*** DIMITRI GRYGOWSKI: Les Etats-Unis et l'unification monétaire de l'Europe. Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes - Peter Lang (1 av. Maurice, B-1050 Brussels. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - Fax: 3761727 - email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.net ). "Cité européenne" series, No. 41. 2009, 472 pp, €47-50. ISBN 90-5201-268-7.
Long ago, in the early 1950s, economist Robert Triffin boldly announced: "If Europe is not created by its currency, it will not be created". He struck the nail on the head because some fifty years later, Europe finally managed to create Monetary Union and personified it in the Single Currency. Meanwhile, the EU Member States were forced to react to the monetary events that occurred in the decision-making capitals in other parts of the world, in other words in the United States, and initially they reacted each in her own manner, becoming more coordinated from the 1970's onwards until their collective emancipation with Economic and Monetary Union (programmed into the Maastricht Treaty). This book follows on from a doctoral thesis directed by historian Gérard Bossuat at Université de Cergy-Pontoise in France and takes a totally new approach in that the author does not go back over the history of European monetary union (there's only a short prologue on the matter) but instead examines how the United States has reacted to the gradual formulation and implementation of the single European currency and Economic and Monetary Union in Europe. Better still, Dimitri Grygowski does not only study US partnerships as "simply reacting to European monetary union," but sees them as constant "actors" in this arena. This view certainly invites readers to take a new look at the current offensive against the euro in the wake of the situation in Greece…
The research is based on a very reader-friendly narrative, with descriptions of monetary mechanisms taking up far fewer pages, chronologically ordered in line with events in monetary union. It is divided into four sections. Firstly the 1960s, when the United States tried to defend the Bretton Woods system. The author starts by describing the United States' policy towards Europe until the time when the Johnson Administration starting doubting and the Nixon Administration updated its European doctrine. At this point, as Prof. Bossuat explains, one saw "the end of US innocence and the return of US interests," while European monetary cooperation remained in the doldrums after the Barre and Werner Plans, under pressure from the Bretton Woods System that collapsed after President Nixon's decision on 15 August 1971 to sever the dollar's gold standard (convertibility). The first mooting of European currency ideas were tested by US policy and the political will of the Member States. The second section looks at the re-launch of European monetary unity ideas in the second half of the 1970s at a time when currencies were floating freely and there was huge tension between the United States and Germany. The author sheds light on the Carter Administration, which took up pro-European integration ideas but was divided over the question of the European Monetary System and therefore also on the plan to set up an area of monetary stability - seen in some departments in the US as a diversion from the ambition of a concerted economic recovery. The third section looks at US perceptions and analysis of the way Europeans have been learning how to cooperate on monetary issues through the European Monetary System (EMS). The times were changing and Washington had tried to "win an invite to the European negotiating table" when the EMS was being drawn up, but this would become a condescending attitude under Reagan, who repeatedly called for Europe to toe the line on the road to the Single Market and who would very soon scrap "the United States' integrationist catechism (…) in favour of calls for a free market," with the tentative European Monetary Union having the key negative characteristic of "providing a reverse demonstration of the policy of perfect neutrality endorsed by the designers of Reagonomics". At the time, the United States would regularly come up with the term Eurosclerosis… However, as Prof. Bossuat points out in the foreword, while the 1983 Williamsburg Summit was the theatre of attacks against "anti-free marketers" and against fixed European currency rates (not to mention the snide "remarks about the inferiority of Europe's economic culture," it was also a time when the European Union showed "in practice that Reaganomics" could not "become general rules for the whole of the world". This demonstrates that Europe was right if, as Grygowski puts it, "it decided for its own reasons to create a European currency".
Readers will understand just how right this decision of Europe's was when they read the fourth part of this book because even United States business circles have understood the benefits to be drawn from a single exchange rate system unlikely to become a political football. Even today, it is best to proclaim that Robert Triffin was right. Dimitri Grygowski's great achievement is to shed light on how this slow-moving juggernaut progressed and was viewed and reacted to in the United States, thanks to impressive delving in the archives and direct interviews with the key players of an adventure that people fell into rather than directly planned. The book also sheds light on the United States' disparate methods of governance vis-a-vis Europe... Michel Theys
*** LARS JONUNG, JAAKKO KIANDER, PENTTI VARTIA: The Great Financial Crisis in Finland and Sweden. Editions Edward Elgar (The Lypiatts, 15 Lansdown Road, Cheltenham, Glos, GL50 2JA, United Kingdom. Tel: (44-1242) 226934 - Fax: 262111 - email: info@e-elgar.co.uk - Internet: http://www.e-elgar.com ). 2009,337 pp. ISBN: 978-1-84844-305-1
Arising from cooperation among several academic experts in economics, this book examines the financial crisis that hit Finland and Sweden in the 1990s. Most people simply did not believe that the two countries, characterised by sustained growth and low unemployment, could possibly suffer a recession like the one that hit them in 1991. To examine the mechanisms at work, the authors start by looking at the financial and macroeconomic manoeuvres in the countries before and after the big crisis of the 1990s, comparing and contrasting its causes and effects in the two countries in question. The final chapter examines the causes of the downturn and draws twelve lessons from the Scandinavian privatisation policies that follow on from other lessons earlier in the book. The authors make political recommendations on how to avoid repeating the mistakes made by Sweden and Finland. (NDu)
*** PHILIPPE-EMMANUEL PARTSCH: Droit bancaire et financier européen. De Boeck & Larcier (39 rue des Minimes, B-1000 Brussels. Tel: (32-10) 482619 - Fax: 482750 - email: commande@deboeckservices.com - Internet: http://www.larcier.com ). "Europe(s)". 2009, 1086 pp, €125. ISBN 78-2-8044-1970-3.
