ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the failure of western banks during both the interwar and postwar periods to promote the integration of Yugoslavia's own economy or its connection to the economic space of South-east Europe as a whole. Citibank and its partners could not secure even US$200 million from western capital markets for an emergency Yugoslav loan. In the first flush of optimism that followed the collapse of communist regimes across Eastern Europe, our S. G. Wilson Center programme convened a conference in Sofia in 1991 to consider the prospects for reconstructing capital markets for private investment. The coincidence of French will and interest in Czechoslovakia was real but simply cannot be read into South-east Europe. As Yugoslav inflation accelerated with budget and trade deficits, West-European and especially American banks became a necessary partner in keeping the supply of new credit coming.
