Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 December 2015
This article challenges existing accounts of the development of the Euromarkets by arguing that their emergence constituted the foundational moment in the advent of a postwar Anglo-American developmental field. The account contends the notion of a postwar order shaped predominantly by the outward expansion of American financial power, by deprivileging the exclusivity of American power and arguing that co-constitutive Anglo-American developmental processes were the generative force that produced the Euromarkets. Drawing upon new archival material, the article suggests that an Anglo-American developmental sphere, in which Britain continued to play a crucial but subordinate role, was key to the unfolding of postwar financial globalisation. The Anglo-American developmental processes occasioned by the Euromarkets gave rise to a ‘transatlantic regulatory feedback loop’ that stimulated deregulation on both sides of the Atlantic and placed Anglo-American capitalist interdependence at the centre of the politics of globalisation. The deeper origins of financial deregulation lie in the transformation of Anglo-American finance during the 1960s.
The author would like to thank Leo Panitch and Hannes Lacher for their support throughout the creation of this article, as well as Sandy Hager, Colin Hay, Andrew Hindmoor, Mick Moran, and Ronen Palan for their thoughtful comments and encouragement. Finally, thank you to the anonymous reviewers and editors for their insightful feedback.
1 The term ‘Euromarkets’ applies to transactions of offshore currency in two distinct but related markets: the ‘Eurocurrency/Eurodollar’ and ‘Eurobond’ markets.
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