The International Organization of Credit

Randall Germain explores the international organization of credit in a changing world economy in this book. At the centre of his analysis is the construction of successive international organizations of credit, built around principal financial centers (PFCs) and constituted by overlapping networks of credit institutions, mainly investment, commercial and central banks. A critical historical approach to international political economy (IPE) allows Germain to stress both the multiple roles of finance within the world economy, and the centrality of financial practices and networks for the construction of monetary order. He argues that the private global credit system which has replaced Bretton Woods is anchored unevenly across the world's three principal financial centers: New York, London, and Tokyo. This new balance of power is irrevocably fragmented with respect to relations between states, and highly ambiguous in terms of how power is exercised between public authorities and private financial institutions. Germain's analysis thus suggests that we are living in a period of fragile international monetary order.