Conclusions

As long as political boundaries persist, the “imperialism” of financial laissez faire is a harbinger of international and national political and economic problems. Keeping finance national (or regional) through Keynes-type clearing unions and reforming finan­cial regulation along the previous lines is only part of a radical rethinking of global relations.

The attention devoted by the present chapter to vested interests comes from the neces­sity to properly consider the nontechnical difficulties that loom over alternative paths. Policy makers should realize however that the social and political climate nurtured by the global laissez faire of the last decades is making it difficult to avoid the fact that the next devastating crisis could bring back the fascist, and not the liberal, version of national interests.

Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to Jan Kregel and Elisabetta Montanaro for comments and suggestions on a previous draft of the paper. The usual caveats apply.