As barriers to trade and financial flows between countries have come down, the global movement of goods, services and capital has made national economies more and more interdependent.
Daily currency flows approximate four months of world trade.
A single country's long-term financial plans can be swamped in a few days by ravenous traders sensing weakness. And water-tight doors of credit agreements and domestic central banks collapse under the weight of collective monetary movements. And it seems certain that a crisis in one part of the world will ultimately affect everyone else. One senses that the private view of government officials and bankers is that something has to be done. Disagreements that were previously guarded now flare in public.