ABSTRACT
Following on the financial crises of the late 1990s, the international community considered numerous concepts of how risk, transparency, and crisis prevention/management processes in the global financial system could be improved. Suggestions ranged from radical proposals (e.g. establish a global bankruptcy court) to modest initiatives (e.g. countries ought to adopt a policy of confining short-term foreign currency borrowings to a level not exceeding available free foreign exchange reserves). Most suggestions were rejected or at best, unevenly adopted, but finally a consensus developed to the effect that a feasible path to improve the financial system involved country adoption and implementation of best practice standards in what came to be termed 12 key policy areas.1
