I evoke it just to drive home the sheer enormity of the task accomplished in this second transformation, achieved in slightly over one generation, so that it now seems perfectly natural to discuss whether this erstwhile basket-case is now a financial crossroad of the world. In what follows, I interpret “financial crossroads” to refer to International Financial Centres, or IFC’s.
Another example of deficit targets comes from the balanced-budget requirements of the states, which can be viewed as deficit targets with the target set at zero. Most states have some form of balancedbudget requirement, although the form and stringency of the requirement varies considerably across states.