ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book introduces two broad visions of the relationship between finance and development: Financing for development (FfD) and the political economy of finance (PEF). It focuses on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), vision, development, global finance, power. The book includes the international context that development finance operates in, in terms of poverty, inequality and welfare indicators. It suggests that there are different ways of viewing the relationship between finance and development: finance as a resource for development and as a social structure within which development happens. The finance is a necessary and liberating resource used to boost savings, increase investment and drive the capital accumulation process necessary for economic growth and development. Finance is itself a structure of power not just a resource for the powerful. And the increasing power of finance is a consequence of financialisation.
