Over the course of the nineteenth century the London Stock Exchange evolved from a market dealing primarily in new issues of British government debt to become the preeminent exchange of the first global capital market. By 1914, one-third of the public capital available to investors anywhere in...

“Someday you guys are going to need to tell me how we ended up with a system like this….we're not doing something right if we're stuck with these miserable choices.” President Bush, to Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke, after his briefing on September 16, 2008

In common with the other periphery countries that joined the euro-zone in 1998-2000, Spain enjoyed ten years of economic prosperity, essentially debt-financed. The financial crisis of 2008 has revealed deep structural problems in the euro-zone, but also among Spain’s fiscally autonomous...