ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the Group of Seven’s (G7) Halifax strategy of 1995. The current review of the global financial architecture has its roots in G7 reports and proposals that were first presented at the Halifax summit of 1995 as a response to the Mexican peso crisis, at a time when enthusiasm for capital account liberalization was at its high water mark. It was in this sense that the Group of Seven acted as a core transgovernmental coalition in the review of the global financial architecture. Because of an approach to the global financial architecture that has primarily been based on transparency, the G7 have laid the institutional and ideational foundations for a global financial system characterized by market supremacy, in which market actors are able to engage in asymmetrical negotiations with debtors and demand reassurance in the form of institutional arrangements and policies and have the final say in the determination of repayment schedules.
