In order to become a role player in regional and international trade, countries have to ensure that their financial system is stable, as measured by international standards.
13 It was trading in the bond market that made the Rothschild family wealthy and for most of the nineteenth century its bank was the largest in the world. 14 So by the middle of the nineteenth century a quite sophisticated financial system had arisen in major western economies. It included banks and other financial intermediaries, stock and bond markets and insurance.