into the ways China must move to improve its laws and policies.

Along with the development of economic globalization, many countries have begun to relax their controls on their capital accounts. However, the recent financial crises in Latin American countries as well as the exchange rate crises in Southeast Asian countries have shown that there is major risk associated with capital account liberalization. This book details the benefits and risks of capital account liberalization and explains how to take an open-door policy at the appropriate time in order to reduce the risk to the lowest possible level. Supplying a complete mathematical analysis framework for the study of the problem of capital account liberalization, it presents a few important models that have been developed for the study of capital account liberalization. Next, the book examines the influence of capital account liberalization on the stability of financial markets by greatly expanding the scope of ordinary differential equation theory to the analysis of local stabilities. It conveys cutting-edge results while providing a general yet simple analysis framework, enriched with practical experiences from developing countries. This book applies the theory of limit cycles to the study of problems related to capital account liberalization and discusses the contagion of financial crises among different countries. Many problems related to capital account liberalization are formulated as optimization models, showing the fact that much broader economic issues can be solved by employing optimization methods. The book concludes by comparing the contagion effect of financial markets between nations with a relatively high degree of openness with those characterized by a moderate degree of openness. Explaining how to determine optimal capital inflows and outflows, this book provides you with the understanding required to accurately determine the characteristics, backgrounds, causes, and roles of capital account liberalization and relevant capital flows.