The emergence of prosperous middle classes has created increased demand for a wide range of consumer goods and personal services, again creating employment or business opportunities and generating further wealth for those able to take advantage of these new demands. The international financial system has begun to exercise significant influence on national economic and fiscal policies, and on a range of other domestic policies, by benchmarking governments against criteria judged to be useful in assessing sound policy performance and best practice management. The OECD does this for member countries - international agencies advising investors do it for most if not all countries, but in the interest of their investor clients, not national governments. Monetary and fiscal policy decisions can no longer be taken on the basis of exclusively domestic considerations. A trend towards uniformity in national economic and fiscal policies between countries is one result.
Credit ratings become powerful political symbols for governments.
They are used as a measure of their economic responsibility and standing. The result is conservative policies driven, essentially, by the criteria used by credit rating agencies. It is ironic, for instance, that a key factor in the credit-worthiness of a nation, enabling it to borrow internationally on favourable terms, is to have little or no debt. Debt reduction following the debt crisis of the 1980's has been a key objective of governments. A common approach has been to reduce debt by selling assets and government business activity.