This weighty tome is a mighty Marathon in its ambition and scope. One needed to screw one's courage to sticking point to start the new decade by writing a guide to banking and finance law in Europe! The bet has paid off - although the mushrooming of new laws in recent years has done nothing to simplify an already complicated task. The brave author is ideally qualified to carry out the work, having lectured on the freedom of capital, written a doctorate on European international private law and worked as a law clerk at the European Court of Justice before leaving to combine his work as a lawyer with work as a lecturer at the Universities of Liège and Luxembourg. His educational talents have been drawn upon to marshal this growing and amorphous subject matter with a staggering degree of clarity, while remaining fully rigorous and exhaustive. The author starts by describing the material and institutional set-up surrounding the regulation of banking and finance, like measures on the circulation of capital, payments, banks and the provision of services, along with Economic and Monetary Union and the EU's rules in this connection. After describing the general EU backdrop, Philippe-Emmanuel Partsch examines financial and banking regulation proper in four chapters. The first looks at operators (lending, currency and payment establishments, investment companies, undertakings making collective investments in transferable securities, pension funds, banks and insurance companies); the second at financial infrastructure (financial market negotiating platforms, share issue prospectuses and conditions to be met before negotiating on a regulated market, takeover bids, settlement and delivery systems and so on); the third at the rules governing banking and finance (competition rules, consumer protection, e-commerce, privacy laws, tackling money laundering and the funding of terrorism, and financial guarantees); and the fourth at regulators, where the author thinks he has detected a shift "towards convergence and better coordination of the national authorities". Enriched with tables comparing the various EU treaties, including the Lisbon Treaty, with lists of secondary law, European Court of Justice rulings and European Commission decisions. There is also a detailed bibliography and an index. This is clearly a reference book in the field although "European law is more like cinema than photography because it is constantly changing" and the book will therefore have to be revised and updated several times in the years to come. (PBo)
*** SANDRINE HANHARDT REDONDO, PHILIPPE BRAILLARD, HENRI SCHWAMM, FLORENCIO ARTIGOT: Secret bancaire et place financière: le combat de la Suisse. Centre Patronal (PO Box 1215, CH-1001 Lausanne. Tel: (41-21) 7963300 - Fax: 7963382 - email: info@centrepatronal.ch). "Etudes & Enquêtes" series, No. 39. 2009, 98 pp, CHF 18. ISBN 978-2-940089-21-3.
"Knocking on the head some clichés that are damaging Switzerland's role in the financial world" and providing ideas about how to guarantee the future of the financial world in Switzerland (the country's largest industry) are the twin ambitions of this incisive book. Lawyer and legal secretary Sandrine Hanhardt Redondo slams as " hypocritical" the G20's drawing up of black lists of tax havens because Switzerland is on the 'grey list' but the Channel Islands of Guernsey and Jersey (the UK) and the Virgin Islands (the United States) are on the white list of 'good guys' despite not being particularly renowned for transparency and exchange of banking information. To put an end to this "masquerade," the entire secret accounting system has to be tackled, from Singapore to Monaco via the state of Delaware in the United States and the Isle of Man. In addition to the constant controversy of banking secrecy, two economists show that Switzerland's leading place in the financial world is not dependent on secret banking because the country has much more to offer on the banking front and this should now be galvanised to "fight canny competitors in a market that is already banking on the disappearance of secret banking in the near future". (MT)
*** ANTOINE N'GAKOSSO: Corruption fiscale, Fraude, Evasion fiscale et Croissance. L'Harmattan (5-7 rue de l'Ecole Polytechnique, F-75005 Paris. email: diffusion.harmattan@wanadoo.fr - Internet: http://www.librairieharmattan.com ). 2009, 182 pp, €18-50. ISBN 978-2-296-10212-5.
Fraud, corruption and tax evasion are not restricted to the developing world but they are a greater drain on the economy in the developing world than elsewhere. In this book aimed at expert economists, the author sheds light on the macroeconomic impact of fraud, corruption and tax evasion on how the state operates, on civil servants and agents in the private sector and on the growth and structure of economies in Sub-Saharan Africa. The book stresses several Keynesian multipliers generated by corruption, fraud and tax evasion. (PBo)
*** FRANCOISE AUQUE (Ed.): Baux commerciaux. Quel modèle pour l'Europe ? De Boeck & Larcier (see above). "Contrats & Patrimoine" series, No. 11. 2009, 114 pp. ISBN 978-2-8044-3483-0.
Should there be a common EU law governing commercial rent? The EU treaties do not cover the issue and Member States are certainly very reluctant to relinquish powers in this domain. All the same, observes Prof. Joël Monéger (of University Paris-Dauphine in France), "the cost of diversity cannot be denied" and approximation or even harmonisation of commercial lettings is seen as vital by some parties. How should this be organised? By moving in the direction of common substantive law, purely contractual law or law that includes protective legislation? Without aiming to provide detailed answers but rather to provide good foundations for whichever form of law might be chosen, the University Lille 2 and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium organised a conference a year ago to examine French and Belgian commercial rent acts, which provide special protection to the commercial lessee, and comparing these two countries' legal systems with the commercial lettings rules in Spain and the United Kingdom, which have the reputation of not providing such protection. The book provides a useful summary of the conference and its examination of contractual freedom, the binding nature of contracts and the role of courts and judges. (MT)