Book Description

Banking, Politics and Global Finance presents an innovative, micro-political examination of the US banking system's response to the ongoing globalization of financial markets. This approach contrasts sharply with earlier studies which have emphasized the macro-structural aspects of politics through concentrating on elements of stability and consistency in the policy responses by advanced industrial countries to external economic pressures. By micro-political analysis of policy making, this book reveals a multitude of changes in the interests, coalitions and power constellations among private and public sector actors and institutions in the US financial system, in the absence of any macrostructural adjustment. These changes have opened alternative channels for policy making leading to substantial adjustments in the regulatory framework governing US financial markets. Using detailed discussion of the unsuccessful attempts to repeal the law that separates commercial from investment banking - the Glass-Steagall Act - and the successful raising of the capital standards of US commercial banks, Dr Reinicke's book also explains why the same policy network can respond very differently to an external economic challenge - a phenomenon usually neglected in the literature on comparative political economy.