These policies, as we know, favored the building up of the large imbalances between surplus and deficit countries, which provided the economic precondition for the international crisis. In the aftermath of the global crisis timely and internationally coordinated policies were fundamental to avoid a new Great Depression.
London, and other British financial centers, had developed by World War I into the dominant lender to the world, accounting for half of the world’s trade financing and, despite its loss of empire, London remains, with New York, at the top of the world’s financial pyramid.