Safeguarding Prosperity in a Global Financial System

This report contains the findings and recommendations of an independent blue-ribbon commission on the future international financial architecture. The commission was sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, and co-chaired by Peter G. Peterson and Carla A. Hills, with the Institute for International Economics' Morris Goldstein serving as project director. The membership is listed below. The report analyzes the main factors that give rise to banking, currency, and debt crises, and it proposes a set of interrelated recommendations for improving crisis prevention and resolution. It also explains why the United States, despite its impressive overall economic performance since the outbreak of the Asian crisis, has a large stake in the future international financial architecture. The commission's recommendations aim at altering the behavior of emerging-market borrowers and their private creditors in ways that would reduce vulnerabilities in the exchange rate systems of emerging economies; inducing private creditors to accept their fair share of the costs of crisis resolution; reforming the IMF's lending policies; and refocusing the mandates of the IMF and the World Bank on leaner agendas. Its recommendations range well beyond the decisions taken to date by the international financial community.

A series of dissenting opinions by individual members is included. Other members of the commission were Paul Allaire, C. Fred Bergsten, Kenneth Dam, George David, Jorge Dominguez, Kenneth Duberstein, Barry Eichengreen, Martin Feldstein, Maurice Greenberg, Lee Hamilton, John Heimann, Peter Kenen, Paul Krugman, Nicholas Lardy, David Lipton, Ray Marshall, Norman Ornstein, William Rhodes, Stephen Roach, Henry Schacht, James Schlesinger, George Soros, Laura Tyson, Ezra Vogel, Paul Volcker, and Vin Weber.

Morris Goldstein, nonresident senior fellow, has held several senior staff positions at the International Monetary Fund (1970–94), including Deputy Director of its Research Department (1987–94). From 1994 to 2010, he held the Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow position at the Peterson Institute. He has written extensively on international economic policy and on international capital markets.