Lessons and Reflections

Abstract

Governments these days are like the magician who let the genie out of the bottle and could not recapture or control it. Influenced by free-market ideology and the new technology, they have removed shackles on money switches among nations and dropped barriers between markets, so unleashing vast sums to roam the globe in quest of profit. Yet risks are inseparable from these heady conditions. Nor is it difficult at the start of 1988, and after the experience of the October 1987 stock market ‘meltdown’, to identify areas of particular hazard.

The cost of doing business in London is rising, while profit margins are under intense pressure and are coming down.

Leading American broker.

Governments must be aware that sophisticated technology and truly international markets (such as the Eurobond market) preclude them from regulating capital flows.

Securities Industry Association.¹

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs — you are not in possession of all the information available to the market.

Adapted from Kipling’s ‘If’.