Читать книгу Financial Cold War. A View of Sino-US Relations from the Financial Markets онлайн

15 страница из 137

This book is an attempt to synthesise the financial and economic factors that have brought us to our current predicament, analyse the geopolitical realities underlying financial markets today, and to suggest some solutions that balance the many varying interests, so as to avert the calamities that befell earlier generations. In this attempt, I am conscious of Maslow's caution that ‘It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail'. Financial markets cannot provide solutions to all the complex problems that arise in Great Power relations – indeed, policies that excessively favoured markets at the expense of communities may have contributed to many of the problems in the first place.

That said, I haven't yet come across an analysis that considers fully, from both a top-down and bottom-up perspective, how the global financial system as we know it today is contributing to geopolitical tensions. Even less attention is paid to the diverse range of policies, regulations, infrastructures and conventions that support it. Without an appreciation of these and the history of how the system has come about, it is difficult to understand the full scope of the systemic financial challenges facing the world's two leading powers, much less devise effective strategies for navigating the treacherous waters we're in.