I never considered myself an academic economist. I was a trader. That distinction has led me around the world with a front-row seat all because the floating exchange rate was born on August 15th, 1971 and even then it was supposed to be just temporary. Foreign Exchange futures just began trading in 1972. That only emerged when it was becoming obvious that what was intended to be temporary was becoming permanent. Consequently, none of this was ever taugt in school. When the first bank failure took place in 1974, Franklin National Bank, I knew a senior man in the bank and he knew I understood this new thing of floating currencies. This was all before hedging or understanding currency risk. The bank failed on a 10% move of the Italian lira. There were no academics to call in back then. After I looked at the problem, thereafter, whatever currency crisis that developed it came down to get the guy that did the Franklin National Bank one.
This book is about how the world economy really functions. I have been called in from the Middle East even being on the phone in an OPEC meeting to being called by by the central bank of China during the 1997 Asian Currency Crisis. I have attended many board meetings of major multinational corporations and restructured companies to survive the new age of international capital flows.
I have tried my best to relay what I have experienced and learned over more than 50 years. I have witnessed the evolution of the world economy from every side and it has been a fascinating journey. This is a text book on how the world really functions with just over 600 pages fully illustrated in color.
It is also time to abandon domestically confined analysis and theories and understand how the world truly functions, for everything is interconnected.
Understanding the World Economy
