This edited volume on "Credit, Currency, or Derivatives: Instruments of Global Financial Stability or Crisis" contains original papers that examine various issues concerning the role, the structure and functioning of credit, currency and derivatives instruments and markets as they relate to financial crises. We stress the importance of the inter-linkages of these instruments and markets in promoting or hindering financial stability or crises as well as government policies, on a local and global level. The papers in this volume highlight various aspects of credit and currency instruments and markets, along with their interactions, for the stability of domestic and international financial systems. Particular emphasis is given on the failures of regulatory systems and their implications for systemic financial crises. Also, the papers analyze the costs of financial crises and explore the institutional and economic arrangements that could ameliorate the adverse effects of financial crises in advanced and emerging-market countries.

As the financial crisis abates, governments are faced with the challenge of balancing the withdrawal of fiscal support with reestablishing sound public finances and sustainable growth. This volume presents papers from an IMF-sponsored conference of senior policymakers, academics, and senior representatives of the private sector on unwinding public interventions initiated during the crisis. There was broad agreement that the main goal of any strategy for unwinding such interventions should be to create price stability, fiscal sustainability, and a new economic landscape that is much safer than currently exists. Different perspectives on the timing and sequence of the exit process are presented and some guiding principles for exit strategies are discussed. Policy objectives, unwinding public support to banks, and dealing with risky assets purchased by central banks are among topics discussed in detail. The volume also presents views on what the new financial landscape will look like.