Taming Global Financial Flows: A Citizen's Guide

The global financial system, this book argues, is in turmoil. Financial liberalization has led to phasing out of regulatory mechanisms over the movement of huge sums involved in currency speculations, new financial products, offshore financial centers, secretive hedge funds and hot money flows to emerging markets. The result is a degree of volatility in financial markets which threatens the orderly running of notional economies. This book explains and analyses the constantly changing and complex world of global financial flows, and calls for radical reforms in a system that is now more susceptible to the whims of market sentiment than the economic policies of governments. The author enunciates certain guiding principles in order to create a more stable international financial architecture and recommends a series of concrete measures. This most timely and useful follow-up to his very successful previous book, The Globalization of Finance: A Citizen's Guide, contributes greatly to public understanding of the intricacies of global finance and to the possibilities of effective action by peoples movements campaigning for a more just and sound financial system. We can always count on Kavaljit Singh for lucid and hard-hitting analysis. This book is no exception. - Susan George Kavaljit Singh has made a difficult subject intelligible to ordinary citizens, and in a very readable way he has mapped out the progressive alternatives for bringing international finance under, democratic control. - Edward Herman Singh is to be congratulated an up-to-date critical assessment of financial globalization. - David Felix It should be made compulsory reading for finance ministers, central economic policy makers... learned international experts. - Arun Ghosh