In this book eminent international banking expert Alexandre Lamfalussy grapples with issues that surround the trend toward financial globalization and its potential impact on financial fragility. He analyzes four recent crisis experiences in emerging markets-in Russia, Latin America, Mexico, and East Asia-and offers a series of carefully considered, pragmatic policy recommendations. "Drawing on intimate personal experience and a deep well of common sense, Lamfalussy provides a compact but thorough account of debt and currency crises in the 1980s and 1990s. His proposals for crisis prevention and management are bold without being unrealistic.