Finance and World Politics

Abstract

Money has always been at the heart of international relations. United States monetary domination was the cornerstone of American hegemony in the post-war international political economy and a key factor in generating the long boom from the late 1940s to the early 1970s. The breakdown of that system, however, has opened the way for the revival of international ‘high finance’, based on floating exchange rates, financial market deregulation and information technology that can shift money around the world with a tap of a button.