FINANCIAL SYSTEMS

Financial Systems

Financial Systems

Introduction

We live in an increasingly global community. If democracy is to mean anything, we need the political institutions to match Globalization is a much contested word. On the one hand, some claim we live in a completely global order - an integrated world economy and society. On the other hand, some question the extent of globalization and see the national state as robust and integrated as it ever was. Both views are misleading.

Globalization is a major trend in recent years, and no book covers it more thoroughly than Global Transformations by David Held et al. Eight key elements are explored in depth: global politics, military globalization, global trade and markets, financial globalization, global production, global migration of people, cultural globalization, and environmental globalization.

In this book, the author describe that Global transformations have affected our concept of the democratic political community. Just at the moment when the idea of democracy is gaining Substantial ground around the world, our understanding of political community is in doubt as a result of multiplying interconnections among communities. While more countries are seeking to establish national democracies, some of the most powerful forces that will affect our future are escaping the boundaries of nation-states. On the one hand we insist increasingly upon our own uniqueness as individuals and yet must live and collaborate with others across nations and states.

Typically that "collaboration" has been dominated by the pursuit of national interests, ultimately backed by force. This may well be how it remains. Most governments seek to assert themselves nationally and to protect their national interests. But here is the problem. Today states do not just make decisions for their citizens; their decisions have deep implications for other peoples, other national communities, who have few, if any, ways of holding these other states to account.

This goes well beyond the obvious example of the pursuit of war. When, for example, the United States develops an energy policy sanctioning the intensive use of oil and coal, it is developing a policy that consumes and utilizes a lot of the world's resources and which has many implications beyond its borders. When a country in Latin America harvests its rainforests, it is making a decision not just for itself but for other peoples who will also be affected.

Further the book explains that the processes of globalization have been fundamentally changing the world in which we live. This is not entirely new since societies have always been somewhat connected. But now we're experiencing a more intensive interconnectedness among different people than before. The world economy has grown rapidly, world trade has expanded enormously and financial systems are highly integrated. More than a trillion dollars changes hands daily in the foreign exchange markets. Multinational companies dominate national and international economic transactions. In environmental politics, in human rights regimes, in international law and elsewhere, a denser pattern of interconnectedness among the world's peoples also prevails. Such developments fall far short of creating an integral world order but they have ...