Even before the Russian attack on Ukraine, discussions were underway on how to correct the most obvious shortcomings of globalization, while at the same time retaining the benefits achieved over the last thirty years. Global problems such as pandemics and greenhouse gas emissions can only call for global responses.
That included the failure of the Bank of New England Corp., then the third largest bank failure in U.S. history.2 It happened in January 1991, at a time of great stress in the financial system and the broader economy, and only days after 45 depository institutions in the region had been closed and 300,000 deposit accounts frozen.3 My Treasury colleagues and I joined representatives of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Federal Reserve Board in a conference room on a Sunday morning.