ABSTRACT
The global nancial system is at once (i) a market in which money itself, and nancial products, representing credit, debt and risk, are bought and sold; (ii) a structure of exchange, what accountants would call a pattern of ows of funds, in which rst Britain, then the US, then Japan, and most recently China has acted as the dominant provider of funds for the major debtor nations and rms; and (iii) a set of institutional arrangements, including regulators and rules and institutional procedures, most obviously exemplied in recent years by the continuing rise of the G20 bloc of leading developed and developing nations along with global institutions and key market actors who, it could be said, both largely caused the 2007-2009 crisis and enjoyed success (so far) in resolving it. It is also a system of power that distributes gains, losses and the prospects of future gains and losses in a number of dierent forms.
