Global Financial Regulation: The Essential Guide
by Howard Davies and David Green
Financial regulation has leapt to the top of the international economic agenda. Seldom can there have been such a well-timed book. The authors are very distinguished experts and practitioners in the field. Davies and Green achieve the almost impossible feat of making 'regulation' interesting.
William Keegan, The Observer
As international financial markets have become more complex, so has the regulatory system which oversees them. The Basel Committee is just one of a plethora of international bodies and groupings which now set standards for financial activity around the world, in the interests of investor protection and financial stability. These groupings, and their decisions, have a major impact on markets in developed and developing countries, and on competition between financial firms. Yet their workings are shrouded in mystery, and their legitimacy is uncertain.
Here, for the first time, two men who have worked within the system describe its origins and development in clear and accessible terms. Howard Davies was the first Chairman of the UK’s Financial Services Authority, the single regulator for the whole of Britain’s financial sector. He was a member of the main international regulatory committees for several years. David Green was Head of International Policy at the FSA, after 30 years in the Bank of England, and has been particularly closely associated with the development of the European regulatory system. He now advises the Financial Reporting Council.
Their ‘essential guide’ to the international system will be invaluable for international regulators themselves, financial market practitioners and for students of the global financial system. Furthermore, they identify weaknesses in the system, faced with new types of institutions like hedge funds and private equity funds and the growth in importance of developing countries, who have been excluded so far from the key decision making fora. It will be essential reading for all those interested in the development of financial markets and the way they are regulated.
Why We're Losing The War On Terror
by Paul Rogers
The war on terror is a lost cause. As the war heads towards its second decade, American security policy is in disarray – the Iraq War is a disaster, Afghanistan is deeply insecure and the al-Qaida movement remains as potent as ever with new generations of leaders coming to the fore.
Well over 100,000 civilians have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, many tens of thousands have been detained without trial, and torture, prisoner abuse and rendition have sullied the reputation of the United States and its coalition partners.
Why We’re Losing the War on Terror examines the reasons for the failure, focusing on American political and military attitudes, the impact of 9/11, the fallacy of a New American Century, the role of oil and, above all, the consummate failure to go beyond a narrow western view of the world.
More significantly, it argues that the disaster of the war may have a huge if unexpected bonus. Its very failure will make it possible to completely re-think western attitudes to global security, moving towards a sustainable policy that will be much more effective in addressing the real threats to global security – the widening socio-economic divide and climate change.
