ABSTRACT
Recent decades have witnessed an unprecedented globalization of finance. Along with the traditional world money, gold, various national currencies, the euro, and the Special Drawing Right (SDR) have also become mediums of exchange, units of account, and stores of value across the planet. Moreover, most foreign exchange transactions now take place through telephone and computer networks in a roundthe-world, round-the-clock market. In other financial transactions, too, most major banks, investment houses, pension funds, insurance companies, and hedge funds today operate in a global market. Concurrently a number of multilateral agencies have either newly emerged (like the International Organization of Securities Commissions, IOSCO) or expanded (like the International Monetary Fund, IMF) in order to monitor and regulate transworld financial flows.
