Solomon, Steven. The Confidence Game: How Unelected Central Bankers Are
Governing the Changed Global Economy. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.
606 pages.
The mobility of global capital skyrocketed in the 1980s. Foreign
currency exchange transactions increased fourteen fold to $1 trillion
every day (twice the foreign exchange reserves of all world central banks),
while world trade merely doubled. In the 1990s, all manner of future-dated
instruments became popular. Some call it a "casino society"; these financial
markets are almost completely speculative, and very sensitive to bad news.
It all has to balance at the end of the day on the clearing-house computers
that track money movements between banks. If someone fails to meet their
obligations, there's the threat of chain-reaction and meltdown.
Central bankers in the U.S. are known as the Federal Reserve System,
but Germany, Switzerland, Britain, France, and Japan also have their
counterparts. Working together, it's their job to put out any fires that
might consume the system. It's not as if they have the resources for the
task -- no one can control these unpredictable markets, and nations are
increasingly at their mercy. Consequently these central bankers use bluff,
secrecy, and innuendo, hoping to calm the waters by presenting an air of
insider confidence. This book is richly detailed from 250 interviews.
Stay tuned, it could get interesting.
ISBN 0-684-80182-5
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