In a powerful demonstration of how we can learn from history, Professor Buckley provides deep analyses of some of the devastating financial crises of the last quarter-century. He shows how such factors as the origins and destinations of loans, bank behaviour, bad timing, ignorance of history, trade regimes, capital flight, and corruption coalesce under certain circumstances to trigger a financial crash. He then offers well-thought out legal measures to regulate these factors in a way that can prevent the worst from happening and more adequately protect the interests of vulnerable parties and victims. In the course of the discussion he covers such topics as the following: the roles of the Bretton Woods institutions in the globalisation process global capital flows debtor nation policies the effects of the Brady restructurings of the 80s and 90s fixed versus floating exchange rates the social costs of IMF policies debt-for-development exchanges and the national balance sheet problem. Professor Buckley’s far-reaching recommendations include details of tax, regulatory, banking, and bankruptcy regimes to be instituted at a global level.