World's money; International Banking from bretton woods to the brink of insolvency

Global banking is the central nervous system of the world economy. Banking has become a 24-hour finan cial supermarket that is, in the words of Walter Wriston of Citibank, "capable of moving money and ideas to any place on this earth in minutes." The World's Money is about the world's biggest business: money.

Michael Moffitt has interviewed scores of the world's most powerful bankers, political and eco nomic leaders, and foreign currency traders to find out why the vast and intricate banking system is on the verge of collapse. Today the world is poised on the brink of a financial catastrophe unlike any it has witnessed since the Great Depression. This dissolu tion has brought the international banking system to a state of competitive anarchy and unprecedented indebtedness.

In 1944, the Bretton Woods Conference laid the foundation for the postwar economic boom. The United States became the wealthiest nation, Europe and Japan recovered, and the International Monetary Fund and World Bank were created to foster eco nomic stability for the world. There was global economic order. But the giant global banks have become both victims of the world economic crisis and one of its central causes. The global banks that already control the world's money have outgrown national boundaries and have assumed more power than most governments. They have fed inflation, speculated against currencies, including the U.S. dollar, and lent enormous amounts to shaky govern ments like Poland and Mexico and Brazil which can never pay it back. In a desperate move to avoid financial anarchy, the banks and the Federal Reserve Board put the United States on the road to high interest rates and in the process plunged the Amer ican and world economies into the worst recession in decades.

The World's Money is also a book about people. It takes the reader into the heart of the world's financial system from the skyscrapers of Wall Street to the eighteenth-century pubs of London's elite financial district and introduces the men who manage the world's money. Moffitt demystifies the world of high finance and tells the reader how the great global banks affect the interest rate on a mortgage and whether or not one has a job.

Fifty years ago, the world economy was wrecked by massive financial failures. Today leading bankers and politicians are asking: Can it happen again? An idea as grand and inventive as Bretton Woods is needed to safeguard our future.