The financial crisis prompted many to ask how financial systems from America and Iceland to Russia and Hungary could have been so misgoverned that their near collapse plunged the entire world into recession. Randall Germain assesses what needs to be done, and by whom, to avoid a repetition of what he calls the 'great freeze'.
List of Abbreviations
Preface
Acknowledgments
1 Financial Governance and the State 1
Introduction: The Significance of the 2007-2009 Credit Crisis 1
Finance, Governance and the State 5
Dimensions of Financial Governance 10
Basic Elements of the Argument and Plan of the Book 12
Summary 17
Box: Select Financial Crises 18
2 Forging Financial Governance 20
Introduction: Baring Brothers 1890 20
The International Gold Standard until World War I 23
War Finance 26
The Interwar Years: 1920-1939 27
War Finance and a New Financial Order 39
Summary 44
3 Extending Financial Governance 46
Introduction: Bankhaus Herstatt and Franklin National Bank 1974 46
Bretton Woods: 1945-1971 48
Post-Bretton Woods: 1972-1997 53
Reading History: Continuities and Discontinuities 63
Summary 67
4 Financial Governance and the Great Freeze 70
Introduction: Lehman Brothers and AIG 2008 70
The New Global Finance and Governance Innovations: 1997-2007 72
The Great Freeze: 2007-2009 79
The Regulatory Response 87
Recalibrating the Public/Private Authority Nexus 95