The Latin American debt crisis, which broke out in August 1982, was the first global financial crisis in the postwar period. While the crisis started in the "periphery", it constituted a threat to the "core" of the world economy, as the banking system was under severe pressure. Alongside the...

"When the BIS was established in 1930 it had two purposes. The most obvious practical concern was to handle a narrowly technical issue: to create a painless or crisis-minimising method for making the transfer of German postwar reparations payments. But the new institution also had a more...