Trade union leaders use it to support pleas for better protection of their members. Institutional investors use it to ask for liberalization of cross-border investment. Local politicians warn of the threats to local habits, traditions, and jobs.
National politicians extol the achievements of policy coordination.
And so on. Clearly, globalization has its merits as well as its dangers. In this issue we point to two long-term phenomena related to the globalization of capital markets. First, Insight 410 argues that globalization is not per se a new phenomenon, but that it has changed fundamentally from the past in the way it unfolds. Take as a reference the golden era which preceded World War I, when capital flowed unfettered across the seven seas, and investors enjoyed an unprecedented freedom about where to put their money.