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Lessons from Iceland

The extraordinary rise and fall of Iceland’s financial-casino economy. Wade and Sigurgeirsdóttir describe the island’s neoliberal turn under a quasi-feudal elite turned banking oligopoly, and its prospects amidst the triple crisis—currency, banking, sovereign debt—now bestriding it.

Financial Regime Change?

As stock markets plunge and governments scramble to bail out the finance sector, Robert Wade argues that we are exiting the neoliberal paradigm that has held sway since the 1980s. Causes and repercussions of the crisis, and errors of the model that brought it to fruition.

A New Global Financial Architecture?

As the world economy shows growing signs of vulnerability, what mechanisms exist for averting repeats of the Asian or Mexican crises? Banking and regulatory regimes as instruments of standardization, pulling national economies into Anglo-American orbits.

Choking the South

Charting the impact of fluctuating currencies, volatile stock markets and interest rates on the developing world since the end of the Bretton Woods system, Robert Wade contends that untrammelled mobility of capital—private funds above all—reinforces dynamics of debt and underdevelopment.

The Ringmaster of Doha

Robert Wade on Michael Moore, A World Without Walls. The road from Seattle to Cancún. Back-room politics of the global trade agenda in the account of an ex-Director General of the WTO.

Showdown at the World Bank

‘International financial institutions’ are more national than they seem. Robert Wade reveals how tightly the US Treasury monitors and controls the World Bank, and how quickly it will stamp out departures from its orthodoxy.

The Gathering World Slump and the Battle over Capital Controls

“The policy backlash is ‘the most serious challenge yet to the free-market orthodoxy that the globe has embraced since the end of the Cold War’ The Wall Street Journal, 4 September 1998.” read more

The Asian Crisis: The High Debt Model Versus the Wall Street-Treasury-IMF Complex

“How could the widely acknowledged real estate problems of Thailand’s banks in 1996 and 1997 have triggered such a far-reaching debt-and-development crisis? The devaluation of the Thai baht in July 1997 was followed by currency crises or financial instability in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, . . .” read more

Japan, the World Bank, and the Art of Paradigm Maintenance: The East Asian Miracle in Political Perspective

“To what extent is the World Bank an actor, an ‘autonomous variable’ in the international system? Or to what extent are its objectives and approaches the mere manifestations of competition and compromise among its member states? Several writers have argued that the Bank has a relatively large amount . . .” read more